by Maggie Marr
“You’ve got sixty days of sobriety behind you”—my finger slid over the cool metal of the coin—“and a lifetime to make amends.”
Chapter 12
Amanda
My ear hurt. I pressed my phone to my ear and waited for my brother to stop talking on set in the Amazon to whatever grip, gaffer, or PA had interrupted our phone call. Across the street Ryan was in his daily therapy session with Dr. Dwyer. Sometimes he did his NA/AA meetings in the morning and sometimes he did it after his therapy session. Today I waited for him in the Coffee Bean across from his therapist’s office because Ryan had already done his NA/AA meeting, and he’d met with wardrobe to have his measurements taken for The Exuberance of Prosperity. He still had to go for his daily piss test after Dr. Dwyer, but then he would be finished for today—except for his second workout of the day. He’d become an exercise addict since he’d left rehab. Perhaps all those endorphins were acting in place of the cocaine and the booze.
“Sorry about that,” Sterling said.
I poked my straw into my iced coffee. “How’s Daddy?” I asked. “He hasn’t called or emailed or written.”
“He’s…” Sterling paused as though thinking for the words. “He’s okay.”
My spine tensed and the muscles in my shoulder tightened. Sterling was a Legend too. He knew what to say and what not to say. “Is he sick?”
“No,” Sterling said. Again he paused. “Just a minute.” A door in a room thousands of miles south opened and shut. I pictured Sterling moving to a more private spot on set. “He’s worried,” Sterling finally said. “About Kiley.”
Fury and sadness combined into a Molotov cocktail of emotions that wanted to explode inside me. I was homeless and penniless and being raked through the mud in Los Angeles, and my father was worried about his new bride.
Priceless.
Sterling sighed. “Look, I know it sucks. He should be worried about you and not her, but we both know who he is. He’s been our dad a long time.”
True. Completely true. With Steve Legend as a father you got the brilliant movie star and the desperate narcissist and you lived with both.
“Dad thinks Kiley is seeing someone,” Sterling said.
“Well, of course she’s seeing someone,” I said, my voice low. “She tried to sleep with someone other than Dad on their wedding day. What did he think? That she’d suddenly be monogamous while he was in the Amazon for three months? She doesn't have anything to keep her busy besides torturing me. Her next film doesn't start until end of summer.”
“Wow,” Sterling said. I heard a smile in my brother’s voice.
“Wow, what?” Had I said too much? Had I been too harsh? Had I—
“I haven’t heard that Amanda Legend in a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, I haven’t heard you tell it like it is since we were kids. I love it. I’ve missed it. You don’t remember how you would always say the wrong thing at the wrong time? Remember when you told Jerry Bruckheimer Pearl Harbor wasn’t very good? At the premiere?”
I scrunched my brows together and a tiny memory slipped through my brain, pulled up from long ago and far away. “I do remember that,” I said. “Didn’t I get in huge trouble for that?”
“Huge,” Sterling said. “But it was kind of worth it just to see the look on Dad’s face.”
“What about Dad? What is he doing?”
“He’s pouting. And acting like an ass. Storming around set, driving the crew and the director insane.”
We’d both witnessed this kind of behavior before from our dad. When we were little our Mom could contain the great Steve Legend’s childlike temper tantrums. She would cajole, guilt, please, do whatever was necessary to calm the man, but since her demise there hadn’t been anyone to fulfill that role. Well, anyone except for Sterling and me.
“What he really needs is you,” Sterling said.
His words thumped in my chest. “Daddy doesn’t need me,” I said.
“He always needs you,” Sterling said. “You have the same magic touch that Mom did. This amazing ability to calm him, make him see reason. Make him smile.”
Did I? Is that what I’d been doing for my father since my mom died? Had I taken on that similar role? Taking care of all the things he didn’t want to take care of? Doing it without upsetting anyone, especially him? Not telling him about the bits of life that he didn’t want to know, or that he wouldn’t like?
“Yeah, you do,” Sterling said. “You have this amazing ability to calm even the craziest of actors.”
“Really, Sterling?" I asked.
“What? You didn’t know that? You’re perfect as Ryan’s sober companion. I’m glad you’re telling it like you see it. You have to talk about what you want.”
“Okay,” I said. “I need you to tell Daddy he’s being an ass and that he should call me.” Sterling laughed. “Oh, little sister, what the hell do you think I’m down here in the Amazon trying to do, aside from making a movie?”
“I think you’re trying to make sure that Daddy puts in the best performance he can.” A wisp of air came from my mouth. Our entire lives had been about letting our father act and focus on his career and doing whatever we could to help him put in the best performance that he could. We’d wandered the world and followed him from film set to film set. Sometimes, the constant travel and the constant attention seemed like a luxurious existence but most days, I’d simply wanted to be home and be normal like any other family. I wanted to go to the same school with the same friends year after year. When that normal existence finally started in high school, just as I’d relaxed into the regular pattern of my life, was when Daddy stopped speaking to me, Mom got diagnosed, and then our family unit, as I knew it, was gone. Just gone.
I closed my eyes. Her death was a long time ago, but I still couldn’t really talk about it … we never talked about it. Not Sterling, not me … and definitely not Dad.
“So when will you be back?” I asked.
“I think we wrap the Amazon shoot in another eight weeks,” Sterling said. “If Dad can stand it that long. He’s going ape shit over the stuff he’s hearing about Kiley out every night in L.A.”
The knot in my chest tightened. As much as I loathed Kiley and wished that she’d never married my father, I didn’t wish pain on my dad, even now. Our current disagreement aside, he didn’t deserve to be tortured by Kiley. Nor did he deserve another divorce. This would be his third since Mom died.
“Sorry, sis, I gotta go.”
“Okay,” I said. “Talk to Daddy and call me soon.”
“Bye,” Sterling said. And he was gone, lost to the Amazon jungle yet again. I glanced at the time on my phone; Ryan’s therapy would finish in a half hour. I scrolled through my emails. Nothing from Daddy. I’d sent him an email every day since he’d left for the Amazon and there’d been no reply. Hopefully, Sterling would get a chance to talk to him. Meanwhile, at least I had a job. I would ignore Kiley, and just focus on my job. This job would get me out of the insane entertainment business and to New York, which was exactly where I wanted to be.
Ryan
Dr. Dwyer leaned back in his chair. He was fortyish and looked like an active guy—lean, maybe a swimmer or a runner. His office had a warm vibe and was filled with bookshelves, windows, and a plush couch. He sat in a brown leather chair across from me with a cup of coffee in his hand and his ankle resting on his knee. I usually spent the first twenty minutes of each session ready to jump out a window. We were forty minutes into this session and often by this point a calm feeling seeped into my brain. I knew I was nearly done with the intense scrutiny, but today my anxiety kept popping up and wouldn’t stop.
“You’ve been out for a while now.”
My elbows settled onto my knees and I clasped my hands. My right foot bounced. I couldn’t sit still. I jumped to my feet and walked around to the back of the couch.
“How’s it feel?”
“Right this minute? Five minu
tes ago? What? It changes, but most of the time I feel like someone is shoving toothpicks under my skin.”
Dr. Dwyer nodded. He sipped his coffee. “That’s normal. You’ve made substantial changes in your life. An adjustment period is to be expected.”
I turned toward the bookshelf and picked up a silver paperweight shaped like the state of California. The metal was cool to my fingers. My palms were sweaty and I grasped the paperweight in the center of my hand.
“You’re nervous.”
“I don’t like talking about myself. About any of this,” I said.
Dr. Dwyer remained silent and waited. He watched me.
“My past. My childhood. My dad. My family. None of it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then, let’s not. Let’s talk about now. What are you going to do now?”
I took a long hard breath. “Now?” I put the paperweight back on the shelf and circled around to the front of the sofa. I sat down. “This week I’m going to start prep on a new movie. A tiny indie movie for low money where I am the second lead. I am going to piss into a cup every other day during prep and production, so I can have the role. I am going to be driven around L.A., because I managed to lose my license and don’t know when I’ll get it back.” I leaned forward again with my elbows on my knees, but my foot had stopped bouncing. I met Dr. Dwyer’s eyes. “And I am going to say thank you for every bit of it.” I glanced down and studied my feet.
“Thank you, because…?” he let his words trail off.
“Thank you because I’m alive,” I said. My gaze locked onto his. A river of anger burst into my chest. Anger mixed with heated pain.
“That makes you angry?” Dr. Dwyer leaned forward and placed his coffee cup on the table. “Are you angry because you have to do all those things, or are you angry because you’re still alive?”
I slammed back against the couch cushions. “What a fucked up question,” I said. I grabbed my hair and looked toward the bookshelf on the far side of the room.
“Can you answer it?”
Rage burned a hole in my chest. A deep searing heat. I didn’t know where it came from but it was hard and thick and I couldn’t get around it.
“You know I started getting high when I was twelve, right? It’s in my file. That giant file they had at Clarity and that you have now?”
“We’ve talked about it,” Dr. Dwyer said.
“You know why? Why I started to get high at twelve?”
Again Dr Dwyer stared at me in silence, just waiting for my response. His eyes intense, focused, but full of patience.
“To get the fuck away from my dad,” I said. I rested my forehead on my hand. “Isn’t that the fucking kicker?” I locked my gaze on Dr. Dwyer. “I started to get high so I didn’t have to deal with my dad who was an abusive ass. Un-fucking-real.”
“You wanted to escape a difficult situation. You were twelve. What were your choices?”
“Run away or get high,” I said.
“And you got high.”
“And I got high,” I said. I closed my eyes and took a long breath. “That was how I learned to deal with tough things—by not dealing with them, by getting high instead.”
Dr. Dwyer nodded. “Yes, and now you’re working on different ways to deal with difficult feelings.”
“Getting high still feels like it’d be a whole lot easier,” I said.
“And it feels that way, often for a long time, even forever. Until something worse happens.”
“Like driving off a cliff,” I said.
Dr. Dwyer nodded. “Like driving off a cliff.”
My stomach lurched with his words. My stomach dropped. I closed my eyes, I couldn’t remember that night, but I had a sensation of falling. I gripped the pillow beside me and opened my eyes.
Dr. Dwyer watched me. His gaze traveled from the pillow I now clutched up to my face. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I looked at Dr. Dwyer. I waited.
“Ryan, are you angry that you’re still alive?”
Amanda
I’d been driving Ryan for weeks—weeks of pre-production, weeks of NA and AA meetings. Weeks of therapy meetings, and each day when Ryan emerged from his therapist’s office he looked like a rag doll that had been dunked underwater and then wrung dry. Again, today, his color was off and his eyes didn’t focus onto me for a moment.
I followed him out the lobby door into the sunlight and into the heat. He walked toward the Jeep. His gait was off. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was drunk. When he got to the car, he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Not a word. Not a sound. Instead his gaze met mine and then he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and bent over double.
I froze. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to react. I was unprepared for this Ryan, the guy who was vulnerable and upset and trying to quell some inner emotional storm. He stood back up and pulled his hands from his eyes. They were red-rimmed, but there were no tears. His gaze locked on mine.
“We have to go for my piss test next.” His tone was flat. His eyes looked dead, void of emotion. He climbed into the passenger side of the Jeep.
A piece of my heart shredded. Ripped by the pain I’d just witnessed him experience and then push down deep into his body. When Mom died, I had pushed emotion so deep that I felt physically ill. I climbed into the warmth of the sunbaked Jeep and fired up the bucket of bolts. Ryan punched the radio dial to a thrash metal station and turned the sound up loud. There would be no talking on this ride.
*
The music and the drive relaxed Ryan. When we climbed from the Jeep he managed a half smile. Now I stood in a bathroom next to a steel door. On the other side was Ryan.
“What was that you said about not holding the cup when you piss?” I had one hand on my hip and a plastic cup with a white sticker in my other. Usually one of the techs came into the bathroom with Ryan, but today was my lucky day since the clinic was short-staffed.
“Not while I pee,” Ryan said.
I heard his zipper slide down. He ducked his head through a crack in the stall. “Look this is humiliating enough, you think you could keep the teasing down?”
A smile curved over my face. “Not a chance.”
“They just want you to stand in here while I piss, okay? To make sure I use my own pee and not somebody else’s.”
“Right, I understand why, I just didn’t think that I would be the person who had to do it.” I handed the cup to him through the crack in the door.
“Neither did I,” Ryan said.
I turned toward the mirror over the sink. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before,” I mumbled. I fluffed my hair.
“What was that?” Ryan yelled from the stall.
“Nothing,” I yelled back, turned on the water and scrubbed my hands then ripped a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped them dry. I tossed the towel in the trash and leaned against the bathroom wall with my arms crossed over my chest. This was a pretty good gig. I was getting paid well and I was saving money. I guess supervising a piss test was not that bad.
“How long does it take one man to pee?” I asked, just a teeny bit nervous.
“Not long,” Ryan said. He exited the stall and placed the cup on the metal tray in the wall. He went to the sink and washed his hands. “Bet you’ll remember this for the rest of your life,” he said. The wicked Ryan Sinclair grin glimmered across his face.
Unfortunately, he was right. Standing in the bathroom while he took his pee test wasn’t something that I’d soon forget.
“Hey,” Ryan said, changing the subject. “There’s something we need to go pick up.”
*
Two hours later I settled behind the wheel of Ryan’s latest purchase, a brand-new Tesla. We left the dealership and I pulled onto the “parking lot” known as the 405 Freeway.
I stared at the endless L.A. traffic in front of the car. “Do you ride?”
Ryan tilted his head and looked at me. A smile played on
his lips. I was certain a joke about the question I’d just asked formed in his brain. Warmth flushed up my neck.
“Horses,” I said. “Do you know how to ride horses?”
“I do,” he said.
A small shiver shot through my belly. His voice was deep and sexy and each day my body had a bigger response to his voice than it had the day before.
“You don’t have anywhere to be the rest of the day, right? We did your NA meeting?”
“Check.”
“We did your therapy.”
“Check.”
“We did your potty test and your fitting for the film.”
“Check.”
“You bought a new car.”
“Check.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
Ryan cocked an eyebrow upward. “What did you have in mind?”
I could imagine a whole lot of things, but none of them were anything I could consider doing with Ryan. I pulled the wheel to the right and got off the 405. Kiley could take a lot of things away from me but there were two things she would never have and both of them waited for me at Gayle Bliss’s Malibu ranch.
Chapter 13
Amanda
“Amanda!” Gayle walked from the two-story brown adobe house with her arms outstretched. Acres of open space filled with dirt and dust and cacti surrounded Gayle’s house, and the whole place sat high in the Malibu hills. Her two Australian Heelers, Caribou and Oscar, jetted from the house and stopped just in front of us. They wagged their tails, but were much too well behaved to jump up on us. Caribou had one blue eye and one brown eye, an eerie-looking combination. Oscar was bigger and had a prettier coat. I bent forward and petted each one.
Gayle walked to me and wrapped me in a hug. The tightness in my chest released.
“It’s so good to see you,” Gayle said, “and you brought a friend.”