Broken Crown

by Susan Ward

  She rolls her eyes. “Well, according to Kaley, that t-shirt was like setting off a bomb in that crowd. She said she kept 911 dialed into her phone throughout the filming. But that Bobby is a charmer. He ended up having this really long, frank discussion with the protesters down there. How she edited the film with her still photography and collage of interviews made it all very engaging. Well, it’s a really good piece of work. But Linda and Len weren’t amused.”

  I laugh. “I imagine not.”

  “And Linda has been a really good friend since I moved here. I don’t know how I would have managed without her.” She laughs again, nervously this time, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. “I love Linda, but I wish she’d stop trying to fix my life. She invites me to dinner at least once a week and tries to set me up. It’s humiliating.”

  What the fuck? “Set you up? You’ve got to be joking.”

  From another woman, I’d take this as some obvious ploy to try to make me jealous. But we both know she doesn’t need to make me jealous. I already want her.

  I search her face, looking for some clue of where she is going and why she told me this last annoying news flash.

  “She didn’t tell you?” she asks.

  “No, Linda didn’t tell me,” I say, my jaw tightening.

  “It was hard getting her to stop,” Chrissie says, dropping her gaze and shaking her head. “I had to tell her my life was already planned out.”

  That comment in the context of Chrissie is laughable—Chrissie has never spent a moment of her life with a plan—but I don’t let myself laugh.

  “I’m surprised she bought that,” I say.

  Chrissie’s gaze lifts to mine, pinning me. “My life is planned out, Alan.”

  My body goes cold. Did I wait too long to try to fix things with her? Has she already moved on? Is there already someone else?

  I can’t be your friend. And I won’t be your lover.

  Oh fuck.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Chrissie?”

  “I guess that I’m OK.”

  No help there. I’m tense again and my mood has plummeted.

  “Why don’t we go out? Go somewhere?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  Can’t? Strange choice of words since the kids aren’t here. I let out a ragged breath. For a long time she does nothing but silently dab at crumbs on her counter with her index finger.

  Finally, she looks up, her face serious and anxious. “Did that night we shared have anything to do with your divorce?”

  Oh God, not this. I don’t want to talk about Shyla, but I can tell by how Chrissie asks that she’s read the papers and is feeling badly, wondering what part she played in my divorce and Shyla’s recent drama.

  I can’t avoid this damn discussion.

  I fix my gaze on hers, direct and unblinking. “No. It had nothing to do with my divorce. Absolutely nothing.”

  Her brow crinkles as if uncertain how she should take that. “Did you tell Shyla about us?”

  I exhale slowly. “No. It was pointless by then.”

  “Does she know?”

  Why is she pressing me on this?

  “Probably,” I say, frustrated. “I didn’t tell her, but I am reasonably confident she knows.”

  For some reason, that kicks up Chrissie’s distress. She doesn’t look at me, but I can tell she’s deeply troubled and struggling with something.

  “I’ve been absolutely miserable this past year, Chrissie.”

  She doesn’t lift her face. “I’ve spent most of it being angry with you, Alan.”

  “I’m sure you have. I didn’t want that. I’m sorry.”

  Her chin lifts. “You’re always sorry. But that won’t change anything. Not a thing. And this time we can’t keep doing the same old thing.”

  I study her again, the quick shifts of her mood.

  She pushes away from the counter. “I’ll be right back, Alan. Don’t leave,” is all she says before she hurries out of the kitchen.

  It has been so long, a year since we’ve been together. While I didn’t expected our first meeting to be comfortable, I never expected it to be this. Something about what transpired, the way she left the room, fills me with a sense of warning. This conversation is far from over, and in fact, it doesn’t even feel like it’s begun.

  I step out onto the patio and smoke a cigarette. I stomp it out and look inside the house. The kitchen is still empty. I light another. I wait and watch for her to return.

  Twenty minutes pass. Where is she? I go into the kitchen and pour myself another drink.

  I peek into hallway. There’s a light from a room near the back of the house. I make my way to the doorway and my gaze locks on Chrissie in a rocker. Her head is leaning back, her eyes are closed, one thin strap of her shirt is pushed down on her shoulder, and there is a baby at her breast.

  Oh fuck, the baby is Chrissie’s.

  She was pregnant when Jesse died.

  I search for something cautious to say.

  “Your kids seem to have grown in number without me knowing it, Chrissie.”

  Her eyes fly open. “Four months I’ve lived in LA. It hasn’t even hit ink. Not once. The cone of silence hasn’t failed me.”

  I sit on the bed, facing her. “Cone of silence?”

  She makes a slight smile. “There are times I forget you hate American TV. I used to watch a TV show when I was young. They had this plastic bubble that would drop down from the ceiling to keep their conversations private. They called it the cone of silence. Stupid, huh? American humor in its most trite life form.”

  It is a broken, rambling explanation, and more of one than I want. “You always did have terrible taste in cinema and TV.”

  She makes a face at me for that. Her gaze shifts from me to her daughter. “You didn’t know about the baby, did you, Alan?”

  My eyes widen. “No. By the surprised look on your face I take it everyone knows but me. Jesse did teach you how to deal with the press. How did you manage to have a baby and not have it hit print? I just met Khloe in the kitchen today. Grace didn’t tell me that she was yours.”

  “Khloe was born in August in Santa Barbara,” she explains quietly. “As for the everyone knowing part, the list of people I trust is pretty short. It’s limited to Jack, Brian, the Harrises, Rene, the Rowans, my lawyers, and now you.”

  “It’s a blow to my ego to fall below your lawyers on the list of people you trust.”

  I say that lightly, but I am hurt.

  Her eyes cloud over. “If you hadn’t spent a year out of contact you might have ranked above the lawyers. But I don’t think so, Alan. The lawyers were necessary in this.”

  Her comment carries bite, even though I can see she didn’t intend it to.

  “They’ve made even having a baby a legal complication these days, Chrissie? If involving the lawyers is necessity I can’t imagine why you all do it.”

  “You probably can’t imagine why we do it, lawyers or not. The world hasn’t become such a litigious place, Alan. Of my five children, this one is the only one requiring legal counsel at birth.”

  Now I feel like an asshole because I’m uncertain if Jesse being dead at the time of his daughter’s birth held some sort of complication and I just made a fucking joke about it.

  “You’ve had a hell of a year, Chrissie. I never intended to add to the hell. I love you. I thought by staying away I was giving you what you wanted. I reached for the phone a thousand times. I stopped myself. I wasn’t sure where things had been left between us. I assumed you’d call when you were ready. But I got tired of waiting, so here I am.”

  The expression that surfaces on her face takes me by surprise. It’s an odd reaction. It looks almost as though she is bracing herself for something.

  “I’d like to clarify where you left things between us.” She stops rocking and lifts her chin, her eyes boring into me. “Khloe is your daughter, A
lan.”

  For a millisecond the world still feels normal. Then the massive amounts of alcohol and nicotine in my blood shoot through me like an adrenal rush. And then I know, I feel it in my body, that she just hit me yet again with something life-altering and unexpected.

  She searches my face. “Don’t you have anything to say? You had better say something soon so that I know you’re still breathing and can stop worrying that I may need to call 911.”

  I hold her gaze, fighting to keep mine stripped of reaction. The way she waits reminds me of how unpleasant it can be with Chrissie in the serious moments of life. How grossly unpleasant. How she only seems to exacerbate the disorder between my mind, heart and body, and how I paradoxically solidify her.

  The way she stares also brings to mind all the times she’s walked out on me, how they had been like this, decisions forced on me by her, swiftly and unexpectedly. Changes I hadn’t wanted.

  Her in control.

  Me in disarray.

  Always her in control and me in disarray.

  So she wants a response? Goddamn her if she thinks I’m going playact with her through this. The only emotion forming inside me is anger. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”

  She meets my gaze steadily. Unflinching.

  “Well, that’s a start, but not quite as eloquent as I’d hoped for.”

  I pop a cigarette into my mouth, but she gives me a sharp glare and I rip it from my lips, unlit, and toss it with the pack on the bed behind me.

  She says nothing. She waits. My turn to talk, it seems.

  “Forgive me for not being eloquent,” I sneer. “I prepared myself for something quite different today. There is a lot to take in here. There is a lot to be furious with you over. It makes it difficult to decide where to begin. I think it best I start on the fringes. What the fuck were the lawyers about, Chrissie? I can’t believe you called the lawyers. Why call the lawyers with me?”

  Tears fill her eyes. She rises quickly from the rocker to put the baby in the cradle. She stands there staring down for a long time.

  She whirls on me.

  “Don’t swear around my children, Alan. The swearing needs to go just like the cigarettes did when you are in my house.” Now she is fully bathed by her anger. “As for the lawyers, you deserve to be slapped for what you’re thinking. Do you think I’d file a paternity suit against you? I didn’t know the status of her legal paternity and my options in that. After a rather lengthy discussion of the issues with the Harrises, we decided to leave Jesse’s name on her birth certificate as her father. It is an arrangement we are all comfortable with if you are inclined to keep it that way permanently.”

  That sends me from the bed. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”

  I don’t want to pace. I know that Chrissie understands what the pacing is about, but I don’t have a better way to keep a tight lid on what is surging for release. A tight lid at least until I sort through all this and have some inkling of what I want my reaction to be.

  If I let loose all that I’m feeling now I’ll rip her to shreds and a marginal part of my brain warns that would end us.

  “You might as well dump it all, Alan, exactly what you’re thinking—one dump out on the table without bothering to be indirect,” she continues, a controlled attack. “I would, however, appreciate if you passed on the cheap shots. You want a fight from me. You don’t need a fight if you don’t think this is something you can do. I want this resolved however it ends up being resolved. In fairness you should know that if you walk before we resolve this, I won’t let you back in the door. Not ever. That is how I’ll resolve this.”

  I sink down on the small sofa. It is the first time Chrissie has ever manipulated me that way and I don’t like that she’s done it. Never once has she used my love for her as a weapon to manage me.

  “I know why you feel the way you feel about this so stop being angry with yourself for feeling as you do,” she says quietly. “And stop turning that anger at me. Please don’t make me the enemy because things are not the way you want them.”

  The lines of my face harden. “Is that what I’m doing? Making you the enemy? Why is it that is exactly how I am feeling?”

  “Fighting isn’t going to change a thing. We have a daughter. I would rather find out where this leaves us.”

  “I’m not sure we’re ready today for that much directness, Chrissie. It’s a loaded question. You may not be as ready for the answer as you believe.”

  “I come with kids, Alan. If you want to be with me, you’re going to be with kids. Why should it matter if one of them is ours?”

  Her words only manage to kick up my anger to something beyond anything I’ve ever felt.

  “When you get it wrong, Chrissie, you get it fucking wrong. It’s not paternity I’m having trouble with. I can’t believe you think that’s why I’m angry with you. You didn’t call me, Chrissie. You wouldn’t have let me know about the baby if I hadn’t come here today. I thought we shared something different between us. You let a year pass, Chrissie. A year without even a call. I don’t understand how you could do that. After loving you through every ugly, every fucking insane moment we’ve shared together, this is what you decide you can’t share with me. I don’t even want to get into the decision to leave Jesse on the birth certificate. Let’s just leave that one at you couldn’t have fucked up more and hurt me more on every exposed nerve than you did in this if you tried. Direct? How did I do?”

  She starts to cry. Listening to it is like having a nail dug into my spine. But I let her cry and I say nothing. I’ve never done that before.

  She cries for at least ten minutes. She looks at me, sniffling and running the back of her hand against her dripping nose. “You were very direct. I did what I thought was right. I never meant to hurt you by any of it.”

  “You never mean to hurt me, Chrissie. Somehow you always do.”

  She takes in a ragged breath and moves several steps away from me.

  “I’ve had a long day, Alan. So if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stop this and go to bed. You are welcome to stay the night with me if you want to continue this in the morning.”

  “I don’t know if I care to stay the night, Chrissie. Are you talking about sex or sleep?”

  Her eyes flash. “I have no intention of becoming number fifty-one in your year of self-abuse. I would just be number fifty-one tonight if either of us were angry enough to do that. I have a guest room at the end of the hall.”

  “Don’t worry, Chrissie. We might as well fuck tonight. It’s impossible for you to be number fifty-one. You were number one in my twenty years of self-abuse.”

  “That was mean, Alan—” Her voice breaks on a sob. More tears run from her eyes leaving harsh tracks on her cheeks. “I don’t have the stamina I used to. If you go for a knockout blow with each angry remark I will probably end this not loving you.”

  I can’t rally enough control to relent.

  I turn toward the door. “Today, Chrissie, I’m not at all sure I have the stamina to love you anymore.”

  Chapter 9

  It is a lousy exit point. I’m aware of it. I leave anyway.

  Once I’m in the hallway, I’m not sure where I want to go. I can hear Chrissie crying. I can hear the baby crying.

  Fuck!

  I debate going back in, but stop myself. I feel all jittery as if I’ve just spent a night doing lines of coke: partly paranoid, partly explosive and partly in hyperdrive.

  If I go back to Chrissie now we’ll only end up in round three of the fighting and she isn’t up for more. She is so beautiful I often miss details of her face. She looked worn out by the end of it.

  I walk down the main hallway and out the front door. The fog has rolled in, dewing my car, and I take from the backseat something to clear the windshield. When I toss it onto the passenger floorboard, I realize it’s a sweater. Aarsi’s sweater. Fuck. Too late. I’ve probably ruined it.

  I climb in, put the car in gear, and just want to get the fuck away from he
re. I definitely blew it during that scene with Chrissie in the bedroom. I shut down my thoughts. I’m not ready to go there yet. Tomorrow. When I’m calmer. Less angry. That’s soon enough to work through how I feel about Chrissie’s latest bombshell to my life.

  I exit from her driveway, intending to go back to Malibu. Fuck, Aarsi’s there. I’ve had quite a bit to drink. Everything inside me is edgy and ready to explode and begging for release. I definitely shouldn’t risk being alone with the pretty little Indian girl in my house. Not tonight.

  My anger is enough to make me do something stupid, and I don’t know if I’m ready for what I’m feeling now to be irrevocable. The Indian girl would make it irrevocable if Chrissie ever found out. As awful as our reunion went, in Chrissie’s mind since she went to the effort of outlining ground rules, we’re together again. Fidelity rule in effect and we’re not even fucking yet.

  I turn the car around and head towards Len’s. I’ll crash there until I sober up. Then I’ll get the fuck out of Los Angeles.

  I should never have come here. Fucking Miles Abernathy with all his probing questions stirred it all up in me. Made me believe in the possibility of Chrissie, when life had already taught me not to, and fuck it, I couldn’t stop myself from being with her any longer. But it was the wrong move.

  Yes, I love Chrissie, but I’ve been making the same mistakes over and over again for more than twenty years: loving her, trying to keep her, losing her anyway because I’ve never been the man meant for a woman like Chrissie. I’ve never been enough to keep the scene good for me or for her. Even Chrissie understands that. It is why she always ends us just short of me making her hate me.

  We have survived only because she won’t stay until she hates me. And she always keeps just enough of the good between us so we can start again.

  Over and over. Chrissie’s right. We can’t keep doing the same old thing.

  I pull into Len’s driveway and park. The air is much cooler when I climb from the car to make the walk to Len’s front door. My body’s reaction to the blast of cold confirms that it was a good decision to have left Chrissie and a better decision not to drive back to Malibu.

  A night in jail would be a brilliant finale to this fucking brilliant day. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk. But then, I was nervous about seeing Chrissie again, I didn’t expect what came at me at her house, and I certainly didn’t think I’d end the evening at the Rowans’.