by Susan Ward
“Screw you, Linda.”
That was said at a bellow, but her out-of-nowhere take-charge-over-my-life manner is just too much to bear today. She’s not my mother and I don’t have to stay. Even if she likes to behave as if she is because she’s been fucking my father forever.
That last thought makes my stomach turn and I push it away. I’ll deal with that bombshell later. That Linda stepped into my life, not because she is friends with Alan, not because she really cares about me, but as some sort of weird surrogate mother only because she’s involved with Jack.
I can hear her following me to Maria’s room. I knock once, don’t wait for an answer, and open the door wide.
The wood bangs against the wall and Maria does a little start. She’s in her rocker, Kaley against her breast, and they were both sound asleep—before I barged in—and look as if they passed a rough night together.
Kaley’s dark eyes fix on me, and she immediately erupts into tears. I freeze in the middle of the room. Shit, what am I doing? I’m careening out of control again.
Linda is standing close beside me. “Leave the baby with Maria, Chrissie,” she orders quietly yet firmly. “You shouldn’t be with Kaley right now.”
I ignore her and reach for my daughter, even though I know Linda is right, but the angry girl in me doesn’t want to listen. The angry girl doesn’t want to stay in this house another minute with her.
“You are not taking the baby,” Linda announces, and before I figure out what she’s done, Kaley is no longer in Maria’s arms but in Linda’s. “I not letting you leave this house with Kaley.”
I’m about to argue the point, then I don’t have a choice but to let Linda have her way. I sway on my feet and it starts again. Like a panic wave. Stomach sick. World spinning. Flashing images in my head. The way Andy stared at me, cruel and gloating and pleased.
My limbs grow tingly and I start to tremble. Fragments in my brain are running and colliding. Moments in my life, like a fast free fall, once meaningless, but no longer so.
My emotions accelerate. The rapid pounding of my heart is painful.
“Chrissie! What’s wrong?” Linda exclaims, panicked and terrified.
I shake my head. I can’t speak, the words are trapped in my head with pictures I can’t make go away. I hear Linda talking, but it sounds far away as if in a tunnel. “Maria! Run and get Jack. Now.”
Then every part of my marriage to Neil is no longer messy and unclear. Everything joins too quickly into truth. And then there is nothing but black.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I come awake slowly, a strange swimming upward through dark water kind of sensation. I open my eyes. I am on my bed.
“Are you OK?”
I shift my head in the direction of the voice to find Linda Rowan, with Jack standing behind her, hovering over me.
Before I can piece together in my sluggish brain what’s happening or even tell them I’m OK, Linda roughly says, “You scared the shit out of me, Chrissie. One minute you’re screaming in my face and the next you’re on the floor.”
On the floor?
Then my brain kicks into overdrive and I remember everything: the fight in the kitchen, trying to leave with Kaley, and Linda not letting me.
I shift my gaze from her to my dad and wish I hadn’t. Damn, Jack has that look again, the worried over Chrissie expression. I hate that look. I’ve spent too much of my life worrying Jack.
I struggle to sit up and Linda tucks a pillow behind me. “I’m fine. I had a rough night and I think it just caught up with me.”
Linda makes a small laugh but Jack reproaches me with his eyes.
“Are you ready to tell us what’s going on, baby girl?” Jack asks quietly, sinking down on the bed beside Linda. “Don’t pretend something isn’t wrong, Chrissie. You don’t just show up here in the middle of the night for no reason. Neil’s been blowing up the phone all morning. He sounds panicked and desperate to talk to you. Are you ready to tell us what’s happening?”
Panicked and desperate. Oh, I bet Neil is panicked and desperate. I’m disappointed in myself how much it pleases me that Neil might be suffering, too.
And then that voice inside my head taunts me that he’s probably only in a panic because he doesn’t want anyone to know about his affair with Andy. He has expertly concealed from everyone—me, his family, the band, his fans—that he is gay.
Jack’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “Tell us what’s happened, Chrissie. We’re both worried. Let us help you however we can.”
I stare up at them. The temptation is nearly overwhelming. There’s an avalanche of emotion heavy atop me that I still have to work through, but nope, I can’t tell Jack and Linda anything about yesterday. Not yet. Not until Neil decides how he’s going to deal with this.
I push my hair back from my face. “We’re going through some problems. They’re private. I can’t talk to you about this.”
Jack nods, his lips scrunched together, his chin moving out just a touch in that way he has when he wants to probe more but is willing to respect my wishes and not do it.
“We’re here if you need us,” he repeats, and now they are both staring at me in a strange sort of unified-front kind of way.
God, sitting together they look like a parental unit and a totally bizarre one at that. My life just keeps getting weirder and more unreal.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit. I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to come unglued again. I check the clock. Fuck, it’s afternoon.
I look at Jack. “Can you keep Kaley for a while?”
Jack’s brows shoot up. “Of course. That’s probably for the best if you’re going back to the house and have something you need to work through with Neil.”
I stand up. “I’m not going back to the house. Not yet, anyway. I was on my way to LA yesterday. I was planning to visit with Rene. I’ve got a week of commitments I’ve agreed to. Then that thing Friday night with Alan. I’d really appreciate it if you could keep Kaley until next week.”
Jack nods. “My granddaughter is always welcome here.”
I debate with myself, since there is probably no way to say this that won’t stir thought or come out sounding wrong, but I find myself saying it anyway.
“Just one thing, Daddy. If Neil comes to the house, don’t let him leave with Kaley. He can visit with her here. But I don’t want him taking her anywhere.”
Jack’s eyes widen in surprise, but I’m not about to explain that one since it isn’t Neil I’m trying to keep Kaley from. It’s Andy.
I’m a smidge calmer. A little more clear thinking. But that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near being ready to cope with Andy.
~~~
I fight to keep my mind blank by focusing on the too-close bumper in front of me. The traffic has been dreadful all the way down the 101 to the 405. It’s always dreadful, but it’s a good thing today. The constant starts and stops, honking and lane jockeying have kept me from thinking. I don’t want to think, because once I start it won’t stop and this strange numbness will go away.
In tired relief I see the exit for Rene’s street. I check the clock in the dash. It’s a three-hour drive from Santa Barbara and I’m arriving in Brentwood one day late without having made a call to give an explanation. I did call her before I left Jack’s, thankfully getting voice mail, to let her know I’d gotten held up and would be here today.
Fudge, Rene is going to be pissed. Then I amend in my head, she is always pissed with me. My bestie makes the top of the list of people in my life never happy with Chrissie.
Fuck, there I go again. Thinking. I stop myself and instead concentrate on the street numbers in faded paint along the curb. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Rene. I don’t even remember what her house looks like. Blue? Or is it gray? I recall it’s a single story ranch-style structure, but that’s all I remember.
A new list forms in my head. People I’ve let drift away. Or did Rene drift away from me? I’m not rea
lly sure, and for the past three years we’ve existed in that strange, awkward status of married female/single female connected by childhood but no longer connected in any other way. Sometimes it makes our times together miserably tense and awful for me.
Why didn’t I remember that before I accepted her invitation to stay at her place during my week in LA?
Perhaps I should have taken Alan up on his offer for the beach house. Alone time would probably be the best thing for me right now, and I’m not sure what to expect being with Rene again.
She pops up in my world during the Hallmark moments. Kaley’s birth. An occasional party. Long girl chats by phone when she has something newsworthy to share. She has little interest in anything beyond herself, and we rarely talk about me since she is so female competitive. It drives her crazy that Neil has made it so big in the recording industry. She liked him better when he was just a freeloading jerk in our apartment in Berkeley.
Berkeley.
That brings Neil and too many other things crashing back into my thoughts. Damn it! Not today, Chrissie. Not today. For one day let yourself not think of him. Not the good. Not the bad. Not anything.
Good advice, but I start to tear up anyway.
I let out a slow, steady exhale. Well, for the next five days I’m not going to complain about Rene’s unrelenting self-absorption and will keep my mouth firmly shut. I’m more than willing to talk nonstop about her life instead of mine since mine is a disaster at present.
Was it always a disaster? We loved each other in Berkeley, didn’t we? My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. I’m not sure of anything today and I hate that feeling, the feeling that I’ve read every moment of my life wrong.
No, we loved each other. I won’t allow myself to believe otherwise. If we didn’t, then it would make the other decisions I’ve made unbearable.
That brings Alan to mind and more emotional messy.
Thank God, finally Rene’s house. Driving has lost its power as a diversion. I turn into the driveway and park in the loop by her front door. Single-story ranch. Blue. At least I remembered something in my life correctly, clearly.
I tuck my keys in my purse as I reach for the handle on the door. I’m about to climb out of the driver’s seat when Rene bursts out of the house.
By the time I’m standing, she is there in front of me, hands on hips. Indignant. Beautiful. And ready to argue. Your basic Rene nightmare, too much to deal with after the last two days I’ve had. Even if my life were peachy at present I wouldn’t want this, her sparkly and angry and ready to pounce.
Crap, I should have just bypassed Brentwood and gone to Malibu.
“Just because you’re famous doesn’t mean you can treat people this way,” she exclaims before I can say hello. “I rushed around like a mad woman getting everything ready for you yesterday. You had me worried sick last night when you didn’t show.”
The subtle change of her voice brings me up sharply. She has been worried and I can also tell she knows something.
“I would have called if I could have,” I say lamely, reaching into the backseat for my bag.
Her eyes widen in that way that makes her look like an overinflated bullfrog as she rapidly dissects my face. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Oh fuck, she does know something.
“Are you going to help me with my bags or do I have to lug them both myself?” I answer, deliberately nonresponsive.
“I should probably let you,” she says peevishly, and then she lets out an aggravated breath, her pretty dark eyes shifting from me to the car, and her demeanor changes. “Where’s Kaley?”
“Staying with Jack.”
Her brows shoot up. “You are doing it again, aren’t you?”
I ignore that comment. I don’t know what she’s implying but I don’t like how she said that.
She waits. She doesn’t reach for my second bag. She just stands there watching me. My nerves grow tauter, but I somehow manage not to bite on that one and hold back my words.
She eases into me until I have no choice but to look at her. “Neil has been calling nonstop since last night. You arrive a day late without Kaley. You’re performing with Alan on Friday. Neil is out of his mind. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Chrissie. Are you going to explain what the fuck is going on with you and Neil?” She lifts a brow in that way that makes it crushingly rude. “Or should I ask what’s going on with you and Alan Manzone again?”
I clench my teeth. Fuck, Neil, why did you have to call Rene and work her into a frenzy? I can’t even imagine what Neil said to her to get one plus one equaling seven. I’m the injured party here, but oh, Neil said something—I don’t doubt she took it wrong—but now it has her thinking I’m fucking over Neil because of Alan again.
Shit, there is no escaping when she’s fired up like this, filled with opinions about me as I can clearly see she is now, and in dread I wonder what parts of our recent nightmare Neil shared with her.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say on a ragged breath. Damn, I didn’t intend to say anything.
She rolls her eyes, aggravated and disgusted. “Maybe you should before you do something stupid again.”
The words clog in my throat, wanting to be unleashed, but I keep them there.
She reaches around me and grabs my small black bag. “Neil says you’ve left him. You’re getting a divorce.”
Her voice is so soft I almost didn’t hear her, and yet it manages to land in the driveway like an atom bomb. My temper explodes.
“What part of I don’t want to talk about this do you not get?” I hiss furiously.
She lifts her chin, haughty, unaffected by my anger. “Well, someone should talk to you before you fuck Neil over again. For Christ’s sake, Chrissie, you have a child. Don’t do anything rash. That’s all I’m saying.”
Oh no… I’ve been pleasantly numb for nearly half a day, but having my longest friend lay the blame for the state of marriage entirely at my feet makes it come back. My stomach turns. The world spins. My body is consumed by shaking as the flashing images ruthlessly grab hold of my mind again.
I shout it without thinking. “For once can you just be my friend and take my side without me having to explain anything? Yes, I think my marriage is over. Yes, I think I’ve left him—” Think? Why am I being so pathetic about this? Why am I afraid to just say it? My flashing eyes lock on her startled gaze. “I’m divorcing my husband. I’m pretty sure you would, too, Rene. He’s having an affair with Andy!”
The silence between us is deafening. I don’t know which one of us is more shocked, me blurting that out or her hearing it.
Until this moment, where I am did not hold the feel of realness. The look in her eyes gives it the air of a horrible absolute.
My marriage is over.
“Holy fuck, Chrissie.”
~~~
“Shit, Chrissie. I don’t know what to say.”
My fingers tighten around my glass. If she says that one more time I’m going to throw my drink at her. If she doesn’t know what to say, how am I supposed to figure this out?
“I can’t even imagine finding out that way,” she continues, her voice heavily, overly sympathetic and distraught.
My gaze lifts to hers. I told her everything in gruesome detail. I don’t know why. It just happened, an urgent need to unload it all on someone, and she just happened to be the one here.
She refills our wineglasses. “What are you going to do?”
Fuck, not that question. Why do people always think that you can figure out your life so quickly? Why is the first question after conveying a life-altering event “what are you going to do?”
“I don’t want to think about it. I just want to get through everything I have to do this week, and then I’ll worry about Neil.”
“You should cancel everything. Take some time to work through all that’s happened. You shouldn’t push and try to be all right.”
I shake
my head. “I can’t.”
Her eyes cloud over. “Honestly, I don’t know how you’re still on your feet.”
The compliment takes me by surprise, but does nothing to bolster my flailing composure or quiet the rapidly churning thoughts in my head.
On my feet. Somehow through the gut-wrenching minutes of telling her everything and her shocked silence, I am still on my feet. But together I am not.
I haven’t been since I admitted to myself the divorce thing. My husband is gay. I’m getting a divorce. This is not where I expected to be. Not today. Not any day.
I can’t stop shaking. God, I wish my body would be still. But nothing in my life could have prepared me for this. Maybe there are some shocks so severe that they reverberate through you, and you can’t do anything except wait until they quiet on their own.
I stare down into my wine. This is definitely one of those shocks.
Rene sinks to sit on her knees across the coffee table. She just stares and I can see this has leveled her as much as me. She doesn’t know what to say. It is as if this crisis is so enormous she’s afraid to speak. A Rene first.
My eyes fix on her, stricken and wounded. “I can’t believe this. How could it be true? Shouldn’t I have known? How could I not know? I’m married to the man.”
Rene flushes, something flashes in her eyes and then she looks away.
Oh my God.
“You knew!” I accuse harshly. “You knew and you didn’t tell me. How could you do that, Rene? How could you do that to me?”
“No, no, no. I didn’t know, Chrissie. I swear. I had suspicions and you were so certain about Neil. I ended up thinking I was wrong. Crazy. I thought I was wrong so I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? What kind of friend are you?”
She eases forward in a posture simultaneously aggressive and defensive. “I did try to tell you, Chrissie. When we lived together in Berkeley. I told you I didn’t like Neil. I told you there was something about him I didn’t like. You just didn’t hear me.”