“No,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes. “No, they could’ve tried with Daddy. But they took so long helping me.”
“Is that what you think?” Tentatively, like reaching for a feral child, I touch her arm and she flinches. But she allows my hand to stay, as I ask fiercely, “That his death was your fault?”
She says nothing, doesn’t answer at all. “Andrea, please,” I beseech her. “Tell me. Do you really think his death was your fault?”
“I just wish they hadn’t worked on me for such a long time.” The paramedics told me that for more than an hour they carved and welded and worked the bent Mercedes door while she remained unconscious, unaware that her little leg was caught in the mangled wreckage. “I wish they’d helped Daddy, too,” she says, wiping at her eyes.
“Andrea, this might be hard to understand, but Daddy was already gone by then. The paramedics who arrived on the scene knew that. You know it too.”
She gets a strange, distant look in her eyes, staring out the windows again. I’m not sure why, but it spooks me a little. “But he talked to me. In the car.”
I’m supernaturally calm. Relaxed even, as if her comment doesn’t fly in the face of everything we’ve been told about the accident: that my partner died immediately on impact.
“What did he say?”
“Not to be scared.” She glances up at me, tears shimmering in her soft blue eyes. “That the men would help me.”
I get an idea, and ask, “Like in the dreams? When he tells you he’s okay?”
She nods, and I wonder when hot tears began rolling down my own face. “Sweetie, he was just looking after you,” I say. “Like he always did.”
“But it felt real. Like he was alive.”
Sucking in a breath, I conjure up the lost faith of my childhood. The faith Alex was forever working to resurrect within me. I remember what Rebecca told me about the night she nearly died.
“I think he is alive. Just not here, not with us.”
“That’s how come I can’t call you Daddy anymore.” It’s so quiet I almost miss it, this whisper-thin admission—the key to my existence. “You can’t be Daddy too,” she explains, “’cause then he won’t be real anymore.” Looking up at me, it’s as if she’s begging permission—maybe permission to stick with this thread of reasoning, or then again, maybe permission to finally let him go.
Or maybe she’s seeking permission to truly be my daughter once again after such a broken journey together.
“Letting me be Daddy doesn’t change what he was to you.”
“They’ll see you, and…” She looks away, hesitating. “They’ll think you’re my only daddy.”
“You know that wasn’t true.”
“But you are my only daddy,” she whispers, staring up at me. Beseeching me to help her through this moment. “My only real daddy,” she finishes. I wonder if she’s saying what I think, right here in the commissary. My heart races in my chest, my mouth goes dry.
I find myself yearning for the lie, wanting to rush to that default. But I adopted you. Daddy Alex was your natural father. Only, this time I don’t. “Sweetheart, you know, our family’s never come easy. For you, Daddy, and me. It was always kind of different.”
She nods. And that’s when I’m sure she knows. That perhaps she’s always known—seen through our carefully constructed illusions for a long time now with the God-driven intuition of a child.
“Aunt Laurel’s my mother, right?” she asks uncertainly.
“That’s right, sweet pea. Aunt Laurel’s your birthmother.”
“And you’re my father?”
I nod. “Yes, Andrea, I’m your daddy.”
“That’s what I thought,” she answers, sucking in her lower lip. I swear there’s relief on her face, as if something painful has been washed away at last.
“But you will always have a connection with Daddy,” I tell her fiercely. “You do realize that, right? He adopted you, and he will always be your other father.”
She nods, looking around the busy cafeteria. Like she’s still searching for him. “But you still have to be Michael,” she says softly. “’Cause they’ll call him my uncle or… Or they just won’t know he was my daddy at all.”
“Well, then you tell people,” I suggest. “Can’t you do that?”
She considers my question, tears still shining in her eyes. “Do you really think he stayed there in the car with me? That he talked to me?”
“I think he’s with you lots of times. With all of us.” I remember a lost Bible verse from childhood, something about the “great cloud of witnesses”. When I was a kid, I thought my mother was in that crowd, staring down at me from heaven on a riser of baseball bleachers. “I think he watches over us from heaven. That’s why he’s always talking to you in your dreams.”
Despite the tears, a small smile forms on her lips. “Maybe that day? In the car?” she asks, the smile growing. “Maybe he just hadn’t gotten to the beach yet!”
“He hadn’t had time,” I agree.
Then we’re laughing together, uncontrollably, joyous fits of it, just like at the cemetery months ago, and I hold her hand tight, not ever wanting to let go.
“But he’s always at the beach now,” she says.
This time, I finish for her. “And the waves are always good!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Rebecca
A few days after Michael called me when Andrea was on the lot, an invitation arrives on my desk, a small white envelope printed with neat handwriting. Absentmindedly I open it while chatting with Trevor about Julian’s arrival next week. As the visit draws near, Trevor is already becoming somewhat useless in the assistant department, unable to focus and prone to long gab sessions in my office. Still, he’s a perfect best friend, having forgiven me easily for our poolside spat at the party.
“Oh my goodness.” I stare down at the invitation clutched in my hand.
In bright rainbow colors it announces: Andrea Richardson’s Turning Nine! Pressing it against my lips, a wave of loss washes over me. Apparently she’s having a party at the ice skating rink over in Studio City, right near her house. No note is on the inside—just this invitation.
“A rocking ice skating party,” I explain to Trevor, tracing the outline of the white-booted skate on the front, the blade sparkling with silver glitter. Closing my eyes, I imagine dear Andrea choosing this invitation herself. Of course she’d love the sparkles and the colors; she loves anything bright like this.
“Good, so you’re going.”
“You hardly seem surprised about this invite,” I reflect, noting that he seemed well aware of this upcoming party. My eyes meet his. “You didn’t read this, did you?”
He shrugs, polishing his eyeglass lenses. “It’s my job to open your mail.”
“I guess that’s how this one envelope landed,” I pause, shuffling through a huge pile of other mail on my desk to illustrate my point, “on the very top of the stack. Huh?”
With a slow, deliberate gesture he slips his wire frames back up the bridge of his nose. “It’s what you pay me for.”
“I’m not even sure I can go,” I say, but I’m already flipping open my calendar. It’s next Saturday afternoon, and I don’t have any plans. Trevor steps around the desk until he’s right beside me.
“Rebecca, don’t look back at this in ten years and regret anything.” My eyes lock with his. “Don’t waste time wishing or thinking you might have played this hand differently. You love him.”
“I spent long enough regretting things with Jake,” I whisper softly.
“You shouldn’t let something this precious go so easily.”
I draw in a strengthening breath. “I’ll think about it.”
“You know, Cat phoned me last night,” he says with a quizzical expression. “Told me that Evan Beckman’s been asking about you.”
“She told me that before.”
“Cat seems to be under a misguided impression,” he says with a soft laugh. “She seems to
think that although Evan has indicated a desire to,” he pauses, clearly searching for the right word, “Tarantino you, I believe she said, that he believes you’re not interested in the part.” He tilts his chin upward. “I wonder where he’d get a peculiar idea like that?”
Leaning back in my desk chair, I begin to laugh. “What kind of silly girl would pass on a part in an Evan Beckman film?”
He studies me in a way that says he knows me too well for me to put anything over on him. “Perhaps a silly girl who worries far too much about what the world will see.”
“Perhaps,” I offer, wondering how fast I can shoo him out the door and call Evan to apologize for my hasty departure the other night at Mia Mia. “Or perhaps she’s a silly girl who still wants to read for that part.”
“Now that,” he says with a wink, “is my girl.”
***
My mother stands knee-deep in boxes, tape gun held expertly in her hands, when I arrive around lunchtime to help. Their moving van is due at seven a.m. the next day, and although there’s still much to pack—of course they’re boxing it all up themselves—she’s serene. Completely unruffled. When she opens her arms and embraces me, I know that this single personality trait is the one I’ll miss the most in the coming months: her ability to make the stormiest of situations feel placid. To bring tranquility to the chaos in my life, just like she has to this moving scene.
“Your father is playing golf,” she announces, shaking her head with a smile. “Can you believe that?”
“I still say it’s the real reason he stayed in L.A.,” I tease, and she settles atop a large sealed box.
With a wave around at the sea of packing materials and brown boxes, she laughs, “Welcome to my parlor, precious. Want some tea?”
“Sweet tea?”
She doesn’t always add the sugar and mint that makes her iced tea taste like home. This time she grins. “Of course.”
With our matching chilled glasses, we settle into a lunchtime visit; my mom regaling me with details about the move home—and me listening, a bittersweet smile pasted across my face. It will never feel the same in this town without my parents here in Santa Monica, yet I know I can never complete my healing if they stay. Why must growing up—finding freedom—always be so bittersweet?
While we talk, I catch my mother watching me occasionally, stealing sideways glances to assure herself that her only child really is all right.
“I’m fine, Mama,” I say finally, with a soft laugh to play off my words.
“What?” she denies, sipping her tea innocently. “I didn’t say a word!”
“You can go home without worrying,” I promise, smiling at her. “I am doing really great, Mom.”
“But see, until you’re a mother, you won’t truly understand,” she says tenderly. “You’re my baby girl. You’ll be my baby girl, even when you’re thirty-five. When you’re forty. When I’m eighty and on my deathbed, you will still be my baby. That’s my prerogative as the mama.”
My thoughts go to dear Andrea and how protective I felt of her—still feel of her, even now. She stirred some place inside me, a concealed chamber of my heart I hadn’t known I possessed until I met her. She unlocked motherhood within me.
My mother leans closer toward me. “What is it, Rebecca?” she asks, sensing my thoughts with the laser-keen accuracy of the one who carried me inside her womb for nine months.
“I’m just thinking of someone,” I explain, smiling. With all that Michael and Andrea have meant to me, I can’t believe I’ve never uttered a word about them to her.
“And?” she prompts.
“Oh, Mama, you’re going to get it out of me, aren’t you?” Somehow, with her leaving tomorrow, I need her to know everything about Michael. “Can we go sit on the patio?” I ask, knowing how much I’ll miss our Sunday afternoons out there, sipping her iced tea and playing gin. “I think I need some advice, Mom.”
***
My mother listens to the whole painful tale, from that first day at the studio to our courtship over the summer, then winding up in Malibu. I pour out my heart, crying some as I tell her about finding love and then losing it. What I had with Michael was as gorgeous and fickle as those roses my nana always grew, requiring an expert’s touch—and I am clearly no expert on love.
She asks few questions, raising her blonde eyebrows only a couple of times, especially when I explain that Michael’s dead lover Alex was a man.
“Oh, goodness,” she titters gently at that point in the story. “We won’t let that get out back home.”
I cut my eyes at her, laughing. “Mama!”
She continues. “Imagine Darnelle Bogart if she heard that one,” she breathes, leaning close to me with a conspiratorial smile. “Can you think how fast that would travel around town? Like lightning, I guarantee you!”
I smile. “Mom, we’re talking about someone I love.”
“Of course, Rebecca,” she says, remembering herself. She continues smiling in slight amusement though, and while I wish she had reacted more seriously, I’ll admit I’m relieved she’s not chiding me about his lifestyle—or my own choices.
I explain about the break-up, about how he couldn’t seem to let go of Alex, and her expression grows much more serious as she listens quietly.
“That only means he’s loyal,” she observes gently.
“But not to me.”
“No,” she disagrees. “It means he’s loyal to anyone he loves. And you say he loves you?”
I stare at her hardwood floor, tears threatening to fill my eyes. “He did. But it’s been almost two months.”
“Well, of course he still loves you then, Rebecca,” she says. “Because he is loyal, you can count on it. Just like he’s loyal to this Alex.”
“Mama, I think he’s waiting for me.”
“He probably is,” she agrees.
“That scares me.”
“Rebecca, love is never without its risks or doubts, precious,” she begins thoughtfully, an appreciative expression filling her face. “Love is patient; love is kind. Love bears all things. Hopes all things.” She’s doing it again: wrapping life’s plain truths in Scripture; she always makes it seem that the one can’t be separated from the other.
Love bears all things. Of her words, those are the ones that reverberate right through me. I love Michael. I loved him before, and I still love him now. Couldn’t I have borne his grief long enough, until he found his way through to the other side of it? Was my own love so tentative and fragile that it wasn’t strong enough to bear the weight of his sorrow?
I bow my head, tears filling my eyes, and my dear mother simply sits beside me, wordless. She slips her arm around my shoulder, squeezing. After a time I look up, wiping at my eyes.
“You don’t care that he’s been with a man?” I ask, trying to picture Michael assimilating into my hometown culture, a world where Darnelle Bogart could slingshot the risqué news of our romance down Main Street in a single afternoon. “You don’t worry about the gossip back home?”
“Oh, honey, I was joking,” she assures me. “How will they ever know?”
“They could find out.” There’s always the National Enquirer, but I don’t remind her of that.
She swats her hand at me. “Like we care!” she laughs. “Daddy and I have weathered all kinds of gossip and survived.” That’s true enough: with a hometown celebrity for a daughter—one with a TV expose devoted to her—they’ve been through it all.
“Well, this may come as a surprise to you, Rebecca Ann,” she laughs. “But I have lived a little. And in my experience, there’s nothing more important than the loyal love of a good man.”
Inside her house right then, the phone rings: it’s the moving company calling for directions. Our conversation is interrupted; long enough for me sit in her garden surrounded by her wind chimes and small pavement stones and sculptures, and think of how I’ll miss my mother once she moves tomorrow. As long as she was here I could always run home and be safe.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Michael
I’ve done my best to make a lot of things right in the past few months. To establish more credibility in my life, to get more honest. Coming clean with Andie about our family was the biggest of those steps. Sitting here on the back deck, deliberating about trying to call Rebecca one more time, I know that there’s another call I should make. That I need to make, but I’ve been putting it off for more than a year now.
I pick up my cell, turning it in my palm, and know that I need to tell my father that Alex died. That we had a daughter together, years before that. And that he’s a grandfather.
Truth is, ole George has tried calling me plenty of times in the past few years; I just never take the calls. I think about Ellen’s words that day up in Santa Cruz. That I’m a dad, too, and I know how that kind of estrangement must be killing him.
I stand up and walk to the sliding doors that lead inside. I lean in through the open door and call out to Andie. “Sweetpea, there’s somebody I’m going to want you to talk to in a little while. I think. So when I call you, come on out here, okay?”
She makes a sharp cry and tells me that she just beat her high score on Super Mario Cart. I listen for a moment, smiling as she talks to herself, and know that she’s starting to come alive again. That she’s healing.
And more than ever, I know I have to go make that call to my father because I’m healing, too.
***
So maybe I finally have added stalking to my list of failings because for the past seven days I’ve made a point of driving by Rebecca’s place. I just keep thinking that if she’s outside somehow, maybe going for a jog, that I can pull over and lay everything on the line. I could talk to her about Andrea’s party, find out if she plans to come.
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