by Anne Pfeffer
“Should I tell Nat and Yancy about the baby?”
She purses her lips as she considers my question, a little vertical crease appearing between her eyebrows. “I think they’re entitled to know.”
“But I don’t really have any information! I don’t even know where Chrissie is.”
She glances at her books. “Well, you don’t have to tell them. You asked for my opinion, and I gave it.”
I think about it. “I guess you’re right. I’ll do it.”
“She hasn’t left town, has she?”
I’ve been worrying about that, but didn’t want to say it. A wave of panic starts to roll over me, but I push it down.
“I don’t think so,” I say. I sure hope not, anyway.
Chapter 23
After I finish talking to Emily, I pick up a book, read a page, then put it down. I turn on the tube, pace around my bedroom, then turn it off.
Since I said I’d tell Nat and Yancy about the baby, I might as well do it now. Maybe they’ll know how to find Chrissie’s home address. It’s about six in the evening, and I decide to drop in without calling.
Their house is this contemporary thing that’s all white surfaces and right angles, both inside and out. Nat and Yancy wanted all those white walls for their art collection. Outside is a gigantic metal sculpture in the shape of a mobile, with arms extending out and circles and triangles dangling off them. Michael used to call it The Octopus.
The last time I was here, it was the night of Emily’s party, when I went looking for Michael. I remember how stupidly relieved I was to find no accident along his route home.
Of course, Nat and Yancy hadn’t been around that night. Even more than my folks, they specialize in disappearing acts. Those two wouldn’t even know what to do with a grandchild.
I think back to all the times they flew to Rome, or had an opening to go to, or something better to do than spend time with Michael. The worst memory of all, the one that caused the split between me and both sets of parents, is the terrible day of Michael’s overdose.
He and I were thirteen when it happened. My parents and the Westons were in Cannes for the Film Festival, having left Michael at our house, with Rosario in charge. Michael had been upstairs, supposedly doing homework, for a couple of hours. I was helping Ro unload the dishwasher when Maddy’s voice came through the intercom from her upstairs bedroom.
“Molly says Michael’s in the driveway.” They can see the driveway from the upstairs windows of their adjoining bedrooms.
“Well, have Molly call down to Michael to come inside. We’re having dessert,” I instructed the intercom.
“Molly says he can’t come inside.”
“I’ll go find him,” I said.
Michael was lying in the driveway in a pool of vomit. He was on his side, looking almost peaceful, his face and t-shirt drenched and sticky. One hand was flung out to the side, the fingers slightly curled.
He must have wandered down the stairs and out the front door, stoned out of his mind, then blacked out.
Sitting there in front of the Weston’s house, three years later, I still remember how freaking terrified I was that day. Seeing Michael lying there, my insides heaved, and for a brief second I thought I would throw up, too.
Instead, I screamed to Rosario to call 911. I remember my mind grasping for the little bit of CPR I knew. Putting my hand to his nose, I felt nothing, no air coming out. Frantic, I yanked at Michael, turning him over to let the vomit run out of his mouth.
“Somebody get me some paper towels!” I yelled, but by the time Ro came running with the roll of paper, I had already cleaned out Michael’s mouth with my t-shirt. I prayed nothing was lodged in his throat.
I felt slow and stupid. All I knew was, I had to get oxygen into him. Molly and Maddy, five years old, were wailing and clutching each other, ignored by me and Ro as we struggled to keep Michael alive.
“Ro, help me!” We turned him over on his back, and I tried mouth-to-mouth, almost gagging from the taste of vomit. “Is his chest moving?” He just lay there, still and pale. Maddy and Molly had stopped crying and were holding each other, saucer-eyed.
“Keep trying!” Ro was kneeling beside me. She wedged the paper towel roll under his neck, so his chest arched out. “Try again.”
I blew into Michael’s mouth, and this time I felt the air go somewhere, and his chest went up, and Ro cried, “Yes!” I kept doing it, one breath after another, while Ro said, “It’s working.”
My back ached, but I kept the breathing going, over and over, thinking simply stay alive. Rocks in the driveway poked into my knees and calves, hurting me. Where was the freaking ambulance? Finally, we heard the sirens.
I remember Rosario’s face, with its look of horror, the blinking ambulance lights, and the sight of my parents’ open medicine cabinet, bottles of non-prescription and prescription drugs scattered across the counter. Four bottles had been opened, so, the paramedics had to assume Michael had taken all four.
“You’re his friend?” one of the paramedics asked me. When I nodded, he said, “Was this a suicide attempt?”
“No.” I was sure about that. Michael loved life. “He was just trying to get high.”
Rosario blamed herself. “I should have watched him,” she said to me in the ambulance, her eyes full of fear.
“You can’t follow a thirteen year old around like he’s a baby,” I told her. Until it happened, we couldn’t have known how our medicine cabinet would seem to Michael—like a candy store, irresistible.
We had to take my sisters with us to the emergency room. There was no one to stay with them. The ER was swamped. As we arrived, ambulances pulled up with casualties from a four car pile-up on Interstate 10. Bloody bandages, patients on gurneys, bottles of dripping chemicals, bags and tubes filled with blood.
My little sisters were holding onto each other and whimpering. Ro knelt and said, “This place looks scary, but it is a good place. The doctors here make sick people better.” She smoothed back Molly’s hair and touched Maddy’s cheek. “You are safe here with us. But if you do not want to see, put your faces in my skirt.” So both girls clung to Rosario’s skirt, faces hidden, the whole time we were there.
A car blasts its horn, bringing me back to my own car, parked in front of theWestons’ house. I shake my head, get out, and run up the front walk. It’s Charlie who answers the door. He’s been Yancy’s personal assistant for as long as I can remember.
“They’re not here, Ryan,” he says, giving me this look of sympathy. “But I expect them back soon.”
“Do you think … I could wait in Michael’s room? Just see it for a minute?”
He hesitates. “They asked me and Clarisse to clean it out.” Clarisse is Nat’s assistant. “You’re free to go through boxes if you want. Take whatever you like.”
I follow him down the Weston’s long hallway, still thinking about Michael, lying on a gurney while a crew of hospital people worked over him. As Charlie and I arrive at Michael’s bedroom door, he gives me this apologetic look and reminds me, “They wanted it cleaned out. I think it’s their way of dealing with the loss.” He opens the door and my jaw drops.
The room’s been gutted. All of Michael’s personal things are gone, probably packed into the boxes stacked against one wall. The bed is stripped, the shelves are empty.
“Like I say, take anything you want,” Charlie says. He leaves me alone.
I sink down on the bare mattress. I look at the boxes, which are all labeled. Fury boils up inside me.
As rage mounts, my mind goes back to how I sat in the Emergency Room that night, trying to reach the Westons, calculating the time difference and leaving messages at every phone number I had for them. By the time they finally called back, we were home and Michael was out of danger. The Film Festival, the working part of their trip, was over. Michael lay in my bed, still weak, but able to talk to them.
“I’m fine,” he told them, his voice raspy. “No worries.” I saw a flicke
r of some expression on his face, then, “That’s okay. We’ll be fine. See you next week.”
So the Westons had no plans to interrupt their trip. They would stay in France another week, on vacation, just as if their son hadn’t almost died.
Michael went to hang up, but I lunged for the phone and grabbed it from him. “Yancy! Can I talk to Dad? Or Mom?”
“They’re not here, Ryan. They’re tied up with something. I’ll have them get back to you,” Yancy told me, her voice small and tinny.
“I need to talk to them as soon as possible,” I said. “Promise you’ll give them the message?” She promised, and we both hung up.
I could not believe they were staying in France another week. Michael was leaning back against the pillows. “Hey, Ryan,” he said, yawning.
“Yeah?”
“The nurse at the hospital said you saved my life.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Yeah, well, the next time I won’t, so don’t do it again.” He and I smiled at each other.
“You’re such a dick,” he said in a fond tone, and turned over and went to sleep.
I come back to the present, where I sit in Michael’s empty room. Charlie had said I could look through the boxes, but when I check them out, I see they’re all taped up. They have split up Michael’s memory into tiny pieces and packed it away.
I can’t stay here anymore. I have nothing to say to Nat and Yancy.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I yell out, as I head for the front door.
“Okay, bye.” He appears in a doorway, looking surprised at my taking off like that.
I leap into my car and start the ignition. The funny thing was, Michael got something good out of that day: he went off of drugs completely and stayed clean for three years. Until Chase came along.
For me and my sisters, it was different. It turned out Yancy’s promise wasn’t worth much, because we didn’t hear from my parents for a few days, and then they just left a long machine message while we were off at school.
In the meantime, we were flipping out. Neither I nor my sisters could fall asleep. That whole week, we used air mattresses that Ro had put down in the library in front of the-fireplace—the five of us laid out in a row: Michael, me, the girls, and Rosario. It was the only way that Molly and Maddy—sandwiched in the center, between me and Ro—felt safe. Jasper was still alive then, and he slept at our heads, lying crosswise, so that each of us could reach up and put a hand in his fur.
Ro and I had gone through every medicine cabinet and cupboard in the house, gathering up pill bottles in a shopping bag, and hiding the bag under Ro’s bed. We watched Michael nonstop, terrified he would do it again.
I remember the Westons arriving from the airport with my parents, the four of them pumped up from their Dealmaking Victories and relaxed from their nice vacation.
“Where’s my baby?” Yancy called out. I walked up to her, steaming mad.
“Your baby’s asleep upstairs, after being rushed to the hospital and almost dying.” My voice was shaking with fury. “Ro and I scraped up the vomit and got him to the hospital and saved his life. But don’t let any of us disturb your rest and relaxation.”
“RYAN!” My mother stared at me.
I stalked away.
“Apologize!”
“NO!” I shouted. And I never did. A wall grew that day between me and my parents. And, until Michael died, I never spoke directly to the Westons again.
Chapter 24
Another day passes without hearing from Chrissie, and I’m going nuts. There has to be someone at the tennis club who will give me her address. I do a mental run-through of possible targets and come up with Marge, who works in the Admin office. I smile to myself. She’s perfect.
She’s the type who wallpapers her cubicle with postcards of celebrities and spends all her off hours standing in line for free tapings of TV reality shows. I usually avoid her because she bombards me with questions about my dad. My plan is to offer Marge something she wants in exchange for what I want.
My dad can get tickets to practically any event in town. I almost never ask for stuff like this, but today I will.
I stick my head into his office suite at our home to find Phyllis, his assistant, juggling three blinking phone lines. She shakes her head at me, but I say “Please? I only need a minute.”
Dad, in the office behind her, catches sight of me through the open door. “It’s okay, Phyllis,” he calls, waving me in.
I sit down across from him, noticing the surprise on his face. It’s been more than three years since I came to visit him in his office. It has taken this Chrissie problem to bring me back.
I used to spend hours here. When I was young, I read a lot of Dad’s scripts and gave him my notes on them, and he’d teach me stuff like how a story should be structured and how to write dialogue.
Dad still uses paper more than he does electronic gadgets. His desk is piled high with scripts, mail, and messages. His list of Things to Do, covering two typed pages, is in front of him, lying on a large month-at-a-glance calendar that’s black from all the inked in meetings, auditions, lunches, events, and other things he does with his life.
His eyes are red and tired, and the three lines are still blinking on his phone, all on hold, waiting for him. But there’s a pleased smile on his face. “What’s up?” he asks me, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head.
I’ll have to tell Dad some version of the truth; the man can detect bullshit from a distance of a thousand yards.
“I want give two tickets to someone at the tennis club. It’s kind of a thank you, cuz she’s been nice to me.”
His face goes expressionless when he realizes why I’m there. I know he’s disappointed, but he’ll do this favor for me. He should, after all the times he’s waltzed out of the house with Mom, leaving us kids behind.
He leans forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “Jared Abernathy’s new film comes out in two weeks.” Dad has just signed Jared to star in his next project, Mystery Moon. “You want tickets to the premiere and the party afterwards?”
“That’d be great! Thanks.” I stand up as the number of blinking lights increases to four.
He gives me a nod and picks up the phone as I leave.
The next day, I go to Marge and make her my offer. “All you have to do it get me some information, okay?”
Faced with the option to do her job right versus blowing it off to hang with Hollywood celebrities, Marge’s choice is clear. An hour later, she calls me with Chrissie’s home address and phone number. Yes.
I start to call Chrissie’s number, but then reconsider. I don’t want to scare her off. I decide to go pay her a visit instead. It’s now late in the afternoon, and I’ve got a date with Emily tonight. I’ll go up to Chrissie’s first thing tomorrow morning.
• • •
I justify my date with Emily by the fact that I’ve been working to find Michael’s baby. If Jonathan’s right, the good deed will cancel out the bad one on the karma worksheet. She and I are going to the Santa Monica Pier, and I want to have fun.
Ever since that kiss with Emily in the park, I’ve been a goner. I can no more resist her now than I could stop breathing or swallowing. And she seems to feel the same way: we have become the Make-out Maniacs.
On the Pier, we ride to the top of the Ferris wheel and exchange fantastic, face-sucking kisses. She’s a little freaked out, though, by being up so high. I distract her by telling jokes, then French kiss her through the last two cycles of the big wheel, until our little car finally shudders to a stop on the ground.
The ride over, I walk with her along the pier.
“I haven’t seen you since noon yesterday,” she says, putting her lower lip out in a cute way. For us, that’s a long time.
“That’s because you went home with your carpool,” I say. “You should let me drive you home every day.” She and I grab every chance we can get to be together.
“You’re practically already doing it! My aft
ernoon carpool has barely seen me in two weeks.”
“Quit it. I’ll take you home in the afternoons.”
“What about on Wednesdays?” Emily stays late for Songbirds rehearsal that day, but her friend Chloe, who stays after for debate, takes her home.
“I can wait for you on Wednesdays. Tell your carpool and Chloe that you’ve got a new ride.”
I put my arm around her as we lean against the railing and look down into the water. Her warm body presses up against mine.
Although I know it’s wrong to be with Emily after what I did to Michael, I sometimes think he would have understood in his own way. As he would have put it, Never pass up a chance for some booty.
In my case, it’s a little different. I’m not getting any actual booty from Emily, although I fantasize about that nonstop. But I am completely, gonzo, out-of-control in love.
“Ryan?”
I come back to earth. Emily’s next to me, her hair flying and cheeks red from the wind. She has this amazing way of knowing exactly the right thing to do for me. She stands there, calm, saying nothing, waiting for me to come back to her. Mentally, I mean.
“Michael and I used to come to this beach all the time,” I tell her. “We’d bring my dog Jasper and play Frisbee.”
“How long did you have him?”
“For eight years, starting when I was six. He was the coolest dog.”
I start to tell Emily a story. “You want to know the best thing Jasper ever did? He ate my homework once. It was awesome, to be able to say to a teacher ‘The dog ate my homework’.”
“He did? He really ate it?”
“Swear to God,” I say. “It was in Mr. Randall’s algebra class. He was such a dick. I had to tear the assignment up into tiny pieces and mix it with canned food. But Jasper ate it all. And I went to school, told Randall the dog had eaten my homework, and I got detention. But it was totally worth it.”
“You fed your homework to the dog?” Emily’s eyes are warm as she rests her chin on my chest and looks up at me. “What am I going to do with you, Ryan?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What are you going to do with me?” We exchange a long, steamy look.