Malibu Rising

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Vanessa snapped. Without thinking, she pushed him. “Don’t touch her again!” she said.

  The cop behind Purdy grabbed Vanessa by both of her arms and cuffed her, pulling her arms tight behind her.

  Greg came back around the corner at the same time Ricky came into the living room, wondering what all of the commotion was about.

  “What the hell is going on?” Greg yelled. “Let her go!”

  Instinctually, Ricky lunged forward and pushed both cops off the women. Purdy fell back, the other cop barely moved. “You get off of them!” Ricky said. “I don’t care what badge you’re wearing!”

  Purdy looked at Ricky, and Ricky instantly understood this was going to cost him. But he stood tall as both cops moved toward him, and remained stoic as they pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed him.

  He winced at the tightness of the restraints themselves, but as he did, Tarine caught his eye and mouthed Thank you. Vanessa smiled at him. Greg gave Ricky a nod, and the remaining crowd cheered.

  Tarine, Vanessa, and Ricky were all going to jail. But at least they’d put up a fight.

  Then the police raided the house.

  They got the two actors hallucinating from LSD on the tennis courts (Tuesday Hendricks and Rafael Lopez, possession), the one supplying coke (Bobby Housman, possession with intent to distribute), the two throwing serving trays like oversized ninja stars (Vaughn Donovan and Bridger Miller, vandalism), the naked woman blowing a drummer in the middle of the lawn (Wendy Palmer, indecent exposure, lewd conduct), the ones with pockets full of what were clearly Nina’s and Brandon’s belongings (Ted Travis and Vickie Brooks, grand larceny), and the one holding a gun (Seth Whittles, possession of a loaded firearm without a license).

  There were so many of them that the cops had to call in a police van. They loaded each of them in as they cleared out the rest of the house. Bridger stared daggers at Tuesday the second he saw her. Tuesday refused to look at him, focused entirely on Rafael. Ted and Vickie tried to hold hands in handcuffs. Bobby nodded at Wendy. Wendy smiled kindly at Seth. Vaughn was trying not to vomit.

  Ricky was seated next to Vanessa, pushed together tight, almost no room between them.

  “Weird night,” he said to her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Weird night. But thank you, for, you know, standing up to that cop for me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ricky said. “Sure. I mean, anytime.”

  Vanessa smiled and leaned over and kissed Ricky on the lips. “Maybe we could hang out sometime,” she said.

  Ricky nodded. “How about tomorrow night, assuming we’re not both in jail?”

  “Excellent,” Vanessa said.

  The two of them sat there, handcuffed next to each other, smiles creeping across their faces. And in this way, the very end of the night contained its own kind of beginnings.

  Tarine was the last one escorted to the van.

  “I’m going to come get you,” Greg called to her. “I’ll be right behind the van.”

  “Please!” she yelled, as the doors were shut. “These people are crazy.”

  On the way to the precinct, the cops came across a crashed black Jaguar on the side of the road. The hood was crunched around a tree, the engine smoking.

  They arrested the very drunk but completely unscathed Brandon Randall (driving while intoxicated).

  Thirteen arrests, hundreds of people kicked out of the house, and the Rivas nowhere to be found.

  By the time the clock struck 5:00 A.M., the party of the decade was over.

  5:00 A.M.

  The six of them sat on the beach in silence for a while, no one quite ready to move.

  They had the answers to the questions Nina, Jay, Hud, Kit, and even Mick had held in the backs of their minds for the past two decades. Would he ever come back? Could he belong to them once more?

  Yes. But no.

  And so they all sat quietly as the world shifted and settled within each of them.

  After what felt like hours, Nina stood up and wiped the sand off her legs. The Santa Ana winds were gearing up, she could feel it against her shoulders. “It’s getting cold,” she said.

  The six of them put the surfboards back in the shed and started climbing back up the cliff.

  • • •

  Jay was reeling from almost everything that had happened over the past twelve hours. He was having trouble processing what had taken place, and he knew it would be some time until he truly understood it all. But there was one thing that felt clear to him now: He did not want to be anything like his father.

  There had been so many times over the past years that Jay had hoped his father’s glory or prestige might have rubbed off on him. But now he could see plainly, he did not want to indulge that about himself the way his father had.

  In fact, despite everything, he had to admit if there was a man in his life to look up to, it had always been Hud. As difficult as that felt to swallow at that given moment, it was still undeniably true.

  As Hud struggled up the stairs, Jay came up behind. He put his arm out to help and said, in a voice that was not a whisper, but was not heard by anyone else, “I need you to be sorry.”

  “I am,” Hud told him.

  “No, you have to be so sorry that I know you’ll never lie to me again, so that I know I can still trust you forever. Like nothing has changed.”

  Hud looked at his brother and allowed his sorrow to surface. Jay could see the pain in his brother’s face and body, and he knew Hud well enough to know that it wasn’t the broken ribs. “I am that sorry,” Hud said.

  “OK,” Jay said. “We’re OK.” And with that, Jay took the full weight of his brother’s body onto his shoulder and helped Hud up the cliff.

  • • •

  All this talk of their father made Hud think of their mother. And he thought of the story she used to tell him, how he had been handed to her, and she had held him as he cried, and loved him right then and there.

  She had chosen to love him and it had changed his life.

  Hud would love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity.

  And maybe twenty-five years from now, all of them plus a whole new generation of Rivas would be right here on this very beach. And maybe there would be another reckoning. Perhaps his children would tell him he’d been too permissive or he’d been too strict, he’d put too much emphasis on x when it should have been y.

  He smiled to think of it, the ways in which he would mess this whole thing up. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The small mistakes and heartbreaks of guiding a life? His mother had screwed up almost as much as she’d succeeded.

  But the one thing he knew in his bones was that he would not leave.

  His child—his children, if he was lucky—would know, from the day they were born, that he was not going anywhere.

  • • •

  Kit, despite herself, did feel something for her father. She did not like him, per se. But she was happy to have learned that he had a soul, however imperfect. Somehow, knowing her father wasn’t all bad made her like herself more, made her less afraid of who she might be down in the unmined depths of her heart.

  As they made their way up the stairs, Kit pushed ahead of everyone as only little sisters can and then stopped when she got to Casey.

  She slowed down, and as she passed her she said, “Excuse me.”

  Later on, Kit would look back on that moment—that time they were all walking, mostly in silence, back up the stairs with their father—as the moment their family rearranged, made room for Casey to stay, made room for Nina to go.

  Kit tapped Nina on the shoulder. “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hi,” Nina said.

  “What’s the place in Portugal?” Kit asked.

  “Huh?” Nina said.

  “The place in Portugal. Where you said you wanted to go and eat the catch of the day.”

  “Oh,” Nina said. “I don’t know. I was just talking.”

  “No, y
ou weren’t,” Kit said. “I know you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It was the most honest you’ve ever been,” Kit said. “It matters more than anything.”

  Nina turned, and looked at her sister. “It’s Madeira. I’ve always wanted to live in Madeira in a tiny house on the water, the kind of place where you only go into town once a week to buy food. I’d love to be somewhere where no one knows who I am or who my dad is and no one has my posters on their wall and I can eat anything I want to. And I can cut all my hair off if I feel like it and maybe be a gardener or a landscaper. Something outside. Where no one knows I was married to Brandon. And when the waves are good, I’m always in the water.”

  Kit saw it in perfect Technicolor. The thing they could all do for Nina.

  • • •

  Mick knew that if he really loved his kids, he would leave them alone. That seemed easy, that seemed doable. He thought of it as his own redemption.

  And so, as he made his way up the steps, he decided he’d hug each of them, give them his direct phone number, tell them he would be there if they wanted to go get lunch, and then get in his Jag and drive away.

  He turned to Casey, just as his feet hit the grass, and he said, “I’ll take a paternity test. If you want. Just let me know.”

  Casey, still finding this night beyond belief and sad and a tiny bit thrilling, smiled at him. Then, just in case he was her father, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

  • • •

  As the family came up to the lawn, the remaining cops shined their lights on the faces of Mick and his five children. And it was then that, for one of the first times in their lives, they saw why it’s good to have Mick Riva as your father.

  They all went inside and, after ten minutes of smiles and handshakes and autographs and polite laughing at inane stories, the cops resolved to be on their way.

  “We had some arrests,” Sergeant Purdy said. “Nobody you’d miss, I can’t imagine. Vandals, really.”

  Nina wasn’t sure what to say to that and she wondered who the cops had arrested. “Thank you, Officers,” she said. She showed them to the front door.

  Then she turned and looked at her family. Her brothers had blood crusted on their faces, her sister had a hickey—what?—and there were two more bodies than there’d been at the beginning of this whole thing.

  “All right,” Mick said. “I believe this is my cue to leave.”

  He entertained the fantasy that someone might try to stop him. He wasn’t too surprised when no one did.

  He hugged his sons first, and then his possible daughter, and then the one with the big mouth, and then as he got to the front door, the one who had saved the family he had started.

  “Thank you,” Mick whispered in her ear as he pulled Nina to him. “For the person you’ve been your entire life. And all that you’ve done.”

  And then, before Nina could even realize she was crying, he was gone.

  Nina sat down on the steps facing the door and her brothers and sister sat down next to her.

  “You OK?” Hud asked.

  Nina looked up at him, so many feelings dancing around inside her, out of the grasp of words. “I mean …” she said and then gave up.

  “Right,” he said.

  “Me, too,” Kit added.

  “Yeah,” Jay said.

  Casey stood by the door.

  Hud looked at her there, alone and unsure, on the threshold. “Come on, sit down. I don’t care who your dad is. You’re one of us.”

  Kit scooted over to make room. And when Casey sat down next to Nina, Jay squeezed her shoulder. Nina patted her knee.

  She needed someone to love her. And they could do that. That would be very easy for them to do.

  June was gone. Yet here she was, living on through her children.

  6:00 A.M.

  It took exactly fifty-two minutes for them to convince Nina to leave. The five of them were all standing around the island in the kitchen, eating from the cracker tray.

  Kit pitched the initial idea. “What if you just left and went to Portugal right now?”

  Hud was silent. Casey wasn’t sure what to say. And Nina dismissed it over and over again.

  Until Jay started echoing Kit.

  “It’s not actually that crazy, Nina,” he said. “You don’t want to live here. Especially now. You don’t want to be with Brandon. You don’t want all the attention. You don’t want any of this and you also don’t want to have to explain yourself to everyone. So leave. Don’t tell anybody. Just go.”

  “You’re saying I leave my things, my bank account, my house. And no one will have any idea where I am?” Nina said.

  “I mean, that’s not exactly what we are saying,” Hud said.

  “Brandon will know where I am, won’t he? So he’ll still be a problem. People still know who Dad is. Everyone is going to know I got cheated on. Everyone’s gonna know my husband left me for Carrie fucking Soto.”

  “Can I just say …” Casey stepped in. “That she seems like, as my mother used to say when she was really mad, a real asshole?”

  “Yes, you can,” Nina said. “Yes, you can say that.”

  Kit saw then that there was a version of Nina—the nice girl who always said the nice thing—who was gone. And there was a slightly new Nina—who agreed when someone said the woman that fucked her husband was an asshole. And Kit thought, for both the old Nina and this new Nina, she wanted Portugal.

  “Will you just listen to me?” Kit said. “It’s actually pretty simple.”

  “OK,” Nina said, exasperated. “Go ahead.”

  “We don’t want people tracking you down. We want them to leave you alone. So we make it really ambiguous. You leave now. The party got out of control. I’m sure it will be in the papers. And people will think you ran off with someone or something.”

  “Or that I died.”

  “I mean, maybe,” Hud said, conceding the unlikely possibility.

  “So, fine,” Kit said. “People say you died. Who cares? That just means they will leave you alone. We know you’re not dead. We’ll tell Mick you’re not dead. I can tell Tarine or whoever you want. We’ll tell anyone that will keep the secret. But then you take some cash, you drive to the airport, and you get a one-way ticket to Portugal. Get yourself a small house. Or whatever. See if you like it. If you don’t, then you’ll come home. And if you do, then stay as long as you want. And we will come visit you. All the time. And no one would even question it because the surfing is great there. Hud and Jay would probably go all the time anyway for surf shoots and shit. I’ll tag along. We will see you all the time. We will come stay with you for weeks sometimes. We’ll always be in your hair.”

  “I can’t leave,” Nina said. “I can’t leave you all. You …” Need me.

  “No,” Kit said. “Not anymore. We love you and we want you around. But, Nina, you don’t need to take care of us anymore.”

  “She’s right,” Hud said. “Kit’s right.”

  And that is when Nina started to wonder if this wasn’t such a crazy idea. She started to wonder if she could just go. It felt daring to even imagine.

  “Kit’s right. You should go, Nina,” Jay said. “It’s totally not like you to do it. And that’s exactly why you have to.”

  Nina was listening to him. He could tell.

  “You’ve spent your whole life making up for Mom and Dad. We don’t talk about it very much but … Mom didn’t make it easy either. But I have always known that it didn’t matter how drunk Mom got or whether Dad came home because you would always be there.”

  “I’ve known that, too,” Hud said.

  “I’ve known it my entire life,” Kit said. “I know it now. And I’ll know it even if you live on a beach in Madeira.”

  Casey stepped in. “I barely know you and you’ve made me feel that way. It seems like it’s just the way you are.”

  Kit looked at Casey and could see that Casey cared about her family, cared about Nina alread
y. Kit wondered what it would be like to be someone’s older sister, to pass along the stuff you’ve figured out. She could do that. She wanted to do that.

  “What if they find my car at the airport at some point and track me down?” Nina asked.

  Kit started smiling. They’d moved on to logistics.

  “My truck,” Casey said. “It’s parked down the road, way past the bluffs. I was … I was intimidated by the valets. And … all the fancy cars.” Casey walked over to her purse and pulled out her keys. “It’s a red pickup with three quarters of a tank of gas. Registered in my dad’s name. Should get you to whatever airport you want to leave from.”

  “And then, you know, go. Fly to Portugal and do something for you. For once. Just for a little while,” Kit said.

  It was the “little while” that got her. She could go for a little while. There would be no harm in a little while.

  “What about the restaurant?” Nina asked. “Who is going to make sure everything runs—”

  “We’ll sell the restaurant,” Kit said. “I’m sorry but we need to sell it and take the money. Mom hated that place. She never wanted it for us. Let Ramon take it over—he actually cares about it. We should let it go. We don’t have to live life the exact same way Mom did or Grandma did. It’s ours to do with what we want and I say you go to Portugal and let us sell the damn thing, please.”

  Nina looked at Hud. Hud looked at Jay. “Yeah,” Jay said. “Kit’s right. Mom wouldn’t want you to stay here so you could run the restaurant. Mom would have hated that.”

  That was true, wasn’t it? And yet here Nina was, holding on to it simply because her mother had carried it before her.

  Nina suddenly had a picture in her head. It was as if June had given her a box—as if every parent gives their children a box—full of the things they carried.

  June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows.

  And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it.