And then she turned the page and came face-to-face with her husband, yet again. “BranRan and Carrie Soto: Love–Love.” Ugh, the tennis puns.
Nina put the magazine down, disgusted. Then she picked it back up and read the article twice over. There were photos of Brandon and Carrie together all over the pages. The two of them getting into a silver Porsche on Rodeo, the two of them walking into a country club in Bel Air.
The photos haunted her. Not because Brandon looked happy with Carrie. Although, he did. And it also was not because he looked different with Carrie—although, again, this was true. Brandon had replaced his T-shirts with polo shirts, his boat shoes with loafers.
But no. What haunted Nina was that this all just felt so familiar. She’d long ago watched her mother scour magazines filled with images of her father and his new wife.
“We’re here!” Hud called to her before they even made their way through the door.
Nina got up and hugged each one of her siblings as they joined her.
“Sorry we’re late,” Kit said.
“It’s fine,” Nina said.
“It was Jay’s fault,” Kit offered.
“We’re barely late anyway,” Jay said as he looked at the clock on the back wall. It was 12:23 P.M.
The four of them sat down at the table and Kit immediately started eating her fries. Nina knew they had to be cold by now but appreciated that none of her siblings mentioned it.
“So, what’s up with the party?” Kit said, putting a fry in her mouth. “Do you need us to do anything?”
Nina picked up a slice of tomato. God, she wanted a fry. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s all managed. I’m meeting the cleaning crew at the house in a few hours. The caterers will be showing up at five. The bartenders should get there at … six? I think? Party’s at seven but people should start showing up around seven-thirty, I’d think. I have it all under control.”
Jay shook his head. “It’s so different from the old days.”
Hud laughed as he was chewing. He wiped his mouth and swallowed. “You mean when Nina cleaned the house and Kit was putting out the bowls of pretzels …”
“And you and I were convincing Hank Wegman at the liquor store to sell us three kegs,” Jay said. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“By the way, I’m mostly focused on beer and wine this year,” Nina said. “I mean, obviously the bar will have a few bottles of liquor for cocktails but I don’t want to go crazy. I don’t need somebody thinking it’s a good idea to jump off my top balcony into the pool again.”
“Oh, my God,” Kit said, laughing. “Jordan Walker’s nose still looks terrible! Remember when we saw Pledge for Eternity? Every time he came on-screen it looked like he had Silly Putty on his face.”
Hud laughed.
“But that wasn’t because he had a whiskey,” Jay said. “The guy was hopped up on mushrooms.”
“Still,” Nina said. “The caterer said beer and wine is cooler anyway.”
“Yeah, all right,” Jay said. And then he briefly glanced at Hud and in that nanosecond of time they both knew they were going to drive down to the liquor store and stock the bar the way they wanted.
“Guys, what if Goldie comes this year?” Hud asked.
Jay shook his head. Nina smiled.
“Would you stop?” Kit said, laughing. “You can’t call her Goldie—you don’t even know her.”
“I do know her.”
“Standing behind someone in the grocery store is not knowing her. Just call her Goldie Hawn like the rest of us,” Kit said.
“I lent her my basket!” Hud said. “Because her hands were full with her kids. And she said, ‘Hi, I’m Goldie!’”
Nina, Jay, and Kit all looked at each other, trying to decide whether or not to give it to him.
“I haven’t heard anything about Goldie Hawn coming,” Nina said, diplomatically. “But I do think Ted Travis is coming again.”
Kit smiled and rubbed her hands together, excited. “Yes!”
Ted Travis lived four streets over in a house built in the shape of a donut with a tiki bar and a grotto in the middle. Kit and her best friend, Vanessa, never missed an episode of his show, Cool Nights, about a cop in Orange County who slept with everyone’s wives and solved murders wearing a blazer and swimming trunks. “He jumped two speedboats on water skis last week and Van and I wanted to ask him about it.”
“Is Vanessa coming tonight?” Nina asked. “I know you said she might have to go to San Diego with her family.”
“No, she’s coming,” Kit said. Vanessa had been in love with Hud since Kit and Vanessa were thirteen. So Kit knew she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to be near him. Kit kept hoping the crush would fade but it never did. Hud didn’t help matters by being so sweet to her.
“But is anyone surprised Ted’s coming?” Jay said. “He’d never miss an opportunity to come hit on Nina.”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Ted is, like, old enough to be our dad,” she said, getting up from the table to grab a napkin off the counter. “And anyway, I don’t even want to think about getting hit on. I’m not sure I’m feeling my spunky best lately.”
“Oh, come on,” Jay said.
“Maybe just leave it,” Hud offered.
“You’re gonna let some tennis asshole make you feel bad about yourself?” Jay said, looking directly at Nina. “The guy’s a complete douchebag and, I’m sorry, but his backhand sucks. And I always thought that. Even when I liked him.”
“I mean,” Kit said. “Jay’s kind of right. Also, are we now allowed to acknowledge that he was balding?”
The last part made Nina laugh. Hud caught her eye and laughed with her.
“He really was balding,” Nina said. “Which would have been fine if he realized it. But he had no clue! It was, like, right on the top of his head and he’d wear those visors—”
“That just made him look more bald,” Jay said, plainly. “Why did you let him wear those visors?”
“I didn’t know how to tell him he was balding!”
Kit shook her head. “That is brutal. You let him walk out of the house and onto national TV with a bagel of hair on his head.”
And they all started laughing. The four of them, erupting, at the image of Brandon Randall unknowingly balding on ESPN.
They were good at this, they had experience. This was how they began the process of forgetting the people who turned their backs.
“At least it’s Carrie Soto’s problem now,” Nina said. “Let her find a way to tell him.”
The good thing about getting dumped by a dickhead is that you don’t have to deal with the dickhead anymore. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
1961
The day after Mick and June’s divorce went through, Mick married Veronica. Within weeks, Mick and Veronica bought a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and moved across the country.
They had been married for four months before he started sleeping with the wife of a sound engineer he’d been working with, a redhead with blue eyes named Sandra.
When Veronica figured it out—she’d found an auburn bobby pin in his suit jacket—she threw a dinner plate at him. And then two more.
“Fuck, Ronnie!” Mick screamed. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“I hate you!” she screamed as she threw another one. “I hope you die! I really do.” Her aim was terrible; not a single dish so much as grazed him. But he was startled by the violence of it. The flush of her cheeks, the craze in her eyes, the cacophony of dishes breaking and a woman screaming.
The next morning, he had his lawyer file divorce papers.
As he had movers pack his things, Veronica stood in her robe screaming at him, mascara running down her face. “You are an awful man,” she cried. “You were born a piece of shit and you’ll die a piece of shit just like every other piece of shit on this planet!”
When he told the movers to take the bedside lamp, she hit him across his b
ack and scratched his shoulder.
“Veronica, stop it,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Please.”
She grabbed the lamp out of the mover’s hand and threw it against the wall. Mick’s pulse started to race, as he watched her unravel. He grew nauseated and pale. She lunged at him and he ducked from her last grasp as she fell to the floor crying. He threw a few hundred bucks at the head mover and ran out of the apartment.
As he lit a cigarette there on the street corner, about to hail a cab to his hotel, Mick thought fondly of June.
• • •
June learned about the divorce from the pages of Sub Rosa magazine. As she read the headline, she felt some semblance of pride. She’d lasted longer on the bull than Veronica had.
Maybe, June thought, he’ll get his head straight now. Maybe he’ll at least call his kids. But the phone never rang. Not on Christmas. Not on anyone’s birthday. Never.
• • •
Still, in the rare quiet moments backstage …
In the deafeningly sober seconds before the first drink at his after-parties …
In the blindingly bright mornings before his first glass of bourbon …
Mick thought of his children. Nina, Jay, and Hud.
They would be fine, he figured. He had chosen a good mother for them. He had done that right. And he was paying the bills for all of them. He was keeping that roof over their heads, sending child support payments that were sky high. They would be fine. After all, he’d been fine with far less than they had. He gave no thought to the idea that he might break his children just as someone had broken him.
• • •
Carlo and Anna Riva had been tall, stocky, formidable people. They had one child, Michael Dominic Riva, and had tried for more but came up empty. In other families that might have meant Mick was the star, but for the Rivas it meant Mick was the beginning of a failed project, one they were sometimes tempted to abandon.
Carlo was an unremarkable barber. Anna was a mediocre cook. They often were not able to pay their rent or put anything that tasted good on the table. But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren’t sure they’d survive them. They smacked each other on the face. They made love with a sense of urgency and mania. They locked each other out of the house. They threatened to call the cops on each other. Carlo was never faithful. Anna was never kind. And neither of them spent much time remembering there was a child.
Once, when Mick was only four years old, Anna was making dinner when Carlo came home late smelling like perfume.
“I know exactly where you’ve been!” Anna shouted, furious. “With the whore from the corner.” Tiny Mick ducked at the sound of her raised voice. He already knew when to find cover.
“Anna, mind your business,” Carlo snapped.
Anna grabbed the pot of boiling water in front of her with both hands and flung it at her husband.
The scorching water hit the kitchen floor and a spot across Carlo’s neck. Mick watched from the living room floor as his father’s skin began to puff at the collarbone.
“You crazy bitch!” Carlo screamed.
But by the time the burn had blistered, Carlo and Anna were snuggled up together on the tattered sofa, laughing and flirting as if they were alone.
Mick watched them, eyes wide and staring, unworried they would see him gawking. They never looked at him when they got like this.
The next month, Carlo was gone again. He’d met a blond seamstress on the subway. He stopped coming home for nine weeks.
During times like those, when his father was gone, his mother could often be found alone in bed, crying. There were some mornings, far more often than to be called occasional, when Anna did not get out of bed until the sun had passed its zenith and started its way back around.
On those mornings, Mick would wake up and wait for his mother to come to him. He would wait until ten or eleven, sometimes even one. And then, understanding that it was one of those days, he would eventually begin to fend for himself.
Anna would later open her bedroom door and join the world of the living, often to find her baby boy cross-legged on the floor, eating dried spaghetti. She would run to him and sweep him up in her arms and she would say, “My boy, I am so sorry. Let’s get you something to eat.”
She would take him to the bakery, buy him every roll and donut he wanted. She would fill him with sugar, ply him with laughter. She would pick him up into her arms with glee, cradling him to her, calling out “My Michael, my Michael, fast as a motorcycle” as she ran with him through the streets. People would stare and that made it all the more fun.
“They don’t know how to have a good time,” Anna would tell her son. “They aren’t special like us. We were born with magic in our hearts.”
When they got home, Mick would have an ache in his stomach, and he would crash from the sugar and fall asleep in his mother’s loving arms. Until the chill settled into her again.
Soon enough, Mick’s father would come home. And the fighting would resume. And then they would lock themselves in their bedroom.
But eventually, whether it was weeks or months or even a year, his father would leave again. And his mother would stay in bed.
And Mick would have to fend for himself.
• • •
Mick married again, shortly after he divorced Veronica. The biggest star in Hollywood. It was a huge scandal, the talk of the town when they had it annulled the next day.
Nina saw the headlines in the grocery store while June was buying milk and bread. She couldn’t read the words on the cover of the magazine and June wasn’t even sure if her daughter recognized the face of the man that was her own blood. After all, June had cleansed their home of his music and photos. She had changed the channel the few times his face invaded their TV screen. But still, Nina stared at the picture on the front of the magazine as if she could sense its importance.
June picked up the stack of magazines and turned them around.
“Don’t worry yourself with that garbage,” she said, her voice steady. “Those people don’t mean a thing.”
June paid for her groceries and told herself she didn’t care what he did anymore. Then she took the kids home and poured herself a Sea Breeze.
• • •
Then came the spring of 1962.
Mick was single and in Los Angeles for a show at the Greek, one of the last on his third world tour.
In his dressing room backstage afterward, Mick loosened his tie and threw back his fifth Manhattan of the night.
“You ready to come out and play?” said his makeup girl with a glint in her eye.
Mick was already bored with her and he hadn’t even touched her. He rolled his eyes and grabbed his drink. He was getting so sick of all the people around him all the time. And yet, he didn’t want to find out what his soul had to say when he was by himself. And so, he came out and charmed the VIPs and beauties who had made their way backstage.
There were so many girls. So many women. For some reason, all of them seemed too easy lately. The way they clamored for their chance to hang on his arm, the way their makeup was all the same, their hair all sprayed in the same styles. Even their beauty seemed meaningless—what is one beautiful woman if you’ve slept with hundreds already? What does it matter if the pretty teenager in the corner is batting her eyes at you when you’ve had the world’s most famous woman in your bed?
Mick had started getting into the backs of his limos alone at night, drunk and already half-asleep. The night after the Greek was no different. Just him and his driver and a bottle of Seagram’s.
Mick rested his head against the window, watching Los Angeles whiz by as his driver sped farther toward the Beverly Wilshire. Mick was now drinking his whiskey right from the bottle. Perhaps it was the sights of his old city, perhaps it was the smell in the air, perhaps it was the reckoning that was emerging in his soul. But when he closed his eyes, June�
�s face appeared in his mind. Round, wide-eyed, gentle. She was making him dinner, pouring him a drink, hugging the children. Beautiful, patient, kind.
Things had been easier, then. When he had relaxed into her, in their life together. However small and simple it was. She was a good woman. With her, he was as close as he got to being a good man.
“Let’s go down to the 10,” he said to the driver, before realizing what he was even doing. “The 10 to PCH, please. Up to Malibu.”
Forty-eight minutes later, he arrived at the front door of the first house he had ever owned, the home of the only woman he ever truly loved.
• • •
June woke up to the sound of the waves crashing and someone pounding on the door. She put on her dressing gown.
Somehow, she knew who it was before she turned the knob, but she couldn’t quite believe it until she saw it. And then there he was at the threshold, in a stylish black suit, with a white shirt, and his thin black tie undone, hair tousled just so. “Junie,” he said. “I love you.”
She stared at him, stunned.
“I love you!” he shouted so loud she startled. She let him in, if only to get him to quiet down.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the dinette, the same vinyl chairs he had sat on before he’d left them almost two years ago.
“How did you get even more beautiful?” he asked as he obeyed.
June waved him away and brewed him some coffee.
“You are everything,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” June deadpanned. “You’re a whole lot of nothing.”
He had expected this. She had a right to be angry. “What have I done with my life, June?” he said, his head in his hands. “I had you and I ruined it. I ruined it because I got distracted by cheap women, women who don’t hold a candle to you.” He looked up at her, his eyes watering. “I had you. I had everything. And I gave it all away because I didn’t know how to be the man I want to be.”
June was not sure how to respond to the words she’d been dying to hear.
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