Chapter 17
We drive back to Pacific Palisades and I am not even sure why the fuck we’re going there. We haven’t talked. Not one word. We just sat in the living room, silent, staring at each other, both of us I think too overwhelmed for another round today.
The silence in the car is deafening. My thoughts are an unrelenting, uncheckable constant series of questions, anger, and accusations.
I shouldn’t go home.
Back to Chrissie.
Not today.
Not with how I’m feeling.
Kaley makes that inescapably something I have to do.
I glance at her covertly out of the corner of my eye. She’s transitioned from anger into worry. She’s wondering what this all means. What the fallout is going to be. The impact to her mother. To her. To her family. I doubt she cares what it means to me.
I park in the driveway and turn off the ignition. I turn toward Kaley. “Go inside. Go to your room. Stay there.”
Her eyes, anxious, shift to me. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s going to be OK,” I assure her. “The rest of this needs to be sorted out privately between your mother and me. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. I love you. But you need to stay out of this. OK, sweetheart?”
She jumps from the passenger seat and runs for the front door. I sit in the car, staring at the house, willing myself to be calm, but nope, it’s not happening. I’m fucking on the edge, ready to explode, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop that.
I climb from the car. The house is quiet when I enter. Maybe I’ve caught a break. Maybe the kids are still gone. Maybe they don’t know what’s happened today. Fuck, how could they not know?
I make my way toward the back of the house. I don’t want them here. This could spin out of control in any direction. I can’t breathe. I step into the family room.
They’re all here, except Chrissie, with Linda. Khloe on her lap. The boys tucked into each side of her. And Krystal hovering close from the ground beneath her. They all look anxious and confused and afraid. Any doubt that they all know dies with the look in their eyes.
I need to get the kids out of the house.
Kid—my kids.
Oh fuck, these are my kids.
I’m hyperventilating, too numb from emotion to move, and too afraid to say anything.
“Manny—”
I cut Linda off. “Take them to your house. Now.”
I almost turn to leave and realize I can’t just walk away from them. They’re frightened. Staring at me. Wanting something. I don’t know what I even have left in me to give. But they are my kids. I’ve got to do something to make this not something worse than it is for them.
I go and take Khloe from Linda’s arms. I kiss her and hold her close, and then crouch down in front of the rest of them.
I gesture with my arm. “Come here. All of you. Please.”
I pull each one into me and kiss them on the head.
“I love you,” I say, struggling to breathe and fighting like hell not to cry. “Everything will be OK. Kaley’s home. She’s fine. I’m OK. Your mom is OK. We’re all going to be OK.”
Krystal looks like she’s about to say something. I pull back, stand up quickly and hand Khloe to Linda. “Take them. Go. Please, Linda, don’t argue. Just do it. Don’t bring them back until I call you.”
For once Linda is shocked into silence.
She stares at me, her expression nearly making my tears give way, and then she turns quickly.
“Come on everyone. Go to the car,” she says, ushering the kids out in front of her.
I stay in the room until I hear the front door close. I go to the bar, pour myself a scotch, and try to organize in my head the things I want to say to Chrissie before I try to talk to her.
Fuck, I can’t formulate a single coherent thing.
I go out onto the patio, sink onto a sofa and stare blankly into the darkened yard. The world still looks the same here. The gaily decorated lawn, happy and perfect, but behind the façade a crock of shit.
Every moment between us has been a lie. Every smile. Every touch. Every kiss. Every fuck has been a crock of shit because every moment she shared with me was wrapped in a lie. What do you say to a woman who has done something like this? I don’t even know if I’m capable of looking at her and that rends my heart.
I throw my fucking glass against the concrete. I run my fingers through my hair and hold my head. It feels like it’s about to explode. I feel like I’m about to explode.
I hear the French doors open and close. I shake my head, my jaw tight. I don’t look, but I know it’s her. I can feel it in the way everything kicks up, no longer numb, inside me.
“Please, Alan, tell me you’re all right. I need to know you are all right.”
Her voice is calm, monotone, and it shoots through my body like a depth charge.
I rise from the sofa and whirl toward her. Chrissie is standing awkwardly against the glass, her eyes wide and her face tight, pinched and afraid.
“Goddamn you, Chrissie. Is that really your first concern here? What the fuck happened to your kids coming first always? Or does that not count today?”
She flinches, but she doesn’t look away, determination clear in her eyes. “I’ve talked to the kids. I’ve explained. Or at least tried to. I’m not sure how much they understand. Kaley won’t talk to me. What did you say to her? How is she?”
“Fuck, is that all you care about? That I might have said something that made you look bad to your daughter?”
Her eyes flash. “That’s not what I meant. She won’t talk to me. I’m worried. She’s our daughter. You must be worried, too.”
My anger intensifies. “Oh, sorry, our daughter, pardon me for the momentary mental breakdown I’m having in the middle of this fucking insane day you’ve created.”
I turn away from her, willing myself to stop this. At least until I can sort through everything, figure out what I’m feeling and what I want to do.
“I never intended any of this to happen,” she says, her voice small and weak.
When I move to face her again, she’s hovering by the door, looking lost, fragile, and almost breakable. My anger starts to war with my heart at the sight of her. Those giant blue eyes, always vulnerable and laced with a hint of sadness behind the shimmers that is uniquely hers.
My disobedient memory reminds me why the sadness is there. The things she’s suffered that put it in those gorgeous blue eyes—watching her mother die of cancer and being with her brother while he committed suicide in his bedroom. Going through that all alone so young with a father unwilling to see her agony. The guilt she felt. The pain. Struggling through it on her own in silence, burning her body just to shut off the pain—an unending legacy, a forever part of her, like the infinity brand on her hip and burn scars on her leg. The things that make her so cautious and afraid and untrusting. Why she’s so loving and gentle and goodhearted always. Why she makes so many messes in her life. And why, when I look at her, I just want to love her until the sadness goes away, even now, when she’s ripped out my heart in yet another devastating way.
The things that make her a woman capable of this.
The things that make me love her through everything.
But no, no, no.
It’s not going to happen, not through this.
“How the fuck do you have five kids that are mine and not intend it, Chrissie?” I snap and she jumps, flinching.
She takes in an anxious breath. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times. I don’t know why I couldn’t. That’s not an excuse. I know there is no excuse. I’m not going to try to make one, and I think it’s better if we wait until you’re less angry for me to try to explain.”
I stare at her, stunned. She wants to end this discussion? She thinks she can dictate anything between us after this?
My anger pulses through me. “There is only one explanation I’d like to hear. Then I think we’re through. I know that birth control is beyond basic management for you, Chrissie, but fuck, we both know you know how to get an abortion, so why the fuck didn’t you?”
The color drains from her face.
Oh fuck. Those words I want to reclaim because that’s not how I feel, not what I meant to say. I’ve always felt hurt that she had an abortion and never told me, and that every other fucking man she was with she gave birth to his kids.
It was the cruelest thought in my head.
It poured out on its own.
I need to take back those words.
I didn’t mean them.
But I can’t.
The way she’s staring at me chokes in my throat any apology I could attempt to make.
“That was mean, Alan,” she whispers, heartbroken, then she lowers her eyes and stares at the ground. “I know you didn’t mean that. It hurts anyway. And I’m sorry that I made you angry enough to say something that isn’t even close to who you are.”
The blood starts pounding through my head. That effortlessly she sends me into total disarray. And the only thing I want to grab onto to keep me from going under is her.
It’s fucking insane, but even in this worst of the worst moment of us, I want her with me as we go through this.
I stare at her, ragged from pain and too many other emotions I’m nowhere near ready to sift through.
The same question keeps turning in my head.
I can’t shut it down.
I can’t make reason of it.
I look at her. “How could you do this, Chrissie? You stole my family from me.”
“I didn’t steal them, Alan. I kept them for you. I loved them. I waited. There’s a difference.”
Her tone.
Her posture.
Oh fuck, she thinks she’s done something defensible here. The way her eyes stare is too much to endure. I can’t listen to any more tonight.
No. Not tonight, Chrissie.
I don’t answer her. I brush past her and into the house. I don’t care if what she did makes sense to her. If she thought it was right. Or anything else she might say to try to get us through this.
It’s not going to work this time. And I’m sure as hell not going to try to decode her logic. There is no logic to this. No way to defend it.
Goddamn her.