Chapter 18
I stay in the car and stare at the house. How the fuck did I get here? I know I drove, but my mind is blank, everything has an unreal, detached, and mechanical feeling. Driving, breathing and even thinking.
I hopped on the freeway in LA planning to go to the airport, get on my plane and go to New York to do a lot of things that I haven’t thought of in decades. Irrevocable things. Things that would make this ripping agony and her no longer consume me.
But I brought myself here.
Single-story white Spanish structure with a tiled roof.
Unchanging.
Exactly as it had been twenty-five years ago.
I climb from the car, hurry up the pavement, and knock on the door. Fuck, I didn’t call. What if he’s not here? My pulse starts to accelerate again—
The door opens wide.
Blue eyes staring at me.
The sight of him makes my emotion give way.
“I’m glad you came here,” Jack says, pulling me into his arms and holding on to me firmly.
“I don’t want to fuck up my life. I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want to lose Chrissie. But I don’t know how to forgive her. I don’t know how to get through this, it is tearing me apart, and I’m the closest I’ve ever been since Chicago to using again.”
Jack pats me firmly on the back. Like that, everything inside me seems less on the edge and a little more manageable.
“It will be OK, Alan. Come in. We’ll talk. We’ll get through this together. You can stay as long as you need to. Neither of us is going anywhere until we’ve worked through this for you.”
* * *
I sit on a chair above the cliff staring at the ocean. I’ve been here four days. We talk. We cook. We jam in the studio together. Sometimes we just sit, silent, like we’re doing now. Jack says an occasional trite, folksy axiom, his version of wisdom. Little bits of nothing that have the strange power to move through me as something significant, soothing, focusing, and grounding.
I take a sip of my coffee and shake my head. It’s ridiculous that what Jack does works so completely for people in crisis. But everything is clearer and in focus in me, and that moment of crisis that’s remained a threat even after twenty-five years has stepped back away from me again.
I’m no longer on the edge.
I still don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.
I shift my gaze to Jack. We’ve been friends forever. I still don’t get him. The man is an enigma unto himself. I’ve never asked. But I’m tired of talking about me.
“How do you do it?” I ask. “Get past things as a man you shouldn’t be able to get past with Linda. Stay together all these years and not go insane that she’s married? It’d be like endless purgatory to love her and not be the man in her life.”
Jack turns, studies my face, and then laughs. “Fuck, I can’t believe you’re asking me that. No one ever does. Not even Chrissie. But she’s like me. I think she gets it without asking.”
He looks out across the Pacific, his chin bobbing in little nods, and then purses his lips, stares at the sky and exhales slowly.
“It’s how it worked out,” he says in measured slowness. “We did what we thought was right for everyone, and I’ve never regretted loving her and I will always love her. No one can have everything the way they want it. The man who tries usually ends up with nothing. I have enough. Enough is a pretty fine thing.”
I shake my head.
Jack studies me, amused. “Even when you go through life with the best road map, you’ll still find roads you never expected. Sometimes it’s the unexpected roads that are the best journeys.” He laughs. “I’d say you’ve gotten a few unexpected roads lately and you definitely have enough. More than enough.”
“Fuck you.”
I drop my head into my hands. His jabs come out of nowhere. Why do they make me laugh? Corny ’60s shit. Life can’t fucking be this simple for him, not for any man.
I sit up. “I need to leave soon. I’m back on the road in six days. I talk to the kids every day. It’s not good. Krystal and the boys, they come to the phone. I’m not sure, but I think Chrissie makes them. They sound awkward and distant when they speak to me. Kaley has rebounded back into hating me, though. She won’t even speak to me.”
Jack’s lips curl in an upside down smile. “That girl loves her mother. All she sees right now is that you left. She doesn’t know why and you don’t have to tell her. She doesn’t hate you. Don’t take it personally. She loves you. Chrissie’s hurting. They all are. It must be a terrible weight for Kaley to carry. It’s not her fault, but she is probably blaming herself and feeling guilty and that’s why she’s lashing out at you.”
“I haven’t talked to Chrissie since I walked out. I need to. I’m not sure I’m ready to or what I’m going to say.”
Jack leans forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I’m not going to defend my daughter. I love her, but I don’t always understand her and I do know she doesn’t do things to hurt people. She always wants to do the right thing. She tries so hard—too hard, I think—to be what she thinks she needs to for everyone she loves. Almost like if she can be perfect and not make a mistake she won’t lose the people she loves. It must be exhausting for her. Especially since it’s usually when she fucks up the most. But she’s all heart, always has been, and I love her exactly as she is. There is no other way to love a woman, not even your daughter. If you’re going to love them you have to love them as they are.”
An unwanted vision of Chrissie flashes in my head, from long ago when we were young in New York the first time we loved each other, in the car, after hitting me repeatedly only to fuck me the next minute. A Chrissie crazy moment. But I can still see her face. Her beautiful face, ravished and tear-stained and desperate. I definitely can still hear her words: You’re leaving. Why, Alan, does everyone I love leave me?
I fight back the emotion by taking a sip of my coffee. It wasn’t until later, when Chrissie told me everything she’d gone through, that I understood why she had said that to me.
There’s a long silence between us.
We both seem lost in our thoughts.
Jack sits back, looking up at the sky again. “I miss Jesse. I liked him.”
Oh fuck.
I don’t want to talk about him.
Why are you going there, Jack?
“As much as I liked him,” Jack continues, “I never understood why Chrissie married him. They were good friends, but that was really it. I knew she was still in love with you, and so did Jesse. They were happy together. I didn’t expect that. It wasn’t until about a year before Jesse died that I sat out here with him, we talked, and he told me why she married him.”
Another long pause.
Fuck, the nerve stretching.
I didn’t want to hear, and now you’re making me wait.
“Jesse knew he was going to die young,” Jack says. “The doctors didn’t even think he’d make it to forty. After Chrissie moved back to Santa Barbara they spent all their time together, just friends, talking. Jesse was good to talk to. They were both in a lot of pain about a lot of things. He didn’t want to die alone, so out of nowhere he just asked Chrissie, and he was shocked when she said yes. At that time in her life, I think Chrissie just needed to be needed. Jesse loved her. He definitely needed her. He loved those kids even knowing they weren’t his. He was a good man. I miss him.”
Christ. My head feels like it’s about to explode again. Every time I think there’s nothing more to know, out comes something new to deal with.
Jack smiles. “I asked him one time how he could be friends with you. Jesse said that he liked you and he was lucky enough to be the one with Chrissie so why fuck that up by hating you?”
He pats my leg hard once and then stands up.
“Don’t fuck up your life by hating yourself, Alan. The person you need to forgive to get through this is you. I’m going to go barbecue dinner. How about fish tonight? I’m tired of steak.”
After dinner, we settle on the patio.
“I’m leaving in the morning. I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m going to do.”
“You’ll know when you know. But don’t make decisions with your head.” He balls up his fist and taps his abdomen. “Make them with your gut. It won’t steer you wrong. Where your family is concerned that’s where a man’s decisions live. Don’t question what your gut tells you. Just do it.”
Really?
That’s what you’re going to send me off with, Jack?
Four days and that’s the solution you’ve come up with to fix my thoroughly fucked-up family and marriage?
I laugh, rough and frustrated. “Then my gut is a fucking useless thing. I still don’t know what to do. It’s not telling me a damn thing.”
Jack smiles. He fixes his intense blue eyes on me. “It’s all going to be all right, Alan.”
Fuck, such a trite thing to say.
Why is it always so believable when Jack says it?
* * *
Early the next morning I catch the 101 freeway south still without a clear action plan. Even after a sleepless night sifting through my discussions with Jack, trying to find something useful, I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I go home and see Chrissie.
By Ventura, my gut is screaming loudly to me. Only one thing: I’m not leaving my kids again. The clearest thing Jack said last night, the one thing I couldn’t shut off in my head, was about Kaley.
All she sees right now is that you left.
I don’t even need to analyze that to understand it.
I know what that felt like to Kaley.
I lived that, too, with my father.
After deciding to just do what my gut is telling me to do, I stop trying to think everything through and step into action. I call my pilot and tell him to file a flight plan to the UK for tomorrow. I call my assistant and ask her to hire me a nanny, preferably British, able to travel, with a passport, and send her to meet up with us at Heathrow on the day the tour departs from the UK. The kids’ schools were a bit of a hassle when I requested they prepare lesson plans, messenger them to me, and agree to allow Kaley to graduate even though she won’t be finishing her senior year. Arguing with Pacific Palisades Academy to get what I wanted for Kaley didn’t work. I went in another direction. All their unwillingness to accommodate my request, wrapped in that academic superiority about needing to do what’s in the best interests of the children, ended with the offer of a substantial donation.
I pull into the driveway in Pacific Palisades, knowing this is going to be a fight with Chrissie. I’m determined nonetheless. Those are my kids. This is what I have to do for them. For me. To get us on track and start moving in the right direction together I need to work through this with them without Chrissie. She is just going to have to deal with it even if she doesn’t understand why this is necessary. And I am sure as hell not going to explain myself to her.
I’m not ready to think about our marriage. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to try to work it out with Chrissie. It seems impossible to me right now after everything that she’s done. Even though I love her. And even though the thought of walking away scares me to death.
* * *
After I touch base with each of the kids, trying to talk with them about everything that’s happened, I make a stop in the nursery to be with Khloe.
I sit with her for a while to collect my bearings again. Krystal and the boys were cautious and standoffish. They’re worried. They don’t know what’s happening. It won’t be all right for them until it feels and looks all right with Chrissie again. I can tell them everything will be fine, but they are meaningless words because the house is pulsing with the worry of their mother. Kaley opened her bedroom door when I knocked, stared at me, and said nothing before she shut it in my face.
Two hours back and Chrissie still hasn’t appeared. Even though my rational self reminds me it was the right thing for her to do with the kids here, it hurts that she didn’t come out and try to fight for me.
I’ve been gone four days.
I haven’t talked to her.
She’s hanging back, like always, waiting for me.
Her in control, but today I am not in disarray.
I kiss Khloe, set her back into her crib, send Lourdes in to keep an eye on her and then I tell Aarsi to take the younger kids out back until I send for them.
I go down the hall and into my bedroom.
Chrissie is sitting curled in a chair, a tissue in her hand, staring blankly out the window. I shut the door and her face snaps toward me.
I sink down on the foot of the bed across from her.
“Do the kids have passports?” I ask, removing the things from my pockets and setting them on the bed to have something to focus on other than her face.
A long moment of silence.
“Yes,” she answers weakly. “Why? Why are you asking me this?”
I shift my gaze back to her. “Have them packed in the morning and ready to go by nine. All of them except Khloe. I’m leaving tomorrow with them for the UK. I’m going to spend a few days with the kids, alone, at my home there. Sort of an impromptu holiday. Then they are going on tour with me. The entire four months. Without you.”
Her eyes go wide. She tenses. Her breath comes in rapid spurts. “You are not taking my children from me, Alan.”
I meet her stare directly.
“That is inaccurate,” I counter coldly. “I’m taking our children, Chrissie. That’s not subject to discussion. Don’t even try to tell me no. Not now.”
“Don’t—please.” She crosses the room to me, panic etched on her face. “Don’t do this, Alan.”
“Go talk to the kids. Tell them they are leaving with me. See that Lourdes packs their things. Do it, Chrissie, or I will. But I think it’s better for them that this comes from you instead of me.”
She stares at me, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. I hold my breath. She looks so sad, so worried, and it cuts deep that I’m responsible for that look. It’s torture, the fractured heaviness between us, and it feels like a slow, suffocating death.
In my head comes the daunting awareness that if I stay on this track with her this is what it will be like tomorrow when I leave. I don’t want that for the kids. And I sure as fuck don’t want it for me because looking at her the way she looks now makes everything sharply adjust inside me and less certain.
“I’m not doing this as some sort of punishment or to hurt you, Chrissie.”
She steps back and it’s a move that signals all too clearly that she doesn’t believe me. She starts to cry. Each tear lands like a knife in my belly.
“Then don’t do it at all,” she sobs, anxiously brushing at her cheeks.
Now that she’s crying I can’t take my eyes off her and I feel her more sharply than I feel me. Her pain. Her fear. Her love. Everything. I feel her above what I feel inside of me.
Every line rehearsed in my head before this fails me. If I walk through that door tomorrow how we are now I will have nothing but a void inside my chest.
I can’t leave us like this.
No matter what has happened.
No matter where we go from here.
I can’t walk from her like this.
I pull her up against me before she can protest and hold her as tightly against me as I can. I bury my lips in her hair. “Chrissie, I love you, but I can’t change this for either of us. Too much has happened. I don’t know where we go from here. I can’t cancel the tour. I can’t stay, and I know if I leave here now they won’t understand and that’s something I won’t ever be able to fix with them. I don’t want to fuck this up.”
She puts her arms around me and I don’t even know what this is. She holds me for a long time. She doesn’t say anything. Her tears stop. She looks up at me, her eyes clear and calm and fixed on mine. “You won’t fuck it up, Alan. I wouldn’t let you out of this house with the most important parts of me if I didn’t believe that. I’ll go talk to the kids. I’ll talk to Lourdes. They’ll be ready in the morning to leave.”
She hurries from the room and doesn’t look back. The blood starts pounding through my head. I don’t know what the hell just happened here.