Chapter 19
Six days later
The car rolls to a stop at the airstrip. The tarmac is busy with activity. The road crew is loading equipment. Band and wives and children are standing in the sun, laughing and talking. Our usual horde of press is here. Last leg of the tour—the final tour, I remind myself—and we’re all traveling together on that nightmare 757. Linda’s fucking idea. She wanted something special and this was her idea of special.
Why did I give in? I let out a ragged breath, reminding myself that a year ago when I consented I didn’t know I’d be taking off from the UK with four out of five of my kids by Chrissie. Fuck, a year ago I didn’t even know I had any kids.
I battle down the reaction that stirs, really wishing I could fortify myself with some scotch, but these damn kids don’t miss a thing. Krystal openly remarks on everything she sees and the rest of them just stare disapprovingly. Half the time I don’t even know what I’ve done to make them disapprove.
I thought our five days in my country home outside London were…pleasant? Progress? Denial is a terminal addiction. Fine, they avoided me as much as they could. I tried to talk, they pretended to listen—Kaley wouldn’t come out of her room. Hardly at all—but we have to start somewhere together. I just wish it wasn’t with them still anxious and oddly disapproving me.
Maybe I should have had the nanny at Winderly House with us. She would have probably known better how to entertain them.
No more stalling. Time to get this over with. More than a few loitering around the plane are staring at the car impatiently. I’m late. So what? Delays come out of my pocket not theirs. And what the hell do they all expect? Being late is nothing new for me. What is new is being late because I had to fight four kids to get here.
Fuck, I need a drink and about ten hours’ sleep. It is very fitting that my angry gesture, my idiotic show of fatherhood authority with Chrissie—taking the kids on the road with me. Brilliant, Alan, just brilliant—has turned into a fit punishment for me. These are Chrissie’s kids. I should not have expected it to be easy.
From behind my sunglasses I cautiously check each kid staring at me. God, they look grim. All of them, except Kaley. She looks ready to murder me. Jesus Christ, they’re skipping the last months of the school year to travel the world on a plane with a rock band. They should be a little more upbeat, shouldn’t they? Probably not, they are traveling with me.
I take off my glasses so they can see my eyes when I speak. “Listen, there is press out there. I want you to exit the car, go directly onto the plane and say not one word to anyone.”
Krystal nods. Kaley rolls her eyes. I can’t tell if Ethan or Eric even understand the language I speak. But then again, they’re only six; they probably don’t even know what the word press means.
Fuck, I wish Chrissie were here. All the guys—Len, Jimmy, Kenny and Pat—have their wives with them. For once I have my family with me. Now that I’m over being angry, the kids make me miss Chrissie even more desperately.
The car door opens. I put on my sunglasses and gesture Kaley out first. Then Krystal. I climb out. The cameras explode. There are shouted questions from every direction.
I do a fast look over my shoulder. The girls are climbing the metal stairs to the plane. At least Kaley did one thing as asked without argument.
I bend and look into the car. The twins look terrified. I hold a hand out to the boys. “Come on. It’s OK. It’s a short walk to the plane. I’ll be with you the entire way.”
I wait. Just take my hand, one of you, please. Nothing. They’re afraid to get out of the car.
Decision made. I lean in, scoop one under each arm, and carefully back away from the car until I can stand.
I adjust my hold so I can see them. “Do you want to walk or do you want me to carry you?”
Eric tries to wiggle free. I set him on his feet, but Ethan loops his arms around my neck. It is a uniquely pleasant feeling.
I smile. “It’s going to be OK, kiddo. Just ignore them. That’s what I do.”
I march toward the stairs with the boys. I usher Eric in front of me, and the cameras don’t stop even though they’ve got nothing to see but my back. Haven’t the tabloids ever seen kids before?
The flashes start popping even more rapidly. What the fuck has happened now? I feel movement in my arms and shift my gaze to Ethan. His arm that was around my neck is behind my back waving at the press. I almost smile. Nice touch, kid.
Inside the plane, I find the girls waiting for me. Every seat from the tenth row back is full. Who the fuck are all these people? The nanny is supposed to be here. I don’t see her and I’m not going to search through the plane looking for her.
I stop at the bank of seats in the front row where the tour manager has already staked his claim. I set Eric down on one side of him, and Ethan on the other. Cuddy looks up from his phone and gives me a startled look, though he doesn’t have the nerve to tell me not to put my kids here. It’s probably rude just to surround him with them without asking, but fuck it, it’s my plane.
I motion for Kaley and Krystal to sit.
“This is Cuddy, the tour manager,” I explain. “He’ll make sure the flight crew gets you whatever you need.” I point to the hulking figure standing twenty rows away. “Back there is Nick Day, the production manager. That’s as far back in the plane as you’re allowed to go. You’re not allowed to mix with the road crew. I’m going to sleep until we land in Mumbai. Behave yourselves.”
I can feel stares from all around me. Everyone on the plane is watching and not pretending to do otherwise. Fine, I didn’t announce I’d be bringing the kids. Get over it.
My gaze settles on Kaley. That’s where the trouble is going to come from if there is going to be any.
She glares. I arch a brow at her. No response. Silent treatment still in effect. Fine, Kaley, today that’s a win for me. I start making my way down the aisle to Linda and Len.
“Daddy, are we there yet? I’m bored.”
That stops me. After six days of unrelenting, hostile silence now Kaley decides to speak. It’s not going to be good. I turn back toward the front of the plane. She is sitting on her seat on her knees, arms draped over the top, staring at me.
I’m not sure what pisses me off more: her relentless efforts to irritate me; her willingness to engage in shocking public displays rather than just talking to me—why won’t the girl just talk to me?—or her flexible voice that dominates the air without effort that I can no longer deny she’s inherited from me.
I meet her stare for stare. “You speak to me in that sarcastic tone of voice again and this trip is going to get real rough real fast.”
Kaley smiles. “Sure, Pop. I just have one question, though. Why did you drag us along on the Smash the Family tour? You should have just left me home with Mom. At least she’s not an asshole.”
I feel the beginnings of an Alec Baldwin moment. I’ve always been critical of Alec for that damn voice mail he left his daughter that’s had far too much media play. But now I understand it better. The chaotic emotions and flash responses your own kids can stir. Of course, Alec had been stupid in the extreme thinking only of the immediate release and not the long game, but oh, I am beginning to understand it. Kaley can effortlessly hack through my reserve and the girl uses a machete.
I count to ten inside my head. “Go ahead, Kaley. Keep it up. You’re only embarrassing yourself.”
“Fine, I’ll sit here and tweet.” The smile she gives me is pure Chrissie. “Come on, Pop. Lighten up. Admit it, that was a little funny.”
Yep, that round she was Chrissie. I sink into the seat across the aisle from Linda, recline, and nearly have my eyes shut before Linda starts to laugh.
“Oh God, Manny, she’s you. We should start calling her Mini-Manny. She certainly knows how to get you pissed off.”
I open my eyes. “I don’t need one more enemy, Linda. Don’t pick at me. I’m already surrounded.”
I can tell Linda is fighting back a smile. “Jesus, you’re touchy today.”
I run a hand through my hair, shaking my head. “The girl hates me. I don’t know what I was thinking bringing them along for this.”
Linda gives me a sympathetic look. “The girl, as you kindly refer to her, is your daughter. That’s what you were thinking. Don’t work so hard. Sometimes that’s all the answer there is. And she doesn’t hate you. She’s angry. There’s a difference. How are the little ones doing? Did you have a nice holiday at Winderly House with them?”
“How the fuck would I know? The boys don’t talk. And Krystal, she smiles all the time for no reason, but when she sees me she stops smiling. You can decide for yourself what that means.”
“Jesus, OK. I didn’t ask to pry. I asked because it looks like the second verse is coming your way. Parenting is not your forte, Manny. You better learn quickly. You can’t hide from them. You can’t ignore them and you certainly shouldn’t fight with them. Why the hell did you leave them in the front of the plane?”
Criticism on parenting from Linda. Really? “Because I need a break from them. And I don’t need your advice.”
“Of course you don’t. You do very well all on your own being an asshole.”
Linda closes her tray table with an angry snap.
I open my eyes to see Krystal closing in with her playful half-skipping walk. She smiles at everyone she passes, but she stops smiling when she nears me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Krystal climbs over me and settles in the seat beside me. She locks her belt in place. “Kaley is really angry. I don’t want to sit with her. You shouldn’t argue with her. It makes her angrier. Mom and I ignore her when she’s in a mood. It seems to work.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
I watch her pull from her backpack a homework packet, pencil and calculator, drop the tray table down and immediately begin working on it.
I study her for a while. “Why are you not angry? You’ve got as much reason to be angry as your sister does. You just go with the flow.”
Krystal shrugs. “I’m like Mom. Kaley is like you.”
Interesting comment. How does she know that? Chrissie, no doubt.
“You don’t hate me, do you?” I ask.
Krystal looks startled by the questions. “Why should I hate you, Dad? I didn’t hate you before. Why should I hate you now? You are my dad, aren’t you?”
The way she says Dad stirs an odd impulse in me to cry. It is in the easy tones of a loving and emotionally generous child. It is heartfelt and unexpected. It’s the first time she’s called me that. My gaze roams her dark hair, her bright blue eyes, her too small nose and full lips. Part Chrissie. Part me.
These five kids, each so different, are all part Chrissie and part me. It is overwhelming to see it. I can see it so clearly now. Why couldn’t I see it before? What kind of man can be around his own children year after year and not see that they are his?
Choked up with unfamiliar emotion I never expected to have, I continue to watch Krystal work on her homework. “Me being your dad, it seems to be the case. You’re not sorry we’re related, are you?”
She shakes her head, chews on the tip of her mechanical pencil and then goes to work on a problem. I watch her silently for the first hour of the flight, this bright, confident and self-sufficient girl.
She is halfway done with the second page of problems. “What are you working on?” I ask.
“My math packet.”
“I know it’s math. What kind of math?”
“Calculus.”
I look at the pages, study them. Christ, it is calculus. “They give you calculus in fifth grade now?”
“No, I go to Kumon.”
“What’s Kumon?”
“Sort of a math club. Mom makes me go. She says the US educational system is so poor I need to go to math club to learn anything. It’s mostly geeks and foreign kids, but I really like math and I’m good at it.”
“You must be good at it to be learning calculus in the fifth grade.”
Krystal’s bright blue eyes fix on me. “Kaley’s the one who is wicked smart. She got nearly a perfect score on her SATs. It would have been a perfect 2400 but she said they took off fifty points for her essay being politically incorrect. Still, 2350 is going to be a tough score to beat. I’m not nearly as strong in the verbal as Kaley is.”
How intense Krystal sounds over all this makes me want to laugh, but this is serious to her so I don’t.
“What are the SATs?” I ask.
She stares at me, surprised. “You don’t know anything, do you? The college admission exams. Don’t they have SATs in the UK? In the US if you don’t get a good score you end up in community college.”
“Is that bad?”
“The worst. Kaley got into USC.”
“Is that good?”
“The best. They only take like a handful out of like a gazillion applicants into their film program. It’s the best. She hasn’t told Mom yet so don’t tell her.”
“Why not?”
Krystal shrugs. “She doesn’t have enough money for school. She needs to accept admission by next week or she loses her slot. But I guess it costs even to accept and she’s too pissed off to ask you guys.”
“That’s foolish.”
“Kaley is stubborn.”
Stubborn. Understatement of the century. I stare down at Krystal’s math problem. “You got the answer to the second problem wrong. Just the last step. The rest is perfect. Am I supposed to show you, or just tell you and let you fix it yourself?”
Krystal stares down at her paper. “No, I didn’t get it wrong. You don’t know the answer. Daddy use to say my packets looked like Greek to him. You just wanted to change the subject. You don’t want to talk to me about Kaley.”
Well, that’s true enough. I don’t want to talk to Krystal about Kaley. I want to talk to Krystal about Krystal.
I watch her and admit to myself I’m a little bugged by the Daddy comment. She means Jesse. I am now Dad, but Jesse will always be Daddy. It is how Krystal organizes things in her mind, in a manner that so resembles Chrissie’s internal working. Whatever life tosses at her, if she can organize it then she is comfortable in it.
It shouldn’t bother me—I don’t have a right to expect anything different with these kids—but it does.
“No, you got the answer wrong. I was always good at math. It just made sense to me. The answer is—” I take the pencil to write out the correct answer.
She studies the paper. She erases with a fury. “You’re right. They must have a better education system in the UK. At what grade did you start learning implicit differentiation problems?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I never went to school.”
Her eyes go wide. “If you didn’t go to school then what did you do? Where did you learn? How did you make friends? Who did you play with?”
I tense. The questions are shot at me like bullets from a machine gun. Why the fuck do kids ask so many questions? I don’t know what the correct amount of sharing with a nine-year-old should be. And fuck, this isn’t just any nine-year-old. She’s my daughter. I feel myself choking up again.
Those wide blue eyes are fixed on me, waiting expectantly.
“I had private tutors at home,” I say in an inflectionless way. “I wasn’t permitted friends and I didn’t play. I worked.”
“Always?”
She says that as if it’s inconceivable to her. Maybe it is. Maybe my life is hugely inconceivable to everyone. It definitely is to me at times.
I nod. “Always.”
“I don’t think I’ll like Grandma Lillian.”
“She’s not so bad,” I find myself saying, amazed by the carefully articulate responses I am learning to force through my lips for my children.
Krystal tucks her math packet back into her bag. She studies me for a while. “I can teach you what you need to learn.”
I pucker my lips to keep from smiling. She’s deadly serious. How simple Krystal’s world is to think that she can help me fix any of this. Fuck, I’m smiling even though I don’t really feel like it. It is part of the strangeness of being with these kids; my uncontrollable smiles that come out of nowhere.
Christ, what a mess I’ve made of my life. Everything is unfamiliar now: me, Chrissie, the kids. The cycle of my life has at last been broken: periods of Chrissie, followed by periods without Chrissie, followed by sex and despair, followed by a return to Chrissie and the cycle all over again. But that cycle is finally broken. A new cycle has emerged and this will not be a passing state. It redefines me and alters the course of my future.
Six months ago I thought myself alone in the world. Now I have five kids and a wife I love who is never going to forgive me for the things I should never have said. The things I didn’t mean because these kids are our kids.
I study Krystal. My daughter. My sweet, beautiful, intelligent daughter. The thought still chokes me up. It’s been nearly two weeks. How long will it be before I can think of these kids as mine and not choke up at the thought?
“You look tired,” I say. “Do you want me to get you a pillow and blanket so you can sleep?”
Krystal nods and yawns. I motion for the attendant, hand her the book bag, put up the arm rest, then set the pillow on top of my thighs and tell Krystal to sleep.
I place a blanket over her. She stares up at me.
“It’s going to be OK, Dad. Kaley usually gets over things if you leave her alone.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that.” I lean down to kiss her on the forehead and she gives me a drowsy smile. I watch her close her eyes.
“Do you want a drink? They’ve opened the wine.”
I look up to find the flight attendant hovering over me. I shake my head.
“She’s a beautiful girl,” the attendant says, smiling.
I nod. “She looks like her mother.”
“No, she’s the image of you, except for the eyes. But the older girl is definitely you, especially her eyes. I almost dropped the wine I was holding when she stepped onto the plane.”
“Thank you for not saying ‘especially the personality.’”
The flight attendant laughs. “It’s a tough age. Don’t take it personally.”
“That’s what everyone tells me.”
She smiles. “Well, it’s true.”
I watch Krystal sleep for a while, completely content doing nothing but watching her, then I feel my lids grow heavy when it usually takes a benzodiazepine to sleep on a plane.
“Can I take pictures and film if I promise not to post it?”
I’m startled from sleep. The voice is soft and near me. I find Kaley sitting in the aisle next to my seat. She has her camera in her hand. She’s finally talking to me, in a normal conversational way. At last. Maybe things will start to get better all around. I feel Linda watching.
“Why do you want to film?”
Kaley’s eyes widen. “Because that’s what I do. I film everything. Bobby said that this is the last tour. You haven’t got a film crew. There’s no photographer. I film everything. That’s what I do. Can I film?”
“Did you really get into USC film school?”
That question pisses her off. I see it in her eyes. “Why do you want to know?” Her voice is tightly leashed, controlled. She still wants something from me, wants it enough not to drift back into battle.
My brows hitch up. “If you want to film, you’ll answer my questions.”
“Fine. Yes. I got in. My ambition in life is a three hundred thousand dollar education so I can strive to underachieve by making low budget documentary films that will make me no money at all. Happy now?”
I want to laugh and force myself not to. I wonder if this is true. “You can film anything you want under two conditions. The first is you don’t send it viral. No posting online. And before you do anything with the film, I get to see it and approve.”
Her eyes narrow and her cheeks reddened. “I already told you I wouldn’t post it. What’s the second condition?”
“When we land you get online, accept your admission to USC, tell your mother you got in, and then show me how to pay for it.”
She looks away. “What’s it to you if I go?”
“I think I’ll enjoy watching you evolve into being a capitalist.”
“I’m already a capitalist. The problem is I’m also a realist. Hardly anyone gets rich on documentaries. I want to do what I want to do and fuck them if they don’t get it.”
This time I can’t stop the laughter, though I should since she dropped an f-bomb in there and I know Chrissie wouldn’t approve. But the amusement came too quickly to stop it and Linda’s voice saying Mini-Manny rises in my memory. I laugh harder. “Look on the bright side, Kaley. You’ll probably be more successful than Michael Moore in this. You come by your talent and your attitude naturally.”
She glares. “I hate it when you laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Kaley. I’m laughing at me.”
“Right, so anyway, can I start filming now?”
“Film away.”
“We’re different, you and me. Do you get that?”
“Yes, I get that.”
“Then don’t think you know me because we share some obscure genetic link. You don’t know me at all. And you paying for USC doesn’t make us even. Not even close. It’s not that easy. We’re not a fucking Maury Povich show. We don’t live happily ever after once the DNA results are shared. No one does. They just don’t show the ‘after’ on camera.”
Interesting perspective. A betraying thought, perhaps? “Is that why you want to film? To show the ‘after’?”
Her jaw tightens. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I hope you’ll explain it to me once you know.”
“Fuck, it’s your job to explain things to me.” That’s all she says before she springs to her feet and returns to her seat.