The kitchen is as I left it, and the breakfast I made has gone uneaten for the most part. I scrape the plates into the sink, clean off the stove, go through the motions of the morning that are becoming familiar to me now. I straighten out the dining room, see no evidence of dog droppings, and am pleased. They just needed a little tending to, and some attention. They’re not bad dogs, they’re lonely dogs.
It’s time for me to get out of the house for a while. I enjoy that, riding through the streets and neighboring towns, finding new places, seeing new things. It’s a beautiful day, as always, and I need to see if I can scare up some new curtains for the kitchen, and even the living room. Keys in hand, I knock on the door to the office.
“Yes?” Juliette answers the knock, coming to the double doors and opening them only the slightest bit, just enough for her to squirm from between them.
“I’m going out and wanted to know if Mr. M needs anything.”
“He’s fine.”
“Will you be staying for lunch?”
“I think I’ll be taking him out for lunch this afternoon.”
“Could someone bring the dogs in before you go, then? I might not be back in time.”
“Of course. Thank you for everything, Siobhan.” And she slips back into the room, closing the doors with a firm click.
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“You’re going to scare this one away, too,” Juliette tells me, after she closes the door on Shi.
She doesn’t bother to ask me if I DID need anything, which I do. I need more doughnuts, and now I’m not going to have them. No, Juliette’s into being mad at me now, and I just want to sign the checks I need to sign and get her the hell out of my house. I’ll go get my own goddamn doughnuts then.
“No, I won’t. Where are the checks?” I ask.
“Oh, fuck the checks,” Juliette says, and she drops down into the large chair behind the desk. “What’s going on here, Alex? Why are you being such a complete bastard?”
“I was FINE. F.. f.. fine until y.. y.. you had to bring up N.. N.. Nick.” There, I said it.
“Well, you WON’T bring up Nick. Or anyone else. You have to talk to them.”
“Why? What do we have to say? There’s nothing to say right now. We’re all settled with wh... wha.. what we’re doin’ and not doin’. I know what they’re thinking, th... they think that I c.. can’t cut it.”
“Have you given them any reasons to think that you can?” She’s playing hard ball with me today. I don’t like days like this, not at all. “You’ve been holed up in this house for as long as anyone can remember. You don’t call anyone, you don’t take their calls. You only come out if someone drags you out.”
“Hey, I s.. s.. sang at that thing, I ....”
“Alex, that was, that was MONTHS ago. That was last year.”
I know when it was. I’ve sung in public exactly twice in the past year and a half and I remember both times. I wasn’t happy with either performance. I don’t even know which one I hated the most, singing by myself, or singing with Sarah.
“D... d.. do you have checks for me to sign, or not?” I press that angle and Juliette’s not buying it.
“Yes, I have checks for you to sign, but we have to talk about this.”
“I DON’T want t... t... to t... t... talk about ANYTHING.” Lie. Lie. Lie. I want to talk about this, and I will be talking about it at my doctor’s appointment later today. I won’t even have to remember to put this on a list or anything, because this whole morning is going to brand itself into my head and I’ll be reliving it for days.
I would kill for a drink right now. Fuck AA. Fuck two months, three months, I never could keep track of it, it seems like forever since I had a drink. I’m sick to death of soda, water, near beer, I want a fucking drink. And for Juliette to just leave. Leave, bitch, leave. I want her to stop telling me things I know, or things I don’t want to know, or things I’d like to forget and can’t. Shit, I can’t remember what the hell I did two days ago, but I can remember standing in some shithole club having a fan ask me how I liked Nick’s FUCKING CD. I remember the look on her face when I said it sucked.
“Alex, will you TRY to pay attention to me?”
Juliette’s voice breaks into my thoughts and I look at her. She’s a very nice person, she’s been my PA for a long time now, and I like her, I adore her, and I don’t know what I’d do without her, but I really would love for her to go. I don’t want to have a ‘talk’, I don’t want to go over all my sins right now, all the ways I’ve let everyone down, how I’m not livin’ up to my potential, how I’m not takin’ advantage of my time off.
“No,” I say. I don’t even know where the words are comin’ from. “I don’t want to be doin’ this. This is the wrong damn day for this. Gimme the checks to sign and go.”
Now she sees I’m serious. Now. After making me lose it, now she’s quiet. She opens up the big ledger that’s kept locked in the desk and starts scribbling in it, making out a page of checks, then turning the book for me to sign them. Mortgage on the house. Rent on Sarah’s place. The cleaning people, the gardener. American Express. Lawyer one, lawyer two, lawyer three, lawyer four. Insurance.” I spin the book back at her and she starts on a new page. This is the long day, the one where the major bills get paid along with the usual weekly crap.
I light a cigarette. I wish it was a joint. I wish I had a tranquilizer. Oh, shit.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Juliette, and she doesn’t bother to say anything, or even look up from what she’s doing. At the moment, I don’t care. I will later. I’ll care that we’ve had another fight and that she’s mad at me. I don’t want her to be mad at me, I really don’t. I just want her to back off. But now she’s mad.
And I’m late on my meds this morning.
They’re in the bathroom, waiting for me in that nifty box Shi bought. Right there, out on the counter. That and the fish pills. I take the ones I need and go back downstairs for water to swallow them with. God, the kitchen looks spotless. And all those good pancakes are gone. What a fucked way to start the day.
Juliette is waiting for me, the ledger turned to my side of the desk. I sign my name over and over and over again. Mortgage two and three. Car payments times seven. Doctors. So many doctors. And a bunch of credit cards. Miscellaneous stuff. So many checks. Pages of them. This is worse than a meet and greet, when we have to autograph everything under the sun.
“Call Kelly,” Juliette tells me, shoving the receiver of the phone into my hand. She even hits the speed dial, there’s no way out of this. And it’s Kelly, my cousin, who answers the phone. I love Kelly, she’s a sweetheart. Her and Nicole, another cousin, they help my mother with this foundation thing I have, this charitable stuff. Used to be it was my personal management, too. Not for the group, that’s handled by huge management houses. And attorneys. This is small time, although it’s gotten pretty damn involved for something that was supposed to stay small.
Thank Denise for that. Nothing’s smalltime for mom. She’s been running my business for as long as I can remember. Well, up until after rehab. Things changed then. I got it in my head that maybe her in my business wasn’t such a good idea. That maybe having everything run out of Florida wasn’t too smart, since I was living and relocating my life out here, in Los Angeles. That maybe having family involved wasn’t in, like, my best interest, or something.
My mother is still pissed off about it. I never DID actually change anything, nothing major. In fact, I’ve let a lot of this go straight into her hands, along with Kelly, Nicole, and my Uncle Bob. I can’t keep track of it all. And I just couldn’t make myself get involved in any events. No fund raisers for a while now, I even pulled out of a few that Denise had set up. It was too hard. It wasn’t hard right after rehab. I did a few one-on-one things with girls, fans, who were looking at rehab, or on the other side of drug abuse. All quiet, no publicity. It made me feel good, then, made me feel that the whole ordeal had been worth something. I felt pretty good then. Solid.
I shoulda stayed in Florida.
Kelly’s telling me about this Make-A-Wish thing. Those are the worst. The hardest things to do. I’m always about having a breakdown after. Sick kids, dying kids; they want to meet you, have you make something good out of a few hours of their lives. I don’t feel I’m right for this, but I can’t see myself saying no. Juliette knew this. So did Kelly. It’s not until May, that’s months from now. Maybe by then, something will be different. I hear myself saying the right thing, saying yes to that, yes to something else that will be happening in Florida around that time. That means staying there. I haven’t stayed in Florida for any length of time since I got out of rehab.
I don’t care now. I’m tried from all the screaming and arguing. I’m worn out from it all and I’m agreeing to anything Kelly says. Later, even tomorrow, Juliette is going to have to call her and get it all straight for me. I’m suddenly aware that I’m not listening to Kelly at all, and that Kelly is no longer the voice on the other end of the phone, it’s my mother.
“What, ma?” I have to ask because I don’t even know who’s been saying what.
“Are you all right, Alex?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Tired. Sorry.” What else am I gonna say? She knows I’m not all right. I know it, too. And we both know that it might be a long, long time before I’m all right again. Or even close to all right.
“Do you need me to come out there?”
I want to cry. It takes a deep breath and a drag on my umpteenth cigarette to find my voice and answer her.
“No, ma.” That’s not what I want to say. I want to SCREAM ‘yes’ into the phone, but something inside me won’t let that word out.
There were days, and weeks, and months, when I wanted her to come out here. Times when I didn’t think I was gonna make it. And times when I didn’t. And I couldn’t ask her then, and I can’t ask her now. Even since everything’s changed, because if I know anything, I know this: my mother wouldn’t come to California while I was living with Sarah. Not after that first time, on my birthday. And if I had asked her to, if I had called her up and told her that I needed her, no matter who was living in this house, she would have come.
But I couldn’t then. And I can’t now. There’s too much between us still.
“Are you sure, Alex?”
“I’m sure.” I need to end the phone call. I can’t take it, the way her voice sounds, because it sounds like it used to sound a long, long time ago. Back when things were sane and I was sane and I trusted her love for me, and mine for her. That’s all in pieces now and we’re on our own slow road together trying to gather it up and make something out of it again; trying to be a family again. So to hear the past come through the phone is just about killing me. “I gotta go, ma. ‘Bye.” And I hang up the phone without listening to her own good-bye.
Juliette has been keeping herself busy during all this. When I hang up the phone, she looks at me. She’s not angry anymore. Her face is, it’s neutral.
“Do you want to go get some lunch?” she asks me, and I nod. “Go grab a shower, then, and I’ll finish up this paperwork.”
And I nod again, not saying anything because I can’t trust my voice.
I need a drink.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
