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.