by Byron Lane
“So if they’re not vitamins, what are they?”
“Oh. If they’re not vitamins they’re morphine.”
“Morphine? They make morphine pills?”
“Miracle of modern science,” she says, walking to her makeup bag and pulling out a tube of silver lipstick.
“These are morphine? Like from a hospital?”
“I don’t know where they get them exactly.”
I ball the pills into my fist. “Kathi, what the fuck? Are you kidding me?”
“I tried to get them in, like, a nicotine patch, but it’s more complicated.” Kathi walks to the cabin door.
“Does this affect your bipolar medication?”
“Oh, I don’t ever do both,” she says. “No fun.”
My body numbs with the thought of the manic episode she had in her driveway, and even the one here on the boat, and my fear that these were my fault, my guilt, when the problem is actually: She’s using again, or using still.
“It’s their drugs or mine,” she says. “And it’s my body.”
“Please don’t do this,” I say, hanging on to hope. “They can cancel the show. No one will care. We’ll say it’s a medical emergency.”
“There’s no emergency, Cockring. You can come or not,” she says firmly. She opens her cabin door and joins her escort to the theater. I lock up and chase after them.
“I’m going to open tonight with the song ‘Crazy,’” Kathi says as we rush down the hall.
“What?” I ask. “How? We didn’t give them the music. Do you even know the lyrics?”
She says, “I am the lyrics.”
“No, do you know the words so you can sing it onstage?”
“Fine,” Kathi says. “Forget the song. I won’t sing it.”
Hey, Siri, we’re walking to the auditorium.
Hey, Siri, Kathi is ecstatic. I’m nervous. Roy is carefree, per usual.
Hey, Siri, have I done enough? Or will she do like she’s done countless times before and brilliantly rise to the challenge? Certainly this isn’t the first time she’s been un-sober for some dreadful thing she doesn’t want to do.
The escort says into a walkie-talkie, “We’re here.”
“Where’s the doctor?” I ask. The escort shrugs and points Kathi to a stage door.
“Showtime,” she says, and goes inside.
I’m escorted to a glass-fronted control room on the other side of the auditorium, behind and above the audience with the spotlights and the crew, where I can watch the stage, help with cues, and address any technical problems. As I enter, the lights in the theater dim.
The host welcomes everyone.
Kathi Kannon, Roy in tow, walks onstage to thunderous applause. She looks out, squinting her eyes, cupping her hand over her face to block the bright lights to try to see out.
“Cockring,” she says into the mic. “Cockring? Where are you?”
The audience giggles and stirs, expecting a surprise, but the lights don’t change, nothing happens, the silence is deafening.
“Cockring!” she shouts. “Cockring, play ‘Crazy.’ I want to sing! I want to sing ‘Crazy,’ Cockring!” The mic starts to pitch feedback like we’re in a bad movie.
My forehead is pooling sweat. It’s not possible to play her music. She said she wouldn’t sing it, so the music isn’t cued, the iPod not even hooked up to the huge electrical board. And I’m not mic’d. I have no way to talk back to her.
I’m watching, lethargic and paralyzed, as Kathi Kannon fumbles through stories she’s told a thousand times, starting and stopping and forgetting the endings, no punch lines, only setups and setups that never pay off.
“My mommy,” Kathi says, “was once on the TV show M*A*S*H. But then. I’m hungry. Who’s hungry? Are you hungry, sir? You look hungry, ma’am. I’m a Virgo, anyway.”
I feel far from my responsibilities of protecting her as she stands exposed, blathering, no one to guide her away, no protection from the room which is less and less full of people who want to see her and more and more full of people who want to see her fail, for the spectacle, for the sport of telling their friends about it.
Kathi flings the mic down and starts talking to the crowd, but no one can hear. People are shouting, “What?” People are shouting, “Use the mic!”
Kathi flips them off. She starts to walk offstage to shake hands and mingle. No one knows what’s going on. Roy pees on the stage. And then poops.
People start leaving, laughing, pointing, recording.
I turn to the lady running the spotlight. “Is this funny or bad?”
It’s an honest question. Maybe I can’t tell anymore. Maybe I’m too close to the Shine, too close to the sun. Kathi Kannon has been crazy before and they still loved her. She’s been boring before and they still loved her. She’s never been this raw before, and I have no idea how this ends.
“Bad,” she says.
“Sing it with me,” Kathi shouts, again starting the lyrics to “Crazy,” but she’s unable to carry the thread, unable to find words beyond the first few lines.
“Crazy…” Kathi sings. “Ba da ba ba ba da ba whateverrrrr.”
She’s lost her way, and her audience.
I start to rush down to her, but the cruise director storms in. “I’m not happy!” he yells. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. She’s ill, I think. That’s why I asked for a doctor.”
“How are we going to fix this?” he asks.
“I don’t … I’m sorry. I’m not her agent or attorney,” I say. “I’m just her assistant.” The statement sits in the air a moment, swirls and washes over me; the statement drowns me, grounds me, returns me to the helpless altar boy of my youth watching his mother die.
I look out at Kathi Kannon, wondering how this is the place where it unravels, wondering how this is the moment a miracle has finally evaded her, this of all times, with great news about Nova Quest in the wings, and her self-destruction in the face of it, on stage of all places.
Kathi is in the middle of a half-told story of her meeting George Clooney at Cannes when she stops, her gaze going soft, her focus lost. The auditorium, full of jeering and laughter, goes instantly silent, creating a pregnant pause that consumes the theater, the boat, the Atlantic.
Suddenly, her stature gives way and Kathi Kannon, film icon, collapses. Her legs fold under her and her body plops on top of them, her head falling back, stopped from smacking the stage by the sofa behind her. The microphone she’s holding slams loudly to the floor, and the amplified crash causes people to grab their ears and flinch, as if the world is crashing down upon us all.
The control-room director shouts, “Cut mics! Lights up! Security?!”
The rattle of the sound system turns to screeching and then cuts out completely, yielding to the audible gasps and “holy shits” from the remaining audience.
I shove past the cruise director and dash toward Kathi. I lose sight of her as crew members and a security guard rush to her and circle around. I’m trying to push through audience members who are now standing—some trying to get a better view and others trying to leave and salvage their night of frolic and fucks. I’m moving sideways through the oncoming traffic. I’m ducking under men holding hands and trying to make their way out.
I race toward the stage, winding around corners and weaving through exiting crowds of people gossiping about Kathi.
“What a disaster,” they say.
“What a waste,” they say.
“Fucking train wreck,” they say.
I’m thinking, Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die.
Music starts playing—like we’re on the sinking Titanic: I’m unsure if the music is to distract us or calm us as it all goes down.
The stage is getting more and more crowded as I approach, with cruise-goers jumping up and moving closer to Kathi, taking pictures, video, bystanders capturing I don’t know what: Kathi incapacitated? Kathi dead?
“Security!” I s
tart yelling. “Pardon me, security. Medic! Move!” I’m breathing heavy, just trying to get to her, feeling small and forsaken, until at last I’m at the stage and start pulling myself up onto it.
An announcement begins to play over the intercom about the next event, a karaoke night at a bar on the other side of the ship. Already, a collapsed film icon is old news.
No one stops me from approaching Kathi. A security guard on his walkie-talkie is barking at someone on the other end, “She’s breathing, she’s responsive … kinda.”
“I’m her assistant! What’s happening?!” I yell. “I’m her assistant!” I hover over Kathi and drop to my knees. I touch her shoulder and her eyes roll forward, and for a moment, I think, they lock with mine. “Hi. Kathi. You okay? What’s happening?”
She doesn’t answer. I look up, hoping for a savior. I see a stranger holding Roy, a wiggly and scared Roy. “Put him down, please,” I yell. The stranger puts Roy on the ground, and he bounces over to us and smashes his nose into Kathi’s face, his indelicacy startling her conscious again.
“Roy,” she says. “Hi, Roy. I love your teeth.”
“Kathi?” I ask, touching her face, wiping her hair out of her eyes.
She looks at me. “Cockring,” she says. “I’m … I’m…”
“You’re bored?” I ask kindly, presumptuously, heartfully.
“I’m scared,” she says.
“Want to go to your room?”
Kathi nods yes.
I turn to the crowd encircling us. “Move back please!” I yell. “Time to go!” I hook my hands under Kathi’s arms. “Can you stand?”
Kathi starts to lift herself up.
The security guard protests, “A doctor is on the way.”
“Then either clear this room so she can have privacy or help us get out of here,” I say.
The guard looks around, seeing the hundred or so spectators still drinking in their nightly entertainment, seeing the impossible task of peeling them away. He looks at Kathi; she nods to me.
“Cockring,” she says. “I want to go home.”
The elusive doctor meets us at her cabin and says Kathi will be fine. “A little medication mix-up,” he says, showing himself out as Roy and I stare at our master as she sleeps it off.
Assistant Bible Verse 144: It’s always the meds.
I try to imagine her feelings on this night—defeat, shame, exhaustion. I can’t help but think of my mother and her lonely public death, wondering if Kathi Kannon just barely escaped that fate. I look around for Kathi’s purse, to fish out Mom’s locket, to see if it’s still with us, to beckon its magic and healing, to help us get through this night. But it’s across the room, the room swaying back and forth in the choppy waters, and I don’t have the balance or leverage left in me to make the journey.
Roy hops off the bed with Kathi and comes to sit beside me on the couch, his body curling into a ball and just barely touching mine, the slightest contact, not enough to infringe on his autonomy or mine but enough to wake him if I move. No one wants to be stranded alone on a cruise ship. I wonder about Kathi, isolated comfortably in her bed. I wonder why Roy chooses to sit with me and not Kathi. Rarely does he choose safety over fun.
I worry about leaving her alone for the night, so I lie down on the sofa, still wearing the same clothes I wore to Kathi’s show. And I doze in her room, safely in her orbit, pushing into slumber past my guilt for napping on the job and not having maybe prevented all this.
I call Miss Gracie, tell her there could be photos, videos.
She says, “Never get old, dear.”
She says, “Don’t live past eighty, dear.”
She says, “I’m only living for Kathi, dear.”
Miss Gracie charters us a private plane home from the next port.
Snap: My first private plane—I’m living the dream, right? I take in every moment, every detail—the wood-grain accents, white leather chairs, crystal champagne flutes. The bathroom is a bucket under a seat cushion just behind the pilot. The only privacy while using it is a shower curtain you pull around yourself. What a metaphor for this trip I’m on; I always thought a private plane was so glamorous, but it’s really just a flying toilet.
* * *
I’m putting Kathi Kannon in other hands now, health-care professionals at Cedars. They take her away in a wheelchair—standard procedure. She’s been quiet since the cruise, depressed, distant, lost. Kathi watches me not follow her, like a rejected puppy forgotten by a child who has a shinier toy to play with.
They’re asking me about her medications.
They’re asking me about her diet.
They’re asking me if I know anything about drugs.
I want to scream, You don’t know her life!
I want to scream, You can’t do for her what I do for her!
I want to scream, You don’t know the way she likes her soda!
I’m a kid again, my father snatching her action figure from me. Inside, once again I’m screaming, Don’t take her from me!
They’re sweet to me, these nurses, these doctors, but I know their intentions, their judgments. I know that Kathi Kannon isn’t special to them, that she’s just a number, a client, another spoiled celebrity. They don’t know she’s my whole world.
I ask, “Can I see her?”
They say, “Sorry, you’re not family.”
20
My world is shaking.
Los Angeles is having a small earthquake. Reid is sleeping beside me at my place and it wakes us. I jolt up, my back straight as a board, looking down at Reid, who opens his eyes kindly, calmly, a message to me: nothing to fear.
Until, BAM! SMASH!
As the tremor stops, I turn on my small brass lamp, Kathi’s old pill bottle from Bali still safe and sound beside it.
On the floor, beside my bed, is a smashed piece of art that was propped on a bookshelf. It’s a cheap reprint of The Lady of Shalott, the 1888 John William Waterhouse painting based on the poem of the same name. The painting’s namesake is a stunning woman, cursed, pensive, alone in her lovely white robe, drifting in a river, in a small boat, en route to her death, two of the three candles on her boat already blown out, the third a mere breath, a mere breeze away from being extinguished. The comforts with her—her blankets, her lantern, her crucifix—none of them can save her; she won’t take any of them with her in the end. Even smashed on the floor, she’s beautiful.
I’ve had her with me since college, my one consistent prized possession. The Lady of Shalott has such a sad look on her face, she seems cold and irritated, and I think that during much of my life in depression, I probably looked just like her—unsure, pained.
Now she’s on the floor, face up, surrounded by glass, by more danger. A shard has cut a small corner of the reprint. Her visage is intact, but her world is broken, damaged, and yet she still stares into the future, that sweet but fated expression, all of it not unlike the uncertainty I’m feeling tonight as I think about my hospitalized heroine.
“You okay?” Reid asks, now leaning up on an elbow, watching as I get out of bed, tiptoe around Shalott’s shards.
“Scary,” I say, picking up the painting, careful to keep the broken glass contained. I put it on Mom’s boxes, which I’m still using as a coffee table. I’m thankful that the Lady of Shalott is frozen like this, on the brink, locked forever in danger in color and oil, this exquisite young woman who will never see her future, never see what really becomes of her. I wish time could stand this still for all of us in our moments of doubt and fear, give us whatever time we need to feel confident about moving forward. I wish we had a pause button we could press until we figure things out, perfectly know what’s ahead, and move forward with clarity, with ease. But if we had that, would we ever un-pause? Would we ever move forward? If we could do everything with boldness, where’s the room for genius mind?
“Is this about Kathi, babe?” Reid asks.
I nod, unwittingly emotional, surprisingly raw.
“She’s an adult, Charlie. And she’s getting the care she needs.”
“She’ll be fine, right?” I ask with a big exhale.
“Right,” Reid says.
“Yeah. She’s finally getting great care and will be okay, and I’m sure after a couple weeks she’ll be good as new.”
“Better than new,” Reid says.
“Hopefully!” I shout, and crawl back into bed, lying beside him, his warmth filling me with love. “And before you know it, we will be in London shooting the film and having a blast.”
“Totally.”
“Will we be okay?” I ask.
“While you’re in London? Of course. I’ll come visit a bunch,” Reid says. “You can come back home sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”
“Right,” I say, falling into him, my head on his chest. “I’ve just never done a long-distance thing—or even a short-distance thing. Are you sure you’re okay with it? What if we’re apart for a longer stretch than we plan? With filming, anything can happen.”
“I’m invested in us if you are,” he says, holding up his hand like a mime trying to escape a glass box. I hold up my hand and touch his, our fingers then falling in between each other’s knuckles, intertwined, locked, and I lean in and kiss him.
* * *
I’m on the list and I’m on my way, heading to visit Kathi Kannon at the hospital, past the valet parking, past the security guard standing watch like a bouncer at a dead nightclub at eight A.M., past the security doors buzzing with electricity and magnetism that hold the locks tight, hold the many personalities inside.
I’m waiting to see her, to embrace her, to squeeze her shoulders and tell her to hang in there. Hey, Siri, I’m also thinking about how much I hate this, how much I hate addiction and its demons, how much I long to get her back to her A-plus sobriety with her A-plus assistant.
The waiting room sits off a busy hallway, and it’s more of a waiting area than a room—there’s no doorway, just an open space where I can see machinations of mental health care. The hallway is lined with empty beds, the same generic kind they use throughout the hospital, with buttons and levers to make the mattresses go up and down, bending half this way and half that, covered in a bright-blue plastic. Nurses rush back and forth, shaking their heads, annoyed and underappreciated, no doubt wondering what the hell happened that they ended up in this job. I’m thinking, Sometimes, I understand.
