The Girl of Sand & Fog

by Ward, Susan

  “Pull into that driveway,” Bobby says.

  “Why?”

  “You’re shaking. You shouldn’t drive when you’re upset. That’s where I live. We’ll hang here until you’re feeling better.”

  I park the car and sit clutching the steering wheel and breathing heavily.

  “Do you feel like getting out?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Fine. We can just sit here,” he murmurs soothingly.

  We sit in the car for what seems like ages surrounded by my emotional heaviness. And then, no matter how I fight it, it happens again. Truth bubbling upward and out of me.

  I fix my eyes on Bobby. “Something is very wrong. My mom won’t call Alan. They haven’t spoken in almost a year. That’s never happened before. I hate him, but I don’t want him gone forever. I don’t want to not see him anymore. He used to send me a present and a check every birthday and Christmas. I got nothing on my birthday this year. Not even a call. That’s never happened before. I don’t want him gone from my life for good.”

  Bobby shakes his head. “Of course you don’t want him gone. Alan Manzone is your dad.”

  Anger surges upward inside me at being misunderstood, because up to that point it seemed like Bobby was the one person who got me.

  “No,” I hiss, aggravated, but for some reason explaining anyway. “I don’t want him gone until I know for certain he is my dad. Understand? I want him to admit it, explain to me why they’ve lied about it, apologize and then go away. Once I get the truth I won’t ever talk to him again.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Zoe exclaims.

  Cracking silence surrounds me in the car.

  “Oh no, she means it,” Bobby says.

  That he gets that without any sort of judgment reinstates his status with me.

  I hear a cell phone beep, signaling a text, and watch him fish his phone from his pocket. He reads it quickly and clicks off the phone without responding. I don’t like the change of his expression.

  “Your girlfriend?” I ask sharply, irritated by the flash of unexpected jealousy. Fuck, where did that come from? I arch a brow challengingly. “You can text her back if you want to.”

  “Not my girlfriend,” he replies, annoyed.

  “I don’t believe you. You look uncomfortable. We’ve just met. You don’t need to lie to me. Why do all guys lie about everything?”

  I don’t know why I’m picking a fight with him, and certainly not such a lame fight since, jeez, we only just met today and even a crazy girl couldn’t think he owes her anything.

  “I hate liars,” I repeat again argumentatively.

  For the first time I see a flash of anger on his face. “All guys don’t lie. I don’t lie. Not ever, Kaley.”

  He retrieves the phone, clicks to the text and tosses it at me. Pouty and feigning indifference, I glance at the screen.

  Linda: Whose car is that? Who are those girls? What’s up, Brat? Afraid to introduce them to your crazy mom?

  I toss the phone into his lap and start to laugh. “I thought Chrissie was bad. Your mom sends you texts from the house when you’re home?”

  Zoe laughs. “Linda is so funny.”

  “Yeah, but she is a pain in the ass,” Bobby says, opening his door and setting one leg out. “Do you want to come in?”

  As emotionally unsteady as I’m feeling, I debate the wisdom of following Bobby into the house and coming face-to-face with more shit that might rattle me. There isn’t a person on this planet more connected to Alan Manzone than Len Rowan is, unless one tosses into the mix Chrissie who somehow exists in total connectivity with the man without having been his significant other in over ten years.

  It often seems as if everyone in my world revolves around Alan, even me, for as long as I can remember. And what is most infuriating about that is that he seems to hold us all emotionally hostage without effort, awareness or want.

  It takes me a minute to decide, and Bobby just sits there waiting for me. With an aggravated sigh, I unbuckle and climb from the driver’s seat. Whatever there is in there, it can’t be worse than any of the other shit I deal with on a daily basis, and a part of me is curious about the Rowans since Bobby is such a difficult-to-read sort of guy.

  Difficult.

  Intriguing.

  Definitely hot body.

  I don’t need to complicate my messed-up life with him.

  What the fuck am I doing here?

  CHAPTER 3

  My mouth drops.

  I stand inside the main foyer and stare in disbelief. Fuck, I don’t know what I expected to find here, but it wasn’t this.

  The inside of the house stirs instant reaction, like what you’d have if too much sensory simulation is forced on you all at once. I’ve grown up in modest affluence, and though I do know that our family has money, that we are privileged, somehow Jesse and Chrissie always made a point to live conservatively that way.

  Chrissie believes in not ruining children with money, a philosophy that started the last generation with Grandpa Jack and his earthy, very humbly chic existence in Santa Barbara.

  I’ve certainly watched enough episodes of Real Housewives of Orange County that I shouldn’t be surprised by anything found in an affluent Southern California neighborhood. But this house demands reaction.

  I’ve never seen anything like this.

  I shift my gaze to look out through the line of tall windows at the back of the house with its stunning view of the Pacific Ocean, and can’t help but think that as breathtaking as the location is, the house is just plain obscene. There is something absolutely creepy about the incredible amount of memorabilia strategically scattered across the walls from floor to ceiling. Pictures, gold and platinum albums, guitars in cases: they are everywhere. It’s like the fucking Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in here.

  But with only one inductee: Alan Manzone and the members of Blackpoll.

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Bobby says. “Linda considers herself the official biographer of the band, keeper of the history, and takes that role too seriously.”

  I stare at my left hand. Somehow Bobby caught it in his without my realizing it. He looks uncomfortable. Embarrassed. And something else I’m not sure of. I decide to skip over his remarks and be generous about this.

  I smile. “Your mom loves your dad. I think it’s all kind of sweet.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Bullshit. It’s vulgar and you know it.”

  I shake my head. “Impressive, but not vulgar. And definitely sweet.”

  I start to study the pictures on the walls. There are almost as many of Alan here as there are of the Rowans. Well, they do have a long history with him, just like Chrissie does, evidenced on the walls with the number of personal moments caught on film here.

  Most of the pictures I’ve never seen before. They are private photos. Family photos. I don’t know how I know that. I just do.

  I am halfway through the entryway when a series of pictures nearly drops me to the floor. Tucked in between the Rowans’ personal moments are personal moments of me that I have never seen before.

  Christ, there are pictures of me as a small child, me with Alan, tucked into the history here. I stare at one of us on the beach—I couldn’t be more than four—and the side-by-side still of our faces is an undeniable visual confirmation of what I know to be true: that he is my real dad.

  I start to hyperventilate and frantically continue searching the pictures.

  “Kaley, what’s wrong?” Bobby asks.

  I can’t stop shaking. “I’ve not seen any of this before. Not ever. Even my mom doesn’t have these photos.”

  I jerk free of Bobby’s hand.

  “What?” says Zoe, concerned and clueless.

  I shove my face into hers. “There are photos of me all over these walls. Look. That little girl is me. There are photos of me I’ve never seen before. Me with Alan Manzone. They are everywhere!”

  “So?” Zoe asks.

  I’m breathing hard
and furious now. “Do you know what it’s like to see pieces of your life you know nothing about in a stranger’s house?”

  “We’re hardly strangers, Kaley. I was in the room the day you were born,” I hear someone say from behind me. “I consider us family, which is why you and your mother are on my walls there.”

  I whirl to see Linda Rowan standing in a doorway, watching me.

  “I was wondering how long it would be before you turned up here,” Linda says. “I’m glad to see that my kid isn’t a complete jerk and invited you over. I’ve been trying to catch Chrissie since she moved here in September. What’s up with your mom? Why is she avoiding me?”

  I have to count to ten not to scream. I’m in full emotional free fall here and the conversation instantly transgressed to Chrissie.

  “Mom is avoiding everyone these days.”

  “Grief can do that,” Linda says sadly.

  Trapped in upwardly surging fury, I snap, “Grief doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with any of it.”

  Linda’s expression tightens.

  Oh shit.

  I hate that the bitch of the past months has chosen to surface now because Linda caught more than I wanted to tell with that remark and it shows clearly on her face.

  “Aha.” Linda lifts her dark brows. “Don’t think you’re getting away without explaining that to me.”

  She puts an arm around me and guides me to a large family room in the back of the house.

  “Christ, Mom,” Bobby says. “Can you give her a chance to get through the door before you start the third degree?”

  “Put a lid on it, Bobby,” Linda warns. “The girl looks upset.”

  She motions me to sit.

  “I’m not upset at all,” I state stiffly.

  “Aha,” Linda says again in a strangely challenging and knowing way.

  I shift my gaze and stare out the window. I should get the fuck out of here. Right now. This is not going to be good. Not for my mother. No way.

  The afternoon has diverged so wildly from what I expected today that I can’t seem to catch my footing with each new shift. And somehow I’ve brought myself here, with Linda Rowan staring at me, clearly far more perceptive than her appearance suggests. She has a way of studying someone that looks uncomfortably like Dr. Phil, as if she is constantly analyzing those around her and trying to resolve a plan to fix them.

  My temper spikes up again. I don’t need fixing and I won’t be the object of someone’s new pet project.

  I stand up. “I really should go.”

  “Like hell you’re going. What’s wrong with your mother?” Linda asks.

  Not Chrissie again! “Not a fucking thing.”

  Linda stares at me, dark eyes amused and not the least bit intimidated by me.

  “So you think you can get me to back off with that burning black stare, do you? Sorry to disappoint you, love. I’ve been friends with the original, Alan Manzone, for thirty years. Consider me wrapped in a fireproof suit. Sit down.”

  The barked order makes me flush and obey.

  It is more than how intimidating Linda is or in being transparent to this woman; it is her knowing matter-of-factness about everything that puts me in check. Matter-of-factness is in fact intimidating.

  Linda leans back in her chair.

  “OK,” she says with a satisfied smile. She looks at Bobby and Zoe hovering in the background. “I want the two of you out of here.”

  “There’s nothing she’s going to tell you that I don’t already know,” Bobby says.

  He sinks protectively onto the arm of my chair. The gesture both amuses and annoys me.

  Linda glares at her son. “Aha.”

  In the tense quiet that follows, Zoe doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. She just fades away into the background.

  “So what’s up with your mother?” Linda says abruptly.

  I try smiling this time. “Nothing is up with my mother.”

  “That’s nice to hear, but we both know that’s not true. I’ve been sitting here for weeks in my house thumbing magazines and wondering what I could have done at the funeral to have Chrissie treat me this way. Like, if she was going to tell me that she never wanted to see me again or simply continue to ignore me. She lives a mile from me and pretends I’m not even here. So when I ask you what’s wrong, don’t flash your smile or give me the black stare and pretend I’m imagining things. I get enough of that from Len these days.”

  “I was simply explaining that my mom is OK.”

  Linda’s eyes flash. “OK? You keep saying that. Why does it sound insincere?”

  “I don’t know that it does. It’s the truth.”

  “I saw Chrissie today,” Bobby says. “She looked fine to me.”

  Linda glares at Bobby. “Right, thank you. That’s nice reassurance. I guess.”

  “Everything is not about you, Mom.”

  “Right! Thank you again.”

  There is something so uncomplicated in the way mother and son fight that I allow myself a moment to feel mildly jealous of the Rowans. There is nothing uncomplicated about my relationship with my parents.

  I study them. Fuck, how do I defuse this? Confessing Chrissie’s latest fuck-up to Bobby is one thing. Telling Linda Rowan is another. No way will Linda stay out of this clusterfuck if she knows the truth. She would tell Alan. And that would unleash a total shitstorm on Chrissie.

  I’m pissed at my mom, but I don’t want that.

  “Mom is sort of stuck in limbo right now,” I explain, cautiously. “It’s just the move and getting organized again. I’m sure she’ll call you when she’s ready to. She’s not angry with you. She’s not angry with anyone. Just sort of stuck in limbo.”

  “Limbo. Aha.” Linda gives me another penetrating stare then holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

  I tense. “What?”

  She shakes her hand in front of me. “She won’t answer my calls, but I know she’ll answer yours so give me your phone or start being honest here.”

  “Fine.” I fish in my pocket and toss her the phone. “Dial away if you think it will get you anywhere.”

  I cross my arms, wishing I could take this one back. It is the second uncool thing I’ve done to Chrissie today. I watch as Linda clicks on the phone and searches through my contacts.

  Injecting Linda into the mix is like tossing a Molotov cocktail into Chrissie’s carefully constructed world. Still, if it gets us out of being stuck in limbo—and that’s where we are in Chrissie’s universe—then more power to Linda.

  Still, I’m surprised that I have to squeeze my eyes shut and lean back into the soft cushions of the chair to keep from starting to cry. It is in this moment that I become fully aware of how internally chaotic I’ve been since Khloe’s birth and how tense I’ve been made by the forced secrecy and all the trauma of the past year. I hadn’t realized how bad it was until today. But I feel it now in my limbs and how hard I have to fight against the tears.

  “It’s going to be OK, Kaley,” I hear Linda say.

  When I open my eyes she has the phone to her ear. I start to remember things about Linda from when I was little. She always frightened the shit out of me as a child, but just then in her voice she sounded older, more soothing and motherly.

  “Am I allowed to ask if all is well with you?” Linda demands, without preamble, into the phone.

  Shit. I can hear my mother’s voice rapidly streaming through the phone, but I can’t make out the words. I can only imagine the conversation on the other end and how pissed off this is making my mother.

  Linda can hardly get a word in—it is completely unlike Chrissie to control any conversation—and in between the steady stream of ‘aha, aha, aha, oh shit,’ then ‘aha’ Linda seems to collapse back into her chair and says, “Oh fuck.”

  My stomach turns. That oh fuck confirms that my mom, for whatever reason, just told Linda everything that’s happened since my stepfather’s death.

  After another ten minutes, it
looks like Linda has decided she’s had enough of listening to my mom.

  “You are fucking this up the most you can,” she says fiercely into the cell. “I hope you know that. No. No. Kaley is fine. Sitting right here. And no you can’t talk to her. She is very upset. That’s why I called you. One look at her told me something fucked-up was going on with you. Damn, we’ve been friends forever, Chrissie. How could you have a baby and not call me? Move here and not see me? I’m hurt. Really hurt. Why did you shut me out, dear?”

  That is followed by more ‘ahas’ and Linda reaching for her iPad. She starts clicking the screen until she reaches her calendar.

  “Of course, Chrissie. Of course. You’ve always been able to trust me. No, I won’t say a word. OK. Good, good, good. Yes, I’m free on Friday. I’ve missed you. I can’t wait to see the baby. But I can’t believe you didn’t trust me with this.”

  Linda clicks off the phone and hands it back to me. “You’re a very good daughter.”

  For some strange reason that’s enough to make the tears give way. “No, I’m not. I’m a real bitch these days.”

  Linda smiles sympathetically. “All teenage girls are. The problem is when we don’t outgrow it. Or worse, when we don’t know that we are. And Lord knows you have had more than your share of shit to wade through this year.”

  I stiffen and cross my arms. “Meaning?”

  Linda rolls her eyes. “Meaning we’re all family here. There is nothing you could tell me about your mother that would come as a surprise to me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Family I’ve only seen once, at a funeral, in ten years. When Mom broke up with Alan, you left us. Remember?”

  “Damn, you’re just like him.” Linda gives a frustrated sigh. “You used to be such a sweet girl. Now you’re doing your best to be intolerable. It won’t help, but I understand it. Get a hold over it before you do something stupid with all that hostility.”

  A silence of injury befalls me. Linda seems not to read it well. Bobby sees it at once.

  “We’re out of here, Mom.”

  Linda smiles and fixes her eyes on me again. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  I don’t know what to say. My emotions are stuck in a different gear, but events here seem to roll in an effortless flow from the bizarre back to completely normal again.