Again
December, 2001
My eyes crack open to the sun piercing through my sheer curtains and my mind goes right to the dream I just woke from.
There I was at Chili’s with my big platter of fried appetizers and my bottomless fountain drink. Like usual, disgustingly fat patrons with their obnoxiously loud children were strewn about the joint. Like usual, the losers from my old high school days in Freakmont delivered food to me, and like usual I was supposed to meet Kelly. Only this time, she didn’t show up.
I hear the coffee pot signal it’s ready and for a second I wonder why it went off so early. But then I suddenly remember and my heart sinks. I thought I had already gone through hell and back with the Kelly stuff, the affair, the lies, the divorce, the….oh, you get my point. But, here I am, back in hell. This time though, I’m scared I’m not going to make it back. This is literally going to be the longest and most painful day of my life.
After a laborious brush of the teeth and a long-drawn-out sigh at my worn-out reflection in the mirror from having stayed up most of the night, I grab my old lime green French terry robe and set out to try and get everything straight. My coffee cup, already poured and prepared just the way I like it, is waiting for me on the kitchen counter. After a short search, because my cottage is only six hundred square feet, I find Kurt on the deck. He’s shirtless and staring at the partially frozen creek below.
“Kurt…you’re freezing. Why don’t you just put it on?”
Last night, after calming him down enough to tell me what had happened and then him calming me down enough to absorb the news, I helped him out of his shirt. It was only serving as a horrible reminder of what he just went through. I offered him one of Leo’s old shirts that I sleep in almost every night of the week, but he was quick to say, “No fucking way. Get it out of my face.” I suppose I would’ve had the same reaction if he offered me one of Kayla’s bras. Even though he didn’t snap at me for making the offer again right now, the look on his face is saying the same thing he said last night.
“Then here…take my robe.”
“Chrissy, I don’t need the robe. I can’t feel anything.”
I remember that same numb feeling when Courtney and Nicole broke the news to me about Kelly. You think it’s going to last forever, but it passes…as you pass through the stages of grief.
Gently taking hold of his arm, “Come on, Kurt, let’s go inside. We have a lot to talk about and it’s too cold to do it out here.”
Leo was remarkably calm last night. It took about fifteen minutes for me to pick up the receiver that I dropped to the ground when I saw Kurt. But when I did, he was still on the other end of it. He told me he heard every word that Kurt spoke and while he was obviously frustrated about my ex-husband standing shirtless in front of me, he didn’t feel like it was the right time to be angry about it. He asked if I wanted him to come home and help me, but I told him to stay put until I knew what I needed help with. This is exactly what Kurt and I have to figure out this morning. After two pots of coffee and two hours of back and forth phone calls between Craig’s parents, Kelly’s mom, Courtney and Nicole and their husbands, I think we have a tentative plan.
“So, I’ll go and pick her up tonight. That’ll give you and everyone else time to make the arrangements.”
“What are you gonna tell her?”
My own courage catches me by surprise, “The truth.”
“Jesus, how is she gonna be able to handle that?”
“She won’t. That’s why, first thing tomorrow, I’ll call Dr. Maria.”
“She’s a marriage counselor. What the hell is she gonna be able to do?”
“Please don’t snap at me! I’m just as confused and upset as you are right now!”
“I’m sorry… I don’t know what I’m…” And then his tears let loose again. It’s a sight that’s so foreign to me that I still don’t exactly know how to act when it happens. I gently put my hand on his bare shoulder to soothe him.
“I’m sorry too. Look, I’m not sure if Dr. Maria’s qualified to handle this kind of situation, but she’ll know someone who can. That’s a good start, right?”
Vigorously rubbing his face with his hands, “And then what?”
“I guess we have to talk to a lawyer and the sooner the better. We have to initiate some kind of stability…we have to give everyone some answers.”
“So…we’re leading the charge on this?”
Even though I’m scared to death, I can tell he’s more scared. So scared…that I think I’m the one actually leading the charge on this.
“It’s the responsibility we signed up for.”
Realizing that I’m losing him to the first stage of grief-denial, I put my hand back on his shoulder to bring him back to the hand we were dealt.
“Kurt, look at me…I’m pretty sure everyone’s relying on us to figure this out.”
Staring at each other like two people who just got stranded on a deserted island with no possibility of a rescue, I hesitantly continue.
“I think we have first right of refusal on this, or maybe we don’t have any choice at all in what happens. As far as I know, their will stayed the same, but I don’t really know what that means. Do you?”
“No.” Now it’s his hand that touches my knee. “But, what do you want to happen?”
Without hesitation, “I want her.”
Still stunned and still shirtless, Kurt left my cottage at two in the afternoon with plans to meet me and the rest of the gang at Craig’s house later that afternoon. I’m supposed to bring Kendall back to my cottage and everyone else will stay to make the funeral arrangements. Now I know why Kelly didn’t show up in my dream last night. She was busy welcoming her husband, Craig, to the place she’s called home for the last ten months.
Crash
December, 2001
According to everything Kurt told me, they were supposed to have a good time yesterday--just two lonely guys out on the town. Kurt wanted to give Craig something fun to do to take his mind off of Kelly for a few hours. He also wanted to meet some chicks and attempt to jump back into the dating scene again. On top of wanting to shed the sound of my voice telling him he sucked as a husband, Kayla told him to never call her ever again unless he had a house and diamond for her. Even though I’ve made my fair share of relationship mistakes (like, for example, pretending to enjoy mountain climbing in scary animal infested forests just so Kurt would fall madly in love with me), even I know Kayla’s a friggin’ idiot to make demands like that! Seriously, it’s like the girl’s boobs sucked the common sense right out of her brain. No dude worth marrying is going to give in to an ultimatum like that. Ever.
First, Kurt and Craig hit up a sushi restaurant in Palo Alto and had a great time doing sake bombs on table tops with the pretty Stanford girls. Initially, it took some convincing to get Craig to join in on the fun, but one co-ed in particular had a way with words and it gave him one of his first genuine smiles since his wife died. After that they continued their ego boosting/mind distracting tour at a nearby pool hall where seemingly pretty white trash girls hit on the two of them. I say seemingly pretty because had the boys managed to keep their alcohol consumption to shall we say…less than what an entire stadium full of football fans would drink, they would’ve realized the pool hall girls were total ho’s.
The two guys drove separately to Palo Alto. Kurt had a meeting with his biking club, (please…don’t even get me started) in nearby Menlo Park earlier that afternoon, so Craig made the drive over the Dumbarton Bridge to meet him. By late afternoon it seemed like the ego boosting/mind distracting mission had been accomplished because the boys were cracking jokes and laughing like it was 1987 all over again. It was just what the two of them needed.
Now, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of beer with Craig in the old days and on Kelly’s porch, but he was never one to push the limits. Especially since Kelly died, because he was the only one left to keep a close eye on Kendall. But yesterday Kendall wa
sn’t with him. She was at his parent’s house. A place Craig didn’t relish leaving her unless it was super important because they weren’t as sharp as they used to be--they were freaking old! In fact, Kelly used to jokingly call them his “prehistoric parents.” But, Kurt deemed yesterday’s festivities necessary and convinced Craig to go against his better judgment and party the day away in Palo Alto--so he left her there. Then, Craig went against his better judgment again when he got behind the wheel of his car and drove back home to Freakmont when the party was over.
Craig knew better than to drive drunk. In fact, it was always him who policed us in the old days. He’d be the first one to stop drinking to make sure everyone who was, either stayed the night at his house or was okay enough to drive by the time they left. But, at around seven-o’clock, the drunkenness that for a brief time made him forget about his heartache faded into a somewhat coherent buzz. Kurt told me he started missing Kelly again, and he started to get anxious about getting back to his parents’ house before they dozed off--something that usually happened around eight o’clock. He promised Kurt once he got there he’d tuck Kendall into his old bed and sleep on the couch. He thought the foolish deal he made with himself to just make it to his parent’s house was practical and he gave himself the green light to drive. Kurt stayed behind at a coffee shop to sober up and as far as he can remember, Craig appeared in control when he said goodbye. How would he have really known though? He was way too hammered to be the judge of anything. The two guys gave each other a goodbye bro hug at the coffee shop and made plans for a round of golf on Sunday. That was the last time Kurt ever saw Craig alive.
After four cups of coffee and a nice little cat-nap on a park bench, Kurt was sober enough to return to his brother’s house in Freakmont where he’d been shacking up since his break up with Kayla. Personally, I’d rather call that park bench my home than live with anyone in his family, but we’ve already covered my revulsion of the Gibbons clan, no need to digress.
Traffic was super backed up on the bridge, and what would normally be a thirty minute drive to Freakmont, was more like two hours. Finally, when he got to the other side of the bridge, just a few feet west of the toll plaza, a tired and frustrated Kurt saw what all the fuss was about. There appeared to be a two car collision and by the looks of the stretcher with a haphazardly covered body on it, it was a fatal one. Driving by at a mere two miles per hour, Kurt who was totally sober by now, but a little nervous about the smell of his breath, hunkered down low in his seat as he slowly passed the cops who were milling around the crash site. He got so low that his eyes were directly in line with a hand sticking out from underneath the sheet--a hand wearing the watch he bought for Craig as a wedding gift. Despite seeing what he knew was Craig’s lifeless body, he acted just as I did when I was told Kelly had pancreatic cancer, he tried to save him. He jumped out of his car, ran to the stretcher and immediately started performing CPR on the mangled and bloody body. Paramedics ran to pry who they thought was a crazed stranger away, but Kurt tried to fight them off so he could continue his hopeless effort. He was finally subdued by the police, and after calming down and explaining who he was, he was told what happened to his best friend. It appeared that Craig plowed into an abandoned car stranded in the right lane of the two-lane stretch of the bridge. Witnesses to the accident were shocked that Craig didn’t notice the bright hazard lights of the broken down car, and they said it appeared he was driving about eighty miles per hour, twenty-five miles per hour over the limit. Despite his seatbelt and air bag, he was dead on impact.
Head swirling with the news, Kurt was finally allowed to return to Craig’s stretcher where he cradled his best friend in his arms and repeated over and over again, “I love you, man. Please come back. Please come back. Please don’t leave Kendall…” At last, the paramedics painfully told Kurt they had to take Craig away and peeled him off his body. Without thought, he got into his car and drove straight to me.
Happening
December, 2001
“Chrissy, I have to come home. You can’t possibly handle all of this on your own.”
Even though I’m on my way to Craig’s house to retrieve Kendall and tell her the horrible news about her daddy, I’m not so messed up to have forgotten how stupid it would be to have Leo anywhere near this scene. “The gang” is going to be very entwined in the next few weeks and… Kurt’s a member.
“I would love that Leo, but I have to focus on Kendall. I’m taking her back to my cottage tonight, and it’s best if I’m alone with her.”
Although crushed, my beautiful, heartfelt Leo agrees to go along with whatever I think is best. Hoping to continue to ride his wave of warmth, I spontaneously decide there’s not going to be a better time to tell him the news, so I pull my car over to the side of the road.
“Leo, I never told you this, but Craig’s parents are very old.”
“I remember he mentioned something about that when we had dinner at his house.”
“And…Kelly’s mom has never been the same after she died.”
“I’m sure this is gonna be incredibly difficult for all of them. Honestly, I can’t even imagine the grief.”
“That’s not why I’m telling you this. Leo…you know how I’m Kendall’s Godmother?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…Kurt’s her Godfather.”
“I never wanted to ask, but I suspected as much. Why are you bringing this-- Oh my God, are you two the legal guardians of Kendall?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
The tone in his voice takes a subtle shift from warm to worried.
“When will you know for sure?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll call the attorney listed on my last version of their will. But Leo, you have to know something.”
He doesn’t need to wait for me to tell him, he already knows.
“You want her, don’t you?”
“Try not to spit your coffee out, but I’m the only shot that child has at living a life that’s remotely close to what her parents’ would’ve wanted for her.”
“You don’t think Nicole or Courtney can do it?”
All of a sudden a maternal instinct to protect kicks in that even I didn’t know I possessed.
“Are you insinuating I should even suggest it to them?”
“I don’t know…they’re married, they already have kids.”
“Yeah, kids they barely have enough time for because of their jobs! Kelly would roll over in her grave if Kendall was in daycare for even half the amount of time their kids are!”
“Baby, baby, baby! I’m not trying to upset you. I support whatever you decide. I care for Kendall too, and I’ll do whatever I can to honor her parents and be the best… I guess the best father-figure I can be. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about, right?”
Hearing him say that makes me wonder for the millionth time in nearly four years, what the hell have I gotten this guy into? Seriously, if Taddeo thought I had baggage because I was a divorced chick, he’s going to have a field day about this. Worry about it later, Chrissy! There’s still more to tell him.
“I don’t think it’s gonna be as easy as that.”
“I don’t think there’s gonna be anything easy about this, especially for her. But, I want you both to be happy, and I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen because I love you.”
“I love you too, Leo, but that’s not why I said this isn’t gonna be easy.” Here we go…“I’m pretty sure, once he’s had time to deal with everything that’s happened, that Kurt’s gonna want her too.”
It’s quiet for a long time as the two of us process the millions of what-ifs shooting through our heads. He’s first to break the silence, and he does it like he’s a man on a mission.
“I’ll fly home tonight, and we’ll get married tomorrow. We’ll prove we can offer her the most stability, and if we have to, we’ll fight him for custody.”
How did I know a fight would be involved?
�
��Leo, if their will stayed the same, it won’t be that easy.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’re gonna have to stay calm and strong for Kendall, no matter what the outcome. I won’t allow one more minute of chaos into that child’s life.”
“I understand, but are we talking about split custody here? Chrissy, are you saying he might have to be a part of our lives…forever?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. Right now, I don’t know anything.”
I take that back. I know the familiar sick feeling brewing in my stomach. It’s telling me I’m losing Leo all over again.
After a frazzled goodbye, I set my phone down and resume my drive to Craig’s house. On the way, I play sick head games with myself like, if someone told me we could have Craig and Kelly back if I re-married Kurt, would I? And, to make this news to Kendall easier, would I break up with Leo right now? And on and on and on.
I’m the last person to arrive at the house. Kurt, Guss, and Kyle are standing in the middle of the garage talking, and Courtney and Nicole are sitting on the front porch. With both hands extended out in front of her, Nicole motions for me to go to them first. Kurt’s eyes stay worriedly focused on every step I take toward my best friends.
Focusing on Courtney, I see a sight hardly ever seen before. I bend down to comfort my problem-solving pal.
“Court, talk to me. Where’s my touchstone? C’mon, girl, I need you to guide me through this. Just like you did with Kelly. Can you do that for me?”
The Unexpected List (The List Trilogy) Page 14
