Broken Crown

by Susan Ward

  The silence in the car is deafening. My thoughts are an unrelenting, uncheckable constant series of questions, anger, and accusations.

  I shouldn’t go home.

  Back to Chrissie.

  Not today.

  Not with how I’m feeling.

  Kaley makes that inescapably something I have to do.

  I glance at her covertly out of the corner of my eye. She’s transitioned from anger into worry. She’s wondering what this all means. What the fallout is going to be. The impact to her mother. To her. To her family. I doubt she cares what it means to me.

  I park in the driveway and turn off the ignition. I turn toward Kaley. “Go inside. Go to your room. Stay there.”

  Her eyes, anxious, shift to me. “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s going to be OK,” I assure her. “The rest of this needs to be sorted out privately between your mother and me. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. I love you. But you need to stay out of this. OK, sweetheart?”

  She jumps from the passenger seat and runs for the front door. I sit in the car, staring at the house, willing myself to be calm, but nope, it’s not happening. I’m fucking on the edge, ready to explode, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop that.

  I climb from the car. The house is quiet when I enter. Maybe I’ve caught a break. Maybe the kids are still gone. Maybe they don’t know what’s happened today. Fuck, how could they not know?

  I make my way toward the back of the house. I don’t want them here. This could spin out of control in any direction. I can’t breathe. I step into the family room.

  They’re all here, except Chrissie, with Linda. Khloe on her lap. The boys tucked into each side of her. And Krystal hovering close from the ground beneath her. They all look anxious and confused and afraid. Any doubt that they all know dies with the look in their eyes.

  I need to get the kids out of the house.

  Kid—my kids.

  Oh fuck, these are my kids.

  I’m hyperventilating, too numb from emotion to move, and too afraid to say anything.

  “Manny—”

  I cut Linda off. “Take them to your house. Now.”

  I almost turn to leave and realize I can’t just walk away from them. They’re frightened. Staring at me. Wanting something. I don’t know what I even have left in me to give. But they are my kids. I’ve got to do something to make this not something worse than it is for them.

  I go and take Khloe from Linda’s arms. I kiss her and hold her close, and then crouch down in front of the rest of them.

  I gesture with my arm. “Come here. All of you. Please.”

  I pull each one into me and kiss them on the head.

  “I love you,” I say, struggling to breathe and fighting like hell not to cry. “Everything will be OK. Kaley’s home. She’s fine. I’m OK. Your mom is OK. We’re all going to be OK.”

  Krystal looks like she’s about to say something. I pull back, stand up quickly and hand Khloe to Linda. “Take them. Go. Please, Linda, don’t argue. Just do it. Don’t bring them back until I call you.”

  For once Linda is shocked into silence.

  She stares at me, her expression nearly making my tears give way, and then she turns quickly.

  “Come on everyone. Go to the car,” she says, ushering the kids out in front of her.

  I stay in the room until I hear the front door close. I go to the bar, pour myself a scotch, and try to organize in my head the things I want to say to Chrissie before I try to talk to her.

  Fuck, I can’t formulate a single coherent thing.

  I go out onto the patio, sink onto a sofa and stare blankly into the darkened yard. The world still looks the same here. The gaily decorated lawn, happy and perfect, but behind the façade a crock of shit.

  Every moment between us has been a lie. Every smile. Every touch. Every kiss. Every fuck has been a crock of shit because every moment she shared with me was wrapped in a lie. What do you say to a woman who has done something like this? I don’t even know if I’m capable of looking at her and that rends my heart.

  I throw my fucking glass against the concrete. I run my fingers through my hair and hold my head. It feels like it’s about to explode. I feel like I’m about to explode.

  I hear the French doors open and close. I shake my head, my jaw tight. I don’t look, but I know it’s her. I can feel it in the way everything kicks up, no longer numb, inside me.

  “Please, Alan, tell me you’re all right. I need to know you are all right.”

  Her voice is calm, monotone, and it shoots through my body like a depth charge.

  I rise from the sofa and whirl toward her. Chrissie is standing awkwardly against the glass, her eyes wide and her face tight, pinched and afraid.

  “Goddamn you, Chrissie. Is that really your first concern here? What the fuck happened to your kids coming first always? Or does that not count today?”

  She flinches, but she doesn’t look away, determination clear in her eyes. “I’ve talked to the kids. I’ve explained. Or at least tried to. I’m not sure how much they understand. Kaley won’t talk to me. What did you say to her? How is she?”

  “Fuck, is that all you care about? That I might have said something that made you look bad to your daughter?”

  Her eyes flash. “That’s not what I meant. She won’t talk to me. I’m worried. She’s our daughter. You must be worried, too.”

  My anger intensifies. “Oh, sorry, our daughter, pardon me for the momentary mental breakdown I’m having in the middle of this fucking insane day you’ve created.”

  I turn away from her, willing myself to stop this. At least until I can sort through everything, figure out what I’m feeling and what I want to do.

  “I never intended any of this to happen,” she says, her voice small and weak.

  When I move to face her again, she’s hovering by the door, looking lost, fragile, and almost breakable. My anger starts to war with my heart at the sight of her. Those giant blue eyes, always vulnerable and laced with a hint of sadness behind the shimmers that is uniquely hers.

  My disobedient memory reminds me why the sadness is there. The things she’s suffered that put it in those gorgeous blue eyes—watching her mother die of cancer and being with her brother while he committed suicide in his bedroom. Going through that all alone so young with a father unwilling to see her agony. The guilt she felt. The pain. Struggling through it on her own in silence, burning her body just to shut off the pain—an unending legacy, a forever part of her, like the infinity brand on her hip and burn scars on her leg. The things that make her so cautious and afraid and untrusting. Why she’s so loving and gentle and goodhearted always. Why she makes so many messes in her life. And why, when I look at her, I just want to love her until the sadness goes away, even now, when she’s ripped out my heart in yet another devastating way.

  The things that make her a woman capable of this.

  The things that make me love her through everything.

  But no, no, no.

  It’s not going to happen, not through this.

  “How the fuck do you have five kids that are mine and not intend it, Chrissie?” I snap and she jumps, flinching.

  She takes in an anxious breath. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times. I don’t know why I couldn’t. That’s not an excuse. I know there is no excuse. I’m not going to try to make one, and I think it’s better if we wait until you’re less angry for me to try to explain.”

  I stare at her, stunned. She wants to end this discussion? She thinks she can dictate anything between us after this?

  My anger pulses through me. “There is only one explanation I’d like to hear. Then I think we’re through. I know that birth control is beyond basic management for you, Chrissie, but fuck, we both know you know how to get an abortion, so why the fuck didn’t you?”

  The color drains from her face.

  Oh fuck. Those words I want to reclaim because that’s not how I feel, not
what I meant to say. I’ve always felt hurt that she had an abortion and never told me, and that every other fucking man she was with she gave birth to his kids.

  It was the cruelest thought in my head.

  It poured out on its own.

  I need to take back those words.

  I didn’t mean them.

  But I can’t.

  The way she’s staring at me chokes in my throat any apology I could attempt to make.

  “That was mean, Alan,” she whispers, heartbroken, then she lowers her eyes and stares at the ground. “I know you didn’t mean that. It hurts anyway. And I’m sorry that I made you angry enough to say something that isn’t even close to who you are.”

  The blood starts pounding through my head. That effortlessly she sends me into total disarray. And the only thing I want to grab onto to keep me from going under is her.

  It’s fucking insane, but even in this worst of the worst moment of us, I want her with me as we go through this.

  I stare at her, ragged from pain and too many other emotions I’m nowhere near ready to sift through.

  The same question keeps turning in my head.

  I can’t shut it down.

  I can’t make reason of it.

  I look at her. “How could you do this, Chrissie? You stole my family from me.”

  “I didn’t steal them, Alan. I kept them for you. I loved them. I waited. There’s a difference.”

  Her tone.

  Her posture.

  Oh fuck, she thinks she’s done something defensible here. The way her eyes stare is too much to endure. I can’t listen to any more tonight.

  No. Not tonight, Chrissie.

  I don’t answer her. I brush past her and into the house. I don’t care if what she did makes sense to her. If she thought it was right. Or anything else she might say to try to get us through this.

  It’s not going to work this time. And I’m sure as hell not going to try to decode her logic. There is no logic to this. No way to defend it.

  Goddamn her.

  Chapter 18

  I stay in the car and stare at the house. How the fuck did I get here? I know I drove, but my mind is blank, everything has an unreal, detached, and mechanical feeling. Driving, breathing and even thinking.

  I hopped on the freeway in LA planning to go to the airport, get on my plane and go to New York to do a lot of things that I haven’t thought of in decades. Irrevocable things. Things that would make this ripping agony and her no longer consume me.

  But I brought myself here.

  Single-story white Spanish structure with a tiled roof.

  Unchanging.

  Exactly as it had been twenty-five years ago.

  I climb from the car, hurry up the pavement, and knock on the door. Fuck, I didn’t call. What if he’s not here? My pulse starts to accelerate again—

  The door opens wide.

  Blue eyes staring at me.

  The sight of him makes my emotion give way.

  “I’m glad you came here,” Jack says, pulling me into his arms and holding on to me firmly.

  “I don’t want to fuck up my life. I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want to lose Chrissie. But I don’t know how to forgive her. I don’t know how to get through this, it is tearing me apart, and I’m the closest I’ve ever been since Chicago to using again.”

  Jack pats me firmly on the back. Like that, everything inside me seems less on the edge and a little more manageable.

  “It will be OK, Alan. Come in. We’ll talk. We’ll get through this together. You can stay as long as you need to. Neither of us is going anywhere until we’ve worked through this for you.”

  * * *

  I sit on a chair above the cliff staring at the ocean. I’ve been here four days. We talk. We cook. We jam in the studio together. Sometimes we just sit, silent, like we’re doing now. Jack says an occasional trite, folksy axiom, his version of wisdom. Little bits of nothing that have the strange power to move through me as something significant, soothing, focusing, and grounding.

  I take a sip of my coffee and shake my head. It’s ridiculous that what Jack does works so completely for people in crisis. But everything is clearer and in focus in me, and that moment of crisis that’s remained a threat even after twenty-five years has stepped back away from me again.

  I’m no longer on the edge.

  I still don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.

  I shift my gaze to Jack. We’ve been friends forever. I still don’t get him. The man is an enigma unto himself. I’ve never asked. But I’m tired of talking about me.

  “How do you do it?” I ask. “Get past things as a man you shouldn’t be able to get past with Linda. Stay together all these years and not go insane that she’s married? It’d be like endless purgatory to love her and not be the man in her life.”

  Jack turns, studies my face, and then laughs. “Fuck, I can’t believe you’re asking me that. No one ever does. Not even Chrissie. But she’s like me. I think she gets it without asking.”

  He looks out across the Pacific, his chin bobbing in little nods, and then purses his lips, stares at the sky and exhales slowly.

  “It’s how it worked out,” he says in measured slowness. “We did what we thought was right for everyone, and I’ve never regretted loving her and I will always love her. No one can have everything the way they want it. The man who tries usually ends up with nothing. I have enough. Enough is a pretty fine thing.”

  I shake my head.

  Jack studies me, amused. “Even when you go through life with the best road map, you’ll still find roads you never expected. Sometimes it’s the unexpected roads that are the best journeys.” He laughs. “I’d say you’ve gotten a few unexpected roads lately and you definitely have enough. More than enough.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I drop my head into my hands. His jabs come out of nowhere. Why do they make me laugh? Corny ’60s shit. Life can’t fucking be this simple for him, not for any man.

  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 m
y 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.”