by Julia London
“Well,” she said, her voice lilting. “You agreed. I didn’t. Not really.”
“What are you talking about? You said—”
“I can’t live in a house that looks like this. I mean, my God, there’s a Buddha in the sunroom that has plaid wallpaper! Who does that? The interior of this house is a train wreck, and I can’t live like this.”
Brennan groaned. He ran his hands over his face and scrubbed his forehead with his fingers. His skin felt gritty to him. “I get it, Mom, the house needs to be redone. I’m all for it—but I need a break. I need a break,” he said again, and abruptly slammed his fist down on the kitchen table, startling his mother and himself. “From you, from work, from music, from renovations, from strange women in the kitchen when all I want is a cup of coffee! So just . . . just lay off of it for now, will you? Will you do that for me?”
His mother looked slightly wounded. “Here’s the thing, Bren,” she said, speaking coolly, formally. “You’ve had your break. You’ve been here a month and all you’ve done is buy yourself a new car and sleep and drink. Am I supposed to tiptoe around you forever? Am I supposed to pretend your manager isn’t calling every other day? What made you lose your way? Is it Jenna?”
“Jenna?” Brennan struggled to keep from exploding. He wanted to put his fist through a wall, rip the fridge out of its cubby and hurl it across the room. His anger—undefined, always simmering-below-the-surface anger—was mixing toxically with the beer. “I’m not asking you to pretend or to tiptoe or to psychoanalyze me, I’m asking you not to renovate right now.”
“It’s not going to bother you,” she insisted.
She was trying to manipulate him, but she was no match for the many people in his life who had sought to manipulate him. Managers, producers, bandmates. “Do you want me to leave? Is that what you want? Because I will.”
“Don’t be so touchy,” she said. “Why would I want you to leave? You’re my son, I love you, I love having you near me, and God knows that I haven’t seen much of you in years. And you obviously need your mother now more than ever. I don’t like how you sleep all day and go on benders,” she said, gesturing at the empty beer bottles on the kitchen bar. “I don’t like how you ignore phone calls that must be important, and I don’t like the way you are hiding from the world. That’s not you, Brennan. You’re the strongest, most determined, smartest, most gifted person I have ever known. But look at you!”
“I am hiding!” he shouted. “I am hiding from managers and bands and paparazzi and everything else. Jesus, I’m thirty-three years old—do I really need to explain myself to you?”
“Hey!” she said hotly. “Watch how you speak to me. I am your mother and I am worried about you. I earned that right when I gave birth to you.”
Brennan sighed. It was like talking to a rock. “Yeah, well the only thing wrong with me today is that I’m starving.”
His mother pressed her lips together and walked stiffly to the table. “I was going to wait for a better time to do this, but . . .” She reached in her purse and withdrew a brochure and handed it to him. Brennan glanced at it. Valley Vista Recovery and Rehabilitation Center. He didn’t understand it at first, didn’t get the hint. But when he did, he sagged back in his chair, away from it. “What the hell is that?”
“Exactly what you think it is.”
He stared at her. “Are you kidding, Mom? You think after what happened to Trey that I could possibly be into drugs?”
“No, of course not!” she said, sounding slightly wounded. “I know you better than that. But you’re drinking too much.”
“So what?” Brennan exploded, this time unable to keep his anger in check. He shoved against the table and out of the chair and moved away from her. “I’m a grown man! I can drink a river if I want!”
His mother did the wrong thing—she gave him a patient, motherly smile. “Brennan . . . don’t you see? You’re drinking too much because you’re depressed.”
“Don’t even try,” he snapped. “I’m not depressed. I’m tired. I’m exhausted,” he said, sweeping his arm wide. “Do you have any idea what my life has been like?” His life had hit a wall head-on, and he couldn’t seem to peel himself off of it. No one could peel him off of it.
The world knew him as Everett Alden, the lead singer and cofounder of Tuesday’s End, the chart-topping band of the last decade. Brennan Everett Alden had been Brennan’s name for the first twelve years of his life. But then his mother had married Noel Yates and Noel had adopted him, and Brennan had become Brennan Yates. Brennan Yates was a nobody in the music industry, but Everett Alden was about as red-hot as rock stars came. And right now, at this point in his life, for a few weeks, Brennan desperately needed to be nobody but Brennan Yates.
So what if he was a little depressed? He’d just finished a 150-city tour on the heels of a new album that had gone platinum. He’d ended a yearlong relationship with Jenna O’Neil, one of the hottest young actresses filling movie theaters, because she couldn’t keep her pants up in the company of her costar—a fact that was displayed on every magazine on every newsstand, lest Brennan forget. He’d dealt with a batshit crazy forty-year-old woman who kept breaking into his house in LA and stealing his boxers. He’d had a major artistic disagreement with Chance, the guitarist of the band, and Brennan’s best friend since they were two fourteen-year-old outcasts in a California middle school. They’d formed Tuesday’s End in Chance’s garage. And oh yeah, the big one, the topping on his cake: their other best friend, Trey—who had been there in the beginning, too, who had been their drummer until his heroin addiction got so bad they couldn’t rely on him—had overdosed and died a few months ago.
Or committed suicide. Depended on who you listened to.
Brennan had tried to reach him, had tried to pull him out of his own ass, but Trey was so messed up. He’d flown out to Palm Springs to see Trey the day before he was found dead. Trey had just come out of his third stint in rehab and he swore he was clean. He’d looked gaunt and a little yellow. He’d said, “Look at all we’ve got, Bren,” and had cast his arms around his big house.
“We’ve done pretty well for ourselves,” Brennan had agreed.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying look at what we’ve got. We’re at the top of the world. So . . .” He’d leaned forward, peering at Brennan. “Is this all there is?”
“Buddy, I don’t—”
Trey had grabbed his wrist and gripped it tightly. “No, man, I need to know. Is this all there is?”
The next day, Trey was dead.
I don’t know, Trey. I don’t know. Maybe it is. Maybe this exhaustion I feel is all that there is at the end of the day.
So yeah, Brennan was tapped out, and okay, he was a little depressed. He’d had enormous success, beyond his wildest dreams. But somehow the grueling road tours, the selfish beauties, the constant stream of women wanting to suck his dick, the artistic differences with someone whose opinion he highly valued, and the loss of a good friend to drugs were not exactly how he’d imagined his career unfolding.
Brennan didn’t know who he was anymore. He didn’t know where he was supposed to be going with all of this. He couldn’t even say with any confidence what sort of music he wanted to make at this stage of his life. He needed some peace and quiet away from it all to think.
He needed to be here, in this little town on a peaceful lake, in his mother’s house, because no one here knew Brennan Yates.
But his mother seemed determined to get deep into his business. “Think about how much you sleep,” she said, apparently thinking his silence was an invitation to keep talking. “Think how much you’ve been drinking lately, how you have no enthusiasm for anything. Not music, not girls. You aren’t working—when is the last time you picked up a guitar?” she stubbornly continued. “I get it, I do,” she said, pressing a hand to her heart. “I was very depressed when you were born.”
Brennan snorted. “Gee, thanks.”
“And there have bee
n other times, if you want to know the truth. But you, Brennan! You’ve never been depressed. You’ve always been my rock. You’ve had such a brilliant career and a life I could never have imagined for you and I am scared to death you’re going to let it all slip away because you’re depressed. Your father was like that, but he—”
“Don’t bring him up,” Brennan said curtly.
His mother sighed heavily. “Will we ever be allowed to talk about him?”
God, how could she gloss over it? He felt a painful prick every time she mentioned his dad, like an old wound that appeared to be healed over, but was easily opened with the wrong move. “I don’t know, Mom. Seems like the time to talk about him was before he died.”
She colored. She sniffed. “All I want to do is help,” she said.
“Don’t help me, Mom,” Brennan said. “I came here because I thought, for once, I could have a little refuge from all the bullshit. I thought this would be the one goddamn place on earth I could be me. Not Everett. Brennan. But you’ve been dogging me since the day I showed up.”
“That’s not true. I know you must be hurting. I know you loved Jenna—”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” he said angrily. “Mother, listen to me. I was not in love with Jenna. I may have loved her at some point, maybe, but I doubt it, and if I did, it was a very long time ago. I haven’t felt anything but resentment for months. I knew what she was doing. I knew she was using me for publicity and sleeping with her costars. And you know what, Mom? I could have ended it last fall, but it was a hell of a lot easier just to finish the fucking tour and then dump her. I’m glad to be rid of her.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. She chewed on the inside of her mouth a moment as she considered him. “Then what about your music?” she asked, her voice softer. “What about the gift God has given you and no one else? The world is waiting. Your band is waiting.”
Brennan suddenly felt bone-weary. As if he’d been carrying a boulder on his back for a very long time. “The world and the band can go to hell,” he said low. He swiped up his beer and took a long swig.
The truth was that Brennan didn’t know about his music. Chance and he weren’t seeing eye to eye on the artistic direction. Chance and the band’s manager, Gary, were angling for more commercial music. They’d included some on the last album, against Brennan’s wishes, and the album had gone platinum. Give the masses what they want, Chance said. But Brennan couldn’t feel it—it wasn’t in him. He truly felt heart-blocked from that sort of music. He felt truly heart-blocked in general. That style of music felt like a sellout, a moral corruption of his soul. His music—it was all he had when he got right down to it. It was the only thing in his life he could depend on, the only thing he could completely trust. Without it . . . was this all there was?
His mother reached for his hand and covered it with hers. “I know you’ll figure it out, honey. But maybe you need some help.”
She didn’t understand the stakes for him. Brennan needed help, all right. But it wasn’t the help of a doctor and antidepressants. It was more spiritual than that. He needed help finding his path. He pulled his hand free of hers and turned away. “I’m good, Mom. I’m just asking you—nicely, now—to postpone the renovations a couple of months,” he said tightly. “I don’t need people in my space right now.”
He could see the tension in his mother’s jaw as she poured a healthy serving of white wine. She was biting her tongue. “Sure, honey. If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
She shrugged and drank from the glass. “Okay then. No renovations inside the house for a couple of months.”
“Thank you.” Brennan moved to the fridge and withdrew three beers. He grabbed a bag of chips from the counter and walked out. He ignored the muttering he heard under his mother’s breath, and made his way upstairs to his room.
Maybe he needed to get out of here, go someplace overseas, away from his mother and the tabloids. That wasn’t a bad idea, he thought as he took the stairs two at a time. Someplace remote where he could molt in peace. A tropical place, maybe. With a girl. Any girl. He could use some good, wall-banging sex about now.
Brennan walked into his slightly reeking wreck of a room and paused, looking around.
He had taken the second master suite with a stunning view of the back lawn and Lake Haven on one end, and the front drive on the other. Too bad the walls were painted lime green and the bath was done in pink tile. He threw the bag of chips on a bed that had gone unmade for two weeks now, put down his beers next to an army of empty bottles on the dresser and the nearby windowsill. He walked past his guitar and paused, looking down at it.
His mother was right. He couldn’t remember when he’d last picked up an instrument of any kind. Madison Square Garden?
Brennan picked up his guitar now and took a seat on the edge of the bed, balanced it on his thigh, and struck a minor chord.
Since a time he could no longer recall, he’d had the ability to hear a chord and instantly hear a melody in his head. He could easily imagine the bare bones of a song, the chorus, the bridge. But in the last two months, he’d imagined . . . nothing.
Everett Alden, the lead singer of Tuesday’s End, heard nothing.
Brennan put his guitar aside and fell onto the bed beside the bag of chips. He closed his eyes, saw himself on stage, heard the melody of one of their greatest hits, “Dream Maker,” as an acoustic number in his head. He’d written every bit of that song—the melody, the lyrics. Chance had tweaked the rhythm of it, but mostly, it was Brennan’s creation. It had stayed at the top of the charts for more than a year. He was the architect of that massive hit, and now, he couldn’t even dredge up a few chords.
Yeah, he was going to get the fuck out of here.
He was going to find his laptop in this mess and Google the Canary Islands. He turned his head on the pillow and looked across the room. He didn’t know where the laptop was, actually.
He’d do it tomorrow.
Brennan sat up and looked down at his disgusting bed. It just seemed like everything required so much effort. He drank more beer, brooded more. He wrote a few things in a notebook, tried to read.
He didn’t know when sleep drifted over him, but it was the sound of a buzz saw that startled him awake. He sat up with a jolt; weak sunlight was drifting in through the windows. His room smelled like dirty socks and beer, and he blinked, looking at the clock next to the bed. It was seven in the morning. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and stumbled to the windows. Below him, a ground crew was fanning out around the thicket his mother was determined to cut back.
And there was Mom, pointing to things to be cut and edged and generally made loud.
Just to annoy him.
Five
Aunt Bev had called at o-dark-thirty this morning, and it had scared Mia to death. She’d assumed something had happened to Grandpa, but it turned out that it was nothing more alarming than some of the pictures Mia had taken at the old Ross house had gone missing in Aunt Bev’s cluttered office.
“I know what happened,” Aunt Bev said. “That goofy kid at Cranston’s screwed it up. He’s one pair of boxers short of a full load of laundry.”
“I don’t think that’s a saying—”
“So here’s what you do, kiddo,” Aunt Bev said, pushing on. “Go ahead and stop by Cranston’s and ask that goofy kid to check again.”
“Okay, but Cranston’s doesn’t open until nine—”
“Just do it as quick as you can. I need to get this bid up to the Ross house as soon as possible. Oh, and pick up some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups while you’re there.”
Quite honestly, before this gig, Mia had never truly appreciated what a head case Aunt Bev was. Sure, Bev’s daughter, Skylar, had always complained about her, but Skylar was one of those troubled teens who ran away and smoked dope and generally could not be trusted to be accurate about anything. Once, Skylar had breezed in unannounced to Mia’s place in Bro
oklyn. Mia hadn’t even known Skylar was in the city; the last she’d heard, her cousin had taken off in the night with some guy she’d met in Black Springs and had ended up on the West Coast. That was Skylar, always taking off for something bigger and better, preferably something that didn’t require her to work. Inevitably, she had to come home when the bottom fell out of whatever scheme she was involved in and try again.
She’d shown up in Brooklyn with an overnight bag and a joint that she’d smoked at the open window. “My mom is bananas,” she’d said. “She’s disorganized and thinks everyone else is to blame. And I’m an easy target for her.”
“Really?” Mia had asked, shaking her head to Skylar’s offer of the marijuana. Mia never went near drugs after what happened to her that summer. It was one of those family stories that everyone tacitly agreed not to mention again, but Mia had never felt the same about Skylar since.
“I know, I know, Mom seems so nice,” Skylar had sighed. “And she runs a very successful business, so you wouldn’t think she’s that disorganized. But she’s a mess.” Skylar had lifted her chin and blown smoke out the window. “She drives me crazy.”
The next morning, Skylar was gone, off to bigger and better things.
Turned out, Skylar was right—Aunt Bev was a little nutty. For the last two days, she’d been locked in her office at the storefront, finishing up the bid for the Ross house. Mia had heard nothing but the whir of the adding machine and Aunt Bev muttering under her breath.
Mia had manned the counter. Which meant she’d been reading a lot of magazines. It was excruciatingly boring.
Anyway, Mia got herself up and made her way to Cranston’s. As the kid with the bobbing Adam’s apple and big brown eyes went in the back to look for the missing photos, Mia perused the magazine rack. “William Steps out behind Kate’s Back!” screamed the National Enquirer, complete with a picture of the Duchess of Cambridge looking like she might be ill at any moment. “Why Everett Alden Disappeared from the Alternative Rock Scene,” said the top of the cover of Rolling Stone. Mia couldn’t see the picture that accompanied that headline because in the slot below it was Us Weekly, and Chris Pine was on the cover. “Chris Revealed,” the title read.
