Between You and Me (27 page)

The next morning I stand outside Kelsey’s bedroom door as I hear her team greeting one another downstairs, low voices repeating my question:
What
was she thinking? Even I still don’t get it. But Aaron’s move—that I get. I saw him crouched on that balcony in Little Rock when his privacy was sucked away into the air. In the eye of that funnel, he said he loved her like I did. The girl being goofy in her T-shirt. And we both know, if you want to hit this girl in the heart, if you want to break her like you felt her world had broken you, you would come for her baby. I wish I could call him, but the first thing Kelsey learned was that he cancelled his phone.

I crack Kelsey’s door to find her lying in Michelle’s arms in the king-size bed. The curtains are drawn against the paparazzi, who have doubled in strength outside the gate. Every time so much as the mail arrives, the sky lights up like Michael Bay is filming a battle sequence in Laurel Canyon.

“Sorry, but the lawyer just got here,” I whisper, and she nods, nudging her mother.

“He’s here,” she mouths to Michelle. Kelsey carefully gets up, shifting her swaddled daughter to the mattress.

“It’s for real down there,” I say quietly as Kelsey goes to the bathroom to splash her face. “There’s seriously no way to call this thing off?”

“Maybe his lawyers will tell us where he’s staying.” She grabs a towel.

“And then you’re going to tell him you made a mistake.”

“Logan, things were so bad when Momma took me to L.A.—when we left Daddy.” She scrapes congealed soap off the dish. “God, it was so shady—the motels, the guys we’d have to meet in their dingy offices.
We were down to cereal and powdered milk. And then it just . . . ” She lifts her shoulders. “Came out okay.”

“It did,” I say uncertainly.

“He came back! She threw down the ultimatum, and he got his crap together and showed up, and it all came out okay.”

“But he didn’t get sober for, like, years after that, right?”

“Well, he’s sober now,” she says tartly, picking up a rubber band and twisting her hair into a topknot. “And Momma just had to be brave. She
was
brave.”

Michelle comes in, tying her robe over her nightgown. “Holy mess.” She sees herself in the mirror and Kelsey hands her a brush.

“So, were you in on the strategy here?” I ask her.

“What?” Michelle looks at me as if I’m nuts.

“I didn’t talk to anyone about it, Logan,” Kelsey says. “And it still can work. It’ll work. He’s just being a guy.”

Michelle nods supportively. And while at a fundamental level, it is true, she’s also just being a girl, playing at a high-school level with adult ammunition.

At the dining table Bob, her divorce attorney, passes out a packet to Cheryl, Kelsey’s agent, and a few other suits.

“Honey, want some eggs?” Michelle asks Kelsey as we seat ourselves. “Or a bagel?”

“Can’t eat.” At the head of the table, with her mom beside her, she looks expectantly at the assembled, and it strikes me that this is the first time I’ve seen her open a meeting without her choreography of smiles.

Bob clears his throat. “Now, before we dive into the nitty-gritty of what they’re asking for and what we’re prepared to give—”

“Nothing,” Andy states. “She’s already given him way more than he deserves.”

“Andy, I know we’re only a day in here, but, to set your expectations, this is a long process. You should know Aaron’s hired a very high-end team.”

“How?” Kelsey asks, and Michelle covers her hand with hers. “He’s broke.”

Bob shrugs. “Banking on a future cut of a big payout.”

“Think again,” Andy interjects.

“Okay, this is totally out of hand,” Kelsey says. “I appreciate that you came all the way up here to meet with me, but I only wanted him to come home. So, if you can please communicate to his attorney that we just need to talk, there’s no need for—” Kelsey lifts the heavy packet and drops it.

“Yes,” Michelle agrees. “They just need a pastor. You know, some good old-fashioned guidance.”

“He’s
suing
her.” Andy repeats what he shouted all day yesterday in disbelief. “I am not fucking slow-dancing with that redneck piece of shit.”

“But, baby,” Michelle entreats. “We’re performing an autopsy on a breathing person.”

“If that was the case, he’d agree to mediation.” Bob’s mouth is pressed into a line. “Which he has unequivocally refused.”

“He wants to take Jessie from me?” Kelsey seeks confirmation.

“He wants to take money from you,” Andy corrects her.

“He can want a lot of things. He has absolutely no grounds. The prenup was very clear.” Bob tugs off his wire-rims. “Custody will fall along a seventy/thirty split in your favor. You can set it up how you like, but typically, it’s a weeknight and every other weekend.”

“Without me?” Kelsey’s stunned. “But he’s never even been alone with her. He’s been gone from the beginning. She won’t even know where she is.” Kelsey can’t catch up. “I think I should just take her back to Oklahoma until he calms down and we can—”

“You can’t cross state lines with the baby, and the judge will not be impressed if you leave the city. Really,” Bob continues, “your dad’s right. This is about hitting you where it hurts. Pursuing custody is just a strategy to get you to break the prenup.”

“Over my dead fucking body,” Andy says.

“I need him to take my call.” Kelsey repeats herself in vain.

“Can’t you just talk the other guy into getting these two together?” Michelle tries yet again. “You still get paid.”

Bob snaps his briefcase shut. “My retainer notwithstanding, given the case his team is hustling to compile, these two should not be together.” He hits the side of his palm against the table. “No e-mail, no calls, no
texts, unfriend him, unfriend his family. I cannot emphasize this enough. The person you fell in love with is gone. Your husband is gone. From this point forward, he’s just someone out there who wishes you harm.”

When the custody arrangement is
finalized, it grants Aaron every Wednesday night and every other weekend, as Bob had predicted. The following Wednesday at four o’clock, Kelsey brushes Jessie’s downy brown hairs and dresses her in a strawberry-patterned jumper. And then puts on full makeup, painstakingly picking out earrings, her skinny jeans and halter top hanging loosely on her emaciated frame. We see the sky light up at the gate, and she opens Jessie’s bag yet again to run through its contents. “Diapers, wipes, pajamas, swaddles, pacifiers, bottles—where’s Blue Bear?”

As the bell rings, I lean over and lift the onesie to remind her where she snuggled Blue Bear first.

“Okay.” Pressing her lips together to refresh her gloss, she picks up Jessie from her bouncer, and I follow them down the stairs with the bag. “Who are
you
?” she abruptly asks the woman in the white starched uniform waiting by the door.

“I’m Mr. Watts’s nanny, ma’am. I’ll be bringing her to him.”

“We agreed no nannies,” Kelsey says, her composure evaporating as her arms tighten protectively.

“I’m sorry.” The woman shrugs, embarrassed, confused. “I’m just supposed to take the baby.”

“I don’t know you.” She grips Jessie against her. “You could be anyone.”

“Kel.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure he was nervous having her all to himself—he hasn’t exactly changed a diaper yet.”

“I’ll call him—”

“No,” I say firmly, stepping between her and the phone. “I will call our lawyer, who will call his lawyer, who will call him.”

Twenty minutes later, Kelsey and
I wave manically to the receding taillights.

“What do you want to do?” I ask gently as she wipes under her eyes. “Order in? Catch up on Bravo?”

Michelle comes through the back door with a nightgown folded under her elbow and a Walmart bag straining in her hands. “Did Jessie get off okay?” she asks as I go to help her. “Daddy’s right behind me—”

“Here I am,” he says, wrestling the door open with the popcorn machine in his arms.

“We’ll watch a movie,” Michelle says. “And then I want to show you the pieces of Kelsey Kids that Walmart ordered.”

Kelsey takes in the empty house. She looks forlornly overhead, where raw wires hang, waiting for the chandelier Aaron picked out that is still being blown in Venice. She crosses to Jessie’s activity mat and picks up the purple pig she jingles for her amusement. “Okay.”

“You choose.” I wait for her command. With Finn in Toronto for the next month, I’m ready to camp out. Michelle pulls Kelsey down next to her on the couch, shifting to braid Kelsey’s hair. Not knowing what else to do, I take Michelle’s nightgown up to Kelsey’s room, where she’s been sleeping. As I return, I hear Andy and Michelle in the den, fiddling with the TV.

“Pass me my phone,” Kelsey says quietly.

“What are you doing?” I ask. She looks flatly at me, her hair reminiscent of her fifth-grade picture.

“I want sushi.”

“Great—let’s order sushi.”

“I want to go out.”

“Okay, let me grab my bag.”

She puts up a hand to pause me, dropping her voice. “Logan, I need a break from this house.” She gestures with the pig and then visibly forces herself to put it down. “From everything.” She starts to tug her hair loose. “I want to have a drink and a cigarette. With girls who have lives of their own with sex and islands and not popcorn and their parents. Divorced girls whose friends are divorced, whose dogs are divorced, and they won’t look at me like you—like I’m dying.”

“Okay,” I say, shrugging casually against the hurt.

She jumps up, shaking out the last of the braid. “Tell them I needed
some air. I’ll be back by eleven.” Throwing her phone and keys into her bag, she leaves the wipes and a pacifier on the chest. “I am, though,” she says softly, chin angled slightly, her hand on the doorknob.

“What?” I ask.

“Dying.”

Midnight comes and goes. I persuade a perturbed Michelle to sleep down the hill in her own bed and promise to text when Kelsey gets home. I pass out on the couch watching HGTV, and daylight is breaking when I hear her key in the door. She’s only wearing a minidress and sweat.

“Hey,” I say, stretching up. “Did you come home and change?”

“I borrowed it. Sshh,” she says, utterly drained. “It’s Thursday. I made it. Just wake me when Jessie gets home.”

A few weeks later, Michelle
and I have spent the morning looking for snapshots of Kelsey being a “regular” girl for the upcoming Walmart campaign. Michelle wanted Kelsey to do this with us, but she’s still asleep.

The nights of Jessie’s departures have fallen into a routine. Without ever asking me to join her, Kelsey is through the door on the heels of Aaron’s nanny, their cars only a few convertibles apart. To the tabloids, it looks as if she can’t wait until Jessie’s gone to head out and party, but really, it’s her unbearable absence that drives Kelsey from the house. She dances and drinks until her limbs are so heavy and her head so thick that she can manage to pass out only a wall apart from the empty crib.

“Can my seventh-grade perm be Photoshopped out?” I ask, since I have my bony arm around her in almost every picture that wasn’t taken at some contest. It’s comforting to discover that a record of those years remains. Especially given that my dad took everything off the walls one afternoon and threw it onto a smoldering leaf pile.

“What about this one?” I ask, holding up six-year-old Kelsey with a hula hoop.

“She has to look contemporary yet classic. I don’t think kids even know what hula hoops are now.”

“So, one where she’s playing Xbox in pearls?”

Michelle laughs. “Thanks for doing this, Lo. I couldn’t get Kelsey to sit still with these for one freakin’ minute.” I flip to a Christmas picture where Kelsey has scrawled out Andy’s face with a crayon.

“Hello? I need a ride!” Kelsey calls from the garage beneath us.

“Uch, she wants to go meet those bitchy girls.” Michelle clucks.

“I know.” I share her derision.

“Mom! Logan!”

“Up here!” we yell.

I hear her jog the outside staircase. The door opens, and she leans in the doorway in cutoff jeans, the white pockets hanging below the frayed denim.

“What can we do you for, Kel?” Michelle asks.

“I stepped on my last contact, and I can’t drive.”

“Well, where are your glasses?” Michelle reaches for the next album.

“In the diaper bag, I think.” With Jessie at Aaron’s. “So, is there any way you can drive me?”

“Can’t this Sage pick you up? She’s got three cars.” Michelle aggressively flips pages. “That I’ve seen.”

“It’s out of her way. Logan, please?”

“I need Logan to help me.” Michelle lays her palm on my arm. “This has to be done by Monday. Sit down, pick an album. We’re having a hoot, aren’t we, Lo?”

“I’m rediscovering my suspenders phase,” I offer.

Kelsey sticks a scabbed cuticle into her mouth.

“Can’t Peter drive you?” I ask.

“I don’t want to roll up like that. I already have GM tailing me. It’s weird enough.”

“Don’t be so antsy.” Michelle peers at a photo. “How ’bout you pull what Jessie’s grown out of ? That closet of hers is getting totally out of hand.”