Between You and Me (31 page)

“That’s not—” Kelsey shakes her head in frustration.

“Kelsey, your parents are the two people who love you most in the world.” The doctor leans forward and takes a Tic-Tac from her purse. “This is a safe space.”

Kelsey’s entire body flares, a visible rigidity spreading from her nostrils down through her flexed toes. “Please leave.”

“Kelsey,” she replies evenly, crunching the Tic-Tac. “I want you to hear how your behavior has hurt them.”

“My behavior.”

“You used to be so happy,” Michelle says, grappling. She wipes her nose. “You were always smiling, always.” She leans forward, struggling
to make herself understood. “But it’s not your fault, Kel. We get that, we do. It wasn’t Daddy’s fault, either. The doctor here has helped us to understand it’s in your genes.”

“
What
’s in my genes?”

Michelle looks to the doctor, who nods for her to continue. “One minute you’re laughing backstage, then you’re crying in your closet. Logan knows. She’s seen it.”

“That’s my
job,
” Kelsey says, disbelieving what she’s being accused of. “I have no space to react to anything
except
in my closet.”

“Kelsey,” the doctor starts again, “your parents only want to see
you
get the help you deserve.”

“Okay.” Kelsey stares at her, seeming to calculate how to counter being called crazy without seeming crazy. “I will look into it.”

“Thank you,” Michelle says softly, reaching for Andy’s hand.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Kelsey gestures for them to leave.

“The doctor carries her quilted purse to the door. “I’ll wait in the car. So nice to meet you, Kelsey. I look forward to our first session.”

Andy pulls two prescription bottles out of Michelle’s tote.

“What’re those?” Kelsey asks, eyeing them.

“My lithium,” he says.

“And your chlorpromazine,” Michelle adds.

“I have extra. Try ’em for a few days, it’ll level you out. I get it, the coke brings you up, the booze brings you—”

“Hear me from the sanest part of my everything. For the last time. Get! Out!” They don’t move. “GM!” she calls, and he rushes in from the den.

She turns to climb the stairs, but Andy roughly grabs her ankle, and before I know it, GM has apologetically picked him up and shoved him toward the door like they’re both on skates, Michelle scurrying behind.

As we catch our breath we hear Kelsey’s name from the den TV. “From what we’re being told, Dr. Laura will be addressing us from the Wades’ home.” We run to the doorway.

“Kelsey’s parents have asked me here today to counsel them in their time of need.” Kelsey grabs my hand. “Kelsey is obviously
deeply disturbed and in need of our help. In my professional opinion,” the doctor says, “Kelsey’s behavior has all the hallmarks of being bipolar.”

The text below her face immediately changes to “Kelsey Wade is Bipolar.”

Her knees buckle.

The questions drown one another out, and Andy jostles closer to the microphone. “Bipolar’s serious, but it’s treatable. We hope that with God’s help and the proper medication, she’ll get the care she deserves. We ask America to pray for our little girl.”

A few torturously miserable days later, I stand behind Kelsey in what was her and Aaron’s closet. Across from her customized racks and shoe cubbies sit the barren shelves and rods where Aaron’s things briefly lived. I keep waiting for her to spread her wardrobe around the room, try, at least, to minimize the specter that makes it feel as if the floor is tilting ever so slightly from the weight of her belongings.

Kelsey’s diagnosis has commandeered the news cycle—Republican front-runners, international crises, and even Pedro have been bumped. The cable channels have been rerunning her old interviews, going back to age sixteen, while talking heads who took one psych class in college analyze them for signs of a “split.” They’re even playing her bubbly dance videos up against her wistful ballads, proving that she was always struggling with a “duality.”

“I still don’t understand who she is,” Kelsey says as she clenches her towel around her damp chest with one hand and pushes through each hanging item with the other.

“The social worker?” I clarify as I make a note to get more Band-Aids. Her nail beds are raw and infected.

“Yeah. Who is she, exactly?” She tugs out a sun dress and holds it up, her brow contracted.

“I like that one,” I say, but she’s already returned it and continues flattening garment bags with quick swipes to identify their contents. “What’s wrong with the white dress?”

“I never wore it with Jessie. And it’s already been cleaned. I want her to recognize my scent.”

“It’s only been a week,” I say gently. “I mean, I’m not that versed in babies, but—”

“Please. Who is she?” She returns to the dresses.

“Sorry, the social worker is the court-appointed observer.” I read through the letter from Kelsey’s lawyer outlining the conditions of her newly restricted visitation. “Andrea Salazar.”

“And we’re picking this social-worker observer woman up?”

“At Aaron’s, yes.”

“She has to be in the car with us?” She turns to me, her hair sticking to her face from her shower.

“Yes.” I look pointlessly at the memo as the rules are not vague. Ms. Wade is not to interact with the observer. She is not to be alone with Jessie at any time. She is not to exhibit any indication of being on a substance of any kind. She is not to exhibit any angry or hostile behavior or the indication of angry or hostile behavior. “If Jessie’s there, the observer has to be there.” I summarize rather than force her to hear the requirements yet again.

Tightening her lips, she turns back to the rack and continues to swipe, the sound of the metal scraping the rod gaining momentum. “Here.” Kelsey tugs a bright red T-shirt dress off a hanger.

“That’s a full boob show when you lean over. Not an issue on a plane or in a studio, but in real life . . . ”

“I won’t lean. She needs to remember me. And it’s bright and cheerful.” Kelsey tugs open a drawer and withdraws underwear, pulling it up under her towel. “We’re going somewhere bright and cheerful.” She opens another drawer and whips out a bra. “I want to be somewhere bright and cheerful. With Jessie.” She snaps it on and then pulls her dress overhead. “The observer wants to observe me being bright and cheerful, so if you could please just call the nanny and remind her to have Jessie up and changed by the time we get there, it will be—”

“Bright and cheerful,” I say under my breath as I reach for the land line on her makeup table. I dial Aaron’s house and click it to speaker, awaiting the nanny.

“Hello?”

We both freeze at the sound of his voice.

“Aaron.” Kelsey takes the phone from me, gripping it with both hands. “Aaron?”

“Hey.”

“Aaron, I—” She falters as she stares at it. “I’m not crazy.”

Silence.

“I’m not. You can’t believe what my parents are telling you.”

“No one has to tell me.” He sighs. “Jesus, I’ve seen the pictures.”

“But you know how those guys are, I know you do. Walmart, Aaron. I was there—”

“Kelsey.”

“I just don’t know how this got so out of hand. I would never hurt Jessie, never.”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“But I wouldn’t!”

“We’re not supposed to be talking. I thought it was about the pickup. I can’t talk to you—”

“Wait!” Silence. Her eyes are wide as she hunches around the phone. “Aaron? Aaron!”

“What?”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Get it through your damn head. You’ve done it all yourself.” The line goes dead.

Kelsey insists on driving. She
has reframed the afternoon as the audition of her life, which is evident as she chatters to me with an enthusiasm normally reserved for morning television. I can feel Andrea sitting behind me in her boxy blazer, gripping her pen, her expression maddeningly impassive. Jessie lets out a moan in her sleep as she shifts in her seat, and Kelsey issues a string of reassuring murmurs to the Suburban’s ceiling. We hear Andrea scribbling. I realize Kelsey has hit her turn signal to get off the highway.

“Rest stop?” I ask through the smile we’ve both had in place for the last hour.

“Just need to pick something up. I’ll be quicker than a rabbit hump,” she apologizes over her shoulder, getting nothing in return. We roll past a Subway, a Michael’s, and a Dress Barn before she turns a hard right into a parking space in front of a Designer Shoe Warehouse. “I’m realizing these sandals are a little snug for walking. Be
right back!” She jumps out and dodges the paparazzi to dart between the sliding doors. I look down; she’s left her bag.

I turn around, still smiling for Andrea, as Jessie starts to shift awake. “Be right back.” Andrea lifts her eyebrows. The papparazi race to the store, lifting their cameras into place and yelling to one another as if they’re Special Ops. I run past the dumbfound shoppers.

“Kelsey Wade?” I ask a salesgirl whose lower teeth keep her gum in while her mouth hangs open.

“Here. Right here,” she marvels.

“Yes. Where is she?”

“In the evening aisle. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Kelsey Wade is in our evening aisle!”

I dash away from the photographers covering the windows like some Stephen King fog. I turn around the last row and spot her crouched against the rear wall. “What the fuck?” I hiss. “I’ll give you my shoes—”

She looks up at me, and I see that her jaw is chattering. The sparse customers are starting to get braver and inch their way toward us. I bend to take her hands into mine. “You’re doing great, Kel. Perfect, honestly.”

The air comes into her in little sucks. She scans my eyes, her pupils darting back and forth.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” I say. “You
can
do this. But we have to leave right now. Right now.”

“The shoes—if I come back without shoes, she’ll write it down.”

I scan the stack to grab the first box with a seven on it. We stand to find the customers now less than an aisle away. I hold her hand tightly as we walk speedily past.

“Hey!” she manages. “I love this place, don’t you?”

I reach into her bag, pull up her wallet, and slip a hundred-dollar bill into the stunned hand of the cashier. Facing the windows blackened with the swarm, Kelsey tugs me back. She takes the box and opens it. We both blink for an instant at the Lucite heels and rhinestone straps before she steps out of her sandals and ties them on.

Jessie is sobbingly awake by the time we get through the flashes
and back into the car. Kelsey asks Andrea if she will sit in the passenger seat so that she can comfort Jessie. Andrea says nothing but undoes her seatbelt and sits down beside me. I glance at her pad as I try to back us up. “SHOPPING,” it says, underlined twice.

The air is thick and
humid by the time we make it through the Disneyland turnstiles. Kelsey has settled Jessie, who is fussily gnawing at the knot adorning the shoulder of her mother’s dress. It is ridiculously satisfying to see the paparazzi slowed to a human pace as they’re forced to wait and pay to enter the park alongside the other families.

“Isn’t this fun?” Kelsey rubs noses with Jessie as she jostles her in her arms. Jessie’s lips lift into a smile as her gums work the fabric. Teetering on her ridiculous heels, her neckline shifting precariously with her daughter’s movements, she heads into the park, chattering to Jessie as she points out the fountains and flowers and life-size characters who stand as stunned in our wake as the little kids who spot them. Andrea walks behind her in her sensible flats and nude hose. I to see a wedding band and then steal a glance at her unlined features. I bet we’re the same age. “Oh, my gosh, Sleeping Beauty’s Castle!”

“Wow, she didn’t leave the baby in the car this time.”

Kelsey’s face drops as a sneering couple strolls past, each holding a mammoth turkey leg.

“Lead the way,” I encourage Kelsey just as the husband mutters under his breath, “Stupid bitch.”

The wife nods in agreement as they’re subsumed into the growing march of photographers following us.

“Miss Wade.” A man in a red blazer and a Mickey Mouse print tie makes his way over to us. “I’m so sorry, we had no idea we’d be so fortunate as to have you with us this afternoon. I’m Craig Winterson, director of the park, and on behalf of everyone here at Disneyland”—he turns out for the cameras—“I want to say what an honor it is.”

“Thanks, Craig.” Jessie starts to push against Kelsey’s chest.

“Now, Miss Wade, if you’ll indulge me, we would like to give you a guided tour.”

“I think she’s hungry.” Kelsey turns to me. “I need to feed her.”

“Perfect!” Craig extends his arm toward a wood plank door. “Our Princess VIP courtesy lounge is just up the stairs here to the turret. That way, you can have some privacy, and we can, uh, . . . prepare a proper itinerary for you to maximize the fun while you’re with us.” He glances over his shoulder at the cameramen, pushing between children and the gift-shop windows. I am not so sure that ours is the fun he’s concerned with. Kelsey’s heels click against the stone as we twist up the staircase. “It’s a bit of a climb, but it has its charms.”