Between You and Me (33 page)

And I swear the judge snorts. So fast it’s barely perceptible.

“The circus outside your courtroom today would drive anyone to distraction. Ms. Wade lives with that night and day. She’s had no peace to recuperate from her painful divorce, from the emotional distress inflicted on her by Mr. Watts.”

“Ms. Wade,” the judge asks, shuffling manila folders. “Do you have anything to say to this?”

She stands carefully, a steadying hand on the desk. “Thank you, Your Honor.” Her speech is slow. “I have not handled this divorce like I could have.” There’s a pause, as if she isn’t sure what to say next. “But I want to take care of my baby and be a full-time momma.” The judge looks unimpressed, but I’m not sure why she even asked Kelsey
to speak in this condition. “I just need a few days to think straight,” she adds, the “s” in
straight
an embarrassing “sh.”

“Ms. Wade has multiple charges pending against her,” the judge says, looking down.

“No one is served by prolonging Ms. Wade’s incarceration in a psychiatric facility,” Dan continues. “Certainly not the taxpayers. Mr. and Mrs. Wade are proposing to take over as her temporary conservators. We have a report from the county mental health representative supporting our petition.”

The judge waves him up to the bench.

“What does that mean?” Kelsey asks the room.

“Counsel, please quiet your client,” the judge cautions.

“What does it mean?” I whisper as both lawyers convene with Borenstein.

“It means this is over,” Andy says quietly.

Kelsey spins around in her seat. “I don’t understand.”

“Kelsey.” Michelle addresses her daughter for the first time. “Face the judge.” Kelsey nods and returns her foot to the floor, taking her body with it.

The lawyers resume their positions. “After careful examination of the relevant documents, this court hereby grants the temporary conservatorship of Kelsey Wade to her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew and Michelle Wade. To be reviewed in sixty days.” The judge bangs her gavel and rises. She pauses to look us over. “Good luck.”

A few mornings later, I
park the borrowed pickup truck and climb down into the cloud of dust outside the kitchen door. An AA friend of Andy’s has given us his ranch in the Santa Barbara hills for Kelsey to recoup, as far off the beaten track as we could get and still keep Andy in driving distance of L.A. He’s been back every day for meetings to “keep things moving in the right direction.” He’s trying to settle out of court with everyone, including Sage, who, along with the loss of her cocaine, apparently suffered grave, seven-figure emotional harm.

“There’s nobody out there this morning,” I marvel.

“Simple economics,” Andy replies, sliding a pie crust from the oven. I hand off his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and pass the other to Michelle, who’s been studying plastic-surgery web sites. “A pic of Kel’s worth, what? Half a mil right now? Those maggots’ll sit out by the fence a day or two, but eventually, there’s nothing to see and nothing else to snap but a buncha cows. Don’t fuck with me.”

“Does that mean she can walk outside now?” I ask, since we did get a few flyovers the first day.

“Maybe.” Andy hesitates. “Whatever the doc says.”

“About what?” Dr. Flannery asks, coming from his morning run. Another recommendation from Andy’s sobriety circle, he apparently has a lot of experience with this kind of hush-hush outpatient treatment. So far, he seems to be a stellar choice, inasmuch as Kelsey lets him in to check on her.

“Can she walk outside today, Tom?” Andy asks.

The doctor takes a biscuit off the table. “Let’s see how she’s doing when she wakes up. How far did she make it yesterday?” he asks.

“She sat on the porch for a while.” Andy gives an optimistic description of what was really a pass-through that they weren’t even here for.

“Well,” Tom continues, “she’s transitioning off the hospital’s tranquilizers onto a sustainable med program, and that takes time.” He plucks his coffee from the cardboard tray. “I’m going to shower. Holler when she wakes.”

“Will do,” Andy says. He pours the peach slices into the crust.

“Med program?” I ask.

Andy lays the top on the pie and starts pinching the dough the way Grandma Ruth taught us. “Everything she wants depends on getting her leveled out.”

“Right . . . ” I wander into the living room and stare above the fireplace, where someone has laid the Serenity Prayer in mosaic tiles. And I ask to be granted the wisdom.

Sometime after lunch, I hear
a door on the second floor open. “Logan?” Kelsey calls, and I run to the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m right here.”

She peers down from the landing in the pajamas I packed for her. “Where are we?” she asks, her voice as diminished as her demeanor.

“Santa Barbara.” I repeat my answer from yesterday.

“Room service doesn’t answer.”

“There is no room service,” I say again. “Just me. What do you want? We have peach pie.”

“That’s my favorite.”

“You want to come down? Get some fresh air?”

“In this?” She tugs at her top.

“Sure. We’re the only ones here.”

“Oh, okay.” She ducks back into her room.

In the kitchen Michelle is sitting at the table with her Nora Roberts. “We’ve had a request for pie,” I say brightly.

“Help yourselves.” Michelle drops the book flat on the placement and walks right out the screen door. O-kay.

Kelsey shuffles in, her hair in a knot, her glasses on. She roots through the plastic bag from the hospital that I’d left on her dresser, shoving the red dress aside to dig out her K necklace.

“Can you?” She sits down and lifts her hair.

“Of course.” I hold up the chain to ensure that the K faces out. Then, unexpectedly, a tiny hinge opens, revealing a photo of Delia. “I never knew this was a locket.”

“No one does.” Her eyes land on the book. “Wait—is my
mom
here?” Kelsey drops her hair.

“We’re all here.”

“But I fired them.” She twists to snatch the locket. “They’re fired.”

“You did. But then you were in the hospital. Do you remember that?”

She nods.

“So now they’re taking care of you—just for a little while.”

“The judge,” she says, remembering.

“Yes.”

“I have to get out of here.” She pushes her chair back so quickly it topples, and she grabs the rim of the table to steady herself.

“Kelsey, you’re not—”

“I have to explain to the judge that I fired them.”

The crash brings Tom and Andy running from the yard. “Everything okay?” Andy calls.

“What are you doing here?” she yells.

“Kelsey, you remember what we talked about?” Tom says in a dulcet tone.

“I fired you,” she repeats to Andy. “It’s over. Logan, get my clothes, we’re leaving.”

“Kelsey, you can’t leave,” the doctor says gently.

“I am leaving. Oh, and Logan knows everything, Daddy, now. She knows why you went to jail, so don’t think she thinks you’re a good person.” She strides to the stairs, leaving me frozen.

“Kelsey, I made them a deal. It’s this place or you have to go back to the hospital,” he calls apologetically after her. “Kel, I freed you.”

“I’d rather go back.”

He puts his hand on the banister. “You’d rather go back to the psych ward than stay with me?” he asks as if she’d said it in another language.

She slams her door.

“As I live and breathe
.” Travis sits on the edge of the pool table, wearing only his board shorts and chewing on a toothbrush as if it’s a cigar.

“Hey.” I greet him, inching around a pile of boxes that have my name scrawled on them. “Is Finn here?”

“He is.” Finn climbs out from between the wall and the arcade game he’s installing. It has a big Jeep seat, a steering wheel, and Travis’s face garishly airbrushed all over it. Finn wipes his brow with his T-shirt, and as it drops I see that his expression is uncertain.

“Sorry to just—it’s been . . . we’ve been out in Santa Barbara, kind of off the grid.”

“The only way.” Travis’s bare feet slap the floor as he switches his toothbrush to the other side and climbs into the driver’s seat. “Love off the grid. Love. It.” He hits a button, and the sound of revving engines and electric guitars blasts out. “Yee-haa!”

“Do you think we could talk?” I ask, nodding at the stairs. Finn
extends his hand that way, indicating I should go first. I climb to the loft, the sound of screeching brakes and explosions underscoring that the relocation was pointless. I check my phone. Finn leans against another stack of boxes. “I—she’s taking a nap,” I explain. “It’s the only time she’s okay not having me right there.”

“How long do I get you for?”

“With the drive, um, about fifteen minutes. I should have called first.” I bite my lip and sit on the edge of the bed, the fact of the cartons catching up with me. “How’s your movie project? How was New York?”

“Fine.”

“Guys love me!” Travis yells. “I don’t need to be air—just gotta be me.”

“Oh, good.” I lob my voice over the half-wall and look questioningly at Finn.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Turns out the texturizing campaign was unnecessary. It was just a matter of the getting tabloids to run the pickup-truck-brushing-teeth-in-traffic thing.”

“That’s great. I’m really happy for you.”

“Logan.”

“Yeah?”

His voice drops. “It’s been
two
weeks.”

“Have you turned on the news while you were packing me up?” I ask. “I haven’t exactly been on a cruise.”

“That girl’s in trouble,” Travis yells up.

I extend my finger toward the bathroom, and Finn goes in. I pull the door shut tight behind us and hit the ceiling fan for extra measure. “I’m sorry I was out of touch. This has been disorienting, to say the very least.”

“Everybody’s talking about this conservator thing like Andy’s daddy of the year,” he says, studying me.

“It’s just until she can show the judge she’s okay.”

“And she’s cool with it?”

“It’s only for two months—six more weeks, really.”

“And then?”

I shrug, wanting to pull his arms around me, to admit that I don’t know.

“So you’re sticking with this. With them.” He clenches his jaw.

“Look we’re
both
making our living as crutches to the weird and wounded. You had no right to forbid me—”

“She’s fucked up.”

“And who’s that freak?” I point at the toilet paper with his boss’s likeness. “Maybe this isn’t even a relationship, Finn. Maybe it’s just a really hot hookup we tried to turn into normal life, but the problem is, neither of us has one.”

He grabs my face and kisses me so hard I taste blood. His hands spread into my hair, pull me into him. I feel my body press lengthwise against his, and all I can think is yesyesyes, and then, just as fast, he rips me off. We stare at each other as we catch our breath.
Say you love me. Say it’s okay. Say we’ll figure out how to make this come clean.
“What kills me is that you’ll give that fucking family enough rope to hang you. But you don’t give me even an inch to figure this out with you.” He puts his hand on the knob and pushes it open.

“Dude!” Travis yells with exasperation “I was calling—let’s go find those Kangaroo Jumps up at the house.” Then I realize that all of the boxes up here have Fs scrawled on them.

“You’re moving out?” I ask.

“I got an apartment.”

“You did? When?”

“Before you disappeared. A friend of mine needs to give up his lease, and I hoped—look, it’s not a mansion, but it has a real kitchen. An actual ceiling over the bed. One-ten Normal Street.” He smiles weakly before peering at me, his blue eyes searching mine. “I want you to come so badly. But, Logan, they’re so far beyond weird and wounded. If you can’t see that, then . . . I can’t do it.”

“Finn—”

“Christ, you were right, I was so jealous when you first told me.”

“Of what?”

“Being part of that family.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I move first of the month, so let me know where to ship your stuff by then, I guess. You know where to find me.”

“One-ten Normal Street.”

“And just, take care of yourself.” He jogs down the stairs, and I
hear the door slam behind them, the guitar starting up again as the game plays its electronic siren to an emptied room.

A few days later, I
help Andy pack up a rental minivan to drive us all back to L.A. Kelsey has gained some color and much-needed weight. As she and I talk about what we’re going to get on our In-N-Out burgers, we watch the landscape whiz by unencumbered by motorcycles. “I’ve got a surprise,” Andy says when we turn left toward Wilshire. “There’s somebody who’s very excited you’re back in town.”

“Jessie?”

Andy pulls into the label’s basement garage.

“You know what else I
love that you do?” Terrance asks the sixth such question in the last hour. “The way you connect with your audience—the sexuality, the animal—it’s so powerful.”

“Yes,” someone agrees. More clapping.

“So, what we want to do with this album is a three-sixty comeback.” Terrance shakes his large gold watch back down his arm, and I dart my eyes to Kelsey’s inscrutable face. “But we gotta acknowledge the car accident—I don’t mean the actual car accident, I mean you—but hey.” He points across the table. “Make a note. A video that does some twist on the accident—maybe we set it at Disney. You could run over Mickey.” He cracks himself up. “Nah, that’ll cost—but damn . . . damn! That’s it!” He slaps the marble. “
Car Accident.
That’s the album. Slow down and have a look.”

Kelsey’s semblance of a smile dies.

“I want these to be the best fucking songs ever.” He tents both hands on the table. “The best fucking songs this label has ever recorded. This is gonna be huge. Huge!”

We don’t make the turnoff
for the Canyon. Instead, we proceed through the looming palms of Beverly Hills, and I wonder who we’re picking up now. A vocal coach? A live-in trainer? We arrive at a gated
community, and the guard waves us through. Farther down the road, we drive into the courtyard of a hulking mansion suggesting a French chateau by Donald Trump. Andy pulls the car around three stone dolphins rising from the central fountain.