Between You and Me (29 page)

“You just
what
?”

“This is not the time,” Andy barks, and Michelle drops onto the bottom step of the nearby staircase. “Cheryl?”

“You’re making them want to root for him. We have to shift the conversation. No more dumb slut who can’t manage one baby. Let’s remind everyone why they fell in love in with you.”

Andy steps in between Kelsey and Michelle to get his daughter’s attention. “Terrance wants you to open the European Music Awards in Stockholm, and Dan and Bob think it’s the right strategy. Show the judge what’s what.”

“Yes,” Cheryl says. “Love it.”

“Um, really?” Kelsey asks in dazed disbelief. “I guess I could do ‘Chemistry Lesson’?”

“No,” Cheryl states. “This needs to be big. Same girl-woman-virgin-whore we love but, you know, fresh.”

“The world premiere of the first single off your new album,” Andy announces triumphantly.

“But I don’t have one due for a year. I haven’t been writing.”

“The single’s the important thing,” Andy says. “It has to be huge, it has to be—a lot of things, I don’t know, Terrance said it real good. We’re meeting at the label tomorrow.” He claps. “Twenty-four-seven, baby, you’re living, eating, and breathing this.”

Only weeks later, I’m already
sitting in rehearsal for the new single, “You Can’t Tell Me.” With custody at stake, Kelsey hasn’t left the house except to go to the studios, leaving the paparazzi to stalk this unassuming one-story building as if it were the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Terrance sits between Andy and Michelle, waiting to be wowed. “Got to check this one out for myself,” he says. “Make sure baby girl
here knows it backward and forward.” Kelsey nods, still chasing her breath from the last run-through.

“Oh, you’ll be impressed,” Duane says, wiping his glasses on the hem of his tank.

“And what you can’t tighten up we’ll Spanx.”

Duane seems unsure how to respond, so he just starts the music. It’s been decided that because the choreography is so aerobic, Kelsey’s going to do a full lip-sync, no overlay.

“Okay, everybody!” Duane shouts. “From the top!”

Terrance fixes her with an appraising stare, and she stares back, something long absent locking into place. She throws her head hard to the left and her arms hard to the right, and she’s off, flying against the dancers. It is dynamically intoxicating. And then something suddenly shifts—the dancers seem confused and stop following the choreography. Breaking the fourth wall, they look to Duane, but Kelsey just keeps dancing new steps with equal ferocity and precision. It doesn’t hit us until she ends where she started, throwing her head hard to the right and her arms hard to the left. She did it forward—and backward.

Two days later, Terrance arranges
a private plane to fly us discreetly to Stockholm and a black-windowed car to ferry us directly to the stage door, skipping the red carpet. We’re welcomed in the dressing room with a magnum of chilled champagne.

While she takes off her K necklace I pull out her travel picture of Jessie.

There’s a knock.

“Come in,” she trills. “I’m decent.”

Eric is blushing before he can even get in the door.

“Oh, my God.” Kelsey throws her arms open. He gathers her against his leather jacket, and I see her lip trembling in the mirror. She playfully pushes him away. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

He tucks his hair behind his ear. “Well, my bachelor party’s next week, and I hear you put on quite a show.”

To my profound relief, she laughs. A deep belly guffaw I haven’t heard from her in months. “Thanks,” she says, “I needed that. Sorry, this is my cousin, Logan.”

“This is Cousin Logan?”

“Hi!”

“Nice to finally meet you. And that’s her?” he asks, pointing to the picture.

“That’s my girl.”

“Beautiful. She looks just like you.”

Kelsey smiles gratefully at him.

“Well, I better get back. Have a great show. I’ll be out there.”

Suddenly shy, she waves her fingers by her face. He pushes the door open—

“Oh, thanks for the bunny!”

He turns to look deeply at her from across the years. “Are you talking to someone?”

“What?”

“You should talk to someone, you know, professional,” he says with concern, but she closes like a prodded anemone.

“Thanks. Enjoy the show.”

Acknowledging that it’s become awkward, he raises his palm and leaves.

She sucks in her lips, then claps as if trying to jump-start herself.

Binky and I take our
seats in the audience, and it feels like hours before the auditorium goes black for the live broadcast. Kelsey’s voice comes over the speakers. “You think you can tell me, but you can’t tell me.” The lights rise on the sexy opening tableau, but as soon as the music starts, it’s as if she and the dancers are records being played at different speeds. They cut across the stage, while she seems to meander, neither dancing nor trying to lip-sync. Clearly drunk, she is walking through the routine, her eyes flat.

And then it happens.

As Duane and Pita lift her for what should be a tucked spin, she doesn’t draw her legs in fast enough, ending instead in a spread-eagle,
the fabric at her bikini line gaping. A split-second in our time, but I sense DVRs the world over freeze-framing.

Binky squeezes my hand while discomfort rolls over the celebrity-packed audience. “I’m calling time of death,” Terrance says loudly, already distancing himself. The second we’re cleared for commercial break, I run the aisle and bound the steps reserved for celebrity presenters, dashing across the stage after Kelsey. A flat drops in my path.

“Akta!”
one of the crew yells.

I double back to the other wing—skidding straight into a woman carrying a clipboard. “Delia!” I exclaim. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m with Fergie. Oh, Lo.” She’s crying.

“Come with me to talk to her.”

She shakes her head. “Fergie’s up next—then we leave for the airport.” She scribbles something on a corner of her paper and rips it off. “This is my new number. Give her my love?”

I pull her into a fast hug, aware that the Duchess is hovering. “Wait, Delia!” I have to know.

She turns back.

“What did you say to Andy?”

She stares at me a long moment. “If she kept going like this, she was going to break.”

Kelsey cracks the passenger window and inhales the few inches of air that she can get without giving the paparazzi a view of more than the top of her head—although they could probably even find a way to turn her sunglasses into a scandal. Since she stepped offstage in Stockholm, the dominos have not so much fallen as been pelted in her face. The label dropped her so fast Terrance actually billed her for the flight back. Her management e-faxed dissolution papers to my phone. Her agency “released her from her contract.” Cheryl not only quit but has been extremely publicly vocal about quitting for, you know, a publicist. And her entertainment lawyer calls hourly to inform me of yet another corporation executing its out clause.

Andy and I brief each other in the driveway. Like a funeral where the deceased passed away banging a hooker, these somber meetings address everything but the cause. He then plods back to the guesthouse, to Michelle, whom we haven’t seen at all.

I try to remember when this family started communicating through avoidance. I picture my dad opening our front door at all hours. I’d peek around his pant leg to see Kelsey on her mother’s jutted hip, Michelle wild-eyed because Andy had been on some three-day bender. His absence punished with theirs.

I guide the Suburban’s steering wheel along the GPS-dictated twists and turns, while we watch the houses modernize and their acreage shrink.

Kelsey sucks on her iced coffee. “Thanks for not letting me take another Xanax this morning.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I lose track,” she says, embarrassed. But I prefer it to finding her balled up at the base of the empty crib, crying because she can’t
stand for Jessie to think that she wants it like this. “I just can’t face being up in the middle of the night. I look out the window and see his TV on, and I can’t—” She catches herself. “I’m gonna get him that new Benz. Start there. Maybe he can persuade Momma to forgive me.”

“Look, you’re out of bed”

“And you’re still here,” she says softly to the glass.

“Of course,” I reply, although at this point there’s no of course about it.

“I think this is it.” I steer us into a cul-de-sac.

“Well, this isn’t an apartment in the Valley,” Kelsey says snidely. Legitimately. Marrying her was the most money this guy could make in a year without taking out a bank.

A couple of kids are playing soccer on the pavement. “Should I honk?” I ask Kelsey. “We’re kind of leading the
War of the Worlds
right into their playground.”

“Definitely, yes, honk.” The kids look over, and their jaws drop as the motorcycles swerve around the vans trying to swerve around the news trucks trying to get the closest spot to us. Kelsey cringes as a mother comes running down her front steps and calls her kids inside.

“I wish you’d let GM come along.”

“I told you, no,” she says with frustration. “Daddy doesn’t need a bodyguard.” She inadequately compares herself to Aaron. “Is that his house?” She points at the porch, with a baby swing next to a wicker glider, a little bucket of toys on its seat. “It’s just so . . . ”

“Normal.” I finish her sentence as I get out into the crush.

Aaron’s nanny lets us inside. She glances out at the barrage of cameras, and I apologetically pull the drapes closed. “From now on, GM comes.”

“Yes.” Kelsey collects herself as we both take in the living room. A far cry from a bachelor pad—there are even throw pillows on the boxy blue couch. I guess he got his white phase out of his system.

“The baby’s still sleeping,” the nanny informs Kelsey. “I didn’t want to wake her until you got here.”

“No, that’s good, thank you,” Kelsey says, but her gaze is flitting
from the basket of stuffed animals to the pile of freshly folded men’s T-shirts on the dining table.

“I’ll get her.” The nanny turns toward a hallway.

Kelsey goes to follow. The nanny looks uncertain. “She’s my daughter, and I’d like to wake her,” Kelsey says firmly. The nanny nods reluctantly and leads us to a door with a pink polka-dot plaque that says
Jessie.
Kelsey pushes it open and smiles, her hands crossing over her heart as she walks to the crib. “Hey, little girl,” she coos quietly. “It’s Momma.” Jessie wriggles awake, a smile breaking when she looks up. “Hi, bunny, hi. Oh, I missed you.” Kelsey scoops Jessie up and nuzzles her. “You smell delicious.”

“She smells like she’s got something in that diaper,” the nanny adds, flicking on the overhead.

“Well, Momma can fix that right up, can’t she?” Kelsey takes Jessie to the changing table and gingerly lays her down. Reaching for a diaper she freezes. “Logan.”

I see the framed picture of Jessie with Michelle, Andy, and Aaron. They sit on the porch we were on just moments ago. With a bracing palm on Jessie’s belly, Kelsey turns to the nanny. “When were my parents here?”

“I have no idea, miss.”

Kelsey looks over to the bookcase, and I see it with her, a photo of Michelle holding Jessie with the ocean behind her. “We haven’t taken her to a beach,” Kelsey says faintly.

“Let’s, um.” I step in to seal the diaper. “Let’s just get Jessie together, and we can discuss this at home.” Kelsey nods.

In the living room I now recognize Michelle’s coordinating hand in everything from the picture frames to the lampshades to the needlepoint pillow nestled on the armchair,
Bless This Mess.

The nanny clears her throat. “All right, then. You’ll have her back by six. She’ll be wanting a bottle as soon as possible, and she probably won’t need another nap for three hours or so. I can write it down.”

“I got it.” Kelsey flings open the door and, gripping Jessie against her, muscles through the scrum. The diaper bag over my shoulder, I attempt to make space for her to move and, at the same time, pull
out the car keys. Kelsey’s gaze is cast down as she shields Jessie’s head against her chest.

“Watch it!” I cry as her foot lands on the soccer ball.

“She’s dropping the kid!”

“Shoot the kid!”

I dive to grab her wrist just in time.

As soon as we pull
in, Kelsey tugs Jessie from her seat and slams through the front door. I catch up as she lays Jessie on the bed and dumps out the diaper bag. “Kelsey, what’re you doing?”

She storms into her closet, punching in the code of her jewelry safe, and sweeps the boxes into the elephant-patterned bag. She scoops Jessie up. “Logan, come on!”

I follow her down to the guesthouse. Andy looks up in surprise as Kelsey swipes the remote from the coffee table and spins at the screens, pushing every button until they all go black.

“Kelsey, what the hell?”

“Momma!” she yells. Michelle walks in from the bedroom, carrying a book, her thumb holding her place. Pointedly ignoring Kelsey, she reaches her arms out for Jessie. “How’s my little princess?”