Bridge To Happiness (32 page)

The music went on and eventually the back curtain parted and revealed his band playing along with him. Molly and
Keely
and Renee were clapping along to the music as the songs grew faster and more upbeat, and soon the place was rocking and I just joined in and had fun, though it took another couple of drinks to properly loosen me up.

After a short break, the next set of songs started with ballads, and the songs built and the band rocked on until Rio and his guitar players were extending the songs with instrumental challenges, as he moved from rhythm guitarist, to the bass guitarist, to the drummer and to the keyboard player; one rocking song led into a well known heel-kicker about lowdown bars and wild women. The crowd went nuts when they finished and left the stage.

Everyone was on their feet, clapping and waiting for the encore. They came back out and crowd applauded and sat down again. I noticed Rio made some kind of gesture to the band before they played the intro to his biggest hit,
It Feels Like Crazy Sometimes
.

He started singing as he came down the front steps into the audience, walked in our direction before I could realize what was happening. He kicked the chair next to me around and straddled it, his arms resting on the back, holding the mike and singing to me.

Stunned, I stared down at the dark hair on his forearms, and when I braved a look at his face, those eyes had me and I couldn’t look anywhere else as he sang:

It feels like crazy sometimes,

To have loved someone so long.

You wrapped yourself around me,

I can’t breathe now that you’re gone.

It feels like crazy sometimes,

This life I’m
livin
’ now,

Gettin
’ through this world without you,

Some days I don’t know how.

It feels like crazy sometimes,

To wake up and find you missing.

And I walk the floors and wonder,

What other man you’re
kissin
’.

It feels like crazy sometimes,

When I think back so long ago,

To the days before I met you

When my heart had nothing to show.

It feels like crazy sometimes,

To know what my mistakes cost.

I have no one else to blame but me,

Because now I’m a man who’s lost.

It feels like crazy sometimes,

Knowin
’ there’s nothing I can do,

I can’t go back and replay time,

And find my way home to you.

It feels like crazy . . .

Living life alone

It feels like crazy . . .

Knowing that you’re gone.

It feels like crazy,

It feels like crazy,

Sometimes, it’s just crazy.

Rio finished the last, long note and got up from the chair, but he took my hand and brought it to his lips. When he let go, he winked at me, then turned and loped back up on stage, “Goodnight, folks!” He picked up his guitar and left the stage to the audience’s enthusiastic applause, and the curtains closed and the lights came up.

The audience was on their feet, along with my kids, who were laughing and cheering, Scott and Phil elbowing each other and getting a big ha-ha of the whole serenade to their old mother.

I, on the other hand, was still trying to get my head on straight and my feet back down to earth, but after a minute I realized I was smiling.

“I can’t believe he sang to you,” Molly said, sitting down again. “Wow!” She sounded impressed, but I wasn’t as I watched Spider’s arm crawl back around her. I wondered if there was some way I could switch him out for Rio.

But Rio was not the man for my daughter, either. I just wanted to think of her with someone other than Spider. Someone safer, I told myself, and Rio Paxton was definitely not safe.

“Can you believe those eyes?” Renee said in a dreamy voice.

“And that voice,”
Keely
added in the same tone.

Renee sighed. “I’m melting . . . ”

“Hey,” Scott groused.

“Oh, stop it!” she said disgusted. “I give birth to your children. Let me fantasize about something, here, will you? This is the first time in months I’m not waddling around or exhausted, first time in weeks when I’m not pacing the floor and nursing the baby, or covered in baby powder and spit-up.”

“Yeah,
jerkface
,” Phil said, giving him a hard time. “Let your wife dream.”

“My dream is that you could sing like that,”
Keely
said.

“Phil?” Scott laughed. “Oh, he can sing, but all the dogs in town would start howling along with him.”

“I wonder why he picked you to sing to?” Molly speculated.

“She’s a beautiful woman,” Spider said, which almost endeared him to me, until I considered the source.

“Mom’s safe,” Scott said. “She’s an older woman. She’s not a groupie. She won’t be waiting for him at the back door.”

“Or throwing her panties on stage,” Phil added.

My mouth dropped and I looked at my sons and asked myself when they had become so insensitive, and counted to three. “Please leave my age and my underwear out of this, boys,” I said and finished off my last cocktail, popping the cherry in my mouth so I wouldn’t say anything more.

Little did they know what was really going on. Although, truthfully, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was
going on.

I’d been back home
only a few days when I discovered Mike was back, or my visions of Mike were back, or my grief madness was back. Something was back. I came home late from Tahoe, took a long bath, and flopped into bed. As I reached over to the turn out the light, I saw the photo was gone again. I closed my eyes in frustration, and in fear, because I actually thought I had been doing better the past few months.

Was I lapsing back into mental disorder?

It didn’t seem possible, since I’d been sleeping and healthy and feeling as if each approaching day actually held promise. In the morning I could get out of bed and do what I had to do and not want to roll over and pull the covers over my head like I had for so long. I had thought my mind was actually under control again.

Because the photo and the visions had to be in my mind—there were no such things as ghosts—who else other than the housekeepers could possibly hide the photo? And they had no reason. I’d questioned them months ago about it, back when he was first appearing. These women had worked for me for years and would never play games like that with me. They were crushed when we lost Mike.

I stared at the nightstand drawer for a long time. I almost didn’t want to open it. But I did. The photo wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the floor, under the bed, or behind the night stand. Now I was on a mission, which took a few minutes. The photo was in the dresser drawer that held those three shirts of Mike’s.

Looking down at the drawer I had a sick feeling, before I scanned the perfectly normal room while my blood raced and my heart pounded, searching for what?

There was no shadow from the tree outside.

Could it be that he was he here?

“Mike? Please . . . . ”

Nothing. There had to be some logical answer. I would ask the housekeepers again.

But two days later I walked out of the laundry room with a huge basket full of Mickey’s clean clothes and saw Mike sitting at the kitchen table.

I screamed, and the basket tumbled to the floor spilling the piles of folded clothes. When I looked up, he was gone and the chair was empty. I knew then it was impossible for the housekeepers to have had anything to do with what was happening.

I wanted to vomit. The visions were making me sick.

He had been wearing a
vee
-necked red sweater and plaid shirt. I remembered he’d worn them that last Christmas as he ran around taking photos with a new high tech digital camera Molly and the boys had given him. Every time you turned around Mike was there clicking the camera, and at the time I was annoyed after hours of “smile” and I secretly cursed those big gigabyte photo cards.

Those clothes he wore that day were gone and had been for a long time. I sat down hard in an empty chair and waved my hand in the empty spot where I’d seen him sitting, because these visions were just so real—heart-
stoppingly
real.

“Mike?” I whispered. “Mike, please . . . ” Tears made my throat tight and my eyes burn. I couldn’t pull my gaze away and just sat there staring at the empty spot, crying miserably and helplessly, short breaths making it impossible to for me to do much else.

I think I might have needed a paper bag to breathe into to, but I had never hyperventilated before. So I just sat there panting and crying and panicking, until I could finally manage to take a long, shuddering breath.

And then I knew. I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to sell the house.

The next morning I was power walking up the hill toward home when a familiar long black limo pulled up and the tinted windows powered down.

“Get in. We’re going to breakfast,” Ellie said imperiously.

I stopped and bent down to look inside. All the girls were in the car, even
Harrie
, who was the only one who didn’t have a mimosa in her hand.

“I look like crap.”

“Everyone looks like crap at this ungodly hour,” Ellie said, tossing her perfectly-straight, precision bobbed dark hair, her makeup flawless, and she was wearing a St. John sports outfit and Prada sneakers I hoped she would later send on to
Suki
.

I was in hot pink running shoes, black yoga pants and a tee-shirt, with a lime green Cantrell Sports windbreaker tied around my waist, sweaty, red-faced, panting, no makeup, and my hair probably looked like a pineapple.

Ellie opened the limo door. “Come on. Get in, Eugene’s double parked. Besides, it took us twenty minutes to find you.”

I crawled inside and she poured me a cocktail. I held up my hand. “No. It’s seven A.M. I’ve just been on a walk for my health, which
Harrie
started.”

My doctor and close friend for decades was cupping a large Starbucks’ cup in both hands.

“What are you drinking?”

“
Venti
, double shot, skinny, sugar-free vanilla latte.”