The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet (19 page)

My limbs grow tingly and I start to tremble.
Fragments in my brain are running and colliding. Moments in my life, like a
fast free fall, once meaningless, but no longer so.

My emotions accelerate. The rapid pounding of my
heart is painful.

“Chrissie! What’s wrong?” Linda exclaims,
panicked and terrified.

I shake my head. I can’t speak, the words are
trapped in my head with pictures I can’t make go away. I hear Linda talking,
but it sounds far away as if in a tunnel. “Maria! Run and get Jack. Now.”

Then every part of my marriage to Neil is no
longer messy and unclear. Everything joins too quickly into truth. And then
there is nothing but black.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I
come awake slowly, a strange swimming upward through dark water kind of
sensation. I open my eyes. I am on my bed.

“Are you OK?”

I shift my head in the direction of the voice to
find Linda Rowan, with Jack standing behind her, hovering over me.

Before I can piece together in my sluggish brain
what’s happening or even tell them I’m OK, Linda roughly says, “You scared the
shit out of me, Chrissie. One minute you’re screaming in my face and the next
you’re on the floor.”

On the floor?

Then my brain kicks into overdrive and I remember
everything: the fight in the kitchen, trying to leave with Kaley, and Linda not
letting me.

I shift my gaze from her to my dad and wish I
hadn’t. Damn, Jack has that look again, the
worried over Chrissie
expression.
I hate that look. I’ve spent too much of my life worrying Jack.

I struggle to sit up and Linda tucks a pillow
behind me. “I’m fine. I had a rough night and I think it just caught up with
me.”

Linda makes a small laugh but Jack reproaches me
with his eyes.

“Are you ready to tell us what’s going on, baby
girl?” Jack asks quietly, sinking down on the bed beside Linda. “Don’t pretend
something isn’t wrong, Chrissie. You don’t just show up here in the middle of
the night for no reason. Neil’s been blowing up the phone all morning. He
sounds panicked and desperate to talk to you. Are you ready to tell us what’s
happening?”

Panicked and desperate.
Oh, I
bet Neil is panicked and desperate. I’m disappointed in myself how much it
pleases me that Neil might be suffering, too.

And then that voice inside my head taunts me that
he’s probably only in a panic because he doesn’t want anyone to know about his
affair with Andy. He has expertly concealed from everyone—me, his family, the
band, his fans—that he is gay.

Jack’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “Tell us
what’s happened, Chrissie. We’re both worried. Let us help you however we can.”

I stare up at them. The temptation is nearly
overwhelming. There’s an avalanche of emotion heavy atop me that I still have
to work through, but nope, I can’t tell Jack and Linda anything about
yesterday. Not yet. Not until Neil decides how he’s going to deal with this.

I push my hair back from my face. “We’re going
through some problems. They’re private. I can’t talk to you about this.”

Jack nods, his lips scrunched together, his chin
moving out just a touch in that way he has when he wants to probe more but is
willing to respect my wishes and not do it.

“We’re here if you need us,” he repeats, and now
they are both staring at me in a strange sort of unified-front kind of way.

God, sitting together they look like a parental
unit and a totally bizarre one at that. My life just keeps getting weirder and
more unreal.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit.
I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to come unglued again. I check the
clock. Fuck, it’s afternoon.

I look at Jack. “Can you keep Kaley for a while?”

Jack’s brows shoot up. “Of course. That’s
probably for the best if you’re going back to the house and have something you
need to work through with Neil.”

I stand up. “I’m not going back to the house. Not
yet, anyway. I was on my way to LA yesterday. I was planning to visit with
Rene. I’ve got a week of commitments I’ve agreed to. Then that thing Friday
night with Alan. I’d really appreciate it if you could keep Kaley until next
week.”

Jack nods. “My granddaughter is always welcome
here.”

I debate with myself, since there is probably no
way to say this that won’t stir thought or come out sounding wrong, but I find
myself saying it anyway.

“Just one thing, Daddy. If Neil comes to the
house, don’t let him leave with Kaley. He can visit with her here. But I don’t
want him taking her anywhere.”

Jack’s eyes widen in surprise, but I’m not about
to explain that one since it isn’t Neil I’m trying to keep Kaley from. It’s
Andy.

I’m a smidge calmer. A little more clear
thinking. But that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near being ready to cope with
Andy.

~~~

I
fight to keep my mind blank by focusing on the too-close bumper in front of me.
The traffic has been dreadful all the way down the 101 to the 405. It’s always
dreadful, but it’s a good thing today. The constant starts and stops, honking
and lane jockeying have kept me from thinking. I don’t want to think, because
once I start it won’t stop and this strange numbness will go away.

In tired relief I see the exit for Rene’s street.
I check the clock in the dash. It’s a three-hour drive from Santa Barbara and
I’m arriving in Brentwood one day late without having made a call to give an
explanation. I did call her before I left Jack’s, thankfully getting voice
mail, to let her know I’d gotten held up and would be here today.

Fudge, Rene is going to be pissed. Then I amend
in my head,
she is
always pissed with me
. My bestie makes the top
of the list of people in my life never happy with Chrissie.

Fuck, there I go again. Thinking. I stop myself
and instead concentrate on the street numbers in faded paint along the curb.
It’s been too long since I’ve seen Rene. I don’t even remember what her house
looks like. Blue? Or is it gray? I recall it’s a single story ranch-style
structure, but that’s all I remember.

A new list forms in my head.
People I’ve let
drift away.
Or did Rene drift away from me? I’m not really sure, and for
the past three years we’ve existed in that strange, awkward status of married
female/single female connected by childhood but no longer connected in any
other way. Sometimes it makes our times together miserably tense and awful for
me.

Why didn’t I remember that before I accepted her
invitation to stay at her place during my week in LA?

Perhaps I should have taken Alan up on his offer
for the beach house. Alone time would probably be the best thing for me right
now, and I’m not sure what to expect being with Rene again.

She pops up in my world during the Hallmark moments.
Kaley’s birth. An occasional party. Long girl chats by phone when
she
has something newsworthy to share. She has little interest in anything beyond
herself, and we rarely talk about me since she is so female competitive. It
drives her crazy that Neil has made it so big in the recording industry. She
liked him better when he was just a
freeloading jerk
in our apartment in
Berkeley.

Berkeley.

That brings Neil and too many other things
crashing back into my thoughts. Damn it! Not today, Chrissie. Not today. For
one day let yourself not think of
him.
Not the good. Not the bad. Not
anything.

Good advice, but I start to tear up anyway.

I let out a slow, steady exhale. Well, for the
next five days I’m not going to complain about Rene’s unrelenting
self-absorption and will keep my mouth firmly shut. I’m more than willing to
talk nonstop about her life instead of mine since mine is a disaster at
present.

Was it always a disaster? We loved each other in
Berkeley, didn’t we?
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. I’m
not sure of anything today and I hate that feeling, the feeling that I’ve read
every moment of my life wrong.

No, we loved each other. I won’t allow myself to
believe otherwise. If we didn’t, then it would make the other decisions I’ve
made unbearable.

That brings Alan to mind and more emotional
messy.

Thank God, finally Rene’s house. Driving has lost
its power as a diversion. I turn into the driveway and park in the loop by her
front door. Single-story ranch. Blue. At least I remembered something in my
life correctly, clearly.

I tuck my keys in my purse as I reach for the
handle on the door. I’m about to climb out of the driver’s seat when Rene
bursts out of the house.

By the time I’m standing, she is there in front
of me, hands on hips. Indignant. Beautiful. And ready to argue. Your basic Rene
nightmare, too much to deal with after the last two days I’ve had. Even if my
life were peachy at present I wouldn’t want this, her sparkly and angry and
ready to pounce.

Crap, I should have just bypassed Brentwood and
gone to Malibu.

“Just because you’re famous doesn’t mean you can
treat people this way,” she exclaims before I can say hello. “I rushed around
like a mad woman getting everything ready for you yesterday. You had me worried
sick last night when you didn’t show.”

The subtle change of her voice brings me up
sharply. She has been worried and I can also tell she knows something.

“I would have called if I could have,” I say
lamely, reaching into the backseat for my bag.

Her eyes widen in that way that makes her look
like an overinflated bullfrog as she rapidly dissects my face. “Are you going
to tell me what’s going on?”

Oh fuck, she does know something.

“Are
you
going to help me with my bags or
do I have to lug them both myself?” I answer, deliberately nonresponsive. 

“I should probably let you,” she says peevishly,
and then she lets out an aggravated breath, her pretty dark eyes shifting from
me to the car, and her demeanor changes. “Where’s Kaley?”

“Staying with Jack.”

Her brows shoot up. “You are doing it again,
aren’t you?”

I ignore that comment. I don’t know what she’s
implying but I don’t like how she said that.

She waits. She doesn’t reach for my second bag.
She just stands there watching me. My nerves grow tauter, but I somehow manage
not to bite on that one and hold back my words.

She eases into me until I have no choice but to
look at her. “Neil has been calling nonstop since last night. You arrive a day
late without Kaley. You’re performing with Alan on Friday. Neil is out of his
mind. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Chrissie. Are you
going to explain what the fuck is going on with you and Neil?” She lifts a brow
in that way that makes it crushingly rude. “Or should I ask what’s going on
with you and Alan Manzone again?”

I clench my teeth.
Fuck, Neil, why did you
have to call Rene and work her into a frenzy?
I can’t even imagine what
Neil said to her to get one plus one equaling seven. I’m the injured party
here, but oh, Neil said something—I don’t doubt she took it wrong—but now it
has her thinking I’m fucking over Neil because of Alan again.

Shit, there is no escaping when she’s fired up
like this, filled with opinions about me as I can clearly see she is now, and
in dread I wonder what parts of our recent nightmare Neil shared with her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say on a
ragged breath. Damn, I didn’t intend to say anything.

She rolls her eyes, aggravated and disgusted.
“Maybe you should before you do something stupid again.”

The words clog in my throat, wanting to be
unleashed, but I keep them there.

She reaches around me and grabs my small black
bag. “Neil says you’ve left him. You’re getting a divorce.”

Her voice is so soft I almost didn’t hear her,
and yet it manages to land in the driveway like an atom bomb. My temper
explodes.

“What part of I don’t want to talk about this do
you not get?” I hiss furiously.

She lifts her chin, haughty, unaffected by my
anger. “Well, someone should talk to you before you fuck Neil over again. For
Christ’s sake, Chrissie, you have a child. Don’t do anything rash. That’s all
I’m saying.”

Oh no
… I’ve been pleasantly numb for
nearly half a day, but having my longest friend lay the blame for the state of
marriage entirely at my feet makes it come back. My stomach turns. The world
spins. My body is consumed by shaking as the flashing images ruthlessly grab
hold of my mind again.

I shout it without thinking. “For once can you
just be my friend and take my side without me having to explain anything? Yes,
I think my marriage is over. Yes, I think I’ve left him—”
Think?
Why am
I being so pathetic about this? Why am I afraid to just say it? My flashing
eyes lock on her startled gaze. “I’m divorcing my husband. I’m pretty sure you
would, too, Rene. He’s having an affair with Andy!”

The silence between us is deafening. I don’t know
which one of us is more shocked, me blurting that out or her hearing it. 

Until this moment, where I am did not hold the
feel of realness. The look in her eyes gives it the air of a horrible absolute.

My marriage is over.

“Holy fuck, Chrissie.”

~~~

“Shit,
Chrissie. I don’t know what to say.”

My fingers tighten around my glass. If she says
that one more time I’m going to throw my drink at her. If
she
doesn’t
know what to say, how am I supposed to figure this out?