Trouble Me (20 page)

A
FTER
T
HE
B
LISSFUL
T
IME
I
N
O
REGON
, I fly alone to Boise to meet the boys for a few days, then it’s on to California to catch up with Andrew for the rest of fall semester. When we land in LA, Tucker picks us up at the airport. No fanfare at LAX today, since it’s just me, Hunter, and Beau. Tucker is always on guard here, though.

“They tail you to your house. Then they park someone at the gate twenty-four-seven, lie in wait. They’re complete predators.”

Beau chimes in. “I’d say more like vultures. They circle and keep their distance, then swoop in when you’re vulnerable.”

Tucker smiles. “Beau, you’re absolutely right. Creepy birds with red heads, that’s them. Definitely.” He pulls the SUV away from the curb.

“So, are you going to spill the big news or what?” Hunter has turned a Beats headphone around so he can converse. I guess it’s nice, the large cups over his ears, because, boy, when he turns one around, it means we better take notice: he’s actually entering the land of the conversant. I don’t say much about it because I very clearly remember wearing out my Walkman when I was his age. There’s a way to play a tape so much you can hear the other side of tape when playing it.

“Who’s going to spill what big news?” Beau looks around at everyone.

Tucker shakes his head. “How do you know anything, Hunter?”

“I just texted Andrew that we’re here, and he asked how far into the drive we were. Then I asked him why, and he said ‘you’ll see.’ I figured something was up.”

“You text Andrew all the time, do you?” I know he does. I think it’s cute.

“Mom, get over it. What’s the surprise, Tucker?”

“No, no, I’m not caving. You just sit tight, mister. All will soon be revealed.” Tucker takes a turn north on the 405 and just smiles, quite Cheshire cat-like.

The boys needle him relentlessly for who knows how many more miles. I’m about to my breaking point when we cruise right past the turn-off for the 10.

“Where are we headed? That was our turn. I thought we were going home.” Beau practically hops up and down in the backseat.

“I have been sworn to secrecy.” Tucker grins. He clearly loves being a part of this. It makes me happy.

When we turn north on Santa Monica Boulevard, I am truly stumped. “Tucker, I do need to let you know that the baby sits squarely on my bladder, so if this is an unscheduled sightseeing trip, I’m going to need to take a pit stop.” I’m only partially kidding. One of the joys of pregnancy: the constant bathroom breaks.

“Kelly, dear, you’re as bad as the boys. We’re almost there.”

We roll through Beverly Hills. As we pass Rodeo Drive, I’m truly confused. This isn’t our part of town. Sure, Andrew has to come here all the time, to meet with producers. But I take comfort in the fact, daily, that he breaks out in as much of a rash as I do when it comes to this excessive display of wealth. One, I don’t have that kind of wealth to display (Andrew does, but still), and two, if I did, I’d like to think I would put it to better use than buying ridiculous things. Andrew has kept his charitable business very quiet, and I like that very much. He does what he does to help people, not to schedule a photo op through Sandy.

I fidget. Tucker takes us farther north, and the car climbs out of LA and into the dry hills. This is a pricy neighborhood, and the lawns and shrubs and mailboxes all are perfectly tended and perfectly expensive.

The boys point at one house after another, wowed by the displays of wealth. They’re kids, and they still get impressed by the showy side of LA. Money doesn’t start to stink until you see what it does to people over time. It’s the houseguest who has outstayed his welcome, but the boys are still too young to bear witness to that.

“Tucker, seriously, I need to stop soon. And traffic is slow. Is there a point to all this?”

He turns right as I say this. “You’ll see soon enough.”

He pulls to a stop at a guard house. A guy with dark, thick eyebrows and sideburns steps out. Tucker lowers the window and flashes a pass. The guard nods and steps back in, and the gate ahead of us swings wide.

“Tucker—”

My phone rings. I answer, “Andrew, what’s up?”

“Look to your right.” He sounds like a little kid.

I look right, and Tucker slows the car, pulling into a short driveway. “What is this?”

It’s a house. A big house. A different house than the one Andrew’s rented the whole time I’ve known him, the one we’ve all come to know as our place when we’re in LA.

This is no rambling 1920s Spanish-style home. This is a mansion; there’s no other word for it.

The door is a huge arch detailed with ornate, curving wrought iron. The face of the house is large white stone, with just the right amount of ivy curling up the sides to meet the balconies above—two on each side of the arched front door.

Beau jumps from the car and runs to the porch, where Andrew waits. “Dude, what the what?”

Andrew hugs him. “New digs for the Pettigrew-Reynolds clan.” He looks to me. I make sure my face is neutral, putting my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

We step into the front hallway, and I catch myself before I say a word.

A marble stairway curves to the second story, and a sparkling crystal and brass chandelier dangles above our heads. The floor is diamonds of white and black marble.

It’s ridiculous. I wait for Scarlett O’Hara to sweep down the stairs, calling for Rhett.

“Whoa, this is a rich person’s house!” Beau races Hunter up the stairs.

“What is this?” I look at Andrew.

“How about, ‘Hi, darling, dashing father of my child, how I’ve missed you’?” He comes to my side and kisses me on the lips, wraps his arms around me for a moment.

“Andrew, really. What is this?” I feel my bottom lip quiver a bit.

“If you say that one more time, I may have to assume you’ve had a stroke. Um, I wanted to surprise you. It’s the new house. Our lease was up, and I wanted a place with beefier security. You know, like how we talked about after all the stuff in New York.”

“Please tell me you didn’t buy this.” My voice sounds wavery.

“No, of course not. The only house we own is in Boise. That’s our home. Well, now at Silver Point as well. This is a place we stay when we need to be here in LA. When I’m working.” He exhales loudly, looks like he’s losing his patience.

I take a huge breath in, trying to maintain calm. Tucker looks at me and makes a beeline for the front door, closing it behind him as he goes outside.

“You’re not going to cry, are you? Why in the world are you upset?” Andrew rubs a hand across his forehead.

“This house, Andrew. This isn’t me at all. I thought it wasn’t us. But you chose it.
You
did. How could you think it was actually right for us?”

“You know what? I’m going out back. I will chalk this up to a hormonal moment, and then you can come on out, and I will explain why I did something as dastardly as pick a house that is safer by a mile than our old one here in LA, and one with a pool so you can rehab your knee. How I thought you’d get a kick out of the handprints in the cement by the pool out back, the ones with Ingrid Bergman’s signature. But right now I’m going to give the baby mama a moment, because I don’t feel so gracious.”

He disappears down the hall. I sink down on the first step of the ridiculous stairway, feeling two inches tall, and try not to dissolve into tears.

I suck, as usual.

I shake myself out of it. I need to fix this before it gets out of hand.

I head toward the back of the house, looking for Andrew. The other rooms are ostentatious, to be sure (there are two dishwashers, two ovens, two prep sinks, and a Subzero fridge the size of a minivan in the kitchen), but nothing as outlandish as the
Gone With the Wind
staircase foyer. Maybe it’s not so bad.

I come out of the house to the pool area. It really is lovely. There are old, painted-white wrought-iron fences, detailed and intricate, like a balcony from the French Quarter. There’s a beautiful view of the city. The shrubs are large, old-growth holly bushes. In the center is a kidney-shaped pool, not gigantic, with a diving board on one side. It’s perfect for the boys. All of this is much more modest than the entryway.

Andrew sits on the pool deck, khakis rolled up, feet dangling in the pool. He looks out at the view, the city stretched out below. “This would be a perfect time for a smoke.” He looks up at me.

I rub my tummy. “No, it wouldn’t.” I come to him, kick off my shoes, sit, and ease my feet into the water. “It’s cold.”

“It’s in the shade most of the morning. And I haven’t figured out how to turn on the heater yet.”

“Doesn’t it come with a pool boy?”

“No. I don’t want anyone to get any ideas about the lady of the house, my
mamacita
.” He elbows me a little.

I put an arm around him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. I know it’s a little much. I should’ve asked you first.”

“The proposal, the Oregon house, I loved it. But this decision just caught me off balance. You know, I can’t run, I’m losing my mind a little bit with the panic attack and all, and we aren’t in Boise…”

“And?”

“Well, what makes me who I am?”

“I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“I feel rudderless. I’m a runner. Now I’m not. I live in Boise. Except right now, I don’t. I’m the person who everyone else relies on, except now, since I’m falling apart all over the place. I don’t even have a job.”

“You’re about to have a baby. You don’t need a job. You’ll be plenty busy.”

“I know. I’m about to be mom of a newborn baby for the first time in years. I think, Andrew, that what I know about me right now is not very much.”

“I think I see where you’re headed. What’ll help?”

“Maybe I need a project. I’m smart. I like to use my brain. Or help. Help someone.”

Andrew takes my hand, rubs his thumb across my palm. “I can go get some of those big Post-it charts. We could make lists. You like lists.”

“I just need to think about it.”

“And breathe. You still have me. You still have the boys. You have Tessa and Joe and your mom and dad. And Tucker loves you unnaturally, if you ask me. Maybe you’re defined by the people you love. The people you take care of.” He splashes me a little. “You don’t need it all figured out this minute. Give it some time to gel.”

I look in his eyes. “What about you? Are you okay? Are we okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m working hard and looking forward to meeting this little one. I like my projects, and I know this amazing girl, and this amazing family. They seem to like me. I, as they say, am sitting pretty.”

He leans over and kisses me.

I smile. “I really want to do this one thing right now, though.”

“What?” He looks straight into my eyes, ever the good listener.

I push him in the pool.

He splashes up to the edge, a surprised smile on his face.

“You did not just do that.” He takes me under the arms and pulls me in along with him.

“That is so, so, so cold!” I shiver.

He goes under, comes up in front of me, and shakes his head like a dog, whipping his hair out of his eyes, smiling with a wide white grin. “Go cry to the pool boy about it.”

I L
IKE
R
OUTINE
. I like that we have a routine. And I can’t tell Kelly this, but I like our little family life in LA.

Almost three months of peace. I was crazy busy on Mr. Oscar Bait movie,
Out of Range,
but how often do I get to play a mobster in hiding on a huge film? And then drive home to the missus every night. Shooting in LA has a lot of advantages. We spent Christmas with Kelly’s folks, we hired a tutor for the boys, we found an almost normal (I didn’t say normal, I said
almost
) rhythm, and I watched Kelly settle into the pregnancy.

But that movie’s wrapped now. Jeremy took me at my word, in my moment of weakness, and booked me straight through, so now I’m prepping for the next movie. And prep for my next movie right now means working out. Running.

I have to run. Kelly loves to run. I don’t. But Christmas with Kelly’s folks, I ate anything that was put in front of me and anything else that didn’t move. I loved it. But now I’m on to my next project,
Leave No Trace
, and I’m not ready for any comparisons to Brando or Elvis or anyone else who ate fried sammiches and porked out.

The script for
Leave No Trace
packs in the action and the mystery. A man and his girlfriend go camping, and the girl goes missing in the middle of the night. As the hero, I’m expected to run around and look fit while finding her and saving the day. And it’s too indie a movie to do any digital touch-ups of me shirtless, so here I am, getting ready to run.

Hunter will run with me, though. That makes it worth it.

I stand in the kitchen, drinking the disgusting green shake thing that Tucker talked me and Hunter into adding to our diets. It’s not even a green color. It looks like green-gray baby puke. I choke it down.

“That face is priceless.” Kelly walks in. “I wish I had my phone. That’s a moment right there.” She comes over and waits for me to be done.

“Your son’s been drinking this sludge too.”

She nods. “You’re both crazy.”

I set my drink down and take her into my arms. She’s big now. We’re in the home stretch, just six weeks to go, and I love the way she leads with her stomach.

She
doesn’t
love it, so I try not to say much about her expanding belly. But that’s my child in there. What’s not to love?

“Where’s Hunter, anyway? We’re supposed to go run,” I ask her. I have just a few days off in these next weeks. I try to pack as much family bonding as possible into each of them. Soon the movie will wrap, and I’ll be done until
Flat Rock
in May. I keep calling it paternity leave, mostly because Jeremy looks like he’ll throw up each time I do.

“Hunter!” Kelly yells for him.

“Mom! I’m right here. Hang on, Andrew. I just need my earbuds. Have you seen them anywhere, Mom?”

You know how everybody says people expect the mom to know where everything is? It’s true. Here’s the other part: she usually does. A guy can’t help asking, under those circumstances.

Kelly points to the island. “Hold still for a minute right there, in front of the counter. They’ll jump up and bite you.”

Hunter turns around and stares at the island for a minute. Then he plucks the earbuds off the placemat right in front of him.

“I don’t know about the sarcasm, Mom. I don’t think it’s good for your mom-ly image.” He gives her a hug.

“I can’t help myself sometimes.” She kisses him on the cheek.

“Hunter, go on out,” I tell him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I’ll get Ditto. Where’s his leash?” He looks at Kelly.

“Look in the garage. I’m going to start charging for locator services. You get two more free asks.”

He shrugs and goes out the door.

“Come here, Mrs. Almost-Pettigrew.” I fold her in my arms.

“Yes?” She leans her head against my neck.

I breathe in her smell, fruity and clean. She’s never worn perfume. I like that. Almost all of the women I’ve worked with smell strongly of some Oriental perfume, or some “essential oil,” which I have no idea about, except that they make my eyes water when we have to do love scenes.

Kissing people I don’t like is weird. But there’s a point where it’s the ultimate acting—if I can make an audience believe in my “love” for someone like Amanda, for instance, then I’m really pulling one over on them.

Right now, though, this girl, this woman, I
want
to kiss. I lean over and kiss her softly. She smiles under my lips. I’m pretty sure that’s code for
not so fast.
She pushes me away.

“Get going, mister. You’ve got a teen and a dog waiting. They’re not a tolerant bunch.” She pats me on the butt.

I leave her in the kitchen and cut through the garage.

Hunter jogs around the circular drive. Ditto bounces around next to him.

The air’s cool. In LA, people pull out sweaters and wool coats in weather like this. When we went to visit Boise for New Year’s, it was sixteen degrees for the high, and Joe, Tessa’s husband, still wore shorts. Today in LA it’s probably sixty.

“I wonder if I need my jacket.” I look at Hunter. He has a short-sleeve shirt on.

“It’s fine. Let’s go.”

We jog to the gatehouse of the neighborhood. It’s been quiet since we got out here in October. Kelly and the boys were supposed to go back to Boise for spring semester, but the boys came to us after New Year’s and told us they wanted to stay together, stay in LA.

Devon, their tutor, might be part of the reason they’re okay with sticking in LA with us. He’s young and smart and knows a lot about music. He’s been really creative with the lessons he designs for the boys, and he knows what makes each of them tick. He took Beau to the La Brea tar pits for a science lesson about heat and thermal energy. Hunter actually read a few books without a huge fit, mostly because one of them was about Pelé, the soccer legend, and the other was about the music scene in Seattle in the nineties.

I watch Hunter now. He jogs in front of me with the dog, bobbing along, all legs. He’s grown a ton, just since I met him. I can’t believe it. Kelly comments on it all the time, but it’s hard for me to think that the boys were ever tiny babies. I’m psyched to experience that with the new little one coming. Going from tiny and helpless to this big gawky teen kid. Kelly gets a misty look in her eye when she talks about it.

She’s been doing better. And nothing else weird has happened—nothing like the shove or the baggage tampering. She swims in the pool every day, and her knee seems better. Her smile is back. I can breathe a little now. When she had the panic attack, it just about killed me. Almost three months of peace has been complete heaven.

Ditto sits down on the sidewalk to the left of me. Damn dog. He’s old, and he’s fat and lazy. More than that, he knows our path is about to go up into the hills above our development. He doesn’t want to go.

Hunter stops with him. “I could just go back to the house with him.”

“No, that’s not fair. Listen, I’ll run back to the guard house with him. If Larry’s there still, Ditto can hang out with him till we get back.”

“I’ll come with you. If I stay here, he won’t go with you.”

We brought Ditto back with us from our New Year’s visit, when we decided we were staying in LA until I was done shooting
Leave No Trace
. He’s punishing us for kenneling him and putting him on a plane. And he sheds everywhere. I’ve never been home long enough to have a pet, and I don’t know…The dog’s cute enough and always seems chipper, but he’s a pain. I’m still deciding if pet ownership is worth it or not.

We jog with him back to the guardhouse. Larry’s still there. He’s one of the guards, but what Hunter doesn’t know is that he’s the one Tucker hired. I’m paying for the additional guard on duty at the development. It’s one of the things we set up when we picked out the new place.

We leave the dog with him and get up into the hills. It’s good to run with Hunter. His youth beats my lukewarm determination every time. I keep up with him, but just barely. I’m motivated by fear of humiliation.

The first two miles are uphill. Hunter sets a mild pace out of pity for my advanced age. I’m proud to keep it under fifteen minutes. We turn around at the top and head back down, LA spread out in front of us in the valley below. It’d be pretty, but there’s a brownish smog. It hangs over the city even in the January weather.

With about a mile left on the way down, a woman jogs up the trail toward us. I know who it is before I can even see her face.

“Hunter, don’t stop running, even though I do.”

“Why?” He’s next to me.

“This is Amanda Walters. You do not need to meet this piece of work.”

He makes a weird face. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it.”

We run downhill and closer to her. Her red hair is tied up in a red bandanna, all piled on top of her head. She kind of runs.

I grit my teeth. “I’ll bet you money she came out here to try to run into us.”

“Why would she do that?” Hunter asks.

“To be a pain in the ass. Because we haven’t seen each other since we wrapped in New York.”

“Doesn’t she know you’re with Mom?”

God, I love this kid. I could kiss him. “Yeah, doesn’t she?”

He looks at me one more time, looks at the woman in the doo-rag and shiny running tights. “Good luck.”

He picks up his pace and flies down the path, not even looking at Amanda.

Which leaves her to me. The last time we were alone, she chucked a plate at my head after breaking, entering, and redecorating my trailer. I wonder for a minute if I shouldn’t bring Tucker on these runs. What if she really is certifiable?

“Amanda. What’re you doing here?”

“Same as you.”

“Except I live right down there.” I point toward our house.

“So I’ve heard. How’s Kelly? Was that her boy who just ran by?”

“She’s fine. And yes, that’s Hunter.”

“How cute. A little daddy bonding.”

This chafes me. She’s an insensitive bitch. “Nobody’ll take the place of his dad. We’re just friends. He doesn’t need another dad.”

“That’s sweet.” She doesn’t give a crap. “I heard your fiancée’s having a shower?”

“You’ve heard a lot of stuff lately.”

“Am I invited?”

“What do you think?”

“Aw, c’mon, Andy. Let’s kiss and make up. Friends?” She puts out a hand.

“Amanda, listen. You’re a terrific actress. We have a history together. Let’s leave it at that. Can we just quit while we’re ahead? Please?”

She smiles slyly. “You know I love it when you beg.”

This woman. I can’t even believe her. “Clearly that’s a no, so I’m going to finish my run. I’ll see you around.”

I take off down the hill. When I get back to the guardhouse, Hunter informs me that’s my fastest mile split yet.

Maybe I should have ex-girlfriends chase my ass around the Hollywood Hills more often.

“Field trip today. Wahoo!” Beau announces this to the whole house from the kitchen table the next morning.

Devon stands behind the boys with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “Wahoo. But Hunter needs to hustle it up, or we’ll spend the day looking at the back of a Geo Metro on the 405.”

Beau laughs. “Funny.” Then he turns his body, just barely, and yells again. “Hunter! Let’s go!”

Kelly’s out back, swimming laps. All of us in the house were supposed to be leaving by now. She’s already said her goodbyes, and it’s probably good, because this yelling thing is one of her mom pet peeves. I try to curb the behavior all by myself. Andrew, the cool but sensible adult, to the rescue. “Beau. The yelling. Devon and I want to retain what hearing we still have.”

Beau nods. “Fine.” He gets up and pulls on a baseball hat with zombies on it, grabs his lunch bag and backpack. “I’ll be in the car, Devon. I just want to make it clear that I am on time, ready to go.”

Devon points to the car. “Duly noted. Go get in the car.”

I look around for my phone. Tucker’s due any minute to take me to set. “Are they behaving for you?”

Devon grabs three water bottles out of the fridge and tucks them in his bag, folds the flap over and buckles it. “These two boys? I wish I could clone them. So very different from the usual LA clientele.”

I’m proud of them. “Good.”

“Probably all the more reason not to settle down in LA for too long then, huh?” He smiles.

If he only knew the arguments Kelly and I had about that in NYC. “Absolutely.”

He points to the copy of
For Whom the Bell Tolls
on the counter. “Kelly’s reading that?”

People assume movie stars are idiots. Usually we are. “No, that’s me.”

He shrugs. “Huh.” He shifts uncomfortably. Maybe he’s embarrassed he assumed. “What do you think of it?”

“I like it. The whole book feels sun-baked.” I regret saying that. I could say that to Kelly, and she’d get it, but maybe not everyone. I try to continue in English. “It’s full of good stuff. Robert Jordan, the hero, in the part I just read was talking about living a full life in the now, in a moment. How one person’s few hours can be as packed as someone else’s whole life.” I stop. Kelly could explain it better. She gets it. She lives that way.