Chapter 2 #2
He gets in my face. “You haven’t earned a dime in almost two years, cost me a couple thousand in legal fees and retributions, and you’re gonna tell me what to do?”
My fists clench, my jaw tenses, and a flicker of fear stirs in my gut. He’s never hit me, but we’ve had shoving matches. Ones that usually get broken up before they go too far.
We’re the same height and same build. One might think we’re brothers.
But Pete looks way older than his years.
If he’d stayed off all the drugs and Jim Beam, he might look his age.
Becoming a father at sixteen probably didn’t help either.
My mom was only fifteen. I was what you might call a mistake.
When I was eleven, and Pete was somewhere between sobering up and binging, Peach and I were trying to get him into bed.
He slurred through the story of how he knocked up my mom in the back of her father’s Oldsmobile.
“I didn’t want you.” He laughed. “You know that? We almost got rid of you, too, but the doc’s office got shut down by the pigs.” His head lolled from side to side as he laughed. “We didn’t want you at all.”
Peach shook her head and whispered, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
Pete had to marry my mom to make it all official before either of them turned eighteen.
I’ve seen the pictures. Someone wrote Peter Laden and Shirley Nash Nov.
’57 on the back. They looked like two teens headed to a cotillion.
I remember my mom telling me she’d already started feeling me kick.
I wonder if that’s what I was doing when the picture was taken.
Her tight-lipped smile, the Justice of the Peace, and no wedding gown.
They were just kids. They didn’t know what was going to happen. They didn’t know Pete would meet Judd Pinsky and Dan Strother at a bar. And then the three of them would pick up George Wilkins and Hot Night would be born. That wasn’t a mistake, though. Pete really wanted that.
“Don’t miss that flight,” he growls. “Or I’ll let them throw in you in a cell and toss away the key.”
“I bet you would.”
His face relaxes a little. “You gotta do something, Harv. You hit a cop car, for crying out loud.” He pauses. “You’re too old for this shit. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
He’s been asking me that since he first put a guitar in my hands.
Pressing the strings over the frets hurt my seven-year-old fingers.
Pete said they’d get tougher, and I’d hardly feel it anymore.
He showed me the callouses on his fingers and tried to show me some chords.
I didn’t want my hands to be like his, and I fumbled through every lesson he gave me.
The excitement in his voice, the pride at seeing his first-born son taking after him, slowly faded until there was just this: that hard gaze, that growling.
That disappointment.
What the hell’s wrong with you?
“What can I say?” I shrug. “I’m a fuckup. Just like you said. But you don’t have to worry. This fuckup won’t miss his flight.”
He stands there for a moment, glaring at me as if he has more to say, but then he turns away and goes back inside.
I grab the Variety out of the pool. The ink is running on the page with Austin’s photo.
The blotting ink distorts his face, making him look like he’s melting, turning him into a monster.
One thing’s for sure: I won’t run into that dipshit for the next six weeks.
Maybe it’ll be a good thing to get away from all this mess.
All this chaos. Maybe I need an escape, and an excuse to get my shit together.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.
I go inside and stuff the paper into the trash, Austin’s picture faces up, his face warped into something otherworldly and unrecognizable.
It seems like a big mess, but it’s all very simple really.
Pete likes it when things are new.
He split with my mom when I was six because he was nailing Peach.
He didn’t even try to hide it. My mom came to get me, and I stayed with her for a little while.
But after Pete knocked up Peach with Seth, Pete suddenly became interested in shared custody.
I had to spend weekends with him and weekdays with Mom.
Peach was nice, I guess. She taught me how to roll a joint.
She’s half Polynesian, so she’d make leis for us and play Hawaiian music when she was high.
Mom and her were civil to each other for the most part.
Then my days at Pete’s started to last longer, and the days with my mom grew shorter.
They were fighting over alimony at the time, but I didn’t know about it.
Eventually, my mom met someone, and it just became convenient for everyone if I stayed with Pete.
I’m not sure where she is now. Last I knew, she was somewhere outside Fresno with her new boyfriend.
Then Seth was born, and he cried all the time, so they got a nanny for him.
Then Laura was born, and she cried all the time too, so the nanny took care of them both.
I looked after myself. Not long after Laura was born, Peach found Jesus.
Then she lost Jesus and found Buddha. She tried to clean herself up and didn’t want her children around all the drugs and partying.
So Pete started doinking Tamar.
Tamar was the Fresh-a-Dent Girl in those chewing gum commercials.
She was blonde, pretty, and nineteen to Pete’s thirty-one.
I’d hear them having sex during the day sometimes, and occasionally in the kitchen.
They married right in the backyard beside the meditation path some mystic talked Pete into building.
They picked up a group of Hare Krishnas off Sunset and brought them to the wedding.
One was an ordained minister in a yellow kurta with a circle of red carnations around his neck.
Pete had a long beard then and wore a blue and green kaftan.
Tamar wore a crown of daisies, her floral dress brushing her bare feet.
It was all spontaneous. There were no bridesmaids or best men.
One of Tamar’s friends handed out daisies, telling us to throw the petals at them when they walked by.
I tossed mine and ripped up fistfuls of grass from beneath the Japanese maple.
I wasn’t sure if I’d throw that at them, but I remember thinking I wished the earth underneath me would open like a mouth and swallow me whole.
Pete would try something on, wear it for a bit, get tired of it, and then get something new.
With each new thing, the old one would get shoved to the back of the closet.
I’m in the deepest, darkest corner of them all.
I remind him of the time he didn’t pull out.
I remind him of a difficult time in his life, having to grow up too soon.
It’s best to keep something like that where he doesn’t have to see it at all. Out of sight, out of mind.
After Sunny was born, Pete and Tamar had spells where they were sober, but then they’d relapse.
It happened a lot when Sunny was a baby.
They’d disappear for weeks with the band when they weren’t even on tour.
It’s like they just forgot about her. And me too.
Laura and Seth stayed with Peach, so they were never here.
Someone had to be responsible in this house.
I guess it had to be me.
One day, Sunny was crying and wouldn’t stop.
I looked for Tamar, but no one else was home.
They didn’t get her a nanny. I picked Sunny up from her crib and got scared I might drop her.
I didn’t realize how small and fragile babies were.
I had once been that small. I got her to calm down and started taking care of her from then on.
I changed her diapers, gave her baths, fed her, put her to sleep, and did everything I could to keep her from seeing what else was happening under this roof.
When Sunny was a toddler, I made up a game for her.
I’d put her on my shoulders and tell her to cover her eyes when I took her downstairs so she wouldn’t see the bongs, pipes, needles, and strung-out people in our living room.
I’d make her breakfast in the morning and read her a story at bedtime.
I tried to explain away anything she might see or hear.
When Sunny was four, they started putting me in Teen Street, and Tamar and Pete got sober again. The people managing me got the bright idea that I should record an album, so I wasn’t around the house as much. I still tried to spend time with her because we’d become pals, but Tamar was doing better.
I’d be gone for days or weeks sometimes, and I’d worry about Sunny, hoping that Tamar hadn’t started using again.
But Tamar’s been on this health food kick over the past year.
She bought a juice machine and goes to the health spa.
I think Sunny will be okay for six weeks.
It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from her.
When I go up to her room in the evening and see the light on under the door, I know I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.
“Hey,” I call through the door. “It’s past your bedtime, Sunny Side Up.”
No answer, and it’s no surprise.
I open the door a little bit and see Sunny in the glow of a lamp, lying in bed with her Big Bird doll. She’s got her back to me, but I can tell by how she’s breathing that she’s awake.
“I know you’re mad at me,” I say.
She shuffles under the covers.
“Can I come in?”
She huffs. “It’s a free country.”
I walk in and sit at the foot of her bed. I got her that Big Bird doll for her birthday last year. She has lots of dolls, but she plays with that one the most.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was going to be leaving.”
She turns her head to look at me. “You’re a real baloney head, you know that?”
“Yeah, I’m a baloney head. You’re right. But I’ll be back before school starts.”
She sits up. “I don’t wanna be stuck here with Seth and Laura. They’re dumb, and Laura always changes the channel when I’m watching Scooby-Doo. And Seth eats his cornflakes really loud. I hate them. They can kiss my grits.”
I don’t know how it happened, but it sort of became like Sunny and me against Seth and Laura.
Somehow, they became enemy invaders. You wouldn’t know we were all half siblings.
They both take after Peach, Sunny looks like Tamar, and I look like Pete.
I guess it’s also because they’re not here all that often, and when they are, they just sit in front of the TV and eat Cap’n Crunch or grilled cheese.
They’re boring. And they’re too old to want to play with Sunny and too young to want anything to do with me.
“You don’t have to talk to them. And they’re only going to be here a couple of days. Your mom told me.”
Sunny looks away and crosses her arms. “She always says that, then it’s like forever until they go.”
“I’ll get the TV out of my room and put it in here, okay? You can watch all the Scooby-Doo you want.”
She uncrosses her arms and shrugs.
“I’ll call you. I don’t think it will be every day, but as much as I can.”
“Can I go to the rehab?”
I shake my head. “It’s just for grown-ups, Sunny.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Grown-ups who haven’t been doing so good in life.”
She tilts her head at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well.” I slide down onto the floor next to her on the bed. “Remember when I told you about this?” I brush my hair off my forehead, revealing the raised scar.
“You said you ran into something.”
“I did run into something, but that wasn’t the whole truth.”
The same look is on Sunny’s face that Tamar gets when she isn’t buying a story.
“I had an accident with my car. I wasn’t being careful, and… well…” It suddenly seems far more shameful to have this conversation with my little sister than with a judge. “I made a mistake. A really big one. And now I have to pay for it.”
She stares at me for a moment. She grabs Big Bird and squeezes his beak. “Dad said you crashed into a police car. And then he said the f-word.”
“I did crash into a police car.”
“Why?”
“I was driving too fast.”
“Why were you doing that?”
“Because I’m a baloney head.”
A grin spreads across her face, and she giggles.
I grin too. “And baloney heads like me have to go to rehab for six weeks.”
She pokes one of Big Bird’s eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I’ve got to. And I don’t want you to be mad at me.” I take the doll and turn it to face her. “And Big Bird doesn’t want you to be mad at me either.”
She seems to think it over for a minute. “Okay,” she says with a little smile. “I won’t be mad at you.”
I stand up and hold up my hand to her. “Right on. Slap me some skin, pal.”
Sunny gives me a high five, and I get my TV for her and set it up. Then she picks out Sideways Stories from Wayside School from her bookshelf, and I read her a couple of chapters until she’s asleep. I tuck her in and quietly close the door.
I stand in the hallway, dark and quiet, except for the laughter from the TV downstairs. I go into my room and fall face first onto the bed. Behind the darkness of my eyelids, I can see Austin’s blotted-out face.
Six weeks in some butthole town in Virginia.
Six weeks of hippie shit and yapping to a shrink. I swear if someone makes me stand up and introduce myself to a group, I’ll say my name is Donald Duck.
I don’t need to go to rehab. Pete belongs in fucking rehab. He’s never been. He’s only stopped using on his own with a little help from Tamar or Peach. But at some point, he’ll slip up and dive right back in. He should be going, not me.
But it’s either this or jail.
I roll onto my back, and I can still see Austin’s warped face. Six weeks away from here. Not hearing about or running into Mr. Hollywood would be nice.
It would be great.
I bet he’d be happy about it if he knew I totaled my Jaguar. I remember when he was mad that I had the same car as him, as if it were some kind of competition. But then it did become a competition.
Jesus, why I am thinking about him?
Because he doesn’t have to do this shit. He doesn’t have to live this life and pay for things. He gets away with it all.
I’m the troublemaker and the troubled.
The devil on your shoulder who tells you to lie.
And this devil gets an all-expenses-paid six-week trip to Hell.
One thing’s for sure, though. In this Hell, I won’t find Austin Rivers.