Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
When I finished reading my mom’s manuscript on Sunday morning, I wept.
Great, heaving sobs over fictional characters who took their own lives, bodies tangled in the sheets in a passionate embrace.
Together in life and in death with The Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” blasting from the speakers.
Jakob didn’t want to live in a world devoid of color and light, and Petra didn’t want to live in a world where there was no Jakob.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that ending. There was nothing romantic about dying by your lover’s side. It was far more romantic to live by their side.
I lay in bed, watching the pale sunlight filtering through the lacy curtains and creeping across the honeyed floor.
Was Petra the fictional version of my mother? Would she have gladly died by Nicky’s side?
From what I’d seen of my parents’ relationship, love didn’t exist without pain. It broke your heart and destroyed you.
That was all I’d ever known about love.
Anyone in their right mind would run in the opposite direction if that person entered their lives, the one who was destined to change the rhythm of your heartbeat and the entire trajectory of your life. But my mother hadn’t run. She’d just kept going back for more.
Lured by the scent of coffee, I dragged myself out of bed and snatched up my clothes from the floor.
Dressed in the baggy jeans and cropped sweater I wore yesterday, I washed my face and brushed my teeth and shut out all thoughts of Gabriel who may or may not have already broken my best friend’s heart and probably had the power to break mine too.
If I let him .
I found my mom sitting at the farmhouse table surrounded by stacks of journals and sorting through a box of photos.
Joni Mitchell was singing “A Case of You,” her voice crackling from the scratchy vinyl record that had been part of the soundtrack of my youth. Joni. Dylan. Hendrix. Led Zep. Nicky.
I cut a slice of birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting, and carefully transferred it to a pretty china plate decorated with violets, and poured my coffee into a matching cup.
When I sat across from my mom with my breakfast, my eyes darted to a photo propped against a lit candle like a little shrine.
The flickering flame backlit the smiling faces of my parents leaning against the railing on the fire escape of our East Village apartment.
He was looking at her like she was a work of art; she was looking at him like he held the key to her happiness.
I did not want to know what this was about, so I took a bite of my cake and tried to ignore the photos scattered across the table, but my eye snagged on a black and white photo of my parents in their early teens.
My mom in a little, plaid skirt and an argyle sweater.
My dad in a black sailor’s cap, his hair longish and messy, with holes in the knees of his jeans.
He had his arm slung around my mom and they were looking at each other, not the camera.
After a few more angry bites, I just couldn’t seem to help myself. “What are you doing?”
My mom looked up from the yellow legal pad she was scribbling on and tapped the pen against it a few times like she was debating whether to answer. “I’m going to write our story.”
My fork clattered to the table, and I stared at her, horrified. “ Why ?”
“Because he asked me to,” she said. “And now I’m ready.”
Maybe she was ready, but I wasn’t.
I stared at her mutinously. My jaw clenched. “Please don’t do this.”
My mom studied my face for a moment. Her eyes softened, but it looked more like pity than acquiescence.
I knew my mother. When she made up her mind to do something, there was no swaying her.
Today she was dressed in bell-bottoms and an embroidered blouse, black with white stitching, with chunky silver and turquoise rings on her fingers.
Her long, dark hair was parted in the middle and hung halfway down her back, and at forty, she didn’t look much different to her twenty-something self, smiling in the photos.
She was still the same Alice from Nicky’s song, “Meet me in Wonderland, that evanescent dreamscape where time warped and twisted and the knave stole your heart … ”
“I have to,” she said, holding up a hardback copy of False Prophet , an unauthorized biography that had been published two years ago much to her disdain. “ This is not the man I knew. Your father deserved better.”
She hurled the book across the room. It hit the braided rug with a thunk and landed face up. “Even the critics agreed with me on that.”
“Who cares what he deserved?” I cried. “ You deserved better.” And so did I .
My mom slid a photo across the table and went back to reading through her journals and scribbling notes while I drank my coffee and tried not to look at the photo. An intimate portrait of a fractured family.
I don’t remember this photo being taken or which city we were in, but I knew it was the summer we went on tour with Nicky, all over Europe.
The room was decorated with mid-century Danish teak, pop-floral wallpaper and 70s-style orange table lamps. It was the summer of ‘79.
In the photo, infused with a soft orange haze, my dad was sitting on the sofa playing an acoustic guitar and smiling at my mom who had been caught mid-laugh.
She was sitting on the arm of the sofa, dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans with a studded leather belt.
She made it look chic, very rock and roll.
He wore a paisley button-down with a wide collar, faded denim, and the silver and turquoise rings on his fingers that my mom wore now.
And I, at the tender age of eight going on nine, had donned a baby blue dress trimmed in lace with dozens of strings of pearls and beads around my neck and my dad’s fur coat wrapped around my shoulders.
My hair was lighter back then, a towhead with messy waves, and my skin was suntanned a deep shade of bronze.
I was nothing if not dramatic, lounging on the other end of the sofa in cat-eye sunglasses with an unlit cigarette dangling from my fingertips.
“I must have thought I was Edie Sedgwick.”
My mom smiled. “You’ve always had a unique sense of style. Your dad was working on the song he wrote for you. It usually took him ages but that one came to him right away. In ten minutes, he’d created something beautiful. That’s the Nicky I knew.”
This was only one snapshot. One moment in time didn’t define his entire life or even begin to scratch the surface of my complex relationship with him.
I don’t feel like I ever really knew him.
He lived a nomadic lifestyle. He couldn’t commit to one city or one permanent residence, so he came in and out of our lives whenever the spirit moved him. My mother never shut the door on him, and if I lived to be a hundred, I don’t think I'd ever understand their brand of love.
Whenever he’d call, she would drop everything to be with him. London. Paris. Los Angeles. Tangiers. Stolen weekends in the Hudson Valley.
This cabin and the surrounding ten acres was his private oasis where he could shut out the world and retreat into one of his dark moods.
His relationship with fame was notoriously rocky and his struggles with addiction were widely publicized.
Self-destruction doesn’t only destroy one person. It destroys everyone around you. How convenient for him to check out without even trying to repair the damage.
I tossed the photo across the table. “How could you have settled for so little?”
Her brows knitted. She looked confused, but more than that, she looked hurt that I would dare to ask such a question. Probably because I never had. I’d always kept my anger and resentment hidden, simmering just below the surface.
“I loved him,” she said simply.
As if that was reason enough to let a man treat you like a disposable object. A shiny toy he’d toss aside whenever one of his groupies caught his fancy or the lure of drugs made him disappear for months, sometimes years at a time.
What I remember most about the summer of ‘79 were the late-night parties in hotel suites, my parents getting drunk and laughing in the next room while I watched TV shows in foreign languages and played cards with the roadies and swam in hotel pools under the watchful eye of sunbathing groupies.
In Dublin, I swiped a bottle of whiskey and spiked my Coke, and in Amsterdam I nibbled on a hash brownie, just to see if my mom would notice. She never did.
She was the best mother in the world when she wasn’t with Nicky. But whenever he was in the picture, her entire world revolved around him and his mercurial nature.
I stood from the table and scraped my uneaten cake into the trash then retreated to my bedroom and packed up my things, shoving my clothes and the books and set of paints and brushes my mom gave me for my birthday into my duffel bag.
Packed and ready to go, I dropped onto the bed and stared at the guitars hanging on the paneled wall like trophies. Why did she have to keep all his stuff? His coats and boots were still in the hallway closet as if she expected him to waltz through the door looking for them.
The last time I saw him, he showed up drunk in the middle of the night. On his way out the door the following morning, he said, “I never asked for this, you know.”
By this , I’d assumed he meant me.
But then he’d said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.”
I was fourteen, already jaded, but still hopeful. “It’s okay. We still have plenty of time.”
Making excuses for him was in my DNA. After all, I was still my mother’s daughter.
He smiled and it was glorious. Like the sun coming out after a long, dark winter. “I’ll see you soon, Baby Blue. We’ll spend some time together, just you and me, yeah?” He hugged me and kissed the crown of my head and told me that he loved me. “Take care of your mum for me.”
And I think that’s when I realized why my mom kept going back to him.
When Nick Ashby tossed you a few crumbs and a smile, it made you feel all warm and glowing inside, like you were someone special. Something precious to him.
As soon as the door closed behind him, I retreated to my bedroom, took out my sketchbook and pencils and filled pages and pages with drawings of him. And of us. A happy family of three.
But it was all just a silly dream. It always had been.
One month later, he was found dead in a Mayfair hotel. Cause of death: “accidental” overdose. And I always thought that it would have been so much better if he’d left that day without saying a word. Without filling my head with false hope. Again.
Because hope is a cruel mistress. It keeps you holding on even when you’d be better off letting go.
I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and walked into the living room. “Can you give me a ride or should I call a taxi?”
My mom looked up from the table and set down her pen. “I thought you were taking a later train.”
“You look like you’re busy.” I sounded like a petulant child but I didn’t care.
I just wanted to move on. Why dredge up ancient history? What good would it do to dwell on something you couldn’t change or fix? My mother couldn’t rewrite history, no matter how hard she tried.
She stood and rounded the table. “You know…you never cried. You just tried to shut it all out and refused to talk about him. You wouldn’t even mention his name?—”
“Because he’s gone. What’s there to say?
I don’t understand why you’re doing this.
” I gritted my teeth. “Who cares about Nick Ashby? No one. He wasn’t even there for you when he was alive.
So why do you want to memorialize him?” My eyes narrowed on her.
“Are you going to tell the truth or your version of the truth?” There was so much venom in my voice that I barely recognized it.
My mom reared back like she’d been struck.
I never spoke to her like this. Never. But I couldn’t reel the words back in and even though my stomach was churning, I didn’t really want to.
My mom leaned against the edge of the table and folded her arms over her chest, her gaze drifting to the window where a blue jay hopped onto the window frame. A splash of color against the brown landscape.
“It’s a message from a loved one,” my mom said. “That’s what a blue jay symbolizes. Nicky is trying to tell me something?—”
“No, he’s not,” I said through clenched teeth. “You need to stop, Mom. It’s been seven years . No more Tarot cards or crystal balls or searching for signs from the universe?—”
“I’m sorry if this upsets you but it’s something I need to do.
I need closure,” she said. “Your father was the love of my life. We grew up together. No one knew him like I did. No one . And I need to find a way to make sense of it all.” My mom held out her hands, palms up.
“To do that, I need to write our story.”
“Then just write it for yourself. The whole world doesn’t need to know. Just do it for you.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze.
“I should have waited until you were gone. That was silly of me. I’m sorry.
” She released a weary sigh and massaged her temples as if this whole morning had been taxing beyond belief.
On that we could agree. “But it’s nothing you need to worry about right now.
When it’s done, I promise I won’t do anything without your blessing. How’s that?”
Did I have a choice? Apparently not. She was going to do what she was going to do and there was nothing I could say to stop her. “Fine,” I muttered.
“Now. Would you like to tell me what’s really bothering you?”
“Killing off Jakob and Petra and resurrecting Nick Ashby aren’t reasons enough for you?”
She laughed softly. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me. But we’re going out for lunch and we can talk about anything you want.”
I relaxed my shoulders. I wasn’t in a big rush to get home anyway.
I had a bad feeling I knew what I’d find.
My best friend, heartbroken. A gift from Gabriel I wasn’t sure I wanted.
And the end of my little fantasy starring the Notebook Boy who had turned out to be a freaking musician. How’s that for irony?
“Nothing deep and heavy,” I said, putting on my coat. “I’ve had enough of that for one weekend.”
She crossed her heart. “We’ll stay in the shallow end.”
“Strictly rom-com territory.” I quirked my brow at her. “Something you should probably think about for your next book since you have yet to write a happy ending.”
She slung her arm around my shoulder and ushered me out the door. “You’re my happy ending.”