Chapter 18 The Lady in the Bathtub from The Shining #3
It’s not fine. It has devastated her life.
When she was younger, we had a little pre-bed routine: she’d eat, then we’d dance, then it was bath time, and then I’d read to her.
We danced every single night. We called it Dance Party.
We’d dance to “I Know What Boys Like” by the Waitresses or “Back in the U.S.S.R.” by that guy I kissed that one time.
Sadie has always had a penchant for good music.
When she was only five years old, I was in New Orleans shooting Bad Moms, and we went down to Bourbon Street to take in the scene.
That day we came upon a band busking—bluegrass, delta, jazzy, bluesy stuff, with the washboard and everything—and Sadie couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
The next thing we knew, she was in the middle of the street, dancing, with her crazy hair that she never wanted brushed.
She was really feeling it, so much so that a small crowd formed to watch her.
One of the shopkeepers came out with a coffee can and the crowd started putting money in it.
She made about thirty dollars, which she then gave to the band.
I fear the Applegate has not fallen far from the tree.
I was a super shy girl—I could never have done what Sadie did that day in New Orleans.
But then my mom would remind me that I was on tour with CSNY for years, because of Stephen Stills, and then later with Manassas, because Joe Lala played with them.
With Manassas, when they sang “Find the Cost of Freedom,” someone in the band would hoist me, then still a baby, like Simba in front of the audiences.
One time we were at a CSN show, and Ringo Starr was there backstage. He asked my mom if he could hold me. But Stephen Stills was my guy, so I punched Ringo a few times and said, “No! I want my Uncle Stephen! I want my Uncle Stephen!”
“Does she not know I’m a fucking Beatle?” Starr reportedly said.
But what I really remember about being on the road was Andy Gibb.
Joe Lala played with him, and I was a bit older than in my Simba days, and I can still see the crazy crowds and Andy Gibb taking his shirt off.
My babysitter once said, “Christina, why don’t you tell Andy what your favorite part of the show is? ”
“When you take your shirt off!” I said.
He just laughed in my face. And even as a little girl I knew he didn’t love me, didn’t want to marry me.
Some days my life hurts so bad that I just sit here and cry—except if Sadie needs me, and I will push through all of it.
I’ll go to the ends of the earth. Mamas can lift a car, so for her I’m not giving up.
Sometimes I want to. Thoughts rush through my head once in a while—bad thoughts.
I’m lucky they just pass through. They are thoughts without an object; it’s not contemplative in any sense.
There’s no heaviness to it. They speed away like a douchebag in a Tesla truck.
I’ve had fun in life, but I’m not sure it was ever happiness, not ever a zephyr that lasted.
You can have fun and then everyone leaves, and you’re left with yourself and your thoughts and your feelings of loneliness and failure in the world and that overriding fear, “Does anyone really love me? Or will I ever love someone? Will I ever love myself? And why doesn’t anyone really know me?
” All those questions you have when it’s quiet.
That’s why I always have the TV on: to drown out the noise inside my head.
And that’s why I’m writing to you now, to tell you who I am, so that at least someone knows before it’s too late.
The house in the Canyon, the hit TV shows…
those are outside things. I never learned how to deal with the inside parts.
I lacked a teacher and couldn’t find the truth for myself, but then I remember how often that voice inside my head skews dark.
And I remember mornings with my mom, discovering dance, slip-and-sliding with uproarious friends, lying in bed next to my rock god, and of course having my brilliant Sadie.
Even all the meditation I did, the time at Agape, those moments of abandon and the moments of freedom—they’d all be taken away by someone hurting me, leaving me here with this huge ball of trauma.
Sylvia, Barbara, Stanley, Meghan Markle, Tootie, Gail, Olivia, Calliope, Stacey, Fucking Bitch… all these body parts letting me down. Though I do talk to them most days, and they listen. Teamwork!
All I ever wanted to do is dance. And be a mother.
As I sit still for the first time in my life, the traumas I buried deep inside rush to the surface and light up like a fireworks display. It’s still so beautiful, isn’t it?
I know Sadie’s heart is broken at what has become of me.
One of the ways she deals with it is by making sure that I still mother her.
“I want the nachos, but I want them the way Mommy makes them,” she’ll say.
It’s her way of getting me to go downstairs, make the snack, and bring it upstairs to her on a tray like my mom used to do for me.
All so she can say to herself, “She’s still here.
She’s still my mom and she’s still taking care of me. ”
Yesterday Sadie came and got in my bed and fell asleep on my chest. We had talked a few days earlier about how, just like her mother, she hates being touched, but there she was, asleep on me, holding my hand.
I asked her about it later, during one of our “lanai talks” out on the balcony, our sacred Sadie-and-Mama-only time.
“You’re my mom. I feel safe there,” she said.
Sometimes she just reaches over and takes my hand when we’re sitting on the bed watching TV. And then if I’m lucky she’ll let her eyelids droop…
In fact, she’s here right now. I’m typing with one hand. My other hand is tight in hers as she sleeps.
I am Sadie’s mother.
I am Kiki.
And that’s where I leave you.