Between You and Me (34 page)

“Uch, I told them no roses in the urns. The sun will burn those petals right off.” Michelle hops down.

“Come on out, Kel.”

“I thought we were going home. I really want to go home, Daddy,” she says, her voice faint as I unclick my seatbelt.

“The comeback starts now.” I follow them into the grand entryway, which looks as if Norma Desmond is about to swoop down the staircase in a caftan. The living room beyond is filled with their oversized peach furniture, every surface clustered with Michelle’s objets as if they’d been living here forever.

“This is your house,” I confirm.

“All of ours,” Andy corrects me. “And, Logan, you’re welcome as long as you care to stay.”

“But I want to go to
my
house,” Kelsey says, backing up, her hands feeling for the doorknob.

“Baby, that place had bad vibes. We thought you needed a change of scenery. Something more homey to ground you.”

“I don’t care what you think—I want to go there.”

“Hon,” he says gently, “we sold it.” He looks at me. “In about a minute flat, which shocked the hell out of me. Never could see the appeal. Kel’s bedroom is up the stairs and to the left. Logan, why don’t you see her up, and y’all can just take a load off.”

We follow a long hall past a series of bedrooms until we get to one that is unmistakably hers. A replica of her room in Malibu, complete with mantel and canopy bed, only instead of pink, every surface is the same butter yellow of her wedding roses. Kelsey sinks to the floor. I close the door and, seeing that the lock has been removed, slide down against it.

I pull up my knees and lift my fingers to my mouth. She curls into a fetal position. “Can he really do this?” I ask. “Who should I call? I don’t know who to call.”

“Going to . . . throw up.” Kelsey pushes herself to stand. Swerving,
she spots the bathroom and darts in. I hear the toilet flush a few moments later. “Logan?”

I find her slumped beneath another display case of her childhood glory.

“I have to live here for how long exactly?”

I go back to her room to get her laptop. But it’s not on the dressing table or the desk or anywhere. I slip my phone from my pocket, pull up Wikipedia, and type in
conservatorship
. “Conservatorships are put in place for severely mentally ill individuals, the gravely disabled, or elderly patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s. The conservator must prove to the court that the patient is unable to make legal, medical, or financial decisions on behalf of themselves and are unable meet their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter.” I look up. “I mean, obviously, you don’t fit any of the criteria.”

She shakes her head.

I keep reading. “It says the conservatee is subjected to the legal control of the conservator.”

“He has control over me? What does that mean?”

I read down, the implications sinking in. “You’ve legally ceased to exist.”

“Girls? Got your dinner right here.”

We don’t answer.

Andy comes in, tray in hand. He chooses to ignore my wet face. “You don’t want to eat in here. Come on into the bedroom, and we’ll fire up the TV for you. What do you think? Your momma thought the trophy wall would inspire you.”

“She wants her laptop.”

“What, now?” he asks distracted by soda sloshing over the cup rim.

“Kelsey wants her laptop and a cigarette,” I repeat, battling the impulse to upend the tray in his face, gauging if she’s up to making a run for it.

His smile falters, and he looks down. “I’d love to be able to give you that. Laptop, that is. But I can’t.”

“I can’t have a laptop?”

“Not with Sage and Pedro and the like out there waging legal
wars. We can’t risk you doing things you might regret. And baby, we have to admit there’s been plenty of that. I’m sorry, but you can’t be trusted right now. Y’all want to eat in here.” He slides the tray onto the sink console. “Be my guest.”

“How about the cigarette?” Kelsey repeats. “In prison, they get cigarettes,” she says as his foot crosses the threshold.

He flinches. “Get a good night’s rest, because tomorrow morning we’re having a little visitor.”

“Here?” Kelsey stands. “Jessie’s coming to see me?”

“I told you I’m making things right.” The door closes behind him.

“The judge said sixty days, Kelsey. There’s a review. We’ll figure out how to challenge this. They can’t—”

“I have to lie down.” She walks carefully to her bed.

Neither Dan nor Bob ever
returned my messages, leaving me no choice but to start cold-calling law firms. All of whom have staunchly told me that since Kelsey no longer exists, only Andy, as her conservator, can retain them on her behalf, at which point I hang up. With one day to go until the final hearing, I’m desperate to find someone to see past the impossible.

Andy’s had Kelsey scheduled from the moment he brings her morning coffee till she pops her sleeping pill at night. The label’s team has been working around the clock as well, this endeavor on its way to being as huge as Terrance predicted. That being said, if it’s possible to sing a pop song with the enthusiasm of a late-shift drive-through operator, Kelsey does. I sit on the edge of a folding chair waiting for a lawyer to call as Duane works Kelsey on the studio floor.

“Awesome!” he shouts, and I wonder if he has his contacts in. Every vertebra used to be expressive, every movement sinuous. Now she looks locked from shoulders to hips. Her hands don’t flex. Her face, once powerfully engaged, remains passive well after the music blares on.

“And two and three and spin and done. Yea!” Duane claps. “Okay, from the top!” As he turns away ostensibly to check his BlackBerry, I
see tears in his eyes. Maybe the judge could just watch her dance. Or listen to her sing. How could anyone witness this and not understand how much she does not want it?

“She’s killing it, huh.” I look up to see Andy dropping off some sandwiches.

“Not really,” I say quietly.

He steps closer, ducking his head and opening the bag so it looks to those nearby as if we’re discussing the lunch. “Come again? I need to speak to someone?”

“Maybe just stay and watch.”

“Oh, I gotta keep moving,” he says as he does every time I try to talk to him. “The meds are what’s making her slow.”

“The meds are what’s making it possible for her to tolerate this.”

He pushes out the door like I didn’t say it.

That evening, Andy says he’s
as fired up as the grill to have a “family meal while the sun sets.” On the last night before he’s indefinitely named her conservator. That kind of family.

I pace on the end of the patio, gripping my phone and whispering to yet another administrative assistant. “But he said he would call back. I have got to talk to him tonight.
Tonight
.”

“Logan,” Andy summons from the table.

“I’ll give him your message,” she says without conviction.

“Doesn’t he have a cell?”

Andy pushes back his chair and strides over. I turn away, hunching my shoulders protectively.

“I can’t give that number out if you’re not a client.”

“But I want to be. I’m trying to be. I have money—”

The phone is tugged from my hands.

“Andy, I wasn’t done! Andy!” I follow after him—he drops it into the pitcher of iced tea.

“Now you are.” He sits. “We’re eating.” Speechless, I watch my phone sink into the crushed ice.

Michelle comes out in her tennis skirt, taking in the spread. “I have drinks tonight. I told you.”

“You can sit with your family for five minutes.” Andy passes the coleslaw to Kelsey as Michelle tugs out her chair. She turns her Rolex to check the time, deciding not to comment on my hovering presence. “You girls going to watch something fun tonight?” Andy asks as he bites into his chicken.

“Nothing left,” I say. Fuck it, I’ll use the house phone.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve been watching fun things for fifty-nine days. There’s nothing left.” Kelsey flinches. I’ll go up to my room. There must be somebody still in that lawyer’s office; otherwise, I’m Googling a directory and going door to door.

“Sit down, Logan,” Andy instructs, as if he’s done with my funny business. “You’re making Kelsey upset. She’s—”

“
She’s
right here. Ask her what
she
wants,” I challenge, my heart thudding.

“Logan.” Andy wipes off his fingers. “I’m gonna have to insist that you ease up with those scumbag lawyers.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t think I will.” He lifts a chastising finger. “You’ve called over thirty firms. You don’t think those people have secretaries who’d go to the press? You realize the risk you’re putting Kelsey in, spouting off about private family matters?”

“Is there something in the news?” I’m confused.

“I’m just saying.”

“How did you—are you checking my call log?”

“You’re acting out.”

“You know you don’t own
me
, right? You know I can call whoever the hell I want?”

“Enough, Logan.”

“You threw me into a wall, Andy.” And suddenly I realize that this is what I can do. What I have. “Which is on police record. You assaulted a minor. And I’m going to tell them tomorrow at that hearing what you’re capable of.”

To my surprise, he gets up, strides to the French door to his study, and reemerges a second later with a paper and pen. He puts them in my hand. “I made my amends when you got here. That was the disease.
It was not me.” I scan the document, dated a few days after Kelsey was taken from the Magic Kingdom. A letter to the judge attesting to my confidence in my uncle Andrew, the very fact that I’ve been voluntarily working so closely with him for the past two years proving that he’s a changed man.

I drop it onto the table as if it’s ignited.

“There’s no way I’m signing this.”

“Have you seen me so much as touch a beer since you came?”

“No, but—”

“Have I once raised a hand to you, to anyone?”

“Has he even made a threat?” Michelle asks me.

“You busted Delia’s bookcase, you smashed that remote in Nebraska, you drowned my phone two minutes ago! I—I don’t know how to describe what you are now. Sober?” I battle with the certainty of my indictment, emboldened by the fact that he needs me. Has to have my endorsement to pull this off tomorrow. “You still scared the childhood right out of me. Still screamed for hours that you were going to kill me and the other women at this table. That still happened, Andy.”

“It’s not fair to rub it in my face. I told you I accept it.”

“I don’t give a shit what you accept. You haven’t once asked me how it felt. What it cost. Least of all the years, Andy,
years
of friendship! Fuck, it cost me my parents!”

“I get it!”
he roars.

“I don’t believe you.”

We stare at each other.

“You could never do this if you got it,” I say.

“I’m doing this because I get it.” He takes a steadying breath as he stands, backing away from me. “I am making things right.”

“This is the twenty-first century. In a civilized society. You don’t get to kidnap your twenty-five-year-old daughter and force her into a second childhood at the threat of taking her own baby away. That is the opposite of right.”

Kelsey jerks her chair back and walks into the house, but I can’t stop.

“She’s damaged because you damaged her. And now you’re turning
that into an opportunity. No matter what you tell yourselves, nothing will change the fact this is the single most selfish thing you could do.” I walk away on shaking legs.

That evening, Kelsey holes up
in the bathtub, watching old episodes of
Will and Grace
. I lie in her bed, rehearsing my speech for the judge, until at some point I wake to her sliding in next to me.

And then, in the early dawn, I roll over, and she’s gone. There’s no light from the bathroom. At the opposite end of the hall, I spot the glow of Jessie’s dresser lamp spilling onto the runner.

Pushing the door open, I see signs of Kelsey’s recent presence, the dent in the toile day bed’s pillows, the mohair throw in a heap on the floor. I go to fold it and spot a slim hardback of
The Velveteen Rabbit
splayed on the carpet. Flipping through the pictures of the stuffed bunny on his journey through the seasons of a child’s favor, I arrive where the book’s spine naturally opens from repetitive reads.
“‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’”

Letting out a long breath, I slide the book back into its thin slot and click off the lamp.

There’s a door ajar at the end of the other wing. In the third-floor gym, I find her silhouetted against the wall of blue glass, her legs spinning fast on the bike.

Seeing me, she sits up, pulling out her earphones. She touches the resistance knob, slowing her pace. “Can’t sleep?” I ask.

“Needed to move.” She takes a sip of water.

“I’ll let you be.” I walk around the pyramid of weights for the door.

“You can’t do that, Logan.”

“Check on you?” I turn back.

“Go at them.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not helping. You’re not helping.”

“I’m trying to.”

“I don’t need another person
trying
to do anything.”

I push my hands into my cardigan pockets. “Kelsey, I didn’t handle that perfectly. I can’t be perfect for you all the time.”

Her feet pause in their treads as she works her way up to continue. “You need to sign it.”

“What?”

She lets out a breath. “I’m asking you to.”

“Kelsey.”

“This is his way of making things right, and I’m just too tired to fight it.”

“But I’m not!”

“Lo.”

“What?”

“This is what it’s going to take to get Jessie back. And I can get through it. But not with you watching.”

“Okay,” I say, my mouth drying. “I won’t watch. Is this because of what I just said?”

“No, I’m glad you—I respect you, all of you, especially the not-doing-it-perfectly parts. So fucking much. I respect you more than anybody I’ve ever met. Which is exactly why I need you to go—”