Dedication (26 page)

December 24, 2005

Avoiding the rowdy throngs of paparazzi barricading the Sharpe gates, the rental car—“A Dodge Daytona!” Jocelyn shouts into her cell from the front seat, “I know! How Andy Griffith is that?”—pulls in half a mile down, curving past skeletons of barns from a different era eroding in snow-covered fields. My suitcase open beside me on the backseat, I zip the cashmere hoodie over my bra and extract my hairbrush, trying to slow my lungs, my heart, my brain, trying to ignore her stream of invectives—“Vermont! Fucking Vermont!”—and use these last few minutes to debate if this is a massive mistake. Decisively tossing Mom’s balled-up nightgown out the open window I press the button to raise the pane before crisply snapping the hem of my jeans over my kitten-heeled boots.

The car slows to a stop along the dirt road.

“Here?”
Jocelyn asks the driver. He hands her yet another sheet of lined paper with Jake’s scrawled instructions and hops out to open my door.

“Oh, okay, thank you,” I say to him, now actually obligated to leave the heated vehicle. The supple leather sinks into the deep snow as I stand. “Are you
sure
this is right?”

“Hey! Up here!” Jake’s voice calls and I pivot around, blinking up to where he sits, smoking a cigarette, his legs dangling over the edge of a decaying tree house. Out here in the middle of a field, in the middle of winter. He waves. “Good morning.”

The Dodge suddenly revs its engine, the back wheels unearthing a spray of snow as it pulls away, leaving us in chirp-filled stillness. Shielding my eyes from the crisp sun, I look to where his suspended boots swing like Kermit feet. “Of course you’re up a tree.”

“The view’s really something!” he shouts down. “Promise!”

“Okay…” I clomp through the powder and begin to ascend the rough-hewn planks of wood nailed through the bark. His hand reaches to pull me assuredly to the platform.

“Lost your coat?” he asks, unsnapping his jacket.

I slip it on, feeling how his body has warmed it through. “No time to get it in the Exodus.” I swivel myself around and let my legs remain hanging off the side beside his. And the view is gorgeous, acres of branches forming a black lattice against the ivory and the Sharpe house sitting upon its cake platter in the distance.

“Smoke?”

“Not since college. I’d think with your voice…”

He looks down at the stub of his butt. “Recording industry keeps the tobacco industry alive. Backstage at the Grammys, everyone’s got a honey bear in one hand and a pack of Marlboros in the other. But I try to confine it to late-night or when I’m…a little nervous. Otherwise my team gets on my case.”

“You have a team?” I ask, straightening my arms against the wood floor.

“Well, you know, my throat guy, my trainer, my publicist—”

“Yes, we’ve bonded. What, you couldn’t get an
actual
deposed dictator?”

He laughs. “I know, she’s fierce, right? I need that though. I thrive on it. I believe you planted those seeds pretty deep.” He stubs out the cigarette in an ashy semicircle and flicks the filter to the ground. “Come on, let’s go inside, I think it’s a little warmer in there.”

“Is it really a sauna?”

“What?” He whips his legs around and crawls into the small room, which is empty, save for the blanket and thermos.

“Todd said your mom had hollowed out all the structures on your property and built stuff inside—you know, basketball courts and the like.”

He laughs as I crawl in beside him. “Well, there’s an indoor pool behind the garage, but that’s it. Good idea, though. Here.” He unfolds the blanket and drapes the heavy wool over my legs.

“Thanks. Why haven’t I been up here?”

“I don’t know, I kind of outgrew this place by the time we got together. You’re the first girl up.”

I rub my tingling palms together. “Tell the next one to bring ear-muffs.”

“I don’t want there to be a next one.” He puts his hand on my thigh.

“Jake.” I take it off.

“I shouldn’t have posed the question?” he asks.

“No. Yes. We should’ve talked first.”

“We did talk.”

“I mean about making huge changes. About hurting other people. I’m touched, I am. But our lives are so far apart—”

“You’re touched?”

“Yes, but—”

“Look, I did what I did because I want to.” He takes my chilled hands in his and holds my gaze. “I owe that much to both of us. To just put it out there, clean and simple.”

“But, here’s the problem, Jake.” I slip from his grip to gesticulate. “And I should mention, problem, like, one hundred three out of about forty-two thousand. I don’t know you. I mean, yes, it’s clear we still have, you know, heat. But I don’t know who you are now.”

“Well, for starters: this is my tree house.” He swings his right arm in introduction. “Tree House, this is Katie.”

“It’s Kate, now. I’m thirty.”

“Sorry, tree house—Kate—drop the
i
on her guest towels.”

“See?” I shiver. “I don’t even know about your tree house, and this was around before me.”

He unscrews the thermos lid. “Okay, let’s see. After
Return of the Jedi
came out I was driving my dad nuts about wanting my very own Ewok village—hot toddy?”

I nod, plunging my hands into his jacket pockets.

“I just kept bugging him and bugging him.” He pours me a shot.

“When he put me off I started twisting screwdrivers into trees with that kid with the Coke-bottle glasses—”

“The one with the lazy eye?”

He nods. “We were best buds back then. So, like, three trees die, my mother goes nuts.”

“I bet she did,” I laugh, raising the little metal cup.

“Cheers.” He clinks it gently with the thermos. “So my dad got some guy at the factory to build this place. And it was pretty cool, even if it wasn’t inside the tree.” He knocks back a swig.

I down the cupful, liquid coating my throat, burning its way between my ribs as I ready myself. “Jake,” I look down at the cap, circling my thumb around its rim. “That you wrote about me, about us, I understand. I get that our relationship was yours, too. But to write about my mom…” I look over at him.

“That was about you seeking refuge in me, the closest I ever felt to you, that we ever got.”

“But to come back to her infidelity album after album, I honestly don’t know if I can ever—”

“That’s not your family.” He taps the bottom of the thermos against the edge of the platform, his mouth twisting. “That’s my dad.”

“What?”

“He had this other woman set up in Denver. They have two kids now and he stopped traveling, so yeah.”

“Oh, God, Jake, I had no—”

“Me neither.” He clams his left hand shut and starts methodically pressing each joint in, cracking the knuckles. “Mom found out my first year in L.A. when she contested the settlement her lawyer unearthed this woman.”

“Jake, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sick. The divorce took years and the details that came out.” He grimaces as he switches to his right hand. “Like he used to collect things from his trips—”

“Those soaps, I remember.”

“Yeah, turns out he had guys from work bring them back from
their
exotic trips—he was in Denver the whole time. We don’t talk. So”—he forces a laugh—“that’s that.”

That’s that. Calculating the hours, the years, the decade of wasted ire, I pass him the cap back and watch as he refills it for himself. Chagrin burgeoning into relief, I study his face up close in the sparkles of reflected daylight, the shadow of stubble that wasn’t there before, the little spray of creases from his eyes, the cluster of pale freckles the camera doesn’t read. “Wait a minute—didn’t Kristi Lehman get a hickey up here? She did!”

“God, that’s right! I totally blanked on that.”

“So, I’m not the first girl up here!” I slap his knee.

“You’re the first woman, Ms. Thirty. Jesus, what do you think Kristi Lehman’s doing right now?”

“Rubbing her neck wistfully and praying you’ll write a song about it.” I take another sip, the liquid going down easier. “Actually, Sam saw her. She’s running the mini-mart in Fayville. You so wish you were here with her right now.”

“Not a chance. It was awkward as hell and I got a massive splinter trying to get her bra off.” He leans back, letting his torso rest on the gnarled floor. I prop myself on my arm and look down at him, his hair falling away from his chiseled face, the angle so intimate, a view of him that’s still somehow privileged.

“Come here.” He pulls me down, his arm wrapping around me, my head coming to rest under his chin. I lie there with him, our breath falling into sync, feeling like a strewn toy suddenly remembered and returned to the privileged crook. The masking Gucci smell from the night before is gone, letting the sweet scent of his skin disorient me, making me want to turn my face up and kiss. I take a deep breath, letting the icy air ensnare me in my purpose. I sit up.

“Jake what went down between us, well, we’re figuring that out. But it’s untenable that you never gave those guys any credit. Untenable.”

He pulls the blanket over his head. “I know.”

“Don’t joke.” I pull the blanket down, its weight flattening his hair. “This is a deal-breaker.”

He sighs. “I told you, it’s totally complicated.”

I push myself away from him. “And this isn’t?”

He lifts the blanket over my head, covering us both as he pulls me down next to him. “No work talk, I’m begging. We’re hanging out. What did you call it?”

“Getting to know you.”

“Yes, that.”

Flailing the blanket off, I pull back and stare at his sheepish expression, determined. “If you don’t do right by my friends, there is no ‘you’ I want to know. Are we clear?”

He sits up, the flirtatious boy energy suddenly dissipated. He looks me in the eye. “Clear.”

“Really? You’ll tell Jocelyn and your lawyers? You’ll sign the papers?”

“Yes.” An unfettered lightness floods through me as he takes my face in his hands. “I need you—Kate,” he emphasizes my adult name. “I think I keep writing about you just to keep your voice in my head.”

“I’m your Jiminy Cricket?”

He laughs. “
You
are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Can your lawyers draw up something to that effect, as well?” I laugh with him, finally able to let myself feel the elation of being right where I am.

He kisses me gently. “I can’t be apart from you again.”

“You just got one ring back,” I deflect, though his words outstrip my most outlandish fantasy.

“No, listen, I have a week in New York before my Asia tour launches. Spend it with me.”

“Jake, I don’t know if we’re ready to…” I hedge.

He runs a finger along my jawbone. “I promised I’d have Christmas Eve with my mom. Are you up for some Sharpe Family Holiday Festivities?”

“Where we douse her in sherry and set her alight?”

He laughs. “She’ll be good, I promise. And we have a beautiful tree.” He leans in and kisses me. It is delicious and insistent. “We’ll fly to New York tomorrow morning first thing. We’ll have an amazing week together and get to know each other for real. And then we’ll see,
you’ll
see that you and I are—that we’ve been waiting thirteen years for our lives to start—” He’s interrupted by the sharp crack of a tree branch breaking. We turn, following the sound to the scratched plastic window as brightness, infinitely whiter than the sunlight filtering in a moment ago, explodes around us.

“They’re taking pictures of the carolers.” Susan lets the taupe silk curtain drop back. “What kind of inhumane outfit makes its photographers work Christmas Eve?”

I set my champagne flute down on the coffee table, wishing it were whiskey. “Actually, I think they all work freelance, so they’re sort of out there by choice.”

“It’s always tempting to open the door and just let them take their pictures so they can go home,” Jake says from atop the ladder where he’s straightening the angel. The last chorus of “O Tannenbaum” grows quiet as they move on to a house not under siege. “But it doesn’t work like that.”

“There, dear, that’s much better,” Susan nods approvingly from the brocade settee and Jake beams, reaching in to space the garlands and lights. “It was making me seasick. Smoked salmon?” She nudges the sterling tray of pristine triangles toward me.

“No, thank you,” I say, my stomach not having caught up to a festive holiday meal from running through fields with a charge of telephoto lenses at my heels. “They did a great job of putting everything back together,” I offer to mollify declining her canapés, looking around the room, the silence I remember about this house once again stiflingly thick. “Speaking of carols, could we put some on?” I ask.

“Oh.” Her lined face sinks. “This is my first Christmas here in ages. I wasn’t even sure we still had ornaments. I usually meet Jake and my brother’s family in Vail. Let me check.” Knuckles against the brocade she pushes herself up and makes her way, reasonably steadily, to the bookshelves where a row of CDs sits among picture frames and a few velum-bound volumes on Nelson. She unfolds her glasses from the gold chain around her neck and peruses the labels. “The Vienna Boys Choir,” she announces after a few moments of browsing. “That’ll sound festive.” She puts the disk into the machine and strains of “Exultate Jublilate” fill the room. Not exactly chestnuts roasting, but better than the deafening nothing.