Every Little Step: My Story (24 page)

A FEW WORDS FROM LANDON BROWN

My mom was mad at me all the time because she said I loved my dad’s kids—Bobby, Krissi and LaPrincia—more than I loved my siblings in California. I didn’t get that. She and Carl had had two sons by the time I went to live with my dad; eventually she had a third. She said I loved my dad’s kids more because I talked about them all the time, always saying they need me, they need me.

She said, “But your brothers need you too.”

“Yeah, but they have me,” I said. “They see me all the time. The others need me.”

As the oldest, I felt protective of all my siblings. I still do. Even if sometimes I say they make me so mad, and I turn my head away from them, that same night I feel like such a jerk for feeling that way for even five seconds. Bobby and Princie were with their mother all the time in Boston, and I don’t think their mother liked my mother very much, so I didn’t really get to see them very often. LaPrincia is so independent; she never needed my help. Trying your hardest to help someone who never needs you is really frustrating. Listen, everyone needs someone. Talk to me. I’m here for this specific purpose of you being able to use me for comfort. That’s my job. Little Bobby used to walk on his toes all the time. That would make my dad so mad. It was so funny. I just want to see how he’s growing up. I want to see how all of this, life, is working for him. I hear he’s playing hockey. I love hockey. I want to watch him play hockey. But he’s in Boston and I’m in Cali.

When I stayed with my dad and Whitney and they weren’t around, which was often, the people around Krissi wouldn’t let me talk to her, wouldn’t let me see her, wouldn’t let me hug her. They would say she needed room to breathe. I’d be very disappointed by that. Whitney’s nephew, little Gary, her brother Michael’s older son, would wait until they weren’t looking and then walk her over. “Landon, she’s here,” he’d say. He would bring her to me so I could play with her.

As she got older, I think she was just looking for an idea of what a man was supposed to be like. My dad was all over the place, on the road. He didn’t really have much time to show her exactly what a man is supposed to be like. She
would call me, talk to me about boys, talk to me about Dad. She was really caring too. She would completely stop thinking about herself and would say, “How are you? Tell me about what’s going on with you. What’s going on there?”

That was new to me because everybody always wants to know about my dad, everyone wants to get their questions out of the way. Nobody really cares what’s going on with you. But here she was, a little kid, like eleven, maybe twelve, asking what was going on with me.

Her personality went through big changes as she got older. When she was little, she was innocent, silly, playful. Then she jumped to being very spoiled—very mean and spoiled. Then all of a sudden she was serene, just awesome, silly, caring. She was way deep into what was important to you and would mold her conversation around it, gear it to what was important to you. “Oh, you like soccer? I’ve never really liked soccer, but I know this person . . .”

She would always find a way to connect to you.

Wedding Day

As June 2012 approached, Alicia and I prepared for our destination wedding in Hawaii. I was hoping that I would have all my kids there to share the special moment with us, but Krissi’s presence was looking doubtful. She wasn’t speaking to me at the time; I couldn’t even get her on the phone to
invite her to the wedding. I knew she was still dealing with the pain of her mother’s passing, so I didn’t press the issue too much.

I had proposed to Alicia in 2010, when our son, Cassius, was eleven months old. I did it at a show in Florida, on tour with Heads of State. That was another combination of New Edition, when Johnny, Ralph and I went out on the road as the lead singers. I had planned on proposing in Los Angeles, so Alicia would be around her friends and family when it happened, but the LA show got canceled. So I decided on Jacksonville, Florida, because I just wanted it to be done. I was out shopping with Ralph in Jacksonville and when we came upon a jewelry store, on a whim I decided to go inside.

“You know what? I’m just going to do it,” I said as I pushed open the door to the store.

“What?” Ralph said.

“I’m about to get married, man.”

So I picked out the ring that I wanted with Ralph by my side. When I pointed to it, I said, “Let me marry this girl before she leaves my black ass!”

Let me say, I was no longer balling like I was in the nineties when I proposed to Whitney and got Joe the Jeweler to whip up something magical. I was on a radically different budget now. I had walked away from Whitney with no money, and I had been absent from performing for years, so it was going to take me a while to build up another nest egg. Alicia and I had spent many nights eating McDonald’s
chicken sandwiches for dinner, literally stashing our nickels and dimes, keeping on top of my child support payments, living check to check.

I had spent so many years in mansions and Bentleys, not ever thinking about money. Now that I had to think about it on a daily basis, I must say I preferred things back in the day. Alicia lost her house because we couldn’t stay on top of the payments. I felt bad that I had pulled her down into this sinkhole, and I vowed that we wouldn’t be there for long. I wanted to marry her and take care of her as best I could.

Just as I asked Whitney’s dad for his daughter’s hand in marriage, I also asked Alicia’s dad, Henry Etheredge. It was a bit awkward for Alicia because she was on the phone with him when we were out to dinner and I asked her if she could hand me her phone. She looked at me with a frown, wondering what I was up to. I walked away from the table so we could talk privately.

When I told Mr. Etheredge my plans, he said he was fine with my proposing to her, as long as she said yes. I wasn’t an easy partner, I knew that, but I was certain she wouldn’t turn me down.

So that night at the show in Jacksonville, I had Alicia come out on the stage with Cassius. They had been sitting at the side of the stage as usual, watching the show. As my manager, Alicia traveled with me for nearly all of my shows. We usually brought the baby with us.

I told the crowd, “I want you to see my girl and my baby boy.” They responded with robust cheers.

Because I often had her come out onstage with the baby, Alicia still didn’t suspect anything. Ralph and Johnny were onstage with me, so they watched it all wearing big smiles, knowing what was coming. I got down on one knee and asked if she would marry me while the crowd roared. A tearful Alicia said yes and gave me a big kiss as little Cassius watched from her arms. I told the crowd, “I’m going to work harder on this one than I did on the last one.”

That got another round of cheers.

When we looked at my shows scheduled for 2012, Alicia and I were excited to see that New Edition would be stopping in Hawaii on a major tour. Bingo! Right away we knew that would be the perfect location for our wedding. We had taken a trip there with my kids Landon, LaPrincia and Bobby Jr.; Tommy; and my dad before he died, and we’d had such a great time. We scheduled a three-day-weekend party for all of our invited guests, including a big brunch, beach parties, a boat ride—not to mention a New Edition concert. The entire weekend was the picture of the kind of people we are—outgoing, welcoming folks who love to be around others and always want to make sure everybody is having a great time. It was such a fun party, we never wanted it to end.

The incredibly talented Lalah Hathaway made the trip to sing at our ceremony. She serenaded us with her powerfully moving song “I’m Coming Back.” We also asked Charlie
Wilson, but he had a prior engagement that weekend and couldn’t come. When Alicia and I first called Lalah to ask her, she shocked us by saying she’d had a dream that she would sing at our wedding. When she told us about her dream, she had us all blubbering on the phone.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said. “I already felt this. I already knew it.”

We were so blown away by how magical that was. But that was nothing compared to her tearing that song up on our special day. It was such an awesome moment; Lalah is a beast.

We were married by Reverend Michael Beckwith, the pastor of our church in LA, Agape. Beckwith typically doesn’t fly for anybody’s wedding, but he agreed to get on a plane for ours. We were moved that he would do that for us. Alicia wore white, while I wore a red suit and Adidas sneakers, matching Cassius, our ring bearer.

The only note of sadness was the ones who were missing. We were all pained by the absence of my mom and dad. Krissi was also conspicuously missing. She was still making me pay for moving on, for falling in love again. Every time I thought about my child, I felt pangs of regret, confusion, anger. There were many adults in her life who were helping her keep her distance from me and I didn’t understand why.

Krissi did call me the day after the wedding to congratulate me. It was great to hear her voice after so many months without any contact. I could tell she was still hurting.

I was further enraged to hear allegations that I was trying to get my hands on the money Krissi was due from her mother’s estate. Krissi was getting a monthly allowance determined by Pat Houston, as executor of Whitney’s estate. If I didn’t take any money from her mother, I certainly wouldn’t take it from my daughter. Krissi did have a lawyer— a lawyer who was provided by the Houston family. When she turned twenty-one in March 2014, she was supposed to get $10 million, but that never happened. She later told me the only reason she agreed to do the television show was because she felt she didn’t have any money.

I flew to Atlanta several times to try to track my daughter down, but she was avoiding me. I would find out later the reason why—she was scared I would see what was going on with Nick. I’m pretty sure she knew what I would have done to him if I had discovered it. But soon enough I started hearing from some of my security guys in Atlanta, who were telling me that I needed to get her away from him. I told them they needed to bring her out to LA to be with me, but they said she refused.

I had first heard the name “Nick” several years earlier, when Krissi was in her early teens and she and Whitney told me he was living in the house with them. It didn’t make any sense to me why my ex-wife would let some nearly grown-ass man live in the house with my thirteen- or fourteen-year-old daughter. I heard stories from some of my friends in Atlanta that he used to hang around Krissi’s middle
school, which was extremely suspicious to me because he was at least five years older than the middle schoolers. What would a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old want with middle schoolers?

When I’d call the house to talk to her, Whitney would tell me she had gone somewhere with Nick and that he was like her chaperone.

“He’s okay, Bobby, he’s fine,” Whitney said to me.

But I didn’t have enough information about him to be comfortable with the arrangement. I started to suspect that his presence was more about Whitney than Krissi—I began to believe he was providing my ex-wife with drugs.

Krissi had been calling Nick her “brother” all along. After Whitney died suddenly she started referring to him as her “boyfriend.” I was extremely alarmed by that development.

“We’re in love,” she said to me dreamily over the phone when I finally got a chance to ask her about this.

“Little girl, you don’t even know what love is,” I said back to her.

Then we saw on Instagram that she claimed they had gotten married. She displayed a picture of what was supposed to be her wedding ring. But I recognized it right away—it was the huge diamond ring I had given to Whitney when I proposed to her twenty-five years earlier. In my mind, the sight of that ring cast instant doubt on her marriage claims. I got her on the phone again to question her. She admitted to me that they weren’t really married. While some of my family
members were doubtful that she had told me the truth, I had a strong feeling that she had.

Over the course of many phone conversations with my daughter, I tried to befriend Nick. My plan was to get my daughter to LA; once she was with me, I’d cut him off like a bad habit. He would say all the right things to me on the phone, but when I’d come to Atlanta to see her, he’d figure out a way to make her unavailable. One time when they were supposedly in LA, I went to the Beverly Wilshire, thinking I was about to see my daughter. I called her and he answered the phone, claiming they were on their way downstairs as I waited in the lobby. Nobody ever showed up. I found out that they weren’t even staying there. Whatever game he was playing, I had a growing sense of dread about what was happening to my daughter. I wasn’t even sure where they lived; they had moved out of Whitney’s condo in Atlanta. Apparently the Houstons were funding their game of musical chairs.