The Rock Star's Daughter (15 page)

As I exited the lounge I tried to pull my
t-shirt down lower to more sufficiently cover my butt. Once we were
in the hotel lobby and a safe distance from the sultry cocktail
lounge, my father could contain his rage no longer.

"Just what in the hell do you think you're
doing?" my father bellowed.

"Dad," I began, not sure to how begin my most
successful chance for defense.

"Driving intoxicated? You don't even have a
license, Taylor!" he yelled.

I noticed the concierges behind the desk
attempting to look busy and not overly interested in this public
argument. I wondered how on earth my dad knew I had been driving
the Mercedes when we arrived back at the hotel. Did he have spies
planted everywhere, even in the hotel parking lot?

"I couldn't let Bijoux drive," I stammered.
"She was drinking all afternoon."

"Oh, so you decided to take matters into your
own hands and put your life and the lives of others at risk? Good
thinking, Taylor. I thought you were a lot smarter than that," my
father berated me.

I was mortified. I had no idea he was so
skilled at not only expressing anger but humiliating his target, as
well.

"What was I supposed to do?" I yelled back,
on the brink of tears.

"Did it even occur to you to call someone and
ask for help?" He threw his hands in the air as if he were about to
clap very loudly.

"Who would I call?" I screamed. I turned and
took a few steps toward the elevator in an attempt to end the
public spectacle. "You were on a stage! Jill would just yell at
me!"

"There are no less than twenty people with us
on this tour who you could have called," my father hollered. "What
you did was just thoughtless and selfish."

Selfish! Thoughtless! I couldn't believe he
would dare use those words with me mere days after what I had
observed going on in his dressing room. I knew that the cocktail I
had just consumed was loosening my tongue. When I am angry, the
best thing for me to do is keep quiet, but somehow my mouth kept
opening and words kept pouring out.

"Wow, you really want to go into thoughtless
and selfish, Dad? Those are adjectives I could easily apply to
someone else's behavior."

Out of the corner of my eye just then, I
noticed the worst thing possible. Jake, carrying a huge cardboard
box, was trying to slip through the lobby without me noticing him.
But of course I did see him, and I was fairly certain that he knew
that I had seen him.

"You are fifteen years old, Taylor," my
father reminded me, so angry that his voice was trembling. "This is
a discussion about the fact that you are underage – drinking and
driving – and fooling around with intoxicated men far older than
you – and there is no excuse in the world that you can use to get
out of being in serious, serious trouble. Goddamnit! And just… what
in the hell kind of outfit are you wearing?"

I cringed and seriously prayed that Jake had
been out of earshot before my father made reference to Brice's
hands being all over me. I reached the elevator bank with my father
right behind me, and punched the UP button in the wall.

"What about Bijoux and Betsey?" I demanded.
"You and Jill told me to spend the day with them. You thought it
would be nice for me to spend some time with girls my own age. This
is what girls my own age do all day when they have thousands of
dollars to waste, Dad. In case you didn't know."

The elevator arrived, the doors open, and I
stormed inside and stood in the back corner with my arms crossed
over my chest. A middle-aged woman in a business suit also boarded
the elevator and awkwardly smiled at both of us, aware that she was
intruding on a very tense moment. I noticed, with a little
annoyance, that my dad and I were both so angry that we were
huffing and puffing in unison. Like father, like daughter.

There was no point in trying to convince my
dad that I had initially tried to avoid drinking. Making the case
that I had prevented myself and the Norfleets from ending up in a
sleazy motel with a bunch of college guys was probably also not
going to get me out of any hot water. My whole life of being a
goody two-shoes wasn't going to spare me from my dad's wrath
because those fifteen years of good behavior couldn't undo one
rotten night of dumb choices.

"Bijoux and Betsey are not my daughters," my
dad said, trying to calm himself on the ride up to our floor after
the third occupant of the elevator stepped off and bade us
goodnight. "I thought you had more sense than this, Taylor. I don't
even know what to do with you at this moment. You don't even see
the wrong in what you've done."

The elevator doors opened on our floor and I
pushed past him to step off first. As I strode down the hall I
snapped back, "First you don't want me at the hotel, you don't want
me practicing violin. You don't want me going off on my own, you
don't want me at the hospital with Kelsey, and now you don't want
me hanging out with kids my own age. Why did you want custody of
me? You don't want anything to do with me!"

I realized once I reached the door to our
suite that I didn't have a key card, which was a big hindrance to
my raging desire to slam a door.

Dad used his key card to open the door to the
suite and told me quietly, "We can finish this discussion in the
morning when you've had a chance to sober up."

"FINE!" I screamed, and crossed the suite to
my bedroom.

Only I didn't slam the door once I got there,
because Kelsey had already been put to sleep in the room's second
queen-sized bed, and as angry as I was, I knew it would be the
start of a nuclear war if I woke her up.

I tore off Bijoux's stupid red string bikini
and put on my pajamas. Even after I was motionless in bed for ten
minutes in the dark, my ears were still ringing and my heart was
racing with adrenaline from fighting with my father. And from
seeing Jake and having him witness my father blowing his temper at
me.

I could hear my father and Jill speaking in
hushed tones in the other room. For reasons I couldn't comprehend,
I was suddenly extremely scared that Jill knew all of the reasons
why my father was upset with me in that moment. I strained my ears
to be able to hear what he was telling her.

"…sunburned to a crisp and having cocktails
at the hotel bar with Brice Norris drooling all over her," I heard
my dad grumbling in the suite's living room.

And then, shockingly, I heard Jill giggling
at him.

"Well, then. She's a normal teenage girl
after all. I was beginning to wonder," I heard Jill say.

"This is not funny, Jill," my father
corrected her.

I was afraid he was going to go on to tell
her about the driving part, or that she already might have known
about it, but to my shock, it wasn't mentioned.

"It is funny," Jill insisted. "Did you think
having a teenage daughter was going to be a walk in the park?"

There was a long silence and then I heard my
father say, "I am going to kick Brice Norris' ass tomorrow."

I drifted off to sleep, and in the morning
woke up with the most killer headache I had ever had in my
life.

CHAPTER
9

My father found me the next morning after his
work out. I was stretched out near the hotel's smaller of two pools
in an attempt to try to avoid Bijoux and Betsey. My father sat down
in the lounge chair next to mine and cleared his throat.

"So, Taylor," he began. "I hope you have had
a chance to think over the actions you took yesterday. I've talked
things over with Jill and we're in agreement that you deserve to be
grounded."

Grounded. Ha! Grounded at a luxury hotel.
Rather than inform my father that his idea of a punishment was
hilarious, I allowed him to continue.

"Uh, OK," I said.

"For the next four weeks you are not to leave
our hotel suite, you are not to join the rest of the tour for
meals, and you are not to attend any shows," my father informed
me.

I listened on, eager to hear what else he
thought he could take away from me. Moments during which I could
step outside the hotel suite were really the only kind of freedom I
had. And at the end of the next four weeks it would be August; the
tour would be nearing its end back in Los Angeles and I'd be
packing my bags for Treadwell.

"Cell phone calls for no more than five
minutes," he added, as if anyone had been calling me recently.

"OK," I agreed. I stood up, stretched, and
picked up my beach towel, ready to follow him up to the suite for
my harsh punishment to begin.

"Look, Taylor, I'm sorry to have to do this
to you," he said, and it sounded like he truly was. "Maybe I was
stupid to think it would be all right to expose you to so much
freedom all at once. I don't want our summer to be like this. I
want you to be able to have fun but I need to be able to trust
you."

"OK, Dad," I said. "Lecture over, please. I
know I let you down yesterday. I'm sorry. But please do not ask me
to spend time with your friends' kids. I don't want to be called a
loser just because I don't want to do what everyone else is
doing."

On the walk back up to the hotel suite, I
mulled over the possibility that this weak punishment of my
father's concoction might seriously obstruct my next steps with
Jake. If there were even going to be next steps.

I also anguished over knowing the fact that I
still had not really confronted him about his backstage behavior. I
wondered if I would ever find the nerve to address that or if
knowing about it was just going to be an ongoing part of my
relationship with my dad.

Once we reached the hotel room, my father
presented me with a gift. It was a brand new laptop. Someone really
needed to give him some lessons in punishment technique, because
although I had never really been grounded before, I knew that
usually groundings are not accompanied by expensive electronic
presents.

"Jill thought it might be good for you to be
able to keep in touch with your friends from school," Dad said.

Spending the afternoon stuck in the hotel
suite with a brand new laptop turned out to produce the most
enjoyable few hours I had passed on the tour yet. I emailed Riddhi
a short note, knowing that she was with her family in Mumbai
visiting her grandmother that summer. Using the Treadwell student
directory, I also emailed my roommate Ruth, who was in San
Francisco enjoying a summer with her mother and stepbrothers, and a
girl named Erin who played cello in the junior symphony.

To my surprise, within an hour Riddhi wrote
back a long note expressing remorse over my mom's death. Her summer
had been drama-filled, too. When she had arrived in India with her
family they had quickly come to realize that her grandmother, who
lived in a large house in a wealthy part of Mumbai accompanied by
trusted family servants, was likely suffering the onset of
Alzheimer's. Her parents were desperately trying to determine the
best course of action; they didn't want to leave Riddhi's
grandmother or the house in Mumbai unattended, but they didn't want
to uproot their lives in Vermont to relocate to India, either.

Riddhi felt very strongly that her parents
should relocate permanently to Mumbai so that her grandmother could
remain in the family's ancestral home. She felt like her parents
were acting irresponsibly and selfishly. It struck me as funny that
she was on the other side of the world having the exact same
realization as I was: that parents aren't any better at making
decisions than kids.

I really missed Riddhi. Unlike Allison, who
was a lightning rod for gossip and needed constant self-esteem
boosting assurance, Riddhi was steadfast and even-keeled. She was
always a voice of reason at Treadwell, someone who was almost
matronly in her practicality. The previous year Riddhi had dressed
as a slut for Halloween and couldn't understand why the rest of us
laughed uncontrollably at her, in her costume of fishnet stockings
and smeared lipstick.

"What, too much?" she had asked
innocently.

By dinnertime on my first day of grounding my
father was already bending his own rules, assuming (correctly) that
it was less enjoyable for me to eat dinner with Jill and him than
to order room service alone in the hotel suite. There was no show
that night, so a limo would be taking us to one of the fanciest
restaurants in Virginia Beach, and Jill ordered me to get dressed
even though I was already fully clothed. Scowling, I changed into
pink tiered tank top and a pair of white jeans.

"Cute," Jill complimented me, and added, "Oh!
I have something that would make it even cuter."

She dug through her suitcase and pulled out a
wild fuchsia scarf with fringe and sequins on it, and looped it
loosely around my neck. It was definitely not my style, and when I
looked in the mirror I barely recognized myself. The sunburn I had
earned myself the day before had faded into the deepest tan I had
ever had in my life. My hair was a good two inches longer than it
had been when I left Treadwell at the start of May, and
sun-bleached on top, too. I was both pleased and ashamed to admit,
the celebrity lifestyle was agreeing with me.

Dad was in an irritatingly happy mood
throughout dinner, tucking his lobster bib into his collar and
grinning like a goon at Jill, Kelsey and me. "Now this is my idea
of a good time," he said, knife and fork in his fists on the table.
"A night out with all my girls."

I squirmed to keep myself from mentioning the
other girls, the Pounders and backstage groupies.

The restaurant was unbelievably decadent and
romantic. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows opened to the gentle
rolling waves lit by moonlight just a few yards away. There was an
outdoor deck where a fire pit roared, crackling and warming the
night air as diners clinked wine glasses and laughed about how
beautiful the weather was. I longingly looked out toward the ocean,
wishing that I might have an afternoon to return to the beach and
collect shells before we boarded the bus again and headed to North
Carolina.