The Rock Star's Daughter (4 page)

He was staring me down. I was completely
unaccustomed to an adult telling me how things were. With my mom I
could talk my way out of anything… out of a curfew, out of a mess
left in the kitchen, but I could see that Chase was the king of his
castle and was not going to stand for any lip. This was not at all
good news for me. I began to feel my lower lip trembling and I knew
the tears weren't far behind.

"That's really not fair," I told him. "I
haven't even seen you in three years and now you suddenly show up
and know what's best for me? This is my home. I don't want to
leave. I can go live with my best friend if I can't live
alone."

My dad stood up and crossed his arms over his
chest. "Taylor, you have just suffered a tremendous loss. I can't
allow you to stay in the house by yourself at such a delicate time
with your mother's bloodsucking friends trawling around. Do you
want me to lose custody of you? Because that's what will happen if
I leave you here tonight. And I'm not going to be able to live with
myself if I have to trust strangers to finish raising you. Now
please, go pack a bag."

I stood up, stormed out of the living room
and was howling uncontrollably by the time I got to my bedroom. I
even slammed the door for the full effect; giving him a taste of
every tantrum he had missed out on while he was packing concert
halls and arenas throughout my entire childhood. Somehow, in
between the tears, I managed to stuff my big rolling suitcase, the
one that came with me to and from Treadwell, with underwear, clean
jeans and t-shirts. By the time I was looking wildly around my room
at all of my treasured possessions that couldn't possibly fit in my
suitcase, I noticed my dad was standing in my doorway.

"You don't have to pack it all," he told me
comfortingly. "We'll figure it out in the next few days."

"I can take care of myself," I said again,
more for my own benefit than for his. "You don't even know me. But
I can handle this – planning a funeral and taking care of the
house."

My father sat down on my bed and looked at me
with admiration. "I'm sure you can. But you're fifteen. You
shouldn't have to."

I glanced around my room again at all of my
stuffed animals, my Barbie collection, my ice skating costumes
still hanging in my closet from elementary school. I had always
assumed that all of my possessions would be right here in my sky
blue bedroom forever.

"Taylor, look, I know I haven't been here for
you," my dad began slowly. "Things between me and your mom, well,
you know. From the day we split up, things were not good. But I'm
asking you for your trust. Can we just take it day by day and see
how things go?"

He looked pretty miserable sitting there on
my bed, surrounded by my ratty old stuffed animals. My dog-eared
vintage New Order poster hung above him, and he looked tired and
aging and a little like a fashion victim with his goatee and
earring. And for the first time in my whole life, I realized that
my dad is just a man. Forget the rock star part, and he's just a
guy with feelings.

So I agreed to take it day by day, and we
locked up the house for the night.

CHAPTER
3

When I woke up the next morning in my
father's Presidential Suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I had no
idea where I was for about ten minutes. I was in a ridiculously
enormous bed and sun was streaming in through the window. When I
pushed back the blankets and looked outside, I was gazing down upon
an enormous crystalline swimming pool that was being cleaned by men
in uniforms. Then I saw a woman who I recognized from the cover of
People Magazine wearing a terry cloth cover-up sitting down on a
deck chair and slathering sunscreen onto the shoulders of a little
girl around the age of five. And then all of the events of the last
three days came flooding back to me.

My father had been on the phone well into the
night making arrangements. A wake for my mother was being held
later that afternoon in Beverly Hills, and my father's extensive
team of managers, lawyers and accountants had begun settling her
estate. Before I had nodded off the night before I had come to
understand vaguely that there wasn't much of my mother's life left
to settle.

Our house on North Laurel was a rental. I
don't know how I had been so ignorant of this; I had always thought
of it as our house. But my father had been paying rent on it since
I was a baby. And Mrs. Earle was our landlord. How had I never
known? Why hadn't Mrs. Earle ever thrown my mother out for her
rowdy partying? At any rate my father had arranged for a locksmith
to change all the locks on the house that morning and install an
alarm system to keep it secure until new tenants moved in.

My mother had no savings and no assets. She
had a check that came once a month for the backup singing she had
done on a Chevy commercial when I was in eighth grade. Every time
the commercial aired anywhere in the world, she made a few pennies,
but I would soon find out that her monthly liquor expenses were far
more than that residual check. Part of what my father had been
sending her in child support since I was a baby had been intended
for a college savings account, and apparently no such account
existed.

I certainly knew nothing about one.

My mother's parents were on a flight in from
St. Paul. The concierge at the hotel was arranging for a black
dress to be delivered to our suite for me to wear to the wake, as I
didn't own anything formal (although simply black would not have
been a problem as black turtlenecks and jeans were my personal
uniform at school). Everything seemed to be moving so fast… and at
some point I was going to have to make my way down to the pool to
introduce myself for the first time to my father's wife and
daughter.

There was a knock on the door to my room.

"Taylor, are you awake in there?"

It was my dad. I opened the door and found
him carrying a leather-bound menu with a little tassel on it.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"You should come downstairs and eat. We have
to be at the funeral home at two and the stylist will be here with
some dresses for you to try on in an hour," my dad said.

A shower and a fresh pair of jeans later, I
made my way down to the pool, where my dad had joined Jill to order
breakfast. Now it's probably important to point out that when my
dad married Jill, I read about it in
Expose Magazine
just
like everyone else in America. Jill was a fashion stylist on a
shoot he had done for
Rolling Stone
, and they exchanged vows
at the Fundu Lagoon resort in Zanzibar. My mother had noticed the
cover of the magazine when we were standing in line at Vons to buy
toilet paper and ice cream. She had snorted with disgust and read
the article aloud in a dramatic British accent for my
amusement.

Two years later, when I had met my dad for
burgers near the airport, he had told me that he had invited me,
and that my mother told him it was hardly possible for me to just
drop out of my fifth grade classes and jet off to Africa. At the
time I thought he was probably lying but realistically my mother
kind of had a point. Since then, I've seen my dad and Jill on
Extra, attending the American Music Awards and Grammys; I even got
a complete tour of their mansion on the Jersey shore not far from
where the Bon Jovis lived, courtesy of
Cribs
. But never once
was I invited to visit in person.

"Hello, dear," Jill called to me, standing
and pulling off her Gucci tinted sunglasses to get a better look at
me. "Aren't you just the spitting image of your mother."

I sat down across the table from my dad, who
was drinking some kind of fruit smoothie. Jill was very tall and
tan, with streaked blond hair. She looked like the kind of woman
who grew up riding horses and eating granola.

My mother, by comparison, was soft all over
and had a lot of help from Clairol and Slimfast.

Jill looked me up and down, and with one
expression made me feel like the world's biggest idiot for showing
my face at the pool of this hotel wearing jeans bought on sale and
a Red Sox t-shirt.

"I'm Jill," she said, formally introducing
herself and extending a stiff hand as if I were on an interview for
an internship.

"Taylor," I said in return, although I'm sure
she knew my name already.

My half-sister, Jill's daughter, ran up to
the table with wet hair and plastic floaters secured over her upper
arms. "And this little monkey here is Kelsey."

Kelsey, who was skinny and tan and had my
dad's shockingly green eyes, hid in my dad's arms and giggled at
me.

"Go ahead, little girl. Say hi to Taylor.
She's your big sister," my dad told her.

I had never previously given much thought to
the notion of having a sibling. And yet here one was, my very own
little sister. Half-sister.

"You should order something to eat," Jill
instructed me. I had looked over the menu up in my room and had
been a little daunted by the prices. Twenty dollars for French
toast? Even a box of Munchkin donuts was a little bit of an
extravagance for me and Mom.

"Jill is very interested in raw food," my dad
informed me, and I interpreted his statement as a casual warning
that my selection would be judged. "She reads a lot about how food
loses its nutritional value after it's been exposed to high
temperatures."

"I was thinking that I'd like the Dutch Apple
pancake," I said, throwing my dad's caution aside. I was
starving.

"Oh, there are probably three thousand
calories in that!" Jill exclaimed.

"Relax, honey. Taylor can have whatever she
wants. She's had a rough couple of days," my dad said.

Only as I was practically licking the syrup
off my plate did I wonder what Jill meant when she said that I
looked just like my mom. How did Jill know what my mom looked like?
Had they ever met? Was her comment intended a compliment or an
insult?

I wish I could remember the details of my
mother's wake, but the hours that we spent at the funeral home went
by in a flash. My mother's parents appeared, gray-haired and
well-dressed, and then disappeared. They appeared to be deep in a
serious discussion with my father, and my mind wandered toward the
possibility of having to live with them in Minnesota. Many of my
mother's friends appeared, knelt at her coffin and wept, and then
left to go to happy hour at Boardner's bar in Hollywood.

I plucked an orchid off an arrangement and
sat on an overstuffed couch, thanking passersby for coming and
assuring everyone that I was OK. I was uncomfortable in the itchy
Zac Posen black shift that Jill had selected for me back at the
hotel. I had told her more than once, when trying on the dresses
delivered by the hotel concierge, that my style at school was very
laid back. She matter-of-factly told me that whether I liked it or
not I was going to have to start paying more attention to
fashion.

The only big surprise of the afternoon was
that Allison came with her parents and brother. Allison, wearing a
black sundress I had never seen before, and her mom both rushed
over to me while her dad shook hands with my dad. Todd lingered
behind, mostly looking at the ground and seeming very
uncomfortable, but looking insanely cute anyway. Todd had just
graduated from high school a few weeks earlier. He was leaving for
college in Connecticut in the fall and I had been harboring a
secret hope for months since he had been accepted at UConn that he
would drop in on me at Treadwell once we were both on the East
Coast. Naturally I could not share this hope with Allison, as she
found my crush on her brother totally disgusting.

"Oh my god, Taylor," Allison said over and
over, her eyes brimming over with tears. "I can't believe this is
happening to you."

"It's all right," I found myself saying
repeatedly, even though I didn't believe myself.

"You know, Taylor, anything you need, all you
have to do is ask," Allison's mom said. Allison's mom went to
church daily and wouldn't let Allison wear makeup. She drove an
ugly minivan and taught yoga part-time. Allison often complained
about how old-fashioned her mom was but I knew she would never have
traded hers for mine.

"What's going to happen to you now?" Allison
asked.

"I want to stay here until school starts," I
said. I hadn't completely given myself over to the possibility of
spending the summer with my dad. September seemed impossibly far
off in the future. "I don't know if my dad's going to let me,
though."

"Well, it would be best for you to be with
people who care about you," Allison's mother told me, stroking my
arm. At first I was comforted by this statement, because I thought
she was providing me with what I wanted more than anything that
evening: an invitation to move in with them for the summer. But
when I looked up at Allison's mom for confirmation that my worries
could finally end, I realized that she was implying that I would be
best off with my dad.

Todd stepped up and his mouth twisted into a
frown when his eyes met mine. "Sorry about your mom, Taylor," he
said. His voice sounded kind of gravelly. Todd had Allison's huge,
heavy-lidded blue eyes but had a slightly noticeable scar over his
lip from cleft palate surgery he had as a baby. He was planning on
majoring in International Relations in college. I pretty much
thought he was the cutest, smartest, funniest boy ever. And totally
unattainable, as to him I was just his dumb kid sister's pesky
friend.

"Thanks," I mumbled, trying not to cry.

He gave me an awkward hug and pecked me on
the cheek.

I tried not to be delighted to get a kiss on
the cheek from him. I noticed Allison glare at him. It's totally
wrong to be thinking about cute boys at your mom's wake but I
couldn't help but be flattered that he had come with the family
when I am sure he had a million other things he would have wanted
to do that afternoon. Had my mom been alive to do so, she would
have teased me.