Wild Child (35 page)

“Of course.”

“You want to speak to Simone?”

She nodded.

“Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”

The inside of the farmhouse was a surprise. Richly decorated. Homey, even. One room was filled with a big brown leather couch with bright orange pillows facing a big-screen television. A knitting basket sat on the floor near the edge of the couch. Knitting needles skewered red and yellow balls of yarn. There were beautiful rugs on the polished wooden floors and decorative tables with knickknacks.

Must have come decorated
, she thought. But then in the hallway filled with pictures she saw photos of her mother. Turtle Man. And two young men.

“My kids,” Turtle Man said, watching her from the kitchen on the other end of the hallway. “Jake and Charlie.”

Stunned, Monica looked back at the picture of Simone with her arms around one of the boys. Simone was
smiling. Beside the man was a young woman. A pregnant young woman.

“We’re expecting our first grandchild.” Turtle Man watched her carefully.

Her throat throbbed, ached.

“What’s your name?” Blind to the rest of the photos, she walked down the hallway. “I can’t keep calling you Turtle Man.”

That he smiled was surprising; she was doing her best to piss him off. “Charles.”

“Chuck?”

“Charles. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll go get Simone.”

He pointed to the white chairs surrounding a circular distressed wooden table.

It was the kind of table that spoke of family dinners and happy memories. She couldn’t imagine what Simone was doing with such a thing. Perhaps the version of Simone in those pictures out there, but not the one she knew. Not her mother.

Monica sat, then took out her recorder and notebooks. Her three favorite pens. When she was organized, she reached out a hand for Reba, who jumped up in her lap and licked her chin.

Monica was immeasurably comforted.

“Hello.” Her mother’s voice, rough with sleep, preceded her out of the shadows from the stairs. But then she was there, in the white kitchen, a splash of green. Bright green. Monica blinked, disoriented. It had been so long since she’d seen her mother in anything but white, but now here she was in a bright green jersey robe.

Her hair was a mess. A wild, white-blond cloud around her head. She wore no makeup and was still beautiful.

“Charles made coffee?” Simone asked and as if in answer, the coffeemaker on the counter gurgled and hissed. “Would you like some?”

Monica shook her head, her lips shut. Locked against the river of questions that were suddenly filling her mouth. This had to be calm, had to be controlled. She had to be removed and distanced. Not the girl she had been, but the woman she was.

Simone poured her own coffee into a china cup with pink flowers and then sat at the table, carefully crossing her legs, pulling the green robe closed around her kneecaps.

“What’s all this?” She pointed to the recorder.

“I’m going to interview you,” Monica said.

Simone nodded, as if everyone who showed up at her door at midnight did the same thing. Maybe they did; Simone’s life was a mystery. “All right.”

Monica pushed Reba down onto the floor and pressed record on her machine. The click was epic, the sound of something big and irreversible starting.

“How old were you when you met JJ?”

“Monica, you know this.”

“I’m not …” She was about to say “I’m not Monica,” but that would sound ridiculous. So she just said, “Answer the question.”

“Fifteen.”

“How old was JJ?”

“Twenty. He was playing in a band down in Masonville. I snuck out of the house every weekend for a month to see him.”

Monica created a time line in her notebook.

“And how old were you when you got pregnant?”

“The first time? Fifteen.”

Monica’s head shot up and Simone smiled, sadly. “You didn’t know? Well, I had a back-alley abortion that nearly killed me. When I got pregnant with you two years later he wanted me to get another abortion, but I couldn’t do it. After what I’d gone through before, you seemed like a miracle.”

Simone had been seventeen and pregnant. For the second time.

“How old were you when he first hit you?”

Simone set down her china cup with a small thunk. “Seventeen. He didn’t like that I wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy.”

Right
. She took a deep breath that shuddered at the top. The cold, hard facts didn’t feel all that cold and hard. They felt hot, searing and alive. “Why did you stay with him?”

Simone pursed her lips and tilted her head as if trying to find the answer where she’d hidden it. “I was alone. Daddy wouldn’t have me back—he made that clear when I ran off with JJ in the first place. I had no money. And, after you were born … well, my body changed. I was curvier, womanly. While still looking like a little girl. And people seemed to notice. A talent scout saw me at the Santa Monica pier with you one day and asked me to come in to see him. JJ was on tour at the time and I had a girlfriend look after you and I went in. Within two weeks I was booking national commercials. Print work.
Playboy
had contacted me.”

“JJ didn’t like that.” It wasn’t a question; it was a memory, and Simone’s eyes flared.

“No. He didn’t. His career was a … disappointment to him. And the constant touring was very difficult. And watching me start a career with a little success made him crazy. But he liked the money.”

“So, he’d let you make the money and then knock you around when you got home.”

“I had always hoped you didn’t remember that.”

Monica shrugged, her notes consisting of scribbles at this point. “It would be nice not to.” Simone blanched at her words, lifted a trembling hand to her hair, and Monica had to look away from the chinks in her bright armor.

“What made you finally decide to leave?” Monica asked.

“I’d left a few times when you were smaller. But he always talked his way back. JJ … JJ was good at that. At promising that he’d be different. That he wouldn’t hurt me again. And I was good at believing him. But when you were six, you tried to stop him one night from hitting me and I realized … I realized I had to make a change.”

“That’s when you decided to come back to Bishop?”

“I took all the money I had saved and got us on a bus. I thought … I thought I’d buy us a house. Something small, and you could have a regular childhood.”

Monica ignored it—the allure, the vision of a regular childhood.

“Did you think he’d come after you?”

Simone stared into her coffee cup. “I’d hoped not. It was naive of me to think that, I realize.” She shook her hair back, managing to pull herself back from some dark internal brink.

“What do you remember from that night?” Monica asked.

“What do
you
remember?”

Stay under the bed, honey. Don’t get out for any reason
.

“Nothing,” she lied.

“I remember hearing him on the steps. I remember putting you under the bed and then …” Simone ran her hand over the hem of her robe, over and over again, as if there were something there she couldn’t wipe off. “I remember grabbing Dad’s gun and thinking, ‘Oh, Simone, you’re overreacting. You’re being ridiculous.’ But … I’m glad I had that gun. The second he walked through that door, I was sure he was going to kill me. I was sure he was going to hurt you. I was … I was just sure of it.”

“The people there that night agree with you.”

Simone nodded, still so regal, and though they were long gone, Monica imagined the bruises and the scratches and the blood on that perfect face. It was as if they were still there, just beneath the surface.

“What do you remember from afterward?” Monica asked. “From London and Greece and France?”

Simone smiled. “I remember you were so fierce in London. So protective. A guard dog. Pouring out all the booze, hiding the drugs.”

“Your friends didn’t like it.”

“My friends.” Simone waved her hand, dismissing the women, the notion of their friendship. “I remember being so glad that you were strong. That you could bark and bite at those women, not just because it was on my behalf, but because I had no bark and bite. None. I never did. And I thought it would protect you, that fierceness.”

Monica almost said that it did. That it both saved her and got her into a lot of trouble. But this was an interview, not a conversation.

“I don’t remember Greece at all,” Simone said, and Monica blinked. Astounded. “I was … in hindsight, it’s easy to see that I was dangerously depressed. I didn’t ever think about those months there until Charles …” Simone smiled, glancing over her shoulder to the shadows and the stairs. Monica wondered if he was listening. “Charles told me if we were going to be together, I needed to see a shrink and talk about some of the things I liked to pretend didn’t matter. Greece was one of the things we talked about.”

Monica remembered with photographic clarity the sight of her mother’s hand slung over the side of that thin bed.
Mom
, she remembered crying,
Mom, please get out of bed. Please talk to me
.

“You must have been terrified,” Simone said.

“It was a blast.” The sarcasm didn’t make her feel better. “What about France?”

“France was … scary.”

“Really?” Monica asked.

“You didn’t think so?”

You had come back to me. You smiled, laughed, held my hand as we walked along the river
. Monica found herself unable to say those words. “I’m interviewing
you
,” she said instead.

“We had no more money. I’d spent all our savings. Used up everyone’s goodwill. And I knew we had to go back to the States. I’d been hiding for three years. We got back and I struggled to get work, crappy sitcoms and B movies, and game shows. And then
Playboy
called, and after that success, my agent told me about a reality TV show and I agreed.”

“Did you like doing
Simone Says
?”

“No. God, no.”

“Then why the hell were we doing it?” she yelled. She hadn’t meant to yell. She picked up a pencil, put it down. At loose ends inside herself.

“I was thirty-three years old, Monica. I didn’t even have a high school diploma. We had no money. None. The only other job offers coming my way with any real money attached were for adult films. I was just trying to make a living for us. A home. I wanted a chance to start over.”

“It must have been a relief when I left,” Monica said. The interview was slipping away from her, devolving into memory and accusation, and she was trying to rise above her feelings, but there was no getting away from them. She started to gather her things, ready to leave. To find Jackson and punish herself on him. To make this bad feeling acutely more painful.

This is what you do
, a quiet voice whispered.
When it gets too painful, when it gets too hard, you run away. Or you make things worse. It’s what you did with Jackson yesterday. It’s why you will never be happy
.

Simone slipped her hand over Monica’s and she was so stunned, she didn’t move.

She forced herself to stay, to sit and be there in this painful, awful, honest moment. It was like holding her hand in a fire. She had to open her mouth to breathe through the pain.

“In a way, Monica, it was. I know how that sounds, but I was scared and you were so angry. And I made a lot of mistakes. More mistakes than I can count, but I should never have let you go.”

“You didn’t
let
me do anything … I ran away.”

“I could have dragged you back. I could have tried harder to keep you. But … by the time I tried, it was too late.”

She remembered her mother showing up backstage at random shows, asking her to come home, inviting her out for a meal, slipping her some money. All of which she refused. And then came the paparazzi blitz.

“Why the paparazzi, then?”

“You ran away from me, you wouldn’t come home. Wouldn’t speak to me and I … I knew what you were doing. The trouble you were flirting with, and I thought … if I could be everywhere, everywhere you turned, you couldn’t run. But … all I did was push you farther away.”

“Why are you doing this show now?” she asked. “This reality thing again.”

“Same mentality, I suppose. After you had so much success, I just wanted … I wanted you to know I was there.”

Monica didn’t want to understand. She had no interest in understanding this twisted, narcissistic behavior. But she did—because she’d behaved the same way. She’d retaliated against her mother using the same means.

Charles came back in the room, still in his robe, and he looked very pedestrian next to Simone’s slightly rumpled beauty.

“Why are you two together?” Monica blurted, apropos of nothing but trying to find some anchors in this new landscape.

Simone didn’t even flinch. One thing she could count on her mother for, she was pretty unshockable in the face of Monica’s shitty behavior.

“Why is anyone together?” Simone asked. “Why are you with the mayor? Oh, don’t look so shocked, Monica. It was all over the television in that
America Today
clip. He seems like a very nice man. Very protective of you.”

Done
. This interview was done. Simone had just walked into a whole lot of none of her business. Monica gathered up all her stuff.

“That’s it?” Simone asked.

“That’s it.” Monica turned to Charles, who watched her with unreadable eyes behind his glasses. “Sorry to keep you up so late.”

“No.” Simone stood, her eyes flashing. She looked desperate, which was strange. Sort of alarming. “No. We’re not done.”

“What were you expecting? A Hollywood ending? We’d get all this out in the open and I’d fall into your arms, a little girl again, grateful? It doesn’t work that way in the real world.”

“Well, when … when can I see you again? There’s more I could tell you. For your book.”

“I have enough.” There was no further need to see Simone. No more ghosts to chase.

“Monica!” she cried, sounding stern, her attempt at a mommy voice. Monica turned back around and saw her mother, tears swimming in her eyes, her face red with anger and remorse. “Please,” she whispered.