Crowne jewel, p.26
Crowne Jewel, page 26
part #1 of The Crowne Brothers Series
It’s threeish in the morning. Noonish in Paris.
“Yes!” I snap up my phone and call him. His name pops up.
I don’t know what I’m going to tell him. Something honest. I want him, but I don’t know how to have him. I’m going to ask him if he’s a mistake. If he’s an experience I’m supposed to file away.
What if I’m filing the wrong experience? What if I wasn’t supposed to learn to avoid abandonment? What if I was supposed to learn to trust the people who love me?
His number rings, and rings, and rings…
Anton. Am I supposed to feel this way? Or am I supposed to learn not to feel this way?
…and rings and…
I hit the red button.
He can’t tell me anyway. He doesn’t have the answer any more than I do.
Mom gets up early these days, so I figure showing up at seven o’clock won’t be that big a deal. Waiting four hours was the best I could do under the circumstances. The Bel-Air house is dark and as eerie as an empty church. The sky is turning ultramarine over the canyon. The goldfinches compete with the last of the crickets. I could stand on their patio all day, but the sun’s going to rise, and the leaf blowers and cars will start their intrusive humming. It’ll get hot, even for October.
“Lyric,” Mom says, coming out onto the patio with me, “you’re coming around early. Do you want some coffee?”
“I’m good.” I put my arm around her. “You’re not really shaky. Is it the medication?”
“Mornings are always easy.”
“Why don’t I know that?”
“I don’t know. Look at you though.” She takes my hands and looks me up and down. “Did you change something?”
“No.”
“Hair maybe?”
“Not really. I didn’t brush it.”
“Hm.”
“You asked me this the last time you saw me. Are you okay?”
“You didn’t have your face in your phone last time I saw you. This time the change is… different.”
“Well, I should ask—”
“I need to ask—”
We stop at the same time and laugh. Mom sits on the edge of a patio chair with her hands folded between her knees. She is silent, waiting for me to start.
“So, um…” I sit in the chair next to her. “I don’t actually know what to do.” I wait for a reaction, get none, and continue. “So, Anton, you remember him?”
She nods. I can’t read it.
“He’s working for Logan and Dad, out in Europe, and I really… I feel so many things about him but mostly just like this emptiness? Or, no. More like this big space inside myself that’s squeezed flat like a plastic bag. But a huge plastic bag. Like once I put stuff in it, it’ll be so much stuff, but Anton is the only stuff that’ll fit.”
Still, no reaction, just attention.
“But he’s out there doing what he wants to do, and I’m here, where I want to be, and where I can take another shot at a movie, because the last one… I didn’t mean to be cagey about it all this time, but it kind of sucked,” I say.
“Did it?”
“Yeah, and I felt like that meant I sucked, so I didn’t tell you.”
She laughs. “Did you think I’d agree with that assessment?”
“Well, if you didn’t think I sucked, that would make you wrong. Right? And if you did think I sucked, that would hurt my feelings. You see the conundrum. I was trying to keep everything at neutral.”
“And so you want to stay here and try again, but Anton is there. And if you stay here, you could lose him and still suck?”
“Right.”
“And you don’t know what to do?”
“I want to know. I have to know.”
“You want to know what?”
“When you saw Anton and I together, did you get the tingle?”
“Oh. Lyric. Honey.” Mom tilts her head and blinks quickly with a little flutter, and I know what that means.
“You didn’t.”
“You can’t build your life around that.”
“Shit.”
There’s the answer I came for, right in my mother’s nervous system. No tingle. No true love. Anton is just a life experience I’m supposed to file away. He’s stories I’m supposed to tell to the children I have with another person once I commit to staying here without him.
“Okay!” I stand. “Is Dad up?”
“I’m up,” he says from the doorway with a reading tablet in one hand. He kisses my cheek.
“How long were you standing there?”
“Not too long.” He leans on the railing with the rising sun behind him. “You wanted to talk to me or just say hello?”
“Well. So.” I clear my throat of unexpected gunk. “There’s the matter of the One Big Thing?”
“Ah, the last OTB. Great. Let’s get that off my desk.”
“I want to shoot a trailer to take around.” I sniff. A ton of snot gathers in the back of my throat and my eyes sting. “Or they’ll just buy it and give it to, like, Scott Ridley or something? Which…” My breath stutters. “So that’s the plan and… I’ll get you a budget if you need it… or I could make a trailer on my own dime and if you think it’s worth the investment…”
I break down into sobs, crouching as if I want to melt into the Italian tiles.
“Hey,” Dad crouches with me. “Is this because your mother didn’t—”
“Tingle!” I spit out the word and a lump of snot at the same time.
“Doreen,” Dad says flatly.
“Why would I lie?” Mom asks.
“I don’t expect you to lie, but you could explain the entire point.”
“What?” I ask, blind with tears. “There’s a point? Is it that he was my security so we weren’t supposed to… you know?”
Dad takes out a linen hankie, shakes it, and passes it to me. I wipe away what feels like an entire raw egg white off my face.
“The point,” he says. “is if you’re disappointed that this person isn’t your one true love, they probably are. If you’re relieved—”
“Then they’re not?”
“Probably not.”
I sit with my back to the railing, knees bent, and blow my nose. “Jesus, it’s like an omelette.”
Down below, where the driveway curves up the hill and around the house, there’s a clatter and hum of an opening gate.
Dad cranes his neck to see. “Ah, I have to go.”
“Why?”
“I have a meeting.” He kisses my forehead, stands, and walks into the house.
I scoff, wiping my nose before I sniff. “It’s Sunday.”
“He’s committed, your father.”
“Yeah.” I look over the canyon, balling up the hankie. “What do you think, Mom? About me trying to make another movie? Is that dumb? You never saw the last one but…”
I stop because Mom’s shaking, and it’s not the Parkinson’s. She’s laughing.
“What?” I ask.
“We saw it, Lyric.”
“How?”
Mothers aren’t supposed to roll their eyes at their daughters, so when my mother tightens her mouth and does the quickest eyeroll in history, I can clearly see her at my age. “Your father’s friend at Darwin Media—”
“Ben Newitch?”
“He sent us a DVD. He said it showed promise but might not ‘be for everyone.’ Exact words.”
“Kiss of death,” I say.
There’s another clattering sound from halfway up the hill. The garage door. I lean back to see Mom and Dad’s valet, Gerrick, coming out and dashing out of sight.
“So.” I’m afraid to ask the rest, but I have to now, even through the cringe. “What did you think?” I immediately chicken out. “No. Wait. Forget it. Don’t tell me.”
“It was…”
“Ugh, Mom.” I hold up my hands, desperate for her to stop.
She stands and comes to me, letting me hope for a minute that my brutally honest mother could find it in her heart to keep her opinions to herself.
“It was not for everyone.” She holds my hands tightly. “It was for me.”
“You don’t have to say that.” If she tries to turn this into some kind of speech about how she’s my audience, I’m going to literally puke.
“I am aware.” She squeezes my hands so hard it hurts, then loosens without letting go. “It had your vigor. Your energy. It was your voice. The daughter I love so much was inside every shot. The sixth-grade girl writing bizarre monologues and acting them out on video… the woman who always wants everything to be even… who was so kind to her friends… she was also kind and fair to her characters.” She lets my hands drop and leans on the railing next to me. “I would have known it was you even if your name wasn’t on it. I could feel your presence right there in the room and I got to hold my daughter from thousands of miles away.”
“That’s funny.” I laugh to myself even though I am not amused. “I always thought it failed because it was too much me.” I turn toward the canyon, elbows on the railing. “It’s like I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
A car comes around the second switch up the hill and turns into the garage. It takes me a second to place it.
“It’s a white Range Rover,” I say to myself.
Mom stands next to me, watching. “If you say.”
There are thousands of those all over Los Angeles.
Right?
What are the odds? Especially with him somewhere in Europe this week… what’s the likelihood it’s the same car without the dusting of brittle fall leaves on the hood?
I was always good at math, but not good enough to calculate the odds in my head or patient enough to get out a pen when confirmation is four minutes away on foot.
“I’ll be right back.”
I break into a run. Inside, around a corner, unable to stop when I hear voices around the next turn. One is Dad. The other… I catch a scent of burned bread and fucking a millisecond before I smack right into Anton.
CHAPTER 50
LYRIC
His hands hold my biceps. They’re the only reason I don’t fall backward.
“You’re here,” he says in harmony with me, because I say it at the exact same time.
“Hey,” I start, but get lost in the depth of his stare and the strength of his hands. “What are—”
“I came—” He interrupts himself to not interrupt me. He takes his hands away. “Go.”
“No, you.”
“You. Please.”
Dad moves somewhere out of my peripheral vision.
“You’re here.” I said that already, and it’s obvious, but my brain’s hissing and popping with scrubbing bubbles that clean out any thought that’s not the sight or sound of Anton. “I didn’t…”
My mouth is open but the rest of the sentence pops into a splash of soap midair.
“It’s too…” He stops himself, nervous, looking over my shoulder, probably for my father, but I can’t check to see if he’s there when Anton is right in front of me in three dimensions. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“Oh.” The joy is sucked out of me. I wasn’t expected. Does he regret coming? Was he going to slip in and out of town without calling? “Oh.” I step back before tearing my eyes away from him. “That’s fine. I can—”
“It’s fine—”
“Yes. I can just… um…” I’m confused. Everything with him seemed fine on the phone, but he missed a couple of calls, and I can’t deal. “I should go, I guess.” I go around him, head down because I can’t look at him.
“Wait,” Anton says, reaching into his pocket. “I have something for you.”
His hand comes out with a folded piece of paper. I’ve seen that paper before, but without the man attached to it.
What was it I learned?
Something about trusting the people who love me?
He pinches open the paper. His hands are shaking. Maybe he’s hungry or something, but I don’t think so. He seems nervous. Too nervous. Stooping a little, focused so hard on that little slip of paper.
“No.” I snap the note away from him. “You love me, you dipshit fuckhead. You came back for some whatever meeting with my father, but you were going to call me… no, you weren’t. You were going to come right over to my house and crawl into bed with me. Because you love me and you can’t live without me and this note isn’t a note. It’s a receipt for that shirt which”—I notice his black button-front shirt for the first time—“isn’t a fucking turtleneck.”
“Lyric,” he says softly.
“Look!” I unfold it. It’s four fucking lines in black ink. “See?” I hold it up, convincing myself it isn’t what it is.
“I can’t go on like this.”
I’d like to congratulate him on the full sentence, but the reality of the note is weighing on me, and it’s killing me to see him stand here and choke like an actor with stage fright.
“Is that what this says?” I ask.
“No. Give it to me and—” He reaches for it, but I snap it away.
“I tried to call you.”
“I was on a plane.”
“Before I read this, I want to tell you what I was going to say.” I pull in a deep breath and take in the sight of him in this moment of potential, when the story of who we are together is unwritten. He’s so beautiful it hurts. I can barely speak, but I have to. “I want you to know, Anton, that I was going to tell you I’m having a hard time being without you. So I want to come to wherever you land… to be with you, after I make this movie, if I make it… but let’s assume I do. I was going to ask you to wait for me and tell you that no matter what you said, or actually, no matter what you wrote here.” I hold up the note. “I know you love me. I trust you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So.” I open the note. “Four lines from Anton Markov.”
“Can you not? Your parents are going to hear it.”
I can, and I will, parents or not. They love me and so does he, even if he’s breaking up with me.
“‘Dear Lyric. I’m sorry.’” I look up. “For fuck’s sake. Please say it’s not the same note.”
He shrugs and clears his throat.
“Fuck.” I read again. “‘This is unbearable.’ You can say that again.” A quick glance at him reveals a tiny upturn of a smile. “‘I am weak without you.’ We’re on a roll here. Okay. ‘I am useless under a different sun than you.’ Wait.”
That’s not the same. He changed that line. I read it again, to myself this time, to make sure I got it right.
“It wasn’t finished,” he says.
“Wow.” I fold it and let my hand drop. “I feel kind of… ah… so…?” I read it again. “What does it mean?”
“Besides that I’m not much of a poet?”
“No, really, you’re not, but…”
His smile breaks wide, and it takes every drop of my discipline not to kiss him.
“It means I’m coming home. To you.”
“No, you don’t have to.”
“I will. I told Mike.”
“You can’t crush Mike’s dreams!”
“What? Are you—?” He opens his mouth, slaps it shut as if it can’t hold the enormity of his bafflement. “My God, buttons, I’m standing here, both feet on the ground, tired but fully in my faculties, telling you that I love you. I want to be with you. I’d rather reroute my entire life than wake up one more morning without you, and you’re standing there, Lyric Crowne… my Lyric Crowne, in her parents’ whatever-room, telling me to make sure my life revolves around Mike?”
“But…” I look around. My parents are out on the patio, on the other side of an open wall. “You can’t just drop everything to rub my neck and bring me sandwiches.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You cannot. I won’t allow it.” My shout echoes off the walls. “I won’t.”
He crosses his arms. “Try and stop me.”
I am so frustrated, I don’t even know what I’m fighting for. Maybe the visions I had last night of waiting for a couple of years, staring at the sky in longing as we went about our business on opposite sides of the world. Maybe I’m fighting for him to keep his own path intact, or maybe I’m terrified of being responsible for what he gives up in my name.
“Dad!”
“What?” My father strolls in at his own pace.
I point at Anton as if I’m accusing him of murder. “He’s working for you? Him?”
Dad’s eyes go from me, to Anton, and back again. “Not if he’s bothering you.”
“He’s supposed to have an office somewhere…” I wave my hands. “Far? That’s the deal?”
“What’s this about?” Again with the looking between Anton and me.
“He wants to do the job from here.” I say it as if it’s the most laughable proposition ever proposed.
“I love her,” Anton says with a shrug, arms still crossed.
“In Los Angeles!” I continue with the same assumed hilarity.
“She has to be here. I want to be with her.”
“Does she want to be with you?” Dad asks flatly, like Walter fucking Cronkite.
“Right now?” Anton looks my way, studying the length of me, then back at my father. “I’m not so sure.”
“Of course I want to be with you. I love you. I miss you. Every minute. Ever since you’ve been gone, I’ve had this pain.” I touch the place in the back of my neck where my tension always settles. “Right here.”
“I have something for that.” Anton raises an eyebrow.
He wants to put my hair back into a tie and rub camphor on the back of my neck as much as I want him to do it. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
But I knew that already. I’m not afraid. Liang found his way. Anton will find his. I’ll find mine.
“You can make your own choices,” I say.
“I know that.”
“And yes, I love you.”
“I also know that.”
I put my fingertips over his mouth. “Can you shush?”
“Hm.” He smiles. His lips are so soft I almost forget what I wanted to say.
“What’s going on?” Mom says from somewhere behind me.
