Acknowledgments 3 страница

Her siblings were out there seeing the world while Kit was still slinging crab cakes.

She wanted some of the glory, too. Some of the glamour of Nina’s life, some of the thrill of Jay’s and Hud’s. She had spent so much of her childhood following them all into the water. But she suspected that even if none of them had ever picked up a surfboard, she still would have.

She was great on a board. She could be legendary.

She should be out there, getting accolades, too. But she wasn’t taken as seriously as her brothers and she knew she wasn’t as gorgeous as her sister, so where did that leave her? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure if there was a spot in the limelight for someone like her. A chick surfer who wasn’t a babe.

Jay pulled up in front of the garage and let Kit hop out.

“I’ll be back, ” he said.

“Wait, where are you going? ” she asked. She had gotten a tiny bit of a sunburn on the apples of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. It made her seem younger than she was.

“It’s going to take you forever to shower and I need to get gas, ” Jay told her. He looked at his gas gauge to see whether he was even telling the truth. The indicator was hovering at just under half. “I only have a quarter tank. ”

Kit gave him a skeptical look and then left, heading into the house through the garage.

Jay pulled the car back onto the road and put his foot on the pedal a bit heavier than he needed to. The car roared over the barely paved street. He checked the clock on the radio. If he sped, he had time.

The Pacific Coast Highway was the most comfortable place on land for him and practically the only road in town. There were small offshoots of neighborhoods dotted along the highway, canyons branching out, shopping centers nestled in one direction or the other. But you could not go anywhere, could not do anything, could not visit anyone in Malibu, without your wheels hitting the pavement of PCH. Your ability to get to a restaurant, shop at a store, make a movie on time, claim your patch of sand, take your spot in the waves, all depended on just how many other people were pulling onto the same road as you every day. It was the price you paid for the view.

Jay navigated traffic as best he could, sped up through changing lights, stayed in the left lane until mere seconds before he needed to be in the right one, and soon, he pulled onto Paradise Cove Road.

Paradise Cove was a startlingly gorgeous inlet hidden from PCH behind palm trees and valley oak. Jay turned right onto the narrow road and slowed. Once his Jeep rounded the corner, a cove of blond sand came into view, surrounded by magnificent cliffs and clear blue skies.

There was a community of mobile homes on the bluff looming over it all with land fees so outrageous that only the Hollywood elite could afford them.

But the restaurant at Paradise Cove was the reason Jay was here. The Sandcastle was a beach café, where one could buy an overpriced daiquiri and drink it while looking out onto the pier. Jay parked his car and checked his pockets. A five and four ones. He had to at least go through the motions of ordering something.

Jay walked into the restaurant, putting his sunglasses on top of his head, and approached the bar counter. He was greeted by a blond guy with a tan darker than his hair, whose name Jay could not remember.

“Hey, Jay, ” the guy said.

“Hey, man, ” Jay said, giving him an upward nod. “Can I get an order to go? ”

The man turned and Jay checked his name tag. Chad. Right.

“Sure thing. What can I get you? ” Chad took out a notepad.

“Just a uh …” Jay glanced at the specials listed on the board and chose the first thing he saw. “Slice of chocolate cake. To go. ”

Jay tried not to look around too much, be too obvious. If she didn’t come out, he’d resolved not to ask if she was there. Maybe she wasn’t working today. Whatever. That was fine.

Chad clicked his pen in a way that implied he was excited about Jay’s order. “One choco cake, coming right up, dude. ”

And Jay remembered that Chad was a dork.

He sat down on a stool as Chad walked back into the kitchen. Jay looked down at his own shoes—beat-up slip-ons—and decided that it was time for a new pair. His big toe on his right foot was starting to peek out from a hole in the top. He would go into town and visit the Vans store next week, get the exact same pair. Black-and-white checkered, size twelve. No sense in messing with perfection.

That moment, Lara walked out with a Styrofoam container she was putting into a plastic bag.

“Chocolate cake? ” Lara said. “Since when does Jay Riva eat chocolate cake? ”

So she was working today. So she was paying attention to him.

Lara was six feet tall. Actually a full six feet, just an inch and a half shorter than Jay. She was skinny, all hard edges. And, if Jay was being completely honest, not particularly beautiful. There was a harshness to her, an oval face with a sharp jaw. A thin nose. Thin lips. Yet somehow, when your eyes landed on her face, it was hard to look away.

Jay had not been able to stop thinking about her. He was infatuated and smitten and nervous, like a teenager. And he had never been lovestruck as a teenager. So this was all new to him, all uncomfortable and nauseating and thrilling.

“Gotta change it up, sometimes, ” he said.

Lara put the bag down next to the register and rang him up. He handed over his cash. “You coming to the party tonight? ” he asked. The words were out and he was satisfied with his performance. Casual, not too eager.

Lara opened her mouth to speak, Jay’s entire day and night resting on her answer.

• • •

Three weeks prior to that moment, Lara and Jay—until then only vaguely acquainted—had found themselves the only two people outside of Alice’s Restaurant. Jay had been walking back to the shoreline after smoking a joint at the end of the Malibu pier. Lara had been leaving the bar. Her lame date had left an hour ago and she’d been nursing her disappointment with Coronas.

When Jay saw her, she was sitting down on a bench in denim shorts and a tank top. She was in the middle of attempting to retie her white Keds, fully buzzed.

Jay spotted her and smiled. She pleasantly smiled back.

“Lara, right? ” he’d said, lighting a cigarette to try to hide the smell of weed.

“Yes, Jay Riva, ” Lara said, standing up.

Jay smiled, humbled. “I knew your name was Lara. I was just trying not to seem like a creep. ”

“We’ve met at least three times, ” she said, smirking. “It’s not creepy to remember my name. It’s polite. ”

“Lara Vorhees. You work at the Sandcastle, mostly behind the bar, sometimes waiting tables. ”

Lara nodded her head and smiled. “There you go. See? I knew you could do it. ”

“There needs to be some room to play it cool, don’t you think? ”

“People that are cool don’t really need to play cool, do they? ”

Jay was used to women that hung around and waited for him, women that made it clear they were available, women that laughed at his jokes even if they weren’t funny. He was not used to women like Lara.

“All right, ” he said, “I get your point. Tell me. If I’m cool, what do I say next? ”

“I guess, next you ask me if I’m doing anything right now, ” she said. “And then I tell you I’m not. And you ask if I want to go finish your joint, which you clearly have because you’re high and smell like bud. ”

Jay laughed, caught. “Are you doing anything right now? ”

“No. ”

“Do you want to go somewhere and finish my joint? I’m high and I smell like bud. ”

Lara laughed. “Let’s go to my place. ”

And so they did. Lara lived in a studio apartment in a complex a quarter of a mile inland at the foot of the mountains. Her place had a view of the water on a clear night. The two of them stood on her tiny balcony, nestled between two houseplants, sharing a beer and a roach, and looking at the moon over the sea.

When Lara said, apropos of absolutely nothing, “How many people have you slept with? ” Jay was so disarmed he told the truth. “Seventeen. ”

“Eight, for me, ” she said, looking forward, toward the horizon. “Although, I guess it kind of depends on what we are defining as sex. ”

He was surprised by her. Where was the shyness? The coyness? Jay was smart enough to know that these traits weren’t necessarily natural for women, but he was also bright enough to know that they were learned. That most women knew they were supposed to perform them as a form of social contract. But Lara wasn’t going to do that.

“Let’s say we define it as an orgasm, ” Jay said.

Lara laughed at him. Actually laughed at him. “Well, then, three, ” she said, breathing out the smoke of the joint, passing it back to Jay. “Men don’t give women as many orgasms as they think they do. ”

“I guarantee I would give you one, ” he said, as he put the joint to his lips.

This time she didn’t laugh. She looked at him, considered him. “What makes you so sure I’d let you? ”

He smiled and then pulled back, moving away from her, letting her feel his absence. “Look, if you don’t want to feel an orgasm that starts in your toes and shakes your whole body, it’s no skin off my back. ”

“Oh, this is impressive, actually, ” Lara said, playing with the label on the beer bottle. “How you’ve managed to make sleeping with me seem like a favor. Let’s be explicitly clear about something, Riva. You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t interested. But you’re lucky I’m interested. It’s not the other way around. I don’t care who your daddy is. ”

Jay figured it was then. That moment. When he fell in love with her. But there were other moments, too, that night. Moments it could have been.

Did he fall in love with her when she took her clothes off right there on the balcony? Maybe it was when she touched his face, and she looked directly into his eyes, and moved on top of him.

Maybe he fell for her as they interlocked themselves together, legs pretzeled, bodies pulled tight until there was no space left between them. They moved together like they knew exactly what they were doing. No fumbles, no mistakes, no awkward moments. And Jay thought, maybe that was love.

Or maybe he fell in love with her later, when it was pitch dark out, and the two of them were pretending to be asleep but each knew the other one was also awake. She had lain there bare, no gesture toward covering up. And her skin was the only thing he could see in the dark.

It was then that he took a deep breath and, for the first time, told someone else his big new secret. The one that was eating him alive.

“I was just diagnosed with a heart problem, ” he said to her. “It’s called dilated cardiomyopathy. ”

This was the first time he’d ever said the phrase out loud since he’d heard it from the doctor the week before. It sounded so strange coming out of his mouth that he wondered if he’d mispronounced it. The word repeated, over and over in his mind, until it sounded like nonsense. That couldn’t be right, could it? Cardiomyopathy? But it was. He’d pronounced it just like the doctor had.

He’d been having chest pains for weeks. He’d noticed them starting shortly after he got thrown off his board and then caught in a two-wave hold down in Baja. He’d been underwater so long he thought he might die. He struggled and struggled against the current, trying to decipher up from down. He pushed himself against the weight of the water, desperate to reach the sky. But he just kept tumbling and tumbling, pulled by the riptide. And suddenly, he broke through the surface and there it was: air.

Ever since, these pains appeared from time to time, as a tightening that took him by surprise, arriving out of nowhere and stunning him silent and then passing on, leaving as quickly as they came.

The doctor wasn’t sure what was causing them until suddenly the doctor became very sure indeed.

Lara put her hand on his chest, moved her warm body closer to his, and said, “What does that mean? ”

It meant that Jay’s left ventricle had been weakened and would not always function the way it should. It meant that anything that might cause overexertion and adrenaline, especially something like being thrown underwater, was no longer in his best interest. Putting his heart into overdrive by almost drowning had triggered it, but the underlying condition was hereditary, given to him by all of the people who came before him, lying in wait in his blood.

Jay spared Lara any more of the details, but told her the worst part. “I should stop surfing. It could kill me. ” His glory, his money, his partnership with his brother … One little defect in his body would take it all.

But on hearing that, Lara said, “OK, so you’ll find something else to be. ” She had made it seem so simple.

Yes, Jay thought, that was when he’d fallen in love with her. When she made what had felt like a fatal blow seem easily overcome. When she’d cracked open his bleak future and shown him the light shining in.

When Jay woke up the next morning, he’d found a note from Lara saying that she’d had to go to work. He didn’t have her number. Since that day, he’d been down to the Sandcastle three times, trying to find her.

• • •

“I wasn’t sure how it worked, ” Lara said, handing him his chocolate cake. “With the invites, I mean. ”

Jay shook his head. “No invites. It’s a pretty simple system: If you know about the party and you know where Nina’s place is, you’re invited. ”

“Well, I don’t actually, ” Lara said. “Know where her place is. ”

“Oh, ” Jay said. “Well, luckily you know me. ”

He wrote down his sister’s address on a napkin and handed it to her. She took it and looked at it.

“It is OK, ” she asked, nodding toward the other server, “if I bring Chad? ”

She was into Chad? Jay started burning up from the inside, on the verge of humiliation and heartbreak. The drop was so long, so treacherous, when you started from this high up.

“Oh, sure, ” he said. “Yeah, sure. ”

“I’m not sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re thinking, ” Lara said. “I prefer men who don’t spend four hours a day sunbathing with a foil reflector. ”

Relief came to Jay like ice on a burn.

“He’s depressed because his even-more-orange girlfriend dumped him, ” Lara continued. “Somebody at your party’s gotta have a thing for pretty boys, right? Can we pawn him off on someone? ”

Jay smiled. “I think we will have a lot of options for getting Chad laid. ”

Lara folded the napkin with the address and put it in her apron pocket. “Guess I’m going to a party tonight. ”

Jay smiled, pleased. There it was. What he came for. When he left, he forgot to take the cake.

June had been due with Jay on August 17, 1959. Smack in the middle of Mick’s tour for his debut album, Mick Riva: Main Man.

June and Mick had fought about the tour dates all through her first trimester. June had insisted Mick reschedule the second half of the tour. Mick had insisted what she was asking was virtually impossible.

“This is my chance, ” Mick told her one afternoon as they stood out on the patio, watching the tide pull away. Nina was napping and they were trying to keep their voices down. “You don’t get to just reschedule your chance. ”

“This is your child, ” June said. “You cannot reschedule your child. ”

“I’m not asking to reschedule my child, Junie, for crying out loud. I’m asking for you to understand what’s at stake here. What I’m building for our kids. What I’m building for this whole family. I can’t do all of this alone. I need your help. If I’m going to go out there and be great, I need you to be here, keeping things together, being strong. This life we want …” Mick sighed and calmed down. “It requires things from you, too. ”

June sat down, resigned. This reasoning made sense to her, as much as she hated it. And so somewhere in the time that Jay went from the size of a lime to the size of a grapefruit, they found a compromise.

Mick could perform wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but when June called him home, he had to come.

They shook on it one night when they were going to bed and as they did, Mick pulled June’s arm toward him and pulled her on top of him. She laughed as he kissed her neck.

When Mick took off for his Vegas shows four days before June’s due date, he promised to head home the moment she called to say she was in labor. “And I’ll be home as soon as I can, ” he said as he kissed Nina’s forehead and June’s cheek. He put a hand on June’s belly and then made his way out the door.

But when the time came—June’s mother called him an hour and ten minutes before his Saturday night show began—Mick didn’t run to the airport like he’d promised. He hung up the phone and stood there, backstage in his suit and tie, staring at the bulbs around the mirror.

It was his last Vegas stop on the tour. And impressing the guys at the Sands meant a lot of things. It meant he could get booked out for whole months at a time, which would mean some financial stability. This was his last booking for two weeks. Two weeks! Just like Junie had asked.

Think of all that time he’d have to be home. Junie and the kids would have him all to themselves. He’d pay full attention to their every waking need.

And so, he turned away from the mirror, straightened his tie, and finished his sound check.

June’s second labor developed with lightning speed, her body kicking into gear, remembering with precision exactly what it had done only a little over a year before.

Mick was in an impeccable black suit, leaning over and winking at a young woman in the front row, at the very moment that his first son, three hundred miles away, cried at the shock of the world.

Mick arrived back in L. A. seven hours after Jeremy Michael Riva was born. And Mick could see, just looking at June in her hospital bed, that she was angry.

“You have a lot to explain, ” his mother-in-law said, the moment Mick came through the door. She began grabbing her things. She shook her head at him. “I’ll let you get to it, ” she said as she took Nina with her and exited the room.

Mick looked at June, his eyes resting on the baby swaddled tightly in her arms. He could see only the tiny tip of his son’s head and marveled at the dark swirl of hair.

“You were supposed to be here before, ” June said. “Not half a day later. What is the matter with you? ”

“I know, honey, I know, ” Mick said. “But can I hold him? Now? ”

June nodded and Mick swooped in, ready to take him. The boy was light in his arms and the sight of Jay’s fresh face stunned Mick silent for a brief moment. “My son, my son, my son, ” he finally said, with a level of pride and warmth that melted June’s tired heart. “Thank you for my boy, Junie. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here. But look what you have done, ” he said. “Our beautiful family. I owe it all to you. ”

June smiled and took it all in. She looked at her glamorous husband and thought of her darling daughter out in the hall and reached out and touched her beautiful new baby boy. She felt that she had so many of the things she had ever wanted.

And so she let them go, the things she did not have.

A few weeks after they brought Jay home, as June was brushing her teeth, Mick kissed her on the cheek and told her he had a surprise. He had recorded the song he’d written for her. “Warm June” was going to be the first single off of his second album.

She spit out her toothpaste and smiled. “Really? ” she said. “‘Warm June’? ”

Mick nodded. “Everyone in the country is going to know your name, ” he said.

June liked that idea. She also liked the idea that everyone would know he loved her. That he was spoken for.

Because June was starting to suspect Mick wasn’t keeping to himself on the road.

11: 00 A. M.

Kit was sitting in the driveway, waiting for Jay. She checked her watch again. He’d been gone for almost an hour. Who took an hour to get gas?

Her hair was wet and combed, grazing her bare shoulders. She was wearing an old dress of Nina’s, seersucker and strapless.

Kit wasn’t really into dresses but she’d seen it hanging in the closet and decided to try it on. It was comfortable and cool and she thought maybe she liked how she looked in it. She wasn’t sure.

Jay pulled up to the cottage like a man who’d only twenty seconds ago stopped speeding.

“What took you so long? ” Kit asked.

“Since when do you wear dresses? ” he said, the second he saw her.

“Ugh, ” Kit said, frowning. How were you supposed to change—in ways both big and small—when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be? She turned around and started walking through the garage.

“Where are you going? ” Jay called out.

“To change my clothes, you asshole. ”

Once inside, she pulled off the dress, leaving it there on the wood floor. She slipped into jeans, put her arms through a T-shirt.

“Nice job pretending you were getting gas, ” Kit said, as she hopped in the car. She leaned over the center console to confirm her suspicions. The tank was still half full.

“Oh, shut up, ” Jay said.

“Make me. ”

Jay sped out and headed back up the Pacific Coast Highway. The Clash came on the radio and, despite feeling annoyed with each other, neither Jay nor Kit could resist singing along. As with most of their disagreements, they found the anger dissipated as soon as they forgot to hold on to it.

Just as the car approached Zuma Beach, they saw Hud in his shorts and T-shirt and Topsiders, waiting for them on the east side of the road. Jay pulled over and gave Hud a second to jump into the backseat.

“You guys are late, ” Hud said. “Nina’s probably waiting for us. ”

“Jay had to run some secret operation, ” Kit said.

“Kit had to change her clothes four times, ” Jay offered.

“Once. I changed my clothes once. ”

“What secret operation? ” Hud asked as Jay looked at passing traffic and then gunned it into the right lane.

“It’s nothing, ” Jay said. “Lay off. ” And that’s when everyone knew it was a woman.

Hud felt his shoulders loosen. If Jay was interested in someone new, that would soften the blow. “Consider me officially laying off then, ” he said, both hands up in surrender.

“Yeah, ” Kit said. “Like anyone gives a shit anyway. ”

Hud turned his head and watched the world stand still as they whizzed past it. The sand, the umbrellas, the burger stands, the palm trees, the sports cars. The dudes at the volleyball nets, the bottle blondes in bright bikinis. But he was barely paying attention to what he was looking at. He was guilt-ridden and sick over how he was going to confess to his brother what he had done.

Hud’s entire life, he’d always felt that Jay was not just his brother but his closest friend.

The two of them were forever tied to each other, twisting and turning both in unison and in opposition. A double helix. Each necessary to the other’s survival.

It was late December 1959, just a few days after Christmas. Mick was at the studio in Hollywood. June was home with Nina and Jay, roasting a chicken. The house smelled like lemon and sage. She was wearing a red-striped housedress and had curled the ends of her hair into a perfect bob, as she did every day. She never let her husband come home to a woman with her hair out of place.

Sometime after four in the afternoon, the doorbell rang.

June had no idea that in the ten seconds it took for her to make her way from the kitchen to the entryway, she was experiencing her very last moment of naï veté.

With four-month-old Jay in one arm and seventeen-month-old Nina clinging to her leg, June opened the door to see a woman she recognized as a young starlet named Carol Hudson.

Carol was small—tiny really—with big eyes and fair skin and delicate bones. She was wearing a camel-hair coat and pink lipstick, expertly applied to her thin lips. June looked at her and felt as if a hummingbird had shown up on the windowsill.

Carol stood on June’s doorstep holding a baby boy only a month or so younger than Jay. “I cannot keep him, ” Carol said, with only the thinnest edge of regret.

Carol handed the baby over to June, pushing him into June’s already crowded arms. June was frozen still, trying to catch up. “I’m sorry. But I cannot do this, ” Carol continued. “Maybe … If it was a girl … but … a boy should be with his father. He should be with Mick. ”

June felt the breath escape her chest. She gasped for air, making a barely audible yelp.

“His birth certificate, ” the woman said, ignoring June’s reaction and pulling the paper out of her black pocketbook. “Here. His name is Hudson Riva. ” She had named the child after herself but would leave him all the same.

“Hudson, I’m sorry, ” Carol said. And then she turned and walked away.

June watched the back of her, listened as the woman’s black pumps clicked faintly on the pavement.

Rage began to take hold in June’s heart as she watched the woman run down her steps. She was not yet angry at Mick, though that would come. And not angry at the situation either, though that frustration would set in almost immediately. But at that moment in time, she felt a grave and seemingly never-ending amount of fury at Carol Hudson for knocking on her door and handing over a child without having the courage to say the words “I slept with your husband. ”

Carol had treated the betrayal of June’s marriage as an afterthought, the smallest piece of the puzzle. She did not seem to care that she was not only handing June a child but also breaking her heart. June narrowed her eyes as she thought of the unique combination of audacity and spinelessness that this woman possessed. Carol Hudson was a bold one indeed.

June continued to watch Carol walk away while the two baby boys in June’s arms started crying—in alternating tracks, as if refusing to be in unison.

Carol backed out of the drive. Her clearly brand-new Ford Fairlane was crammed to the roof with suitcases and bags. If June had any doubt, the image of a packed car made it clear that this was not a game. This woman was leaving Los Angeles, leaving her son in June’s arms, leaving him for June to raise. Her back was turned, quite literally, to her flesh and blood.

June watched Carol drive off, until the car disappeared behind the curve of the mountains. She kept looking awhile longer, willing the woman to turn around, to change her mind. When the car did not reappear, June’s heart sank.

June shut the door with her foot and guided Nina to the television. She tuned it to a rerun of My Friend Flicka in the hope that Nina would sit there quietly and watch. Nina did exactly as she was told. Even before the age of two, she knew how to read a room.

June laid Jay down in his crib and let him cry as she unwrapped Hudson from his swaddle.

Hudson was small and puny, with long limbs he had not grown into, could not yet control. He was red and screaming, as if already angry. He knew he’d been abandoned, June was sure of it. He cried so hard and so loud for so long—so very, very long—that June thought she might lose her mind. His cry just kept repeating over and over like an alarm that never ceased. Tears started falling down his newborn face. A boy without a mother.

“You have to stop, ” June whispered to him, desperate and aching. “Sweet boy, you have to stop. You have to stop. You have to stop. Please, little baby, please, please, please. For me. ”

And for the first time since they began this peculiar and unwelcome journey, Hudson Riva looked June right in the eye, as if realizing suddenly that he wasn’t alone.

It was then, June holding this strange boy in her hands—staring at him, trying to process just what exactly was happening to them both—that she understood everything was far more simple than she was making it.

This boy needed someone to love him. And she could do that. That would be a very easy thing for her to do.

She pulled him close to her, as close as she could, as close as she’d held her own babies the days they were born. She held him tight and she put her cheek to his head and she could feel him start to calm. And then, even before he was silent, June had already made up her mind.

“I will love you, ” June told him. And she did.

• • •

Evening came around and June took the chicken out of the oven and steamed the broccoli and fed Nina dinner. She rocked the boys, gave Nina a bath, and put all three of them to bed—a process that took a full two and a half hours.

And as she performed each one of these tasks, June was forming her plan. I will kill him, she thought as she washed Nina’s hair. I will kill him, she thought as she changed Jay’s diaper. I will kill him, she thought as she gave Hudson a bottle. But first I will lock him out of the goddamn house.

When the kids were asleep—Nina in her bed and the two boys sharing a crib—June poured herself a shot of vodka and threw it back. Then she poured herself one more. Finally, she called a twenty-four-hour locksmith out of the yellow pages.

She did not want Mick to step one foot in their house, did not want him to ever again sleep in their king-sized bed, or brush his teeth in one of their master bathroom sinks.

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