Out of the Blues (21 page)

“They didn’t hate each other, Mason. Not really. Hate implies that at one time they loved each other. Arden used Cody for money and his fame. Cody used her…for me.” Anger crossed his face and he became the man I remembered.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that I fell in love with a man and when Arden found out she set out to ruin me. She used the two of you against me. I gave up my rights to you because she didn’t want a fucking faggot anywhere near her son. I might molest you.”

Fear prickled my skin. I couldn’t breathe. Panic. I knew what panic felt like now. I’d been living in a constant state of panic for the last…forever. I was old friends with panic.

“I told you, you didn’t want to know.” He put food on plates and carried one over to me. “Here. You’re going to eat.”

I took the plate and sat against the window with my back to the world while he went back for his own and a couple of bottles of water. He sat on the floor in front of me and for a moment I saw the same fear and pain in his eyes that swam in me like a fucking shark eating me from inside.

“I wasn’t allowed to see you and Harper. She didn’t know Cody was the man I’d cheated on her with. He was young. He was beautiful. He met her because I sent him to meet her. I’d heard rumors some guy she was hooked up with was hitting her. I didn’t give a shit about Arden at that time, but the rumors were that he was beating my kids and I didn’t have a fucking legal right to interfere because I gave that up so she wouldn’t out me to the media. So, Cody met her. He brought that asshole to me and we sent him packing. And Arden loves a sugar daddy. I hated that woman for a long time. Sometimes I still hate her.”

I flicked the goop on my plate with the fork. I didn’t know which was more unstomachable…this food or his story. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“You were four, how could you?”

“I remember you and Arden fighting about whose job was more important. I remember that you both chose your careers over us. I remember hiding in the pantry the day you left.” Yeah, I was four, but I remembered that day.

He poked at the food, not eating any of it. “We were fighting about boyfriends, not our jobs. I guess maybe we used the words career to cover…yeah, she knew I had a boyfriend. I don’t know how she found out, but she’d had so many that I’d lost count. We were screaming at each other. I had to give up my boyfriend…or else…so I screamed back that she had to give up hers. It was ugly, not even going to lie. And immature. And I didn’t know you were in the pantry.”

“I’d gone in there to get candy. I thought everyone was outside.” I shrugged. I was four. The candy bars in the pantry were the most important thing in my life at that time. “You left.”

He set the plate down and gave up pretending that it was edible. “He was playing small clubs back then. He was about a year away from making it big and one night after a game I went to this club in San Francisco. We’d lost so it wasn’t a big deal. I was having a bad week, Arden was being a bitch, two babies…I don’t know. And there he was, nineteen-years-old and I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. So being semi-famous, I arranged to meet him. I was twenty-seven, I was married with two-year-old twins and I ended up fucking this kid in his dressing room because I had to have him. Had to. I couldn’t live without having him. I’d never felt anything like that before, I haven’t felt anything like that since. I fucked up and fell in love with him. Sound familiar?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t see my father losing his head over a pretty face. Especially if it would cost him his career. “And he loved you back?”

“I don’t know. I think he did. We met up whenever his tour and my game schedule put us anywhere near each other. We talked on the phone. Back then, cell phones weren’t in wide use. I bought him one. No such thing as texting or sexting, not in 1990 anyway. Not that I remember. I risked everything. Hell, kids coming out in the NFL get shit on now, imagine how it was back then. Yeah, there were gay men. I knew who some of them were. We…” he stopped talking and lay back on the floor. “Kept it quiet. I liked men, I liked women. It was easier to hide. Women in public, men in private, marry a model, have a couple of kids, have the wife at home to fuck, the boyfriend on the side for when I wanted more than pussy. I was in the middle of what would be my best years. I was winning, I was making money. Not the same kind of money I could make now, but I was still getting rich and I fucking didn’t take care of that. I married a woman who only saw dollar signs, knocked her up. She took me for everything because I cheated, with a man, and, Jesus. I’d have kicked my ass all over the damned street. I can’t make any excuses. I cheated. That was on me.”

“Arden has never been faithful to anyone. You said yourself she’d had boyfriends. She never even made a secret of screwing around on Cody.” I was trying to connect so many dots and he wasn’t giving me a timeline to follow. “Christ, Cody was nineteen?”

“Not something I’m proud of. He was a fucking kid, so pretty, so gay. He couldn’t be out either, not in rock not then. I loved him. You met him when you were a baby. You knew him when he accidentally met Arden. You hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, but you recognized him. She didn’t figure it out until I finally got visitation rights back. And yeah, she cheated, but she didn’t cheat with a woman…I don’t know, Mace, it’s all fucked up. She would fuck anything that had money. The word gold digger was created just for her.”

“She’s my mother. You know this, right?”

“She’s the woman who gave birth to you then abandoned you with nannies and stepfathers who never married her to jet set around the world. When she let that asshole give Harper a black eye, that was it. I had the leverage I needed to counter her threats and I wasn’t afraid of being outed anymore. I got my kids and I got Cody…that’s how it was supposed to work, that’s why he married her, so he could be with you, so he could be your father, so we could be a family. Didn’t work.”

I was getting the picture. “So you had Cody marry Arden and you figured with Arden trotting off to make movies, you and Cody would play house? I think I got that.”

“But Arden didn’t run off. She liked being in Cody’s entourage, or she suspected. I think the prenup kept her close. Can’t get his money through divorce, she would spend it before. I think she wanted to get pregnant again. They never slept together, he wouldn’t touch her. She slept her way through his band and the other bands. She…was a piece of work.”

“She wasn’t that bad.” I put the plate down. My whole life was one fucking season of Dynasty. “Okay, some.”

“I never spoke badly of her in front of you.”

“Not until tonight.”

“You asked, you wanted to know. We fucked up, both of us and you’re walking around proof of how badly we fucked up.”

“And that didn’t hurt at all. Thanks, Doug, for the confidence boost.

“That’s what I mean, Mace. You don’t have any self-confidence. You have bluster and swagger and you hide behind a quick wit, but you don’t have enough confidence to know what you want in your life and that’s my fault. I take that blame. I made you feel inferior because you weren’t into sports. I made you feel unwanted and unloved. I made you ashamed of how you look and…I’m sorry. I was an asshole. I’m learning
not
to be an asshole.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d been waiting my whole life to hear him say that, or something like that. “What happened with you and Cody?” And that was not exactly what I wanted to say, but that was the last puzzle piece. What the hell happened to cause Cody to haul ass to middle of fucking Georgia when he was the biggest star in the world? “Cody wouldn’t have walked away. I know that much. You said you had a falling out, so what happened to send him into hiding?”

I heard Doug draw in a deep breath. He still lay on his back staring up at the ceiling that was shrouded in dark.

“Dave Lerner.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t need to ask another question. Dave had come into Cody’s band when we were twelve, and into Cody’s bed.

“He molested Harper on Cody’s watch. Cody brought him into the house and didn’t know the fucker was into little girls. Harper miscarried that summer. She was thirteen fucking years old, and he let his lover rape my baby.”

I was on my feet and moving toward the door. The panic was back and I couldn’t fucking stop it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. She told me he…she didn’t tell me…fuck. No.

Doug caught me. I was standing on the edge of the back deck. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t stop shaking and screaming.

“He was high all the time. She didn’t know what happened and we didn’t tell her what happened. He started when she was twelve. Cody never even suspected. I’m surprised he didn’t come after you, too.” Doug couldn’t let it go now that it was out there. “She had drugs in her system, he was drugging her.”

“He didn’t come after me at first because that girl, Heather, whatever her name was, was already there,” I screamed back at him. It was his fault, his, and Arden’s, and Cody’s. All of them. “We were kids. We were not possessions to pass around and leave behind. You all did it, all of you. Dave tried. Cody caught him with his hand down my shorts and where were you? Off playing quarterback hero and fucking models and…I can’t. I can’t trust anyone, I don’t trust anyone. People have told me my whole life how pretty I am, how much they love me while they put their hands in my pants or my pockets. There’s no such thing as love, there’s just sex and money and people who use each other for both.”

“Is that why you won’t let yourself be happy?” We were screaming at each other in the dark with the wind whipping in from the water. “Is that why you won’t…sing? Why won’t you sing? You have more talent in your little finger than Cody did in his whole body. He always said you’d be a star. He always said you’d make him look like a nobody. He was fucking proud of you.”

“He loved his drugs and his groupies. He brought them into our house and let them…use me, us. He did that. Arden was worried about you, and he did it. I hate him and I love him, and I hate all of you. But…none of you give enough of a shit to see what you did to us. I didn’t want to go back to Georgia, I didn’t want to. We were normal there, it was just the three of us. We were a family for four years, but it was wrong. He wasn’t our father, he was fucked up and we were pretending to be a family. It wasn’t real. He died and I found him. He looked like he was asleep and would wake up and ask me what was for dinner because he’d been writing songs and smoking pot all day…but he didn’t. I still see him sitting in that chair. We buried him in Georgia. He’s in fucking Georgia. And I went back there and fell in love and and…”

Doug grabbed my arms when I started to run again. He held me with fingers that felt like steel bands cutting into my flesh. “I love you, Mason. I am sorry I failed you, I’m sorry Cody died, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry.”

“I hate you,” I wailed when the rain started. It was cold and it hurt. I was a little kid having a tantrum. “I hate you. I hate…”

He hugged me to him. Holding me while I pounded my fists into his back and screamed my hate into the raging winds until I couldn’t scream anymore. I sank to my knees and he followed, holding me. Whispering in my ear, that he was sorry.

“I love him,” I said when I was screamed out. “I would have told him that I fell, too.” My voice was raw. I was freezing and soaked and crying because I had fucked up my own life so many times. “I walked away from the first person to make me…feel loved…because I’m just like you.”

“You are,” he agreed, but he didn’t let me go. We knelt like that until my knees went numb. “You’re just like me, so what are you going to do differently?”

“Fix my shit.” I hiccupped and held on to him tight. “I have to fix my shit.”

“That would be a fine start.”

I couldn’t stop trembling. I couldn’t stop holding onto him as if I’d cease to exist if I did. I’d fall and drift away and never be anything again. “I love you…Dad.”

He didn’t tell me again, he just held me while I cried it out of my system. “I love Arden.”

“You should tell her.”

“I will…one day.”

“Before she comes and breaks down the gates would be good.”

I nodded.

“I miss Cody so much.”

“Me too.”

I nodded again.

“Does Harper know? About…what you told me?” I couldn’t carry that knowledge and be able to look her in the face if she didn’t know.

“She does. She spent time with me years ago. We talked, went to therapy. She’s working her way through that time. I was so afraid when she said she was pregnant. I could see the terror in her eyes.”

“She loves Hunter.”

“He’s a good man. He knows, he’s been with her through so much. She won’t tell him much. She won’t tell anyone much. I never thought I had to worry about that with you, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Cody didn’t know, well, about the women. He knew about Dave. He threw him out of his band and I never saw him again. I didn’t know about Harper, I didn’t, not until she told me the other night at the barbecue.”

“That was two months ago.”

“Oh.” I’d forgotten that. I let go and stood up. “I feel like a fool.”

He stood up and smiled a sad smile.

I looked around at the house on the hillside that had once been home but was now a neglected tomb with nothing left of its owner. “I’m going to sell the house.”