Cheaper Than Free: An Anniversary Story (The Dance A/U Sequel)

You, Child

Pacific Palisades, California
Sunday, November 22, 2022
(12:00 pm)
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Amber had one hand on the steering wheel of her father's old Mercedes and the other on the radio in the dashboard as she fiddled with the stations.

"See his hand on my waist; thought you'd never be replaced, baby, ooh, you know it's true...that I was born to run, I don't belong to anyone, oh no...I don't need to be loved by you..."

The sound of Miley Cyrus' pro-woman anthem for the Millennial and Gen Z generations, of which Amber was a member, blared from the speakers her father had installed for her last year when he'd gotten a new car and she'd worn him down with requests for his old one. Miley had sampled her mother's "Edge Of Seventeen" track on "Midnight Sky", and the similarities between songs had even led to a mashup, "Edge Of Midnight", which she'd heard over the phone with her mother that she'd given her blessing to one night during the Covid lockdown of 2020.

"I mean, I put her six socially-distanced feet away from me in the yard, but jeez, kid...I HAD to talk to Miley...make sure she's okay after the divorce and all the shit people have been giving her online...You know I don't follow that crap but Daddy does, and Harry, and Vanessa...basically all my young friends and an old-man rock star."

Amber heard her mother's little giggle over the phone, and she smiled. Stevie Nicks was seventy-three and still giggled like a little girl. She remembered hearing her laughter in her bedroom at night when she was a kid and her mother would put her to bed and tell her silly stories and take the time to look at the hand-drawn poster she'd put beside her little pink princess bed to review her letters and colors and shapes. Stevie was in her early fifties then, older than the mothers of her friends, but she was still childlike at times, still a bundle of energy, still Stevie Nicks...even if the teachers at her school called her Mrs. Buckingham.

"Miley loves you, Mom." Amber knew how much younger artists looked up to her mother; she'd grown up meeting all of her favorite singers because, inevitably, they would all wind up at Stevie's door for a collaboration or just some friendly advice.

"Well I love her too," Stevie said. "NOW I have to get my hands on Demi Lovato...I can see she's struggling."

"What are you, Mom? The savior of Millennial singers?" Amber chuckled.

"No, just an old lady who remembers how it was to be young and famous and so fucked up I couldn't see the forest for the trees."

Amber had heard the stories. She understood how her parents had lived in the years before she'd come along, the difficult road they'd traveled back to each other leading up to her conception in 1997. She considered herself a miracle child, but even if she didn't, Stevie reminded her that she was one. Her mother had been forty-nine when she was born, conceived shortly after her reunion with her father while they were touring with Fleetwood Mac together for the first time in fifteen years. Stevie had assumed menopause was to blame for the way she felt at first, but she was pregnant with her miracle baby.

Amber was just pulling up to her parents' house as "Midnight Sky" turned into "Adore You" by Harry Styles and she laughed out loud. Jeez, Mom, it's like all your fairy godchildren are out to play today!

"Walk the fire for you," her friend Harry was singing as she pulled into the driveway. "Just let me adore you...like it's the only thing I'll ever do..."

She turned off the engine, and gave herself a quick look in the rear view mirror before getting out of the car. Amber would be twenty-five next week, and looking at photos of her mother at twenty-five, the year of the ill-fated Buckingham Nicks album, she knew, was as good as her look into the rear view mirror...except she'd inherited her father's blue eyes. Her outfit for the party tonight was in a garment bag in the back seat, and she couldn't wait to get dressed up and join her father in the big surprise.

When her parents stood up to give their annual toast, her father was going to turn to her mother with a stunning ring that was literally "gold and braid" and custom-made, and propose for a renewal of their wedding vows. Amber had a surprise for her parents too, but she was going to wait to tell them after they said their vows.

Standing up out of the car and locking the doors with a beep, she used her other hand to reach down and pat her surprise, which had been living in her belly for four months.

I can't wait to see the look on her face when I tell her I'm naming my daughter Stephanie Robin.

It was the separate solo tours her parents had been on this fall that had kept Amber from seeing them in person long enough to share her news, and even then, she had been warned by her gynecologist that because she'd conceived with IVF, her pregnancy was considered high risk despite her being just twenty-five. The choice between her wife and herself as to who'd carry the baby was a no-brainer, they'd decided when they'd begun the process after their first anniversary last year, since she was younger by ten years, and had a completely clean bill of health...unlike Jane, who took daily insulin for diabetes, as well as an antidepressant.

Stephanie Robin Buckingham Ryan. She and Jane had already been having a ball practicing the name out loud - "Stephanie Robin, put that down!" "And now, the valedictorian of Harvard Class of 2045, Stephanie Robin Buckingham Ryan!" "Who gives this woman, Stephanie, her hand in marriage? - We do." They wound up in hysterics, rolling around on the bed at the hotel in the Bahamas where they were staying on vacation, especially at the Harvard example. Both of their family backgrounds - the musical Buckinghams and the artist Ryans - would almost guarantee a creative girl who was too alternative for the Ivy League.

But it was fun to dream together. That was what they'd always done in bed together, since their first time being intimate - lie in bed in the dark and talk and laugh and share silly stories and deep secrets, sometimes all at once, always in each other's arms. She'd shared her happiness about it with her mother when she'd asked about how her "new relationship was going," and Stevie had gotten misty-eyed at the answer. When Amber had asked her why she was so emotional, Stevie had just winked and said, "How do you think you got here, kid? You just described my best times with your dad."

Amber had to remember as she rang the doorbell to keep her hand off of little Stephanie Robin. In her loose-fitting crew neck sweatshirt from Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever tour and leggings, her thin frame disguised her pregnancy well. She had just tugged at her shirt in the front when the heavy oak door opened, and she heard two barking dogs just as she laid eyes on a woman who was the spitting image of her in fifty years, wearing two big curlers on top of her head and a very old and worn t-shirt of The Rolling Stones. She was already smiling at her as she pulled her into a hug.

"Hi, Mom." Amber relaxed and leaned into the embrace of the woman she loved and admired most in the world, her mother, Stevie Nicks.

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