Silver Springs: A Holiday Love Story

Prologue: Really I Don't Want To Know

Santa Monica, California
Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 24, 2022
(9:00 am)
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"Hoda Kotb is filling in for Al Roker."

Those were the first words that Lindsey Buckingham uttered to his wife when she appeared in the kitchen of their condo overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was in the living room adjacent to the kitchen breakfast bar they'd put in when they'd remodeled just before the pandemic, and she could see him slumped in "the good chair", Cable TV remote in hand, iPhone in his lap, dressed in flannel pajama bottoms, a white Hanes V-neck tee, glasses, and a slight scowl. Stevie wandered over to the open archway between the two rooms, coffee pot in hand, squinting because she was wearing the wrong glasses and realizing he was talking about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC, which had just kicked off. Lily and Luna, their two little dogs, had settled on the area rug at his feet and were dozing.

"What's wrong with Al Roker?" Stevie asked, laser-focused on the parade on the giant TV screen as if it contained the answer to her question.

"Blood clots or something...I think I saw on Google News he had surgery...or it was Twitter."

"Did the dogs go out yet?" Stevie asked, ignoring his answer about Al Roker.

"After they ate," Lindsey said, his eyes still glued to the screen. "About an hour ago. All missions accomplished. There's coffee." He wasn't facing her; he didn't realize she was holding the handle of a half-full Mr. Coffee carafe in her hand and a Burberry mug, bought in London on tour with Christine McVie several years ago in a set, in her other hand.

"Thank you."

The conversation they'd just had was the most they had spoken since after dinner last night, sitting opposite the kids in a booth at The Lobster on the pier, Stevie's favorite seafood place in all of Southern California. Their argument, in fact, had cut the evening short. Will was in town for Thanksgiving and they'd upheld the Buckingham Thanksgiving Eve tradition of going out for a seafood meal, a tradition they'd begun the first year Robin had come home from college in Arizona for the holiday craving king crab from The Lobster. The four Buckinghams - Lindsey, Stevie, their daughter Robin and Lindsey's son Will - had planned to walk the pier and get gelato, for which they'd forgone dessert at the restaurant, but the argument put a stop to that. Instead, Stevie had disappeared to the ladies room to cry and Robin had asked her half-brother to bring her home, Will had mumbled something about dollar drafts at a bar on the Third Avenue Promenade instead, Lindsey had paid the bill, and he and Stevie had driven home in silence for the five-minute car ride that had become fifteen because of holiday street traffic.

Lindsey was resisting the operation and Stevie had called him a selfish bastard. It was the first time in twenty-five years they'd argued in front of the kids.

"Do you have coffee over there?" Stevie called from the kitchen, where she was drinking her own cup, leaning over the Los Angeles Times spread out across the breakfast bar. An enormous article about the protests in Iran was failing to keep her interest. She was so angry with her husband she'd practically forgotten how to read...which she'd been doing for seventy-one years.

She was also so terrified of losing him she was only offering him coffee because she couldn't offer him what she really wanted to - to cut out her own heart and shove it into his chest so he'd be healthy again.

"I'm good," he said about the coffee, a Burberry mug from the set sitting on the table at his side.

Dressed in her gray Ugg slippers and the same flowing black silk robe she'd owned since 1995, Stevie slowly approached the living room, coffee in hand, her rose gold tinted aviator glasses that were as synonymous with Stevie Nicks at this point as black blouses and tambourines offering slight relief from the sun streaming in from the terrace doors. She landed behind him, leaning over the chair in which he sat in a slightly defiant slump, every bit the Lindsey Buckingham she'd been fighting with and loving with all her heart for fifty-two years.

"I'm sorry I called you a selfish bastard."

"I'm sorry I called you a control freak."

They still hadn't looked at each other, and they each knew why.

It was Thanksgiving morning and neither of them wanted to start crying because once they started, they would never stop.

Stevie set her mug down next to his. The two Burberry mugs sat side by side, Stevie's containing black coffee, Lindsey's containing coffee with sugar and two-percent milk. She couldn't help but think that their two coffee mugs were symbolic - hers black and strong and earthy and bold, his lightened cautiously and made sweeter by something he'd added to it. She began to see a poem in that, but she wouldn't allow her mind to go there yet. Tonight, in her journal, she'd pour her feelings out about their coffee and their love and all the symbolism and imagery of a Stevie Nicks song. Right now, she had to let him know why she'd gotten so angry last night.

"What exactly do you oppose about the surgery, Lindsey? I really want to know."

Lindsey turned around at last, and Stevie could see the tears in his eyes. The cardiologist had warned them about the emotional state that could occur in the early stages of heart failure, but Stevie knew it was more than that. Lindsey was angry at his body, and terrified of what he stood to lose.

"What if I die on the table anyway and it was all for nothing and I'm not here anymore?" 

Stevie didn't need to hear another word. She swung herself around "the good chair" and into her husband's lap, and together they cried as they held each other as tight as they could.

"Baby..." Stevie began to rock him gently in her arms, the end of his glasses poking her collarbone and the end of his glasses poking her cheek, and her tears spilled over as she understood what he was trying to say.

"You know what I thought when I pictured the surgery and not making it and all?" Lindsey choked out in a sob.

"What, sweetheart?" She kissed the top of his head where his hair was its thinnest, her fingers in his gray and white curls.

"I thought the worst part was that if I died...I would miss you."

Stevie let out a long, painful sob and held him tighter, which made him tighten his hold around her waist. Her old black silk robe smelled like gardenia and coffee and home, and he buried his face into the cool fabric and her warm skin.

"I'm so sorry, angel...I just...I'm sorry," he cried in between her breasts, kissing the exposed skin at his lips.

"I'm sorry too, baby."  She covered the top of his head with kisses and continued to cry along with him.

They stayed that way for a long time as the popular shows on Broadway and the Radio City Rockettes were displayed at the parade on the TV and the little dogs at their feet slept on each other, both of them praying for the answer to their problem and knowing that just as they had for twenty-five years of marriage and fifty-four years of being in each other's lives in every different way two people could know each other, they would handle it together.

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