Underneath The Tree: A Buckingham Nicks Christmas

What A Beautiful Sight

Santa Monica, California
Christmas Eve
Saturday, December 24, 2022
(11:00 pm)
********************

"Daddy? Are you out here?"

Julia pulled her Burberry cashmere shawl, which used to belong to her mother, tightly around her as she crept out onto the deck to look for her father. She found him, leaning against the railing, smoking a joint alone. She immediately smiled and walked over to him and said, "You're flying solo tonight with that? Where's Uncle Chris?"

Lindsey laughed, offering the joint up to his daughter who took a small hit and then gave it back to him. Julia was going to be forty-five in 2023, and Lindsey was sometimes taken aback by watching his middle-aged daughter smoking pot or drinking alcohol. He could still see her wandering down the stairs on Christmas morning 1983, squealing with delight because Santa had brought her a Cabbage Patch Kid with blonde hair and blue eyes just like she'd asked for despite the news on TV reporting shortages and fights among shoppers at toy stores. He saw her in the tenth grade, jumping up and down at the Pearl Jam tickets she'd opened in her birthday card. He saw her sitting in the brown leather chair in his home studio, drying her tears with a crumpled tissue, explaining that she had to follow Jodie to New York to attend N.Y.U. even though Stevie wouldn't understand her moving so far away.

"Mom left everything behind for you in 1971 to go to L.A. even though Grandma and Grandpa told her they were cutting her off financially." Julia sniffles, looking tearfully at her father. "I mean, that took serious balls, Daddy! What makes this so different?"

"Nothing at all." Lindsey pulled another tissue out of the box between them and handed it to his daughter. "Barbara and Jess were already in Chicago by then, though. It was less about missing her and more about her life direction...moving to Los Angeles to live with two guys, one of whom she was intimately involved with but married to neither of them...I mean, come on! Your grandfather Jess wears a cowboy hat, for God sake!" He smiled when he saw his daughter laugh despite her tears.

"I know, Daddy...but I mean...this isn't just some high school affair thing, you know? I love Jodie and he loves me, like for real! We want to get married, but not until after college, and I am NOT going to college for four years without him, Daddy. You have to let her know that you're cool with it."

"I'm not exactly sure I AM cool with it, Jules." Lindsey looked at his seventeen-year-old daughter, wearing her Oasis band tee and her Doc Martens, her hair cut to look like Jennifer Aniston from Friends, a product of her generation and reminding him so much of Robin Snyder he nearly cried for his friend, Stevie's best friend, who'd been dead fourteen years. "Do Aunt Christine and Uncle John know about this?"

"Mmm-hmm. They are totally on board." Julia sniffled again. She leaned in, and in a lower and more secretive tone, "Hey Daddy...Jodie told me that they're getting back together. Did you know that?"

"Your mom and I suspected it," said Lindsey. He'd seen the affection between Christine and John since they'd been rehearsing for the new tour, and he knew Stevie had noticed it too. "Listen...I'll talk to Mom. She'll come around. She'll cry a blue streak but she'll come around."

"I hope so." Julia dried tears and liquid eyeliner from her face and said, "So what are you working on?" Lindsey had been playing the guitar when she'd knocked on the door of the studio earlier that evening.

"It's a song about your mom for the tour," Lindsey said. He picked up his acoustic guitar and placed it in his lap. "It's called 'Bleed To Love Her' because it hasn't been easy."

Julia laughed out loud, her crying a thing of the past. "I love it!" She knew her parents' love story. They fought hard, worked hard, loved hard, unlike her relationship with Jodie, which was more like the gentle friendship his parents' relationship was. "Play it, Daddy. Let me hear."

"You got it, kid." Lindsey began to pick at chords, singing, "Once again she steals away...then she reaches up to kiss me...and how she takes my breath away...pretending that she don't miss me..."

"So how's it going in your house these days?" Lindsey asked his daughter, passing her what remained of the joint to smoke. "Jodie doing okay?"

"As well as could be expected, I guess," Julia said on the inhale. She held the smoke in for a moment and then, as she exhaled, "I think he cries in the bathroom at night before he comes to bed so he doesn't freak me out...or Steph and John." She shook her head, more marijuana smoke escaping her mouth. "I do my crying in the car, mostly...especially when the Sirius Eighties station has a tendency to replay 'Everywhere' in heavy rotation because of that car commercial." Christine McVie's music catalogue had been sold before her death, and "Everywhere" was everywhere - as Stevie was fond of saying with a laugh at her own joke - in 2022. Julia sighed and said, "We'll be okay in time. How about you guys?"

"Your mom's never exactly been too much of a secretive crier," Lindsey said, and they both laughed. Stevie's capacity for becoming emotional was legendary. "I'm getting by...I spend a lot of time talking to John - senior, I mean - and your mom holds it back until something happens, like a picture or a song."

"Jodie's worried about Liv," Julia confessed. "She's not communicating with anyone...not texting him back except like one-word replies and all." Olivia McVie had always run very hot and cold, they knew, much as Sara had before her bipolar diagnosis. Julia sighed dramatically and stubbed the joint out on the railing. It fell into a nearby clay flowerpot into which Stevie sometimes planted lilies in Robin's memory in the spring. She bent down to retrieve the stub, but Lindsey stopped her.

"Leave it," he said. "Your Aunt Robin was like freaking Cheech and Chong back in the day! I think Mom will laugh her ass off if she finds that in Robin's flower pot!"

"Point taken," said Julia. "Hey...you'd better give Mom the ring! It's, like, after eleven!"

"Oh shit, you're right!" Lindsey looked at his watch. "Can you go find her for me in there? I have a text I need to send first so I'm going to hang back."

Julia smiled the same smile he'd been marveling at for forty-five years, knowing that he'd helped to create this amazing woman who was standing on the deck with him. One of our four greatest collaborations, Linds! Stevie used to say when the kids were small. "Okay, Daddy." she turned to go inside and then stopped, looking back at him and feeling the effects of the weed she had smoked. "Uncle Christopher?" She watched her father nod.

"You know it, kid." They shared a laugh and Julia disappeared into the party to go find Stevie. Lindsey pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jacket, and he scrolled though his text threads until he found the one thread he knew was no longer in use, the person on the other end not around to reply. He began to type.

Merry Christmas, Christine. I know you're not going to say it back, at least not on here. We're all going to be okay eventually - me, Stevie, John, the kids, Mick - but it sucks you're not around tonight. Sucks a lot. 2023 won't be the same without you, Songbird. Love you. L.B.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket and waited for the love of his life to join him on the deck so he could give her the surprise gift in his pocket, thinking of the words Christine had written over forty years before, which he had sung a million times.

"All I want is to see you smile, if it takes just a little while."

He forced back a tear and waited for Stevie, knowing that when he gave her the ring and he saw her smile light up the entire backyard of their home on Christmas Eve, he wouldn't be able to keep from smiling back.

********************