Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 3: Storms

Your Softness Fades Away

Venice Beach, California
Memorial Day
Monday, May 28, 1979
(2:00 pm)
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"Down around the corner...half a mile from here...you see them long trains running and you watch them disappear...Without love...where would you be now...without looooooooooooove...You know I saw Miss Lucy down along the tracks...She lost her home and her family and she won't be coming back...Without love...where would you be now...without loooooooooooooove..."

Christopher Nicks had one hand on a pair of barbecue tongs and the other wrapped around a beer and was shout-singing along to the Doobie Brothers in his big sister's backyard. He was watching her off in the distance, balancing her son on her hip and occasionally laughing uproariously to something her friends Lori and Sharon said. Sharon Celani was a new friend of hers, a slender, quiet woman in wire-rimmed glasses whom she'd met a year ago in Hawaii at Mick's and discovered was an aspiring singer. Lori Petty was a sweet, well-mannered woman with fluffy red hair who'd been friends with Stevie since the Buckingham Nicks days, her ex-husband Gordon a producer friend of Keith Olsen's. He'd always liked Lori. She was easy company. She was a great listener and she never judged a word that was said. She reminded him of his mother that way.

Single again after a falling out with Christie over the idea of marriage and children not being in his future plans - not his near future, anyway - Christopher looked around at the couples in the yard that afternoon, either standing with each other or mingling among the group - Mick and Sara, Robin and Kim, Christine and John, Ken Calliat and his wife Diane, and, of course, the couple who sat at the top of the pyramid, the golden couple who made it work in ways nobody could ever understand, Stevie and Lindsey.

Christopher's eyes followed Lindsey as he emerged from the open doorway to the deck, balancing a case of beer in his arms, and setting it on the wooden deck floor before climbing the stairs to the yard. He watched Lindsey weave through the Memorial Day party until he was at Stevie's side, watched him kiss his infant son's little head, and then fiddle with the front of Aaron's little sailor suit as he whispered something into Stevie's ear that made her laugh and then kissed her before he walked off in Christopher's direction to check on the meat on the grill.

He turned over three steaks with the tongs and thought, It's not marriage and children I oppose. It's marriage and children with someone I don't think I could survive marrying and having children with. It's doing it all with someone who doesn't make me feel the way my sister makes Lindsey feel. Look at them! Anything less than them would be settling.

"Hey, Chris, how's it going over here?"

Lindsey approached his brother-in-law with a look that was sort of a smile and sort of an inquisition. He looked down and inspected the various meats that were grilling.

"Chicken will be ready in a minute...steaks need a few more than that," he said. He motioned with his chin out into the crowd and said, "Hey...do you know if Lori came here with anyone today?" Christopher had been grilling for most of the afternoon and had not been paying attention.

"She came with Sharon..." Lindsey looked up at the sky, trying to remember the last name of his wife's new friend. "Celani!" He looked proud of himself for having remembered. "Why?"

"Just asking." But Lindsey knew better than that. He knew Christopher had had a crush on Lori for years.

Lindsey looked out at the party and saw Lori in deep conversation with Stevie, and he suddenly recalled a conversation they'd had years before, in the guest room of the Nicks house in Phoenix, the Christmas after Polydor had dropped the Buckingham Nicks album. Christopher had told him as they'd shared a joint in the yard about another failed relationship of his - and how his girlfriend's drug use had been caught by Barbara in their home - and he recalled Stevie saying it was a shame Lori wasn't single because she'd have been perfect for her brother.

Stevie, who had passed baby Aaron on to Robin, looked up at him, sensing his gaze on her. An enormous smile broke out on her face and she waved at him from across the yard, and he was suddenly very acutely aware of how fortunate he was, how much he loved the life they had built together and continued to build upon, how lost he would have been now if he'd given in to his jealousy, his anger, his need to control everything and ironically Drive Stevie away by trying too hard to keep her close.

There would not be a Julia or an Aaron, he thought, thinking of how all four of them had been lying in bed together the night before, watching One Day At A Time. Aaron had begun to fall asleep making little baby sounds while Julia giggled because the dog was licking her toes, and as the two tiny people they'd made lay between them in the bed, he'd looked over at Stevie and caught she'd caught him almost starting to cry. Her response had been to lean over the babies and stroke his cheek, saying simply, "I know, sweetheart. Me too."

Lindsey would never stop thanking the universe for the beautiful woman who'd agreed to spend the rest of her life with him, and the two little humans their love had made.

"I said...give me my fucking keys!"

Lindsey's daydreaming was harshly interrupted by the sound of John McVie's voice bellowing through the backyard over the sound of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride". Everyone's heads turned to see John and Christine standing on the deck above them, and they looked like they had been mid-fight before even exiting the house.

"Over my dead body! Or yours, if you think for one second I'm letting you get into the car like this! The only way you get these keys, Johnny, is if you agree to stick them up your ass!"

John stormed off, back into the house, and the last thing anyone heard was Christine shouting, "Go ahead! Walk away! The mysteriously disappearing John McVie! Sure, that's the answer!"

The awkward quiet that overtook the party was apparently too much for Stevie, who turned and yelled over to her brother, "Christopher, the steaks are done! Start serving!" In the general direction of her guests, who'd come for the holiday as they attempted to start a tradition of Stevie's birthday and Memorial Day - often coinciding - as a party weekend at the Buckingham house, she announced, "Lunch is served! Come and get it!"

She made a bee line into the house to find Christine. The last thing she saw from above the party as she made it to the deck was her friend Lori helping Christopher plate the food.

Christine was in the den, standing beside the recessed shelves filled with vinyl albums and angrily shoving her son's things into a blue diaper bag with Winnie The Pooh on the front.

"Chris...are you okay? What was that?"

"That was a drunken English bass player who thinks it's a great idea to drive his wife and son home," said Christine. "I took his keys because it's not even three and he is not in any condition to drive, so that later tonight when we leave here he doesn't have them on him." She shoved a stack of diapers into the bag with force as she added, "Goddamn it, I hate when he does this! He acts like a fool and I try to stop him, and I get accused of trying to mother him! Ugh!" She tossed the diaper bag to the floor and sank down onto the sofa, her head in her hands.

"Jesus, Chris, I'm sorry." Stevie sat down beside her. "Is it like this a lot?"

She knew the answer. Everyone at the studio knew the answer.

"It's not just the drinking, either," Christine said. "I mean, look...I do my thing too...I haven't changed that much since Jodie was born." She sighed. "Except for lately."

Christine raised her head from her hands and turned to look at Stevie, whose hand was on her back. Stevie was reminded of three dramatic months in Sausalito in 1976, consoling Christine over John's antics, a mountain of cocaine between them. She thought of twelve songs on an album that told the tale of two broken relationships, and she wondered how she and Lindsey had been spared what Christine and John were going through right now.

"Do you want to know something that's totally fucked up in all of this?" Christine asked, looking into the sympathetic eyes of her best friend.

"What, Chris?"

"I'm pregnant."

Stevie watched Christine's head drop into her hands again. This time, she was crying.

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