Everybody Loves You

No One Really Knows You (Lindsey's Story)

Malibu, California
Monday, January 9, 2023
(3:30 pm)
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She looked exactly like she looked on YouTube.

Yes, I admit it. I'd been looking at her tour footage on YouTube all year. I remember looking at footage of her covering "Rock And Roll" by Led Zeppelin in New Orleans in May, and I'd seen her new hair for the first time. It was longer, almost to her waist, and she wore it in these kind of mermaid waves as if she'd slept in braids, with straight bangs framing her face.

She looked older. I mean, she was beautiful, but she was older. Her face was a little more drooped, her eyes a bit more tired. But my God, she was beautiful. I mean, there we were near the restrooms at a funeral, and she looked like sunshine. I swear, Stevie Nicks could have a glow around her in the middle of a dark cave at midnight. I hugged her politely, tentatively, and when I let her go - obsessing over whether I'd held onto her for too long - she was looking up at me with those big brown eyes that were like a baby deer's. She looked like she had no idea what to say to me but was trying really hard to think of something. I let her off the hook.

"How are you doing?" I asked. "How's it been for you since you heard?" I was referring to the loss of Christine, the reason why we were there.

Stevie shrugged and said, "I barely remember life before her." Her face told me even more than her words. Christine's death was hitting her hard. "How about you?"

"Pretty much the same." I kind of looked down at the floor, scuffling along the wooden floor nervously and judging myself for looking awkward.

"How are the kids?" she asked, her hands shoved in her pockets.

"Grown up and out," I said, hardly believing it myself. "Will's working on some computer thing I'm too old to understand, LeeLee's working with her mom, and Stella's at U.S.C." I exhaled, realizing I hadn't breathed yet.

"My God," she said with a little head shake. "How are you doing? I heard you canceled a lot of shows in the fall due to health issues. You okay?"

I didn't know how to answer that question. I mean, how much information should I be giving out freely about my health? On the one hand, Stevie and I hadn't spoken in years. Our last communication had been the letter she'd sent to me after my heart attack and triple bypass surgery in 2019, telling me to listen to the doctors and take care of myself. She had told Irving to choose between us because she refused to share a stage with me ever again after MusiCares. I had sued Fleetwood Mac - so, by definition, sued her, really - for wrongful termination. I had told people on national television that she was jealous of my life because I had "found my soul mate" later in life and married and had children, and she hadn't, so she was most likely lonely and doing these things to me out of bitterness. Basically, what I'm saying is we had a lot of very recent bad blood between us, so why should I have shared my medical troubles with her here in the hallway outside of the bathrooms at Christine's memorial service?

On the other hand, this was Stevie I was talking to...no, scratch that. This was Stephanie. This was the woman who, at one time, I had thought I was going to grow old with. We had shared a household, a bank account, a bed, a dog. This was the woman I had seen through the flu, the common cold, various other medical ailments of her own - including two separate addictions and two miscarriages. This was the woman who had literally held me as I'd cried into her lap after my father's unexpected death in 1974 in line for gas during the shortage. This was the woman I had literally also coaxed out of a closet the night Robin died and into her bed because she was so grief-stricken and so paranoid and out of her mind on cocaine that she thought she house was haunted. (She'd even written a song about it! It's called "Sable On Blonde" and it's on The Wild Heart and it's a masterpiece. I've listened to it and cried many times, my heart breaking for her.) This was was woman I'd picked up and carried into the shower when she was too weak from withdrawal from klonopin to do it herself. This was the woman I had let fall asleep in my arms three nights in a row in Phoenix about a decade ago after her mother died because she'd confided in me that she hadn't stopped shaking since it happened and she was terrified that the shaking would never stop. We'd shared so many other medical hardships together, so why keep my condition a secret?

In the end, I made my choice. I said, "I am and I'm not. Getting Covid last year really took a lot out of me, and with my previous cardiac issues, it was a setback. But I'm okay now."

Alright, so I was only being half honest there, but not because of Stevie. We were there to honor Christine McVie; this was not the Lindsey Buckingham Pity Hour. I'd had enough of those when Irving fired me, when I woke up from triple bypass surgery, when Kristen finally had enough of my mourning the past in my bathrobe all day instead of being an energetic rock star and filed for divorce. Stevie would find out in good time what was wrong with me...that is, if my wildest dreams came true and we found our way back to each other.

"That's good." She smiled when she said that, and then it was her turn to look at the floor for a moment, collect her thoughts...or whatever she was doing that made her suddenly look smaller and more afraid that she had looked to me just a minute ago. When she gathered herself and looked back up at me, she tried to change the subject to a safe one and said, "Mick is giving the eulogy today. He was going to read it to me on the phone but I wasn't sure I was ready to hear it...I don't know why...I mean, what difference does it make? It's all so awful."

"I know." I could see she was trying not to get emotional. I've known Stevie Nicks since 1966, and believe me, she's naturally a cavalcade of emotions. She feels things to here core and it shows. She cries at sentimental things. She laughs out loud at things she finds funny. She shouts at you if you make her angry. She smiles with her entire face - no, her entire body - when she's happy. And if you are fortunate enough to know her intimately as a woman, those emotional responses are the tip of the iceberg. She kisses you with her entire soul, not just her mouth. She touches your body in a way that lets you know she's chosen you and you alone, even if it's just in that moment, and that you are special. And when you touch her the same way, you are rewarded with the sweetest little sighs, the most entrancing little breaths that grow more enticing as they come closer together, and I won't share any more secrets of making love to Stevie because she's always been so shy about those things even now, in old age. All I will say is I've been lucky enough to know every inch of her inside and out since I was twenty-one years old, and she is beautiful in every possible way a woman can be.

I think I must have been thinking of exactly these things then because she sort of tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at me. "What, Linds?"

I could have answered that in a million ways, including the honest one, but instead I said, "Nothing. We should probably head upstairs and sit down now. Would you mind if I sat with the three of you?" I had run into Mick outside in the parking lot already and hugged John upstairs in the room that was all set up with flowers and folding chairs and the usual funeral stuff. Neither of them told me about any assigned seating, nor had they told me to stay away. It was on Stevie now.

Funny how so many of my decisions in the last fifty years had wound up being left up to Stevie.

I watched her sort of stand more at attention then, straighten up, and then, just as it had so many times in fifty years, her face lit up and I saw the glimmer in her eyes as she tried not to smile too hard at my suggestion.

"I'd like that," she said.

The only thing more surprising than her answer was the fact that she linked arms with me right after that so we could walk upstairs to our seats together.

I wasn't about to question my good fortune. Doing that forty-five years ago was how I'd messed it all up for us in the first place.

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