Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 7: Say You Will

It's The Same Old Thing In The Same Old Way

Santa Monica, California
Sunday, January 27, 2002
(8:30 pm)
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"Putting the Brentwood property up for sale at this time of year makes no kind of sense, Lindsey! My God, think about it!"

Stevie stood in the center of the kitchen, trying not to get heated as she and Lindsey discussed their finances. She was slicing into a chocolate cake as she said her peace, cutting a slice for herself and a slice for her daughter Sara to enjoy while they watched the new episode of Malcolm In The Middle, which they watched together every Sunday night that Stevie was home. She had spent a good part of 2001 away from home, touring with her band to support her latest solo album, Trouble In Shangri-La, and she and Sara had been making up for lost time since she'd been home.

Her reunion with Lindsey, however, had only been warm and romantic for a short time. They had been arguing about money and real estate since Thanksgiving.

"If I don't list the property now I'll never be comfortable shelling out all that money for the rental property in the Hollywood Hills for the studio space," Lindsey said, closing the refrigerator door with a bit too much aggression after retrieving a bottle of Heineken. "That shit isn't free, Stevie! And now you're talking about looking for an apartment in Santa Monica when we have a whole fucking house in Santa Monica...explain that to me, Stevie. Tell me why we need an apartment in the same neighborhood as the house we're currently standing in."

Stevie had begun talking about the possibility of buying an apartment near the Santa Monica Pier over the holidays. She'd explained that it was a good idea to invest in real estate at the same time as having a place for either of them to escape to individually if they needed space to work on solo projects...or together if they wanted to escape the kids and have a romantic night or weekend to themselves.

"Forget it," Stevie said, tossing the cake knife into the stainless steel sink behind her. "What do I know about real estate? I only got that guy to buy our house in Venice for four hundred thousand over the asking! But I guess I'm clueless."

"I never said you were clueless, for God sakes, Stevie! Why do you always take every comment so goddamn personally?"

"Because this is personal, Lindsey! I'm standing here telling you the apartment at the pier is a good idea, a way for us to have some alone time, and you're telling me about 'not feeling comfortable' doing it...why? It's not like we need the Brentwood money to cover the new place...Jesus Christ, we're worth, like, two hundred million combined!"

"The new album isn't finished yet, Stevie. It's going to take a lot of dough to keep renting the space, plus we still don't know if we have a label! Warner Brothers is hemming and hawing so I set up a meeting with Interscope."

Stevie, who had been pouring two glasses of milk to go with the chocolate cake, slammed the refrigerator door closed in shock. "You what?"

"I did a little label shopping," Lindsey explained with a shrug. "Well, I didn't just shop around; I did it with Mick and John, technically..."

"And in all this...shopping...did you ever think of consulting me first? Am I not a member of the band?"

Lindsey looked across the kitchen counter at his wife, and he knew she was angry. As hard as they'd tried for the past twenty-five years to keep band business and personal business separate, making a new album always caused friction between them...and, he knew, for the first time since they'd joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, she would not have Christine to turn to for support when the inevitable boys club began to form.

Christine McVie had retired from music four years earlier, after their wildly successful comeback tour, The Dance, Fleetwood Mac's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and her remarriage to John. The McVies had been dividing their time between England and California - mostly England now that the kids were grown - and John had been staying in California for awhile as the three men of the band had been playing together in the house they'd rented in the Hollywood Hills. Their son Jodie, who was twenty-five years old and living in Los Angeles, was a graduate of U.S.C., was about to graduate from Loyola Law School in June along side his long-time girlfriend, Stevie and Lindsey's oldest child, Julia. Both kids were looking towards careers as entertainment lawyers, and after spending the first two years of their college education attending N.Y.U. and living in an apartment in Soho, had returned to the sunshine and beaches of their mutual childhoods in 1998 and purchased an apartment in Santa Monica, not far down the beach from where Stevie had been apartment hunting. Lindsey knew that part of Stevie's insistence on getting the place to begin with was to be closer to Julia, her first baby girl, before she was a married woman with children of her own. Jodie hadn't proposed yet, but everyone knew it was in the air, and Stevie had caught Julia eyeing the diamond rings at the jewelry store in Palm Springs in October when the Buckingham family had taken a weekend trip there for Lindsey's fifty-second birthday.

Sara Buckingham, tired of waiting for her mother to bring the cake into the living room to eating during Malcolm In The Middle, came into the kitchen just as her parents were staring tensely at one another across the kitchen island. Sara, who was going to be fourteen in April and was the spitting image of her mother, more so than both of her sisters, sensed the tension immediately. But Sara did not just look like her mother; she also had inherited Stevie's talent for diffusing a situation with humor. With a roll of her eyes and a knowing smile, she looked at her parents and said, "Okay, guys, time to stop being so 'Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham' already! Mom, you're missing the whole show and I need my cake."

Both of her parents exchanged a look that was a silent agreement to table the fight for later. Stevie said, "Sorry, Sara...here." She put a cake plate and a glass of milk in her daughter's hands. "I'll be right in. And please drink your milk too; I poured it for a reason."

Sara nodded and took her dessert back with her to the living room. Stevie turned to Lindsey to say something, but he beat her to it.

"Stevie, look...I'm sorry we went to Interscope without consulting you," he said, in a calmer tone of voice. "Obviously you'll be there when we take the meeting; it's not a secret or anything. You're coming by the house tomorrow afternoon to play the four new demos, right?" Stevie had been furiously working all weekend with Karen to record four new songs for the album.

"Yeah." She took a breath, trying to calm her anger. "I have to get Amber to school and then Sulamith and Sara Belladonna are going to the vet, and when we're done with all of that, Karen's going to bring me up to the Hills to play the new songs for you guys."

She took another deep breath in and out, and looked up into her husband's eyes. They were the eyes she had first looked into in a church rec center in Northern California on a Wednesday night in 1966 at Young Life, the weekly faith-based teen gathering that neither of them went to for religious reasons but just to get out of the house and party, the same eyes that had looked at her with such intensity as she's harmonized with him to "California Dreaming", impossibly blue and warm and irresistible, eyes that saw her - not just Stevie but Stephanie - down to her core, the same eyes she'd seen again in a garage full of teenage boys and musical instruments two years later and known that somehow, in some way, those blue eyes were reflecting her entire future.

"I'm sorry," Lindsey said for the second time. "You know I love you, right?"

"That's never been up for debate, Linds." Loving each other had never been the issue; it was remembering that fact when life got in the way. "I love you too."

"Go watch Malcom In The Middle with Sara," he said. "There's no use going another round tonight."

"You've got a point." Stevie smiled and reached across the island countertop to bring him closer towards her for a kiss, her arms wrapped around his neck. His lips lingered on hers just a moment longer than she'd expected, capturing her lower lip playfully, and he heard a tiny moan escape her as they pulled away. When her eyes fluttered open, she said with a teasing smile, "You're really not playing fair, Mr. Buckingham."

Lindsey smiled back and said, "Who says I'm playing, Mrs. Buckingham?"

Stevie backed away slowly, picking up her cake and her glass of milk to go join their daughter in the living room in front of the television. She added a little flourish to her walk and looked back over her shoulder in the doorway, and she couldn't resist a little giggle when he whistled at her like a construction worker seeing a pretty girl in the street.

Stevie and Lindsey had never had a perfect relationship, but it was just the kind of perfect imperfection that had carried them through thirty years of a partnership both on and off the stage.

They both knew in that moment that they would be working out their differences later that night in the same place they always did - in a darkened bedroom, under the covers, in each other's arms.

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