Say Goodbye

Now I Know Just What To Do

The Drake Hotel
Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, September 14, 2003
(11:00 pm)
********************

"Are you still feeling queasy?"

Lindsey watched his wife coming through the doorway from the bathroom, where she had just finished about thirty minutes of throwing up half a deep-dish pizza before heading into the shower. She wore a blue t-shirt with a little stencil of a teabag on it, and gray cotton shorts. Her blonde hair was tied loosely on top of her head, and her makeup was gone. She still looked a bit green, but she smelled like lilac, he noted, as she sat down beside him on the sofa.

"I think it's out," she reported with a thumbs-up. She sat back with a sigh and drew her knees to her chest, and all Lindsey could think about was Stevie in that same position hours earlier, two floors down, crying. "I just hope it stays that way because you know one or both of them are going to wake up in the middle of the night freaked out about being in a strange bed, and I can't be hunched over the toilet."

"I've got it," said Lindsey, gently patting her bare foot in front of him and looking down at her pink-polished toenails and feeling more guilty than he'd ever felt before her in the six years they'd known each other. "If the kids wake up, I mean. I'll handle it."

"No offense, Lindsey, but they'll want Mommy," Kristen said. "You're not around enough lately; they each have new shit they're afraid of, and you don't know what they are."

"They're my kids, Kit. I would think you would enlighten me!" he said, a bit louder than he'd intended. Lowering his voice, he said, "What are they afraid of? LeeLee's not scared of the shadow of the door frame anymore?"

"Oh, she still is, and now she's added the fact that the shadow looks like the pointy nose of a scary burglar because she saw one on some TV show Will changed the channel to one day when I wasn't looking." Kristen yanked her foot from her husband's hand, dropping both feet to the floor. "And Will is afraid that Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob is a real town beneath the ocean and that the starfish will come up and crawl on him if he pops out of his covers...but you would know that, Lindsey, if you hadn't just spent ten hours a day six days a week with a drunken sailor, a buffoon with two sticks in his hand and an over-the-hill New Age granola princess with sloppy poetry in some house an hour from ours on the PCH, only to pack your shit and disappear to play rock star with those idiots all across America and Europe for two fucking years!"

Lindsey sat speechless in his place, watching Kristen catch her breath from her run-on sentence of vitriol and bitterness she'd clearly been storing since the beginning of the Say You Will project. Kristen stood up and turned to go back down the small hallway of their suite from where she'd come, but Lindsey grabbed her arm just as she jerked away, anticipating his move.

"Jesus Christ, Kit, why didn't you tell me any of this before? Why keep it all bottled up and tell me now?"

Kristen whirled around and folded her arms in anger. "And when, exactly, are you suggesting I do that? When you were holed up in your fucking studio at home, avoiding us, or when you'd grab your keys like a man possessed every goddamn day and head out to Hollywood to listen to a woman who dumped you practically thirty years ago sing a bunch of ridiculous songs about storms and gardens and long-lost love that isn't with you?" She leaned back a bit and added, "Wait! I know! When you were putting up your dukes in a stupid play-fight dance with some bitter old hippie who's jealous of the fact that you moved on without her!"

Lindsey was on his feet now, attempting to keep his emphatic tone a whispered one, thinking of the two sleeping children two tiny rooms away. "You always go to the same goddamn place, Kristen! You feel the least bit inconvenienced or alone, and you're name-calling and poking fun at my fucking life's work!"

"Your 'fucking life's work' is not those assholes anymore and you know it, Lindsey! You were done with that band of aging drug addicts and alcoholics after the last tour! You fucking promised me! You told me Fleetwood Mac was over for a long time, that your precious Christine quit and went home to grow roses or some kind of British bullshit...I wasn't listening...and that your other precious flower...the Welsh witch or whatever the hell she calls herself to compensate for personality...needed time away from you. You said that to me, Lindsey! You looked me in the eye the day we painted the nursery blue for our son and you told me that! You said your solo work came first, that Fleetwood Mac was on a long hiatus and you were your own man. What happened, honey? Did you miss hearing the call of the tambourine or something?"

Lindsey took several deep breaths to control his rage. In the calmest voice he had - which was not all that calm - he said, "And how did you expect to pay for the massive, ridiculous Buckingham compound you were talking me into building on my property? Jesus Christ, Kristen, just because my name is Buckingham doesn't mean I am Prince-fucking-Charles with unlimited money to build you a castle!" He had a sudden flash of himself a few years earlier, alone on stage with a guitar, singing a song about how he'd promised to build the woman he loved that he'd build her a house on a hill.

"Your property, huh?" Kristen's eyes narrowed in anger. "You know something, Mr. Buckingham-not-fucking-Buckingham-Palace...I'm out of here!" Kristen turned toward the bedroom, her lumpy blonde bun bouncing along as she stalked barefoot through the room. Halfway there, she turned around and said through gritted teeth, "You go sing your songs tomorrow night with some old hippie bitch and have a great time reliving the past...but you're going to be doing that without me in the audience! I told you this was a bad idea, goddamn it! I'm packing my shit, the kids' shit, and waking up Alex to tell her we're leaving in the morning, to pack her shit too and help me with the kids." In the commotion, Lindsey had forgotten their nanny, asleep in a single-occupant room down the hall.

"Kristen, I swear to God..." Lindsey was seething with rage now, almost trembling. He pointed his finger at her as he said, "You fly back home before my show tomorrow and..." He didn't get to finish his threat.

"Or what? Or you'll leave me? Divorce your pregnant wife? Look like the asshole everyone already thinks you are? Tell me...is that your plan now? I refuse to hang around to be frozen out and insulted and you want out?"

Lindsey lowered his shaking hand. In a much cooler, calmer tone, he said, "Kristen, believe me when I tell you, if I want out right now, your leaving town before my show is the top of the iceberg if we're listing reasons why."

Kristen folded her arms again. In her own calm tone, she said, "Good then. At least you finally admit it." She took a long, deep breath in and out. "Go find yourself a roommate tonight, Lindsey. Your kids and I will be here. I'll get nauseous because I'm having another one, and Will and LeeLee will wake up scared of the strange room and I'll tell them don't worry, we're leaving it tomorrow."

And with that, she turned and stalked off to the bedroom, stopping only to add, "Don't even think of coming into that bedroom tonight. Go find your pals and sleep with them."

Lindsey heard the bedroom door close, and he wasted no time before grabbing his phone, wallet and room key from where he'd dumped them onto the table after returning to the hotel from dinner.

He was pressing the elevator button for Stevie's floor just a minute later, never more sure of anything in his life.

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