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“You’re right, Mom. I’d like to go away and I’d like it if you came with me.” There’s something I’ve been putting off doing for me. It’s time I found the strength to do it.
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26
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“Country, dude?” I sputter with a hint of sarcasm.
After a quick walking tour of the Kingsbrier ranch, we’re in a different office at Cris’s house; the Tudor I passed. Instead of blue ribbons from wine competitions, gold records line the walls and there are awards on the shelves.
As part of the cook’s tour, Cris showed me the small recording studio in his home. Then we placed my meager belongings in the guest room down the hall that he offered for me to crash in. It’s arranged like a mini-apartment with a private bath and conveniences that you’d find in a longer term stay suite. The entire set-up makes me wonder who else Cris has had for company that his wife is okay with the intrusion of some random guy.
There are also toys. Lots of fricken toys. The house isn’t a wreck, but it’s obvious from the drawings on the fridge that kids live here.
“Country was the space where my head was when the studio approached me. Be as derisive as you want. The heartache I was going through after Liz died, and trying to find my footing with Daveigh, lent itself to the genre. And, not gonna lie, it paid well. Not at first, but the more songs I had to offer in my catalog, the more artists started coming to me. I’ve co-written a lot of cross-genre stuff, too.”
“What’s the story behind this one?” I ask, picking up a melted grammy that looks more like someone left a chocolate Easter bunny on the dash of a hot car.
“My wife rescued it from a fire a few years ago.” Cris sighs.
I have the creeping sensation that what his new wife actually rescued was him and it makes me think about Paisley.
I place the award back down.
“What about her?”
“Daveigh? She’s a veterinarian. The summer before she went to college, she babysat Mateo. Her dad was the one who offered me the original job at the ranch. I made it awkward by writing a few songs about falling in love with her. She married me, anyway.” He gives a self-deprecating shrug.
“I meant Liz.”
Cris casts his eyes to the floor. “What is it you are looking for me to say, Jake? That you could’ve loved Liz better?”
“No.” I couldn’t have. I know that now.
“Don’t think for a second that there weren’t times when I was so lost without Liz that I hadn’t wondered if she’d chosen you instead that the accident wouldn’t have happened.”
“I never said I was in love with her.”
“You never had to. That’s why when I couldn’t see straight, I asked you to come along to the funeral home and the florist.”
“Fucking lilies. She should’ve had roses. Dozens of them.”
“Yep, and if I wasn’t a broke-down musician, wondering how I was going to raise a kid on my own, I might have had the money for roses.”
My jaw drops. “It doesn’t bother you that she didn’t get what she deserved.”
“It bothers me a helluva lot. Liz deserved to live a long life. She should’ve been here to watch our son grow up. But if you’re asking me if Liz gave two hoots about the flowers on her casket, I don’t think she did. I hadn’t even considered it until you brought it up the day of the funeral.
“I had everything one minute; the wife, the kid, the chance at stardom. Twenty-four hours later, there was a doctor discussing organ donation with me. While you were picking out flowers, my mind was trying to make sense of how I became a single dad overnight. And if I wasn’t worried about all of the ways I was going to fail Mateo, my mind kept going back to the critical care unit, and the moment, for me as her husband, Liz’s life ended. Being an organ donor was what Liz wanted. It was the right thing to do. But I’ve never felt the weight of responsibility like that. In the worst instances, when grief fucked with my head, I felt like I’d condemned her instead of setting her free. That there was something more I could’ve done than give other patients and their families hope.”
“Crap, after all that, getting hung up on the smell of bad flowers sounds dumb.”
Cris laughs and claps me on the arm. “We all deal with grief differently. I send her roses now for her birthday, our anniversary, when Mateo reaches a milestone that Liz would’ve gone nuts about. Sometimes even when a song does well as a thank you for watching over us.”
“What happened to her,”Liz’s heart.“her organs?”
“They went to patients in L.A. There’s a registry in case any of them want to contact Liz’s family. But none have. I’d like to think it’s because they’re living each day to the fullest.”
