The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone Page 17

  Lesson learned.

  Sorta.

  x!o!

  LINCOLN REED: The Rhode Island trip was paradise. We spent the night in Newport. Next day we walked around, strolled over to Green Hall. She took me through how she’d set up Chandelier Girl. We ate at the Black Pearl, then we drove to the beach and watched the sun set. It was a fantasy. It didn’t feel like reality.

  And it wasn’t reality. The reality was, I had no room for Addison charging back into my life at warp speed. I was starting something new, a pretty ambitious piece. At the time I vaguely knew it was going to be about urban planning. I’d put up these blow-up maps and aerial views all over my place. That was where my brain was pounding 24/7.

  I couldn’t have Addison living with me again. Not with all the dreck that blew in with her. Her mess and her fits, her friends and her late nights. And of course there was the Gil Cheba factor. He was a package deal with Addison those days, and if I suspected I couldn’t live with Addison right then, I knew I couldn’t live with Gil.

  That night, after we got back from South Kingstown, I wanted to get home and work. She said that she had work, too. Then Cheba stopped over, and convinced her to head out to some stupid party. The next day, I learned she and Zach had been in a public brawl. It just felt like—okay, here we go again. I was really disappointed.

  Zach was a sore spot, always. I didn’t need the slings and arrows of seeing their names linked in the press. No way. All I’d wanted was some distance from everything that happened between us.

  Addison’s bright lights kept leading me back to her. I was crazy to be around her. Especially after South Kingstown. I remember looking over at her, in that giant hat, that giant smile, her huge sunnies that I always teased made her look like a fly, and thinking, That’s the most deliriously wonderful girl I’ve ever known. I love her. I can’t get enough of her. But I couldn’t rescue her. And I felt like the effort had flattened me.

  JACK FROEK: “Zach Spat”—that was the headline. Yeah, I was there. Addison Stone was supercharged to the sun that night. She threw more than one plate. She must have thrown six or seven, and some champagne glasses besides. She and Zach destroyed that club.

  I hadn’t seen Addison in months, not since New Year’s Eve. She’d changed. No more elfin girl in the aluminum dress. No more free spirit. The Addison I saw that night was kinetic, uncontrolled energy, and all that anger she had for Zach made her act like him. That night, they were two narcissists fighting for the spotlight. Two spoiled children throwing toys.

  DR. EVELYN TUTTENBAUER: June 25th. It’s in my datebook. A Monday. And the very first phone appointment that she ever missed. Of course I tried to reschedule. I tried very hard. It’d be a violation of my Hippocratic Oath not to have done everything I could at the point when I thought my patient was in crisis.

  DR. ROLAND JONES: Addison was very, very good at hiding her illness. She pretended she was swamped with work. She left me long messages where she helpfully suggested multiple times to reschedule our meeting. It would be another ten days before warning bells went off for me. Unfortunately. I think if I hadn’t been so hoodwinked, I’d have intervened a lot quicker.

  ZACH FRATEPIETRO: Max Berger was making money off Addison. He promised my mother a first look at her next work if she would put a gag order on me. Berger thought her preoccupation with me was getting in the way of her productivity. And so did my mother, apparently.

  Did you know, after Addison’s and my dust-up, that I was summoned to the house? By my own mother? With her personal assistant present, and my father on speakerphone from Tuscany?

  “Happy to do it,” I told her. “I’m happy to leave Addison alone. I’m in another relationship.”

  So irritating. They made me feel like I was twelve years old. I didn’t want to be involved at all in this idea that I should have a parental restraining order. It was unprofessional, for one thing. And I just didn’t want to have that conversation.

  CARINE FRATEPIETRO: Again, I must clarify that my lawyers have asked me not to touch too long on this subject. But yes, of course I hoped that the absurdity between Addison and Zach would fall into the bottom of meaninglessness.

  Addison’s talent was pushing so hard to the surface. I’d been hearing about this piece called Bridge Kiss. Berger sent me a .zip file of images she’d sent of her studies. The faces and forms were no longer traditional representation, and the subject was no longer concrete. The bridge was so dense yet fragmented, the human subjects were fragile yet solid. It was intuitive and thoughtful, nuanced and skilled. She was becoming everything Coulsen had said she couldn’t become.

  I never like to interfere with the affairs of the heart. I do not like to impose restrictions on my child. But the Addison-and-Zach sideshow had become tedious to everyone. And my son was the one I could claim responsibility for. I love my son, but he is not—how can I put this delicately—a significant person in the art world? His affiliation with Addison was damaging her name, and I’d made an investment in that name. And so I made my wishes very clear.

  MARIE-CLAIRE BROYARD: Addison took me out for a sushi dinner. She’d left me a bunch of messages, which wasn’t like her. So I made a firm date. I was concerned about her. I had every reason to be. Between the seaweed salad and the hamachi, she confessed she’d been off her medication for about a month. She also told me that Ida was watching her from across the street. I remember my chopsticks slipping from my hands, as I attempted—badly—to hide my reaction. But it was awful to hear.

  But I’d known, even before Addison had told me, I’d known in my heart that she’d gone off the Z. I’d probably known at the High Line fashion show, weeks before. No matter that Addison was attempting to give every indication that she was sane. She’d reminded me too much of Mother—the way her gaze had kept darting around, her restless fingers, the way nothing she said made a shred of sense. At that dinner, her disconnection was even more pronounced. Her rambling choice of topics, of art she wanted to make and trips she planned to take with her childhood friend Lucy. And television shows, documentaries mostly, that she wanted to create.

  She also told me she’d seen all of these psychics, and even a dream interpreter, and these people were smarter than her shrinks. She told me that Lucy and Erickson would have made fun of her for believing. But the psychics had promised that Lincoln was coming back into her life.

  “I’m waiting for the right dream, the right way to get to him. Dreams, numbers, sequences—they’re all so important, they’re the secret, sacred codes of the universe and we never pay attention to them, don’t you think, Marie-Claire?”

  “It’s a lovely idea, darling.” As my heart sank. This was not the Addison I knew.

  “I’m going back to school,” she told me next. And that, I remember, was a comfort. It was just about the only smart thing she’d said all lunch.

  “Yes yes yes!” I was clapping my hands. “Go back to school, darling. You can’t rely on dreams and psychics. You need so much more than that. Teachers, mentors, new ways to think. It’d be wonderful for you.”

  But she wasn’t even listening. She’d moved onto another ramble. It was very disturbing. I called Erickson the minute I got home.

  DR. EVELYN TUTTENBAUER: Twice I traveled to New York City, seeking out Addison, who invited me under the guise of appointments that she had no intention of keeping. This after she’d stood up Roland. When I spoke with Roland, we figured maybe the fact I’d come a long distance would reel her in? But no. Both times, she stood me up. She had all but disappeared from Roland’s radar, too—though she kept up a running game of phone tag with him.

  Of course we were all concerned. I’d left many messages with her parents. I called the Lim family, I spoke several times with Erickson McAvena. I called Arlene and Bill. I even called Max Berger. I recommended to her mother that somebody get hold of her, a family member or close friend, to find out what was happening.

  LUCY LIM: Addison knew the plan. First, I had to snooze through two
weeks on Lake George with my dad—he counted on that trip too much—and then onward to New York. Addison was working on Bridge Kiss, so we were both looking at August as our time. First we’d drive down to the Keys for a week because she’d loved it there so much. We were also talking about going to Nova Scotia. Anne of Green Gables was that one childhood book we both agreed on. So this was kind of our dream.

  Mom was also away in July, on a little Hawaii trip with some of her girlfriends. Mom and I both knew that Addison wasn’t in her best space. We both were on the fence about whether we should just bail on all plans, jump in the car, and go get her.

  If only, if only. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other “if only”s in my life, but if only I’d gone to see Addy in July—that’s the biggest “if only,” by which all of my other “if only”s are measured.

  CAMERON LUTZ: Addison swung by Paloma’s and my apartment one morning in the dead of summer. It was shaping up to be a broiling summer day where you never want to set foot outside, and inside, the clammy-cold air conditioning feels like a thin skin between you and hell. Suddenly, Addison. She hadn’t even been to bed yet, she said, and I believed her. She was in her work shirt, and she smelled like stale cigarettes. She looked kind of wild—a forest creature or an elf. She was crazy thin and tired and jumpy. I told her she looked like she needed some sleep and a good breakfast. She said what she really needed was coffee.

  So Paloma put on a pot. Then Addison told me to record everything she said, because it was so important. I pretended that I was recording, but I wasn’t about to tape Addison Stone’s random pontificating. All she started talking about was how we needed a new heist, how the art market was stale, how nothing had value.

  After she left, four cups of coffee later, Paloma and I sort of laughed it off, but we were unsettled. We couldn’t help thinking back to that first night we’d met her, seeing those scars, and that first picture of Ida that she’d drawn for me. How she’d always seemed too close to the edge, even when she was doing just fine.

  I texted Lincoln about it. Just a heads-up. I knew that he still cared about her.

  “She can be a nightmare, but she’s our nightmare,” Paloma said. It was exactly how I felt, too. Then Lincoln texted that he was in back in Brazil, and our hearts kinda went down the drain.

  Addison in her apartment, courtesy of Gil Cheba.

  LUCY LIM: I’d pick up my phone, and there’d be sixteen, seventeen messages from Addy. She didn’t seem to think voice mail was an obstacle—she’d talk till she heard the beep, call back, and keep talking. She just wanted me to come to New York. That’s what all the messages boiled down to. That she was lonely.

  I’d landed a job at a hotel resort on Lake George, where I was waitressing my ass off. It wasn’t fancy, but I had a life, you know? I was making good tips, and I was dating this guy Marcus—I’m still with him, actually. I guess you could say I was falling in love with him? What I mean to say is … at the exact worst time when I had to make a decision, I decided that my life just couldn’t be all about Addison anymore.

  “Call me at midnight when I’m off my shift,” I’d tell her.

  But by midnight, she’d have left me six more voice mails. She’d be deep in Bridge Kiss, or out with Cheba. She’d phone me at four in the morning. She’d started to talk about Ida, and how Ida had inspired her energy for Bloody Sophie. Which prompted me to call Dr. Tuttnauer and Dr. Jones, who were also worried because she’d been phoning them, too, and leaving long messages, even though she’d make excuses not to see Dr. Jones in person, or even to touch in for a real therapy call.

  It was hard to explain it all to Marcus. It was bizarre to him that I spent my time talking with my best friend’s psychiatric doctors. I saw his point. I didn’t want to be consumed by Addison, I wanted to hang out with my guy, and I wanted to earn money, and I wanted to have my summer visit with Dad, and I wanted Addison to not take up the lion’s share of my life. I wanted too much, maybe.

  GIL CHEBA: She rang me up very late one night that July. She was always calling me that month. She’d caught a dreadful case of telephonitis. Anyway, it was some god-awful time of the night. She was fixated on the idea that a woman was following her. I was barely awake, but I struggled into some clothes, into a cab, over the bridge to Brooklyn, where I found Addison wired and cowering in the corner of her flat. She’d obviously been at work for hours and hours. The whole place smelled like trapped air and stale pizza.

  “She just left two minutes ago! She ran down the hall, and now she’s up on the fire escape. She’s got a knife! Please find her, Gil.”

  “Jesus, a knife? What the hell, Addison! Who is she? Does she live in the building? We need the cops!”

  “No, not yet. Please take care of her—before she kills me!”

  Fool that I was, I searched the entire building, floor by floor, my heart jackhamering. It took me well over an hour—I wanted to ring up the cops, but Addison wouldn’t have it.

  So then I wondered if perhaps Addison was in some sort of trouble with this woman? Or was there any woman at all? Maybe Addison had been given a bad batch of something? I’ve seen countless people freak out from some illegal potpourri, but I couldn’t figure out which cocktail had Addison in its grip. I s’pose it makes a kind of gallows-humor sense that Addison was acting the way that she was because she was off her drugs.

  I didn’t learn until months later that Addison had often rung doorbells and made other people in the complex look for this madwoman, Ida, who had been dead for over a hundred years. I’d been up searching for the phantom of Addison’s imagination.

  What I will never forget is how Addison’s eyes were so fearful. That was why the existence of this person had never crossed my mind. She had to be as real as Addison’s fear.

  Bloody Sophie by Addison Stone, courtesy of Carine Fratepietro.

  XI.

  ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE.

  From: Addison Stone

  Date: Jul 28 at 4:58 AM

  Subject: delete after reading

  To: Lucy Lim

  I got your voice mails returning my calls. But I’m writing back bc I feel like I’ve been way too obsessed with the phone.

  So I dropped it.

  In the trash.

  It’s still there.

  I put the blame on the heat—it was past 100 yesterday. Same today.

  Yes yes yes yahtzee, you win.

  Because I did go off the Z. I did. But I really think, Lulu, that I’d like to take a whirl at life without some kind of artificial feel-good in my bloodstream.

  I promise it’s been the right-healthy-smart decision for me.

  But you are sweet to care.

  I’m not hurting the way you think I am.

  It feels like a normal. Right kind of pain. Breakup pain. I’ve got both feet and my head in the game.

  Which is good.

  I really want to finish Bridge Kiss. My kiss-off to love.

  My bridge between where I’ve been and where I’m going.

  Carine saw pictures, and she thinks this is the best work I’ve ever done.

  So that’s something.

  In an hour, Marie-Claire is dragging me to a party.

  I haven’t been out in a while.

  Maybe it’s not a bad thing. I should go. I’m sorry for my last 18,000 messages of last week.

  Sometimes your voice is all that anchors me to this planet.

  x!o! and another x!o! for your mysterious Marcus.

  MARIE-CLAIRE BROYARD: There was a terrible heat wave the week of the Fourth, and I decamped to the Hamptons, imploring Addison to join me. She’d been my date for a benefit at the Frick, and Cheba had given her some Valium. I knew it wasn’t the real Addison. Valium was a poor Band-Aid, but it got her calm, and I wanted to remind her of the big world out here that was just ready to welcome her with open arms.

  The Bridge Kiss project had truly destabilized her. To the point where the Lutz brother
s and I had been emailing a tiny little bit about the possibility of staging an intervention. We just weren’t sure what we were intervening in. But we knew she needed help. More help than she was getting.

  So I called Carine, and I told her she ought to throw Addison a command-performance party at Briarcliff sometime that very next week before she left for Capri. I remembered that Addison’s birthday was vaguely summertime.

  Carine said yes to hostessing a big bash up at Briarcliff. Under one condition. “You have to bring Addison personally. I can’t throw this party and have her not show, if she’s my guest of honor.”

  I said, “Absolutely no problem!” Inwardly, I must admit, I was quaking.

  How could I guarantee-deliver Addison?

  As it turned out, Addison was receptive to it. Especially when I said I’d come with a team to transform her Cinderella-style. I took a stretch limo over to Front Street that afternoon the next week, with my whole team piled inside—my hair colorist and fashion stylist and my other personal stylists.

  “Don’t come over till my workday is done,” Addison told me.

  Well, it certainly wasn’t so that she could clean the place up! Good Lord, it looked like a bomb had gone off. Even worse than when she’d destroyed Lincoln’s loft on Elizabeth last spring. The music was blaring those horrible old organ-wheezing hippie songs, Jim Morrison. Ick, that music always reminded me of weekend dances at Choate.

  “You’re covered in paint,” I squeaked at her. “How are you going to scrape it all off your body in time for the party?”

  “Oh, it’ll be fine,” she said. So nonchalant. She seemed a bit spaced out that afternoon, but peaceful and happy. I took it as a good sign. Still, even after two scrub-down showers, flecks of gold metallic and purplish paint were sticking to her skin.

  Addison borrowed a shimmery silver-white Viktor & Rolf slip dress. She looked unearthly. Once she was cleaned up, with her hair swept off her head, the white of the dress made the streaks of paint on her hands and legs look as if they were supposed to be there. She really sparkled.