Ellen Hartman - His Secret Past

Christian barely acknowledged the ringing phone, ready to keep on arguing. Give the kid credit, Mason thought, reluctantly admiring the dogged stubbornness of the seventeen-year-old.

He shrugged a shoulder at the door and put his head back down as if the interrupted argument mattered even less to him than the putt he’d lined up with the coffee cup across the room. “Get your phone. We’ll finish this conversation later,” he muttered as he swung the putter and then watched the ball miss as Chris disappeared down the hall. His long game sucked and now he’d lost his short game, too. Mason hoped Christian’s call would be an important one. Long, distracting, all-consuming. Possibly lasting the next three or four years.

He dropped the putter on the floor and slumped in his desk chair with his feet up on the oak file cabinet. The walls of his office were covered with photos of former Mulligans residents, interspersed with the golf course signs people had given him over the years.

The first sign had been a housewarming gift when Mulligans opened its doors ten years ago. The community he’d founded to provide a base for people starting over, using their second chance, was named after “taking a mulligan,” golfer slang for a do-over shot. No harm no foul. That first sign read Course Re-seeded. Please Respect the Greens. He kept that one over his desk to remind him of why he’d started the place. Back then he’d been newly sober and doing everything he could to be a man worth respecting.

Mulligans had seemed like a perfect name for the community he’d envisioned where the residents would support each other to remember the past, but not live in it. That mantra was essential for his peace of mind.

The six homes, former railroad workers’ cottages, faced onto a parklike yard and the larger community-center building. Mason and Chris lived upstairs over the community center.

Ten years after he’d opened this place, life was screwing with him, trying to tear him apart again. It had taken almost this long to feel as if he knew what he was doing, knew how to live this life right. And now it was all messed up.

He picked up the letter he’d been reading before Christian came in.

The Lakeland zoning board requests your presence at a hearing to examine the extension of zoning waivers for Mulligans. The waivers are delayed pending a hearing to allow public comment from neighborhood groups opposing the extension.

Mason put the letter back facedown. It rattled him to know neighbor groups had formed under his nose and he hadn’t heard a word about it.

He jumped when, out in the hall, Christian let out a whoop that could only mean one thing. Mason closed his eyes and leaned his head back against his chair even as his son yelled for him.

“Dad, we got it. Alex booked us to open for the Shreds. The Shreds, Dad!”

Christian skidded around the doorway, his unruly, dark brown hair flying back from his face. His hazel eyes, for once not obscured by his ridiculous long bangs, were lit up. They both knew this changed things, gave Chris power over his dad in their yearlong argument. Which meant Mason had to do something, say something, fast. Before he lost the fight and his kid quit school and was out the door on the road with his band.

But man, Christian was happy. Happy didn’t come that often these days. Maybe when he was alone or with his friends Chris still cracked a smile. Here? At home with his dad? Happy was rare enough that Mason couldn’t shut it down.

So he climbed to his feet and smiled. Tried to keep some pissed-off dad in his expression, but there was his kid. And this was big. Chris was happy and wanted Mason to be happy for him.

Crossing the room, Mason put his right hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Your band is good. We both know it. Looks like the Shreds know it, too.”

Christian pumped his arm, the way he used to when he scored in soccer back before his band became the only thing he cared about. Mason missed soccer.

“I gotta call Drew,” Christian said.

“Want me to take you all out for ice cream?”

Christian stared at him, unsure if he was joking. Mason wasn’t sure himself—maybe he just wanted to keep this connection open, have it feel like old times.

When Christian didn’t answer, Mason said, “What? I always took you for ice cream when you won in soccer.”

Christian gave him one of those looks—the one that meant “my dad is a total loser.” Used to be an offer of ice cream made you the cool dad. But the rules had changed and Mason was, once again, fumbling to catch up.

“Thanks, Dad,” Christian said, and then his voice rose, “but we’re going to be onstage at Madison Square Garden with the Shreds!” He looked dazed. “It’s so awesome.”

Christian’s arms, skinny, ropy with muscle earned from hours playing the guitar, moved disjointedly by his sides. The kid had a lanky, almost six-foot frame.

Mason had been skinny, too, at that age, but in his case he hadn’t had access to three square meals a day. Or any square meals a day. As lead singer of Five Star, a notoriously hard-touring, hard-living band, his diet had consisted mainly of Maker’s Mark and whatever drugs happened to be in front of him. His mother hadn’t been concerned with his diet, choosing to concentrate on her share of his earnings and his Maker’s Mark.

Remembering what his life had been when he was Chris’s age prodded him on. Being a good parent sometimes meant you had to be a bad guy…although not quite as bad as his son’s mother. Ten years ago she’d dumped the scrawny, scared seven-year-old on his front porch with little more than a hissed “He’s yours now” and a birth certificate listing Mason as the father.

“Getting this gig is a huge accomplishment, Chris. Recognition from a band like the Shreds is fantastic for you guys.” He paused. The Shreds were a great band. Opening for them was huge. Mason knew better than most what this gig meant and he knew Chris and his band deserved the spot. Pride and fear sat uneasily next to each other in the pit of his stomach. “But this doesn’t change anything. You’re finishing high school. You’re not taking your band on the road until you have your diploma.”

Christian’s hands balled into fists. Mason hated that he’d wiped the joy off his kid’s face and replaced it with disgust. “That’s completely unfair. Just because you screwed up doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

He was gone before Mason could call him on the attitude or the insult. Not that he had the energy anyway. Holy hell. If living with this particular incarnation of a seventeen-year-old pain in the ass was penance for his own misspent youth, well, Mason wished for the nine millionth time he’d been a better person.

He slammed a hand on the office door frame before pulling the door shut. His open-door policy was one of the founding principles of Mulligans, but he had to put himself back together. Chris and the guys had no business touring at seventeen. What father in the world knew that better than one who’d been on the road at sixteen and in rehab at twenty-three? If his mother had done her job and said no once or twice, maybe his life would have turned out different.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so young, hadn’t latched on to David and Five Star so hard, he wouldn’t have sunk so low when it ended.

He’d protect Chris. Keep him home as long as he needed to until he was sure his boy was ready to face the crap waiting out there for him.

He glanced at the door. Anyone who wanted him bad enough would knock. He picked up his putter, but he couldn’t even line up on the ball.

Mulligans and Christian were all that had kept him sane and sober these past ten years. Now there was this zoning “opposition,” whatever the hell that meant. And Christian was determined to skip out on the normal, middle-class life Mason had worked so hard to put together for them. Crap . He’d never been much of a thinker. Give him a job and he’d get it done. But there was nothing concrete here, nothing he could pin down.

He flicked open his e-mail. He highlighted five stock tips, two penis-enlargement messages and three other messages that looked like spam, and started to push delete when he saw the name. David. Giles@fivestar.com. He blinked.

Just looking at the name made him sick, remembering the last time he’d spoken to David, fourteen years ago. Mason had been begging. Been so far out of it, wasted didn’t even begin to describe it. Somehow he’d gotten it into his mind that Five Star would take him back if they heard the song he had been working on. He’d been singing, or doing what his hollowed-out brain thought was singing, and David cursed him out.

David Giles . The guy had been like an older brother once. The most important man in his life. The man who screwed him up so much he almost didn’t make it.

Mason opened the e-mail, but his finger hovered over the delete key.

Mason,

Heyman. Been a while. I guess you know me and the guys are still touring. Not the same without you. Guess you know that, too. We’re in the studio now, cutting a new album. Sounds amazing. You should come up. Bring your songs. Give me a call when you get this. (212) 555–2413.

David

So that was what it looked like. The invitation had finally come but it was fourteen years too late.

There’d been a time when this was all he’d wanted. Five Star, the guys he thought of as his family, had reconsidered and invited him back.

Still touring . Yeah. With his songs and his name. Not the same without you . That would have had more pull if they hadn’t been the ones who booted him out of the band with no warning, no time for talking and not one single look backward. Bring your songs . As if he owed them one more thing.

Mason felt a satisfaction all out of proportion to reality when he pressed the delete key. He refused to admit he also felt a twist of panic when he closed the door on Five Star again. He didn’t want that life back. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t unnerving to say no to the offer when the life he had here was falling to pieces.

“DAVID GILES WOULD GET cut in the auditions for American Idol ,” Jake said. He was standing behind Anna, watching the monitor over her shoulder as she ran some of the footage they’d shot during the recording session earlier that day. Five Star’s rented studio was a converted warehouse in Jersey City. The band had given them a small room to use as an office. It was windowless and with enough lingering scent of Lysol that Anna suspected it had formerly been a janitor’s closet. Still, it was privacy, which mattered. She’d never worked on a project where she felt so uncomfortable with the subjects. Even the politicians they’d worked with for campaign ads had more integrity than this group. The only one of the four band members who didn’t set off her liar warning system was Harris Coleman, the keyboard player. As far as Anna could tell in the two months they’d spent with the band, he didn’t talk. Ever.

“Blue Maverick rule number 4, Don’t Make Fun of the Documentary Subject,” she said absently to her brother, eyes on the screen, mind running over all the problems with what she was watching.

“I’m stating a fact. That’s allowed.” Jake turned the volume on the monitor down slightly. Anna slapped his hand away and shot him an annoyed look. Jake’s my-sister-is-a-big-fat-meanie expression hadn’t changed since he was three years old. “It’s hurting my ears,” he said.

Anna paused the video and turned off the monitor. “This is serious. If they keep sucking this much there isn’t going to be an album to promote, much less a film.”