The Undertow Series
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What do an Irish-American gangster and a French model have in common with Elvira "Evie" Sandstrom? They will both leave a mark on her life that she will always remember.
Evie is the perfect rich girl/slacker who attends college because it's a means to guarantee she acquires her inheritance. Both her parents are massively successful superstars who throw money at her instead of love and at the age of twenty, her whole life has reached an impasse.
In one crazy and wacky summer, she experiences some of the best times of her life with her first and only love, Finbar "Finn" Reilly. She also grows close to Etienne Fournier under the most awkward of circumstances; the French model is funny, ten years her senior...and her mother's new toy-boy husband.
Certain incidents will change her life -- and the people around her -- forever, but will she be able to pick up the pieces and settle with the one man who has ever had her heart? Or will the secrets she harbors destroy the people she cares about the most and in turn, the image she has so carefully cultivated to hide the scars of a deeply flawed life where nothing is ever as it seems and unhappiness is just the beginning of a life left unfulfilled?*
*There is no guarantee this will be a series but if it is, I don't have to change this page.
Excerpt
October 30th, 2012
“Beep, beep, beep, beep…”
The whirring of the machines continued to aid
the ghost of a woman I had once known to be so vibrant and full of a lust for
life had started to drive me crazy hours ago but I continued to stay. This was
my punishment and like bitter medicine, I would swallow it all, every last
drop.
My hair was thrown into a messy bun and every
time I thought I would be all right to get up and walk out, the tears would
come and there would be a deluge of them, threatening to drown me and sweep me
away emotionally.
It was my fault she was here in this very room
in the Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai; she was mostly out of danger but it
was no guarantee until she was moved from this room in the ICU ward.
Therein lay the problem and the issue because no
one knew if my mother would make a full and complete recovery yet and no one
could seem to give me a straight answer.
A sympathetic nurse I’d come to know as Cathy
walked in and checked the monitors before she placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Your father is here. He’s waiting outside for you.”
I smiled weakly and stood before my legs seemed
to carry me into the hallway. There was my dad, last action hero, former mayor
of the small town he’d grown up in half way around the world in Stockholm, and
clinging to his trophy wife. Although she wasn’t a “trophy wife” per se, she
was twenty-two years my father’s junior and eight years older than me. Her dark
hair set off unusual though highly attractive features, hazel-brown eyes and a
Mediterranean complexion which wasn’t unusual since she was of Turkish-Cypriot
descent though she was British by birth and spent the vast majority of her life
in London. Artemis Ozan-Sandstrom spoke with a thick Cockney accent that
sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
I was shocked she had showed up at all since
one, she was a famous pop singer in the UK and no doubt The Daily Mirror and OK!—the
British, not the American
edition—were lurking around somewhere ready to take her photo if they hadn’t
already gotten their fill at the airport when they’d arrived directly from
Paris. She was also six months pregnant and although it was perfectly okay for
her to fly, I knew from my father she’d suffered several miscarriages before
this one and she was being extra careful in her condition.
I embraced them both and hung on tight. Although
Artemis and I had had our difficulties in the past, no one could have ever
predicted this would be the next time we were face to face with one another.
“What happened?” Papa asked me.
I knew he meant what had happened the press had
failed to mention because it was confidential and unless they wanted to get
sued, they would never report such a thing.
“According to her husband, she had smoked a
joint and taken a Vicodin or two after our dinner. They had a disagreement and
you know the rest. How much truth there is to that story is a mystery to me
because I wasn’t there so I don’t truly know what happened and one of the
people who does isn’t talking at the moment,” I explained.
The tears came again and I hated myself and
swiped at them angrily before I looked up to see Etienne walk down the hallway.
He carried two tall coffees from Starbucks. It was the day before Halloween so
to say my mother had shitty timing regarding her accident which had happened
two days previously was an understatement of the year.
I hated myself for being able to joke about this
incident at all in “Hollywood speak”. As far as the industry was concerned,
this was a tragic incident. Only the doctors knew what had really happened but
there were truly only two people who knew the whole story and I was staring at
the second human being.
Etienne handed my coffee to me before he spoke
to my father and his new wife. The two men had met previous to the
wedding—which I had not been invited to—and seemed to have a solid
relationship; it only surprised me slightly my father didn’t catch on I wasn’t
making any snide comments about my mother’s “boy-toy”.
“This is all so awful. Are you doin’ all right,
love?”
My glassy eyes followed the voice of Artemis. “I’m
okay, I guess. I mean, it was only a couple days ago we made up and everything
seemed really good. My mother and I have been at each other’s throats for so
long, it was nice to get along with her and have that camaraderie between us.”
The tears, those goddamn tears would be the death of me. “We spoke about
something of a more…intimate nature…but she said she would take care of it and
I believed her.”
That was a blatant lie. I knew exactly what had
happened but I wasn’t about to tell anyone. Not anyone else who would dare look
at me with the contempt I already received from the man who still held my heart
despite his blatant rejection of me. Part of me kept waiting and hoping he
would come back but I knew him and
there was no way he would make me feel better about what I had done to him. I
deserved everything I was going through and I couldn’t even bring myself to
feel sorry for what was happening to me.
Etienne touched my arm very softly and said, “We
have to talk.”
I nodded my head and walked away with him.
I sipped from my coffee and it didn’t taste of anything
except a bitter brew I swallowed but the cup was warm and I held on to it for
dear life.
I whipped around to face him as soon as we were
outside near the bench designated for smoking and said, “Please don’t tell me
this has anything to do with—”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” he interrupted in
that abrupt French way of his that was as much part of his personality as his
Parisian accent.
Etienne had the most beautiful clear blue eyes
with crescent of pale green which circled the pupils. His soft brown hair fell
in the waves of pure youth and vitality. And why shouldn’t they? The man was
only thirty years old though he was both my mother’s husband and my
step-father.
“Then what is it? We need to keep cool between
one another because the last thing we need is others suspecting we had something
to do with what happened here.”
His face changed and he suddenly looked confused
and perplexed. “What are you talking about? We have nothing to do with this, Evie. Did I shove those pills down
Athena’s throat? Did you keep pouring drink after drink when it was obvious
she’d had enough? I begged her to go to Promises and she flat out told me she
didn’t have a drinking problem! That was in June, shortly after we got married.
Do you think we have the power to do to your mother what she was already doing
to herself?”
“Yes, I do. I’m not a little girl, Etienne. I
turned twenty in June but I might as well be almost thirty in Hollywood years.
I have seen and done almost everything—I’ve been exposed to the most depraved
acts and I remember the good times between my parents but mostly I remember the
bad. They were miserable together for years and I can only thank God it was
just me who had to go through with this. I would die if I had siblings caught
up in the same situation,” I explained.
“Cry me a river, Evie, because everyone has
problems and your situation certainly isn’t unique. Besides, this isn’t what I
brought you out here to talk about.” He paused and sipped from his coffee. “I
had the barista add in two extra shots of espresso and I am still so tired, I
can barely keep my eyes awake. However, it’s not my lack of sleep I am worried
about. I am concerned about you. This twenty-four-seven vigil isn’t going to
suddenly revive your mother—”
“Doctor Burns specifically said she could come
out of it at any time. She isn’t brain dead and besides, I like being here.
It’s not like I have anywhere else to be at the moment and besides, with Finn
and I not talking, I might as well spend the extra time here with my family.”
He clicked his tongue in a sarcastic manner.
“What ever is going between you and your significant other is none of my
business, Elvira.”
I winced at the use of my Christian name.
Sometimes I didn’t know what was worse: strangers who thought my parents had
named me after the “Mistress of the Dark”, a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson, or the
people who actually knew I had been named after Elvira Hancock, the notorious
blonde cokehead—played by the ageless Michelle Pfeiffer, who’d married Tony
Montana—played by an unforgettable Al Pacino, in Scarface.
“Sorry, I didn’t think I was telling you
anything you didn’t already know. All I am trying to say is what are we going
to do here? What do you want from me? You claim to be in love with my mother so
prove you are and fight for her. Spend time next to her while she is in that
hospital bed and she will find the strength in her to live.” I said out loud
before I bit my lower lip.
“It’s my
decision and I hate she did this to me. Athena changed her Living Will last
month. If anything were to happen to her, I would have to make the hard choice
and decide whether she lives or dies. It’s a difficult decision though because
you’ll have those types of people out there who will say I was nothing but a
cheap playboy who married your mother for her money when I didn’t.”
Etienne broke down and I watched with morbid
curiosity but did nothing to make him feel better. “If you pull the plug on my
mother, I will make sure you regret that choice for the rest of your life. As
long as my mother has brain waves and she’s a functioning human being, she
stays alive. I will involve my father, the police and everyone else I can think
of. I will show you out to be a cold-hearted son of a bitch who murdered his
own wife for money.”
His eyes turned cold and he glared at me. “Go
ahead but if you do that then I will make sure everyone knows about…”
He didn’t have to say it because to be honest I
didn’t want to hear the words spoken out loud.
I cleared my throat. “I assume there is a reason
why you brought me out here. You said we had to talk so what is so pressing
that we need to talk about it now?”
“If she hasn’t woken up in a week then I will pull the plug, Evie. I don’t want
her to be tied to some machine for weeks, months…years. It isn’t fair to her
and it isn’t fair to us. When was the last time you slept?”
I shook my head. “Power naps or eight hours of
rest?”
“That just goes to show you. If you can’t
remember then that isn’t exactly a good sign.”
The tears came again and I sniffed a little as I
turned away from him. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I want to spend the rest of
this time with my mom since you plan on pulling the plug even if she isn’t a vegetable.” I began to walk away
before I stopped and turned his way again. “By the way, how much did she leave
you? I mean of her fortune?”
“Your mother is worth well over half a billion
dollars when you factor in stocks and bonds. She was one of the highest paid
women in the film industry and Cristal Englund Carter-Goldsmith is her agent.
At one time, she had you as the sole beneficiary but when she changed her
Living Will, she made some amendments to her Will as well. She left me forty
percent and you sixty percent. That alone should stop you feeling guilty about
what happened to her. Who leaves a man they have barely known for a year forty
percent of their wealth? In France, that kind of trust is unheard of.”
My heart thudded in my chest just the same but I
felt like someone had taken their fist and sucker punched me in the gut.
“Well, it was her money and therefore she was
free to make any decisions she liked,” I responded.
My throat was dry and I swallowed down the rest
of the flavorless Starbuck’s coffee as I walked back to my mother’s room.
Why couldn’t I have tried harder this time? None
of this would have happened if I had never left Seattle for Boston instead of
coming straight back to Los Angeles in the first place after school ended for
the summer. This was all my fault and no one could tell me any different.
“Have you started your paper for Abnormal Psychology
yet?”
It just occurred to me perhaps I had smoked a
bit too much marijuana at Kyle’s apartment. He was cool and not really
boyfriend material but he lived off-campus and sometimes we got together for
old time’s sake in exchange for getting high together on the excellent chronic
connection he had. The boy knew how to get the good stuff with no seeds and
just sent you into a haze of smoke and endless feelings of euphoria and joy.
“Shit.” I wiped my eyes and hoped they weren’t
too red before I stared at my roommate, Amaani. “When’s it due?”
She was a studious young woman from the
Netherlands by way of Somalia. Her English was impeccable and she actually took
school seriously. She was also unbelievably gorgeous with her perfect bone
structure, mocha colored skin, model-tall height and matching slim figure.
We were also lovers as well and though we had a
very solid relationship, I didn’t want her to know about Kyle. I was still a
cheater even if I was just using him for drugs and occasional sex. I had someone
special in my life and to cheapen that with casual sex with someone else I
barely liked let alone knew didn’t particularly ease my conscience.
“Two days from now,” Amaani replied before she
set a stack of papers in front of me. “I took very detailed notes. Everything
is there for you to write a decent paper.”
I yawned out loud. “I have a better idea. Why
don’t I write you a five hundred dollar check and you do the paper for me? Make
a few mistakes so Professor Asshole thinks it’s me and I can finally get some
rest.”
I knew she needed the money; her mother had
called the other day begging her to send two hundred dollars for something or
other regarding her little sister. She had a full ride scholarship. Of course
that didn’t absolve the money problems her family constantly suffered back in suburb
of Haarlem—the original place as opposed to the tough neighborhood in New York
City—where her family resided.
“This is the fifth paper I have done for you
this semester,” Amaani remarked in anger before she said something under her
breath in perfect, fluent Dutch. “Fine. You know I need the money so I’ll do
it. But really, you should get more serious about school. Is that how all rich
kids get their degrees? Someone else—preferably a smart, impoverished foreign student—does
all their work for them? And you wonder why you have so many imbeciles in your
government.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“No, Elvira, but I wish you would apply yourself.”
“Thanks, sweetie, but I have a mom, and I don’t
need another.”
“Even if you have one?”
“Artemis is not my mother. She’s just my dad’s
trophy wife. There is a difference you know.”
Amaani laughed and threw a copy of Society Magazine my way before she
remarked, “Looks like your mother is working on a trophy Daddy for you too.”
I grabbed the magazine and quickly searched the
contents to find the main story which was about my mother and her new
boyfriend. Well, not exactly new as I had known about her dating some French
model for a while. My father had mocked her as if he had any room to talk.
His wife was only twenty-seven though she had a
birthday coming up in August; men, even my father, were sexist as usual. It was
okay for him to date a British pop star in her twenties but if my mother found
a guy who happened to be thirty then she had committed some kind of cardinal
sin.
My mother had been incredibly famous and still
was but in her heyday, she’d been in the same sentences as Demi Moore, Michelle
Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry. She was in her forties—forty-five,
according to her agent and publicist, though she was actually forty-eight since
her birthday the previous month—and still looked great for her age.
She’d dyed her hair blonde most of her career
though she was a naturally a brunette but now it was a pretty chestnut brown
with blonde highlights. Not that I could do much complaining because I also
dyed my hair. My natural color was dishwater blonde but I dyed it honey blonde
with flaxen highlights.
Though she had aged beautifully and looked
great, there was an obvious age difference between this guy, Etienne Fournier,
and her. He was youth personified and she was…well, older. It wasn’t as obvious
as Madonna and her boyfriend or Jennifer Lopez and her boy-toy but no one would
think my mother and her lover were in the same decade let alone the same
generation.
I read the article with increasing interest
though it was obviously quite exaggerated and played up to sell more copies. I
grabbed my Ulysse Nardin phone and walked out of my dorm. I voice-dialed my
best friend, Monika Dahlin Carter-Goldsmith, and she picked up on the second
ring.
“Hey, sweetie. How’s Seattle?” she wondered in
her usual cynical tone.
“Cold and rainy—what the fuck is new? Listen,
how serious are my mom and this model she’s dating?”
If anyone had the lowdown on the celebrity scene
in L.A. then it would be Monika. The daughter of one of the top agents’ in the
business plus the step-daughter of the most famous agent in the City of Angels,
she knew everything about everyone.
Her real father was Swedish, like my own, but
she’d been raised in L.A. since childhood and had two famous step-fathers and
two half-siblings on her mother’s side of the family. Her first famous
step-father, Bret Carter, had died in a horrific car crash in 2006 and shortly
afterwards, her mother had married Markus Goldsmith II; her rumored half-uncle
but since no one could prove it, the marriage had gone through without a hitch.
She had an eleven-year-old brother from her mother’s marriage to Bret Carter
and a five-year-old sister from her marriage with Markus.
“It’s pretty serious,” Monika finally replied
after an interminable silence. “I mean, Athena isn’t bragging about her
boyfriend which is always a bad thing. Usually, the man she’s dating is the
best thing since sliced bread but with Etienne, mum’s the word.”
“Fuck.” I had finally reached the outside campus
and lit a Camel though I’d promised I would quit. “What do you know about him?
Is he just after my mom’s money or something?”
“I don’t think so. You know your mother can’t
keep her damn trap shut but she really appears to be very happy with this guy.
My mom says they seem like a genuine couple and he is a complete gentleman
despite his profession.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone said about Gabriel
Aubrey until he turned into a complete and utter psycho,” I murmured under my
breath.
“You are so judgmental.” Monika laughed on the
other end. “Seriously, I have met Etienne and he’s really cool. I mean the guy
is hot as hell and sex on a freakin’ stick but he isn’t interested in jailbait.
I tried to flirt with him at a party I attended last weekend and he blew me off
so fast, he made the Airbus seem slow. I am tellin’ you the guy is genuine and
seems really interested in your mother, not her money.”
“Fine.” I dragged from my cigarette and exhaled
slowly.
“Are you smoking again? Gross! That is such an
incredibly nasty habit. You have to quit as soon as possible. By the way, your
future step-dad doesn’t smoke so he
is so not the stereotypical Frenchman. All I am sayin’ is when you finish up
and come home for the summer, give the guy a chance, okay?”
“Look, I gotta go. I wanna call my mom.”
“Laters!” Monika exclaimed before I ended the
call.
I didn’t know if I was ready to talk to my mom
yet. If she was happy then who was I to interfere? I would only be meddling
because my own life was pretty crappy at the moment and that certainly wasn’t a
reason to butt into hers.
I was coming off my marijuana high and I knew I
would make sense if I called so without thinking, I voice dialed my mother’s
cell phone.
She answered after a few rings. “Evie? Hello, my
dear. Have you been kicked out of another university?”
“Not yet,” I murmured in a sarcastic tone.
“However, I did get the latest copy of Society
Magazine and guess who is on the cover?”
“It’s a terrible photo if you ask me. They
caught us after I was finished filming for the day and we were leaving a
restaurant here Montreal. I sometimes hate the press,” she responded in her
gorgeous husky voice which had become huskier over the years due to her hidden
cigarette habit.
My mother had made it her life’s work of keeping
a squeaky clean image. I suppose it had something to do with her being adopted
by the woman who raised her and her genetic mother being Creole. She had that
exotic-enough look though like Angelina Jolie, she just appeared to be a very
beautiful white woman instead of mixed. Her stepmother and natural father were
Irish and all her siblings were either dark-haired or blonde and
alabaster-skinned with these gorgeous cornflower or blue-gray eyes and there
she was: the odd one out with her gray-green eyes and peaches and cream skin
with just a hint of olive.
Cristal Englund Carter-Goldsmith, her agent, and
Ruth Atwater, her publicist, did a very good job making sure that no one ever
bothered to dig up anything less than kosher on my mother. As far as Wikipedia
was concerned, she was the oldest child of Declan and Cleona McKenna, both
first-generation Irish-American immigrants whose families had come to the
States before they were born. She’d grown up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a
working-class suburb of Boston, and gone to Catholic school her whole life.
Like many of her generation of actresses, she
didn’t have a big break per se. She basically had to work her way up and one
day, she’d accepted a role in an independent film where she had to play an
Irish woman trying to get justice for her son who had been murdered by the
British Army in Belfast. Based on a true story, the film didn’t get much
recognition but it did earn my mother an Academy Award nomination for best
Actress. After an endorsement from Oprah, she actually won the award, beating
out Nicole Kidman that year. Not only did she win the Academy Award but she
also collected a Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG.
That had the beginning of my mother’s
illustrious career and it didn’t hurt she had begun dating one of the biggest
action stars of his generation, my father, Rolf Sandstrom. Her career did
nothing but climb and once they married, she was unstoppable. Somewhere in this
history of my mother, I should have told you I was the love child of my parents
for about eight years before they married.
My first eight years were spent in Dorchester, a
working-class neighborhood in Boston, as the ward of my maternal grandparents.
Although I’d tried my best to perfect a Californian accent after my parents
decided I should live with them in L.A., my Boston accent still came back with
a vengeance sometimes. It was even more prominent when I was unhappy or pissed
off.
I cleared my throat and said, “So, it’s true? I
take it you’re serious about this guy then?”
My mother, the great Athena—supposedly named after
a Greek goddess but in actuality was my real
maternal grandmother’s middle name—breathed on the other end of the phone.
“Yes, Etienne is very special to me and I want you to meet him but only if you
are going to respect my wishes. I won’t have you chasing him away.”
“Come on, Mom, I’m nineteen. That would be
completely silly and foolish of me. I want you to be happy too.”
“You mean that?”
“Yeah, Mom, I mean it,” I replied after an
interminable silence.
“I still thought you hated me. I mean, after
everything you’ve been through, including that unpleasant and awful situation
when you were fifteen with that boy…”
she trailed off.
No, my mother wasn’t referring to a cast member
on Jersey Shore, she was talking
about the “subject that shall never be discussed” so it never was and merely
called “The Situation”. Not exactly the most inventive phrase when one
considered my mother was an actress but what the hell, it was all water under
the bridge now anyway.
“I’m fine. And I hope you’re happy and this guy
isn’t just taking you for a ride. I’ll meet him soon enough.” I cleared my
throat again. “Listen, I gotta go but we’ll talk soon, okay?”
“You do
plan to spend summer in L.A., don’t you?” Although she phrased it as a
question, it was more of a statement.
“Yeah, Mom, I do. Two more weeks of school and
then I’m flying back to L.A.”
Not that I’d bought a ticket yet because I
really didn’t know if I wanted to go back to the land of the fake and plastic.
I’d been running from that miserable place since I’d been plopped down in it at
the age of eight. I looked for excuses to spend time in Boston around my
mother’s family because my father’s side of the family was so far away and I
felt at home back east.
“Okay, let me know when school’s over and I’ll
get away so we can have some ‘face time’ together.”
Another euphemism a celebrity’s child got used
to hearing. My parents spent so much time on film sets and rarely had ever
taken me along, spending time with them was promptly labeled “Face time”.
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
We said our goodbyes
and I stuck my overpriced phone in my overpriced Louis Vuitton handbag and made
my way back upstairs to the dorms. School couldn’t end fast enough as far as I
was concerned.
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