Malibu Rising

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

She rocked the boys, gave Nina a bath, and put all three of them to bed—a process that took a full two and a half hours.

What glory it was to feel the ocean move with you, to ride the water. The wave delivered her, softly, onto the sand.

It was the beginning of a lesson her children would learn by heart: Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.

But then she thought of her children. Her exhausting, sparkling children. She must have done something right if life had brought her the four of them. That much seemed crystal clear. Maybe she had done something with her life after all. Maybe she could make something of what she had left.

It got so that by 6:00 p.m., the kids all knew to ignore her. But they also tried to keep her home, lest she embarrass them in public. Nina had even started pretending to love the idea of driving at the young age of fourteen.

Kit stood there, silent and unmoving. She was awash in a tumbling cycle of guilt and indignation, indignation and guilt. Was she terribly wrong or had she been exactly right? She couldn’t tell.

When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can’t stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.

His face was attractive but forgettable, as if fate had not taken a single risk in composing it.

Tarine was kind, even when being kind meant not being very nice.

To not feel—so intrinsically as to be as vital to yourself as your blood—that it was your responsibility to make things smooth and pleasant for everyone? Tarine looked at Nina

She felt a wave of despair coming toward her, ready to take her under. This had been happening on and off since she lost them. Casey had learned that the best thing to do was to brace herself for every rush of grief. She would let the sadness and sorrow wash over her, smother her. She held on tight, knowing all she could do was feel the pain until it passed.

going to happen. But that’s how life goes, Ricky thought. You don’t always get the things you want.

She set out to alert her siblings that their father was there, like she was a surfer girl Paul Revere. Mick is coming.

Men were bullshit—people were bullshit—and Nina was not going to live through bullshit while wearing high heels a single second longer.

They had taught her that family is found, that whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound. And that was why Casey was

But this was Malibu, where the rich white people live. And rich white people get the benefit of the doubt and all of its many benefits.

Capable is a question I never had the luxury of asking. Because my family needed me. And unlike you, I understand how important that is.”

“Must be nice. To be able to be weak. I wouldn’t know.”

“Every minute of your lives you were loved,” he said as his chin started to quake. He put his hands together in a prayer motion and put them to his chest and said, “If I exist on this earth, someone loves you. I’m just…I’m a very selfish man but I promise you all—I love you. I love you so much.”

Hud would love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity.

We don’t have to live life the exact same way Mom did or Grandma did. It’s ours to do with what we want and I say you go to Portugal and let us sell the damn thing, please.”

But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

And Nina understood, maybe for the first time, that letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.

It hurt to leave, but Nina knew that most good things come with a pinch or an ache.

After all, her family had grown up. And wasn’t this the day you always looked toward? When the kids were grown and your life was yours to take.