Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 4: The Dance

How Can I Ever Change Things That I Feel

Santa Monica, California
Tuesday, August 12, 1997
(8:00 pm)
********************

"Liv! Aaron! Get in here! It's starting!"

Of all of the children the five members of Fleetwood Mac had, Sara Buckingham had always been the one who's thought her parents being in a rock band was the coolest. Julia and Aaron, as well as Jodie and Olivia McVie and John's other daughter, Molly, had always found it amusing that Sara was so excited by it all, attributing her love of her musical family to the fact that because she and Molly were considerably younger, and they had never been dragged along on an international tour. Amy and Lucy Fleetwood, who both lived in England near their mother and had kept their distance as they got older, were the most out of the loop, and when the six children between band members who lived in the U.S. got together, usually with the four teens rolling their eyes as nine-year-old Sara demanded she hang out with them and dragging poor six-year-old Molly along, they wondered aloud sometimes what life would have been like if they'd all been born to teachers or accountants or lawyers or something less high-profile than a famous rock band from the Seventies.

"We wouldn't have met, Jules," Jodie had said to her one night in the backyard, shortly before they'd moved to New York together for college. Aaron had been sitting next to Olivia that night, and he'd shifted uneasily in his seat watching them share a sweet, romantic kiss across the fire pit, wishing he could admit his feelings for Olivia and that she'd let him do the same.

The entire extended Fleetwood Mac family had assembled in Stevie and Lindsey's living room that night, ready to watch the premiere of The Dance on MTV. It seemed to Stevie as though a million years had gone by since they'd taped the concert over three nights in May, just before her birthday, when she'd discovered she was pregnant. She was propped up on the sofa surrounded by Lindsey and Julia and Jodie and the dog, enduring teasing from everyone with a drink in their hand and holding a big bowl of popcorn in her lap against her growing belly, and she had been the one to ask Sara to go out to the deck and tell Aaron and Olivia to come inside because the show was about to start.

"We're coming in a minute!" Aaron hollered back at his little sister. He turned back to Olivia, who had been waiting talking about her parents getting remarried and how they had sworn her and Jodie to secrecy until the tour.

"It's weird, you know?" Olivia confided in her best friend. "I have literally never lived in a universe where my parents were together. It's freaking me out!" Olivia had been conceived during the Tusk tour, just after Christine had told John she wanted a divorce, during their last night together. "I asked Jodie if he remembers it at all, but he was too young...which is silly, because he told me he has memories of being put to sleep in a crib beside Julia when they were, like, not even two yet!"

"Of course Jodie remembers that," said Aaron. "I can't remember them ever not being together!" Like you and me, he wanted to say, but he knew he couldn't. "Hey...do you know their first words were literally each other's names? Now that's a hell of a lot weirder than your parents getting back together!"

Aaron had been hearing the story all his life. Julia's first word had come on Valentine's Day and it was Jodie's name, but she'd said "Odie." Jodie had beaten her to the punch, however, pointing at her in the playpen at the recording studio during the production of Tusk and saying, "Gulia!" Stevie had taken to joking that when they got married, she'd include it in her toast.

"We'd better get in there," Olivia said with a sigh. "Your mom already sent Sara out here, so you know it's serious."

"I guess you're right," Aaron relented, wishing they could stay outside alone together all night. "You going to be okay, Liv? About all of this bullshit, I mean?"