OCTOBER 3rd, 2018, SEATTLE, WA
THE MAGAZINE ON the kitchen counter lay completely flat, it's spine heavily creased from being opened and closed many times. The pages were opened to a glossy spread, complete with a blown up cover photo and bold, black lettering, recalling the font that Nirvana had selected years ago for their band name.
The title of the spread, probably clever to whoever had come up with it in the first place, read 'RAISED COBAIN.' Above it was the picture — it was a beautiful photo, really, but it'd been defiled by the contents of the article.
Set against a white backdrop and photographed in shades of black and white, Lindy saw her son and stepdaughter staring up at her from the inside front of the magazine.
Frances wasn't smiling; in fact, she looked quite serious, standing behind her brother and gazing directly into the camera lens with her startling, gorgeous stare. At twenty-six years old, she possessed a deep, earnest sort of beauty about her, from the curve of her lips to the shape of her eyes.
Her arm was slung around Charlie in a protective way, but that wasn't out of the ordinary. She'd always been protective of him, ever since he was born. Unlike Frances, Charlie was smiling, at least partially. He didn't look at the camera. His line of sight was off to the side, and it made Lindy wonder what had caused him to wear such a smirk.
Beneath the title read: 'Welcome to the lives of a rockstar's two offspring. Artistic, unique, and also shocking, Frances Bean and Charles Cobain finally reveal what it's like to call Kurt Cobain their dad.'
Lindy gritted her teeth, flattening her palm against the page and nearly crunching it between her fingers.
It was all lies. Gross, negligent lies at the hands of Rolling Stone, a publication that Lindy had once thought she admired. She wanted nothing more than to slaughter anyone and everyone involved with the article, to make them feel the pain that she felt. In reality, Lindy had always feared this.
She looked up, avoiding the magazine and trying to simmer the anger rising in her chest. She glared around her kitchen, the same kitchen belonging to the same house that she and Kurt had purchased all way back in ninety-four. She hoped that maybe if she looked anywhere but at the injustice resting between her arms on the counter, she would calm down.
It didn't seem to be working.
"Why don't you just throw that fucking thing in the trash?"
Lindy's eyes slid quickly to the right, where Kurt was walking towards her and holding the neck of his Martin D-18E acoustic. His eyes were heavy and rimmed a rugged blueish purple, all signs pointing to apparent stress. But Lindy knew it was more than that.
The magazine article was causing him heartache — the same kind that had ravaged him when Vanity Fair had almost stolen Frances permanently out of his life.
This was not the kind of thing that Kurt needed to be dealing with. Vile deeds like the one Rolling Stone had committed would only transport Kurt back to another time, a time in which he'd loathed himself so much that he had nearly self-medicated his pain to death.
Lindy felt her heart seize up when she pictured it happening again. It was PTSD in the worst form, and although she hadn't worried about Kurt relapsing in years, she could feel her panic boiling over.
"No. Not yet. I haven't decided if I'm going to call them up and threaten their lives," Lindy said bitterly.
Kurt passed her, still swinging his guitar in hand as he beelined for the fridge. He opened the door and pulled out, of course, a strawberry milk. Lindy froze in her seat. It was the same thing that he'd drank when his stomach had anguished him years ago.
"It doesn't help. Trust me, I know," he warned her. Uncapping the lid to his milk, he tipped the opening to his mouth and drank, staring up at the ceiling while he did so. She wondered if he was trying to soothe a familiar, burning nauseous pain. To look on the brighter side would be to say that Kurt was only just craving milk.
"Kurt, they humiliated him," Lindy whispered. "They made Charlie out to seem like some illegitimate annoyance in your life."
Lindy saw Kurt's jaw clench tightly. "They're fucking parasites. All of them," he spat. "I told Bean and Charlie not to do the interview. I said I would support them in whatever they chose to do, but I told them this would happen."
Lindy bowed her head against the counter, feeling the cool granite come in contact with her forehead. She breathed deeply, trying to steady the flurries of rage inside of her, but it was too hard to resist being livid. They had come for her son. That was simply crossing a line, a line that Lindy might as well have drawn herself on the day Charlie was born.
Rolling Stone had made it blatantly clear that they held a preference for a certain Cobain child. Lindy knew that Charlie didn't care about basking in any sort of spotlight; like his father, he only cared about his band and the music he made. But while they could have simply shunted Charlie to the side, Rolling Stone had decided to make him the star, but in the most negative way imaginable.
Frances had been praised throughout the article, reveled as a prodigy that could have only stemmed from miraculous fate in the world of music. She had a brassy, loud-mouthed rocker chick for a mother and a moody, wry musical genius of a father. Of course they would have used that angle to their advantage, highlighting Frances's own talent and intelligence.
But Charlie . . . Charlie was not the same. According to the featured article, he was actually only an 'accident, a challenge Kurt Cobain had to face in the midst of addiction.' Telling from what had been written, it sounded like Kurt had not even wanted to have Charlie in his life. He'd only been a mistake.
'How do you feel in regards to the time frame in which you came into your dad's life? Is it hard to cope with?' read one of the interview questions.
'I can't really say, because I was too young to even have feelings about the situation. All that matters now is that my dad is happy and healthy,' came Charlie's response.
'Do you think that Kurt being your dad has played a role in advancing your own music career?'
'Sure, but isn't that obvious? I'd be a liar if I denied that.'
Deadpanned. Honest. To the point.
All qualities that Charlie possessed in their entirety.
The article may have attempted to make a fool out of him, but Lindy felt some sort of peace knowing that her son was nowhere near being weak. In a way, he hadn't given them what they wanted, and what they wanted was to see him squirm under the figment pain of him being invalid to Kurt and to the rest of the world.
Kurt approached Lindy, propping his guitar up against the wall and taking the seat next to hers at the counter. He swallowed, grabbing her hand and clutching it firmly in his.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry that I let them do this to Charlie."
"It's not your fault, Kurt," Lindy asserted tightly. His anger had quickly morphed into guilt, but she wouldn't allow him to shoulder any blame. If she did, she knew all too well where it would lead to.
"Yes it is. He's every bit yours as he is mine, and look, now you have to suffer too. All because he had to have me for a dad."
Kurt raked his hand through his hair, closing his eyes and exhaling through his nostrils. Not much had changed about him within the passing years. Sure, he'd aged, but everyone from their joint past had. His face was a little more lined and all traces of youth had seemingly vanished. But he still retained his notable handsomeness, from the long, scraggly blonde hair that brushed against his neck to the beard scruff that he kept trimmed short. Charlie had once joked that Kurt looked exactly the same as he had in his twenties, except now he appeared to be the kind of middle-aged guy with 'chronic back pain' and 'one or two dad jokes up his sleeve.'
Kurt had retorted that he'd never tell a dad joke, even if his life depended on it.
"Please don't do this," Lindy begged, touching Kurt's shoulder. "I hate seeing you blame yourself. There is nothing we could have done to avoid this. Someone is always going to have something negative to say."
"Not about Charlie, they won't. Or Frances, either. Not my kids," Kurt said, shaking his head.
"I wonder what they're both thinking," Lindy muttered, running her finger across the shiny image of Frances and Charlie's faces. "Frances might blow up their damn office building before we get the chance to do it ourselves. You know how she gets about Charlie."
Kurt eyed the page knowingly. Frances was as peaceful and loving as could be, but if you dared mess with her little brother, she could unveil a wrath frightening enough to make world dictators cower in fear.
The sound of the front door opening and then being slammed closed caught both of their attentions. Lindy craned her neck, waiting for their unexpected guest to appear. She was not shocked to see Charlie come marching around the corner, holding a guitar case over his shoulder and making an entrance eerily similar to Kurt's.
"Hey," Charlie said simply, nodding in his parents' directions. Once again like Kurt, he went for the fridge, opening it and pulling out a strawberry milk.
"'Hey?' That's all you've got to say?" Lindy gawked, unbelieving of his nonchalant behavior.
Charlie guzzled back his milk before spying the magazine lying between his parents. He rolled his eyes and groaned.
"Oh, god. Here we go."
Lindy pressed her lips together, momentarily taken aback by the way Charlie had rolled his eyes to high heaven. It wasn't the contempt of it that made her hesitate — it was just the way Charlie looked so much like Kurt when he did it.
Lindy had watched him grow for almost twenty-four years, yet she still was not used to how much Charlie bared a resemblance to his dad. Sometimes, if she looked at him in quick enough passing, she could have sworn that she was looking back in time into the face of a young Kurt. It didn't help that Charlie had grown out his hair in a fashion akin to what Kurt's had been all throughout the nineties. He may have possessed Lindy's brown hair and brown eyes, but everything else about him was wholly Kurt, right down to the skinny frame of his body and the way he played guitar.
"This doesn't bother you?" Lindy questioned, holding the magazine up in the air.
"No," Charlie snorted. "I could give a shit what they say about me."
Another trait of Kurt's that Charlie possessed — carelessness for people's opinions. Except unlike Kurt, Charlie really and truly did not care in the least bit about how the world critiqued him.
"Charlie," Lindy began. "Your birthday is tomorrow and Rolling Stone just released this . . . this awful thing that slanders your name. That has to upset you, even a little."
"Mom, I promise, I'm fine," Charlie laughed easily. "If anything, Rolling Stone just gave my band ten times more publicity than we already had. Not that I really give much of a shit about that either. But seriously, I'm fine."
"What does Frances have to say about it?" Lindy shot back. Kurt remained quiet in his seat, looking between them both patiently with a worried crease on his forehead.
"Well, I mean she was pretty pissed about it but I told her not to freak out. She worked for them at one point and I don't want her losing her shit to come back and bite her in the ass. She's mad, but I think she's getting over it."
"Of course she's mad," Kurt finally said. "We're all fucking mad, Charlie. This isn't okay."
"Well, I guess everyone is mad but me then," Charlie said cheerfully, tossing out his empty milk container. "You guys really need to calm down about it. Between this and Frances assuming Courtney had something to do with it —"
"Wait," Lindy spluttered. "Frances thinks Courtney did this?"
Charlie sighed. "She was just looking for someone to blame. She thought maybe Courtney would want to make me look bad so Frances would in turn look good. But that's not how it went down, okay? So don't go snapping at Courtney's throat."
Lindy was fuming, balling her fists together so that her nails dug into her palms. Although she and Courtney had maintained a healthy truce over the years, she wouldn't have put it past the bottle blonde front-woman to throw Charlie to the wolves so that her own kid would look better.
"I'm calling Courtney," Lindy seethed, beginning to stand from her chair. Kurt caught her by the arm.
"Lindy, don't. Courtney wouldn't do that. She knows how much Charlie means to Frances," Kurt said assuringly.
Lindy scowled but sat back down, folding her arms across her chest and hating that she'd missed a chance to release some of her repressed anger. She may have liked Courtney even after all that they'd been through, but it still would have felt good to deck her in the face, even just once.
"Deep breaths, Mom," Charlie commanded, gripping Lindy's shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. "I swear to you it's going to be fine. I am fine."
"But your birthday is tomorrow . . ."
"And it's going to be all the same to me, article or no article. I'll be out with people who I know don't listen to that bullshit. Seriously Mom, I don't want you to worry about this."
Lindy looked away stubbornly, wondering how on earth Charlie could remain so blasé about the whole thing. But yet, he was right. Nothing could have dampened his general outlook on life, mainly because he didn't allow anyone or anything to do so.
"What are you all doing tomorrow?" Lindy asked, attempting to change the subject in order to please both Kurt and Charlie.
"The band rented out Neumos for the night. We're going to perform and have some friends come. Nothing super major, but it's going to be a ticketed event."
Charlie's band, The Finks, had skyrocketed in popularity within the last year. It wasn't actually Charlie's band (he only played guitar — The Finks technically belonged to lead singer, Liam Harvey) but he dedicated much of his free time to it as if he'd started the grouping in the first place. Their second album was to be released within the coming year and they were slated to tour with Greta Van Fleet.
"You two are invited, if you want to come," Charlie added as an afterthought.
"I doubt we'd fit in," Lindy said, though she knew of the riot that would surely ensue if Kurt Cobain showed up to his son's birthday party. Twenty-four years had passed since the dissolution of Nirvana, but the world still raved over Kurt like he was a god.
"Suit yourself," Charlie shrugged. He turned his focus to Kurt. "Dad, wanna' go jam for a bit upstairs? I don't have practice for another two hours."
"Sure," Kurt agreed, picking up his acoustic and leaving Lindy alone at the counter. She watched as they both climbed the stairs, already discussing everything from chords to verses. Lindy suspected that they were writing something together in secret — not that Kurt would ever release it himself. It was probably going to end up on the back of a Finks album, anyways.
She sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day, standing out of her seat and picking the magazine up off the counter. She'd been married to a rockstar for over two decades but even then, some things were still hard to make sense of, especially when they involved Charlie.
But Charlie was right. Everything would be fine. That was one lesson Lindy had certainly learned in life.
She pulled out the trash can beneath the kitchen sink and dumped the magazine inside of it, not bothering to even take a second glance as the polished pages caved in on themselves.