IT WAS NEVER odd for the Cobains to be together, all of them congregated into one room. For Lindy, growing up and being shoved into a single, contained area with her whole family had been akin to burning in a pit of hell. Her, Trae and Lee together in one room had never meant good news.
Yet, when she and Kurt spent time together with Charlie and Frances, she felt whole, as if a part of her had been missing when the two children she called her own were not around. Even when only one of them was present, whether it be Charlie or Frances, something always felt missing.
They were a collection of puzzle pieces, a gene pool of flawlessly compatible people who seemed to understand one another on wavelengths that exceeded human comprehension. They weren't the sort of intimate, granola families who went on road trips or camping adventures, but they were still devotedly close. Even if it meant simply being near each other.
Even though Kurt was nervous to explain Danny's proposition to his kids, Lindy did not feel the least bit wary of what their reactions would be. As she sat on the couch besides Kurt, looking into Charlie and Frances's questioning faces, she felt nothing but love for the two wonderful people in front of her.
They would never be anything but supportive of their father. And that had to do again with them being puzzle pieces. There would always be an understanding between the four of them, one that transitioned seamlessly from one of their minds to the next. The Cobains loved each other fiercely and not because they had to in spirit of traditional family ties, but because they wanted to.
Charlie and Frances would accept Kurt's wishes, that much Lindy knew. She would never doubt their understanding for the man who had helped to give them life. They adored him too much to go against his wishes.
"I'm sorry you guys . . . rushed here," Kurt said awkwardly, looking between them both sheepishly.
"No apology necessary," Frances assured him. She smiled, evoking a smile in return out of Kurt.
Same smiles, worn by two different people.
"Can someone explain why you labeled this little get together as a family meeting, though?" Charlie requested, crossing his arms.
"Why are you so traumatized about the family meeting thing?" Frances asked wondrously, turning to her brother with a glint of humor in her sea glass eyes.
"We don't have family meetings in this house," Charlie protested, whining like a little kid.
"I think you've predisposed him to some underlying trauma by not giving him family meetings as a kid," Frances said, looking pointedly at Lindy and Kurt.
Lindy couldn't help but to giggle, tucking her chin into her chest so Charlie wouldn't see the growing smile on her face. She cleared her throat, passing the bout of laughter off as a cough.
"Whatever you want to call it, we -- I mean, I -- really do have to talk to you guys," Kurt said earnestly. His leg was jiggling up and down, a dead giveaway of his nerves.
Charlie and Frances exchanged a look, a passing exchange of mutual thought that siblings were used to. Together they found seats in the living room, making themselves comfortable. If Kurt had something big to say, then they would listen. He would not have called for a meeting if it weren't majorly important to him, and this became clearly understood by both Charlie and Frances as they opened their ears and minds to what he was going to announce.
Kurt sighed carefully, prompting Lindy to reach out and grab his hand. She couldn't keep count of all the times she'd ever reached out to him, taking his own hand in hers, but she didn't regret knowing that it was probably a high number. It was years worth of physical comfort on both of their ends.
"You guys are kind of scaring me," Charlie said, his voice cracking and making him sound ten years younger than his actual age. "Did someone die? Is Uncle Trae okay? Or Aunt Kim and Aunt Beth?"
"Nobody's dead Char," Lindy promised, shaking her head in dismissal of Charlie's fear.
"Why does Dad look like he's about to vomit, then?" Charlie accused, a note of panic in his voice.
Lindy glanced over at Kurt and analyzed his face. It was morbidly funny -- Kurt had spent so much of their early relationship looking like he was going to throw up at any given moment that she was relatively used to the expression he wore then.
"It's about Nirvana," Kurt suddenly said, cutting straightaway to the main topic of his disclosure.
Both Charlie and Frances raised their eyebrows but remained silent, waiting for Kurt to continue further. Lindy encouragingly stroked the back of Kurt's hand.
"So I got a call from Danny . . . you guys know, my old manager," Kurt began, speaking with gradual intent. "And he told me that he thinks Nirvana should have a mini-reunion in January at this tribute concert for Chris Cornell."
"Holy shit," Charlie said through a sudden burst of ecstatic laughter. "Dad, that's fucking great! A Nirvana reunion? Shit!"
It was not unlike Charlie to be excited. He'd fawned over Kurt's talent for years, always wondering aloud why his dad didn't act on such gifts when he so readily had them. Lindy had once explained to Charlie why it was so hard for Kurt to imagine re-entering the music business, but Charlie held firm to his belief that his dad could do everything and anything. Charlie's faith in Kurt was as unwavering as a devout disciple's.
Frances had not reacted as Charlie had. She sat hesitantly in her seat, eyeing Kurt curiously as if trying to dig deeper to the bottom of the situation at hand. She was doing exactly what Lindy had when she too had first the news of a possible reunion.
She was scoping Kurt out to see if he was truly ready to accept such a feat.
Frances knew her father in ways that no one else in the world did. Lindy had guessed that maybe it was due to her being Kurt's first born, but she had not yet nailed down how Frances managed to understand Kurt so completely. Even though she'd only been an infant during his worst period of hardship, it was like she had understood what was going on and committed it all to memory so one day, she could be her father's shoulder to lean on.
"That's really cool Dad," Frances said sincerely. They connected eyes, Frances nodding slowly, a gesture for Kurt to go on with whatever weighed heavy on his mind.
"I agreed to do it," Kurt confessed, sounding guilt-ridden. "But I don't know what the hell is going to come out of it. I was told it would be a one time thing, but I don't really know."
"Are you kidding? Dad, you've literally got hundreds of songs written upstairs," Charlie cried. "You could make a whole album if you wanted to! Hell, you could even go solo after this!"
Well, Lindy thought. There's Charlie's approval.
"Charlie, I don't even know if I'm going to actually do it," Kurt said exasperatedly.
"Why wouldn't you do it? You already agreed," Frances said, blinking in confusion.
Kurt quieted, looking shameful as he bowed his head to the floor and paused to once more consider what he was going to say. When he looked up again, Lindy thought his eyes appeared more glassy than before.
"If you guys don't want me to do it, then I'm not going to," he said, every word as solemn as when he had first recited them in his head.
Together, Charlie and Frances spoke at the same time, their exclamations congealing into a blurb of noise as they reacted to Kurt's proclamation that he would stand by their ultimate decisions.
"What are you talking about Dad, why would we not want you to do it?"
"Dad, of course we want you to do it!"
Lindy bit into the inside part of her lip, half-surprised that Charlie and Frances had not caught on as to why Kurt craved their approval.
"I think what your dad is trying to say is that there are certain stipulations that come with this," Lindy said, explaining her view of things slowly. "There's the past, for one thing. The last time your dad was playing music, he wasn't in a good place."
Charlie frowned, hating the reminder of Kurt's suffering. Frances did the same, though her face was not as rigid, instead softening with sympathy for the pain her dad had once endured. It was a pain she would never wish on anyone.
"I don't want you to do it if it's going to remind you of bad things," Charlie mumbled, regretful over his eagerness for the idea when he had not paused to think about the terms and conditions that came with it.
Frances said nothing; in fact, she looked more keen to grab Kurt's free hand and hold it in her own in that moment, a sign of her support no matter what happened with Kurt's choice. Like Lindy, they had both lived and breathed at the same time when Kurt almost had not. It was no wonder that they had a shared nightmares of losing him, especially when they'd been merely lucky in nearly losing him once before.
"It won't," Lindy said hastily, not wanting to worry them. "It was just a thought, that's all. Things are really different now compared to back then."
That was not a lie. Kurt was well in ways he had not known before, specifically in regard to his now seemingly healed stomach. He had his own family while somewhat patching up his rocky past with his mother and father, and he'd been able to practice his passion in solitude for years. If Kurt brought back Nirvana, there would be a very different man fronting the band -- a rejuvenated one who for once, placed value on his own life.
"The only thing I care about is you both," Kurt said. "I don't want to hurt either of you by making this choice. Can you understand that?"
"Hurt us?" Frances repeated, making a face. The idea was foreign to her. "How would you hurt us by getting your band back together?"
"I don't want you . . . I don't want . . ." Kurt stammered, choosing again to look into his lap instead of into the eyes of his children. One thing that had remained the same over the years was most definitely his lack of confrontational skills. This sort of thing continued to paralyze him with terror.
"We don't want you both to feel like Kurt bringing Nirvana back will overshadow what you have going on in your lives," Lindy finished quietly. "We know that's been . . . a problem in the past."
Neither Charlie nor Frances could deny that Kurt's fame had stuck to them like a second shadow. No matter their individual artistic capabilities, their talent had somehow always been retraced back to Kurt. In every interview, in every public outing, in every encounter with fans -- Charlie and Frances had always been confronted with questions surrounding their father.
Charlie's guitar playing had been incessantly compared to that of his dad's, and Frances couldn't paint a single picture without someone relaying it back to Kurt's personal trove of artwork. Good things had come out of their father's fame too, like giant career-changing offers and contract deals worth millions, but there had also been torment as well.
There was the time Frances had been called a 'crack baby' at her summer camp, or a particular school year in which Charlie had been prey to a bully who used Kurt's notorious drug use against him. Both children had lost friends over Kurt's reputation, and Lindy would never forget how her heart had shattered when Charlie told her that his second grade best friend was not allowed over because of "Charlie's dad."
Lindy, of course, had had words with the kid's mother, but nothing ever permanently healed the hurt and confusion Charlie and Frances felt while growing up due to Kurt's notoriety.
Whether the results were good or bad, it always found them again, looming over their heads and marking them forever. It did not matter to the rest of the world who they ultimately ended up being; they would always be tagged with the name Cobain.
"Dad . . ." Frances said softly, staring hard at Kurt with a mixture of love and sadness in her eyes. "You can't not live your life because you're worried about us."
"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "It doesn't matter what you do now, Dad. We'll always be your kids and everyone will always know it. Who cares what anyone says?"
"We can coexist, you know," Frances added on. "Whatever you decide to do, we can lead our separate lives and still be a family at the end of the day. You being in Nirvana again won't define what Charlie and I choose to do with our own jobs."
"You both really feel that way?" Kurt murmured, unsure if they truly meant what they said. He clasped his hands together, his gaze sliding from Lindy's face, to Charlie's and then to Frances's. He strived for their approval, the approval of the three people he loved the most in the world above anything else.
Charlie suddenly got up, closing the distance between himself and Kurt and kneeling down onto the floor. He looked up at his father, the candor in his eyes as clear as day. He balled his hand into a fist and rested it on Kurt's knee and Lindy felt her heart jump, reminded of just how similar yet different the two of them were.
It was a gesture Kurt was not used to, even if Charlie had been expressing physical love to him for years. Kurt had not been able to do such things with his own father and was still startled that he had done something right when raising Charlie to make him enjoy hugs and kisses and loving pats on the back. He glanced at Charlie's hand and then back into his face.
"You know," Charlie started, "I always suspected that that a little more than half of the people who came to my shows were only there because I was Kurt Cobain's son."
Kurt looked away ashamedly, feeling an internal pain that went hand-in-hand with Charlie's admission.
"Everyone always expects that it's going to be you up there, I think. They want to see how much I'm really like you," Charlie continued quietly, looking almost stunned by this realization. He swallowed for a moment, probably recalling every time in his life when he'd fretted over measuring up to his birthright. Strangely enough, he seemed relieved of it all as he spoke.
"You know what, though?" he said, sounding stronger. "I am you, Dad. The best parts of me, all the parts that I love about myself the most, that all comes from you. It comes from me being your son. When people tell me, 'you're just like your dad,' that doesn't bother me at all. It makes me proud. I'm really fucking proud to be your kid."
Kurt nodded his head, though his face was shielded by his veil of blond hair. Lindy felt her own hot tears spilling over the rims of her eyes and wondered if he was crying too, crying over finally having been freed from the angst of thinking his child resented him like he had resented his parents in his youth.
Kurt dragged Charlie into his arms, hugging him hard. Frances leapt to her feet and joined them, wrapping both her arms around her brother and father and pressing her cheek to the top of Charlie's head.
"Everything Charlie said is true," she affirmed, holding the two best men in her life close. "We love you. We wouldn't want to call anyone else 'Dad.'"
As soon as Kurt untangled himself out of their hug, he sniffed and nudged Charlie's shoulder. His eyes were red and his nose was clearly stuffy.
"Why'd you make me cry," he muttered, earning a laugh in return from Charlie.
"It's just because you're old now," Charlie reasoned. "You wouldn't have cried twenty years ago."
"Seriously though, Dad. Do the reunion at the tribute. We want you too," Frances encouraged, slipping into the free seat next to Lindy.
Lindy tucked her arm around Frances's waist, leaning her head onto her stepdaughter's shoulder and thanking the stars that she existed.
"I will," Kurt agreed. "But there's still one last thing I have to talk to you guys about."
"Pretty sure we can talk about just anything after that," Charlie remarked.
"I have to tell you about the condition on which I agreed to do the show."
"The condition?" Charlie and Frances echoed at the same time.
"Yep. The condition."