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Up From Here	By : aliciakristine Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Eminem/Marshall Mathers Views: 3453 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know Eminem (Marshall Mathers). I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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01

TITLE: Up From
Here.
STATUS: In progress.
RATING: Mature (16+) for strong language,
graphic sex, and drug use.
GENRE: Romance/drama.
AUTHOR: Alicia.

DISCLAIMER & CREDIT!
I have
absolutely no affiliation whatsoever with Marshall Mathers, his family,
Aftermath Records, or any other real person or business that plays a role in
the following story. The events proceeding are a product of my own overactive
imagination, and none of the aforementioned have
granted me permission to use them in my fiction. Medical research was conducted
at http://www.cancer.org and http://www.nlm.nih.gov,
and many kudos go to the doctors and specialists that
put those sites together. As in all fictional accounts of sickness or disease,
some room for error was allowed in the description of Tara�s medical diagnosis and treatment,
and while I tried to make things as realistic as possible, I�m no doctor.
Please forgive whatever errors you find.

01.

It was
all so overwhelming.

Managing
his career, which, despite his success, wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Managing the careers of a dozen others. Personally
seeing to every aspect of the production of his albums and those of the artists
on his label. Scouting new talent, dealing with his label and the labels
he worked closely with, meeting with lawyers and accountants and people who
thought they knew more about how he should act in public than he did. Raising Hailie and Laney to be decent girls despite all of the
negative influences - himself included - and trying to stay civil with Kim.
Trying to be a good role model for Nathan, which seemed to be
a losing battle.

There was
no time for himself. There was no time for him to sit
down with a blunt, a good movie, and a couple of hours of solitude. There was
barely any time for the girls or Nathan, and he regretted that. His girls spent
more time with nannies and bodyguards and tutors than they did with their own
father, and if for no other reason than that alone, he sometimes hated his
success. He knew that it was his fault. He could have easily managed his own
career and a personal life; hell, if it was that important that he stretched
himself thin, he could have just stopped with D12. But he'd launched a record
label, and then the careers of several new talents. He took almost all of the
responsibility for Aftermath into his own hands, a decision he'd regretted
almost instantly. But damnit, it was his money, his hard work. He couldn't
fathom putting it into the hands of anyone else.

But,
Jesus, he was tired. He longed for peace and quiet, for one day to pass without
the phones ringing off the hook. He wished with all of his heart that he could
pick the girls up from their private school and take
them to an amusement park or a carnival or even an arcade somewhere. He wanted
to be the kind of parent he saw on TV - he knew it'd be harder for him, a
single dad, but fuck - he wished he could at least give it a shot. If he'd
known that success would be like this...

He still
would have done it. He was young, naive, and obsessed with getting himself and
his family out of the slums of Detroit. He hated the single-wide trailer
they lived in, he hated buying his daughter diapers
with money he scammed. He hated selling drugs to complete strangers, all of the
risk for what seemed like no real profit. Kim was the only thing that kept him
going then, Kim and his stupid dreams, and he would have withered away into
nothing without either of them.

Now he
had neither Kim nor his silly dreams. Kim had left him, and he'd left the
dreams long ago. But he had Hailie and Laney, and they were enough to keep him
afloat. They kept him from running away to some remote corner of the world,
from putting a gun barrell against his chin and
pulling the trigger. Not that he didn't humor either idea
from time to time. Sometimes you have to think crazy to stay sane.

The only
time he could ever think was late at night, and even then, he tried to pop a sleeping
pill and pass out as soon as he could. His body had long since adjusted to only
four or five hours of sleep a night, but since G-Unit's success had taken off
the way it had, he was getting less than that. Some days, he was so frazzled
that he didn't even see Laney or Hailie, just said a quick hi to them on the
phone in between trips to recording studios and radio interviews, lunches with
accountants and representatives and lawyers, meetings with the rappers signed
to his label, and the hours he spent sorting through paperwork in his executive
office at Aftermath. He'd stand in their bedroom doorways at night, full of
guilt and regret, but it never was strong enough to make him stay home the next
day.

Tonight
he wished it were.

A letter
from Hailie was taped to his bathroom mirror, and he wondered when her
handwriting became so neat and grown up. Dad, it read, Am I ever
going to see you again? You promised we'd do something fun this week, and
tomorrow is Sunday. It's the weekend, Dad, do you have
to be gone all day? She signed it, Love, Hai-Hai.
His gut wrenched and he pulled it from the mirror, wiping absently at the
smudge left by the tape with his thumb. He felt like a failure - a failure as a
parent, a failure as a friend, a failure as a husband. The only thing he seemed
to be good at anymore was business.

Angry
with himself, he stripped and dropped his clothes in the laundry chute. He
stood naked in front of the mirror. His torso was covered in tattoos, but
despite not working out in weeks, the muscles in his abs and chest were still
defined. He remembered being a scrawny white kid living in a trailer and
laughed, wondering not for the first time what the kids who bullied him thought
now. It felt good to gloat sometimes, to remind himself
that despite all the shit he'd been dealt, he still managed to make something
out of himself.

But
how can I have made something of myself, he thought, turning away from the mirror, if my
daughter feels so neglected? With what felt like a lead weight in his chest,
he turned the shower on as hot as he could bear it and stood beneath it for
twenty minutes before reaching for the soap. His mind raced and something
churned in the pit of his stomach. He'd smoked a blunt on the way home from the
office, but he felt his buzz fading already. It seemed to him now that he
couldn't handle himself if he didn't have some sort of drug in his system, but
he didn't care. Anything to get him through the day.

He
toweled off in the shower stall, wrapped it around his waist and knotted it,
then went into his master suite. When the house was built, he'd had it designed
specifically for him. Three flat-screened monitors hung on the wall opposite
his bed, each connected to security cameras outside, satellite television, and
a state-of-the-art computer system networked with his office. His bed, a plush
California-king sized monster with a steel headboard, stood in the center of
the largest part of the room, flanked with heavy end tables and lamps. A
ceiling fan hung above it, and one of the many remotes on his end tables
controlled both it and the climate control system. In one smaller room just off
of the bedroom, a small office was set up. A larger office was downstairs, but
he found it easier to work here, where Laney and Hailie rarely came and he
could smoke all the weed he wanted without worrying
about the girls bursting in on him. A small living room with plush textured
leather furniture opened up between the office and a small kitchenette. He had
everything he needed up here, and he preferred it that way.

Naked
except for the towel wrapped around his waist, he sat down on the edge of his
bed and dialed his personal voicemail number. There were a few messages, none
worth returning, and he put the phone back on the charger. All of the phones in
the house were connected by intercom, and he thought for a second about buzzing
Hailie's room and asking her if she wanted to come up for a couple minutes to
watch TV. It was a weekend, and he knew she wouldn't mind waking up to spend an
hour or two with him.

He picked
the phone up, pressed the button for her room, and then turned it off before it
could go through. He was tired, and tomorrow was bound to be hectic if he
wanted to finish up by three or four in time to spend a few hours with the girls
before they went to bed. So he picked up the remote and turned the TV on,
surfing through a few channels before he settled on a rerun of The Fresh
Prince of Bel-Air. Professionally, he and Will
Smith weren't on the best of terms, but the show wasn't bad.

While he
watched the show, one he'd seen a thousand times, he took a tray out from
beneath his bed and broke up a blunts worth of weed.
With expert fingers, he quickly split a grape White Owl blunt with his
fingernails, pushed the tobacco out into a trash can beside his bed, and rolled
the weed up inside. His mouth was still dry from the last blunt he'd smoked and
it was hard to make it stick. But he managed, and lit it with a white Bic lighter he kept on his beside table just for that
purpose.

Inhaling
deeply, he settled back on the pillows and closed his eyes. He wasn't relaxed
by any means, but the knots in his shoulders loosened a bit. There was so much
on his plate - he and the guys in D12 had just finished recording the video for
"My Band," and the MTV Making the Video show was supposed to air on
March 16th. The release dates of G-Unit's solo albums had just been made
official, and the pressure that came with the dates was enormous. And then
there was his own solo album in production, hopefully the last - he didn't know
what else he could say as Eminem. Eminem was dying, and sometimes Marshall
thought that he was, too.

He hit
the blunt again, forcing those thoughts from his mind. It was almost midnight,
he was alone, he had an ounce and a half of great weed, and he didn't have to
wake up until seven the next morning. Opening his eyes, he picked up the remote
again and turned the volume on the TV up.

"Please,"
the girl pleaded, clutching the phone to her ear. "Please hear me out.
Just listen to me, okay? Just write this down and pass the message on? What
would it hurt, huh?"

She was
rewarded with an impatient sigh, but no objections. She closed her eyes and
sent a quick prayer of thanks to whichever angel granted her that small
miracle. "My name is Tara, Tara Allister. I'm twenty six years old. My
birthday is August 4th, I was born in 1978. I used to live at 1860 Ridge
Terrace Apartment C."

"Apartment
C," the voice at the other end of the line echoed.

"Yes.
I had a cat named Dodo and a parakeet named Skeeter."

"Excuse
me?"

"Just
write it down. Please. I'll call back tomorrow afternoon around one o'clock. I
don't have a number where I can be reached, but I'll call at one o'clock."

The woman
sighed, scribbled the words down, and dropped her pen. "Okay. I'll put the
message on Mr. Mathers' desk."

"Thank
you. Thank you so much."'

The line
went dead in Tara's ear and she put the phone back in
it's cradle, adrenaline pumping through her viens with each beat of her heart. She could feel it coursing
through her limbs. It had been years since she and Marshall had spoken - Hailie
had been a baby when they'd said their last good-byes - but she knew that he
hadn't forgotten her. She hoped, anyway. Tara didn't know what fame did to a
person, but she hoped and prayed that it didn't erase their memory.

It was
late, but a woman had answered the phone at Aftermath. A third-shift
receptionist, Tara had thought, breathing through her teeth. Marshall had done
well for himself if he could afford someone to sit around all night and answer
telephone calls.

Turning
away from the phone booth, she looked at the old Thunderbird parked illegally
at the curb. It was on it's last breath, she knew, and
she crossed her fingers and prayed that it would last just a little longer.
When had things gotten so rough? For awhile, things had been damned near
perfect. She had a great marriage - she'd thought it was great, anyhow - a
beautiful baby boy, a home with a garden in the back yard.

But then
Rob told her that he was seeing another woman and left the same night, taking
Cameron with him. Her heart still ached when she thought about her boy. Rob had
been unreasonably cruel throughout the whole ordeal, something that Tara still
didn't understand. She'd given him so much of herself - put all of her own
dreams on hold to support him through law school. When he graduated, he was
accepted at a highly renowned firm in Boston, and she'd gone halfway across the
country with him. She'd been six months pregnant with Cameron then, and she
remembered spending the last few months of her pregnancy painting and
wallpapering, singing lullabies in the unfinished nursery while she pasted
Winnie-the-Pooh border up along the walls and sponged soft blue clouds on the
textured ceilings.

Rob was
determined to succeed, and in practically no time at all, he'd been named an
associate partner of the firm. His first case had been high-profile, a man
charged with murdering his wife and children. Rob had gotten him acquitted, and
his career had never slowed down after that. Tara spent more time alone with
Cameron than she liked, but she couldn't object to the money that came
steadily. They moved into a nicer house in the historic district of Boston and
Rob set up an account for her to decorate with. While Cameron toddled around
with his toys, she arranged flowers and gardened and shopped for new furniture
and bedding and decorations. It had been lonely, but it was okay. Rob was a
good man, she'd thought, and as long as he still brought her flowers home from
work, things couldn't be that bad.

But they
were. She found out later that he'd brought flowers home only on the nights
that he'd slept with another woman. His mistress was from Boston, the youngest
daughter of one of the partners at his firm. She'd been raised with money and
was much classier than Tara, and pretty in a Northwestern kind of way. Straight blonde hair, tall, thin, angular features. Tara had
met her a few times at luncheons and holiday parties, and she'd never liked
her. There was something fake in the way she laughed and flipped her hair over
her shoulder, something haughty and snobby about her that made her seem uglier
than she was. But Rob never noticed the same things Tara did about the people
he was associated with through work, and as time passed, he became more like
them.

The
woman's name was Penelope, but everyone called her Cocoa. She and Rob had been
seeing each other for over a year when Tara found out. He'd tried to explain
himself, and at first, he'd been gentle and kind. But when he realized that
Tara was angry, he got angry, too. Now that it was in the past, Tara thought
that maybe the only reason Rob acted the way that he had was because the guilt
would have drove him insane otherwise. Especially when he
took Cameron.

It hurt
to even think about, and she squeezed her eyes shut, sitting on the curb and
pushing her knees together. She ached when she thought about her boy. He'd been
so beautiful, so smart. Only four years old when Rob took him away from her,
but four years was long enough for him to become her entire world. Her days
revolved around him, especially after Rob left. She woke up and cooked him
breakfast, bathed him, played with him, took him shopping with her and let him
play in the yard while she gardened in the evenings. He was a good child, and
Tara never took it for granted.

Rob was a
lawyer, and a good one. When he demanded custody, Tara had tried to fight. But
hiring a lawyer was next to impossible after Rob cut her off from their joint
accounts, and because the divorce hadn't gone through, she wasn't receiving any
alimony. She had a state-appointed lawyer, but he was a tired and overworked
man who had good intentions - but everyone knows that good intentions don't get
things accomplished. Rob was appointed full custody, and when the divorce went
to court, he pulled out every trick in the book to get from under his financial
responsibilities to Tara. They'd finally settled on a one-time payout of
$125,000.

She'd
gone back to school for her master's degree. Graduate school was expensive, and
it drained the money quickly. But she was frugal, and she sold her expensive
car and lived in a tiny apartment near campus. She would have graduated with
$20,000 to spare - but three months into her last year of school, she thought
she'd fallen in love with a man who'd recently graduated from the same school
with a masters degree in business. She'd invested all of her money in him - and
he'd taken off.

Broke,
with a 1987 Ford Thunderbird and $400 in cash, she dropped out of school six
months shy of a master's degree in social work. She got a job waitressing at a cafe near the school and did okay in tips,
but it wasn't enough, and she was evicted after a couple of months. A friend
let her stay with her for a few weeks, long enough to save up the money to get
back to Detroit - and now here she was, homeless, broke, and terrified with
nobody to call but Marshall.

Her head
spun, and she stood up from the curb. There was enough money in her wallet for
a motel room, but she was hesitant to spend it. If Marshall refused her call
tomorrow, she'd be screwed.

But at
the same time, if he did agree to meet her, she didn't want to show up looking
like death warmed over. She climbed into the car, turned the key in the
ignition, and gave the car a few minutes to run. The front end was knocking,
and a mechanic in Ohio told her that it sounded like a piston rod. He told her
she'd do a lot of damage driving it any more without at least having it
checked, but she was almost out of money and totally out of options. Getting
her car fixed was impossible.

She found
a cheap hotel and went to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow,
exhausted from her trip, worried about the future. Hopefully she wouldn't have
to worry much longer, she thought sleepily. Marshall, despite his rough
exterior, was a good man. She drifted off to sleep thinking of the last time
she'd seen him, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.
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