The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone (Page 3)

You can’t know what it’s like, all these years. You just can’t know the feeling of being mother to a girl who you thought might die every single day—right up until the day she did.

EVE LIM, mother of Lucy: If you could have seen those girls together! Best friends! Lulu and Addy, Addy and Lulu, they called each other, always, always. Lucy was at Addison’s house half the week, and Addison was with us the other half. Later, when the girls were in high school, we had Addison over more, on account of what was going on at her house.

I’m a single parent myself, so I loved the company. Driving the girls to the Cineplex or Applebee’s. Changing the radio, listening to them laughing all over themselves in the backseat. Good times! I know Addison turned into a different girl from the Addy-and-Lulu days, but when I looked down at her face in the casket, I could hear her laugh ring out in my head. Her smile was sunshine. What a beauty. She’ll be in my heart forever.

LUCY LIM: After the service, Mom and I were zombies. We’d been in three days of straight shock. And as we were sniffling our way to the reception in the church basement, that’s when we realized a bunch of media types had sneaked in. Every squirrel wanting its nut, and all of ’em asking questions about Addy—her sex life, her drug life, her mental state, her supposed past suicide attempts, and most especially, where was Zach Frat? Where was Lincoln Reed? I looked across the room and saw Addy’s brother. Poor Charlie, this reporter was riding him like a dog. And I knew it, I was like, Aw, hell, Charlie’s gonna lose it on this guy. He’s gonna explode.

JONAH LENOX: Later, I told Charlie, “I wish I’d been the one to throw the first punch. I wish I’d done you a solid with that reporter.” But the thing is, when I can, I try to stay out of fights. Sugarfoot always said, “You best not end up like your daddy—or I’ll shoot you off the farm, too!” So that day, I was slow to burn. I’d brought my own can of Coke, I’d doctored it up with whiskey, I was keeping myself numb and on the sidelines. But yeah, Charlie and the reporter had a scuffle, and then it was an out-and-out fight—and I couldn’t stay away.

Charlie’s a big dude with a flash temper. And I even heard the reporter say, “Didn’t your sister have an arrangement with Max Berger?” So Charlie was like, “The f**k did you say? The f**k did you say? Repeat that?” When he didn’t, Charlie grabbed a ladder-back chair and pinned the dude with it. “Say it again! Say it again!” If you knew Addison, you’d never ask something like that. Addison was her own person. She didn’t need some old-fart art dealer like Berger to make it happen for her.

CHARLIE STONE: Yeah, the guy said he was press. Jack someone. Jack Jerk-Off. Talking about my sister like they were buddies. Like he was devastated. I’d just been called home from football training camp down in Pensacola, and my whole body was ready to rumble. My sister was dead. My sister. The chair was right there. I know the story went that I pinned him. But it was more like I shoved it into him, and as he fell against the wall, he landed a lucky punch.

So I punched back, perfect connect. There’s relief in a solid connect sometimes, you know? And then Jonah Lenox—“The Lenox,” Addison always called him, he was her high school boyfriend—he jumped in. The Lenox seems gentle, but provoke him and he’ll fight to the dirty end. So before you know it, everyone’s yelling and pulling, and my fists were punching, pounding … but I was glad for the bruises. Bruises that showed, I mean.

JACK FROEK, blogger and senior staff reporter for Last Call magazine: Let me just say it: this funeral was full of scum. Townies. They’d have leg-wrestled each other for a dropped Cheeto. Same kind of hicks that killed Matthew Shepard. And in my defense, I did legit know Addison Stone from New York. I could text her anytime—what’s the plan, stone? And she’d tell me, like, going to hear DJ Generate do a “surprise” set at the Green Monkey, don’t show till midnight. And I’d be there. I’d get a quote from her, take a candid picture that really wasn’t so candid. She loved the power. Last Call always ran stories on her and got exclusive snaps of her, especially when she was with Zach Frat—he’s Carine Fratepietro’s son, you know that? Art royalty. When Zach and Addison got together, you couldn’t even see for all the photo flashes going.

Addison cruised on that love. We needed her, and she needed us. She was generous with her personal life, like she’d do pieces for us for free, just for fun, on what she ate for breakfast and where she liked to buy shoes or her art supplies—she was what we on staff called a “mode-info.” One to watch. At the same time, she didn’t do any of that Facebook or Instagram kind of self-promotion. Because while she was perfectly happy to be talked about, she didn’t want to initiate the conversation.

The big news: Zach Fratepietro and Lincoln Reed were not at her funeral. They were not standing in that dinky church basement with a plate of barbecue and Bisquik. Everyone else was there, though. Max Berger and the Lutzes and half the Broyard and Galarza family dynasties had all schlepped up to Peacedale. But neither of Stone’s boys! And I had a tip that she’d fought with not one, but both Lincoln and Zach on that night, the same night that she died.

Sure, my approach with Charlie was wrong. But that gorilla should be locked up. He fractured my tibia in two places and gave me a black eye. Did he tell you that? I spent the day in Peacedale’s hillbilly hospital, getting x-rayed. I sent the kid the bill, too. Fucker. Not that I expected it’d get paid.

Stone in Spring

by Christa Waring

Styled by Beverly Feirtag • Photos by Christopher Bacardi

Addison Stone is used to being stared at. I am staring at her now, and so is most of the crowd feigning nonchalance in the perennially overpacked Café Rouge in the West Village. We have agreed to meet for coffee before she zips uptown to Frost Gallery to see “a new friend’s” opening, and Stone is prompt, which surprises me—though it probably shouldn’t.

Long and lean in black pants and a perfectly distressed charcoal T-shirt, Stone’s model-thin good looks are at immediate odds with her cheerful decision to order an iced café mocha plus a double-fudge gluten-free cupcake. “Does anyone really know what gluten is?” she asks. “I don’t, I just know you’re supposed to banish it.” Stone’s sweet tooth is contagious, it seems. I change my own order, adding a slice of lemon cake to complement my green tea. But daytime desserts seem a fitting pleasure for a young woman with an outsized appetite for this city.