Twang (32 page)

My dream evaporated instantly. I knew nothing, really, about this man. Could he hold his liquor? Was he a mean drunk? A womanizer when he got loaded? I watched him wheel out of the lake, slinging water as he made his way toward the cooler.

“No, thank you!” I called in a shrill, tight voice.

Bobby Lee raised his eyebrows, smiled that nice, wide smile of his, and while watching me, lifted the lid off the Coleman,
pulling out a half-dozen unmistakable red, white, and blue cans of Pepsi-Cola. “Oh, no. Looks like I’m gonna have to party all by myself.”

I was speechless for a bit, then broke down laughing. “Save one for me, Bobby Lee!”

We drank our Pepsis sitting in the shade, birds singing in the background, bugs buzzing nearby. Somewhere across the lake a bullfrog sang a series of bass notes that sounded like “jug-o-rum.”

“Looking for a babe, huh, Jeremiah?” Bobby Lee called. He turned to me, “That’s my buddy. He’s jealous. Wants himself a beautiful lady frog to hang with.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and stared out across the water while Bobby Lee launched into a long discourse on the benefits of live bait. “What’s new in your world?” he asked finally, popping the top on another Pepsi.

I didn’t want to ruin the mood by mentioning the CMA Festival in five weeks. “Well, let’s see, it’s Saturday, and usually I spend some of the day at Riverfront Park.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right. Mom says you’ve got this thing for the Cumberland.”

“Gotta get my fix. Same as you with fishing.”

“Birds of a feather.” Bobby Lee stretched his arms above his head. “I love it out here, at the water’s edge. Just something about it.”

It pleased me that he compared us. I knew he understood my need, and I didn’t feel self-conscious when I said, “It’s like the river pulls all the bad stuff from me and carries it away. I feel so new, so peaceful when I leave there. It’s my sanctuary.”

“Yeah, sanctuary,” Bobby Lee said, the word lingering between us. And before I knew it he was leaning in to hold my cheeks with his fingertips, in a tentative way like he might kiss me. It surprised me so that I laughed a little bit. Then I looked
at Bobby Lee’s eyes in that beautiful face, and all I could think about was kissing him. I swallowed and moved closer, my lips softening. But then, this tug-of-war began in my head. I felt like maybe I could trust this man with my soul. He knew some things about me, some places where I was wounded, but not all. I imagined sharing my innermost heart, my hurts, for that is what I knew it would take to have a real relationship. And it was then I realized I just wasn’t capable of that.

I pulled away from Bobby Lee using the pretense of swiping at a bug. Then we just sat there on the bank, drinking our Pepsis and watching Erastus play.

It was the last day of April, a Friday, almost a week since I’d fished with Bobby Lee. I hadn’t seen him since, but we’d talked on the phone several times, and he was a wonderful conversationalist. I was tons more open with him than I’d been with Holt, but still very careful not to mention the dilemma with my career. The CMA Festival was almost upon us, and I kept telling myself that once that long weekend had come and gone, I would do as I darn well pleased. I had enough to live a very comfortable existence if I never sang for money again. What good was being in the Country Music Association’s Hall of Fame if you were miserable?

Looking out the window, I could see the day was beautiful, but I felt nauseated, dreading the interview/photo shoot Mike had scheduled for the afternoon. I didn’t want to paste on another smile, or answer one more question about “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.”

At a quarter ’til nine I heard the beep and hit the button to let Tonilynn’s Pontiac through the gate. She breezed in the door pulling her big beauty suitcase and holding what I thought was a bowling ball. She leaned in to give me a hug. “Morning, hon!”

“Morning.” I sniffed what I thought to be her new musky perfume. “You smell good.”

“That’s not me.” She sounded exasperated. “It’s this cantaloupe Aunt Gomer insisted on sending. Pitched a fit to get out in the garden this morning while it was still dark as Egypt and pick the very first one of the year for you. I don’t even think they’re all-the-way ripe yet.”

“That was sweet.”

Tonilynn sighed and sat down heavily on a stool at the counter, beckoning me to sit in my usual chair for her to work her makeup magic. “Yeah, sweet, I reckon, but she’s driving
me
crazy with all her craziness. The hard thing is how unpredictable she can be. She’ll be just fine for days, I mean, like you’d never know she had the old-timer’s, but then all of a sudden she’ll take a notion about a certain thing and there’s no way you can tell her any different.”

“Oh, that’s not good,” I said, but my mind was on the fragrant cantaloupe, and my mouth was watering. I loved cantaloupe. It was my favorite of all the melons, delicious sprinkled with black pepper. I smiled over at that netted golden globe on the table, one side with this bleached-out looking oval patch on it like the sun had kissed it with hot lips.
I have people who love me
, I thought,
I have people who care about me and send me things
.

“Hey, what was Mike going on about so much last week when we were in the studio?” Tonilynn steadied the heel of one hand with the fingers of her other hand to stroke on my eyeliner.

“Ah, nothing,” I said, hoping she’d let the subject go.

“Come on. Tell Tonilynn.”

I knew she wouldn’t hush until I told her. “He said I might,
might
be getting an invitation to be inducted into the Country Music Association’s Hall of Fame.”

“Get out!” Tonilynn’s jaw dropped. She started bouncing around on her tiptoes, laughing and waving the mascara wand like a sparkler. Then she hugged me. “That’s awesome, girl! What more could you want?”

That question went around and around in my head as I stared at the cantaloupe and listened to myself breathing.

Tonilynn looked into my face. “You all right?”

I shook my head. “What I want. What I want is something a lot of people get for no reason at all. Just by luck. I want it more than anything in this world! But I can’t get it by being in the Hall of Fame, Tonilynn. I can’t get it by singing, by making tons of money. It’s not something you can buy or earn. And people who have it don’t know how priceless it is.”

Tonilynn laughed, high and breathless. “You’re full of riddles. What is it?”

“Why? I can’t ever have it.”

“Yes, you can! I’ll help you get it.”

“I’D GLADLY TRADE BEING IN THE HALL OF FAME FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD!”

Tonilynn flinched, then closed her eyes, lifted her face, her mouth moving silently for several long minutes as I sat waiting. Finally she looked at me. “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, Jennifer. However . . .” she paused dramatically, “the second one is up to you. I just did what you call an intercessory prayer, and again, the Lord told me you just need to grab his hand and go with him back there to your childhood to pull all that painful stuff up and deal with it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope. Just ask Jesus to give you the strength.”

I sat there in shock, and then I surprised myself. “Stop cramming all this Jesus-is-going-to-fix-everything crap down my throat! If he’s so all-fired up to make me happy, maybe
he should’ve thought about it earlier and given me a different father!”

When Tonilynn had been quiet too long, I swallowed hard and said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t stand to hear you talking about letting God do this or that anymore. About how good God is.”

She didn’t respond right away. She clamped her top teeth on her bottom lip, worked on my eyebrows a bit until suddenly, she jerked bolt upright, put her hands on her hips and shouted, “I rebuke you, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of his blood! I command you to get behind us. Leave us alone! You know you’ve been overcome by the blood of the Lamb, so git! Go to hell, where you belong!”

Tonilynn’s wide-open brown eyes below sparkly blue brow bones would be branded in my memory for years. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until l felt her warm hand on my shoulder. “Listen, hon, I know it isn’t easy for you to trust a Heavenly Father. But you need to realize, he’s not like your earthly one. Speaking of your earthly one, staying mad with him will only eat you alive. It’s poison.” Tonilynn plugged in a straightening iron. “You’ve got to make peace with your past so it won’t screw up your present. And you can’t do it alone. God’ll give you supernatural strength to forgive your father if you just ask.”

I wasn’t sure Tonilynn and I were occupying the same realm. “Even if I did ever manage to let certain stuff surface, Tonilynn, to say I
forgave
him would be like saying it didn’t matter! But it did matter! Does matter! He hurt me, and I’ll never forgive him for how he ruined my life!”

“Oh, Jennifer, Jennifer. Forgiveness is such a powerful weapon. Inside and out.” Tonilynn took a sip of her Diet Coke. “You need to get shed of your bitterness. Start by opening up to Tonilynn and spilling your baggage. Always does me a world of good to talk things out with another human I trust, as well
as the Lord. You’re safe with me, hon. Start with something small. I’m all ears.” She laced her fingers together and waited.

I closed my eyes to block her out. If I opened up to Tonilynn about even something small, that other memory, that insidious thing I felt nipping at my heels might surface. And I definitely could not risk
that
, even though I knew somehow that that piece of my baggage was the very reason I couldn’t break through to intimacy that would let me love Bobby Lee.

Tonilynn spritzed a sweet-smelling mist onto my hair and began running a straightener from crown to ends. “So,” she said, “remember me talking about that word
cathartic
a while back? How music has the power to heal? Remember that?”

I concentrated on not answering.

“Anyhow,” she continued, “I was listening to this show on the radio a few days ago about Carly Simon, and I still can’t get over how much power music has in it. It is simply miraculous when it comes to healing.”

I sighed.

“I did not use the G word, now, did I?”

“No.”

“So anyway, Carly developed this awful stammer when she was just a little bitty girl. She had the hardest time saying anything. It was painful. Hurt her so bad when the teacher at school would ask questions and she knew the answer but couldn’t say a word because she was afraid of her face squinching up and her words sounding funny. Imagine being a six-year-old who stutters, and how mean kids can be at that age. Anyway, finally Carly’s brilliant mother told her to tap out a beat on her leg and sing what she wanted to say to the beat. Her mama taught her to speak-sing with rhythm, and the only time Carly’s stammer went away was when she was singing.

“The entire family started singing everything around the house. You know, stuff like ‘Come eat supper,’ or ‘See you this
afternoon.’ ” Tonilynn put a hand on my shoulder. “Isn’t that amazing? Don’t you just love Carly’s songs? ‘You’re So Vain’ and ‘Anticipation’? She’s recorded over thirty albums, won two Grammies, influenced a whole generation of women.”

Tonilynn waited. But I had no words.

“Well, it just proves that life may have been really traumatic for Carly when she was little, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Turned out music was cathartic. I just love that word!” Tonilynn pointed at me with her straightener. “You know what? Music therapy is Carly Simon’s special cause now because of the powerful way singing helped her work through her disability. She’s helping others by being a spokesperson for stuttering awareness.”

I shrugged. Certainly it was painful, and I wasn’t downplaying Carly’s affliction, but I would give anything had my cross to bear been something physical like stuttering.

I knew what I needed for my hurts, and I was counting down the minutes until my weekly trip to the riverbank in the morning.

After the photo shoot, Tonilynn asked if I wanted to grab a cheeseburger and a Coke at McDonald’s. We ordered at the drive-through, then sat in the Pontiac to eat and talk. The sky was overcast and gloomy, but I was feeling a huge sense of relief to be done with the interview and photo shoot. We laughed about all the young couples hanging out in the parking lot, hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans, their faces turned toward each other with rapturous expressions.

“Love is blind.” Tonilynn’s eyes lingered on one happy couple.

“Yeah.” I knew just what she meant. I didn’t associate Bobby Lee with a disability, even when I was standing right beside him. His wheelchair was invisible to me. I loved his sense of humor, his kindness, his compassionate brown eyes. I hadn’t
accepted any of his continual requests for dinner and a movie, nor had I mentioned to Tonilynn that he and I talked on the phone so often. I looked sideways at Tonilynn, her confection of hair and spidery lashes, wondering how it would be to have a mother-in-law who was also my beautician and best friend. I loved her like a mother. It could work. I felt giddy inside for one brief instant, before acknowledging I wasn’t capable of intimacy with any man.

I ended up asking Tonilynn if she wanted to take a ride to downtown Nashville, to Division Street. Something in me craved to see the Best Western, reminisce about those days when I’d just arrived in Music City, maybe talk about dear Roy Durden some.

“You want to go cruising, girl?” Tonilynn turned to me with a mischievous grin.

I nodded, smiled, thinking,
Isn’t forty-eight a little old for cruising
? Then, just as quickly,
It’s not like twenty-eight is that young either, particularly for a girl’s first time
.

All of a sudden, we were pulling out onto Old Hickory, and before I could hardly think, merging onto I-65 North, zipping along with the radio blaring as Tonilynn wove in and out of traffic while singing to Dwight Yoakam’s “Guitars, Cadillacs” in a very loud, off-key voice. Seemed lots of other folks had the very same idea for their Friday night, headlights and taillights glowed in a cheery line all along the interstate. “Man, I sure hope we wake up tomorrow to clear skies,” Tonilynn said, taking a swallow of her Diet Coke.