Twenty-Four
TWENTY-FOUR
K.O.’D BY T.O.
It’s barely been forty-eight hours since the shoot and, unsurprisingly, my mother’s name is flashing across my phone screen. For half a second, I consider not answering. I’m twenty-four years old and am still not ready to incur the wrath of Candice Lovejoy Barton Moskowitz. But if I don’t answer, she’ll use her connections to go around me and that would be infinitely worse.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Penny, good to hear your voice. Or should I say Ms. Gold?”
Right to the point, I see.
She follows up that revelation with a long, drawn-out silence that tells me exactly how mad she is that I’m on tour with Sparrow. It’s a pointed silence, the kind I dare not interrupt lest I poke the already enraged bear.
“Imagine my surprise,” she says, audibly drumming her nails, “when T.O. called to tell me he shot my daughter for a tour, only, maybe not my daughter? Some Mari Gold person? Honestly, Penny, are you that ashamed of your family?”
“No.” Not ashamed, exactly.
“How you managed to get all the way onto a tour, a tour with Sparrow I might add, without my knowledge is…I don’t even have the words for it.”
I roll out of my bunk and stumble into the empty front lounge.
“You know how Nashville can be. It just sort of happened.”
And I’m an all-the-way adult who can make my own decisions, I don’t say. I don’t need your permission, I don’t say. You’re so uninvolved in my life I was able to get on a major tour without you knowing, I don’t say.
“But why did it have to happen with Sparrow?” she asks, beyond irritated.
“This is something I wanted. Something I needed to do on my own.”
“As Mari Gold.”
“I thought, you know, given Sparrow’s?—”
The bunk door slides open and Mateo stumbles out rubbing his eyes.
“Hang on,” I tell her. “Morning, Mateo.”
“Morning,” he murmurs before laying down on the couch, eyes closed.
“Mom, give me a second to get off the bus.”
I go back to my bunk and fish my slides out from under my twisted comforter while she huffs with impatience. Out in the sunshine, I pace back and forth in the parking lot, phone to my ear, hand in my hair.
“When I heard Sparrow was auditioning people to open their tour, I was curious, sure. Given our family history, which I don’t technically know by the way, I figured it would be best if I didn’t use my real name.”
“Deacon and Don recognized you, surely?”
“If they have, they haven’t said anything.”
I leave out the part that it was Don Sparrow who invited me to the audition.
“But you’ve talked to them? Spent time with them?”
I can hear it in her voice. She’s scared I already know the thing I still don’t know. “Nothing more than short hellos. You know how tours go. The headliner never has time for the opener.”
She pauses again, letting the moment simmer.
“Mom, just tell me about whatever happened between my father and the Sparrow brothers. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Besides, I’m proud of myself for earning my way onto this tour. Have you seen any of the livestreams? It’s going really well.”
She sighs deeply. “I’ll have to rearrange some things but I’ll get out to a show as soon as I can. Clear this up.”
“There’s nothing to clear up. I’m fine. Great, actually.”
“You’re on a major tour and you don’t even have representation. Surely you know better than to sign anything that hasn’t been read by our attorney.”
“Mother.”
“I can get some papers drawn up and sent over to Jasmine. Is she still running the show over there?”
“I don’t?—”
“I’m sure I still have her information.”
“Mother.”
“I’ll have to hire another day-to-day person to cover you, but I think we can?—”
“MOTHER.”
She blows out a loud breath heavy with irritation. “What is it, Penny.”
“I don’t want you to manage me.”
I’ve said this before, but never when it had real legs. Never when I was already on a national tour.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You have to have representation. Who’s looking out for your interests? Who’s handling the details?”
“I have someone.” I can’t tell her it’s Cass. She’ll burst a blood vessel.
Another sigh, this one so laced with aggravation I can feel it seep through the phone and worm its way through my body, judging me. “So many secrets. ”
“Not secrets. Just…me living my life.”
“A secret life. You’re not even using your own name, a name that’s highly respected in this industry might I remind you. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would create some ridiculous alter-ego when you have a path that’s been laid out for you. You say you want to be an artist and yet you refuse to take advantage of all we’ve built.”
“You built it for Polly, not me.”
“I built it for all of us.”
“Then why did you leave me alone all those years when I was a kid? If this was all for me, why did I grow up without a mother and a sister? You were gone, Mom. You left me to go tour the world with Polly. So forgive me if I don’t buy that this was all for me. My entire life I’ve had to make it on my own, which is exactly what I’m doing now. It’s the only thing I know how to do.”
The line goes painfully quiet. I’ve never spoken so plainly about how she abandoned me to go make Polly a star. The unspoken expectation has been for me to show my support for Polly’s career and ignore whatever damage it might have caused. But the truth is they left me. I was just a kid and had to grow up alone.
Now that I’ve said it, there’s no taking it back.
It’s a hot morning. I’m working up a sweat pacing around the parking lot and waiting for her to respond. She’s quiet for so long I pull the phone away from my face to make sure she hasn’t hung up.
Finally she says, “I’m getting another call. We’ll talk about this later.”
She’s gone before I can say, again, that there’s nothing to talk about. I’m doing this. I’m finding my own space, my own way.
I don’t need her.
I haven’t needed her for a long time.
“Hello superstar,” Cass says, answering my video call on the first ring.
She’s wearing sparkly purple eye make-up and has a bright purple streak in the front of her hair.
“Walk with me?” I’m taking a lap around the venue’s main concourse, trying to walk off the call with my mother. “Love the purple. Is it theme night at the salon?”
She checks herself out in her phone’s camera. “Mo said her favorite color is purple and I’m trying to make something happen. Too much?”
“You’re always too much and never enough.”
“I’m so getting Granny G to cross-stitch that on a throw pillow.”
I’m walking past a massive merch display when Mo pops around the corner holding a headless body form wearing a Sparrow t-shirt.
“Hey, Mo,” I call, turning my phone around so Cass can see her.
“Hey, Mari. Oh! Hey, Cass.” Mo’s face lights up when she sees Cass, which, adorable.
“Sorry I missed your call last night,” Mo says to Cass. “It was a rager crowd and I crashed as soon as I crawled into my bunk.”
“Oh, was that last night? I forgot all about it,” Cass says, obviously blushing. “Got busy watching old seasons of America’s Next Top Model while I did a client’s rainbow balayage.”
“I can see how that would be more appealing. Tyra does, after all, only have one photo in her hand. ”
“You two are gross,” I tease. “Keep the phone. I’ll take a lap and come back.”
“Wait,” Mo says, “did you hear? There’s a laundry room down on the lower level.”
“Are you serious?”
“Tons of machines. All free,” she says with a huge grin.
“Mo, you’re the best,” I say, already running to my dressing room to get my suitcase. Stewing about my mother’s call can wait. We’ve been on the road for fourteen days and I’ve been going commando for the last two.
I’m half-way to my dressing room when I pass Kick and Miguel.
“Laundry room,” I shout, breathless. “Lower level.”
Their eyes go wide and they run with me.
Turns out, the most exciting thing on a tour isn’t the bright lights or the crowds or the long meet-and-greet lines. It’s the possibility of clean underwear.