Chapter 22 Way Back When
Way Back When
Forty-five minutes into her flight from Detroit Metro to JFK, Paloma sat in the airplane lavatory, staring at the two pink lines on the pregnancy test, willing her fingers to stop shaking.
It wasn’t really a surprise. She figured her period was at least three weeks late.
Her boobs felt like they’d grown two cup sizes, and she needed to pee every couple of hours.
That morning, she’d whipped over to Walgreens to get a kit and zipped the slim white box into the inner pocket of her purse.
She’d planned to test herself when she got to her hotel room, but fidgeting in her first-class seat, her brain felt like a bag of ants. She couldn’t wait that long.
Still, it was a shock, and she was so stunned she could barely move. She was sure Jace would figure out by looking at her that something had changed. Then again, since she’d been avoiding Paloma’s gaze pretty much since the end of the European tour, she probably wouldn’t notice.
Last summer, Paloma had used every drop of adrenaline to perform all the dates, not wanting to disappoint the fans, or Jace, but by the end of each show she felt like a mannequin, hollow and brittle.
She didn’t leave the hotel on their days off, dread pinning her to the mattress.
Jace had been worried enough to call a doctor in Paris; his diagnosis was nervous exhaustion that ought to be cured by a few days of rest. Paloma insisted that Jace go out and tour the City of Light without her.
Even as she assured Paloma all she wanted was for her to feel better, she could tell by the sharpness in her voice that Jace was disappointed and frustrated with her, having never experienced a moment of nervousness or exhaustion in her life.
In Amsterdam, they’d gotten into a fight when Paloma delayed the show by an hour after shutting herself in her dressing room to try to pull herself together.
Jace had brought the argument to a screeching halt when she yelled at her through the door, so everyone could hear, “Drop the diva bullshit and get on the fucking stage!” Later apologies didn’t really patch things up, and they’d barely spoken on the long flight home.
Back in Detroit, the distance between them continued to grow.
Paloma holed up in her garage studio, attempting to develop the material for her next album but coming up empty.
After months of this, Jace had to renegotiate the record’s release date, pushing it off until the spring, and she scrapped the tour she’d planned for Paloma to launch the album.
Even with the new deadline, Jace made it clear that Paloma had to release a single by Valentine’s Day or she’d forfeit her advance.
Bored without any concerts to organize, Jace would go to the Artemis most nights to watch a show or lend Sabine a hand, returning in the wee hours.
On those nights alone, Paloma would lie on the couch in her studio, headphones on, listening to anyone’s music but her own, wondering what she ought to be doing with her life.
Or she’d call Nolan, who was eager to help her find out.
Since her birthday, they’d been meeting for coffee every couple of weeks to chat and talk shop.
Their friendship was easy and unburdened by past history.
They’d discovered they had a lot in common beyond their shared experiences in and around Detroit, and Paloma was grateful to be able to commiserate about their less-than-loving childhoods, the pressures of being creative on a deadline, and the terrifying space between what others expected of them and what they really wanted.
The chats often turned flirty, and Nolan had even insisted on giving her a brand-new Nokia cellular phone for Christmas in case she wanted to talk to him on his dime.
Paloma was determined not to take the romantic bait.
She needed a friend more than an affair, and she thought the magic of the holidays just might help her patch things up with Jace. And she was right, for a while.
Joyce had invited both Jace and Paloma to stay at her place to be part of her daughters’ first family Christmas, and they agreed to set their problems aside for the week to make it special for Kristi and Olivia.
Paloma had brought her acoustic guitar to teach them carols, and Jace bought them a shit-ton of musical toys and helped them stage a concert in Joyce’s basement.
Being around the girls’ excitement and wonder lightened their mood to the point they’d agreed to put the past rancor behind them.
By the time they’d gotten back home and attended the annual New Year’s Eve party at the Artemis, they appeared to be a happy couple, even to themselves.
The fresh start of a New Year had inspired Paloma to get back to songwriting from a more honest perspective: She had no one to satisfy but herself.
She wasn’t a raw, raging kid anymore who had to be catchy, angry, and loud to earn the moniker of being an “indie musician.” After two albums with a major label, she couldn’t care less if she was called a “female musician” or a “lesbian musician,” either, because both were essential.
Ever since singing with the orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, the musical ideas in her head were lush and more dramatic.
And if she could finally achieve her dream to compose poetry instead of scribble out lyrics, maybe she’d capture a tiny fraction of the astonishing love and admiration she still had for Jace, glowing bright in her mind’s eye, framed by the glittering lights of Joyce’s Christmas tree.
By the first week of January, she’d recorded “Heart Fire” with Mary and Colin, plus a cellist and a pianist, at the Tempermill in Ferndale.
After playing through it for the first time, she looked toward the engineer’s booth and caught Jace’s gaze.
Paloma was sure she was the only one who could tell that Jace was close to tears.
When the musicians took a break and Paloma pulled her aside to ask if she thought the song was bad, Jace said no.
“It’s beautiful. I just hope we can live up to it. ”
Jace wasn’t wrong. The glow of the holidays dimmed, and the unease resumed.
Paloma was in no mood to get back on the hamster wheel of recording and promoting and performing ad nauseam, but Jace would not talk about delaying the release of the album until the fall (“Not now”), or finding a gay-friendly couples’ therapist to resuscitate their sex life (“Not now!”), or giving a concrete answer about becoming a parent after stringing Paloma along for years (“Oh my God, NOT NOW!”).
They decamped into their separate routines once again, with Jace spending her evenings at the Artemis and Paloma buying a pullout couch for her garage studio so she could avoid going back inside once Jace had come home.
She had not bought the couch so that Nolan would have a place to sit when he dropped by one February evening while Jace was out managing a quadruple bill at the Artemis.
She had not meant to burst into tears when she saw him and turn into a complete basket case, babbling about how she couldn’t live with Jace any longer and hyperventilating over the thought of moving out on her own.
She hadn’t asked Nolan to hold her, whispering in her ear to breathe in synch with him to calm down, assuring her that everything was going to be okay, that he was here for her.
She hadn’t predicted he would cup her face in his large hands and tell her she wasn’t abandoning Jace if she left: She was reclaiming herself.
She hadn’t planned to kiss him, or take off his shirt and throw it on the floor next to her sweater and jeans, or pull him on top of her across the narrow sofa cushions, or cry out with relief and release.
The shame swept in immediately afterward.
Things had been bad between them, sure, but Jace didn’t deserve this.
Paloma promised herself she’d find a way to reconnect with her, to make things right and bury this awful night forever.
She’d sent Nolan home without a kiss goodbye, tidied up the studio, and went back into the house to take a long, hot shower.
When Jace got home, she was sitting at their dining room table.
With a rehearsed smile and a steady voice, Paloma told her she’d done some thinking and agreed with Jace that she should do a string of local performances to road test her new song and prep for the album release.
When Jace asked if she wanted to come to bed, though, Paloma went cold with terror.
She dodged the offer, telling Jace she’d had a nap after dinner and wasn’t tired.
Jace went to their room, and Paloma sat and stared out the kitchen window, sick with guilt, until the sky turned light.
Over the next few weeks, Paloma threw herself into performing, agreeing to whatever Jace recommended.
And after Nolan left her a voicemail on the phone he’d given her, saying he was going to be in California for a few weeks and that he wished her well, she blocked his number then turned off the phone and hid it in the back of her closet.
“Shit, what am I going to say to Nolan?” Paloma whispered to herself in the metal confines of the airplane bathroom.