Chapter 9
When I think of that summer in Nashville, I see Hess and me cruising down a sunflower-lined country road in her blue Mustang convertible, belting Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”
She’d invited me to stay at her house instead of a hotel—she lived alone without a husband or children—and so her place became like a home to me.
Each morning was spent re-creating Belle’s life—we got our hair done at her old salon, we bought pearls at her jeweler, we ate the tangy shreds of her favorite barbecue.
I traded in my perfectly soiled Chucks for cowboy boots and squeezed into Belle’s old clothes Hess kept in the attic.
It was fun to pretend I was shedding my skin, finally becoming who I’d always been, rather than putting on a costume.
In the afternoons, when Hess was busy with meetings and appearances, I saw Micah.
He’d decided to stay in Nashville for a while, and we spent almost every day together getting to know the city and researching my mother.
We went to museums filled with images of her face and her old things that didn’t seem real under the lights.
We went to the Grand Ole Opry and the cheesy honky-tonks along Broadway.
Mostly, we talked.
He told me about building a makeshift wrestling ring with his brother in their backyard and diving off the roof of their double-wide.
He told me about the first time he saw classical music performed live at the Charleston Symphony; they played Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess,” and he’d felt emotions he didn’t know existed, like a special, gilded melancholy that stayed with him for weeks after.
I told him about me and Shelli stealing her parents’ liquor at thirteen, and me daring her to slap me across the face, just so I could see what it felt like. I told him about the summer I read Dune and found kinship with Paul and his haunting visions of the future.
In the beginning, it was more curiosity than attraction that pulled me toward Micah. Then as we spent more time together, and he became the person I wanted to talk to most, I could feel a kind of desire starting to creep in, stronger and more sickening than I’d ever felt it before.
I had liked sleeping with boys in high school—bringing them under my control, feeling their need moving against mine, briefly smothering the ache I felt to be touched. I only ever saw them as bodies, and I preferred when afterward they would disappear.
There was something different about Micah’s honeyed accent, and I wanted to know what he thought about everything. When we weren’t together, I obsessed over when I would see him next.
But he hadn’t tried to kiss me, and I worried he only saw me as a friend.
For all of his wiliness and emotion, he could be incredibly disciplined. He was this mix of impulsivity and restraint, of primitive man and gentleman, and it left room for me to be the same. Both creature and girl.
That summer, Hess was the headliner for the Fourth of July show at the Tennessee State Fair.
I’d never been backstage at a concert venue, and the frantic, sweat-soaked urgency of it was overwhelming.
People breezed in and out of Hess’s air-conditioned dressing room, paying their respects to the “grand dame,” while I sat in the corner and listened to my Discman.
I’d started my music education with Belle’s first album, Clayton she always looked cool as a cucumber, no matter the temperature. “I see you met Clayton,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Is he what you expected?”
I shook my head dazedly. “No, not really.” I looked over at him talking to the singer, his eyes crinkled at her excitement. “I assume all men his age are sort of…”
“Clueless?” she supplied.
I chuckled. “Yes. That.”
“Well, you’d be right. But not Clayton. He’s a different kind of cat.” I watched her lock eyes with him across the way and give him a subtle nod that he returned. They clearly weren’t close, but they seemed to share an understanding I wouldn’t be able to penetrate, no matter what questions I asked.
Hess craned her neck around the barrier and peeked at the thousands of people in the crowd undulating like a sea in the shimmering heat.
“Do you ever get nervous?” I asked, and she smirked.
“I never did when your mother was with me. I thought I was one of those people born without stage fright until she was gone, and I had to go out there on my own. Even now, I still get a little sick right before.” She took a long sip of water, and I saw a bead of sweat trickle down her temple.