Chapter 3 Florence
My ears hurt like they’re gonna explode.
I chew the gum Callie gave me before she left me at the airport—like a care package is enough to make up for sending me to the middle of nowhere—until my teeth ache, but it makes no difference.
The plane dips, and I clutch the armrest, the guitar-string scars on my fingers turning even whiter than usual.
It’s for your own good, Callie said. Like she’s the authority on good versus bad.
Really, she knew I couldn’t argue, because she’s the only person who hasn’t abandoned me.
Sometimes I want to remind her that she works for me, not the other way around.
But then, everyone else who worked for me left no matter what I promised them, and not always peacefully.
An old assistant threatened to leak stories to the press if I didn’t agree to his exorbitant demands, which he called a “severance package.” Callie said it was my fault for not making him sign an NDA before I hired him.
I make a mental list of my heroes: Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Carrie Fisher, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Scott Harris. Stars and geniuses, every one of them. Every single one of them a troublemaker. And yes, every single one of them used drugs.
Only some of them died from it. For the rest, it was a rite of passage, just part of being a star.
That could be a song. “Rite of Passage.” Angry guitar riff over a pretty melody. My voice, the one Rolling Stone once called “almost as shrill as Yoko Ono’s,” screaming the lyrics. They panned our first album, but I had the review framed.
Call me shrill?
On the second album, I went even higher-pitched.
Rite of passage.
What’s your damage?
Everybody’s going to rehab.
I’m gonna be a star.
Fuck that. I already am a star.
Carly Simon came up with her “clouds in my coffee” lyric on a plane, though I don’t think she used drugs, at least not enough to make headlines. I release the armrest long enough to scribble the words into my notebook. I could sing it like it rhymes even though it doesn’t.
Lazy, the Janis Joplin in my head accuses.
You need to do better, my mental Scott Harris agrees.
I’ve been hearing their voices for as long as I can remember. Every time someone died, they were added to the chorus. Not sure if I’m haunted, clairvoyant, or crazy.
I toss my notebook onto the empty seat beside me. Callie booked two seats. She knows I like to spread out. Plus the only way to avoid checking my guitar is to buy it a seat.
Two seats in first class. Not bad for a working-class Jewish girl who didn’t set foot on a plane until she ran away from home at eighteen.
I paid for the ticket with money from Mom’s sock drawer.
She never acknowledged the fact that I left a note promising to give it back, with interest. Back then, I flew coach.
The lyricism of Joni Mitchell paired with the barbaric yawp of the Sex Pistols.
That’s from the Stone’s review of our second album.
Anyhow, the point is, plenty of stars get shipped off for talk therapy and group therapy and arts therapy and even electroshock therapy.
Callie said this wasn’t that kind of place. But Callie doesn’t know that these places are all the same.
These places have given me dozens of labels over the years: alcoholic, addict, borderline, narcissist, bipolar, postpartum.
I put enormous black sunglasses on before exiting the plane. Callie chose the red-eye, thinking a 6:00 a.m. arrival might protect me from the press, and she was right. The only person waiting for me at baggage claim is a man in a suit who recognizes me on sight.
There was a time when the paps would’ve woken up with dawn to catch a glimpse of me.
“Ms. Bloom?” I can’t remember the last time anyone called me that—so polite, so professional. “I’ll be escorting you to Rush’s Recovery.”
He says it like it’s the name of a five-star hotel, not a mental-health facility. I keep my sunglasses on as he leads the way to the parking lot. He takes my phone from my hand before helping me into the car, then pockets it like he thinks I’m not going to notice that he didn’t give it back.
What the fuck? Callie said I’d be able to keep my phone.
The car is a shiny black Range Rover with windows tinted so dark that I wonder how the driver can see through them. I didn’t even know what a Range Rover was when I was a kid. Like, I’d literally never heard of that kind of car.
I don’t ask the driver his name. I’m not being rude; it’s just that I never know how to act in situations like this.
Would it be weird to introduce myself? People who were born with money are probably also born knowing these kinds of things.
But no one teaches you the etiquette when you make your own way in the world.
There’s bottled water in the back seat, and that’s in glass bottles, not plastic.
Swiss chocolate in a pretty little box tied with a bow and the nameless driver explaining that of course it’s nut-free, like that’s supposed to make me feel safe and sound, well taken care of—pampered instead of put away.
I look out the dim back window as we drive east, watching the sunrise, pretty even over the streets of Queens in the dead of winter. It’s so cold here that the bare branches on the trees lining the roadway are covered in ice.
When Callie told me this place was in the Hamptons, she’d widened her eyes like she thought she could trick me into believing this was all so glamorous. Even I know that no one who’s anyone goes to the Hamptons in fucking January.
The first time I ran away—money from Mom’s sock drawer, a guitar, and a seat in coach—I wanted to be found. Discovered, like I was a new world and everyone else was an explorer who didn’t know they were looking for me yet, like Columbus discovering America even though he was looking for India.
It’s been years since all those explorers mined my silver and gold, leaving me spent and hollow. Now, I’m running to Shelter Island to hide.
Do they think I’m seeking shelter or that they’re sheltering the rest of the world from me?