Cassie
On the road, 2003
The video for “The Gift”
debuted on MTV on the Fourth of July weekend in 2003, and immediately went into heavy rotation.
Within six weeks, the Griffin Sisters had a number one single, one of the songs of the summer, along with Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love,”
Matchbox Twenty’s “Unwell,”
and Chingy’s “Right Thurr.”
You couldn’t spend an hour in your car without hearing the song on the local Top 40 station.
Janice and Sam said they’d heard it, on one of their trips to the Jersey Shore.
Even Aunt Bess said she’d seen the video on TV.
Two weeks after the video dropped, the album they’d decided to call Night Ride came out.
Jerry sent the band to open for Thünderstrüt and Toxic Honey, a pair of hair bands whose popularity had peaked in the mid-1990s.
At the first few shows, all the Griffin Sisters had gotten were the indifference and the occasional boos that opening acts typically received, but eventually, began to hear people in the audience singing along, not just to “The Gift,”
but to every song they played.
As their album continued to climb the charts, the balance started shifting, until the crowds were stomping and screaming for encores from the Griffin Sisters, and booing when they left the stage, walking past the assembled members of both bands, all of whom (except for Toxic Honey’s female lead singer) were shirtless, in leather pants and matching glares.
After six weeks, Jerry summoned the Griffin Sisters back to New York again and told them that they’d been replaced.
“As an opening act,”
he added, when Zoe opened her mouth to protest.
“We’ll find someone else to fill that slot.
You guys are ready to headline.”
waited for one of her bandmates to tell Jerry that he was delusional.
They’d barely been a band for nine months.
Prior to their most recent stint as openers, they had only played a dozen or so real shows, gigs that hadn’t been organized by radio stations and attended by people who’d been given free tickets.
One video, two singles, and a total of thirteen songs did not translate to headlining a tour.
But Zoe was staring at Jerry, rapt and breathless, and Russell was looking at Zoe fondly, and Tommy was glaring at Russell, who didn’t seem to notice, and Cam was bouncing on the balls of his feet, drumming his fingertips on his thighs, like he couldn’t wait to run out of Jerry’s office, probably to tell Wendy, his girlfriend, the good news.
So had to be the one.
“We aren’t ready,” she said.
Jerry looked at her, his small hands clasped, head tilted, his expression almost bemused.
“You will be.”
There was work to be done.
imagined that, before it started, she and her sister would go back to Philadelphia.
Janice said she’d get their bedroom ready, that she’d missed them, that she’d make her favorite meat loaf and mashed potatoes and Zoe her favorite pancakes and scrapple and take them to Chickie’s not a concert but a circus-slash–fashion show, with songs thrown in.
hated it.
But Russell told her it would be fine.
“It’s a necessary evil, I guess you could say,”
he wrote in an AIM message, after she’d told him how she felt.
“It’s what anyone who pays thirty-five bucks for a concert ticket expects these days.”
told him that none of the singers she’d loved had needed dancers or choreography to make an impact.
Their music did that.
Joni Mitchell had not worn patent-leather minidresses; Joan Armatrading did not make her entrance on a zip line, a move Zoe was learning, for the part of the concert where they’d perform scenes from the video, and Zoe would come flying onto a set built to re-create the rec room.
“I don’t like it,”
wrote to Russell.
“It feels silly and distracting.”
Also, there probably wasn’t a zip line strong enough to hold her.
But was not about to say that.
“Believe me,”
Russell wrote.
“Once you start singing, no one will be distracted.
Think of this as a garnish.
The parsley on top of your mashed potatoes.
It’s nice, and people expect it, but it’s not what they’re there for. You are.”
treasured those words.
She’d bought her own laptop, a chunky, hefty Dell, one of the few purchases she’d made for herself with her share of the band money.
She’d printed out every message Russell sent her.
She kept them in a folder in her tote bag, where she’d once kept her sheet music, and read them when Zoe and Russell were together at night, and she was alone.
The tour began in October, in the Midwest.
“Plenty of ’s people there!”
Jerry had said cheerfully.
had wondered what that meant: Weird people? Fat people? Unfashionable people who’d never had friends? Russell set her straight.
“The album’s selling well there.
I mean, it’s selling great everywhere, but especially there.”
“Why?”
she wrote.
“Who knows?”
he wrote back.
And so they piled into three busses: the band, the backup singers, the dancers, the managers, and a security guard, a soft-spoken wall of a man named Richard.
Their first show was in Gary.
’s goal had been to just get through it, like a tightrope walker who’d be fine as long as she kept herself from looking down.
“It’ll be okay,”
Russell told her backstage.
“It’s just like any other show.
Just a few more people.”
Just a few more people, told herself ...
but halfway through their first song, she could hear the audience members singing along, could feel their adoration, a wave of warmth rolling over her, and she stopped being afraid.
Their second and third were in Indianapolis.
On the morning of their first day off, Zoe had gotten up early to meet Lara and the backup dancers in the hotel gym.
had slept until nine thirty.
She’d just gotten out of the shower when she heard the ping of her inbox, signaling a message’s arrival.
Her heart beat faster as she hurried to her laptop to read it.
U busy? Russell had written.
No, she typed back.
Never too busy for you, she thought.
Be right over, Russell replied.
scrambled into her clothes and spent the next five minutes frantically brushing her teeth, combing her hair, and wishing, desperately, to have been magically transformed into someone who could look good in tight jeans and crop tops, like the ones Zoe wore.
The previous week, Zoe and Russell had gotten their picture in People magazine, in the “Star Tracks”
section, full of candid photos of famous people.
They’d been shot on a sidewalk in New York City, right before the tour had started, hands clasped, walking side by side.
Russell was looking at Zoe, mouth open, free hand lifted, clearly saying something.
Zoe had been looking straight ahead, channeling a supermodel’s hauteur.
Her hair gleamed in the sunshine; her eyes were bright.
The Griffin Sisters guitar player Russell D’Angelo and singer Zoe Griffin take a stroll in the Big Apple, the caption read.
was pretty sure that the picture had been staged—that someone from the record company had tipped off the photographer, or maybe someone at CJ’s office had even sent the picture in themselves.
The week before, there had been a similar shot of Russell and Zoe in Us Weekly, and the week before that In Touch had been speculating about the hot band’s power couple potentially being on the rocks, illustrated with a shot of Zoe having drinks with “a mystery man.”
, of course, had instantly identified the mystery man as CJ.
Still, she’d been hopeful right up until she asked her sister if everything was okay.
Zoe had been smiling as she said, “We’re fine.
Those breakup stories are just all feeding the machine.”
It gave a miserable, untethered feeling, the same one she got whenever she saw Zoe and Russell holding hands, or kissing, or Russell resting his hand on the small of Zoe’s back.
She wanted him to want her.
She wanted his gaze, his smiles, his attention.
And she had no idea whether Russell knew how she felt, and no idea how to tell him or, even, what good it would do.
When he knocked, smoothed her hair one final time.
She looked in the mirror, looked away, and hurried to the door.
“Hey.”
Russell was wearing a white tee shirt and dark jeans and his battered, unlaced black Chucks.
He carried his guitar case in one hand.
“I thought we could work on the new song.”
He looked past her, into the room.
“Zoe around?”
shook her head.
“Zoe went to the gym.”
She and her sister were still sharing a hotel room, which suspected was a money-saving measure on the label’s part.
She’d thought about asking for a room of her own, but the truth was that, most nights, Zoe was with Russell, giving her own room by default.
She opened the door wide, stepping back as he walked in, hurrying to turn on more lights and open the curtains, praying that there wasn’t anything embarrassing lying around.
was usually tidy about her belongings.
She would prop her suitcase on the stand by the end of her bed, remove only what she needed, hang her pantsuits in the closet, leave everything else neatly packed.
Zoe, meanwhile, would dump her entire suitcase out on her bed every second or third day, sorting the dirty laundry from the clean, shaking her head at the state of her outfits.
Her dresses would be left to dot the floor like wilted blossoms; her hand-washed bras and panties would be hung to dry over the shower curtain bar.
She’d set her box of tampons on the toilet, cover every inch of the bathroom counter with cosmetics, and strew the room with half-empty cans of diet soda, which would leave sticky rings on the dresser or the desk.
This day, thank God, had not been a dump day.
quickly gathered up the two half-empty cans of Diet Coke, a copy of The Rules, which Zoe had purchased at a Waldenbooks in Waukesha and which had been reading, in the vain hope that she would learn something, some way of attracting Russell’s romantic attention.
Unfortunately, the book seemed to have been written for women like Zoe: women who already had guys who wanted to date them.
Some of the suggestions made it sound like attracting a man meant extinguishing your personality.
(“Don’t tell sarcastic jokes.
Don’t be a loud, knee-slapping, hysterically funny girl ...
be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile.
Don’t talk so much.”) thought that at least she had the quiet part down.
Ladylike, she suspected, was beyond her.
And her legs were too big to cross.
Other Rules sounded dumb (“make exercise exciting by playing music while you do sit-ups.”
As if, thought ).
And some of the Rules made no sense for their current circumstance.
“Don’t see him more than once or twice a week”
didn’t work when you were basically working and living together, spending almost all of your waking hours in one another’s company.
was busy, except she was busy doing the same thing Russell was busy with ...
and she knew she’d never be able to lie or pretend with him.
Russell observed her tidying with an amused half smile.
could feel his attention, like something warm and comforting draped over her shoulders.
“Okay!”
said, a little breathlessly.
She was always a little breathless when Russell was this close.
“Should I go get my keyboard, or . . .”
The portable keyboard was still locked in the belly of the tour bus.
Some nights, took it to the room with her.
She’d pull her headphones over her ears and play while Zoe slept.
She’d have to wait until her sister fell asleep before she started, though.
Zoe claimed that the clatter of ’s fingers on the keys was enough to keep her awake.
“Nah,”
said Russell.
“I think we’re good with just my guitar.
I wanted to work on the bridge a little bit.”
nodded.
God, she loved listening to him talk.
The broadness of his vowels, the crisp taps of his ts.
The whispering sound when he said her name.
That, most of all.
Russell opened his guitar case.
opened her notebook.
Half of its pages were already filled with lyrics (plus a single heart she’d drawn, with their initials, together, inside it, and then quickly scribbled over).
He held out his hand, smiling.
handed him the notebook, feeling even more breathless as he flipped through the pages.
“You wrote all that.”
It wasn’t a question.
Still, nodded.
“Are all of those lyrics?”
“Mostly.”
Lyrics, and things more like diary entries.
Letters to him that she’d never send.
Dear Russell, I know you’re with Zoe, but she will never love you like I do.
felt her face getting hot as she imagined Russell reading those words.
As she licked her lips, trying to think of what to say, he stared at her intently.
Heatedly? Was this what romance novels called a heated look? Was it how, for example, he looked at her sister? wasn’t sure.
“God,”
he said, very softly.
“You’re incredible.
Do you have any idea how talented you are?”
felt her insides light up, like they’d been brushed in sunshine, painted with gold.
She clasped her hands in her lap, looking down, painfully aware of her physical self, her body and its myriad imperfections.
Her hair was too thin, her eyes too small and squinty, and her mouth always fell into a frown if she wasn’t paying attention.
I have nice feet, she told herself.
It was true.
Her feet were small, compared to the rest of her, compact and graceful, the toes descending in length from big toe to pinkie toe, like the pipes of a pan flute.
They were the same feet Zoe had.
She looked at Russell, remembering how he’d circled her ankle with his fingers, that one afternoon in Wisconsin.
His fingers had been warm, but she’d felt like they were burning, like they’d left a mark, a Russell-specific scar, with the shape of his hands and his fingerprints.
swallowed hard.
Russell was still staring at her, with a gaze that might have been heated and might just have been normal eye contact, with her notebook in his hands.
He might as well have been holding her heart.
She wanted to stop time and ask him a million questions: What did the house he’d grown up in look like? What color were the walls of his bedroom? What was the name of his elementary school, and who’d been his first best friend? What was his favorite restaurant and his favorite thing to eat? She already knew his favorite musicians, his favorite songs; how he loved Journey and Rush and the Beastie Boys, Liz Phair and Veruca Salt and Bikini Kill and Hole.
She’d eavesdropped on him explaining to Zoe that Live Through This was a perfect album and that “Miss World”
was a perfect song.
could picture her sister, nodding along, her face very serious, even though knew that her sister preferred Jessica Simpson to Courtney Love and had probably never heard the album Russell loved the best.
She wanted him to tell her his whole life’s story.
She wanted to make a pillow fort with a bedsheet roof and hide him in there.
She wanted to make herself tiny, tuck herself into his pocket, stay with him forever.
“Do you want to get started?”
she made herself ask.
Her voice was lower than normal, husky.
Russell’s own voice was calm as usual. “Sure.”
made herself stop looking at his fingers, or the flex of his shoulders as he pulled the strap of his guitar over his head (the authors of The Rules had very strong opinions about how a woman should never, ever stare at a man).
Instead, she looked down at the notebook, remembering what she’d written.
Once, she’d read an article that analyzed Broadway musicals.
In every musical, the article had said, there is always the “I Want”
song, usually, if not always, the very first song the audience hears, where the protagonist sings about his or her animating quest, the reason for the story, the journey, the adventure (and, hence, the show).
She’d thought about the prologue from “Into the Woods,”
how Cinderella wanted to go to the ball, and Jack’s mother wished for money, and the baker and his wife wished for a child.
More than life ...
more than riches ...
more than anything . . .
had had that song in her head when she’d written her own “I Want” song.
The prologue and, also, “Somewhere That’s Green,”
from Little Shop of Horrors, where Audrey, the shopgirl, sings about the safe, peaceful, happy life that she will never have.
“A matchbox of our own / A fence of real chain link / A grill out on the patio / Disposal in the sink . . .”
She’d let all those lyrics simmer, and then she thought about her own “I Want.”
Which was Russell.
She’d never tell another soul—she’d certainly never tell him—but there it was, as ineluctable a fact as her hazel eyes or her right-handedness or her talent.
He was her love, her inspiration.
He was her muse, as much as she was his.
And a few days after he’d touched her ankle in the car, with Zoe sleeping in the bed beside her, she’d pulled out her notebook and written words to the melody that had established itself in her head.
Her world is made of dark and water
Deeper than the eye can see
Full fathom five, and now they’ve brought her
Where she was never meant to be
She couldn’t see the traps they’d set
She mourns the vanished world below
She cries at night but no one listens
They tap the glass and start the show
But now he’s swimming in her waters
In the dark, her shape obscured
His hands know how to speak her language
All she needs is just one word
sang with her eyes closed, and wondered if he knew she’d written it about him, and for him.
All her songs were now.
The room was so quiet, and her voice sounded too loud.
She felt completely naked, utterly exposed, because Russell had to know that she was singing about herself.
And him.
Him too; her savior.
“It’s about a whale,”
she said, her voice abrupt and too loud.
Russell blinked, then looked at her, his expression open and curious as kept babbling.
“I saw one once.
My parents took us to Florida.
We did Disney World, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld.
They had whales that did a show.
They jumped through hoops, and did tricks.
The trainers gave them fish, and everyone clapped, but I just felt sorry for them.
They’d been bred in captivity, and spent their whole lives in tanks.
They’d never gotten to swim in the ocean.
And all these people, you know, looking at them, through the glass.”
She paused to breathe.
Russell was still looking at her.
Had she ever told him that boys used to call her a whale? “Free Willy,”
they’d yell when they saw her coming.
Once, one of the boys, braver than the others, had thrown a stick at her.
“Harpoon it!”
he’d been hollering.
The stick had scratched her face, and her mother had come to the nurse’s office.
Normally, Janice was sympathetic, or, at least, she tried to be, but that day she’d been angry.
“Do you think I’ve got time for this?”
she’d asked, walking, stiff-legged, to her car.
“Can’t you try a little harder to get along?”
Russell was still staring at her.
For a moment, she imagined telling him.
Cards on the table, beans spilled all over the ground.
I love you.
I know you don’t love me and that’s okay, you don’t have to do anything about it, but I had to tell you.
I need you to know.
He would be kind about it, she thought.
His voice would be gentle, and he’d look into her eyes and say something like, Hey, I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.
I think you’re incredibly talented, but I don’t feel that way about you.
Russell was a nice guy, good-natured and well-mannered, goofy and sweet.
He would let her down gently.
She knew that it would still break her and leave her gutted, and so, so ashamed.
licked her lips.
“Have—have you ever been to SeaWorld?”
she asked.
Russell shook his head and nodded at the notebook.
“When did you write this?”
shrugged.
“Last week sometime? I think?”
He smiled at her wryly, shaking his head again.
“Amazing.”
Russell thinks I am amazing, told herself, trying to put herself back in the present.
Fifth grade was a long time ago.
I made it out, and I’m okay now.
Some people like me.
And some people think you’re a joke, a voice that sounded like that long-ago classmate said.
forced herself to ignore it, to return her attention to Russell and the song.
“We built ourselves a castle,”
she sang.
“But the walls have fallen down.”
“I have an idea.”
Russell came to stand beside her.
He pointed at the page.
“Right here.
Castle and ruins.
It should rhyme, right?”
“I know.”
shook her head.
“I couldn’t find a rhyme.”
She pressed her lips together.
“And do we need to say it’s a sandcastle, or is that implied?”
“Implied,”
Russell said.
“Let’s brainstorm.
What rhymes with castle? Hassle?”
“Facile,”
said .
“Huh?”
“Facile,”
she said.
“It means, like, easy, I think.
Or fluent.
Like, someone is facile in French.”
“Huh.”
Russell, she’d noticed, had lots of different huhs.
He could use it as a question, an affirmation, or a noise of pleasure when he’d learned something new.
This was his teasing huh.
His I’m-impressed-with-you huh.
She liked it.
She liked all of them.
“But probably we shouldn’t use it in a song.
If no one knows what it means.”
“There’s always asshole.”
Russell raised his eyebrows.
“Do we dare?”
He strummed a chord and sang, “I built you a castle / but the tide’s come in / and it turns out you’re an asshole . . .”
“And have always been.”
finished the verse, noticing he’d changed the we to I.
I built you a castle.
Her heart was doing a swoopy, almost painful thing in her chest, something that felt like bubbles inside of her.
She opened her mouth and found that she was giggling.
She delighted when Russell started laughing right along with her.
“And you have bad skin,” he sang.
“With a double chin,”
sang, and then cringed, hoping Russell wasn’t noticing her double chin.
But Russell was still laughing, bent over his guitar with his shoulders shaking.
“No, no, wait.
I’ve got it, I’ve got it,”
he said.
He began the chorus again.
I built you a castle
But it’s made of sand
Still, I thought that it would last, oh,
When you held my hand.
He strummed the final chord again.
“What do you think?”
His face was so open, so vulnerable, so full of what looked like kindness and affection, that had to turn away.
It was too much.
It would break her.
Her poor heart would explode.
“Play it again,”
she said.
He started to play, and sang.
I built you a castle
That was oh so grand
But the tide’s come in at last, oh
To wash away the sand.
“Something like that?”
she said.
“Or should it be something about how the castle’s not real? Like, it’s only in my . . .”
Shit, she thought.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Only in the person’s head?”
she said hastily.
“Or, the whale’s head, actually.
Because it’s about a whale.
But do whales build castles? Does any of this make sense?”
“You’re fine,”
Russell said.
If had heard what she’d said, if he’d caught the meaning, his face didn’t let on.
His expression was open and relaxed, not guarded, or, worse, pitying, as if he was getting ready to tell her that he liked her, just not that way.
“Maybe it’s . . .”
He played the bridge again, changing the second chord, taking it from major to minor and back again, instead of just the major progression had written.
“Oh,”
she said, nodding, hearing the rightness of it, the undeniable click of pieces locking into place.
She picked up her notebook and pen and started to write; the song spilled out of her, like that simple key change had opened a locked chest.
Love was what she wanted / a prize she had to win / when his hands find her in the darkness / then she feels the world begin.
He started to play the bridge she’d rewritten, and they sang together, his voice low and warm, her voice higher, sweeter, twining around his, and then soaring.
Together, they made something beautiful: something as shimmering and fragile as a soap bubble, as lovely as a peach-and-golden sunset on the last days of summer.
Russell looked at her.
froze.
She could not move, could not breathe.
She could only watch as he reached out and cupped her elbow.
“Hey,”
he said, like he was gentling a horse, trying to keep it from running away.
As if would ever run from him.
As if she could. “Hey.”
“Hey,”
she said back, her voice so soft, cracking a little.
Russell took one step toward her.
Then another.
Her eyes were on his face, his eyes, and she could not have looked away.
Not for all the money in the world.
Not for all the songs that had ever been written.
Not for anything.
They turned their heads at the same instant, at the sound of the door’s lock clicking, then the door opening.
Zoe was smiling as she sauntered inside.
“Hello there, party people!”
Her eyes moved from Russell to , then back again.
thought she saw, in that tiny span of time, Zoe consider the possibility that something was happening, something she needed to worry about, then immediately reject it.
If Russell had done anything to indicate guilt, if he’d lurched backward or looked away or stuffed his hands in his pockets or blushed, there might have been a problem.
But Russell stood where he was.
His expression did not change.
He gave no sign that he was doing anything besides visiting a colleague’s hotel room to discuss a business matter.
Which, supposed, was true.
Zoe’s smile widened as she crossed the room to take Russell’s hand.
She was wearing exercise gear, bicycle shorts and a cropped tee shirt.
could see her flat belly, the tanned, lean legs that she’d have no trouble crossing.
“You still want to go to brunch?”
He smiled at her.
“Absolutely.
I’m starving.”
His voice was casual.
“, want to come with us?”
She shook her head and stood, unmoving, as Zoe went into the shower and Russell went back to his room.
For hours, she could still feel Russell’s presence, could feel the room ringing with his voice, could still see how he’d looked when he’d touched her.