Chapter 4
My first morning in Nashville, I went to a cemetery.
The air was cold and lush against my cheeks, and the ground was so dewy and green that my Chucks were soaked by the time I made it to her grave.
The headstone was a single piece of marble the size of a beach towel nestled into the grass. Lipstick tubes in a spectrum of colors—onyx, jade, gold, silver—were scattered like jewels around the grave amid grocery store flowers and aging stuffed animals.
The stone read:
BELLE POWERS
MAY 16, 1949 - JULY 25, 1982
Oh, please meet me tonight in the moonlight
Please meet me tonight all alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
It’s a story that’s never been told
The marble was covered in kisses, all in her signature shade of pink.
I searched for a feeling that would make sense for the moment, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it was because her body wasn’t actually there; it’d sunk to the bottom of the ocean after the crash. Or maybe it’s impossible to truly mourn someone you don’t remember.
All I could think was: I had come from a woman who inspired such devotion that strangers made out with her headstone. That had to mean something, didn’t it? At the very least it meant I wasn’t trash, as my aunt and some of the more sadistic kids at school had liked to imply.
I was not alone at the gravesite; about a dozen men and women hovered in the chill, clutching flowers or reverently clasping hands against their thighs.
I watched them, hoping one would pull a tube of pink from their purse, apply it thickly, get to their knees, and kiss the stone in front of me.
But they all remained at a respectful distance.
I made eye contact with a guy standing on the other side who’d clearly been staring at me. He gave me a nod, and I glared at him. I thought, Don’t leer at me over my mother’s grave. He, of course, didn’t know she was my mother, but the stare still seemed to belie a sort of derangement.
I lingered for a while longer, waiting for the gravity of it all to sink in, but eventually I gave up.
On my way back to the entrance, I accidentally fell into step with the leerer. I tried to lag behind, but it was like he’d had a similar thought, and we slowed to the same pace.
“Do you have a lighter?” he asked, holding up a pack of Marlboro Reds. His accent had a damp sweetness like syrup, different from the dry, grassy accents of Mr. Blau and the driver he’d hired for me.
I kept my head down, refusing to make eye contact. “No. I don’t smoke.”
“Me neither,” he said, and I raised my eyes to him.
He was sandy-haired with wily, fox-like features, and he looked about my age. He was short for a man, perhaps a few inches shorter than me, but muscular like an action figure. His lean biceps bulged from his white T-shirt.
I waited for him to elaborate about the smoking, but he stayed quiet as we walked along the path leading out of the cemetery.
“Have we met before?” he asked. “That’s why I was looking at you back there. I was trying to figure it out.”
“Oh, no. But I get that all the time.”
“People think they’ve met you before?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what it is. Something about my face.”
“Interesting.” He studied my features as if to discern what it might be. “Maybe you were famous in a past life.”
I smiled, amused by the synchronicity of the comment.
When I peered into his light-green eyes, they didn’t have the same look as the other boys I often encountered, always searching my face for how they might weasel their way in.
His eyes actually sparkled, as if he was in on a cosmic joke, an infinite mirth echoing deep into the recesses of his mind.
“Are you a Belle Powers fan?” I asked.
“No, not really.”
“Then why are you here?”
He gestured up ahead to another grave with a small crowd. “For Johnny Cash.” He paused. “But I’m not really a fan of his either.”
I stayed quiet once again, clearly waiting for him to say more.
“My brother was. He always wanted to come here and visit Johnny’s grave, but he never got the chance, so I told myself I would.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, thanks, it’s fine.” I could feel him wanting to say more, but instead he swallowed the words.
“What?” I asked. I was not one for engaging strangers, but I was genuinely curious.
“I haven’t actually gone to see the grave yet.”
“Why not?”
He took a deep breath. “I drove all night from Myrtle Beach, and now I’m here, and I feel this pressure for it to mean something. I’ve been wandering around this cemetery for an hour, too chickenshit to go over there.”
I understood that more than he knew.
He held up the Marlboros. “Plus, I can’t go until I find a lighter. I’m going to smoke one of his old cigarettes in his honor.”
We kept strolling, and I spotted a white plastic lighter lying in the grass. I picked it up and pressed it into his palm. “It’s a sign. Now you have to go.”
He stared down at the lighter but didn’t make a move.
“I’ll go with you,” I offered, shocked by my own friendliness.
“Really?” He gazed over at the gravesite and stuck his hands in his jeans. “Okay, you’re right. It’s time.”
We walked in purposeful silence toward the crowd and found a small hole in which to wedge ourselves.
There were two headstones laid side by side—one for “John R. Cash” and another for “June Carter Cash.” A similar spread of flowers and memorabilia adorned their graves, but there were no lip prints on the marble.
We stood there side by side in the quiet, and I told myself not to look at him. I wanted him to have his privacy while he tried to feel whatever he wanted to feel.
Instead, I gazed at the twin stones and wondered why my own parents hadn’t been buried in the same place.
I knew there’d been five years between their deaths, but hadn’t they wanted to be together?
My father was buried at the family plot in Minnesota where I’d lived with my grandparents before they died.
When I could no longer resist, I snuck a glance at the leerer and saw tears running down his face. God, I envied him. He wiped them away, and then abruptly turned and walked toward a bench at the edge of the grass.
I followed and sat a few inches away while he bent over and put his face in his hands.
His shoulders shook, and I wondered if I should touch him, or if he’d rather I just fuck off.
I hated when people touched me when I was upset.
But I didn’t want to leave—the intensity of his mourning was strangely appealing, like if I stayed close enough, some of it might leak into me, too.
He took a few deep breaths and raised his head, then pulled out a cigarette from the pack.
He lit the end and puffed it to life, and began violently coughing.
An old woman walked by and sneered. “There’s no smoking here.
” He tried to respond, but he choked on the words, and instead held up a hand and frantically stubbed the cigarette against the side of the bench.
She muttered under her breath and walked on.
I gave him the soda I’d saved from the hired car, and he took a large sip.
“Jesus, that was a terrible idea.” I couldn’t help but giggle, and he gave me a half smile as he rubbed his face dry with the heels of his hands.
“I’m sorry. My brother’s been gone for a year, so most of the time I feel nothing.
But sometimes, this wave hits me, and I can’t control it. ”
I shook my head gently. “I think it’s beautiful. Or, I mean, it’s beautiful that you loved him so much that you feel this way.”
He gazed out over the cemetery. “I was thinking about how much he loved Johnny Cash and wanted to see Nashville. The only reason he never visited was because he thought it seemed too gay or something, and that suddenly struck me as profoundly sad. He was this hard, sort of angry dude, but he also had that in him, too.”
I thought about all of the thoughts and emotions I suppressed, afraid they would scare people off. I understood the impulse.
“I’m sorry, I know that’s kind of heavy, and you don’t even know me—”
“No, I get it,” I said, cutting him off. I had learned at an early age not to talk about my mom and dad—it could really clear a room. “Both of my parents are dead.”
He coughed again, his face contorted with genuine concern.
“It’s not as dramatic as it sounds. I never even met my dad. And I don’t remember my mom. I was too young when she died. I couldn’t even feel something at her grave earlier—I wanted to, but I just didn’t,” I confessed. “I’m envious.”
His brow furrowed more deeply. “Hold on. Are you saying your mother is Belle Powers?”
I nodded hesitantly, not meaning to have revealed this so easily to a stranger.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
He was quiet a beat. “So you don’t remember her at all?”
I nodded. “But I want to. That’s why I’m here.” At the thought, a familiar feeling rose up, not a wave but maybe a ripple, that ached for the touch of another person.
As if he could feel it run through me, he reached out and put his hand over mine on the slats of the bench. I looked up at him, and his eyes glinted with that infinite mirth.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Micah.” He paused. “And yours?”
“Rhea.”
He smiled for the first time, and the mirth spread from his eyes to each of his features, imbuing his face with a mischievous light. “The goddess herself.”
That evening, I was invited to a country star’s house for dinner.
On the way in the hired car, we passed a bronze statue of my mother posing with hands on hips like she owned the place, her wig glinting dull gold in the sunset.
Down the road, we stopped at an intersection at the Country Music Hall of Fame, where her ten-foot grin flashed from a banner advertising a new exhibit.
Everywhere I looked in Nashville, I saw her, like she was a religious icon, and I had finally come to her holy city.