Diary of a Blues Goddess (25 page)

"That asshole has a lot of fucking nerve showing up here," Jack snapped, his hands tightening on the wheel as he parked the car.

My teeth started chattering involuntarily.

"Are you cold, Georgia?" Tony asked.

"No… nervous."

"Don't be," Jack said sternly. "Don't let this guy twist your head all up. Remember his high-school nickname."

Tony hopped out of the car, then held out a hand to me.

Rick stood up. "Georgia… you have to listen to what I have to say."

"No." Tony slipped an arm around my waist. "She doesn't."

Jack came around from the street and stood on my other side.

"Rick," I spoke, "I'm honestly not interested. It all makes sense now. You freaking out at the bowling alley. You asking me if I was playing a wedding tonight… "

"Georgia… " Rick's voice was strong, convincing. "You have to believe me. I was dating Carrie right up until two months ago. I haven't called her since we ran into each other. Since our first date. We planned to go to this wedding together ages ago. I felt like I had to escort her. After the evening was over, I planned on telling her I couldn't see her anymore. But… our little scene pretty much took care of that." He smiled weakly, testing my sense of humor.

I felt a surge in my heart. Could he have faked how we were when we were together? Faked how he felt? Wasn't I involved with Jack when Rick arrived on the scene? It had all been happening so fast.

Tony spoke for me, reminding me what I had seen at the wedding. "That girl was hanging all over you. It didn't look like anything was winding down." I watched him change his stance, looking like a tiger about to pounce. His jaw clenched.

"Look, pal, I think Georgia can speak for herself. Georgia… I love you."

"Don't… " I felt myself weakening. "Come on, guys, let's go inside."

"We'll walk you in," Jack said. "Then come out for the instruments."

The three of us crossed the sidewalk and moved toward the steps. Rick reached out to grab my arm.

"Georgia… I am begging you. I am
begging
you to listen to what I'm saying. Don't you remember last Saturday? How good it was?"

"Don't, Rick… I'm tired."

He kept holding on to my arm.

"Please, Rick… don't do this."

Still he didn't budge. "Look at me and tell me you don't feel the same."

I looked at him, but I didn't have to say a thing. Tony tossed one good right hand to Rick's jaw and knocked him down. Rick grunted and rolled onto his side.

I screamed and stared at Tony.

"No one fucks with Georgia Ray," he said, shaking out his hand and escorting me up the steps. I looked down at Rick, now rubbing the red spot on his jaw. My insides were shredded like coleslaw.

I wanted to believe Rick. I really did. But now I replayed other scenes in my mind. The blonde from the wedding, the Winthrop wedding. It wasn't Carrie. It had been another tall blonde. With more Nordic features, but most definitely not the same woman. Jack was right. He had lived up to his nickname. And I suddenly remembered what Maggie used to call me every once in a while.

Gullible Georgia.

We walked inside. Dominique, Angelica and Nan were standing in the front foyer with bathrobes on. Dominique was already in tears.

"Gary already called," she sniffed. "Then we saw Tony deck lover boy. Good for you, muscles." She patted his bicep.

"It was a pleasure," Tony said gruffly, his brogue thick as ever. "Fookin' bastard."

"Come on, honey," Nan soothed. "We have a hot toddy waiting for you in the kitchen."

This was Nan's "cures what ails you" recipe.

FOR A BROKEN HEART

1 oz. peppermint schnapps

1/2 oz. white crème de cacao

Fill favorite giant-size mug with steaming milk and top with a Hershey's Kiss. Drink up with a good friend and feel better. Good for heartbreak, job loss, significant others who cheat, financial woes and just plain old bad days.

I allowed myself to be led to the kitchen, which has ancient black-and-white tile and an oak-door table big enough for eight. Milk was brewing in a big saucepan, and Nan started making our toddies.

Dominique patted my hand. "Tell Mama all about it."

And that was it. Those five simple words, and the dam of emotions I'd held in check all night so I didn't let Gary down, so I didn't make a fool of myself, gushed forward and I started sobbing. Mama. Every motherless girl, motherless woman, whether she is eight or eighty, when she faces a heartbreak, longs to reach out and be comforted by her mother. I couldn't explain it, because we'd fought so much when she was alive, but I longed for her. I wanted her to hug me and tell me I was going to be all right. That I wasn't always going to be singing the electric slide and lonely in a city whose very personality changes every weekend. I would eventually find the love I wanted. I looked at the rainbow of hands patting my arm. Black, white, soft cocoa-colored. Maybe I had love here, with them. But I still wanted, quite simply, my mother.

Dominique handed me a tissue. "It's okay, Georgia. We all love you."

"I know." I blew my nose in the tissue, knowing it was serious because she'd called me by my real name. "But you know how it goes… " I took a ragged breath. "You have to wait for your heart to catch up to what your head already knows. He's a cheat. A liar and a cheat. And I let sex muddle up my head."

Nan kept handing out hot toddies, then sat down opposite me. "Drink up, dear."

I sipped at the drink, which was soothing. A numbness settled over me.

"I feel like such an idiot." My eyes welled up anew.

"You're no idiot, Georgia," Tony said, his face still grim, as if he was taking all that had happened to me personally. Very personally.

"I am."

"Why," Angelica asked. "Because you believe what people tell you? Honey, I'd rather still believe in love than miss the ride. I'll chance walking in on guys like Frankie caught in the act than be a bitter old soul with no faith in love anymore."

"Yeah, yeah. 'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'" I shuddered. "But Tennyson never said how to mend a broken heart."

"Well, for God's sake," Dominique sighed. "Listen to me, not that old guy. The best way to mend a broken heart is to get right back out there again."

"Sure. Is that why we sit in bed in the afternoons watching
Steel Magnolias
?"

"I didn't say I followed my own advice. Besides, I like Julia Roberts."

I laughed and took another big sip of my hot toddy. I was feeling more and more sleepy.

"How about you, Nan?" Jack asked. "You're just a tiny bit older than all of us. You must have some advice for Georgia."

"I've lived a
long
time. And I've had my heart broke too many times to count," she sighed. "And best as I can tell you all, you just have to hurt till the hurtin's done."

"That's the best you've got?" Dominique asked incredulously. "
That's
the best you've got?"

She shook her head. "Afraid so. The heart figures matters out on its own watch. You can't
think
a heartbreak away. You can't wish it away. You just muddle along until you wake up one day and realize you didn't cry yourself to sleep the night before. Then maybe a day or two later, you realize you went a whole hour or more without thinkin' about the pain."

"I only had one daughter. And my daughter only loved one man. Georgia's father. And try as she might, she couldn't make him stop drinkin', and she couldn't stop him from going to New York to seek his fortune in the music business, any more than Georgia's mother could have stopped Georgia from bein' a singer. And when my daughter's heart was broke, I would have laid down my life to make the pain go away. I would have."

She leaned back and shut her eyes. We had an unspoken code between us. We didn't talk about my mother's death. She opened up more. "And then when she got the cancer, I prayed to God to take me instead. I begged God. I said, 'I can't take it, Lord.' I was afraid. Me. Fearless Nan. Tough ol' bird Nan. I was afraid I would just die of a broken heart. But if God brings you to it, God's gonna bring you through it."

She opened her eyes and looked around at all of us. "And yes, that's the best I got."

Nan stood up and went over to the stove to make another batch of toddies. As she stirred the milk over the flame, I told Dominique and Angelica exactly what had happened. From the Versace dress to remembering that Carrie wasn't the blonde from the other wedding—right down to Tony's perfectly executed right hook.

"I love a man who knows how to defend a woman." Angelica batted her eyelashes. Tony blushed.

I laughed, admittedly feebly. I'd hurt for a long while, but I hoped Nan was right, and I'd get through it. She poured us all a second hot toddy. I felt downright woozy. I was tired from emotional exhaustion, plus I think she was socking in some extra schnapps in mine.

"I'm ready to go on up to bed." I stretched. Everyone else stood. Jack and Tony went out to the car to get their instruments, and I waited for them while Angelica and Dominique kissed me good-night and climbed upstairs to their bedrooms.

I faced Nan. "I'll give Tony the room overlooking the courtyard. He'll like watching his garden grow from there—I never knew you wanted to redo the garden."

"I don't really. But it's something he needs to do, I think." She kissed my cheek. "I love you, Georgia. You saved my life, really. When you came to live with me, when you and your mother came to live with me, it was you who saved me from the grief after she died."

"Funny, Nan. I always felt the same way about you."

She turned from me, smiling, and slowly climbed the stairs. The guys came in with Tony's bass, Jack's guitar and Tony's suitcase, a hard-sided Samsonite with decals and stickers of all the places he had traveled, most of them European cities.

"Come on upstairs. I'll show you to your room."

We left the instruments in the foyer and went up to the second floor. Jack kissed me good-night on the landing.

"Thanks for not saying 'I told you so,'" I said.

"You didn't say it after Sara."

"I thought it, though."