Nashville Chrome (33 page)

"Let me show you the garden," Bonnie said. "Brownie's still at work. What would you like for dinner?" She helped Maxine with her bag. The children were down at the creek, playing with friends. Bonnie stopped in the kitchen to pour Maxine a glass of lemonade and to show her the day's harvest, and while Maxine had known for a long time that Bonnie had another life than touring, and perhaps a better life, Maxine had always managed to put that knowledge aside, or to hide it beneath the surface.

She saw it now though as if for the first time—saw it most fully—not so much in Bonnie's newly relaxed demeanor, but in the beauty of the kitchen: brighter and more modern, certainly, than Birdie's had ever been, and yet somehow harking back to those days. The afternoon sunlight illuminating the lemonade pitcher, the lemonade's translucent fibers suspended, and the stainless steel bowls of produce—redleaf lettuce, greenleaf, radishes, green beans, snap peas, and tomatoes with their pungent, summery smell—combined with the density of Bonnie's happiness lead Maxine to understand finally that which for years she had been trying to avoid seeing or knowing.

Bonnie handed her the lemonade and asked her to come down to the garden. The sun was blazing, and Bonnie tossed Maxine a straw hat.

I don't have a chance in hell,
Maxine thought.
It's over.
She wondered how and when her sister had grown up and away from her; at what point had she slipped away from her control?
She doesn't care if she ever sings again,
Maxine thought. Jim Ed had left her for Helen Cornelius, was what it felt like, Norma had gone off to college, and now Bonnie had turned her back on her, just as she had on Elvis, and chosen Brownie and her new family.

Bonnie entered the waist-high garden like a woman entering surf, wading in slowly, pausing often and putting her hands down to pluck one leaf or another. The day's weeds had already been picked and lay drying in the yard, curing and withering like hay. Maxine loved a good tomato. Bonnie remembered this, sought out a small one she had passed by earlier in the day, picked it, and handed it to her. Maxine took a bite from it as if it were an apple and was surprised at the jag of envy she felt, rather than pleasure, at how delicious it was. She took a sip of the lemonade—the ice cubes rattled as she did so, and she flinched, remembering her yearning—and for a moment, there in the heat and the sun with her sister, and with the green growing odor of the garden, her head swam, and she thought,
All right, lay down your burden, step forward, and all will be all right.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Bonnie asked, direct if not blunt, and again Maxine was surprised; she didn't remember such confidence or assurance, such fullness.

"Yes," Maxine said, wondering how she would bring up her plea. Trying to figure a way to rephrase it, repackage it. Maybe later that night. Maybe not quite yet.

"I know it can't be easy on you," Bonnie said. "I know how much it meant to you."

Maxine followed her into the garden, moving cautiously, almost as if entering a jungle.

"I don't think I can stop," Maxine said, and now the peacefulness that had been present in the garden seemed to be vanishing quickly, as if it had been only an illusion. Bonnie stopped her casual tending and turned to look at Maxine, again with that new directness. They could hear the cries and shouts and laughter of the children off in the woods, the children coming back from the creek.

"Well, you have to," Bonnie said, her tone different, and Maxine thought,
Why, she's looking at me like I'm the enemy.

"It's just that we've worked so hard," Maxine said. "We've finally gotten free of Fabor, and we've made so many connections now. Hell," she said, "we've got Chet Atkins on our side. Do you know how many singers would kill for that?"

"
No,
" Bonnie said, and Maxine, misunderstanding, said, "Well, plenty. Any of them would. I've been thinking," she said, "and I don't think it's right to turn your back on a gift."

"No," Bonnie said again, still in the middle of the garden but giving all of her attention to Maxine; and Maxine was about to press harder, even while knowing it to be a mistake, but the children came bursting from out of the woods, whooping and singing, then pausing at what they understood instinctively was a scene of conflict before recognizing Maxine, whom they had not seen in a long time.

They hurried over to hug her, calling out her name; softening her, in that regard, yet sharpening the ache, the terror, as she came to know further that which Bonnie had chosen and why she had chosen it.

Maxine's own children were back in West Memphis, with a babysitter.
Why,
she wondered,
had she not thought to bring them?

They shelled peas that night, as they had when they were children. Brownie sat in the big overstuffed recliner, watching a baseball game, and Bonnie and Maxine side by side on the couch in an uneasy truce, fingers working quickly, rarely even having to look down. It seemed to Maxine that there was nothing in the world that would not remind her of music, and of their career—the Washington Senator she had dated was not playing that night but was sitting on the bench, having been demoted—but neither Bonnie nor Brownie commented on it, as if having forgotten, and they all three watched the game in contented silence while the children played board games upstairs.

The room filled steadily with the green flesh aroma of the split hulls, the fiber mushy sometimes beneath the shellers' thumbnails, and they all three worked in unified silence, lulled by the trance of the hunter-gatherer, proceeding moment by moment into the uncertain future, against which any stockpiling was always only a partial solution. The pleasure and gratification of ancient tasks.

That night there was a summer storm, and each of them awakened to the sound of limbs and branches landing on the tin roof, followed by the shooting-gallery drum of hail. Bonnie got up and went out onto the porch, worried for her garden, but there was nothing to be done; she knew she would just have to wait for morning, and hope that the broad leaves of her plants and the care with which she spaced them would be sufficient to protect the underlying vegetables. Brownie came out onto the porch with her briefly to admire the lightning, put his arm around her, and told her it would be all right.

"She wants to go back," Bonnie said, and Brownie nodded and said, "You had to know that she would." They stood there smelling the scent of fresh storm-clipped foliage—basil, tomatoes, parsley, dill—and with a tremble in her voice, Bonnie said, "I'm afraid it's going to be all ruined," but Brownie rubbed her back and said, "Nonsense, you've seen storms worse than this before. Don't worry," and then went back to bed, craving, as ever, sleep, working from a lifetime deficit he would never quite be able to catch up on.

In her room, Maxine cursed the storm's sound and pulled the pillows over her head, and worried about her drive home. The power went out sometime after midnight, but by that time she was asleep again, dreaming that she was a child at home and that none of the fame had occurred yet and none of the unhappiness; and when she next awoke, the sun was up high. It was midmorning, Brownie was long gone, off to work, and the coffee brewed in the kitchen was already too strong to drink. She poured a glass of orange juice and went out into the garden, where Bonnie, who had been working since dawn, was just finishing the cleanup.

Neat piles of leaves and limbs were stacked for burning, and Bonnie had gathered all of the shredded parts of her garden, had salvaged the vegetables that had been cut or clipped or partially bruised by the storm. There were still drifts of hail in the yard and in her garden, so that it looked as if she were working amid fields of snow, but the sun was melting those patches quickly and all the world was steaming; and despite being out in the hail, Bonnie was sweating.

There was an electricity in the storm-scrubbed air, and Maxine was ready to walk to town if necessary to secure some vodka for the orange juice. The children were still sleeping, but she had to get on the road. She would ask the question, even knowing full well what the answer would be, and then she would leave and would try to figure something else out; though how she could push on without the other two parts of her sound, she had no idea, knew only that the orange juice tasted flat and unsubstantial.

"I was thinking," she said, "what about a reduced schedule? Maybe just each spring," she said, and then, remembering the garden, "or each fall, once the children are back in school."

"Maxine," Bonnie said, with a quick flame of anger that even now she regrets, "it's over." Bonnie was clutching a handful of plants that had been cut down by the storm, and her temper, her anger, seemed to her to be coming from the new-lashed soil itself. "We had more than our fair share," she said. "Nobody can take that away, but it's gone now. You go ahead and do what you want, but I'm done. I don't want any more to do with it. I want to remember it how it was.

"Things end," Bonnie said. "You've got to stop clinging to it. You've got to find something else worthwhile in your life." She paused, knowing she had said enough, but it was like there was some kind of momentum now, in the opening-up, that wouldn't let her. "It's pathetic," she said. "Nobody wants to hear us anymore.
I
don't want to hear us anymore."

Maxine just stood there as if cast to stone. The garden was sparkling again but the steam made it look like it was burning. She stared at her sister—her little sister, whom she had saved—and for a moment wanted to say
I understand;
and for a moment, feeling the whip of Bonnie's words, and their truth, she wanted to say
I forgive you,
for she knew how much Bonnie would regret, later, having said them.

But those were not the words that came out. As if speaking in another's voice, or from another's heart, Maxine did the only thing she had ever done when hurt, which was to fight back. "
Sure
" she said, her voice dripping with scorn now, "go ahead and say it: I fucked up. You always picked the right guy, and I always picked the wrong one. Go ahead and say it:
I told you so.
" Maxine gestured toward the garden, then up at the house. "You with your damned perfect life," she said.

"All right," Bonnie said slowly, looking straight at her, eyes glittering, and Maxine wondered, with shock,
Is she enjoying it, is she savoring it?
Even now, in the remembering, she cannot be sure.

"All right," Bonnie said again, speaking evenly now—finally getting somewhat of a grip on her temper— "
I told you so.
"

There wasn't a whole lot of room left to negotiate after that. Maxine turned and hurried up to the house to pack. Bonnie wanted to apologize, wanted to follow her up to the house and explain, but she knew where that would lead, to more arguing and pleading, and that it might awaken the children.

This is the kindest thing,
Bonnie told herself, and bent down and went back to work in her garden, trying, in only the course of a day, to get it back to where it had been.

S
HE IS A FIRM
believer in second chances; for her, they are an article of faith. In 1972, she flew up to New York to meet with RCA. Chet wasn't there to lobby for her anymore; she had finally outrun her guardian angels. Bonnie was retired and living on the farm with Brownie, and Jim Ed had his healthy solo career.

She was desperate both financially as well as emotionally. RCA had informed Maxine by mail and then phone that they didn't want to record or release any more of her records, or those of the Browns, that they already had plenty of backlog. That the Browns' days were over. The Swinging Sixties had come and gone and the Browns had fallen by the wayside.

Maxine was trying to adapt, had poofed her hair up into the huge gladiator helmet style and shown up in New York wearing a polka-dotted minidress and high boots—wasn't that how it was done?—but none of the RCA executives would meet with her.

She went door to door, trying to find her old publicists, and searching for the bookkeepers, accountants, secretaries, and vice presidents with whom she had corresponded in the past. They were all gone; she could gain no entrée, could not even explain who she was, who she had been. She had a folder filled with yellowing newspaper clippings about various shows the Browns had played, and photographs—she was savvy enough to know the game was no longer all about the music—of the Browns with Ed Sullivan, and with the Beatles, and of Maxine with Johnny Cash.

There were no photos in the folder of Elvis. For that, she was too proud, and something else. As if, were she to try to reach out and take back a part of that which he had claimed from them, there would be some short-circuitry, some hiss of sparks. He was off-limits.

It was too powerful to speak of. It had been something different from fame. It had been friendship.

She finally was able to intercept a junior-level executive as he came out of an office from one meeting, heading to the next. She hurried after him, her boots double-clicking to his longer strides, then caught up with him. As they both walked, briefly side by side, they passed the framed pictures of all the recording industry's luminaries, as well as those of the newly emerging RCA television industry.

The young executive hurried along, not quite yet late to his next meeting but eager to get to it.

Maxine lobbied for a touring schedule and then, unsuccessful with that, for even an audition for a contract—she who had produced more than twenty albums by that time and sold millions, in this country as well as abroad, money that had gone to Fabor and to RCA, with very little to her and her family, and with no savings.

She did everything but break into song as they hurried down the hall, running out of time. She suggested, then pleaded, for a duet with any of her friends who were still living, but the young executive shook his head tersely and quickened his pace, so much so that she had to put her hand on his arm to slow him down, at which point he threw her hand off and turned to her and said the words that would push her over the edge—this
boy,
filled with dreams of money and power, a boy who had never set foot in a logging camp or seen a man lose his arm, who had never built a fire or cleaned a deer, a boy who had never seen darkness fall over the forest while he was still in it. A boy in a hurry, but with no idea where.