Twang (9 page)

I lay motionless for several minutes, that final frame frozen in my head and sleep as elusive as snow in summertime. Then I snaked a trembling hand out of the covers to turn on the bedside lamp. Blinking, I sat up, reached for my notebook and scribbled down the title, two verses, the chorus, and some thoughts about a bridge:

Mama begged Daddy to stay, with tears in her

eyes,

He said, “Got work to do,” but she knew it was

lies,

’Cause he’s a honky-tonk tomcat, prowlin’

around.

Looking for women and paintin’ the town.

She oughtta leave him, give him back his name,

Take back her heart and escape all the pain.

But she’s a believer in vows, in miracles, and

Grace,

So she just closes her eyes—and she prays.

He went cruisin’ the bars, hunting ruffles and

skirts,

Home drunk at daybreak, humming “Love

hurts.”

’Cause he’s a honky-tonk tomcat, who follows

the trail,

Of whiskey and perfume, a loud-calling smell.

She oughta leave him, give him back his name,

Take back her heart and escape all the pain.

But she’s a believer in vows, in miracles, and

Grace,

She just closes her eyes—closes her eyes, and

she prays.

Possible Bridge: But she closes her eyes. She

just closes her eyes.

I looked down at what I’d written, confused, like it had come from someone else’s hand. But there were pink impressions on my fingers from holding that cheap Bic pen, and I knew I had the concept of a song with emotional impact, a compelling story. “Well, okay,” I said in a flat, exhausted tone, “time to get some sleep.”

I woke at one in the afternoon, made coffee, showered, dressed, and rode the elevator down to buy Andy Capp’s Hot Fries and a Coke out of the vending machines. There was something to be said for finally getting sleep. I didn’t feel so frayed, like I was coming apart at the seams, and I decided to allow myself to look at the lyrics scribbled in my notebook.

Heart racing, I read through “Honky-Tonk Tomcat,” wondering if I could summon up enough of a dispassionate disconnection to finish it. I honestly had no idea until I sat down at the desk in my room and crafted the remainder with a songwriter’s discipline. I took Roy’s advice and wrote a couple verses wherein I let my good-hearted heroine eventually grow deathly ill. The man realized what he had, repented of his tomcatting, but by then it was too late. She died—
she closes her eyes for the last time
. In the final verse, he’s the one who’s closing his eyes. Remorse and grief make him drink himself to death. The melody for my new song came effortlessly as I sat on the bed, strumming my Washburn.

I suppose if I had a moment of trepidation, of second-guessing the direction I was heading in my musical career, it was right then, as I paced in my room at the Best Western. Before I called Mike. I remember asking myself,
Is it worth looking back at whence you came in order to write “Honky-Tonk Tomcat”?
and also
Just how bad do you want this country-music-diva thing, Jennifer?
and then quickly reassuring myself that this song was the first and the last of that type. I firmly believed that looking back for inspiration to write “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” was a necessary evil to get my foot in the door of the music scene in Nashville, and I made a vow to myself that it was the absolute
last
time I’d allow any of my past to influence my music. There were things much worse back there, and after this, I’d move only in a forward direction.

It’s funny, but as I ponder that day back then, I see clearly it was the crossroads for me, and I could have made the choice to go a very different direction from what I did in my journey toward fame. Of course, I didn’t know then that “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” would set the course, the tone of my career as a wounded star. I couldn’t see the future of choice A or choice B. None of us can. All I knew for sure was that I had exactly what Mike Flint wanted.

One morning, weeks later, Mike found me standing in the closet of my room at the Best Western, wrapped up like a mummy in a terrycloth bathrobe still on its hanger, crying and shaking, and holding the sheet music to “Honky-Tonk Tomcat.”

“What’s wrong, babe?” Mike asked, his eyes bulging, his Herrera for Men cologne filling the closet. “The guy from the magazine is down in the lobby. You’ve got to get dressed. Fix your hair and stuff. Believe they want some photos too. Come on now, get yourself ready. Come on.”

I could only shake my head. Anxious thoughts lay quivering like popcorn kernels in hot oil. I couldn’t imagine spilling the dark, confusing stories of back home that inspired “Honky-Tonk Tomcat.”

“For cryin’ out loud, Jenny!” Mike urged, pulling my elbow to drag me out in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. “You’re acting like a five-year-old. You ought to be thrilled. Your very first song is a runaway hit. Do you know how rare this is?”

I caught our reflection, Mike in his casually elegant Western-cut shirt and dark blue jeans, the big silver belt buckle, and his sandy-colored mop of hair—like a model in
Country Gentleman
magazine. Then beside him I saw this pathetic girl with long black tangled hair and a swollen face, who looked like she’d crawled out of a dumpster.

“Listen,” Mike said, toning his voice down a notch. “You owe it to your fans. All those wonderful folks plunking down their hard-earned money for your music.”

I knew what he was doing and I tried to resist the guilt, but couldn’t help thinking of all those people paying for
my
song, listening, and maybe singing along to it. Suddenly, not knowing quite whether to laugh or cry, I pulled away from Mike and said, “Okay,” turning on the faucet and splashing cold water on my face, again and again so that it shocked me into a numb state.

“You have a stunning voice. People are saying you remind them of Patsy Cline mixed with Tammy Wynette.”

“Thank you,” I said, sitting in the lobby and looking at the overweight, eager-faced writer from
Country Music Weekly
.

“In fact, I really
feel
that song. Especially the chorus.” He closed his eyes and held an invisible microphone beneath
his mouth and started crooning:
He’s a honky-tonk tomcat who follows the scent of whiskey and perfume and women—”

It felt like somebody stabbing me in the chest, so I bit my lip hard and tuned him out until he finished singing.

He scribbled something onto his legal pad. “Yep, that is some powerful stuff. A compelling story coupled with a memorable melody. Why don’t you start with telling me where this particular song came from? The inspiration for your debut masterpiece.”

They say flattery will get you anywhere, but after my meltdown in the closet, I wouldn’t dare open up about where this song actually came from to anybody. I still could hardly believe I’d written what I did, though some part of me acknowledged that without the heinous memories there wouldn’t be my very first hit song, an immediate smash at radio. “It was inspired by my best friend.”

“Really. Tell me about it.”

The rest of the lie came easily. “Well, my very best friend from childhood, from kindergarten on, had this father who used to run around on her mother. Right in her mother’s face, as a matter of fact. My friend—her name was Lisa—didn’t understand it. She hated her father coming home loaded, with all these various barflies. Sometimes Lisa didn’t even hear him coming in, and she’d wake up and head to the kitchen in her nightgown, ready for some breakfast, you know? And she’d find her father and some trashy tramp on the sofa, tangled up together, half-dressed. You can imagine how upsetting that was to a little kid, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, his full lips in an O. Then after a moment, “He sounds like a real scalawag.”

“Yep,” I said, feeling a little jab of fury. “Bad, bad man. I seem to remember he read a lot of X-rated magazines, and he had a really filthy mind. He would be so foul-mouthed, even
when Lisa was around! He’d leer at other women right in front of his wife and his daughter. She didn’t know what to think. Or do.” I willed away the tears.

He shook his head.

A moment, and then the rest poured out. “But you know what’s funny? Lisa’s mother never would confront her father! Well, beyond her initial madness and a few words. She cried a lot of tears, I mean, that’s what Lisa told me anyway, and I bet they were awful to listen to. But the next day, Lisa’s mother would just say stuff like, ‘Well, it’s not his fault. It’s that old Demon Alcohol, and I’m praying, and I just have to have faith that he’ll see the light and change,’ and . . .” Here was where my made-up storyline petered out.

“My, my!” The interviewer was scribbling stuff down furiously, shaking his head. “That is tragic. Really tragic.” He looked up at me. “And then Lisa lost her mother. But at least her father did end up seeing the light, so to speak, realizing what he’d had.”

I looked at him blankly, and he chuckled and added, “At least that’s what the song says.”

“Oh, yeah. Right, right. Well, actually, Lisa didn’t know she lost her mother, because she ended up taking her own life before that part of the song happened.” I felt the storyteller in me surging up. “As a matter of fact, I wrote this song in her memory. It’s for Lisa, and every time I sing it, I think of Lisa, and I say a little prayer for her. God rest her soul.”

He shook his head quickly, eyes shut, as if the “rest of the story” was almost more than he could bear. “I’ll tell you something,” he said at last, opening eyes shiny with unspilled tears. “You’re a mighty fine person, Jenny Cloud. A person with a good Christian heart, and I can see why ‘Honky-Tonk Tomcat’ is taking the country music world by storm. You ought to be proud of yourself.”

Back in my room I turned off the telephone’s ringer, undressed, and shakily climbed into bed, curling into the fetal position with the covers over my head. I fell asleep almost instantly, a beautiful, numb escape from the continual waves of anxiety and self-loathing I’d been battling. Day turned into dusk, and still I slept, deeply and safely removed from reality, until finally my rumbling stomach betrayed me. I shrugged the covers off to blink at the red numbers of a digital clock. 8:17 p.m.