“What about you, Annie?” Layla asked. “What’s your superpower?”
“Ha,” she said. “I have three boys. My superpower is keeping everyone alive and not losing my goddamned mind in the process. I do get up an hour before everyone else so I can have my coffee in peace. I like to open Pinterest and design rooms full of white furniture that no one can sit on but me. All the décor is feminine and highly breakable. Nothing is durable or meant to withstand any kind of beating, unlike the furniture in my own house. The rooms I’ve designed would rival those of an interior decorator, or at least an aspiring one. It’s just for fun. And I know a lot about astrology.” Annie tacked that sentence on at the end, as if she were trying it on for size. Saying it out loud to see what they might say.
“Astrology?” Layla asked. “Like Mercury retrograde and stuff?”
“That’s part of it.” Annie looked away and down at the ground a little. “I saw my horoscope one day. I can’t even remember now where I read it. Maybe a magazine or something when I was waiting in a doctor’s office with one of the boys. And that day’s prediction seemed to fit what was happening in my life so closely it was almost scary. So then I started looking into it a little, you know, just sort of learning about it. And then I started reading more about it in the morning when I was by myself and I just, um.” Her voice cracked a little then and Tonya and Layla did not say a word.
“I love my boys and I worry about them so much. And my dad was showing signs of early Alzheimer’s and I had a questionable lump in my left boob that turned out to be nothing, but I just needed something to hold on to. It just kind of got bigger from there because it helps me make sense of the world.”
Tonya reached out a hand and laid it on Annie’s arm. “I understand.”
“I do too,” Layla said. And boy, did she. Layla thought that for the first time since she met Annie, she was finally seeing a side that not many people had or would, and it gave her such a feeling of belonging. It made Layla realize that sharing some of her struggles with other women had unburdened her a little, and maybe she could help unburden other women in return.
“Thank you,” Annie said. “I’ve never said a word to Ed about this. I always close my browser when he comes into the room so that he won’t see the astrology sites. Doctors are very pro-science and I am too. But I can look at something from two different mindsets. I know a lot about astrology. Probably enough to pull both of your charts and give you an idea about what’s heading your way.”
“As tempting as it would be to hear some good news after the shit year I’ve had so far,” Layla said, “I’ll have to pass. If there’s something coming that’s going to knock me off my axis again, I don’t want to know about it because I will not be able to handle it. I cannot handle any more right now.”
“Something tells me you could,” Tonya said.
“I think so too,” Annie said. “Maybe it doesn’t seem as obvious to you because it’s happening on the inside, but I can see something starting to happen on the outside too, Layla. Whatever is coming, you will get through it. We all will.”
“Can I offer you some advice, Annie?” Layla said. “You don’t have to take it and we don’t ever have to have this conversation again.”
“Of course,” Annie said.
“Tell Ed about the astrology. Tell him what you just told us. Because as women, when we start hiding our truth from other people, especially the people who should be aware of it the most, that’s when we give them the power to diminish it. Ed doesn’t have to share your enthusiasm. He doesn’t have to like it or believe in it. But he needs to know that it’s important to you and that it’s something you’re going to keep doing.”
Annie took a deep breath and nodded. The bell rang. “I better go,” she said. “Good talk, girls.”
Good talk, indeed.
chapter 18
Layla
Layla swung by the guitar shop after school. Brian smiled when she walked in and approached her immediately. “Hey. How’s it going, Layla? What’s it going to be today? Picks? Strings?”
“Hi,” Layla said. Brian was always so cheerful and easy to talk to. Maybe because they had so much in common and never ran out of musical topics. “I do need some picks, actually. And a footrest.”
“How’s the studio coming along?”
“It’s getting there.” She’d paid a contractor to hang drywall and then painted the walls a soft gray. The flooring had been installed and now it looked like a real room. She was thinking about putting a small couch down there, so she’d have somewhere to sit with her journal or glass of wine if she felt like listening to music instead of making it. It was quickly becoming one of her favorite rooms in the house.
She’d also ordered some curtains for the window after the embarrassing episode with Josh. She’d lose some of the natural light, but it was a small price to pay for her privacy. She could only imagine what he must have thought. Did he think she had aspirations of someday being more than an elementary school music teacher and was secretly practicing in the basement, so she’d be ready for her big break? It was too humiliating to think about it.
“So, I ran into someone who knew you back in the day.”
“Really? Who?”
“A guy named Nolan who used to play at one of the same dive bars I used to. He was telling me about a friend of his who used to play in a local band called Storm Warning. We got to talking and he started telling me about the band’s lead singer. A girl named Layla who used to, and I quote, ‘Bring the goddamned house down.’ You should have said something.” He was looking at her so admiringly.
“We had a good run for a local band. It was a long time ago.”
“I spent most of the nineties and two-thousands in Minneapolis trying to break in. Finally realized it was never going to happen and moved back home. Opened this shop. I missed your heyday.”
Layla flushed. “I don’t know if I’d call it a heyday, but we had some very loyal support from the locals.”
“Did you ever try to expand?”
“We got as far as Edina,” she said. “And that didn’t even work out.”
“The music business is not for the faint of heart, that’s for damn sure.”
“No, it is not,” Layla said. “So, what was the name of your band?”
“Didn’t have one. I was strictly solo. I write too.”
“Ever sold anything?”
“Nope. But not for lack of trying.”
“You’re still one step ahead of me. I don’t write.”
“Not interested in that side of it?”
She shrugged. “I guess I just didn’t have anything to say.” Layla had never minded playing someone else’s songs. All she needed was a spotlight and an audience.
“I would have loved to sell something, but it just never happened. You know what they say. Those who can break in, do. Those who can’t move back to their hometown and open a guitar shop.”
Layla smiled and pointed at herself. “Elementary school music teacher. But I didn’t have to move back because I never left.”