4
Mike said he’d pay my hotel bill until I got on my feet. He wanted to be sure I concentrated on my music, and not on existing, and he gave me money for food as well. At the outset I was thrilled thinking of this arrangement: staying in my cozy room, listening to music, writing songs.
That very first night, lying in bed after I’d shared my good fortune with Roy, I closed my eyes and began brainstorming. But all I could think of was what Mike had said about a song on love gone bad, wounds of the heart and all, and my nonexistent past in the romance department. The life I’d lived to that point held absolutely no inspiration. Sure, I’d had the schoolgirl’s crush or two from sixth grade to my sophomore year of high school, but nothing had come of these, and since then I’d kept my heart sealed tight for reasons even I didn’t want to see.
I tossed and turned. It was one thing to write songs about things you knew—honest experiences that birthed words and feelings. I’d never felt so absolutely empty. As someone gifted with writing songs, it had always come without a lot of effort. While I was picking apples or doing laundry or taking a bath or talking with someone, part of my mind was off on its own adventure, braiding melodies and words together. Meanings overlapped from what was going on in real time, to that song always half-exposed in my subconscious. Lyrics, a new melody, could strike at any time.
It was a crazy compulsion when I thought about it, my music constant as a mountain stream. That was why this lack of ideas was so frustrating. I wondered what I ought to do. I had no female friends, and I didn’t dare mention a sensitive subject like romantic love to Roy. For three days I dragged myself around, haunted by that elusive song, by the knowledge that this was my chance, my shot at making it in Nashville.
“You okay?” Roy asked me as we shared a pepperoni pizza at the front desk.
I sighed. “Yeah. It’s just that . . . I’m having trouble coming up with a song I think is good enough.”
“All your songs are good.”
“Thanks. But Mike wants one about a specific subject.”
“ ’Bout what?” Roy tilted his head back to take a humongous bite of pizza, chewing as he looked hard at me with those intense blue eyes beneath the white pompadour.
“Um, he wants a tear-in-your-ear kind of ballad,” I replied, picturing Mike’s straight, white teeth in the truck’s dome light as he held the door open for me. “A guitar-drenched, slice-of-life snapshot. A song carved from my own experience.”
Roy nodded. “Okay.”
“About love,” I added after a bit and felt a twinge of sadness for Roy and his loss. “Love gone bad—from a female’s perspective,” I amended quickly. “A girl in her twenties at least. He said to write lyrics that ‘convey a certain emotional arc.’ He wants tension and conflict.”
“Smart man,” Roy said around a mouthful.
“But I don’t . . .” my voice trailed off. I reached down for my napkin to blot my lips. “I’m just not feeling it. It’s like I’ve got writer’s block or something.” I heard myself using a whining tone I didn’t like. “I’ve never had trouble writing a song before.”
“Aw, come on,” Roy said, lifting another floppy, greasy piece of pizza from the box. “This ought to be easy as pie.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” he said, nodding and chewing, “women love songs about men who done them wrong getting their comeuppance.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, in my experience, it’s a powerful emotion when a woman gives her heart to a man and he stomps it flat, so to speak. You know, she’s a virtuous woman, has eyes only for him, and he does her wrong by two-timing her with her best friend? Or by hooking up with some floozy in a bar?” Roy paused to tug another slice of pizza loose from the box. It was truly amazing how much food that man could throw down.
“Women eat that kind of thing up,” he said, licking sauce from his fingers. “You need to put some vengeance in there too. Have the man meet with some misfortune. A barfly shoots him, or he gets hit by a train, or he crawls back to his woman, begging her forgiveness and she shuts the door in his face. That way it would, you know, empower the women.”
I took a sip of my Coke, sat back in my chair chewing a bite of pizza crust, and pondered. Surely it couldn’t be that simple, could it? Some formula, some collective fantasy about revenge that got women enthused? Some ‘Ha ha, you deserved it’ kind of mentality? All of a sudden, I felt a rush of knowing. My heart sped up as I realized the brilliance of what Roy had said. In my mind’s eye, I could see my song forming. It would feel wonderful to let a virtuous, wounded heroine have her vengeance.
At 2:23 that morning I sat cross-legged in a nest of covers on my bed, nibbling a Chick-O-Stick Roy gave me, my notebook open in front of me. It was not the slam-dunk I’d assumed. I kept scratching out lines that fell flat and lifeless words that led absolutely nowhere. Words like He done me wrong, and my heart is breakin’, and I gave him my love, it was his for the takin’, but he—I had no earthly idea how to write about the heart of a woman done wrong, I felt no emotional connections to my wounded heroines. Everything sounded phony. I threw the pen, slammed my notebook shut and switched off the lamp. Sighing and flipping over onto my stomach, I forced my eyes closed. After a spell I began to drop off into that no man’s land, that space between consciousness and sleep where mental blocks crumble. And that is when it came to me.
First, I heard the unmistakable roar of the V-8 engine in my father’s Chevelle as it approached the cabin, felt my heart beating in my ears as I sat up on my pallet and peeked out the screen at the hazy gray of almost daybreak, the bliss of sleep evaporated. I remembered the sound of my mother’s expectant feet running from their bedroom at one end of the house, through the kitchen, the words just flying out of her mouth, “Thank God, thank God, he’s home; he’s finally home,” and then the front door opening and my mother saying, “Oh, no. No, you don’t, Omer. You’re not bringing another tra—” and him cutting her off saying, “Out of my way, woman!” real loud, laughing, drunk. I snuck to the door to look. My father had a strange woman hanging from his arm. She was glassy-eyed, a loose smile on too-red lips, her blouse hanging off one shoulder so low you could see her bosoms. Mother closed her eyes, said, “Lord, help me,” then looked at my father and said, “Omer, you’re nothing but an old tomcat, prowling around from one honky-tonk to the next, picking up trash and bringing it home.” Then my father threw back his head, laughed, and said, “I’m a honky-tonk tomcat.”
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:
HONKY-TONK TOMCAT
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.
That meant Roy was at his post. Despite the butterflies still fluttering in my stomach, I hurriedly put on my blue jeans and a blouse, pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail and went downstairs in my bare feet. When I got to the front desk, I was glad to see Roy hadn’t ordered supper yet. His collection of menus was spread out on the counter, and he looked up from them and smiled big. He was wearing his tan seersucker suit, which didn’t bring out his eyes quite the way the blue one did, but he also wore a Panama hat atop his white swoop of hair, which made him seem somewhat like an old-time movie star. “Well, well,” he said, pulling my usual chair from the wall to face his stool, then bowing ever so slightly, “if it isn’t our own resident star. How you doin’ this lovely evening, Miss Jennifer? You hungry?”
“I’m starved,” I said, surprised to hear my own, normal voice.
“How you feel about Eye-talian tonight,” he said in such a twangy voice I had to smile.
“Good.”
“Alrighty. I don’t believe we’ve had supper from Sole Mio yet, have we?”
“No.”
“Sole Mio has handmade pasta and handmade sauces to die for. It’s where the locals go to find the finest Italian cuisine in Nashville. I believe I’ll order us two entrees of . . .” he squinted down at the menu in his hands, “Scaloppine di Vitello! That sound all right?”
“That sounds great,” I said, sinking down into my chair. “Thank you, Roy.”
“My pleasure. Now, I keep forgetting you’re old enough to drink, and Sole Mio’s got both Italian and Californian wines that complement their entrees like you wouldn’t believe. What’s your pleasure?” He raised his eyebrows.
I cleared my throat and said, “No thanks. I don’t drink,” bracing myself for the inevitable piercing question. But Roy just nodded, said with perfect sincerity, “Fine, because I do believe, now that I think about it, I’m more in the mood for some good old Southern sweet tea with lemon.”
His florid face looked so happy as he ordered our food I had to laugh, and as I did I noticed this certain lightening inside of me, a little bitty internal sunrise in the dark recesses of my troubled soul.
“Time to eat!” Roy said a good fifteen minutes later, leaning back to make room for Sole Mio’s deliveryman to place a tray on the counter—a Styrofoam basket of hot bread and butter in a small tub, two salads, also in Styrofoam, and two steaming platters of Scaloppine. When the lids were lifted, the scent of warm cheese mingled with rosemary, basil, garlic, and oregano.
“I hear ‘Honky-Tonk Tomcat’ is breaking all kinds of records,” Roy said in a bit, busy with knife and fork.
“Yeah. That’s what Mike says.”
He paused and looked up at me with a huge smile stretched across his face. I wondered what he’d say if he knew that not only did I not have a best friend named Lisa but also that the story, besides the woman dying and the man repenting, was from my life. I wondered if Roy would understand that sometimes a person cannot tell the truth, even to her actual best friend, which he was now.
Roy blew on his scaloppine, then took a bite, closing his eyes in rapture. Eventually he paused from eating. “Well,” he said, “I thought it was brilliant how you used religion to tug on folks’ heartstrings. All that ‘she prays, she’s a believer in miracles and grace’ stuff. That’s what appeals to all those nuts out there who think God cares about them. Like I always say, ain’t no more perfect place for that kind of stuff than in a country song.”
I shrugged because I didn’t know what to say.
“I mean it!” Roy waved his fork. “Whenever I’m listening to your new hit song, which incidentally comes on WSIX every other song, to those lines about praying, about believing in miracles and grace, I got to smile. It sounds so heartfelt, and ’course, I know you don’t believe all that, but you ain’t gotta believe it to use it, and you did a fine job, Jennifer. You sure know how to write ’em and sing ’em.”
“Thanks.” I tried to look happy, but I felt a little deflated.
After we finished our meal and Roy had cleaned everything up, he pulled open the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. “You like coconut Neapolitans?” He looked hopefully over at me, holding up a Brach’s bag bulging with pink, white, and brown striped candies.
“They’re my favorite sweet,” I said, thankful that this was the honest truth.
“Mine too! Guess that makes us birds of a feather. ’Cept, well, I’m also partial to Maple Nut Goodies and Orange Slices and Paydays and Moon Pies, the banana ones that is, and pecan pie, and Stuckey’s Pecan Logs, and fresh-out-of-the-fat Krispy Kreme donuts, and can’t forget our own city’s specialty, Goo-Goo Clusters, and . . .” his voice trailed off and his face looked wistful.
“What’s the matter?” I touched his hand. “Roy, you all right?”
He frowned. “Well, last month I was having some chest pains, and . . . ” I looked closely at him, hoping he wouldn’t say what I knew he was going to. At last, he shook his head sadly. “Doctor Firth told me if I don’t quit eating the way I do, I won’t see my sixty-fourth birthday.”
I felt my heart sink. “That’s terrible. I hate that,” I said, and I honestly did. If anybody loved their food, it was Roy Durden.
“But . . . ” he said in a contemplative voice, “I don’t want to live if it’s going to be on oatmeal and steamed broccoli! What kind of existence would that be? I believe I’d be happy if I went out of here holding a piece of fried chicken in one hand and an eclair in the other.”
I looked down into my tea.
“Uh-uh!” Roy said sternly as he noisily unwrapped a Neapolitan. “No long faces! None of us is gonna make it out of here alive! Better to have something to live for than worryin’ about dyin’.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, nodding as I felt the cloud above me scuttling away. I knew I’d die for my music the way Roy Durden would die for his food. He was right—we were all going to wind up dead sooner or later. So, no more feeling guilty about lying.
After Roy and I polished off the bag of Neapolitans, he cleared his throat and said, “Now, there’s something else I need to say.”
“Okay.” I wondered what else was fixing to come out of his mouth.
“I’m all for you getting to be a country music superstar and getting rich. Believe me, Jennifer. Because I believe it’s in the cards for you, and I don’t think you’d be happy going down any other pathway. But I’m worried sick you’re gonna get so famous you won’t remember us little guys anymore. You’re gonna leave the Best Western and get one of those big fancy mansions in Brentwood, and start hanging out with the stars and the important people.”
I looked at Roy’s worried pink face, shook my head, and said, “I won’t! I could never forget you in a million years.”
“Well . . . okay,” he said. “Reckon I ain’t got no choice but to believe you.” He laughed to let me know he was kidding. “In between making albums, collecting Grammies, and signing autographs, Jennifer, I’d be honored if you’d stop by and see your old friend Roy and share a meal every now and then. Like old times.”
“I will,” I said, rising to go. “I promise. Thank you for the scaloppine and the Neapolitans. It was the best meal I’ve had in my whole entire life.”
As I rode the elevator back upstairs, I noticed that the butterflies in my stomach were gone. The value of a quiet conscience, even temporarily, cannot be underestimated.
One month later, Mike Flint called to say that “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” was on its way to being the fastest-breaking single ever. It was the talk of country music circles, still number one on Billboard Country at week nine, remaining there since its debut following a record five-and-a-half weeks, dancing close to a crossover hit. I even had the promise of an album.
I don’t know how to describe those early days, except to say that I was unaware of anything but my own delirious happiness. If I ever felt that old, familiar twist in the gut, one of those sharp thoughts that ambush a person, racing up their spine and culminating in a cold sweat, I just took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was moving on, living in the moment, living free like Roy Durden, and soon it was forgotten. With my past buried and my conscience silenced, life seemed magical, my future stretching out indescribably beautiful before me. I was certain luck would continue to shine on me.
Every day I walked to the Cumberland to spend a meditative, worshipful time as I gazed at the water, feeling one with her broad fearless currents. My favorite place to enjoy my shrine had become the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge, which stretched across the river near the train depot. You could enter by elevator, stairs, or walk up the ramp, and it was a quiet place. It had scattered foot-traffic, bicyclists, pigeons, and the occasional speedboat down on the water. I preferred perching on a bench looking out over the downstream side, where I had a birdseye view of the city skyline on one side and the stadium on the other. Occasionally I strolled over to LP Field where I would walk on the grassy patches, occasionally slipping off my shoes and walking down a cement boat ramp, wading out ankle-deep into the water.
I loved my home at the Best Western, taking long, hot baths while writing lyrics and composing melodies in my head, enjoying frequent suppers with Roy. I loved to set out on foot to downtown Nashville, buying food and drink at the various cafés, enjoying the local color and the street musicians.
But there was one particularly sweltering day in June when I had so much on my mind that I kept bumping into lampposts and fire hydrants. The day before, Mike told me he’d found the perfect place for me to live. Just as Roy’d predicted, it was in Brentwood—a gigantic home on five acres, way down some paved driveway with a gate that locked.
“I don’t have the money to buy a house!” I’d said. I didn’t want to leave Roy.
Mike didn’t hesitate. “You will, Jenny. I have no doubt you’re gonna make it big, real big, which means we’re gonna make it big. So, I’ll front you the money. Realtor’s ready any second for me to make an offer.”
It sounded like a fantasy, just one more unbelievable piece of good luck in an unceasing string. Still, I wasn’t sure why a person living alone needed all that space, or a yard so big, and I mentioned this to Mike, but in his usual manner, he ignored my questions and steamrolled right along with his plan. “It’s fifteen minutes from downtown Nashville,” he’d said. “Convenient.”
“You haven’t even told me how much it costs.”
“Place is listed at eight hundred seventy-nine, and we’re going to offer eight forty-nine to see if he goes for it. I’m betting he’ll say yes. But we need to jump on it if it’s going to happen, Jenny girl. I can’t say who, but there are some other stars considering it, and I promised Arnie I’d get back to him right away, let him know if you were interested.” Mike’s words came in such a flurry, were so full of assurance, that I just sat staring straight ahead, trying to wrap my mind around that enormous sum of money.
“Think about your neighbors,” Mike added with a satisfied chuckle. “Trisha Yearwood, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Dolly Parton, Little Jimmy Dickens, Alan Jackson, and Trace Adkins live in Brentwood, to name just a few.”
I actually laughed aloud, imagining myself opening the door to receive a warm plate of brownies from Dolly, and her saying, “Howdy, neighbor!” in that famous voice.
On my last night at the Best Western, Roy threw me a party. We were gathered around the counter, dining on chicken wings, celery sticks with bleu cheese dip, and Ritz crackers with pimiento cheese slathered on top. The Ritz crackers were on a plastic tray, arranged in the shape of a smile, with CONGRATULATIONS! napkins fanned out beside it.
Roy didn’t look very perky. He had bags beneath his eyes, a five-o’clock stubble on his chin, and his face was pinker than ever. There was a buffalo sauce stain in the shape of the state of Georgia on the lapel of his seersucker suit. After we finished eating, he cleared his throat until I looked his way, then he blotted his glistening forehead with a napkin, leaned over to the file drawer he kept his assortment of sugary treats in, and with a melodramatic widening of his blue eyes, lifted a clumsily wrapped gift. “For you,” he said in this trembly voice.
From its size and shape, I expected to find a coffee-table book, so when I unwrapped a frame holding a copy of the article about my inspiration for writing “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” from Country Music Weekly, I couldn’t speak. The wrinkled page looked like it had been ripped from the tabloid, and there were transparent smudges where greasy fingers had held it.
Looking at it made me feel sort of sick, and I could not utter a word. Thankfully, Roy didn’t catch anything from me but stunned joy. “This is going to be real valuable one day, Jennifer. You’re gonna look back and say, ‘Wow. I remember when Roy Durden told me Nashville was the nine-year town, and I made it in nine weeks.’ ” He chuckled.
I closed my eyes, the picture heavy in my hands.
“What?! Don’t I even get a hug?”
“Of course,” I said, placing the picture face down on top of the counter, taking in a big breath and smiling brightly as I put my shaky arms around him. “I’m going to miss you so much,” I sniffled into his shoulder.
“Me, too, but you got my blessing long as—”
I laughed. I knew what he was fixing to say, and I finished it for him, “You’ll promise to come lavish some attention on an old feller every now and then.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m gonna hold you to it.”
All I could think was, Then please don’t die on me.
I spent several hours packing up my things. I folded my clothes and tucked them neatly into a large wheeled suitcase with a pull-out handle Roy had let me dig out of the lost-and-found closet, gathered my shoes and toiletry articles, settling them into a row of doubled plastic grocery bags, then tucked my song notebook into my guitar case, and put everything in a pathetic, but neat line near the door. It was funny to think that this motley collection was the sole accumulation of the life I’d lived thus far.
That made me think of the humongous interior of my new home, Harmony Hill—room after room waiting to be filled. Mike said there were interior designers by the dozens who were eager and willing to help me decorate the place in any style I chose, whatever my personality called for. He’d brought me magazines full of ideas, and he kept saying, “What’s your pleasure, Jenny?” and finally, after he’d heard, “I don’t know,” so many times, he stopped asking.
As I waited for him and his truck, I looked around my room trying to see it with a decorator’s eye so I could tell them how I wanted the interior of Harmony Hill. It was comfortable, cozy and all the colors went together; the wood on the bed and the tables matched, the curtains complemented the bedspreads as well as the paint on the wall. But the main thing that I liked about it was that not one single thing was broken down. No worn out, broken-down furniture or threadbare linens. The carpet was plush and unstained. I remembered how I’d tiptoed around those first days, not used to the niceness of it all.
I felt a rush of melancholy as I envisioned myself walking around inside enormous, empty Harmony Hill, up the winding staircase and through the echoing hallways. I got into bed and pulled the bedspread around me tight. It wasn’t too long when a bittersweet thought zipped in. How proud Mr. Anglin would have been to see my mansion! He’d often talked about his trips to Europe, where his greatest delight was seeing all the beautiful architecture. It was all I could do not to cry tears of joy because I’d “made it” in the country music scene just as Mr. Anglin had predicted but at the same time weep that he wasn’t here to see it. Because of my foolishness.
Tall, stately trees and manicured lawns in Brentwood made a person think they were driving into some glossy two-page spread in Southern Living magazine. Harmony Hill was magnificent; a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion worth more than half a million tiny cabins like the one I grew up in. More than I ever imagined owning. The first time Mike and his agent, Arnie, took me to see it, Arnie kept talking about how it was Scottish Georgian style because the architect had combined stucco and brick. “Miss Cloud,” he said, in his high, breathless voice, “if you’ll notice, the stucco is scored to look like stone blocks, and this makes a lovely contrast with the brick corner blocks. Don’t you think the cut stone window lintels are absolutely beautiful?”
I nodded. I had no idea what a lintel was. What I saw was a pretty, perfectly symmetrical two-story house that wasn’t made of wood. I walked around inside, Arnie following along at my elbow, chattering endlessly, saying “Now, this is what you call Southern grandeur, incorporating elegant iron railings and archways as artistic statements, and absolutely begging for furniture that looks as if it just arrived from a Parisian flea market.” When we toured the two wings on either side of the central area, I discovered one was a state-of-the-art media room, and the other, as Arnie declared, was “a generous kitchen, suited for a five-star soiree.”
I followed him through a laundry room, office, library, rec room, exercise room, butler’s pantry, screened porch, sunroom, walk-in pantry, guest suite, loft, balcony, three-car garage, and five bedrooms. There were six bathrooms. I couldn’t possibly need six bathrooms!
Overwhelmed, I was ready to tell Mike I’d changed my mind, that it just wasn’t my style. Until I paused on the front steps, imagining myself wearing a voluminous hoop skirt, holding a Chinese paper fan in one hand and a sweating glass of lemonade in the other, while making coy faces at the Tarleton twins. Scarlett O’Hara was one of my favorite fictional characters. She was strong, a survivor, and if I owned my own Tara, I could be one too. This was not the home of a simpering, spineless female doormat. Owning Harmony Hill would somehow empower me to be who I needed to be.
At the beginning, I kept pinching myself as I walked across polished wooden floors, beneath vaulted ceilings, saying I own this. I actually own this structure. I took Arnie’s advice and hired a designer who filled my new home with furniture that looked like it had just arrived from a Parisian flea market. But—and this was nonnegotiable—I told him that everything had to be brand-spanking new. No holes or rips, no broken legs, no disgusting stains, and no rump-sprung cushions. “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he’d laughed. “It’s all new. Some of it is distressed to appear old, but it’s new.”
Though I appreciated all my finery, it wasn’t cozy like my room at the Best Western, and for an entire month I felt like a puff of dandelion the wind had blown aloft, swirling around over an endless field. I’d walked the property of Harmony Hill with Mike before signing contracts, but I hadn’t really explored it. After the furniture trucks had come and gone, after the designer had finished his hanging of drapes and pictures, I stood at the back window with my arms crossed, looking out at my backyard. I’d always thrived on the wildness of the outdoors, on meandering creeks and undulating rivers and barbed-wire fences covered with honeysuckle, and the thought of such a manicured yard seemed silly. But I remembered my resolution to be strong like Scarlett, so I said, Jennifer, bloom where you are planted, and I went outside to explore my very own five acres.
The sun was warm, and there was a gentle breeze as I passed first the tennis courts, then a swimming pool surrounded by white pergolas, and a summerhouse with a brick terrace and built-in grill. I wandered the side yard, winding along between hedges in elegant shapes curled around bits of lawn and rock-bordered flowerbeds full of hollyhocks and snapdragons. Feeling this yearning, this ache for something I couldn’t name, I sat down on a wrought-iron bench overlooking a fish pond outlined with large stones. Arnie had claimed the pond was “a delightful addition that will give you hours of pleasure.” I stared at the orange bodies of a school of koi moving near the floating fountain in the center.
Finally I rose and went to dip my hand in the pond. That was when it hit me. What I grieved for, besides seeing Roy every day, was my daily trek to Riverfront Park. I missed grabbing my Best Western breakfast, then walking to the pedestrian bridge to be with the Cumberland River.
So, on Saturdays when I was not in the studio or on the road, I would lock the gate to Harmony Hill and drive my Lexus coupe (again, thanks to Mike Flint’s urgings) to downtown Nashville. Parking at the Best Western, I walked to Riverfront Park, and sat on the pedestrian bridge to meditate. Mostly the Cumberland glided by serenely, a shimmering thread with a reflective, calm surface, but sometimes she seemed a bit restless, cutting through the banks and hastening along. But no matter what her mood, the curve of her was indescribably beautiful, my assurance that some things in life were constants.
People asked me later if I ever felt scared hanging out at the river alone. And to be frank, I hadn’t. In the back of my mind were Roy’s cautions, along with the stories I’d heard all my life about women who were vulnerable targets for criminals, drunks, and the desperate. But none of this seemed to apply to me, because after all, I was on the path of my destiny.
Finding a Sunday routine took a little longer. There were many restless Sunday mornings of wandering around outside over the dew-drenched acres of Harmony Hill, searching for what, I did not know. The memory of the habit of attending church all my growing-up years began to yawn and stretch, and finally it roused itself enough to demand something. So, I began climbing into the Lexus for a drive to kill time until noon had passed. I spent hours listening to Big D and Bubba on The Big 98 while rambling around Davidson and Williamson counties. I never stopped anywhere, just admired the scenery outside my windshield. Granny White Pike was a nice long stretch of road from Brentwood to downtown; lots of pristine green golf courses, stacked stone walls, grand entrances to estates, and stretches of pretty white fences with horses behind them. Roy informed me that these were “gentleman farmers” and that if I wanted to know the real farmers, with tractors and dirt under their nails, I should get out of the city, especially north and west, where they grew corn, tobacco, and soy. In fact, Roy went to great lengths to educate me about the social strata of various Nashville communities.
He told me that Franklin was Old Money, Old South, but that the truly rich lived in Belle Meade, and it was what you called Really Old Money. According to Roy, those people didn’t like the country music industry at all. He maintained the folks in Green Hills were “Cliquish and married to their money.”
One of my favorite stretches of road was along Franklin Pike, particularly the place where Tammy Wynette’s former home sat behind a black iron fence. Back then, before the novelty of living in the same area as these idols of mine had worn off, I always slowed down there, rubbernecking as I tried to imagine their dazzling lives.
After I’d been at Harmony Hill for almost an entire year, I set out one particular Sunday for a drive along Old Hickory Boulevard. A road that once simply circled the city, it had become a complicated course interrupted by lakes and rerouted sections. I enjoyed the twists and turns, passing by what seemed to be an enormous church on every single corner. Roy called them “The land-baron churches.” During worship services, a cop or two parked along the roadsides at every one of these mammoth churches, with blue lights flashing, waiting to direct traffic in and out. Something as foreign to my little church back in Blue Ridge as a paved parking lot. Back in Blue Ridge . . .
Sure don’t want to go there, I thought, turning up the volume on the radio and mashing the accelerator. Near the Four Points Sheraton and the Waffle House, I spied a warmly lit Panera Bread and decided I sure could use a large espresso.
No one inside Panera recognized me, but I wasn’t surprised because my face was not yet so familiar to the public, and plus, I wore no makeup and had my hair tucked up in a ratty denim baseball cap, pulled down over my eyebrows. My Sunday uniform consisted of a shapeless cotton shirt and slouchy Bermuda shorts and the raggediest high-top Converses you could imagine. I could have been the Queen of England and no one would have known.
I loved the fact that there were no waiters in Panera, and after I’d been nestled down with my espresso in a comfy chair in the tall-ceilinged front room for a while, the scent of warm cinnamon wafted out. I could not resist, and I followed it back to the counter where I discovered a mouth-watering array of carbohydrates behind clear glass: bear claws, giant cookies sprinkled with M&M’s, good-looking muffins called cobblestones. I ordered a cinnamon crunch bagel and returned to my chair, sitting and happily watching the world go by outside the window.
I realized I’d found my safe place. Each and every Sunday after that, I drove to Panera, ordered an espresso and a cinnamon crunch bagel, and sunk myself into the same pillowy chair in the Great Room.
Panera had an assortment of magazines and tabloids scattered on the tables from Strum to Country Music Weekly, and as I sipped my coffee, I liked to pour over the latest news about country’s hottest stars as well as music events around town. Whenever I came upon an article about Jenny Cloud, it was like reading a story about some stranger. I marveled at this chick and her growing, illustrious career in country music.
Funny, but even as a couple more years passed and my fame grew even more, I was never gawked at or accosted for an autograph inside the Brentwood Panera. Maybe the Panera staff just decided to let me have my solace, because once my career kicked into high gear, I could hardly go anywhere without people literally stampeding to me, begging for an autograph or a photo together.
When I was on the road doing concerts, what I missed most were my treks to the Cumberland and my visits to the Best Western to visit Roy. I craved the sight of his florid face, his dramatic swoop of white hair, and his belly, big and rounded, straining against his seersucker jacket as if he was pregnant with triplets.
But while I considered Roy a very dear friend, my best human friend, I could never reveal my heart to him the way something inside me needed to. Nothing is lonelier or more stressful than having to keep up a pretense, and I was probably suffering from generalized social anxiety coupled with depression. It was all an offshoot of my intense loneliness.
Holidays scared me. I rattled around in that huge, empty Harmony Hill, writing songs and avoiding invitations for Thanksgiving dinners with Mike’s family. I never took Roy up on his offer of a Christmas Day together. I didn’t want to rock the boat where our relationship was concerned.
What I craved, without being conscious of it, was the type of intimate friend you could pour your heart and soul out to, with unflinching honesty, without fear. I refuse to blame any holes in our friendship on Roy Durden. The problem lay with me. It was simply because of my own preconceived notions that I didn’t expose my past to him. I wanted to make sure he kept me up on a pedestal.
I feel schizophrenic now when I say that at the same time I wanted to unburden myself to Roy, I adored the fact that he asked me no penetrating questions. He never once mentioned my faux friend, Lisa, the one I presumably wrote “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” about. And she’d become almost famous as journalists continued to pursue more details about the story I’d spun early in my career. He listened and gave me advice as I talked about writing “Never Change” and “Escape to a Place.” I loved hearing about Roy’s latest culinary experience or his brush with stars such as Faith Hill and Tim McGraw while eating breakfast at Bread & Company in Green Hills, or Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman while shopping at Whole Foods in Hill Center. I’d ask him were they friendly, and he’d say, “Yep. Nice enough. But didn’t seem to want to chat.” I just nodded, because I understood how hard it can be when a fan assaults you in public.
I read plenty of articles saying I was snobby. One even called me “stuck up.” I’ve never been good at small talk, but I was even more standoffish and gave off the wrong impression at that point in my career because I didn’t think people would like me if some things in my past came out.
Speaking of things in my past—and I know this may sound ungrateful—but looking back I don’t really see Mike Flint as a friend. Then or now. I love Mike, I respect him, but one thing that hurts me is the fact that he never really listened to me, not even during those times I forced myself to spill a teeny bit of my guts to him. I tried to tell him I didn’t want anymore autobiographical songs the first year, after “I’m Leavin’ Only Footprints” was number one on the Country charts for months, then the next year when I went through agony to write “Blue Mountain Blues,” and finally the next year when my album Smoke Over the Hills went platinum. After that, I figured it was useless.
When it came to accolades I had plenty. There was a doll designed in my likeness, a Jenny Cloud Country music star doll. People even wrote to tell me they’d named their horse or their boat or their airplane after me! For so long I thought being a star would solve all my problems, and when five years of megafame had come and gone and I realized it wouldn’t, I was stupefied.
It took me those five long years full of pain and frustration to understand that with Mike, I would always be Jenny Cloud, singer with a tortured past he wanted to exploit. He lived in a business world that didn’t have time for emotional breakdowns, and it was always a devil dance between my artistic, emotional self and Mike’s analytical world of bottom-lines. Yet I have to admit he was, is, a brilliant businessman. He’s got this natural instinct for figuring out exactly what the country music market needs next, and he knows how to help me craft that certain song with an emotional arc. Also, the man’s a brilliant salesman and marketer. I never doubt that I’m extremely lucky to have him. He just made my life a living hell there for a while.
Now I feel like a hypocrite, because it would be a lie to say I didn’t love hearing all those reports about my number-one hits, the sales to retail outlets, the platinum-selling albums, record time on the Billboard 100 lists, and avalanches of new fans signing up for my Internet fan page.
Yep, to say that my life was all morose back then would be a lie. The parts I loved about my fairly quick rise to stardom, the parts I absolutely adored were those sublime moments of being on the stage and singing to an audience. I craved that microphone in my face like nothing else, and those times when the thrill of performing my music rushed up and down my spine were priceless. Day by day and song by song, the world of a country music diva unfurled before me, beautiful high points with me spinning deliriously, stunned and drunk with my successes.
But the low points were deep and dark and shoved me to the edge of despair. I worked hard at playing the mental game of rewriting, reframing my past, of trying to block certain images from the screen of my consciousness. Like Wynonna Judd sang in her hit, “No One Else on Earth,” I put up my mental fences. But no matter what I did, there was one place where the bull always managed to bust through—that helpless, strange country between being awake and falling into dreamland, that state between consciousness and unconsciousness. Way too often I would find myself sitting bolt upright in bed, blinking in the dark, slightly hysterical about some evil memory that was trying to materialize. Many nights I paced around cavernous Harmony Hill, running from sleep, but at the same time knowing those objectionable little documentaries were where my hit songs germinated.
What I now call my “breaking point” came after five years, dozens of hit songs, two platinum albums, and one particularly ugly romantic relationship.