Chapter Four
I return to New York two days later, after a forty-eight-hour blur of interviews, meetings, meals, and parties, determined not only to put Jonas behind me, but also to keep Matthew with his blue eyes and penetrating questions far away. He’s a rock critic and anything more than a flirtation from afar would be dangerous.
Having a six-year-old helps immeasurably because Ethan spends a good chunk of the flight home explaining a new card game he’s invented. I don’t understand most of it, but the game makes perfect sense in his world—it’s a combination of Pokemon, Lego Star Wars, and Harry Potter because it involves picking cards, making characters, and trying to get a ghost helmet that transforms into a black dog if you use it to battle bad guys before you get a healing stone to ward off dark wizards. Or something like that. By the time we land, collect our bags, hail a cab, and shoot back through the Midtown Tunnel toward our home on Thirty-Sixth Street, Ethan is exhausted from the talking and the travel.
Once we’re inside the apartment I purchased a few months ago with the earnings from Crushed, I help Ethan get ready for bed, then tuck him under the same dog-patterned quilt he’s had since he was born.
“Ethan,” I say, smacking my forehead when I remember he has homework tonight. “It’s Tuesday, so it’s sound share tomorrow.” That’s the thing about being a mom—you don’t get to escape from daily life, even when your husband waves the rainbow flag, even when a bottom-feeder rubs it in your face, even when you win an award you didn’t let yourself dream of ever winning. The very morning after Aidan left me, I still had to make sure Ethan brushed his teeth and ate his toast and didn’t try to wear his favorite ratty little Yoda T-shirt to school. There’s no time to wallow in the mocha-chip ice cream when you have a seven in the morning wake-up call every day, no matter how good or bad you feel.
“Mom, can we skip it tonight?” Ethan half moans. At the same time, he swings his legs out of bed, knowing skipping homework is not an option. He’s in kindergarten, so homework is sort of a relative term. But his school assigns “sound share” homework to its kindergartners. The sound share letter this week is G.
He walks across his room, every square inch of walls filled with posters from the Harry Potter movies and shelves with the books, to a maroon-colored, kid-size desk and grabs his Scooby-Doo notebook and a pencil.
“G for Grammy. Three things about Grammy,” he says. “Number one: My mom has one. Number two: They’re really cool. Number three: I touched a Grammy.”
“Okay, love the idea, my sweets. But, number one, the Grammy is being engraved right now, so I don’t even have it.” Thank God, because there’s no way I want to let that little puppy into a kindergarten classroom. “Number two, you need to be more inventive with your answers. And number three, let’s find a photo of one online.”
About fifteen minutes later he selects: his mom has one, it’s an award for music, and it’s the shape of an old record player. Then he crawls back into bed and promptly falls asleep. I adjust the quilt, tucking it snugly around his body. I kiss his cheek, dim the lights, then make my way to the kitchen, where I fill a supersize mug with water from the tap and pop it into the microwave for a minute.
I pick up my cordless landline to find seventy-two messages on my voice mail. I’ve already fielded another dozen or so on my cell phone—calls from my parents in Maine, as well as my best girlfriend, Kelly, who lives here in New York. I punch my voice mail code—the date I lost my virginity in the backseat of Kyle Sutcliffe’s maroon Chevette in eleventh grade—and reach for a pen and paper, as I drop a Ceylon black tea bag into my mug.
As I wait for the tea to steep, dunking the bag up and down, I steel myself for a mixed assortment of messages. First the well-wishers. My next-door neighbor to the right, my next-door neighbor to the left, my doorman, the Chinese deliveryman (I hate to cook, so we’re on a first-name basis, commiserate over sucky relationships, and even share cold noodles now and then). Then, Haley Mauvais, who owns the guitar shop in my hometown (When would I come back to sign a picture for his wall?); Kyle Sutcliffe (How did he get my number?); Cranberry Morris, my booking agent (Am I free for a special one-night gig at the ultra-cool club The Knitting Factory in late March because they’d be delighted to have me in the Main Space? And can I perform on Late Show with David Letterman this Friday before my gig at Roseland Ballroom that same night? Yes and Yes!); and Jeremy, who runs my label.
I brace myself for this one. I love Jeremy like crazy, but he’s also been dropping anvil-sized hints that he’s ready for a new album. The trouble is I haven’t written many new songs, and I haven’t quite figured out how to tell him that my muse is taking an extended leave of absence for no good reason. I listen to his message.
I know I saw you just eight hours ago, but I’m so damn proud of you, and we all want you to pop into the office tomorrow to see you in person and celebrate.
Okay, I can do that. Then I hear the rest.
And, you know, talk about what we’re working on next. Because there’s this little thing known as momentum. Hey, that’d be a good name for a song. Maybe you could work on a song called “Momentum.”
I take a deep breath, reassuring myself that I can deliver what Jeremy needs. I want to write a new album, and hell, if there’s anything that can be inspiring, winning a Grammy has to be it. Maybe there’s a kernel of an idea in momentum, after all.
I listen to the others. Jonas again. (Delete.) Then a reporter from Star. I kind of like that magazine. Especially the fashion-police photos. Maybe I’ll call him back. Then In Touch Weekly. Then The Superficial. All these messages from reporters remind me that I need to hire a publicist. I’ve always handled press calls on my own or relied on Owen or Aidan to help. But things happened so quickly with Crushed and then the Grammy nomination. Natalie tracked down a few potential publicists for me last month, but no one panned out.
Then I hear the next message.
“Hi, Jane. It’s Aidan. I just wanted to say congratulations. I was pulling for you all night—we had a Grammy party.”
We. And here’s the other half of we now chiming into my voice mail. “Hi, Jane. It’s Tom. Oh my God, we’re soooo excited for you. We’re soooo happy you won.” Yes, Tom actually speaks in soooos. All his soooos have multiple o’s.
So this is my life. I get to climb the music industry’s biggest peak, but on the top of the mountain here’s what’s awaiting me: another night in an empty bed and a congratulatory message from my ex-husband and his lover, the man he left me for, the man who speaks in soooos.
I met Aidan seven years ago when I was twenty-two and he was twenty-one. I’d just released my first album for the indie label Glass Slipper, and Jeremy sent a couple of his favorite artists on a New England tour that summer where I played at Matt Murphy’s Pub in Boston one night in August. About thirty seconds into my first song, I noticed Aidan. He’s hard to miss. He was gorgeous—movie-star gorgeous. Pinch-me-I’m-dreaming gorgeous. He looked like Chris Pine, with chiseled features, see-inside-my-soul green eyes, and golden-blond hair, slightly wavy. I never thought for a second he’d be interested in me. But I had one advantage and I planned to use it. I was the one onstage, and that’s a time-honored trick that’s worked for male rock stars.
I played six songs and I sang them all to him. The club took a five-minute break in between acts, so I maneuvered my way to the bar where he was getting a refill, and chatted him up. We both had a few beers, and one thing led to another. In another time-honored rock-and-roll tradition, I took him back to my hotel room and pounced on him.
The next morning, I told him I’d call him when I was back in town, and he pulled my hand to his face and kissed my palm to say good-bye. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? He kissed my hand. He didn’t kiss my lips. He didn’t run his hands through my long, curly hair. He didn’t trail a tongue across my neck. Nope, he kissed my palm.
Even so, I planned to look him up again. Then I had to. Because there was one big difference between me and all those revered male singers and guitarists and drummers and bassists bedding groupies and fans and hot young things after a gig. I became pregnant that night.
He was a gentleman when I delivered the news, insisting we make it official and become a family. We tied the knot a few months later, and we went on like that, Mr. and Mrs. Aidan Stoker and Jane Black, a history teacher and struggling singer, him moonlighting as a sort-of manager for my career, until that night a year ago when both my husband and the truth of our marriage came out.
“And I’m proud of you. I knew you had it in you all along,” Aidan says as the phone message continues playing. “So listen, I’m calling because I wanted to see if you’d be willing to come to a meeting of Gay Men With Straight Wives, that group I still go to. To talk about your experiences when I came out and maybe help some of the other wives who are going through the same thing, because there are women who attend the meetings, too. And a lot of them are really looking for someone who understands their situation and could give them some honest and true support.”
I groan loudly, then delete the message. I don’t want to be the poster child for dumped straight wives. I don’t want the reminders of the ways I’d been fooled, the ways I was stupid. I’m not at all ashamed he’s gay. I’d be just as ashamed if he left me because he was doing it with the nanny or banging his assistant. I’m ashamed for being so goddamn blind for so many years. I’m embarrassed that I was so stupid I missed all the signs, all the way to the first night when he kissed my hand. I’m annoyed that I’ve been unwanted for so long.
Untouched, unkissed, undesired for years.
There’s one more voice mail, and it’s from Matthew Harrigan. “Remember that interview I asked for? I hope it’s not too much to request a bit of time with you for a feature article. About your music. Call me on my mobile.”
He leaves the number. I don’t remember ever giving him my home number or Jonas or Star or In Touch. Though evidently all of Manhattan and all my past lives have found it.
But Matthew is the first one who’s getting a call back. Matthew’s voice is the one I want to hear most right now, even if he’s a reporter. At least he’s not a reminder of all the ways I was fooled. I grab a sweatshirt, make my way through the living room and open the sliding glass door to a tiny balcony that overlooks my quiet block. It’s chilly, but I’m a Maine girl at heart, so I don’t mind the cold.
I pick up the phone and dial.