Broken Wings (4 page)

He looked at Mother darling and then at me and burst into laughter.

“Look at her face, Kay.”

Mother darling did, and then she laughed, too.

“Let’s call the boys and tell them to come over earlier. We want to get this thing goin‘.”

He looked at me again and sang, “My heart will cry for you.”

Then he put his arm around Mother darling and went out to the living room to call his fellow musicians.

If anyone’s heart’s crying, I thought, it’s mine.

Before the musicians arrived, I left the apartment to explore what looked like it would be my new neighborhood for some time to come. Down on the lower level, in front of the apartment closest to the street, I saw a girl who looked about my age, with licorice black hair tied in a ponytail. She was sitting on a lawn chair and seemed to be singing to whatever was coming through her earphones. She wore a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off to her shoulders and jeans. I thought the T-shirt was splattered with red paint, until I drew closer and saw the red dots were all connected to form a pair of lips. Underneath it read, Don’t Give Me Any Lip.

When we made eye contact, she took off her earphones.

“Quien esta usted?”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked you who you were in Spanish. That’s what I’m doing with these earphones, learning Spanish.”

“Oh.”

“So?”

“What?”

“So who are you, or is that a secret?”

“My name’s Robin Taylor,” I said, making sure to leave out the Lyn. “My mo… sister and I are staying with a friend for a while.”

“Quien?”

“What?”

“I thought you might have figured it out by now. Who? Quien? Get it?”

“I don’t speak Spanish,” I said sharply. I was just going to keep going, but she leaped out of her chair.

“Neither do I. That’s why I’m studying it.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to run off to Mexico and live on a beach and drink tequila and not care what time it is, ever,” she vowed. I guess I looked pretty skeptical. “I am!” she insisted. She looked back at the front door of her apartment. “I’m tired of my stepmother telling me what to do, what to wear, what to eat. My father never says anything. She’s got him wrapped around her you-know-what.”

This time I smiled.

“Quien esta usted?” I asked, and she broke into a wide smile.

She had a round face that made her dark brown eyes look too small. Heavy boned, she looked a good twenty pounds overweight. It gave her a more matronly look, especially with her big bosom and wide hips. I imagined that when she said her stepmother was telling her what to eat, she was trying to get her to lose weight.

“Mi nombre es Kathy Ann Potter. And I’m warning you now, don’t call me Pothead,” she said with a face bracing for a fight. Then she smiled again. “So, who is your friend?”

“Friend?”

“Who are you and your sister living with?”

“Oh. Cory Lewis.”

“The vampire? That’s what my stepmother calls him because he’s out all night and sleeps all day.”

“Musicians usually do,” I said, “and so do singers. My sister is a singer in his band, or will be.”

“Peachy keen,” she quipped. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Just for a walk.”

“Forget it. There’s no place to go around here. You’ve got to get into the city. You wanna go to Stumpin‘ Jumpin’ with me and my friend Charlotte Lily tonight?”

“What’s that?”

“A dance club. You got to be twenty-one, but we can get in. Lots of college boys go there.”

“Twenty-one? How are we going to pass for that?”

“Charlotte Lily’s sister’s boyfriend is one of the security guards. Lots of kids under twenty-one get in.” She glanced at her watch.

“Can you meet me here in about an hour? We’ll take the bus and meet my best friend, Charlotte Lily, downtown by the Tennessee Fox Trot.”

I smiled in amazement. Talk about someone making friends fast, I thought. For all she could know, I was a serial killer.

“Well?”

“An hour?”

“You need more time to dress?” she asked. “You’re not going out in just a pair of jeans and a shirt like that with sneakers, are you?”

“Oh, no. What do you wear to this, what did you call it, Somethin‘ Jumpin’?”

“
Stumpin‘
Jumpin’.” She smiled. “Something sexier,” she replied. “It’s very hot.”

“What’s the other place? What did you call it, Tennessee Fox Trot?”

“Oh, the carousel at Riverfront Park.” She tilted her head with suspicion. “For people coming here to be in music, you sound like you don’t know anything about Nashville.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Except it’s the home of the Grand Ole Opry, where my sister intends to sing.”

“Oh, sure, her and about two million others,” Kathy Ann said.

“She might make it,” I muttered. Funnily enough, I could be critical and skeptical about Mother darling’s chances of becoming successful, but I didn’t like anyone else being that way.

“I hope she does,” she said without much emotion. “Well, you going or not? I have to call Charlotte Lily and let her know, make sure it’s all right with her, too.”

“What kind of a place is this?”

“Fun with a capital F,” she replied. “Are you afraid of fun?”

“Terrified,” I said dryly. “Okay, I’ll see you in an hour.”

I went back up to the apartment. Mother darling was dressed in one of her outfits and was picking on her guitar. The bathroom door was closed with Cory obviously in there.

“I’m going out with a friend,” I told her.

“What? You have a friend already? How could you do that? You just walked in and out of the apartment.”

“She lives here, too. She was just downstairs.”

“Great. Where are you goin‘ ?”

“Riverfront Park. They have a carousel.”

“That’s it?”

“I’ll just learn about the city and then I’ll know where to go myself,” I told her, and went to pick out something to wear from my meager wardrobe. In the end I decided to borrow one of her western blouses and do what she did, tie it at the bottom and show some midriff. Cory was still in the bathroom.

“I want to fix my hair and put on some makeup, but I don’t have a mirror. What’s he doing in there?” I asked loud enough for him to hear. Just then there was a knock on the door and Mother darling let in Del Thomas and the third musician, a man named Ernie Farwell, who was way over six feet tall, with long arms and a long neck. He had dirty blond hair as messy as Cory’s and dull brown eyes with lids that looked poised to shut. Del was the neatest of the three, with well-trimmed dark brown hair and a trim beard. I thought he had an intelligent look, and I would soon see that he was the most serious of the three when it came to their music.

Mother darling introduced herself and then me. Cory finally emerged from the bathroom. While they talked, I fixed my hair and put on some makeup.

“Where’s she goin‘?” Cory asked Mother darling.

She told him. “Who’d you meet?” he demanded as if he had become my legal guardian.

“Her name’s Kathy Ann Potter.”

“That fat girl? Didn’t know she did anything but listen on her earphones and eat and smoke dope, I bet. Mother’s a looker,” he told Del.

“Thanks for the rundown on the neighborhood. Let’s get busy. We’ve got a lot to do,” Del said dryly.

“Sure.” Cory turned to Mother darling. “You gonna let her go out lookin‘ like that?”

She looked at me hard, turning her eyes into two steel balls of cold threat.

“Don’t you get into any trouble here, Robin. We don’t know a soul, except Cory.”

“Who says he has a soul?” I quipped, and the three men laughed. “I need some money,” I added.

She got up, went to her purse, and gave me a twenty-dollar bill.

“We have to watch our budget, you know,” she said. “Be home by eleven, and I better not hear about you smokin‘ no dope, Robin.”

“Right,” I said.

“Robin Lyn,” she called after me. She always added my middle name when she wanted to emphasize something.

“Robin Lyn,” Cory chorused. “Don’t you sin.”

I shut the door on the laughter behind me and hurried down to Kathy Ann’s apartment. She was already out and waiting.

“Don’t you look killer,” she remarked. She herself wore a silk ruffled sleeveless blouse with a collar deep enough to show the cavernous promise of her cleavage. I thought she had gone hog-wild with makeup, too heavy on the eye shadow and thick on the lipstick. Her skirt was nearly a mini, and she didn’t have the legs for it. They were short and stubby, with bony knees. She reminded me of a young girl who had snuck into her mother’s bedroom to play grown-up.

“C’mon,” she said, grabbing my hand and tugging me toward the street. “I told Charlotte Lily about you, and she’s anxious to meet you.”

We started toward the bus stop and then broke into a run when a bus pulled up. Kathy Ann didn’t seem to notice the way other passengers looked at her.

“Here,” she said, handing me a college ID. “Tonight, you’re Parker Carson and you’re twenty-one.”

“Why do we need this? I thought you said we could get in.”

“Just in case,” she said. “You have to flash something so Charlotte Lily’s sister’s boyfriend doesn’t get into trouble.”

I shrugged and put it in my shirt pocket.

“Now tell me all about yourself,” she said, sitting back and looking like a five-year-old about to hear a bedtime story, “and don’t leave out the sad parts.”

I made up a story, claiming Mother darling, who was now known as my older sister, and I had lost our parents in a plane crash. The more elaborate and far-fetched I was, the more Kathy Ann believed and enjoyed the story. I went into how we had to live with our grandparents, who were both old and feeble, with no memories, and how Grandma had set the house on fire accidentally in the kitchen one night. They were both now in homes, and we had left to start a new life in Nashville.

“Wow,” she said with envy, “you have had an exciting life already. You’re going to love Nashville,” she added when I had mentioned my concern about moving here. “You’ll see,” she promised.

With all the lights, people, and music, downtown was more interesting than I had anticipated. We went directly to the park and to the carousel where Charlotte Lily was waiting for us. She was quite the contrast to Kathy Ann. Tall and stylish in her cowgirl’s hat, red fringed-sleeved shirt, and laminated black jeans and black boots, I thought she was pretty enough to be a model. She had long, light brown hair parted in the middle and brushed down, hazel green eyes, and features as petite as mine and Mother darling’s, only with a dimple added to her right cheek. She looked me over quickly.

“Hi,” she said, and glared angrily at Kathy Ann. “You’re nearly twenty minutes late.”

“We left when I said we would,” Kathy Ann whined. “I can’t help it how long the bus takes.”

“C’mon,” she ordered, and marched ahead of us.

We caught up, and she looked at me again.

“Where are you from?”

“Granville, near Columbus, Ohio.”

“Why did you come here?”

“Her sister’s in a band and someday will be singing in the Grand Ole Opry,” Kathy Ann bellowed.

Charlotte Lily smirked.

“What about your parents?”

“Her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was only five.”

“What did you do, Kathy Ann, get her whole life story in ten minutes? Be careful,” she warned me. “Her picture’s next to the word
gossip
in the dictionary.”

“It is not!”

“What’s it next to then, Pothead?” Charlotte said, laughed, and impulsively crossed the street.

“I thought you said she was your best friend,” I told Kathy Ann as we caught up.

“She is. She’s very popular and she can get us into Stumpin‘ Jumpin’,” Kathy Ann reminded me.

“Maybe it’s not worth it,” I told her.

She looked at me as if I was crazy.

“Give me a cigarette,” Charlotte ordered.

“Oh, I left them home,” Kathy Ann said. Charlotte stopped walking and glared at her.

“What? I told you not to forget.”

“I know,” she said mournfully.

“You smoke?” she asked me.

“Yes, but I don’t have any cigarettes on me at the moment.”

“Terrific.”

I looked at the drugstore just down the walk.

“Give me five minutes,” I said, and headed for it.

“Five minutes?”

They followed me in. I located the cigarettes quickly, but picked up a box of tampons I actually did need. I checked out the mirrors, watched the clerk behind the counter, and then picked up a pack of my favorite menthol cigarettes, shoving it into my blouse. Then I paid for the tampons and walked out, the two of them standing at the door.

Charlotte watched me take it out of my blouse.

“Here.”

“I thought something would ring if you did that,” Kathy Ann said.

“Obviously not,” I said.

“Why did you steal them? I saw you have enough money to buy them,” Charlotte asked.

I shrugged.

“I’ll save my money for something I can’t steal,” I told her, and she smiled.

“C’mon,” she said. “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.”

Kathy Ann’s face brightened.

“She likes you,” she said, as if the queen had just granted me permission to live in Nashville.

If it’s that easy to win friends here, I thought, maybe I’ll have a good time tonight.

Charlotte Lily offered me one of the cigarettes from the pack I stole for her. I took it.

“I want one too,” Kathy Ann said.

“You don’t get any. Punishment for forgetting,” she told her, smiled at me, and continued on. Like a whipped puppy, Kathy Ann remained a few steps behind us all the way to Stumpin‘ Jumpin’.

I was in Nashville and if Grandpa saw me now, I thought, he’d have me at a prayer meeting in the morning.

Too late for that, I told the voices inside me.

Maybe too late for a lot of things.

On the exterior Stumpin‘ Jumpin’ looked almost like another one of Mother darling’s honky-tonks. There was a blazing red neon sign over the two large black metal doors, at either side of which stood two human bulldogs. Each looked like a football linebacker, with thick necks and shoulders that made Grandpa’s look puny. Charlotte Lily exchanged some sort of greeting and message with her sister’s boyfriend through their own eye and head signals and then turned to us and said, “It’s a little too early. We have to go in when there’s a good crowd. We’re less conspicuous if we do it that way,” she explained. “C’mon, we’ll visit Keefer for a while.”