Miss Me When I'm Gone (11 page)

Chapter 19

After the younger women left, Dorothy asked me if I’d stay for dinner.

“I couldn’t . . .” I said. “You don’t need to make me anything.”

“Oh, it’s already prepared,” Dorothy said. “I was planning on it. And I’m not going to let a pregnant woman walk away from my house hungry.”

She opened the refrigerator, took out a casserole dish, and set it on the table.

“It’s called a chicken and spinach bake. It’s actually pretty healthy, if that matters to you. Gretchen liked it. I use some of the Cajun spice. Do you like the Cajun spice?”

“Sure,” I said. “I like Cajun spice.”

“Does that mean you’ll stay?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Good.” Dorothy turned on her oven and quickly pushed the dish into it with a clatter. “It doesn’t take too long to warm up. And I’ve made a little fruit salad for dessert.”

“Sounds great. You didn’t need to go to any trouble, though.”

“I like to keep busy. That’s what I was always trying to explain to Gretchen.”

I nodded. As if to demonstrate her point, Dorothy set a fork, knife, and napkin at each of our places and then fetched some cups from a cabinet.

“Something to drink?” she said, pouring herself some root beer.

“I’ll get myself some water,” I said, getting up and going to the tap. Her sudden burst of activity was making me uncomfortable. It seemed to have been set off by the younger ladies’ departure.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Dorothy said, once she finally settled at the kitchen table. “You and I have some things to talk about.”

“We do?” I replied.

“Judy and Diane don’t need to know everything.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I was surprised to hear this. Judy and Diane seemed like the kind of women who found out everything eventually.

“They’d like to know, but they don’t need to know.” Dorothy took a gulp of her root beer and licked her lips. “Gretchen and I were just starting to get a little close. And to be honest with you, I don’t know how hard she was working on that book of hers.”

“Yeah . . . I don’t know either.”

Dorothy sipped her soda again, and then her gaze met mine. Her eyes were like small, dark marbles buried in all her soft wrinkles.

“She said to me . . . ‘I don’t know where the idea comes from, that if you write one good book, the very next thing you have to do with your life is write another.’ And I asked her, well, great idea or not, aren’t they paying you a lot to do it?”

“And what did she say to that?”

“Not much, actually. I just don’t think her heart was in it. But what she was going to do—give back all that money?”

“She didn’t talk to me much lately, but from what I’ve gathered, I don’t think she had very much of a plan.”

“She told me, after the whole thing with Keith, that she wondered if she’d made a mistake, looking for her biological father. She said it was something that had never interested her before. And the negative test—yeah, she told me about it, even though she didn’t tell the girls. She told me, ‘Aunt Dorothy, this was a bad idea. I never wanted this.’ The next morning, she woke up bright and early. When she and I had coffee, she said she’d done a lot of good thinking. And she decided what she really should be writing about was what happened to Shelly.”

“And what’d you say to that?”

“I didn’t say too much to encourage it. I didn’t know if it was a good idea. On one hand, there was certainly a lot to write about, if Gretchen could stomach it. But on the other, it seemed like Gretchen would be setting herself up to relive a lot of grief and frustration.”

Dorothy got up and checked the casserole in the oven.

“Getting there,” she said, sitting again. The wicker seat of her chair whined under her weight.

“I didn’t know all that much about Shelly’s death before this,” I admitted. “Gretchen never talked about it.”

Dorothy nodded. “I think Linda did her best not to burden Gretchen with it. Gretchen was still quite young when the trial was happening, and Linda didn’t involve her. Did her best to get Gretchen active in other things instead. School, friends, Girl Scouts. She was determined not to let Shelly’s death shape Gretchen too much. It was important to Linda that Gretchen focus on being a normal kid instead. It was admirable. I think it became an outlet for Linda as much as Gretchen. Making Gretchen normal.”

I smiled. I couldn’t imagine Gretchen as a Girl Scout, nor had I ever quite thought of her as normal.

“Anyway, it was only natural she’d have questions about it as an adult. A
lot
of questions. In particular, why Frank Grippo wasn’t convicted.”

“And why was that, do you think?”

“Well, that’s complicated. I used to say the jury box was filled with idiots. But the more I learned about it, the more I felt the prosecution just didn’t have enough to really close it. And I think the jury didn’t hear everything they were supposed to, everything they could have.”

“Like what?”

“Frank Grippo had some assault charges from a few years ago that had been dropped, or something. So they didn’t hear that either.”

“Assaulting a woman?”

“Uh. No. I don’t know the details, hon, but I think there was one about him beating up someone outside of a bar. Some signs he had a
very
bad temper when he was drinking.”

“I see.”

“But the worst thing was the way they treated Shelly’s final words.”

“I was going to ask Diane about that,” I said. “But it didn’t seem like the right moment.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t. It’s a sensitive thing for the whole family. While Shelly was bleeding in Dr. Skinner’s arms, she opened her eyes, looked right at Frank, and said, ‘I can’t forgive you. I can’t.’ ”

Dorothy noticed me shuddering.

“I know. It’s pretty chilling. But the defense lawyer ripped it apart. Made Diane’s father look stupid on the stand. Called in a couple of other doctors and medical experts to say that with the head injury she had, and the amount of blood loss, there was no way she knew what she was saying. One of them even said it was doubtful she’d have been able to even speak at that point.”

“But Diane’s father is a
doctor,
” I said. “And he was the one who saw Shelly’s condition firsthand.”

Dorothy shrugged. “I
know.
Preaching to the choir, hon. Dr. Skinner is—and was even then—a very well-loved guy around Emerson, and then to bring in some medical ‘experts’ and make him look like a fool. He wasn’t able to save her, and then, insult to injury, he wasn’t taken seriously enough in court to put her killer in jail.”

“Wow. That sounds just . . . awful.”

“But you can see why Gretchen was eager to talk to him. Even if his condition made it difficult. Anyway, my point is that the jury wasn’t a bunch of idiots. The way the case was presented to them, there wasn’t enough evidence. And part of it was that Frank had a sleazy defense lawyer. Said some terrible things about Shelly, implying that with her drugs and some of the men she’d been involved with, that there was no telling who’d have wanted to kill her. But everyone
knows
who did it. There just wasn’t quite enough evidence to convict him, sadly.”

“I wonder what Linda told Gretchen about that growing up. I’d think that would be a hard thing to explain to a kid.”

Dorothy shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t know what she told her.”

“So Frank Grippo’s always been hanging around here, despite what happened?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. Someone probably would’ve snuffed him out by now, if that were the case. He disappeared for a while. Seven or eight years, at least. Guessing he drifted off somewhere no one would’ve ever heard of Shelly Brewer—somewhere he could get work. Should’ve stayed there, wherever it was. But then he came back to live with his brother in Plantsville. Guess he couldn’t hold a job anymore and went crying home to his poor brother. It’s kind of a blessing that he didn’t come back till after Gretchen’s grandmother died. That would’ve been terrible—any chance of her ever running into him. Not that he comes around here anymore. Just stays at home in Plantsville, in a back room at his brother’s house, mostly. They say he looks awful, though, when they see him around. And I hear it’s filthy, that house. So Frank’s gonna die alone like a dog. Like he always deserved.”

Dorothy got up and shuffled to the oven again.

“Ready to eat?”

Dorothy let me dry the dishes as she washed.

“Will we see you up here again?” she asked while she worked.

“I think so,” I said. “I’d like to. I mean, the more of Gretchen’s stuff I read, who knows what I’ll want to . . .”

I trailed off. Dorothy didn’t appear to be listening as she scrubbed a plate vigorously, working off a crust of casserole sauce. When she was finished, she set it carefully on the rack. I picked it up, dried it, and set it on the counter.

“Yes,” Dorothy said. “I’m sure you’ll have more questions. Anyone who learns about Shelly has questions. Just like Gretchen did. Lots of questions.”

“That reminds me,” I said slowly. “I had one other question, for now. I know I asked the ladies a little bit about this, but I just wanted to make sure . . . Did Gretchen ever say much to you about this Kevin Conley person? The paperboy who testified?”

Dorothy shook her head. “Not that I can recall.”

“Do you remember him at all?”

“No. I
do
remember that a paperboy testified. A fairly young kid. The press didn’t release his name, I believe. Leave it to Judy to know his name. But I didn’t know him.” Dorothy set a wet bowl carefully on the dish rack. Then she turned and squeezed my arm, making a little wet mark on my sleeve.

“Gretchen left some things here, upstairs. Some notebooks, some articles and things she’d collected. I’m assuming you want them.”

I was surprised it took Dorothy this long to mention it. “Um. Yes. I’m sure whatever you have will be helpful.”

“Come upstairs with me, then, will you?” Dorothy said.

I followed her through the cheerful living room—painted bright white, family photographs on the wall, a colorful braided rug on the floor, and a fresh feeling, as if it had been dusted that very day—to the stairway. When we reached the top of the stairs, Dorothy pointed to a basket sitting on a Shaker chair.

“Pick one out for the baby. No—pick two or three out.”

I looked closer at the contents of the basket. It was filled with tiny baby hats, all knitted with pastel yarn.

“What are these for?” I said, lifting one up delicately.

“I knitted them. They’re for babies in Africa. I read it in
Woman’s Day
. There’s an address they gave where you can send hats and socks. But I don’t do socks.”

“You knitted all these? They’re beautiful.”

“They’re all the same pattern. It’s a simple pattern. Now, pick some for your little boy.”

“I . . . couldn’t take them from the African babies.”

“Please.”
Dorothy pulled out a light blue-and-green one and thrust it into my hands. “I just do it to keep my hands busy. And your baby needs a hat, too. Plus it’s colder here than in Africa. Don’t worry—I’ll knit a little faster tomorrow to make up for yours.”

I held the hat gingerly as she led me past the bathroom.

“In there,” she said, pointing her chin toward the next door. “Go ahead.”

I stepped into the bedroom. It smelled a little stale compared to the living room. The bed was made, but in a rumpled sort of way. The sheets were lumpy beneath the yellow bedspread. A country quilt was folded unevenly, tossed across the foot of the bed. There was a half-empty plastic bottle of Evian on the night table, pushed against a jumble of paperbacks and magazines, piled into a tippy stack.

“There on the desk,” Dorothy said, pointing from the doorway.

The rustic desk in the corner was covered with papers, a few folders, a couple of notebooks. On one side of the desk, a leaking pen had run out across several papers, fusing them together. On the other, a black mug sat on a coaster fashioned out of an empty king-size bag of peanut M&M’s.

“Oh,” I said. The clutter was familiar to me from my college days with Gretchen.

“I haven’t had time to clean up in here,” Dorothy said. “But you should take all of that stuff.”

I hesitated. There was a sad, lingering vitality to this mess that I didn’t want to touch.

“Go ahead,” Dorothy said, turning from me and extracting a bit of dust from the hall mirror with some spit on her finger.

“Okay,” I said, gathering the papers and notebooks slowly into a pile, then pulling them to my chest. I stuck the leaked pen inside the M&M bag.

“I’ll take the mug,” Dorothy said, holding her hand out.

We went back down the stairs in silence.

Chapter 20

“Just Someone I Used to Know”

Nashville, Tennessee

I’m YouTubing past midnight in my motel after a day at the Ryman Auditorium and the Country Music Hall of Fame, eating a take-out slice of something called chess pie—a southern dessert that I’m afraid I simply don’t understand.

Sweeter than the pie, though, are Dolly and Porter, singing and giggling me into the wee hours.

Dolly Parton began working for
The
Porter Wagoner Show
in 1967. Porter Wagoner was a popular country star in the midsixties and early seventies. He was about twenty years older than Dolly, and he had a distinctive look: tall and lanky, with a long, horsey face, a goofy smile, and a red-blond pompadour.

And then there were his suits—bright-colored suits covered in rhinestone wagon wheels and cacti. Called “Nudie” suits (after Nudie Cohn, the tailor who made them), they reportedly cost several thousand dollars each.

In her earliest days on the show, Dolly looks like a cute secretary: tailored outfits and stylish (if slightly large) hairdos. In front of the camera, the two singers laugh a lot together (Porter with an aw-shucks guffaw and Dolly with an easy giggle) and flirt in an irresistibly folksy kind of way:

Porter:
Thank you, Dolly. Fine job. A beautiful song, and mighty, mighty well done. You want to sing a duet with me?

Dolly:
Why, I’d just be tickled to death to.

Porter
(snorting self-consciously): ’Kay.

Dolly:
I thought you’d never ask.

Soon after Dolly joined Porter’s show, the pair began recording successful duets. But eventually things went somewhat sour between the two performers.

In a 1972 performance of one of their duets, “That Was Before I Met You,” you can see a hint of Dolly’s growing exasperation with her boss: She rolls her eyes at Porter’s corny hand gestures, making similar but vaguely mocking gestures back at him. She points her thumb irritably in his direction, with a facial expression that seems to say “I’m with Stupid.”

By this time, Dolly had tossed the cute secretary outfits and begun to take on the teased and top-heavy look that would become so iconic for decades to come. Her clothes were becoming more dramatic with each year on the show, her hair and figure more pronounced.

She was outgrowing Porter and his show. They apparently fought a great deal behind the scenes. While they had several duet albums together, Dolly was writing and cutting her own hits by then (such as “Joshua” and “Coat of Many Colors”) and starting to cross over into pop. Tension grew between Dolly and her boss. According to Dolly, Porter became possessive, attempting to control Dolly’s career decisions. Later, Dolly would admit that Porter often tried to put the moves on her. (In her biography, she describes watching Jim Henson give a Kermit the Frog performance on her variety show, and when her manager joked, “Isn’t it amazing the way Kermit can sing like that with somebody’s hand up his ass?,” she replied, “Shoot, that ain’t nothin’. I did that for seven years on
The
Porter Wagoner Show.
”)

Knowing about all of the trouble doesn’t much taint my enjoyment of their performances—perhaps because we all know Dolly could handle it. My favorite of their duets is “Just Someone I Used to Know.” It is, predictably, about love lost, love missed, and the accompanying regrets. The premise of the song is being asked about an old picture, and replying that it’s “just someone I used to know,” while privately feeling pained by the memory. And I think the song may have been a little prophetic for Dolly and Porter. They parted bitterly when Dolly left Porter’s show in 1974, and later in the seventies, Porter sued Dolly over contractual issues. They eventually settled out of court.

Despite the troubles, Dolly wrote her hit song “I Will Always Love You” (probably more familiar to some for the Whitney Houston version) for Porter. Penned affectionately and not romantically, she wrote it in 1973, when she was in the process of leaving his show. And the pair made amends a few years after the settlement. In fact, Dolly, who’d purchased the rights to some of Porter’s songs while he was having financial difficulties, gave them right back to him. Dolly visited Porter when he was dying of lung cancer in 2007, and spoke and sang at his memorial service.

I can’t say how Dolly and Porter felt about each other in the end, but clearly they had a connection that time didn’t dissolve. I play “Just Someone” over and over again, trying to determine what about it makes me so damn sad—sadder than almost anything else on my classic country playlist. Maybe seeing Dolly so young and unsynthetic gives me a keen sensation of the cruel demands of time. Maybe looking at rhinestone wagon wheels simply makes me nostalgic for an era I never knew.

I’m still thinking of Dolly and Porter as I drift off to sleep, but when I wake up at 3
A.M.
it’s Jeremy who’s on my mind. Where am I? What time is it?
Where’s Jeremy?
Do I miss him? I don’t know. I feel his absence, that’s for certain. Is that the same as missing someone? He was here with me for so long, and whatever happened to cause our parting, it’s unsettling that he’s not here anymore.

What does it mean to “used to know” a person? Is such a thing possible? Isn’t “knowing” a permanent state of affairs? Will I ever not know Jeremy? Or he not know me? I don’t think so. Clearly, though, we are about to become “just someones” to each other, rather than the fundamental someones we vowed to be a few years ago. And it seems to me so sad how easily this can happen—as much as we might want it to under some circumstances.

It happens all the time. People we thought we couldn’t live without move out of our lives, fade into mere Christmas-card correspondents or Facebook friends or nothing at all. We’re all free agents. No one is guaranteed to you forever—or even till tomorrow. I’m not sure I have the heart or the independence to really accept this. I wonder how anyone can. And perhaps no one does. Maybe we’re all in denial about this most of the time. Maybe that’s how we’re able to find people to love anyway, for as long as we’re allowed. Maybe that’s how we survive.

—
Tammyland