Twang (12 page)

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.

At five o’clock on an overcast February afternoon in 2009 just outside Nashville, members of my entourage traipsed in and out, rocking the floor so it felt more like a boat bobbing around in the ocean than yet another trailer. I felt exhausted from pasting on smiles all day. My new hairdresser stood behind me with one pink cowboy boot up on the rung of my chair, painfully pulling out a set of hair extensions she’d put in for a photo shoot earlier.

“You’re ruining your makeup, hon. The way you’re sniveling and carrying on.” Tonilynn’s eyes met mine in the mirror.

“Who cares? I don’t care,” I said, shrugging at my image in the huge, brightly lit mirror, at black trails of mascara running down my cheeks.

She pursed her lips, raised her flawlessly applied eyebrows. “Well, I’m with you, hon, I never thought it was fair the way us women have to suffer so much for beauty. Men have it E-Z, while us gals are continually waxing, plucking, polishing, smoothing, firming, uplifting, dyeing, and enhancing. But,” she paused with a dramatic sigh, “I reckon I ought not to complain about beauty, since it is how I make my living.” She smiled as she yanked another strand of my hair.

I flinched and more tears came.

“Reckon you’re just tender-headed,” Tonilynn said around a bobby pin between her teeth.

I tried to ignore her, but I was offended at her insinuation that I was weak. “I’m not tender-headed!”

“What you crying about, then?” She fluttered around to the other side of me, leaving a trail of perfume that smelled like honeysuckle.

I focused on making my expression neutral. The words out of this woman’s mouth were fire, and I was wood. A mental bucket of water I’d filled all those years ago and left near my vulnerable places stood by ready to douse any flames.

When the quietness between us grew too loud for Tonilynn, she used her free hand to squeeze my shoulder, then leaned down close to my ear to whisper, “If it’s on account of all that ugly stuff they keep printing about you and Holt Cantrell bustin’ up, I wouldn’t give a fig. I’d say to myself, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but . . .’ ”

I ground my teeth together hard and totally disengaged from this meddling woman. Why did love have to be so difficult? And how dare she refer to personal things! Well, things the trashy tabloids printed were still personal. Whenever I happened on headlines or articles about Holt Cantrell and his accusations, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a sharp knife. All I wanted was for this day to be over. I longed with every cell in my body to hop back in the Lexus and drive home as fast as I could, get into my real clothes, and put on some Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash to drown out everything else, away from the people and the thoughts I’d dealt with all day long.

I had a quick little fantasy about firing this nosy beautician on the spot, but Mike said she was extremely good at what she did, and best of all, dependable, and I hated the idea of
going through the hassle of hiring and breaking in yet another employee.

“Hey, hey, what’s all this?” Tonilynn walked around and crouched down in front of me, examining the face I could feel crumpling. She took my hands and held them in hers, rubbing circles on my knuckles with her soft thumbs. “What’s wrong, darlin’? You can tell Tonilynn, you know. Talk to Tonilynn. Some of my clients have told me I’m even better than their shrink.”

Her regional twang made
I
sound like
ah
, but it was soothing, and her eyes were compassionate. It didn’t bug me in the least the way she referred to herself in the third person. I did that, too, and I’d often wondered if it was something I ought to talk to a psychiatrist about—the way I thought of Jenny Cloud the country music star as if she were an entirely different person from Jennifer Anne Clodfelter of Blue Ridge, Georgia. A couple of times, I’d decided I would, but then Jenny Cloud talked Jennifer Clodfelter out of it.

“You’re just one of them poor little rich girls, ain’t you?” Tonilynn continued, her words so smooth they slid into one of the cracks in my soul. She couldn’t know how right-on she was. I had a successful career where I made tons of money, beauty (according to all the articles I’d read about me), and enough fame that I had become a household name. I should’ve been the happiest woman in the world. But I was miserable.

I nodded, pulling out the favors and balloons for a fullblown pity party as more hot tears poured out of my eyes and snot began to trickle from my nostrils. Tonilynn made a noise like a dove’s coo, bent forward, and wrapped her arms around me. Without thinking I snuggled my wet face into her shoulder, feeling her large bosoms so solid and comforting, inhaling her scent of hair chemicals mixed with honeysuckle.

She held me, talking a mile a minute about how she’d worked for Holt Cantrell once. “It was way, way back, when he first got to Nashville, and let me tell you, hon, I learned I couldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw him. Some men are just snakes, believe me, and even if he is a star who makes millions of bucks for every hit song, he’s still a two-bit scumbag slid down into sharkskin boots.” She was shaking her head as she patted my back. “I can only imagine Holt’s ego now that he’s got to be so famous. But don’t you worry about a thing because you’re leaving him in your dust with the record sales. Right, darlin’? I believe I overheard Mike saying you’re breaking all sorts of records.”

I snuffled up a few tears through my nostrils. The title song of my latest album,
I’ll Be Yours Until Forever
, was the one currently zooming up the playlists. It had been an immediate radio hit and was daily gaining support and visibility. Ironically, it had been written about my feelings for Holt Cantrell.