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The next time I visited Leslie in Memphis, we attended Sunset Symphony. It was part of the annual Memphis in May International Festival that included the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, the Beale Street Music Festival, and lots of artists, merchants, and food vendors everywhere. Leslie’s favorite part was Sunset Symphony, held on the banks of the Mississippi River to close the monthlong festival. There was an air show with pilots buzzing low along the river, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra performing classic patriotic songs, a different legendary musical act headlining each year (we got to sing along with KC and the Sunshine Band – “Do a little dance…”), and of course, a staggering fireworks show to close the event that was the highlight for Leslie and for most spectators.
Growing up, I’d watched a few Fourth of July fireworks shows in D.C. from our church’s roof a few blocks from the Capitol Building, and I’d never seen any better. But watching these enormous fireworks light up the night sky over the Mississippi River just might’ve topped them all. Leslie could’ve stood there for hours staring up at the colorful explosions peppering the black sky. She was a fiend for fireworks. We held hands, as I imagined telling her something important that would irrevocably change things between us. But was I sure? How did I know for certain? This type of statement couldn’t be blurted without being positive, for there was no going back after it. When was the moment I knew? I later learned when she knew—she had the moment logged to the second when I played her “Hummingbird.” But what about me?
Was it when she sent me a mock list of dating rules when we decided to “go steady,” as they said back in the days of her favorite decade, the 1950s? One of the rules was I had to continue writing her hilarious letters that made her laugh out loud at least twice regardless of how long or often we spoke on the phone. Was it the first time I made her laugh so hard she snorted (a family trait her sisters and mom shared)? Was it when she read the last book I’d written in one sitting because she loved it so much? Was it the first time I called her Lucy because she reminded me of the Peanuts character? Was it one night when we were walking near her house and she stopped to talk to a homeless man for ten minutes and offered to bring him back a blanket and some clean clothes (which we later did)? Was it seeing how much love and respect she had for her mom, who reminded me in many ways of my mom? Was it the first time we held hands and I felt safe to let my guard all the way down?
Or was it a little of all these moments and more, rolled into one mound of certainty growing wider and more powerful as it bowled downhill like a runaway snowball?
It was definitely a mixture, yet if I had to pinpoint one moment, one event when I knew for sure, it was before I visited her for the first time. We were talking on the phone and I admitted to her that when I got nervous or hot or embarrassed, my face flushed red. I was very self-conscious about it and had never talked about it with anyone other than Mom. She responded with this: “Don’t worry, it happens to me, too. We’ll be the cutest little rosy-cheeked couple walking down the sidewalk.” That was it. I knew I could be myself around her and that I could tell her anything without it being mocked or held against me in some way. There was trust, and where there was trust there could be intimacy, and love.
So now I knew, just as she did, yet neither of us was willing to let go of home base and march out into the middle all alone, exposed, with no way to take it back if it was too soon or too overwhelming for the other to hear. It was a gigantic step full of rippling ramifications, like tipping over the first of a thousand dominoes.
Though deep down I understood that first domino had been pushed the moment I began writing her.
The next day before I left for Texas, I told Leslie. She’d often asked what I was thinking whenever I looked in her eyes without saying anything. She liked to joke, “Are you picking which way you’re going to kill me?” I’d smile and answer, “Just looking.” But this time when she asked, I told her the truth.
She didn’t say anything for a few moments. These were some long seconds of silence. Many thoughts flew through my head, none of them positive. I should’ve waited. Too soon, too soon! Nice going, bud—just scared her off. I’m like human bug repellant. Why do I speak? Why do I open my mouth? Nothing good comes from talking. From now on, I’m telling everyone I’m mute.
Then Leslie began crying, and the first thought I had was, This was definitely not the right time to tell her.
But then she said, “I never thought this would happen to me.” Between sniffles, she told me she’d already said it to me dozens of times on the phone, just with the mute button pushed. Any time I made her laugh, or said something encouraging or thoughtful, she pressed the button to tell me. I had no idea, though that was the point. She added that each time she’d told me she adored me, that was code for loved, and she was sick of substituting words. “It’s hard in the moment,” she admitted. “I kept worrying I’d slip and say the wrong thing or forget to mute the phone.”
It all felt surreal, but it was happening and the dominoes were tumbling full speed now. I knew what was next, what had to follow. We had to take a trip together. But not to the beach or to go camping. We had to fly to Boston and then rent a car to drive for an hour and a half to South Dennis on Cape Cod, where my folks lived. It was time for Leslie to meet Mom.
Chapter Sixteen
The South Shall Rise and Hug
Manya and I rehearsed with a drummer, bassist, and cellist, played a few shows, and even recorded a two-song demo. We added some new songs, shelved old ones, and eventually landed a headlining gig at a Dallas club where we’d opened once or twice for other bands. This was our time to shine. It was a relatively big step with the opportunity to win new fans and possibly gain more headlining shows. I hoped a local manager would see us and be so impressed he or she would take us on.
We actually had our best turnout for any show. Singers and musicians from other bands attended. It felt significant, and we tried to make the most of the moment. Unfortunately, after forty-five minutes, we were done. We’d been allotted another hour to play as the headliner, yet we ran out of songs. We’d discarded so many older songs to make room for new material, we had enough prepared for only one set. But we weren’t in one-set territory anymore. This was two-hour, carry-the-evening, everybody-wanted-to-hear-more terrain. Not, “That’s all we’ve got, thanks for coming out.” Even if some of the older songs weren’t quite as good as newer ones, it still would’ve been better to play them than nothing. By that point in the show, most of the crowd was somewhat inebriated and simply wanted to hear loud, live music. They weren’t picky; they just didn’t want it to be over.
As I packed up my gear, sweating profusely in front of everyone, it felt different than before, like something had changed during the course of this one performance. I was frustrated and tired with a long drive ahead of me, but it was more than that. Somehow I knew this was our last show.
It was a combination of factors: Bryan’s absence left it a little less fun and fulfilling (he was the only reason I’d started writing songs in the first place); I wished we kept older tunes in our arsenal; I needed to move to Dallas, but I couldn’t and didn’t really want to; and I still struggled to connect the dots in my head as to how we could journey from Manya’s garage to a successful touring act. All of that, coupled with the major time investment for driving and practicing, left me ready to quit.
Yet Manya’s voice was so special, I had a hard time letting go. I knew this wouldn’t happen again. Thankfully, Manya did the heavy lifting for me, as she did with Bryan. She knew it was time for us to try new things, that our band had run its course. She told me she wanted to pursue being a solo artist, allowing her the chance to write and perform her own songs exclusively, which made sense to me. My favorite part about being a musician was writing songs, so it was stifling for a singer like Manya to be limited in her writing opportunities because of other members in the band. I was s
urprised she’d lasted this long learning our songs. I agreed it was a good point to call it a day, and we set up a time for me to drive over to collect the cables and gear I stored in her garage.
That Saturday, I drove to her house to get my equipment. While alone in her garage, I stopped packing for a moment and looked around imagining the years we’d spent in here shivering in the cold or sweating in the heat while hashing out new songs. I remembered the frozen pizzas she always had ready for Bryan and me, and how her daughter liked to sing along when we practiced. I thought about the times we all went to shoot pool and play tennis and how nervous we’d been when we’d first met. My thoughts traveled even further back to when Bryan and I began playing music together in the living room of the apartment where Tripp and I lived near the seminary. I borrowed Tripp’s twelve-string acoustic guitar to learn how to play, yet I broke a string about once a week from strumming too hard. I quickly memorized the route to the music store. I recorded a shoebox full of cassette tapes with new songs, mostly a cappella as I learned to play guitar and piano, and mostly bad. Yet there were a few that worked that we ended up keeping, and the feeling of creating a little piece of music that touched people sank its hooks deeply in me. Now, it was by far the hardest part to lose.
I said goodbye to Manya and wished her good luck, sincerely encouraging her to push forward with her music. Her talent was too unique to keep to herself. I loaded my gear in my car and drove back to Fort Worth. On the way, I couldn’t help but wonder if all of this had been wasted time—not just here in Dallas, but even back to our first band in Atlanta. Were the last fifteen years a mistake? Had I been blinded by my silly dream of sitting by a hotel pool late at night while on a world tour? Should I have ditched it to pursue a traditional career that would’ve come in quite handy now that Leslie and I were headed in a serious direction? I could’ve latched on at a newspaper or magazine somewhere, slowly worked my way up until I became a columnist. But that type of position wasn’t offered overnight, and the years it took to earn one weren’t available to me anymore. The window had closed, and all I had to show for chasing my dreams was a few boxes of cables and an old mic stand with duct tape wrapped around its cracked base.
I glanced at one of the boxes dumped in Bryan’s seat. He’d been working on a paper at home when I left. The fact that he could diligently plug away on schoolwork without me monitoring him was a huge leap forward. He’d come a long way from the days of me worrying he might kill himself if his depression grew too intense. I’d played a role in helping him, though several others had contributed significantly, and of course, Bryan had done the hardest part. Maybe that was what all these years of music were about. The songs and bands and gigs and endless practicing were really about helping Bryan, about putting someone else’s needs first, like with Richard. Not about record deals and hits but friendship, loyalty, and personal growth. As it said in the book of Proverbs, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Bryan was like a brother to me, and the journey to help him reach this point was worth the years.
Plus, Bryan had always been a big fan of my writing and encouraged me to keep at it. Without his support, I might’ve scrapped it somewhere along the way. I was beginning to understand that success wasn’t crossing a finish line first; it was not finishing alone. And these people I felt so proud to have helped overcome obstacles had probably pushed me just as hard.
R
Richard was kind enough to give me ten days off so I could take Leslie to Cape Cod to meet my parents. It was one of the many aspects of my job I’d come to love: my boss’s flexibility. If I needed to go to the dentist or to pick up Bryan or to take Leslie to meet my folks, Richard was always agreeable. Every now and then, he tossed in a tiny guilt trip like, “Well, if you really have to go…” But that was understandable and was as loud as his protests rose. He was considerate and generous, and I doubted another boss would’ve been as accommodating.
I’d grown up going to Cape Cod. My grandfather owned a house in South Dennis that had been passed down in our family for generations, and we took our annual two-week vacation there each August. When my grandfather died, he left the house to my mom. A few years later, my parents finally sold their home in Maryland and moved to the Cape.
The house on the Cape had four bedrooms and one bathroom, which wasn’t convenient in the mornings or before bed when my whole family visited, yet we were used to it since our house in Maryland had only one full bathroom (there was a half bathroom in my dad’s workshop downstairs he practically boarded up to keep us from using to limit traffic through his maze of tools). The Cape house also had a parlor, workshop, and garage, and when my folks moved in, they renovated the kitchen and bathroom and had a porch built. Dad also constructed a shed out back (to go along with the other shed next to it) to house all of his tools. Within just a few years, both sheds, the workshop, the loft above the workshop, the garage, and even Mom’s new porch were all filled to capacity with Dad’s lathe, milling machine, band saw, and every other tool he’d stockpiled over the decades. They had their own coastal hardware store.
During our visits to the Cape when my three older brothers and I were growing up, we never toured the peninsula. In fact, we rarely strayed outside of Dennis. We weren’t big sightseers. We kept the same basic routine for years on our vacations: played baseball in the yard, read, walked down to Bass River a few minutes away, piled in the car at three to drive to West Dennis Beach (the nearest beach), and possibly ate fish for dinner if Andy caught any (in later years, he liked to fish on charter boats). We played putt-putt once a trip, took a ride on my grandfather’s old boat, and finished the vacation with dessert at Friendly’s. That was it. Nothing too exciting, but it was nice being near the water in less humidity, with a big yard in which to play.
Things changed when I took Leslie to the Cape. For the first time, I rented a car and we explored different towns outside of Dennis. I joked with Leslie, “I wonder if we’ll have to show our IDs at the border.” This was foreign territory for me, branching out beyond the familiar, comforting boundaries of Dennis. We visited Chatham, Harwich, Orleans and even went up to the Outer Cape for a day in Provincetown. It was another world right next door I’d never seen. It reminded me of growing up in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near the D.C. line. We never once traveled to Baltimore to see an Orioles game, though they played in the same state. Baltimore was an hour away yet felt like the other side of the country. Truro, Wellfleet, and Provincetown were forty minutes to an hour away from South Dennis but might as well have been on another continent when we were growing up.
Provincetown was our favorite spot Leslie and I explored. We loved the art galleries, bookstores, antique shops, clothing markets, and every kind of restaurant imaginable, all lined up on Commercial Street right by the Atlantic Ocean. It looked like something out of a movie. They loved dogs here, too, which appealed to us. Many of the storeowners even left out bowls of water for the pooches. Leslie said, “We should’ve brought Bear, Dill, and Atti.” They would’ve been warmly welcomed.
There was actually more to do in Provincetown than we could squeeze into one visit, with whale watching, dune tours, and several galleries on the to-do list for next time. We were definitely coming back. I felt like I was finally learning a little about Cape Cod after visiting my whole life. There was a lot more here than just putt-putt and Friendly’s, though Leslie and I did continue our tradition of playing a round of miniature golf (still no thirty-six for me, or Leslie).
Mom liked Leslie right away. They’d already had good conversations on the phone, yet I was nervous for them to meet in person, especially with Dad interjecting every chance he got. He had a way of dominating the room and the house. I worried Mom and Leslie wouldn’t get much time alone, or it would be rushed and guarded.
My fears were unwarranted, because both Mom and Dad treated Leslie like a Southern belle just up from the plantation. Mom had long carried a fascinati
on with the Civil War and the South—her favorite book was Gone with the Wind. While I lived in Atlanta, Mom had mentioned more than a few times that the classic novel’s author, Margaret Mitchell, was buried there. She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t visited her grave at Oakland Cemetery. She even looked up directions.
Mom and Dad swooned over Leslie’s accent, turning each of her words into a leisurely stroll down a tree-lined, country lane. I really didn’t have to do much except sit back and let Leslie speak. It was much easier than I’d anticipated. At one point, I even got up to get a drink in the kitchen, leaving the three of them in the living room, when I spotted an interesting magazine. About half an hour later, Mom and Leslie came out to the kitchen to find me sitting at the table engrossed in an article. I got a good death glare from Leslie over leaving her alone with my parents after they’d just met. Sorry, I mouthed sheepishly.
Mom gave Leslie a tour of the house, minus the tool sheds and garage. Dad showed her those later, though it was difficult for more than one person at a time to wiggle in. As Mom and Leslie walked down the hall to the stairs to see the second floor, Leslie noticed an antique tea set in a cabinet to her left. She commented how beautiful it was. Mom later told me that no one had ever mentioned anything about her tea set, and that if Leslie and I married one day, she’d give it to her.
A southern accent and liking Mom’s tea set—Leslie was batting a thousand.
Life at 8 mph Page 16