Fast Lane

by Ashley, Kristen

  I mean, one of those names did not make it a secret he wanted her as his muse, and I know you know about that. I know you’ll ask Lyla about that.

  Michelangelo was gay, and he’d want to paint her, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

  There’s that saying, one in a million.

  Lyla was one in a lifetime.

  And most men who knew her, knew it.

  Lyla always said Bobby made that play to piss Preacher off and to try to get him to do something stupid.

  But she was wrong and that was part of what made Lyla, Lyla.

  She had an innate confidence, even though she had her insecurities, she could be timid or shy, but that confidence shone through and it could be intimidating.

  So, she’d never think it was about her.

  Maybe Bobby also wanted to do that, but he thought he was Bobby Sheridan and he thought she’d drop Preacher like a rock if he sniffed around.

  Then he’d have her.

  Two birds.

  One stone.

  You know, what Lyla has, it’s made, it is not born.

  Her mother saved those girls from their father. Man beat the shit out of her, stalked her, landed lawsuit after lawsuit on her, custody, visitation, support, which, mind, he did not pay, just to fuck with her.

  And if he’d had a free hand, he would have destroyed those girls. They’d never be perfect enough for him, but he wouldn’t have given up tryin’ and makin’ them feel like pieces of shit while he did it.

  Lyla’s mom delivered them from all of that. Faced him head on with any shit he pulled. Put herself up as a shield in front of those girls. She couldn’t afford to take them anywhere else, so she moved ’em in with their grandparents, and boom! Two more shields.

  Anchors.

  A foundation.

  You got fertile earth to grow in, you bloom.

  Lyla’s mom busted her ass to give her girls that and I’ll remind you, this was in a time when MeToo would have been a joke.

  The response would have been, so what?

  Lyla’s mom birthed those girls then made them the women they became.

  I’ll tell you what, every day I work to make sure my girls have that.

  Natalie hesitates over eating a chocolate chip cookie or gives the girls a look where I know she’s fretting when I’m making malts.

  I say, “Eat it, baby,” at the same time wanting to find her mother and knock her teeth down her throat, because if that woman was there, she’d give my baby shit about having a fuckin’ cookie, goin’ on about carbs and middle-age spread, something the woman had been doing in one way or another to my wife the whole of her life.

  And I make my girls malts.

  They are, all three of them, the most beautiful creatures who entered my life, and I never let them forget it.

  Lyla’s mom and grandparents taught me that.

  And hey, Preacher taught me it too.

  [Off tape]

  So, you’re saying, conclusively, that you, McCade and Lyla were not a threesome and that you and McCade did not indoctrinate her into her status with the band when she was underage.

  [Stares straight, speaks firmly]

  Yeah, fuckin’ conclusively I’m sayin’ just that.

  And you’re saying that McCade did not regularly railroad the band into his way of thinking and rule it with an iron fist.

  [Shakes head]

  Nope.

  He got his way a lot and he pushed to get his way a lot and there were times, and not a few of them, when that was frustrating as fuck.

  But he didn’t railroad anybody or rule with an iron fist.

  Tom ruled with an iron fist.

  [Laughs]

  But that was his job.

  Cynthia Peters, who became famous in her own right, went on to marry Bobby Sheridan.

  [Shakes head]

  Match made in heaven for the full, what? Nine, ten months those two idiots were hitched.

  And famous?

  I guess so.

  She was no Pamela Des Barres. That woman knew what she was about, what she wanted, she went after it and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought.

  Cynthia was…

  [Lengthy pause]

  Not that.

  Peters also married Josh Hardy.

  Yeah. That’s probably why he’s still doin’ as much session work as he’s doin’.

  Because they only lasted a coupla months.

  But the asshole didn’t get a prenup.

  Jen, Amber and my sister Sonia were all with me, waiting at the gate when…

  Lyla:

  [Off tape]

  At the gate?

  [Lengthy pause]

  How old are you?

  Twenty-two.

  [Quietly]

  Yes, well, doll, 9/11 changed the world. You were young. But everyone used to be able to go to the gate in an airport. Meet their loved ones the minute they got off the plane.

  I guess I knew that.

  Lana’s boyfriend worked in the Twin Towers.

  Oh no.

  [Heavy voice]

  Oh yes.

  As if that family hadn’t lost enough.

  [Takes deep breath]

  He had an engagement ring at his apartment. They found it after.

  It took her a while. Jesse worried. He thought she’d never recover.

  But [smiles sadly] unlike Penny after her loss, eventually, she got there.

  After the plane arrived, I was straining to see down the ramp and there he was, the first one off.

  He caught sight of me and smiled.

  I dashed around the people in front of me and hit him like a ton of bricks the minute he cleared the gate agent.

  I actually jumped him, literally, and did not care.

  I wrapped my legs around his hips, my arms around his shoulders, he caught my ass in his hands, and we went at it.

  I was kissing Preacher again.

  I hadn’t seen him in six weeks.

  An eternity.

  I felt his shoulder jerk when the strap of his bag fell off and that was the only reason I stopped kissing him.

  I lifted my head, looked into his brown eyes and whispered, “Hi.”

  He stared at me with this funny look on his face that was part happy, part amused, part something else, and he whispered back, “Hey, cher.”

  Lyla:

  He’d never had a welcome home.

  He really had never had a home.

  Those jackals who raised him…

  [Pause]

  You know, looking back, that moment at that gate in the Indianapolis airport was when I really won Preacher McCade.

  When I well and truly bagged the most beautiful man on the planet.

  And the rest of that Christmas break, that break from the tour…

  My claim was staked.

  They had limos.

  Jesse, Dave and Tim had one that took them to Mooresville.

  Preacher and Tommy had one that took us home.

  To Brownsburg.

  My grandfather was a World War II vet and a school principal in Indy. He was a Glenn Miller aficionado and felt an indication of a loose woman was that her ears were pierced.

  He was not impressed with limos.

  My grandmother was never without red lipstick, tucked a hazelnut in its shell in her bra “for luck,” never dyed her hair after it turned white but rolled it in rollers and teased it bigger than Dolly Parton’s, and she lived for [raises hands and counts on fingers] nine things:

  Her husband.

  Her children.

  Her grandchildren.

  Shopping.

  Drinking.

  Eating.

  Traveling.

  Generally acting like a nut.

  And getting a tan.

  And not in that order.

  She was impressed by limos.

  And when Preacher angled his big body out of the back of ours, she fell in love at first sight.

  I was nervous as all hell when
Gramps met Preacher.

  I knew Gramps was going to hate him.

  It wasn’t the band, but it was.

  It wasn’t that I’d skipped out on a week of school to follow the band around on tour, and it was.

  It wasn’t that he had long hair and a beard, and it was.

  It was that no one was good enough for Gramps’s girls.

  Preacher did not give a damn about what anyone thought of him, so I was certain this wouldn’t go well.

  My grandfather was of a generation where a man worked to earn an elder’s respect.

  Preacher would work hard to earn a lot of things, but he was a take-me-as-I-come type of guy.

  My grandparents meant everything to me.

  Preacher meant everything to me.

  They had to work.

  But I was terrified it was going to be a disaster.

  “Well, would you look at that!” Gram cried, walking right up to Preacher who was helping me out of the limo.

  He got me to my feet, turned to her, she slammed her hands on his chest and smiled up at him.

  She then patted his chest repeatedly and kept smiling up at him before she declared, “Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water?”

  My Gram.

  I was smiling when I introduced, “Gram, this is Preacher, Preacher, this is my gram. Mrs. Campbell.”

  “Miz Campbell,” he murmured, trying to lift his hand in between them to shake hers, but, even though she wasn’t pressed up to him or anything gross like that, she ignored his hand and just patted his chest, still smiling up at him.

  “Evelyn, darlin’. But you can call me Lynie,” she invited.

  “Lynie,” he muttered then looked beyond her.

  As the others gathered around us, I looked beyond her too.

  Gramps was standing there looking like he was contemplating going to get his shotgun.

  I took Preacher’s hand and guided him to Gramps.

  “Gramps, this is Preacher McCade. Preacher, this is my grandfather. Audie Campbell.”

  Preacher stuck his hand out. “Sir.”

  Sir?

  Gramps looked at it, up to Preacher, then he took his hand.

  “Get our bags in, then could I have a private word?” Preacher asked.

  What?

  A private word?

  It would seem Preacher had a plan.

  But even though we talked on the phone nearly every night, he had not told me this plan and thus I had not okayed this plan, so I was not at one with whatever plan he had.

  Gramps said nothing for so long, I felt my skin get itchy.

  Then he grunted, “Fine,” and walked away.

  He didn’t wait for me to introduce him to Tommy or anything.

  He just walked away.

  I looked up at Preacher.

  “It’s gonna go great, cher,” he promised me.

  He was so wrong.

  “Um, I told you—”

  He bent to me and cupped my cheek.

  “It’s gonna go great, baby.”

  He then moved to the trunk and helped the chauffer and Tommy with their bags, and I knew Preacher was done talking about it.

  I got my way a lot, but I was learning, when Preacher was done discussing something…

  He was just done.

  Gram sidled up to me and said, sotto voce, “You done good. There’s a mile of him, honey, and all of it is so pretty.”

  Lyla:

  I told Preacher the turtle story somewhere between Cleveland and Philly, and I didn’t know him well enough at the time to know that was something he’d get on a level that was something only men like Preacher, and my grandfather, understood.

  [Off tape]

  The turtle story?

  [Nods]

  We had a pond on our property.

  One summer, I was in an innertube on that pond and I’d floated down to the end we never went down to. Lots of cattails down there, trees growing close to the edge, their branches in the water. We had a lot of turtles that lived there.

  I got too close, a turtle didn’t want me that close, floated up and took a bite out of me on the skin between my pinkie toe and the next one.

  Or maybe that turtle just thought I was food.

  [Smiles]

  It surprised me, mostly.

  So, I freaked out, shouting and flailing, going in circles in that innertube.

  [Laughs]

  I must have looked like I’d lost my mind.

  To my grandfather, I looked like I was being attacked.

  He raced out of the house, down the yard, to the pond and almost jumped in wearing all his clothes before I got it together and rowed myself over to him.

  He hauled me out, looked down at my toe, there was a little cut, some blood.

  He cleaned me up and put some Neosporin on it.

  You know that dad on My Big Fat Greek Wedding with his Windex?

  That was Gramps with his Neosporin.

  [Smiles]

  Just a nick.

  No big deal.

  A few days later, I was doing something on our property, I don’t know what. I was always off doing something. Daydreamer.

  Back beyond the barn, up by the trees close to the railroad tracks, I saw them all in a line.

  Maybe eight, ten dead turtles. All with a bullet hole in their shells.

  Gramps was a sniper in the war.

  [Shakes head]

  Yes.

  Just a nick.

  But it hurt me, and it scared me.

  [Expression turns faraway]

  Yes.

  Preacher understood that.

  He understood Gramps.

  [Expression gains focus]

  Gramps might have died with the buzz cut that he retained since the war and Preacher’s hair might have been down to his shoulders.

  But those men?

  Two peas in a pod.

  “Well, there you go,” Gram mumbled.

  I was staring.

  “Holy crap,” Sonia breathed.

  We were all sitting at the dining room table, looking through the kitchen to the mudroom, which was what we called our living room.

  And Gramps and Preacher were standing there with Tommy, and Gramps had just slapped Preacher on the shoulder in male camaraderie.

  “You know, your grandfather told your mother the night before she married your father that he’d put her in his car and drive her to Florida, and the wedding, and that man, be damned.”

  Slowly, I turned my head to look at her after hearing a story I’d never heard before and I felt Sonia had perked up to listen too.

  “She picked that man,” Gram finished.

  She then clicked her teeth and winked at me.

  “You’ve always been a smart girl. Not that your mother wasn’t. That man even had me bamboozled. Gotta admit, that isn’t hard when it comes to me, but it was when it came to your mom. We all can learn at any time, and it doesn’t have to be us who’s the one who makes the mistake that teaches the lesson.”

  “Lynie!” my grandfather called. “We gonna feed these kids or what?”

  “Did your fingers stop working?” Gram asked.

  “They’re gonna work enough for me to turn the key in the ignition in my truck to go get Kentucky Fried Chicken,” my grandfather told her.

  “Yay! My favorite!” Sonia cried.

  Gramps totally knew that, but he ignored her like he was adept at doing because it wouldn’t do for a man’s man to give it all up and show outright he doted on his girls, even if he caught absolutely everything.

  And doted on his girls.

  “I’m making my macaroni and cheese,” Gram declared.

  On no, she wasn’t.

  We were having Preacher’s favorite.

  Hamburgers.

  We were not having Gram’s macaroni and cheese.

  And not because I didn’t know where Preacher stood on macaroni and cheese.

  “Oh, lawd,” Jen mumbled.

  She’d had occasion to
force down Gram’s mac ’n’ cheese.

  Obviously, I had too.

  So, I winced.

  “How about I fry up those burgers,” I suggested after recovering from my wince.

  “I’m making my mac ’n’ cheese,” Gram decreed.

  “Lynie, no you’re not,” Gramps denied.

  “Lyla isn’t frying up hamburgers for famous rock stars,” Gram returned. “My mac ’n’ cheese is a delicacy.”

  “It’s yellow gelatinous goo,” Gramps stated.

  There were a number of gasps, none of them louder than Gram’s, even if this statement was inarguably true.

  “Take that back, Audie Campbell,” she snapped.

  “Woman, I did not marry you for your cooking abilities, and that’s a good thing, since, if you got ’em, you been hidin’ ’em for near-on fifty years,” Gramps told her. “I’m getting chicken.”

  Before Gram could react to Gramps’s latest comment, I quickly said, “We already got hamburger meat so we could have burgers, Gramps. Preacher and Tommy really like burgers.”

  Gramps turned to Preacher and then Tommy, who were now flanking him, both looking like they wanted to bust out laughing.

  “You boys like chicken?” he asked.

  He got two, “Yes, sirs.”

  “We’re having chicken,” Gramps decided.

  He then took off to go buy chicken.

  “That man,” Gram groused, and she took off too, probably to go give more stick to Gramps then ride with him to go get chicken so she could talk him into hitting up the DQ after to get dilly bars.

  I got up, grabbed my guy and took him to the mudroom.

  When we were away from the others and I’d situated him so his back was to the dining room, shielding us, I asked, “How did you wring that miracle?”

  He grinned smugly. “Told you it’d go great.”

  “How did you wring that miracle?” I repeated.

  He got serious and said, “I told him he had a meeting with a firm of lawyers in the city on Tuesday and they already have a court date to win back custody of Julia. I also told him the lawyers, and Tommy, had hired private detectives who were digging into your dad, and because of that, Julia would be home soon.”

  It was my hands that landed on his chest then when I couldn’t hold myself up because of what he said and all it meant.

  Preacher took my weight, and for good measure, slid his arms around me.