by T. E. Sivec
I could never forget the look on his face when I strummed the guitar those first few times. Within a half hour, I could play every note without having to look down and make sure my fingers were in the right spots. His face lit up with the biggest smile I had ever seen, and he immediately started teaching me how to read music and play songs.
We'd spend hours down there together every single day, and I couldn’t think of anything else I would rather do than spend time with him. Plus, it made Mom mad and that was okay with me. Mom didn’t like anything that made me happy, but Dad said I should just ignore her.
“Layla Page! You are supposed to be working on your speech for my charity event at the children’s hospital!” my mom yelled angrily down to me. Her order was drowned out by the sound of my dad’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Oh, leave her be, Eve. That event is weeks away, and all she has to do is talk about her two-day stay with them last year when we thought she had pneumonia,” my dad yelled up the stairs to her as he walked off the bottom step and gave me a wink. I immediately stopped worrying about how irritated she would be when we finally surfaced from the studio in a few hours now that my dad was there. I had a surprise for him, and I was too excited to care about my mom yelling at him, complaining he spends all his free time with me and never pays attention to her.
“There’s my beautiful girl! How was school today?” Dad asked as he rushed over to my side and placed a kiss on top of my head.
“It was boring. But I got an A on my spelling test.”
My dad laughed and pulled up a chair next to me, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Never tell anyone I told you this, hummingbird, but school never stops being boring,” he said with a smile. “Now, show me what you’ve been practicing.”
I tried to hide my excitement, but it showed all over my face with a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear and my eyes dancing with anticipation. I could barely sit still.
“Well, I got tired of playing Leaving on a Jet Plane. I know you said it’s good for beginners because it only uses three chords, but that song sucks and it’s depressing,” I told him honestly as I positioned my fingers on the right frets and concentrated on what I was about to do.
“Well, alright then, show me what you learned!” my dad told me with another laugh.
I immediately closed my eyes and began strumming the first couple of notes to the song I’d secretly been teaching myself every day after school. One of my dad’s favorites. I always forgot where I was when I played. I forgot who was in the room with me and couldn’t hear people talking or anyone making noise. I forgot about everything but the music and how it made me feel—like I was free.
I finished the song a few minutes later and opened my eyes to find my dad staring at me with his mouth open and tears in his own eyes.
“You just played Wonderful Tonight flawlessly,” he whispered.
“I know,” I told him nonchalantly with a shrug of my shoulders as I looked back down at the guitar and fiddled with the strings.
“That was amazing, honey. I don’t even know grown men who have been in the industry all their life that could pick up a guitar for the first time and play something like that after only a few weeks,” he told me in awe.
“That’s probably because their guitars don’t take them away. Mine can take me anywhere I want to go if I just close my eyes.”
He continued to stare at me while I started to play the song again for him. I kept right on playing when he spoke next. I was already lost in my own world of music, but I could still hear him. I could always hear my daddy when he spoke.
“Don’t you ever forget that, hummingbird. You can go anywhere you want to go, be anything you want to be. Play because you love it and for no other reason. The day you stop loving it is the day it becomes a job. Making music should never be a job.”
I stopped loving it the day he walked out on my mother and me. I could understand why he would want to leave her. That part had never been a mystery to me. Even as a teenager, I knew he felt trapped. I could see the unhappiness etched on his face. He was tired of the arguments, tired of the guilt, and tired of not being happy.
“You look sad, Daddy.”
“Don’t worry about me, hummingbird. I’ll be okay. I have you and that’s all I’ll ever need to be happy.”
I didn’t blame him, really. I was the stupid, naïve one who thought that I could be enough for him.
My mother never wanted children and she made that perfectly clear to me on a daily basis.
“You are more trouble than you’re worth. I always knew having a child would ruin everything.”
She never wanted to ruin her body or have another human being share my father’s time and attention. I lost track of how many times she and my father fought over me. I was an accident, something that never should have been. But he begged and pleaded with her not to terminate the pregnancy. He promised her he'd do anything she asked if she only did this one important thing for him. The first time I heard that argument I was six years old.
“I knew promising to go through with having that child was a bad idea. All of your stupid promises you made me when I was pregnant about how you’d do anything for me if I kept it were all lies. All you care about is HER!”
At least back then he wanted me. He really wanted me.
The majority of my early life, my mother ignored me unless she felt like she wasn’t getting enough attention. But after I learned how to play the guitar, and my father taught me how to harmonize and sing as well, she could no longer pretend like I didn’t exist. Especially when strangers stopped her in the grocery store to tell her how beautiful my voice was the previous night during a school concert. Teachers, faculty members, and the women she spent every afternoon at the club with pulled her aside to tell her how amazing my natural talent was and how they’d never seen anyone so young play a guitar with such passion. My mother knew at that moment she’d finally found a way for me to pay her back for the misery she endured as my mother. I could never forget the fight they had the evening he died. It was long and loud and things were said that could never be unheard.
“I HATE her! Do you hear me, Jack? I can’t even stand to be in the same room with that ungrateful brat! And all you do is coddle her. She can fiddle around on an instrument and carry a tune. Why the hell shouldn’t she finally pay us back for all these years of putting up with her?”
My mother wanted to capitalize on my talents. My father just wanted me to be a kid for as long as possible. He knew I had more talent than anyone he’d ever seen, but he also knew what the pressure to be something more could do to that talent. It would turn it into something you worked your fingers to the bone for, something you sweat blood and tears for, instead of something you loved. In his career, as the owner of Hummingbird Records, he saw that happen to more than one person over the years. He didn’t want that for me, his little girl, not now, not ever. He wanted the choice to be mine when I was old enough to make it, not when I was just learning how to become a woman.
As I sat in my room that night, with the journal I wrote songs in resting on my lap, I heard the words I had always wished my father would say to her when she was going off on one of her tirades.
“I can’t do this anymore, Eve. I want out. I want a divorce.”
My heart had sped up and I held my breath when he said those words. I wanted to jump up and down on my bed and scream with excitement. He was leaving her and he’d take me with him. No more fighting, no more unhappiness, no more guilt.
When he walked out the door that night to supposedly clear his head, he had no way of knowing that all of his hopes and dreams for me would be erased within the hour. He would never know that even before his SUV wrapped itself around a tree, events were put in motion and choices were made to guarantee his opinions never saw the light of day. Someone else’s dreams and someone else’s wishes were piled so high on top of my teenage shoulders that each and every day, I grew weary from all of t
he pressure to be what someone else wanted. Even though I never heard him say it during their fight, my mother told me he wasn’t planning on just leaving her. He hated every aspect of his life, and as much as it pained him, he needed to leave me as well.
“Your father said he needed a clean break and a new life. Music just didn’t make him happy anymore, and I guess neither did we. I told you, he explained it all in the note he left.”
My mother’s weak attempts at comforting me when other people were in the room fell short. She didn’t lie about the note. She’d showed it to me plenty of times to prove I wasn’t as special as I assumed whenever I would question her about my father’s motives.
The day my father walked out the door and never came home, coincidentally, became the day that music became a job for me—the one thing he never wanted. But he didn’t want me, so why did I care anymore? I’d read the note; I knew how he really felt. I took up too much of his time, and he felt weighted down, like he had nothing left for himself. Everything he had to give went to me, and he was tired of it. He wanted to live for himself for once. The first time I read the note, I signed on the dotted line my mother put in front of me without even caring what I was doing. I was fifteen years old and just lost my best friend—the one person who had always protected me and stood his ground for me and who suddenly decided I was too much to handle. I had nothing on my side at that point except for my music, but after a while, even that left me.
I wasn’t free anymore. On days like today, I feel like I never will be.
At the sound of footsteps coming up the porch of my log cabin, my eyes fly open and the past disappears from my thoughts. I nestle the guitar back into its red velvet cushion in the case laying open by my feet and quickly snap the lid shut. With the heels of my well-worn, cowboy boots, I slide the guitar case under the couch and out of site before getting up to greet my guest.
The door pushes open without the formalities of a knock and my mother, Eve Carlysle, waltzes into the room looking every bit like the diva she is. Her perfectly highlighted and trimmed strawberry blonde hair hangs poker straight and ends just below her chin.
“New suit?” I ask her. I don’t really care, but I know if I don’t point it out right away, she’ll have something to say about how I’m always too concerned with myself to notice anything about her. It's a fight I’m definitely not up for having today.
“Chanel. No one else really does perfectly tailored suits like they do. It fits me like a glove, doesn’t it?” she asks, turning this way and that to show off the new outfit my latest single helped her buy. “Look at how tiny the white trim makes my waist look.”
I cringe slightly as I get a close-up view of the white, perfectly creased dress pants. Only Eve Carlysle would have the balls to wear white after Labor Day. She thinks it’s okay because it accentuates the long legs she sculpts and tones with a personal trainer every other day, also courtesy of my royalty checks.
She looks just like a show business mother, minus the mothering part.
When she’s satisfied with my perusal of her outfit, she breezes past me. The click of her black, four-inch Louboutin heels across my hardwood floors echo through the cabin, and the sickeningly sweet fragrance of her signature Gloria Vanderbilt perfume wafts through the air, the scent cloying and making me sneeze.
I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans and stare at the woman I barely even recognize anymore. My mother's not the June Cleaver type, never one to hug me when I scraped a knee or soothe me when I had the flu, but the coldness that has come over her ever since I've made a name for myself in the music industry is astounding. She takes the role of being my manager very seriously. Nothing and no one can ruin the empire she’s painstakingly built brick by brick. My mother will never be ashamed of the way she’s gone about things: coercing her young, impressionable teenage daughter into signing an ironclad deal when she’d just lost her father and found out he had grown tired of her. How could she feel even a moment’s worth of shame when she has everything she’s ever dreamed of? I'm exactly where she’s always wanted me—under her thumb, doing everything she dictates.
“I have a few photographs you need to sign for the fan club and the list of radio stations you’ll be doing call-ins for tomorrow morning starting at six,” my mother states a she pulls a stack of black and white glossy photos out of her Birkin bag along with several sheets of paper.
I make my way across the room to my kitchen table so I can stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the woods surrounding the cabin while she methodically organizes the stack of photos next to a black Sharpie marker, standing there with her arms crossed in front of her waiting for me to do as she wishes. Just like always.
I pull out a chair, the legs scraping across the floor, and sit down with a small sigh, wishing—not for the first time—that I can say no to my mother. These three days are supposed to be vacation days for me and the band, time for us to regroup and take a break from the back-to-back touring schedule Eve booked the year before. For six months, I’ve done nothing but think about these three days, dreaming about not having to set my alarm in the morning and being able to take my coffee out onto my wrap around porch so I can watch the sun rise over the hills of Tennessee. Three whole days without my mother telling me what to say, what to wear, and what to sing.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. It never is with Eve. She's always working, always thinking about new ways to make a buck and increase my value. I've tried many times over the years to defy my mother, to do things on my own time, my own terms. But it never ends well. My mother controls every aspect of my life, and I've allowed it to happen.
Sure, I was young at the time, and I’d just lost the one person who I thought truly cared about me, but I should have known better. Eve made me promises and dangled dreams in front of me that could be mine if I just reached out and took them. I signed every paper she put in front of me the day of the funeral, thinking I’d finally done something to make my mother proud of me, make her love me. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was all a lie.
It comes as no surprise to me as I sit down at the cedar table that the promise of vacation time was a sham. I should have known better than to dream, even of something as small as a few uninterrupted days alone in my cabin. Nothing good ever comes from dreaming except disappointment.
I pick up the black marker and begin the tedious process of signing my name to hundreds of copies of a picture of me smiling straight into the camera with a cowboy hat on my head and my long, blonde hair hanging in waves around my shoulders. I don’t even pay attention to the name I scribble. As I flip picture, after picture, after picture, all I do is stare into the eyes of the woman in the photo and wonder why it looks nothing like the one I see in the mirror every day.
She’s late. Of course she’s fucking late. God forbid she realizes the world doesn’t revolve around her.
Reclining comfortably in my chair, my booted foot resting on one knee, and my fingers tapping a steady rhythm on top of the conference room table, I’m sure I look like the epitome of calm and cool. Inside, I’m about to punch the God dammed wall. Leave it to the princess to not give a shit about a meeting regarding her own personal safety.
I watch as her mother, Eve, glances at an expensive diamond and gold watch on her slim wrist and huffs in irritation.
Right there with you, sister.
Gwen had made all the arrangements with Eve Carlysle about the job, so I have yet to talk to her, aside from our initial introduction when I first got to Hummingbird Records a half hour ago. She seems nice enough, concerned about her daughter’s safety and all that crap, tells me I have full access to Layla, and she'll make sure this whole thing is my call. Whatever I need, whatever I ask—it's mine. She says her daughter most likely won’t be happy about the whole thing, but I expect that. And I don’t give a shit.
As soon as I got over my initial shock that the twenty-percent increase I demanded to perform this job wa
s accepted, I began doing research on the twenty-three-year-old singer. Google was like the Great and Powerful Oz in all things relating to Layla Carlysle.
Pulling out the few printed pieces of paper I’d stuck in the inside pocket of my black leather jacket, I open them up and scan the words probably for the twentieth time while the small handful of people in the room talk amongst themselves quietly.
To say Gwen was irritated with me that I clearly had no idea who this person was is an understatement.
“Layla Page Carlyle, born to loving parents Eve and Jack, led a pampered upper class life,” I read aloud from the screen of my computer while Gwen perched on the edge of my desk. “Father started up one of the largest recording labels ever to hit the music scene in Nashville. Mother worked as a secretary for him. Layla attended—”
“How do you not know all of this information already?” Gwen questioned as she swung one of her legs back and forth, her foot banging against my desk over and over.
I reached over and placed my hand on her knee, squeezing my fingers just enough to get her attention. She scowled at me and I removed me hand, not really giving a shit if I pissed her off. At least she stopped making all of that racket against my desk.
“Why in the hell SHOULD I know this information about her?”
I continued to scroll through the article once I knew she wasn’t going to go back to annoying me with her foot pounding. Now she was just going to annoy me with her talking.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe because she’s only one of the biggest recording artists in the country? She’s been around for years; she’s grown up in the public eye. EVERYONE knows all about Layla Carlysle,” Gwen informed me.
“Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but I’ve never heard of her. And from what I found on YouTube, I’m pretty sure there’s a reason for it. That shit is straight up Britney Spears, God awful―make-your-ears-bleed—shitty dance club music,” I told her with a slight shiver as I recalled the few minutes I had spent listening to a couple of her songs last night. Time I could never get back. I should add another ten percent onto the bill just for that shit.