Paradise

by Jill S. Alexander

  Where that wind began, I didn’t know. I only knew that it had a life of its own and could sway everything in its path.

  I stood at the end of the pier, the toes of my boots slightly beyond the edge. And just to the outside of my boots were those familiar scuffed-up snip-toes. Paradise wrapped his arms around my waist. His belt buckle cold against my lower back. His chin resting on my head. Every now and then after the wind swirled past us, he leaned against me, bending me toward the water, far enough forward that my heels would rise, but not so far as to lose his balance and lose me to the water.

  That was where he kept me. On the edge.

  An old Eagles song was coming from the Bronco. Paradise turned me around, facing him. My heels hung off the pier. The only thing keeping me out of Moon Lake was the strength of his hand. He kissed my neck and whispered, “I say we go skinny-dipping.”

  I buried my face in his shirt. Embarrassed and laughing at the same time. “You first.”

  The Eagles faded, and a two-step beat lapped around us in time with the water against the bank. A rocking country beat. And we danced. Spinning round and round on the pier. Over the water. In the purple haze of twilight. The old quarter-sawn boards creaking with every two-step and twirl.

  As the song drifted out and another in, Paradise held me in his arms and pushed his lips against mine in a way that made me forget where I was, forget the time. My feet had long since left the ground. All I could feel and all I could taste was the sweet softness of his lips.

  I wanted to stay in that moment, hold tight to it, but Paradise pushed us forward.

  He brushed his fingertips along the slope of my neck. His middle finger slipping gently under my bra strap. His hand was hot against my skin and his heart pumped through his palm.

  I squeezed his wrist, kissed his hand, and walked away from him to the end of the pier. So much in my life was uncertain. Not just him. The band and school and where I’d end up. Where drumming would take me. I couldn’t figure us out, until I figured me out.

  Paradise stayed back. I heard him blow out a long, hard breath followed by the clopping of his boots on the pier. He sat down behind me. I pointed at the bright star shining near the moon. “That’s Venus.”

  “How do you know?” Paradise smoothed his hand across my stomach and under my shirt.

  “Lots of factors.” I leaned back into him. “Starting with it’s the clearest, brightest thing in the night sky, and it reaches optimum brightness right after the sun sets.”

  He laughed. His fingertips tickled my ribs. “Did you just say ‘optimum brightness’?”

  “I’m good in science.” I felt compelled to defend my intellect. “And math.” I thought about the kids at school who grew up in Big Wells with tutors and social calendars and the purebred, inbred prejudice that rural kids were dumb hicks. I pushed Paradise’s hand off my stomach and sat up. “I’m ranked number four in my class. I can quote Mark Twain and the geometry formula for the area of a cone.”

  The water below us swished as a bass hit a grasshopper. The tree frogs whirred in a mad harmony with the locusts and a lone whippoor-will.

  Paradise fingered a sprig of hair behind my ear. “Whew.” His breath danced around my neck. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever need a lecture and a dunce hat.”

  I swatted his leg. “I’m serious. My grades are important to me.” I traced a heart on his leg with my finger. “I may want to be a Rhodes scholar.”

  Paradise grabbed my head in his hand and kissed me. A long, slow kiss that burned through me and melted my boots. He leaned over, laying my back against the pier. His other hand pushed against my chest.

  The weight of him took my breath away. Scared me. If he didn’t stop, I wouldn’t be strong enough to stop him. I shoved him.

  Paradise raised both hands as if I held a gun on him. “A no would have been fine.”

  “I’m not . . I can’t…” I didn’t know what to say, so I just shook my head.

  No shouldn’t need a discussion, but I went there anyway. “I don’t want you to be mad.”

  “You keep saying that.” He twisted the bottom button on my shirt. “Would it change your mind if I said I was?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He kissed my forehead. “I’m all yours.” He paused, and I could feel his chest rise with a deep breath. “On your terms.”

  He hugged me, lifted my feet off the ground, as darkness closed around us. “But if you think you can coax me out here, use me to dance with, then drop me like an old drumstick, you’re wrong. I won’t be treated like that. I have too much self-respect.”

  “Coax you out here?” We got back in the Bronco. It was dark enough now that he needed the headlights. I’d be way late getting home. Time with Paradise slipped by.

  Every time a worry crept into my head, I stared at his hand clasped around mine. Dancing with him on the pier was something I’d never regret regardless. But regardless took on a whole new meaning when he pulled up to L. V.’s to let me out. My drumsticks were resting on the handlebars of the four-wheeler. They’d been moved. L. V. wasn’t due back until tomorrow. I looked across the thicket. There were only a few people who would’ve been up here and moved my sticks.

  Mother ranked at the top of the list.

  28

  GHOST NOTES

  Musical-themed sugar cookies cut into treble clefs and quarter notes and decorated in black and white covered the kitchen counter. A breeze floated through the screen door and the windows, cooling the kitchen from the heat of the oven and stove.

  “You missed dinner.” Mother squeezed icing from a fat tube with a tiny pointed tip on the end. Her hands were red and dry from working the cookie dough and ringing the icing bag. She had her hair piled on top of her head in a wonky updo. Definitely not Lacey’s work.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked. His truck wasn’t in the drive.

  Mother put the icing bag down. She dabbed her forehead with her sleeve. “It’s baseball season, Paisley.” She wiped her hands on her apron and smirked. “He’s running the batting cages. Probably blowing rays of sunshine up the rear end of every Little League dad who wants to hear his son is the next A-Rod. I’m prepping for a big catering job Saturday. That’s what we do. We work.” She rubbed her hands as if they ached and rubbing would ease the soreness. “We work so that you girls can have more opportunities than what we had. So you can get an education and get away from here. We don’t want you stuck eking out a living in Prosper County.”

  Mother could’ve been at L. V.’s. She could’ve moved my drumsticks. The dig about work came out of the blue.

  The screen door opened and Dad stepped in. Mother jumped. She wasn’t expecting him.

  Dad hung his baseball cap off a cabinet knob and kissed her. “Haven’t seen this in a while.” Dad pointed at the stitching on her apron. THE KITCHEN GODDESS CATERING. A relic from my elementary-school years and Mother’s short-lived attempt at a catering company.

  “I’m temporarily back in business.” Mother drew in a deep breath. She picked up the icing tube. “I agreed to do a job Saturday.”

  “Lucky folks,” Dad said. “Where have you been?” he asked me. Straight up.

  I dodged his question. Not wanting to lie to him. “I just got home.”

  Dad stared at me. He peeled his leather work gloves off his big hands, and he smelled like fresh-cut grass. Dad had been shredding. He could’ve moved the sticks. Maybe it was him after all. I thumbed toward Lacey’s room. “I’ll grab a snack later. Lacey and I need to talk about this weekend.”

  “Well, don’t bother planning on that youth retreat.” Mother pulled a fresh batch of music-note cookies from the oven. “Lacey will be trying out for another choir on Saturday. This one from the Bible college over in Jessup County.”

  “A Bible college?” I could still ride with the guys to Austin. But the very idea of Lacey attending a Bible college sounded like punishment. No way would she go. She was probabl
y hiding in her room, plotting a very un-Christian maneuver.

  Mother carefully slipped a spatula under each note and delicately placed the cookie on parchment paper. “She’s in for certain. I’ve agreed to do some catering jobs for the choir in exchange.” Mother gloated over her perfect cookie. “I’ll show those Prosper County choir snobs a thing or two.”

  Mother was a little like Waylon, always trying to prove herself. Somehow, Lacey was wound up in her efforts. I pitched the idea out that maybe her plan was flawed. “I don’t think Lacey would be happy going somewhere you had to bribe to get her in.”

  “Shows you what you know, honey pie.” Mother grabbed a wooden rolling pin and pounded flat another batch of cookie dough. “Connections. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Rich people do it all the time.” She leaned the force of her weight into the rolling pin. “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

  I thought about Waylon and how the Sliders’ bluegrass roots ran deep. They knew people who knew people. Waylon relied on none of those connections. Didn’t even want them. It was about the music for him. Making a name for himself. Letting his guitar make his introduction.

  Dad poured himself a glass of milk. “What do you think about that, Paisley?”

  He pushed me to make a stand. So I did. The picture I had of Lacey in Bible college trying to be something she wasn’t proved too much to let the charade continue.

  “I think it’s how hard you work that gets you somewhere. And I think Lacey’s done with singing.”

  “Done? Don’t you dare say that to her,” Mother gasped. “She needs us to believe in her. Singing is her life’s dream.” Mother pointed at me with her rolling pin. “You want to talk about hard work. Your father and I work day and night to support you girls. Lacey’s gifted. She’s going to ride that gift out of Prosper County and we have to believe in her. She’s worked year after year to try to make her dreams come true. Hard work.”

  I watched Mother go off in a cloud of flour.

  “From where I stand…” I paused and thought about the consequences of what was about to fly out of my mouth. “From where I stand, you’re the one doing all the hard work to make sure she gets to sing.”

  Mother slammed the rolling pin onto the counter. “She doesn’t need you running her down with smart-aleck remarks. She needs you supporting her. She’s got to pursue her passion or else she’ll be stuck in the same old same old.” Then Mother added, “Maybe you should get up enough gumption to find your own dream instead of goofing off at L. V.’s every day of the week.”

  Dad scrubbed his hands and forearms at the sink. He did nothing to come between me and Mother. He wanted me to tell her the truth. I could see it. If ever there was a moment to come clean, this was it. But I was within thirty-two hours of leaving for Austin. Mother would take more work than I had time for. Opportunities didn’t always present themselves at the right time. And if it was her who moved my sticks, she’d have said so by now.

  If Lacey had to go sing, I still had a ride with the guys. But I feared what she might do and not because of the singing farce. Without knowing it, Mother was separating Lacey from me. She wouldn’t be able to catch my performance. More important for Lacey, Mother was cutting her off from Levi. That might just be her breaking point.

  * * *

  Lacey had agreed not to push the issue of going out on a date with Levi until after Texapalooza. She did it for Levi, and she did it for me. Lacey kept her passion for cosmetology to herself probably because it was easier for her to slowly fail at singing than to let our mother down. Lacey, it seemed, gave up a lot of herself for other people. She had a problem saying no. However, at some point, yes becomes an impossible response. Lacey had finally hit that wall.

  “Bible college!” She sat in front of her salon mirror without a lick of makeup on. “What am I going to major in? Snake handling?” She took a sucker out of a drawer. “I need a smoke.”

  “You don’t need to smoke.” I wanted to shake her. “You need to go tell Mother you’re done singing, that you’ve thought for a long time about beauty school.”

  Lacey took a long pull at the sucker then popped it from her mouth with a smack. “You know she’ll be up Saturday morning early. Both of us can’t leave.” Lacey’s eyes reddened. She wanted to see Levi play and be there for me. Not going burned her up. “You can still ride with the guys, right?”

  “Yes.” I leaned against her dresser.

  “Covering for you is the best I can do.” Lacey growled, “Go for it, Paisley. Don’t let those boys upstage you.”

  I picked up a fat blush brush and tapped the handle. “Are you going to the choir tryouts?”

  “Hell, yeah.” Lacey began twisting her hair into a bun. “And I’m going full-on Pentecostal—denim skirt, tennis shoes, and no makeup. Lacey Tillery in her best Bible-thumping camo.”

  “Lacey, Bible college really isn’t that backward.”

  “I’m not dressing for the school. I’m dressing for Mother. She never once asked me if I wanted to go to sing in that choir. She just came home and told me what to do and where to do it. And she’s going to pay dearly for messing up my plans.”

  “She’ll never let you out of the house like that.”

  “Of course not. But by the time the fight is over, you’ll be halfway to Austin. She won’t even know you’re gone.”

  29

  SPIT-SHINED AND READY

  Uncle L. V. pretended to rid Miss Molly Moonlight of any imperfections she might’ve picked up on her last air-show outing. He clutched a can of wax and dabbed at her aluminum sides with a cotton cloth. Miss Molly didn’t have a blemish on her. L. V. just conjured up a reason to witness the Waylon Slider Band’s final rehearsal before Texapalooza.

  I put everything I had into the crash cymbal at the end of our set. That was the plan. We’d all end together on the high side: Waylon, Levi, and Cal bending the frets, Paradise with a wicked stretch of his accordion, me making the crash sing. We put everything we could rally, all we had on the top shelf. The high pitch rang throughout the hangar, all but lifting the roof off.

  “Yeah, I like that.” L. V. stopped his fake waxing. He’d listened to the whole set, start to finish. “Like the dark blues start and the bright end. You write all that, Waylon?”

  “Me and Cal.” Waylon ran his hand down the neck of his old Strat. “What about Paisley hand counting us in on the Latin drum?” He needed some outside assurance that opening with the caja would work.

  “A bare hand on an animal-skin drum?” Uncle L. V. dropped the cotton cloth on the back of the chair and patted his chest twice. “That’s native, son. It’ll crawl up in you and hang on.”

  Paradise glanced at me with a half smile, but he kept his thoughts to himself. We all did. Even Levi had his game face on. For him taking the stage would be just like taking the pitcher’s mound. And Cal. More so than anyone, Cal grasped the goal every time he grabbed his guitar. One and the same. The time for talking and analyzing and trying something new had passed. We’d planned the work, now we had to work the plan. We were ready. Waylon had us ready.

  We watched Waylon cradle his Strat in the case as if he were laying a baby in a crib.

  “Waylon”—L. V. picked up the waxing cloth and began folding it, edge to edge, until it was a small square—“your daddy showin’ up?”

  “Already there.” Waylon closed the lid on the guitar and smoothed his hands across the top. “Been there all week with my uncle. Performing at different events. The producer, Lloyd Maines, has them in the studio playing on some artist’s new record.” Waylon flicked the handle on the case. “He can’t afford not to show up when his name is on the band list.”

  My heart broke for Waylon. Split open. Even my mother had believed in Lacey despite her cratering at the rodeo. Mother blamed the bad performance on everything and everybody but Lacey. From what I’d seen at church, Waylon would never be good enough to get his father’s approval. It was clear Waylon didn’t think
so either.

  Levi and Cal were packed up and headed out. But Levi seemed to understand Waylon’s circumstance better than anyone. “It’s just you and the guitar, dude.” Levi clinched his left hand into a fist as if it held a baseball. “Block out the crowd. Block out the pressure. Can’t nobody do what you do, but you.” Levi turned around on his way out the door. He made sure L. V. heard him. “I’ll have the Tucker wine wagon gassed up, and I’ll be down there by the bridge at five in the morning. We’ll give you till five fifteen, Paisley.” Levi waited to see if Uncle L. V. would object.

  L. V. would let it go and he’d let me go. This was my deal and he wouldn’t interfere. He and Waylon and Paradise stared at me.

  “What?” I tried to play it off like showing up was nothing. “I’ll be there. You just be on time.”

  “Lock her up, Paisley.” Uncle L. V. grabbed his wax can. “I’m leaving for a bit.”

  Paradise slung his murse over his shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told me. “I need to catch your uncle. Talk him into loaning me a hat.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.” I chuckled at the idea that Paradise thought he could schmooze one of L. V.’s Colombian hats from his collection. I handed him my caja. “I can’t hide this at home.” The animal skin was warm from being played. I didn’t want to let it go. “Make sure it makes the trip.”

  Paradise took the drum. I trusted him. Maybe even with my own heart.

  Then I saw Waylon. Hands still spread on top of his guitar case. Head bowed. I think he was praying.

  Everyone cleared out. Waylon and I were alone.

  Waylon gathered his guitar and tucked his band notebook under his arm. He waited while I slid the hangar doors shut. One. Last. Time. I walked with him outside.

  “Don’t stand me up, Paisley.” He laid the guitar in the backseat of his car. “You lead us off. You set the pace. We’re all screwed without you.”