“I’m so sorry, my girls just went insane.” She said to Nate, so apologetically.
“It’s OK. It happens all the time, I’m used to it.” He replied. He had changed the phone to the other ear, since the other one had a ringing in it, which may or may not go away in the next hour.
“Well, it’s your call Nate, is there something you wanted?”
“No, just thought I would touch base, and tell you again how much I enjoyed your story.” There was silence for a moment.
“I’m so pleased someone likes it.” Was about all Carnegie could think to say, she looked over her shoulder at her oldest two, who were in recovery from what looked like a nuclear holocaust.
“I take it that, my daughters know who you are, even if I don’t.”
“Appears so, how about I call you another time, maybe a different time to this. It seems that you have priorities in the morning.” Nate could hear that he had disrupted the flow of her gauntlet.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea, well thanks for the call. Have a great day.”
“Oh... it’s night here. Well, late afternoon anyway.” It was just something he said to hold the conversation together, before it ended badly.
“Oh, of course... Sorry about that. Well have a great night, and thanks for the call. Bye Nate.” She said casually.
“Bye Carnegie, and thanks, for the chat.” He hung up, pleased he had called, yet a little nervous that it hadn’t been the right thing to do. Time would tell.
Carnegie Lane turned to her daughters, still not recognizing the magnitude of what that call had done to them.
“Come on you two, you have a bus to catch.” She said, trying to restore order.
“MUM! That was NATE BOWMAN! Like… how do you know him?” Sobian asked, still shaking.
“I don’t, it’s a long story, now get your shoes on.”
“MUM!!! Do you know who he is?” Olivia was continuing the interrogation that would not end until they had answers.
“He’s in a band, some band, and I sent something off to his sister a while ago, and now we email.”
“You email him? What could you have possibly sent to his sister in the first place, that lead to Nate Bowman calling for a chat? What’s going on?” Both of them had their hands on their hips waiting for an answer. For a moment, it looked like they were the parents, and she was the child, busted for escaping the window in her room late at night.
“It’s a long story, I wrote a book, well it’s not a book yet, but I hope it will be. I sent it to Katalie Bowman in London, she’s an agent, and somehow, he read it. He emailed me a few times and told me what he thought of it. That’s all. It’s nothing; now get your shoes on.” They grinned from ear to ear looking at each other.
“You wrote a book? Are we in it?” They asked, determined not to move until the revelations of this morning were well and truly on the table.
“No, it’s fantasy fiction, and you will be fantasy fiction if you don’t hurry up.” She started to mobilize them, which worked to a certain degree.
“Do you know what Nate Bowman looks like?” They questioned, knowing it may come as a shock for her to recognize who it was she was talking to, since it was clear, she had no idea.
“Nope, wouldn’t know him if I fell over him in the street.” Carnegie Lane replied casually and honestly.
Sobian grabbed her hand and led her to their bedroom. The walls were covered with posters. Even though she had cleaned this room a thousand times, she had never paid any attention to the walls, or even who it was that her children had decided was their idol of the moment.
“See this wall Mum; this is our dedication to Nate Bowman. The rest of the room is our dedication to his band. So you see… Now you know. He isn’t just a someone. He is to most of the world what Robert Smith is to you. Mum…you know Nate Bowman! Don’t you know what that means?”
Carnegie could hear her, although she wasn’t really listening. She was staring at photos of her new friend, wondering how she had missed this. She sat down on the bed, mesmerized.
“How old is he?” She questioned. He didn’t look a day over thirty, if that.
“He’s forty one. Nearly the same age as you.” Olivia said, pleased she had her facts right.
It took Carnegie a moment or two to get herself together, but she did it. Then once again she became the mother to two daughters, who were hoping for a day off.
“Well, that’s all very interesting, now go! Get your lunches and off to school.” She said with authority as she got up and left the room without looking back. She didn’t need to look back, Nate Bowman was now permanently imprinted in her brain. She suddenly had a moment of being star struck. If he were to call her back, she only hoped she didn’t say something stupid. She also felt an overwhelming desire to go to the gym.
Carnegie didn’t know it then, but flying in a mail cargo container in the belly of a British Airways plane, was a letter from Katalie Bowman, slowly making its way to her place. The letter was offering her management with all the appropriate paperwork included to formalize the invitation.
The world continues to turn, regardless of what is happening in the background of your life. With the kids gone, Carnegie turned to the bathroom and began scrubbing it with rubber gloves and bleaches not really fit for human consumption. Yet her world was moving forward, even if it felt like it was still. It was only Tuesday, and the repetition of her life blended every day to become one. She didn’t know about the package, and what you don’t know, can’t change anything. That includes housework.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Carnegie Lane, mother of four, idol to inanimate objects, almost Author, was about to be represented by one of the most prestigious literary agencies in London.
I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesdays grey and Wednesday too, Thursday I don’t care about you it’s
Friday I’m in Love
“Friday I’m in Love”
Written by The Cure
The Cure – Wish Album 1992
5
After the children were gone and the bathroom was squeaky clean, Carnegie decided to go and check her email. Just in case. There wasn’t one, and she was almost disappointed. She decided to YouTube some songs, this time, they weren’t blasts from the past. She looked up Sheeva’s Disciples, and clicked on one. There were pages and pages to get through. To her, having to discover new music was daunting. She had, for so long, been caught in a cycle of repetitive memory.
As the song began to play, she decided she liked it. There was bass, drums, rhythm guitar, and there was lead. Then, there was an amazing vocal. She went into the girls rooms and looked through their CD collection. She found five Sheeva’s Disciples CD’s, which amazed her. Most bands these days were lucky to have two, let alone five. She grabbed one randomly, and went and put it into her large boom box stereo, the one with the speakers fit for a small stadium.
For the rest of the day, she discovered a new band, a new sound, and it gave her a lease on life she never knew possible. Time flew along with the increments of the songs; one by one she made her way through four CD’s.
The bus dropped off the kids at the corner of their street. They could hear the music booming from nine houses away, and even by their standards it was loud. The older two looked at each other, bewildered. It wasn’t The Cure, or The Police, or anything that to them felt ancient and primitive. She was listening to their music. The old lady at number fifteen watched the bewilderment of the girls as they approached her house. She was in her front yard attending to her rose garden, somewhat unsuccessfully.
“Your mother does that all day long. No rest for any of us. It’s just not right.” She was attempting to gossip, it didn’t work.
In fact, the girls weren’t listening to her at all. There were still too many things that needed answering, starting with the mystery book. The younger two just followed on behind, oblivious to whatever it was that had possessed their older sisters this week. To the little ones, the twins were odd, a
nd although they loved them, they had no intention of really getting to know the individual personalities that were hidden behind one persona. Everyone got their names mixed up, every one asked, which one was which. To Sienna and Connor, it was obvious, so they just found the continual questions annoying.
When they walked in the door, they turned off the music. Their mother walked out of Sienna’s room, which she had been cleaning, and greeted them joyfully. They put the kettle on, fed their little brother and sister cake, then they made themselves and their mother a cup of coffee.
“Come and sit at the table with us Mum, I think it’s time we had a little chat.” said Sobian in a tone mimicking her mother as if it had been artfully practiced.
Carnegie went over and sat with her girls. She had a feeling this was going to come, so now was as good a time as any to fill her daughters in on what her life had been like, especially for the past year. The girls were only fifteen when their father left. They’d really only had a shell of a mother since then. The sudden change did need explanation.
Carnegie went to her room and brought out the printed manuscript of her book, the title page stared back at them:
“Impossible things” by Carnegie Lane.
She told them about the dream, about the idea, how it had consumed her every day for a month. They joked that to them, she didn’t seem much different and hadn’t even noticed she was even more absent than usual. Then she told them how she searched and found an agent. One single agent she chose from a photograph, that she believed was the right one. It was truly a coincidence that Katalie Bowman was sister to Nate Bowman.
She told them about the emails, and how really, he was just being nice. Both of the girls agreed that maybe their mother was good enough to be an Author.
“You do realize Mum, that if you become a friend to Nate Bowman, we get free tickets to the shows, and our social standing in the whole world will change from average to perfect.’ Carnegie laughed at their innocence.
Her experience with bands in her life so far, had been nothing but disappointing. Especially when she had been the one encouraging most of them in the first place, only to be left on the side lines when it mattered.
“You do realize that your reading way too much into this whole situation. What I think, is we just wait and see. Right now, I don’t even have an agent, I don’t have my manuscript accepted to be published, so therefore, I’m still just… ‘me with a story’. As for Nate Bowman, I’m sure he is just being polite.” Carnegie sighed a little as she got up and started making pancakes for dinner.
It had become a ritual in their home to have pancakes for dinner, not for breakfast or for any other reason.
Those two girls had a different idea completely, and if their mother wasn’t going to use her new found position in life, then they would use it for her. It could have been the beginning of the end for both of them, proclaiming their way to stardom before it had physically presented itself. They were too young to see it coming, and Carnegie Lane was too off the planet to even notice.
The rest of the week rolled around quickly and before she even gave it a thought, it was nearly over. Friday was always a good day. To Carnegie, it was the success of surviving another week… Another week closer to something new, another week further away from what tore her apart. Drinking her coffee out the back and enjoying the sun rise, she wondered if she should email Nate Bowman, perhaps to pressure him a little and see if he had any answers from his sister yet. Although she realized that the world of publishing was a slow and tedious one, she had also hoped for some word by now.
There were other agents she could contact, although every one of them would be second choice. He also had her curious, as to why he had persisted to the point of calling her. Was her book really that good? Or was a world class musician the only person on the planet who thought that way? There was time left before those kids would be up, so she decided to check her email, just in case something had come through during the night.
In the sanctuary of her room, she booted up her trusty computer. It was almost like an acknowledgement between friends; an electronic “hello” as she was greeted with the familiar beeps and buzzes indicating that her memory was talking to her hard drive. Then she waited as the way too many applications and software programs slowly but surely, took over the operation of her computer. Finally, she logged in to her email. It was empty, and that was exactly the way it made her feel.
She bit the bullet and began to write an email to Nate. Hoping, as he had asked, to keep the lines of communication going. She sat there, starting and deleting at least a dozen times. Suddenly she felt unworthy, to communicate with him, not able to find words that even made sense. It was as if finding out who he really was and seeing him in action put him strangely above her. Time slipped away and finally she stopped trying and left the email open, waiting until her children were out of the house and on their way to school before she continued. Somewhere between the peanut butter sandwiches, the carefully peeled oranges that wrapped back around the fruit in one long connecting line, the date slice, and the breakfast toast, she would find the magical words she needed to continue this friendship on the same even path it had been five days before.
She chased Sienna around the lounge room with the hair brush. It had become more than a morning ritual. It was a necessary exercise in this home that allowed the day to continue without change. It was while she was sorting out Connor that the older two made a break for her bedroom. Both of them were amazed that the very thing they were after was staring back at them from the computer screen. To them, it was as if fate had made the call. They scribbled down the private email address of Nate Bowman. Then they not-so-innocently scampered out of the room and quickly into their own, acknowledging between them the priceless information they held in their hand.
As quickly as the morning gauntlet had begun, it ended. Kids were gone, house was trashed and life went on exactly the same. Carnegie cleaned up the toast that had been dropped on the floor, and found small droplets of jam on the wall behind the kitchen table that Connor had placed on the handle of his spoon, using the main end as a platform for his thumb to create a projectile food weapon. Clearly it had been aimed at his sister, although the lack of screaming meant that he missed. She turned on her stereo, flashed back to Billy Idol, and once again, began to dance and sing her way through the day.
The door bell rang at about 10.30am that Friday morning. The music was so loud, she almost missed it. Turning down the stereo, Carnegie Lane made her way to the door, and greeted the postman who had in his hand an international registered letter in an A4 folder. She signed for it. Her heart racing, she decided to savor this moment, regardless of how that moment turned out. Carnegie made herself a cup of coffee, and sat at her kitchen table. Slowly and carefully she opened the package. The letter inside was on think creamy bond paper, with a beautiful embossed letter head. She began reading the letter, that spoke encouragingly of her work. By the time she finished, she was in tears.
Katalie Bowman had signed it by hand, and had agreed to be her agent. Carnegie’s story was now represented and once she signed the enclosed agreement, they would begin the task of feeding her book to the appropriate publishers. As much as the representation made her happy, she also knew she had just found the opening line to her next email for Nate Bowman. Suddenly, Carnegie Lane was a little more creatively credible than she was, an hour ago.
-----Original Message-----
From: Carnegie Lane ([email protected])
To: Nate Bowman ([email protected])
Sent: Fri, 18, June 2010 10:05 am
Subject: I’VE BEEN ACCEPTED !
Hi Nate,
Just wanted to say, thanks for the phone call the other day. It may have created a frenzy here although it was entertaining to watch. It made my day. Not to mention my daughters.
Now for the good news, no… GREAT NEWS!.. My manuscript has been accepted by your sister. She is going to represent me! How fantastic i
s that! Well, you’re the only one I have to tell, so you’re getting my celebration email! Hope you have a great day/night/afternoon/whatever depending on where you are right now. Talk soon. :D
Carnegie!
PS. YAY!
Nate Bowman was in Germany, staying at The Regent Hotel in Berlin. It was 2.30 in the morning and he was attempting to sleep. His blackberry went off, he chose not to ignore it. Reaching over, he opened the new email message. A smile crept over his face as he read it. He also felt an overwhelming joy, not only that Carnegie knew now what he already knew, but she’d also sent him an email. It was like a little win. He had waited until she made the next move on this interesting little friendship that was developing and was pleased he didn’t have to wait that long. He decided to email back straight away.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nate Bowman ([email protected])
To: Carnegie Lane ([email protected])
Sent: Fri, June 18, 2010 2:27 am
Subject: RE: I’VE BEEN ACCEPTED !
Carnegie that is great news! I’m so happy that you know! Your story is really good, I can’t tell you how much I loved it, and now
I don’t have it in front of me I miss it. I really enjoyed talking to you the other day, I even loved the noise in the background. It reminded me of when I grew up, the sound of family. Kat is really excited to represent you, in fact she is on her way here in the morning. I am in Germany at the moment, it’s cold and I can’t sleep. Your email is a welcome distraction. We are touring Australia in late July. You are in Bundaberg yes? Queensland so that’s Brisbane if my geography serves me right. I will arrange passes and tickets for all of you and we will catch up. I can’t wait to meet my almost famous Author.
Have a great day
Nate x
He sent off that email without hesitation. He also sent another one to his tour organizer and personal assistant, asking them to set aside five back stage passes and concert tickets for Carnegie Lane and family to the three shows in Brisbane. He thought about it for a second, then added more onto the message. He also asked that two rooms be booked at the same hotel on the same floor reserved for her.
The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane Page 5