by A. E. Radley
The music started; Hope vocalized along with the melody. I couldn’t place the song; it sounded vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure where I’d heard it before. The audience recognized it, though. They clapped loudly, quieting down only as Hope’s lilting voice began to sing.
The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I’m the queen
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I’ve tried
Don’t let them in, don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know
Well, now they know
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt something tickling my cheek and reached up to touch it. My fingers came away wet.
Her music did this to me. Her music had always done this to me. Something about the way her voice wrapped around each note, something about the way the music seemed to float out of her, word by word and verse by verse. No one else’s music affected me the same way, made me so emotional. And although I enjoyed her catchy pop songs, this raw, unadorned version of Hope had always been my favorite — just her, with an acoustic guitar, sitting on a stool on the stage.
Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
The chorus of the song came, and I suddenly remembered where I’d heard it before. It was from a Disney film, the one with the girl who accidentally freezes things with her hands, and she’s so afraid of her own power that she runs away from her family and her kingdom.
The shell around my heart, which earlier had cracked open a tiny bit, now splintered and broke completely, like ice fracturing beneath the weight of an ill-placed step.
Don’t let them in, don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know
It was me. Hope was singing a song about me. Singing a song about the years I’d spent denying my feelings for her, first when we were teens, later when she broke my heart and all my friends told me to leave and never look back. Hope was singing about the past five years with Karen, when I’d made myself smaller to fit into Karen’s cramped world, to stay contained inside the box she’d built for our life.
But it was a song about Hope, too. A song about a girl destined to become a powerful woman, a girl who was too big to stay contained inside the small kingdom she’d been born into, who broke free from its constraints only to be imprisoned in a new way, by a new set of circumstances.
As I gazed at the TV screen, watching Hope sing with her eyes closed, watching the emotion play out through the lines of her face, I saw a woman imprisoned by the twin powers of talent and tragedy. The sun nourishes but the sun also burns, and the sun of Hope’s talent had always danced the line between the creative and the destructive.
My power flurries through the air and into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back, the past is in the past
If you know a musician well, you can hear her thoughts, her mood embedded in the songs she chooses, in the way she sings them.
As the cameras panned through the crowd, I could tell by their reactions that the audience couldn’t hear what I was hearing, couldn’t see what I saw in Hope’s face. They hadn’t heard her sing for two decades the way that I had, from impromptu concerts with her uncle on the front porch to her earliest coffee shop gigs in high school. They didn’t recognize what I did — a woman about to run, about to shut the world out behind a wall of ice, just like the girl in the Disney movie.
Hope was in pain and she was in trouble. She needed me, or she would stay trapped in the ice palace of her own creation indefinitely.
I let the television play while I grabbed my laptop from the bedroom. I opened a browser tab and started searching for flights to Los Angeles.
BOXING DAY, PART 1: “THAT’S WHAT I LIKE,” BRUNO MARS
HOPE CALDWELL
[ REFRAIN (HARMONIZING) ]
The sun was overbright when I woke, the kind of bright that penetrates closed eyelids and triggers a dull ache in the head. I had fallen asleep in my study for the second night in a row, right cheek pressed against my open notebook. I sat up in slow motion, groaning in annoyance as I peeled the notebook page from my face.
“Ah, so Sleeping Beauty finally rises from her slumber,” said a cheery British voice behind me.
“Whatever you’re selling, Nigel, I don’t want any,” I grumbled.
“Selling?” said Nigel. “Pssh. Only crooks and all major retailers sell things on Boxing Day.”
Boxing Day. Right. The extension of Christmas celebrated by Brits and the parts of the world that used to be British.
“You’re looking rather… glowing this morning,” Nigel said, coming up to half-sit on my desk.
“I don’t feel ‘glowing,’” I said.
“By ‘glowing,’ I meant ‘hungover,’” he said. I thought I detected a note of concern — or possibly disapproval — in his voice. “Although you did get glowing reviews for your rendition of ‘Let It Go’ last night.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, thumbed the screen. “‘In her first public appearance since the tragic mass shooting in Chicago on November 1,’” he read, “‘pop singer Hope mesmerized the audience with her pared-down, acoustic version of Frozen’s big hit, ‘Let It Go.’ One couldn’t help but draw the comparison between Disney’s tragic ice queen heroine Elsa and the reigning queen of pop. Like Elsa, Hope has hidden from public view since the Chicago shooting, canceling tours and refusing requests for — ’ eh, you don’t need to hear the rest of it,” he said, sounding embarrassed as he trailed off. “The point is, they liked the song.”
“I don’t care if they liked it or not,” I grumped. “I did it because it was a way to take a third of that money and give it to the Sandy Hook Promise.”
“Yes, yes,” Nigel said with an impatient wave of his hand. “I was there when you had the conference call negotiating the terms of the performance, remember? But my question is this: Are you planning on leaving this study today? Because you have two invitations for lunch; George will absolutely not let me alone; and your physical therapist is still sore about you standing her up last week. She changed her travel plans to do a session with you, you know.”
His tone was that of a scolding parent more than a personal assistant, and I wasn’t above reminding him of it.
“Is my need for solitude inconveniencing you, Nigel?” I asked. “Funny, but I’m pretty sure I pay you to be inconvenienced so that I don’t have to be.”
Nigel’s mouth pursed into an unhappy pucker. “You’ve been locking yourself in this stuffy little study ever since you got back from Georgia.” He gestured at the study. “I mean, honestly. Look at this mess. Every day it smells more and more like an armpit sweating booze and Chinese takeout. You’d think your mother never taught you to clean up after yourself.”
I frowned. “You’re right. She didn’t. My mother was an alcoholic who gave me up to her sister Tina before the state could do it for her.”
“I’m — poor choice of words, sweetheart,” Nigel said, blushing a deep crimson. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
I pivoted my chair to face him and saw that he had a point about the state of the room. Dirty clothes were strewn across the floor; the futon that I sometimes slept in held a bunched up throw blanket and messy pile of pillows on one corner; empty and half-empty boxes of delivery meals decorated my desk, coffee table, and end tables; and my acoustic guitar, the possession I valued most in the world, lay casually on the floor, as if it had gotten so tired of its stand that it had crawled down onto the area rug to take a nap.
I needed to clean. But I couldn’t bring myself to c
are.
I turned back to my desk, knocking over a shot glass that had the sticky remnants of tequila at the bottom in the process. The few drops that hadn’t dried spilled onto my open notebook. I cursed and wiped it off with my thumb.
Without turning back around, I told Nigel, “Whoever invited me to lunch, tell them no. Tell George I’m too tired to meet after last night’s show and we can talk after New Year’s. As for my physical therapist…” I sighed, straightened my bad leg underneath the desk. It was still asleep, or else it was still drunk or hungover, because it didn’t complain much. I was sure, though, that the pain would come back soon enough. And I doubted there was much the physical therapist could do about it. “Tell the physical therapist we’ll call her when I’m ready. Also probably after New Year’s.”
I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and fished out a tequila bottle. Half of it was gone, though I couldn’t recall having drunk it. Probably not a good sign.
I could tell by his reflection in the glass that Nigel had made no move to leave.
“What?” I snapped at him testily.
“Are you going to stay in your room and drink all day?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
He pretended to think. “Oh, I don’t know… maybe because you don’t want to turn into a cautionary tale told in People magazine?”
I snorted. “I’m not Amy Winehouse. Don’t try to make me go to rehab; I’ll say ‘No, no, no’.”
He rolled his eyes. “Ha, ha. Very funny. So very funny that I almost forgot to laugh.”
“Get the stick out of your ass, Nigel. I gave a great performance yesterday. A great sober performance. So back off and just let me have a day to myself, alright?”
“Fine,” he said. “But if you’re still in here stinking of tequila when I go home from the day, I’m letting George in.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, but I would.”
“Alright, alright,” I said. My manager George didn’t intimidate me, but I didn’t want to deal with his shrill, hysterical complaints, either. Not today. “I’ll stop drinking after lunchtime, I’ll contemplate taking a shower, and I’ll clean up the room. Happy?”
“Fair enough,” Nigel said. He paused. “For now.”
JULIE ARON
I drummed my fingers impatiently on my leg as the ride share car fought with traffic to get away from LAX.
“Malibu, huh?” said the driver, trying to make friendly conversation.
“Yeah.”
“Fancy place. You heading there on vacation? Ringing in the new year?”
“Umm… something like that.” I’m going because I think the girl I’ve loved since I was fifteen years old might be on a downward spiral of self-destruction, I thought. Because I saw her perform a song and the way she sang it was raw and pained and hinted at hidden things. Because I think I might be able to pull her out of that spiral, even though I might be spiraling myself.
“Where ya from?” asked the driver.
“Atlanta,” I said, then amended with, “more or less.”
“East Coast, then. Bet it’s cold about now, even in Atlanta.”
“It was sixty-one or sixty-two on Christmas Day,” I said. “But it’s supposed to be more like forty-five today.”
He let out a low whistle. “I’ve been in Southern California all my life. Even sixty-two sounds bad to me.” We were quiet for a while; his music played softly in the background. I couldn’t place it until it got to the chorus —
Cool jewelry shining so bright
Strawberry champagne on ice
Lucky for you, that’s what I like, that’s what I like
Lucky for you, that’s what I like, that’s what I like
Oh, right. Bruno Mars. I hoped it wouldn’t get stuck in my head.
“Lots of celebrities live in Malibu,” the driver said.
“Is that right.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding more enthusiastic on the topic than I was. “Britney Spears, Leonardo DiCaprio, and, uh — ” He snapped his fingers a few times. “I’m blanking on the actor’s name. As Good as It Gets? A Few Good Men? Played the Joker in the old Batman movie?”
“Jack Nicholson?”
“Yeah! That’s right. Jack Nicholson. He lives in Malibu. Plus Miley Cyrus. Oh — and someone you might be interested in: Ellen DeGeneres.”
Someone I might be interested in. The implication made me want to roll my eyes.
“You know who just bought a big ol’ house in Malibu a couple years ago?” the driver said. “Six or seven acres, tennis courts, built-in recording studio?”
“Who.”
“That singer who got shot in Chicago. Hope.”
I said nothing.
“I saw pictures of the house online. Facebook or something, I can’t remember.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “Terrible thing, the way shootings have gotten to be in this country these days. Seems like there’s another one every time you turn around.”
“It’s true,” I agreed.
We made the rest of our forty-minute drive from the airport in silence. I let my thoughts wander, and I toyed with the gift I’d picked up for Hope during the layover in Houston.
The driver’s eyes bugged out when he arrived at the outer gate to Hope’s mansion. But if he recognized it from “Facebook or something,” he didn’t say so. Nigel buzzed us in once I identified myself, and the driver let me out at the top of the circular driveway, where a fountain sprayed happily, defying any notion of a California drought.
I didn’t doubt that the driver would snap a few photos before he drove away to pick up his next passenger. Even if he didn’t know the mansion was Hope’s, he knew it was someone’s. But where he saw grandeur, I saw only a magnificent prison.
I stood on the doorstep, my luggage around me. After a moment, I pressed the button beside the door and listened to the baritone bells inside.
BOXING DAY, PART 2: “LEAST COMPLICATED,” INDIGO GIRLS (AGAIN)
HOPE CALDWELL
“Who was at the door, Nigel?” I asked without turning away from the desk.
“I was,” said a familiar voice.
I spun around in my chair and instantly regretted it, my head spinning with the effects of both hangover and fresh tequila. It took me a moment to speak, partly because of my shock at who had stepped into the private sanctum of my study, partly because of the alcohol.
“Jules? What are you doing here?”
“I saw your performance last night,” she said. “On the Christmas special. So I bought a plane ticket.”
My brow crinkled. “What do my Christmas special and your flying three thousand miles across the country have to do with each other?”
Her eyes roved over me, over the desk, where the uncapped bottle of tequila and a shot glass sat. “You know why.”
How had she known?
But I crossed my arms against. “What are you even talking about? Not that I don’t want you here,” I added hastily. “But I just don’t know why a Christmas special would bring you all the way to Los Angeles.”
Julie crossed the room to where I sat. She reached for me, and I braced myself for her touch. But instead of touching me, she reached past me, grabbing the neck of the tequila bottle and the shot glass and promptly leaving the room.
She came back empty-handed. “You did this once before. In college, right after I broke up with you.”
“Did what before?”
“Don’t play dumb, Hope,” she said, but her tone was gentle. “You drank yourself into a hospital bed. I wasn’t going to let you do it again.”
I shook my head weakly. “I’ve never been one of those tortured artists with a drinking problem. I’m not about to become a stereotype.”
“Maybe you don’t have a drinking problem per se. But that doesn’t mean you won’t hurt yourself in other ways.”
The implication sounded ominous. I resented it but worried that she was right at the same time.
“I still don’t se
e what it has to do with my Christmas special,” I said, trying to keep a hold on my rapidly degenerating stubbornness. “I did it to raise money for gun legislation, you know.”
“I heard the song you sang — the one from the Disney movie that the big Broadway star made famous. I can’t pronounce her name,” Julie said.
“Idina Menzel,” I supplied.
Julie waved her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I listened. I heard the way you sang it.” She paused. “You’re forgetting that I know you, Hope. And you’re forgetting that I’ve been listening to you play music since you learned guitar. I knew something was wrong from the first verse.”
I rubbed my eyes, which stung with dryness and a hangover. “So you flew all the way to Los Angeles because you heard me sing a song.”
“I flew all the way to Los Angeles because I was worried about you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but — ”
“Nigel says you’ve been a mess ever since you got back from Georgia,” Julie said, interrupting me.
“Nigel likes to say a lot of things,” I grumbled.
We glared at each other for a long few seconds, caught in a kind of battle of wills. I wasn’t quite ready to admit how glad I was to see Jules, how much her unannounced cross-country trip had touched my heart, but for her part, she wasn’t ready to tell me the whole truth. There was something else to her visit, something she hadn’t said yet. I could feel it in her posture and see it in the look on her face, and I was as certain of it as she said she had been certain that I was falling apart.