“I don’t say Rachel and Larry would have enough money between them to get married,” she said now, returning to the conversation she was actually having with her mother rather than the one in her head. “He’s a nice enough young fellow and all, but being a musician is hardly a steady job. They’re always darting around like a pair of blue-arsed flies, playing a show here and a show there—he teaches music lessons and the like but you got to have something more steady than that if you wants to start a life together.”
“It’s harder now than it used to be, for the young folks,” Ellen said. “Harder than it was in our day.”
This didn’t seem likely to Audrey—hadn’t her parents built a house and opened up a shop in the middle of the Great Depression? But Ellen never spoke of any hard times in the past; her memory seemed to cast a rosy glow over everything, and Audrey sometimes wished she had that kind of memory herself. Maybe when she was older, she would look back on the past as fondly as her mother did.
But not likely. Her own past, after all, contained Harry Pickens and the godforsaken farm in Louisiana, and the hard years of raising Henry alone, and poor Stella’s death. Then the aching loss that echoed like a door slammed in an empty house: Henry’s disappearance. Any good memory she might have, of Henry as a baby or a child or a young man, was too sore to linger on. She wondered if Frank felt that way too now, if every happy memory he had of his life with Sophie would always be blighted by the thoughts of these months in the hospital.
Don’t look back, Audrey told herself. Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt for looking back—she remembered that much from Sunday School—and she herself might be all salt tears if she thought too much about the past. Far better, even at sixty, to live in the present and look to the future.
When she called Frank that night she said, “Mom thinks you should come home. For awhile, anyway. I told her you’d probably want to stay where you are but you know there’s always a room for you here if you want it.”
She only meant to let him know she was willing to have him, more like a nice thought than anything. But after a long pause, Frank said, “Tell you the truth, Audrey, I might end up doing that. I mean, I’ll see where I’m to after the funeral and everything, but…I think so much about home, these days. And Frankie Junior, well, this is hard on him. He got a lot of bad influences up here, it’s not like home at all, you know. A fresh start might be good for both of us.”
Audrey felt a little rush of panic. Frank and Frankie Junior? Here, in her quiet house?
“Well, you’ll need to take some time to think about it, won’t you?” she said. “They always say, don’t make no sudden decisions right after a big loss. But you know you always got a place here.”
RACHEL
The phone call from Des Grant came just as she was leaving the shop to go do the sound check at Bannerman Park. Definitely some metaphoric resonance in that. Or whatever. Rachel listened more than she spoke, and ended the call by saying, “I need a day to think this over—you know I’m excited, but it’s a big step—yes, yes—I’ll call you tomorrow with a final answer. I will. Thanks.” As she spoke, the shop door pinged, which she was pretty sure would be either Nan come back from visiting Nanny Ellen, or Larry coming to drive her to Bannerman Park.
It was Larry. “What are you going to give a final answer about tomorrow?”
“Lots of things. Everything. I’ll tell you about it later—it’s no big deal. Right now I can’t focus on anything except this show.”
This was the biggest gig they had ever had, on the main stage at the Folk Festival. It was a big step up from playing on the side stages for the last two summers. And here was Rachel, putting a whole other plan into action without discussing it with Larry.
Larry did nothing, as far as she could tell, without talking it over with her. Since they had both graduated last year he had been completely focused on music, but for him it was a shared enterprise, something they were both equally involved in. “When is that one going to get a proper job?” Nan asked too often. “You mark my words, girl, you don’t want to go through life tangled up with someone who’s not going to be a good provider. Now, I’m not old-fashioned, I believe a woman got to be able to earn her own living, if I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t have sent you to university, though the Lord alone knows what good it did you. But you don’t want to be supporting a man either.”
Larry made enough, teaching and working a few afternoons a week at Hutton’s music store, to cover his share of the rent. But his real job was writing, performing, and recording music, some of it solo but mostly with Rachel. Despite the skepticism of the older generation (Larry’s parents, as well as Nan), Larry & Rae, as a duo, had gathered a following. People came to their shows, invited them to open for bigger artists. They had been all over the island this summer, playing at a bunch of festivals, and they had released an EP, six songs, that was selling all right down at Fred’s. This gig at the Folk Festival was the climax of everything they’d been working toward.
She pushed everything else, the phone call with Des Grant and the decision to be made, out of her mind as they got to the park. Something inside her shifted into Show Mode; she dropped Rachel Holloway like shrugging off an old sweater and became Rae. Rachel might be confused and conflicted, but Rae could step on stage with only Larry and a guitar and be perfect, clear, whole.
It was a warm August night and their set was right around sunset, so they began with a blaze of orange light flooding over the audience picnicking on the grass, and they ended, eight songs later, when the sky was a soft indigo and you could just see the first two stars. That would make a good song title, Rachel thought as she waved to the crowd one last time and followed Larry offstage. “The First Two Stars.” Already there was a thread of melody in her head. Then they were off stage surrounded by friends and fellow musicians, and there were hugs and kisses on the cheek. Anita Best and Sandy Morris both stopped her to say what a great set that was, really fantastic.
The tide of energy buoyed her up till midnight, when she and Larry and all the other performers gathered on stage to sing “The Ode to Newfoundland.” For this one night it all felt so complete, this whole “St. John’s music scene” people talked about. It was easy to forget how many of these people came home for these few summer weeks around the folk festival and then went back to other lives, other jobs, other hardscrabble attempts to make it big, usually on the mainland. Her euphoria had begun to ebb by the time she and Larry were reeling back to his place, half-drunk, at three in the morning. Rachel was starting to replace Rae, practical Rachel whose voice in her head sounded a little like Nan’s. A proper job.
She waited till morning, real morning, to tell Larry. Woke on the mattress on his floor to find him already up, no sign of a hangover or even sleepiness, scrambling eggs on the hot plate, brewing coffee.
He was two steps ahead of her, as he almost always was. “What was the thing? From yesterday afternoon, before the festival? When you were on the phone.”
Rachel realized Larry had been thinking about this too, and had put it aside, waiting till now to ask. He knew it was big; why else would she be on the phone telling someone she’d give them an answer to a question she had never even told him about?
She rolled over so her face was almost buried in the pillow. “It’s about a job.”
“Oh yeah? Which job is this?”
“It’s—I should’ve told you about it. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
There was silence, then she could hear Larry moving around. If I take this job, she thought, and if he doesn’t want to come with me, then I have to break up with him twice. I have to break up as his girlfriend, and then I have to break up the duo. Larry & Rae. I wonder which will be worse for him? Or for me?
“Rachel?” His voice was much closer now and Rachel turned her head to see him sitting cross-legged on the floor near her head, a plate of scramble
d eggs on his lap. “There’s more eggs over there if you want.”
“No.” All through her childhood she had dreamed of having a mom or dad who would make pancakes or waffles on a weekend morning for breakfast, only to find out, as an adult, that she didn’t want anything except coffee before about 2 pm.
“So, what’s this job? Are you going to tell me about it now?”
Rachel rolled over enough to look up at him with one eye. “It’s a really good job. Working with kids, like disabled kids, like the ones I’m working with now, you know, but teaching music. Kind of using music like therapy, I guess. It’s sort of experimental but they’ve got a grant and…it’s just something I’d really like to try.”
“That sounds awesome. And it’s…here? This is at Exon House?”
“It’s in…Halifax. If I take it, I’ll have to move up there.”
Her face was buried in her pillow again. She could see Larry’s knees in her peripheral vision. His eggs sat on his lap, getting cold.
“So…are you going to take it?”
“I don’t know.” A lie. The answer was yes. It had been yes since she had seen the ad, since she sent off the application. It had always been yes. She had always been going away, ever since the first time she and Larry kissed in the Albatross Motel. “I think yeah, probably. I really want a full-time job. I want a paycheque. And this is something that’s, you know, music and working with kids. I’m never going to get that kind of job offer here.”
“Why didn’t you…”
“Tell you. I don’t know. I should have. We should have talked about it. I wanted to ask you, would you ever consider moving away? It’s only Nova Scotia.”
Larry picked up his coffee cup and only then did she see, in the slice of him she allowed herself to look at, that there was another mug on the floor beside him. The coffee he made for her.
The things Rachel wanted to say weren’t in words, just feelings and pictures. If they were words, they might sound something like I am twenty-two years old and I’ve been in love with you since I was eighteen. There’s a story where two people meet and fall in love and marry and have kids and make music together forever, but it’s not my story. My story is about people going away.
“I just…I can’t see myself leaving here,” Larry said. “I know so many people feel they have to move away, but you know I’ve always been committed to us staying here, trying to make something that just grows out of—I don’t know. I guess I just assumed that this was—that it was something we were both committed to. Equally.”
“Right. You assumed.” Something hard crept into her voice, something that felt as real as buckling on a bulletproof vest. Even if her words weren’t completely true, what mattered was they would protect her. “You always assumed. You made the plans. Larry & Rae is your dream, not mine, and no matter how much we discuss things it’s always been clear that in the end, we’re going to do what you want.”
“That is not true! That’s totally unfair!” Good, now he was getting angry too and they would have a fight. A fight was something real. Not like this weird feeling that she just had to get away, to run as far as she could from a man she loved and from the music she loved. Rachel sat up on the mattress and hurled accusations at Larry like she was flicking shoes at his head—he was controlling, he was domineering, he was a male chauvinist pig, he didn’t respect her as a person, he was too ambitious, he wasn’t ambitious enough. Soon they were both yelling and crying and it was easy to grab her clothes and her guitar and stomp out. Back home to Nan and the store and the room that was still hers, where she could close the door behind her and play sad angry music all day and all night.
musical interlude
RACHEL HOLLOWAY
—No, I told you, I don’t play anymore. Haven’t played in ages except for work.
At work I lead little sing-along circles with the hospital kids, and at the school for the disabled kids I help them make up little songs of their own, encourage them to pound on the piano or beat the drums. They don’t have the fine motor skills for the guitar and anyway it’s hard on kids’ fingers. Henry told me I’d build up calluses on my fingertips and that was the one piece of good parental advice he ever gave me. Anyway. I used to think when I moved up here I’d keep making my own music, look for chances to perform, but instead I’ve stayed as far away from the music scene as possible.
—Come on now, don’t be like that, I know you can play. Give us a song.
Sharla leans over a tangle of long-legged bodies on the floor, pushes a guitar into my hands. A dozen or so of us are sprawled around Evan and Leah’s apartment, a little drunk, a little high, talking and laughing. A long relaxed Friday night. It was hard getting to know people, making friends in a new city. But I met Sharla at work, she’s a nurse, and after awhile I started hanging around with her crowd. I still think of them as Sharla’s friends, not mine, but I’m comfortable coming over here with her and spending the evening. Not so comfortable picking up the guitar, even though there’s been one making the rounds most of the evening. Halifax is like home this way. Every other person seems to be a musician. None of this crowd are professionals, or trying to be, though. Just people with day jobs who play and sing a little on the side. Normal people.
—I’m not talented, I just do music therapy. I play and sing enough to make sick kids smile, that’s all.
The guitar lies in my lap where Sharla put it. I refuse to curl my fingers around the neck.
—So modest! Do you want to see what I found? What secrets I’ve dug up on you?
—What?
Suddenly alert, like someone’s walked into a dark alley with me at night, like I’m in danger. The only danger here is the past, but that’s enough. Why am I so scared? Why do I get that sinking feeling in my gut when Sharla pulls out the cassette with the embarrassing hand-drawn cover art? How the hell did she get hold of that, or even connect me with Rae from the not-so-distant past?
—Ooh, is this you?
—Who’s Larry?
—Rachel, I had no idea!
Voices crisscross over each other, the cassette passed from hand to hand. It’s Logan MacTavish who says—Come on, Rachel, give us a Newfie song.
A Newfie song. I hates that old Newfie music, Audrey used to say. But Henry liked it, though he mostly played country and rock standards. Sometimes he’d play an old song he learned from Grampa Wes. He would probably have liked some of the stuff on that tape, the stuff I played with Larry. If he’d been around to hear it. Two voices on that tape I can’t stand to hear: my own younger voice, Rae, full of hope and yearning, and Larry’s voice that I’ve tried so hard to bury in the back of my memory. I shift the guitar in my lap, start finger picking. Anything’s better than letting them put the tape in the cassette player.
—Give me the tape and I’ll play you a Newfoundland song. One my great-grandfather used to play on the accordion on Sunday afternoon. You can’t get more authentic than that, can you? Only you’ve got to give me the tape.
It’s tossed from hand to hand, Logan to Leah to Sharla to Rachel. I shove it in my bag and move my hands back to the guitar. Truth is I barely remember those Sunday afternoons with Grampa Wes; I was so little. Hymns and then folksongs. Uncle Alf would play now and then in later years, and people would say it reminded them of Grampa Wes. Henry would say—Here’s a song your grandfather used to sing. Meaning my great-grandfather, but that wasn’t a distinction we bothered with much. Years of listening and learning folk music with Larry built on that foundation, but underneath it all are those old tunes I heard first.
Ye ladies and ye gentlemen I pray you lend an ear
While I relate the residence of a lovely charmer dear
The curling of her yellow locks first stole my heart away
And her place of habitation was down in Logy Bay
—Any chance that youngster had for a normal childhood went off th
e cliffs in Logy Bay with Nick Lahey’s old Dodge Dart.
Audrey’s voice in my head, as it nearly always is, talking to Treese in the kitchen when I was supposed to be asleep in bed. I guess that’s why this song is so tangled into childhood memories. Grampa Wes would already have been dead a few years when I heard her say that, but “The Star of Logy Bay” and the car that went off the cliffs in Logy Bay all got knotted together in my mind, and that was even before I learned that the name Stella means Star. She had the yellow locks too. Nanny Ellen kept the picture in a little frame on her dresser with the others, Henry and Stella young and beautiful, their arms around each other, in Bannerman Park in the sunshine.
Oh Venus was no fairer, nor the lovely month of May
May Heaven above shower down its love on the Star of Logy Bay.
Henry taught me a few guitar chords, a few country classics, one or two folk songs. He didn’t tell me anything about Stella. If he’d stuck around, could I have asked? I picked up the story in dribs and drabs: they were married as teenagers, and my mother died in a car accident that might not have been an accident. She left me behind and drove into the night, right off the cliffs at Logy Bay. Just like Henry went away years later, looking for God knows what. Steady work, Audrey used to pretend.
Oh now I’ll go a-roaming, I can no longer stay
I’ll search the wide world over in every count-er-ie
I’ll search in vain through France and Spain, likewise Ameri-kay
Till I do sight my heart’s delight, the star of Logy Bay.
A little silence in the room after the last note lingers.
—Well, that was worth waiting for. What a voice—you’ve been keeping that a secret, haven’t you? says Logan MacTavish.
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