Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  "I remember a lot more than you give me credit for."

  "If that's really true, then maybe you ought to think about it." I reached for the door handle. "Do you want a blanket?" I asked. But he'd turned to face the yard, and didn't answer me.

  I stepped inside and latched the screen, then shut the door and turned the dead bolt. I went back to bed, where I lay gazing at the ceiling, turning my wedding band around and around on my finger and waiting for the sound of Ash's truck firing up and pulling out, or his fist or his foot battering the front door. But the only thing I heard, somewhere around four in the morning, was a mournful snatch of Hank Williams, his voice so reedy and faraway-sounding he might have been singing from the Great Beyond: So lonesome, I could cry.

  chapter six

  The room grew furry around the edges with light, and I rolled over and looked out the front window. For the second morning in a row the pickup was there, shimmering under a film of dew.

  I got up and put on coffee in the dark, a ritual I knew by heart. While it was perking I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth. Then I slipped on my garden clogs and an old field coat over my nightgown, poured the biggest mug we had full of French Market brew, and carried it out into the yard.

  It was chilly out, dawn a crimson band below the tree line, the moon a pale thumbprint in the dark blue sky. I took an experimental sip of coffee, black and steaming in the cool morning air. Ordinarily I loved this time of day, everything still ahead, a blank scroll of possibility. Maybe Ash and I were doomed from the start, one of us preferring to get up early, the other one ducking in just ahead of the sunrise, like a vampire. Every bedroom in our house in Nashville had blackout shades on the windows, and the first thing I'd done when I got home to Texas was take down all the curtains. I didn't want to miss another minute of daylight.

  I stood for a while watching Ash curled on his side on the backseat of the pickup under an old army blanket, one arm over his head and his mouth ajar. There was a trace of tenderness, one lingering note, but mostly what I felt was a wave of bereavement, bone-crunching and soul-sapping. Something I loved had been lost. I didn't know if I would ever find anything to take its place, whether I had the heart or the guts anymore to try.

  I opened the door and poked my finger into the hole in the sole of Ash's boot. He woke with a start, jerking his head up and looking around wildly. He looked awful, bleary-eyed and puffy-faced, as he sat up shivering, pulling the old wool blanket tight around him.

  "I don't guess that's for me," he said, spying the mug in my hand.

  "It was. But while I was waiting for you to wake up, I drank it."

  "What ungodly hour is it, anyway? Four? Five?"

  "Almost seven."

  Ash groaned. "Decent people are asleep at seven."

  "Decent people don't get shit-faced and have to sleep in their trucks," I said. "Anyway, it's Saturday. Jude will be out here any minute, wanting waffles and cartoons."

  "I suppose you came to rub that in my face, too."

  "No. I came to see if you'd care to join us."

  "Let me get this straight. You lacked me out of the house last night, and this morning you're inviting me to breakfast?"

  "Well, yes. Except that I didn't actually kick you out, since you weren't in the house to begin with."

  Ash shook his head. "I can't keep up with you. It's too early. Besides, I've got a crick in my neck from sleeping in the goddamned truck."

  "Better not think about it too much," I said. "You're just lucky I woke up in a generous mood."

  "Funny," he said, throwing off the blanket, "I don't feel lucky."

  "Come in and have some coffee, and maybe you will." I poured us each a mug full, and Ash carried his to the bathroom while I got out the flour and Crisco. A few minutes later he was back, his face scrubbed and his hair combed back from his forehead, wearing a different shirt than the one he'd slept in. He walked over to the Mr. Coffee and topped off his cup, then pulled out a chair at the table.

  "You always fix breakfast in your jacket and your yard shoes?"

  "Sorry. I left the fringe and sequins back in Nashville." He smiled. "That's okay. I never was big on sequins at breakfast."

  We were quiet as we sipped our coffee and I mixed up the waffle batter. I couldn't remember the last time Ash and I had spent a peaceful five minutes this way, without a phone ringing somewhere or a terse word tossed out by one or the other of us, a remnant of a fight that had no beginning or end but just seemed to play continually, a loop that had become the background music of our lives. Most of my happy memories, I realized, were right here in this kitchen, before Nashville, before we'd gone and ended up running everything that was sweet and good between us into the ground. I glanced up at him as I measured out baking soda and salt, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking, if he had his own memories, or if it was all he could manage just then to keep his eyes open and his head upright. Whatever was the matter with him, I knew better than to think a plateful of waffles was going to fix it.

  "Can I ask you something?" I said. "What you said to me last night at Dove's, about realizing when I'd made a mistake marrying you—what was that about?"

  Ash lifted one shoulder and dropped it again. "I don't know. I guess I was trying to figure out how something can be just fine one day and then all of a sudden you turn around and it's gone to hell."

  "Are you talking about us? Or are you talking about something else?"

  "I'm talking about pretty much everything."

  "Look," I said, turning to him, setting down the measuring spoons. "I didn't ask you in here to harangue you. But can't you— How can you be sitting there looking like a whipped dog and not know the answer to that question?" His eyes skidded sideways, away from me. "You're sick," I said, "and you need help. Till you admit that, we can sit in this kitchen till kingdom come and nothing will ever change."

  "I hated that racking hospital," Ash said, shoving his coffee mug to the middle of the table. "You never heard so much high-flown bullshit in your life. The doctors were worse than the patients. The whole thing was nothing but one big circle-jerk."

  "There are other places," I said. "Maybe you just need—"

  "Maybe I need everybody to just get the fuck off my back and let me handle it my way."

  "You mean because you're doing such a good job on your own? My Lord, Ash—have you looked at yourself? You're living in a truck!"

  "That truck cost more than some people's houses."

  "I've been meaning to ask you about that."

  "I thought you said no haranguing."

  "I said that's not why I invited you in. I didn't say I'm not capable of it, should the need arise."

  He looked at me for a minute, then laughed and picked up his coffee. "You're too much, Lucy, you know it?"

  "I'm going to act like you meant that as a compliment. Would you mind getting Jude up? I'm about to put the waffles on."

  You'd have thought Santa Claus was in town to hear Jude holler when he opened his eyes to see Ash at his bedside. As I poured the first batch of batter into the waffle iron and added a few of the blueberries Jude loved, I could hear him and Ash carrying on in there, tussling and grunting, doing the things men do to demonstrate their affection for each other.

  I served them the first pair of waffles hot off the griddle, with butter and a jug of Blackburn's syrup. Jude polished off three waffles in an eye-blink, but I noticed that Ash was only picking at his.

  "Eat," I said, nudging him with the handle of my spatula. "You need some meat on your bones."

  "After this, we're gonna watch cartoons for seventeen hundred hours," Jude said happily, swirling his fork through a puddle of syrup and melted butter.

  "Not quite seventeen hundred, baby," I said. "Remember, you've got baseball practice today."

  "You can come, Daddy!" Jude said. "You can watch me catch the ball!"

  "I could watch you catch the ball all day long," Ash said with a smile.

  "I'm not too go
od," Jude said. "But Uncle Bailey says it only counts how hard I try."

  "Your uncle Bailey's a smart man."

  "Who wants more waffles?" I asked, holding up the batter bowl.

  "Me, me!" Jude waved his fork in the air. Ash shook his head, but I served him one anyway, then sat down beside them to eat a couple of my own. Outside the kitchen window, between the pines, pink and white dogwoods were blooming, scattered among the green like the edges of a lace handkerchief. I couldn't help musing about what might have happened if we'd stayed in Mooney, if Ash had just gone on remodeling kitchens and singing at the Round-Up for fifty bucks a night on weekends. Would Saturday mornings at the breakfast table, cartoons and baseball practice, have been a regular thing for us? It worried me that Jude would grow up thinking of his daddy as some glamorous stranger, somebody who dropped in from time to time with his fancy gifts and his city ways. Of course, that was better than a hungover daddy who slept in a pickup.

  "Is it time yet, Mama?" I knew what that meant: Power Rangers or Transformers, Jude's current favorite cartoons.

  "Not quite. But I think Clifford's on now."

  "Clifford's for babies."

  "Why don't we run you a bath while you wait? You've still got grass all over you from playing in Dove's yard last night."

  "No bath!" he announced, climbing off his chair. "It's Saturday and I can be dirty if I want to."

  I made a grab for him, but he was too fast for me, scooting around the table and into his bedroom. "Come in here, Daddy, and see my toys!" he called.

  "Go on, if you feel like it," I said to Ash, getting up to rinse the plates in the sink. "Just don't forget to remind him when Power Rangers comes on at eight, or you'll never hear the end of it."

  He tipped back his chair and reached for my hand. Mine was damp from the dishwater, but his was dry and warm, the tips of his fingers ridged with calluses from years of playing guitar. No, Ash could never have stayed in East Texas when Nashville called. Those calluses reminded me of that, like an athlete's muscles, proof of the thing he'd spent his whole life training for.

  "Where's your ring?" he asked, turning my hand over in his. I still wore my plain gold wedding band, but the three-carat diamond he'd bought me with his first check from Arcadia Records had seemed too flashy for Cade County. More than that, it felt like a billboard for something I wasn't sure I could advertise anymore, the strength and brilliance of my marriage.

  "Bank," I said. "Safety-deposit box."

  "I thought maybe you'd hocked it."

  "Not yet."

  "I'm gonna put that down as a check mark in my favor. Not a big one, but I'll take what I can get." He squeezed my fingers, in no hurry to let go. "Thanks for breakfast," he said.

  "You didn't eat ten bites of it."

  "But I appreciated every bite."

  "Daddy!" Jude shouted. "I'm setting up my dinosaurs!"

  Ash pushed back his chair and stood up. We were face-to-face, as close as we'd been in the past eight months, not counting on Dove's patio the night before. It was too late to wish I'd done something about my bird's-nest hair and naked face, just like it was too late to stop myself from thinking about all those Nashville girls who probably slept in blusher and false lashes. But this was my kitchen, my husband, my life, still.

  From the other room came a loud mechanical roar.

  "What the hell was that?"

  "T. rex," I said. "He sounds pretty mad."

  "Just what I need, on top of everything else. A pissed-off dinosaur."

  T. rex roared again, followed by a bloodcurdling human scream.

  "Jesus," Ash said, letting go of my hand and moving in the direction of Jude's room. "Do I need weapons for this?"

  "Just patience. And a sense of humor."

  I took advantage of the dinosaur battle to dress in my usual Saturday uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and swiped on some sunscreen and lip balm. Then I gathered up a load of towels and put them in the machine, and washed and dried the breakfast dishes. If Ash could act like everything was normal while all the evidence said otherwise, so could I.

  At eight o'clock he and Jude moved into the living room and turned on the TV, and the cartoon racket started to blare. I used to be totally opposed to all forms of electronic entertainment, until Jude started toddling and I figured out what every parent eventually learned, that videos and cartoons were a way to buy myself a few uninterrupted hours on weekend mornings to get my chores done or just sit and enjoy a second cup of coffee. If my son turned into a social deviant because of Spider-Man or Toy Story, well, then, I guessed I'd have to accept the responsibility.

  I was sitting at the table, enjoying the sunlight and trying not to think about much in particular, when Ash came in, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

  "Had enough already?" I said.

  "Mm. A little of that stuff goes a long way."

  He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and stood at the sink drinking it and looking out the window.

  "This place is like—I guess I'd forgotten how pretty it is," he said. "Or, not forgotten exactly. But just sort of put it out of my mind."

  "Tennessee's pretty."

  "Not like here. You can hear yourself think here. In Nashville it's just go, go, go all the time. Even up in the country, you can still feel that hum."

  "Well, you must've had some idea what you were getting into when you went up there in the first place," I said.

  He shook his head. "You know, I think I had this notion that because country music had these sweet, humble beginnings, the business would be like that, too. Just one big, happy family, picking and grinning on the porch. But you take away the guys with five-hundred-dollar Luchesses and bad comb-overs, and you might as well be in L. A."

  "So you decided to get out. Just quit doing the thing you do better than anything else, that you spent twenty, twenty-five years working for, because of a few guys with fancy boots and bald spots?"

  He shrugged without looking at me. "It's a long story."

  "There's plenty of coffee," I said.

  "Arcadia canceled my contract."

  I set down my mug. "What?"

  "You heard me. They dropped me."

  "But you— I thought you had a deal for two more records!"

  "I did."

  "They can't just call it off, can they, just like that?"

  "You know what Tony said to me? It's nothing personal. Time to thin the ranks, give some new folks a start. Let them try to figure out how to swim with the sharks."

  "But Tony signed you! He drove down to Texas, twice, just to convince you to move up there and throw your hat in the ring! How can he say it's not personal?"

  "Easy," Ash said. "He's got a job, remember? Professional ballbuster."

  I held out my cup, and Ash poured me a refill.

  "How long have you known this?"

  "Since—let's see. I guess day before yesterday. He called me at the rehab. How's that for a nice touch? I get out of group therapy, all these sniveling idiots whining about their boring personal problems, and I get paged to the phone, and bam! All over but the shouting."

  "I can't believe it," I said. "There has to be something you can do. Talk to a lawyer, something."

  "I already did. Or, rather, I talked to Vern, who called his lawyer. He said he'd look into it, but he wasn't real encouraging. Neither was Vern, for that matter. Contracts have loopholes, you know, for cases like this. There's all kinds of mumbo-jumbo in there. Have you ever heard of force majeure?" I shook my head. "It means forces beyond your control. The labels use it as a sort of escape hatch. Artists hate it, but lawyers love it, because it's damned near impossible to prove. Or, I guess I should say, disprove."

  "But isn't it Vern's job to stand up for you? Isn't that what managers do?"

  "Vern's got a lot bigger fish to fry."

  "I don't care," I said. "He made a commitment when he took you on. Are you trying to tell me that now he can't be bothered because
you're not big or important enough?"

  "I think that pretty much hits the nail on the head."

  I'd never liked Vern Bellamy; as far as I was concerned, he was one of the fancy-boots-and-comb-over guys. But he was a big wheel, and Ash had been thrilled when he'd offered to represent him, too scared to turn him down. And there'd been a good first couple of years—two records with Arcadia, radio airplay, videos in heavy rotation on CMT, an opening slot on one leg of a big Alan Jackson-George Strait tour.

  I'm not sure I can pinpoint when I first noticed that what once looked like an upward arc, infinitely ascending, had turned south and started plummeting back toward earth again. Ash was struggling with writing and recording his third CD, sleeping on the couch at the studio, or so he said. The times I did see him, he stomped around the house in a black cloud, consuming cases of beer and fifths of Jack Daniel's and complaining about Tony and Vern riding him, trying to bite off and chew up little pieces of his soul. The record, when it finally came out, was beloved by no one, not its creator, its distributor, or the fans, and the lone single, along with the CD, sank like a stone. Ash toured and toured, but the venues, instead of growing, started shrinking. He went from arenas to theaters back to dance halls and county fairs, small-town Corn Festivals and Azalea Parades. He even came back home to be grand marshal at the annual Cade County Dogwood Days celebration, where he'd sung with his old band on a platform on the courthouse square and the mayor had given him a key to the city and a plaque proclaiming him mooney's favorite son. We had an ugly fight afterwards in Bailey and Geneva's guest room that woke up the whole household, and Ash drank so much on the flight back to Nashville, one of the flight attendants had to help me get him off the plane.

  For a while he threw himself into the dark romance of the thing: the beleaguered artist, the tragic, misunderstood genius. He'd wander the house with George Jones or Hank Williams blaring from the speakers accompanied by the clink of bottle to glass, the pop and hiss of a beer can opening, the slow gurgle of liquid being poured, swallowed, poured again, getting stoked and congratulating himself for being in such fine company.