Every day I walked to the Cumberland to spend a meditative, worshipful time as I gazed at the water, feeling one with her broad fearless currents. My favorite place to enjoy my shrine had become the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge, which stretched across the river near the train depot. You could enter by elevator, stairs, or walk up the ramp, and it was a quiet place. It had scattered foot-traffic, bicyclists, pigeons, and the occasional speedboat down on the water. I preferred perching on a bench looking out over the downstream side, where I had a birdseye view of the city skyline on one side and the stadium on the other. Occasionally I strolled over to LP Field where I would walk on the grassy patches, occasionally slipping off my shoes and walking down a cement boat ramp, wading out ankle-deep into the water.
I loved my home at the Best Western, taking long, hot baths while writing lyrics and composing melodies in my head, enjoying frequent suppers with Roy. I loved to set out on foot to downtown Nashville, buying food and drink at the various cafés, enjoying the local color and the street musicians.
But there was one particularly sweltering day in June when I had so much on my mind that I kept bumping into lampposts and fire hydrants. The day before, Mike told me he’d found the perfect place for me to live. Just as Roy’d predicted, it was in Brentwood—a gigantic home on five acres, way down some paved driveway with a gate that locked.
“I don’t have the money to buy a house!” I’d said. I didn’t want to leave Roy.
Mike didn’t hesitate. “You will, Jenny. I have no doubt you’re gonna make it big, real big, which means we’re gonna make it big. So, I’ll front you the money. Realtor’s ready any second for me to make an offer.”
It sounded like a fantasy, just one more unbelievable piece of good luck in an unceasing string. Still, I wasn’t sure why a person living alone needed all that space, or a yard so big, and I mentioned this to Mike, but in his usual manner, he ignored my questions and steamrolled right along with his plan. “It’s fifteen minutes from downtown Nashville,” he’d said. “Convenient.”
“You haven’t even told me how much it costs.”
“Place is listed at eight hundred seventy-nine, and we’re going to offer eight forty-nine to see if he goes for it. I’m betting he’ll say yes. But we need to jump on it if it’s going to happen, Jenny girl. I can’t say who, but there are some other stars considering it, and I promised Arnie I’d get back to him right away, let him know if you were interested.” Mike’s words came in such a flurry, were so full of assurance, that I just sat staring straight ahead, trying to wrap my mind around that enormous sum of money.
“Think about your neighbors,” Mike added with a satisfied chuckle. “Trisha Yearwood, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Dolly Parton, Little Jimmy Dickens, Alan Jackson, and Trace Adkins live in Brentwood, to name just a few.”
I actually laughed aloud, imagining myself opening the door to receive a warm plate of brownies from Dolly, and her saying, “Howdy, neighbor!” in that famous voice.
On my last night at the Best Western, Roy threw me a party. We were gathered around the counter, dining on chicken wings, celery sticks with bleu cheese dip, and Ritz crackers with pimiento cheese slathered on top. The Ritz crackers were on a plastic tray, arranged in the shape of a smile, with CONGRATULATIONS! napkins fanned out beside it.
Roy didn’t look very perky. He had bags beneath his eyes, a five-o’clock stubble on his chin, and his face was pinker than ever. There was a buffalo sauce stain in the shape of the state of Georgia on the lapel of his seersucker suit. After we finished eating, he cleared his throat until I looked his way, then he blotted his glistening forehead with a napkin, leaned over to the file drawer he kept his assortment of sugary treats in, and with a melodramatic widening of his blue eyes, lifted a clumsily wrapped gift. “For you,” he said in this trembly voice.
From its size and shape, I expected to find a coffee-table book, so when I unwrapped a frame holding a copy of the article about my inspiration for writing “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” from Country Music Weekly, I couldn’t speak. The wrinkled page looked like it had been ripped from the tabloid, and there were transparent smudges where greasy fingers had held it.
Looking at it made me feel sort of sick, and I could not utter a word. Thankfully, Roy didn’t catch anything from me but stunned joy. “This is going to be real valuable one day, Jennifer. You’re gonna look back and say, ‘Wow. I remember when Roy Durden told me Nashville was the nine-year town, and I made it in nine weeks.’ ” He chuckled.
I closed my eyes, the picture heavy in my hands.
“What?! Don’t I even get a hug?”
“Of course,” I said, placing the picture face down on top of the counter, taking in a big breath and smiling brightly as I put my shaky arms around him. “I’m going to miss you so much,” I sniffled into his shoulder.
“Me, too, but you got my blessing long as—”
I laughed. I knew what he was fixing to say, and I finished it for him, “You’ll promise to come lavish some attention on an old feller every now and then.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m gonna hold you to it.”
All I could think was, Then please don’t die on me.
I spent several hours packing up my things. I folded my clothes and tucked them neatly into a large wheeled suitcase with a pull-out handle Roy had let me dig out of the lost-and-found closet, gathered my shoes and toiletry articles, settling them into a row of doubled plastic grocery bags, then tucked my song notebook into my guitar case, and put everything in a pathetic, but neat line near the door. It was funny to think that this motley collection was the sole accumulation of the life I’d lived thus far.
That made me think of the humongous interior of my new home, Harmony Hill—room after room waiting to be filled. Mike said there were interior designers by the dozens who were eager and willing to help me decorate the place in any style I chose, whatever my personality called for. He’d brought me magazines full of ideas, and he kept saying, “What’s your pleasure, Jenny?” and finally, after he’d heard, “I don’t know,” so many times, he stopped asking.
As I waited for him and his truck, I looked around my room trying to see it with a decorator’s eye so I could tell them how I wanted the interior of Harmony Hill. It was comfortable, cozy and all the colors went together; the wood on the bed and the tables matched, the curtains complemented the bedspreads as well as the paint on the wall. But the main thing that I liked about it was that not one single thing was broken down. No worn out, broken-down furniture or threadbare linens. The carpet was plush and unstained. I remembered how I’d tiptoed around those first days, not used to the niceness of it all.
I felt a rush of melancholy as I envisioned myself walking around inside enormous, empty Harmony Hill, up the winding staircase and through the echoing hallways. I got into bed and pulled the bedspread around me tight. It wasn’t too long when a bittersweet thought zipped in. How proud Mr. Anglin would have been to see my mansion! He’d often talked about his trips to Europe, where his greatest delight was seeing all the beautiful architecture. It was all I could do not to cry tears of joy because I’d “made it” in the country music scene just as Mr. Anglin had predicted but at the same time weep that he wasn’t here to see it. Because of my foolishness.
Tall, stately trees and manicured lawns in Brentwood made a person think they were driving into some glossy two-page spread in Southern Living magazine. Harmony Hill was magnificent; a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion worth more than half a million tiny cabins like the one I grew up in. More than I ever imagined owning. The first time Mike and his agent, Arnie, took me to see it, Arnie kept talking about how it was Scottish Georgian style because the architect had combined stucco and brick. “Miss Cloud,” he said, in his high, breathless voice, “if you’ll notice, the stucco is scored to look like stone blocks, and this makes a lovely contrast with the brick corner blocks. Don’t you think the cut stone window lintels are absolutely beautiful?”
I nodded. I had no idea what a lintel was. What I saw was a pretty, perfectly symmetrical two-story house that wasn’t made of wood. I walked around inside, Arnie following along at my elbow, chattering endlessly, saying “Now, this is what you call Southern grandeur, incorporating elegant iron railings and archways as artistic statements, and absolutely begging for furniture that looks as if it just arrived from a Parisian flea market.” When we toured the two wings on either side of the central area, I discovered one was a state-of-the-art media room, and the other, as Arnie declared, was “a generous kitchen, suited for a five-star soiree.”
I followed him through a laundry room, office, library, rec room, exercise room, butler’s pantry, screened porch, sunroom, walk-in pantry, guest suite, loft, balcony, three-car garage, and five bedrooms. There were six bathrooms. I couldn’t possibly need six bathrooms!
Overwhelmed, I was ready to tell Mike I’d changed my mind, that it just wasn’t my style. Until I paused on the front steps, imagining myself wearing a voluminous hoop skirt, holding a Chinese paper fan in one hand and a sweating glass of lemonade in the other, while making coy faces at the Tarleton twins. Scarlett O’Hara was one of my favorite fictional characters. She was strong, a survivor, and if I owned my own Tara, I could be one too. This was not the home of a simpering, spineless female doormat. Owning Harmony Hill would somehow empower me to be who I needed to be.
At the beginning, I kept pinching myself as I walked across polished wooden floors, beneath vaulted ceilings, saying I own this. I actually own this structure. I took Arnie’s advice and hired a designer who filled my new home with furniture that looked like it had just arrived from a Parisian flea market. But—and this was nonnegotiable—I told him that everything had to be brand-spanking new. No holes or rips, no broken legs, no disgusting stains, and no rump-sprung cushions. “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he’d laughed. “It’s all new. Some of it is distressed to appear old, but it’s new.”
Though I appreciated all my finery, it wasn’t cozy like my room at the Best Western, and for an entire month I felt like a puff of dandelion the wind had blown aloft, swirling around over an endless field. I’d walked the property of Harmony Hill with Mike before signing contracts, but I hadn’t really explored it. After the furniture trucks had come and gone, after the designer had finished his hanging of drapes and pictures, I stood at the back window with my arms crossed, looking out at my backyard. I’d always thrived on the wildness of the outdoors, on meandering creeks and undulating rivers and barbed-wire fences covered with honeysuckle, and the thought of such a manicured yard seemed silly. But I remembered my resolution to be strong like Scarlett, so I said, Jennifer, bloom where you are planted, and I went outside to explore my very own five acres.
The sun was warm, and there was a gentle breeze as I passed first the tennis courts, then a swimming pool surrounded by white pergolas, and a summerhouse with a brick terrace and built-in grill. I wandered the side yard, winding along between hedges in elegant shapes curled around bits of lawn and rock-bordered flowerbeds full of hollyhocks and snapdragons. Feeling this yearning, this ache for something I couldn’t name, I sat down on a wrought-iron bench overlooking a fish pond outlined with large stones. Arnie had claimed the pond was “a delightful addition that will give you hours of pleasure.” I stared at the orange bodies of a school of koi moving near the floating fountain in the center.
Finally I rose and went to dip my hand in the pond. That was when it hit me. What I grieved for, besides seeing Roy every day, was my daily trek to Riverfront Park. I missed grabbing my Best Western breakfast, then walking to the pedestrian bridge to be with the Cumberland River.
So, on Saturdays when I was not in the studio or on the road, I would lock the gate to Harmony Hill and drive my Lexus coupe (again, thanks to Mike Flint’s urgings) to downtown Nashville. Parking at the Best Western, I walked to Riverfront Park, and sat on the pedestrian bridge to meditate. Mostly the Cumberland glided by serenely, a shimmering thread with a reflective, calm surface, but sometimes she seemed a bit restless, cutting through the banks and hastening along. But no matter what her mood, the curve of her was indescribably beautiful, my assurance that some things in life were constants.
People asked me later if I ever felt scared hanging out at the river alone. And to be frank, I hadn’t. In the back of my mind were Roy’s cautions, along with the stories I’d heard all my life about women who were vulnerable targets for criminals, drunks, and the desperate. But none of this seemed to apply to me, because after all, I was on the path of my destiny.
Finding a Sunday routine took a little longer. There were many restless Sunday mornings of wandering around outside over the dew-drenched acres of Harmony Hill, searching for what, I did not know. The memory of the habit of attending church all my growing-up years began to yawn and stretch, and finally it roused itself enough to demand something. So, I began climbing into the Lexus for a drive to kill time until noon had passed. I spent hours listening to Big D and Bubba on The Big 98 while rambling around Davidson and Williamson counties. I never stopped anywhere, just admired the scenery outside my windshield. Granny White Pike was a nice long stretch of road from Brentwood to downtown; lots of pristine green golf courses, stacked stone walls, grand entrances to estates, and stretches of pretty white fences with horses behind them. Roy informed me that these were “gentleman farmers” and that if I wanted to know the real farmers, with tractors and dirt under their nails, I should get out of the city, especially north and west, where they grew corn, tobacco, and soy. In fact, Roy went to great lengths to educate me about the social strata of various Nashville communities.
He told me that Franklin was Old Money, Old South, but that the truly rich lived in Belle Meade, and it was what you called Really Old Money. According to Roy, those people didn’t like the country music industry at all. He maintained the folks in Green Hills were “Cliquish and married to their money.”
One of my favorite stretches of road was along Franklin Pike, particularly the place where Tammy Wynette’s former home sat behind a black iron fence. Back then, before the novelty of living in the same area as these idols of mine had worn off, I always slowed down there, rubbernecking as I tried to imagine their dazzling lives.
After I’d been at Harmony Hill for almost an entire year, I set out one particular Sunday for a drive along Old Hickory Boulevard. A road that once simply circled the city, it had become a complicated course interrupted by lakes and rerouted sections. I enjoyed the twists and turns, passing by what seemed to be an enormous church on every single corner. Roy called them “The land-baron churches.” During worship services, a cop or two parked along the roadsides at every one of these mammoth churches, with blue lights flashing, waiting to direct traffic in and out. Something as foreign to my little church back in Blue Ridge as a paved parking lot. Back in Blue Ridge . . .
Sure don’t want to go there, I thought, turning up the volume on the radio and mashing the accelerator. Near the Four Points Sheraton and the Waffle House, I spied a warmly lit Panera Bread and decided I sure could use a large espresso.
No one inside Panera recognized me, but I wasn’t surprised because my face was not yet so familiar to the public, and plus, I wore no makeup and had my hair tucked up in a ratty denim baseball cap, pulled down over my eyebrows. My Sunday uniform consisted of a shapeless cotton shirt and slouchy Bermuda shorts and the raggediest high-top Converses you could imagine. I could have been the Queen of England and no one would have known.
I loved the fact that there were no waiters in Panera, and after I’d been nestled down with my espresso in a comfy chair in the tall-ceilinged front room for a while, the scent of warm cinnamon wafted out. I could not resist, and I followed it back to the counter where I discovered a mouth-watering array of carbohydrates behind clear glass: bear claws, giant cookies sprinkled with M&M’s, good-looking muffins called cobblestones. I ordered a cinnamon crunch bagel and returned to my chair, sitting and happily watching the world go by outsi
de the window.
I realized I’d found my safe place. Each and every Sunday after that, I drove to Panera, ordered an espresso and a cinnamon crunch bagel, and sunk myself into the same pillowy chair in the Great Room.
Panera had an assortment of magazines and tabloids scattered on the tables from Strum to Country Music Weekly, and as I sipped my coffee, I liked to pour over the latest news about country’s hottest stars as well as music events around town. Whenever I came upon an article about Jenny Cloud, it was like reading a story about some stranger. I marveled at this chick and her growing, illustrious career in country music.
Funny, but even as a couple more years passed and my fame grew even more, I was never gawked at or accosted for an autograph inside the Brentwood Panera. Maybe the Panera staff just decided to let me have my solace, because once my career kicked into high gear, I could hardly go anywhere without people literally stampeding to me, begging for an autograph or a photo together.
When I was on the road doing concerts, what I missed most were my treks to the Cumberland and my visits to the Best Western to visit Roy. I craved the sight of his florid face, his dramatic swoop of white hair, and his belly, big and rounded, straining against his seersucker jacket as if he was pregnant with triplets.
But while I considered Roy a very dear friend, my best human friend, I could never reveal my heart to him the way something inside me needed to. Nothing is lonelier or more stressful than having to keep up a pretense, and I was probably suffering from generalized social anxiety coupled with depression. It was all an offshoot of my intense loneliness.
Holidays scared me. I rattled around in that huge, empty Harmony Hill, writing songs and avoiding invitations for Thanksgiving dinners with Mike’s family. I never took Roy up on his offer of a Christmas Day together. I didn’t want to rock the boat where our relationship was concerned.
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