Hot Mic!

by Jamie Collins

  She opened her designer tote; a homemade card heavy with glitter, macaroni, and Elmer’s Glue, had spilled remnants of its design onto her notes and show logs, leaving traces of gold and blue sparkles everywhere. A child’s scrawl was written in crayon inside the folded card: WE LOVE YOU, GRANDMA! HUGS AND KISSES X X O O.

  She carefully removed the flimsy treasure and placed it proudly on her desk, giving it a place of honor in the gallery of colorfully framed family photographs propped next to her computer.

  The twins, Emily and Addison, were five now and proving to be quite a handful for her eldest son, Tyler, and his wife, Sara. Hannah turned on her computer, and it sprang to life with bright white light morphing into a stunning aerial view of a snow-capped mountain diorama glowing in the half-light, stretching across her screen. She clicked onto the multi-colored icon and sent it bouncing. She needed to email the twins their daily comic, just as she did each and every morning. It was from Farman’s Funnies, a comic series that ran daily both in print and online, which was produced just three floors below the radio station in the company’s publishing division. There were indeed perks to being an employee of Venture Media that went beyond the fan mail and accolades—the kind of perks that mattered to five-year-olds in footy pajamas.

  The daily comic would be waiting with the subject line filled with emojis and addressed to Tyler on his home office computer, indicating that mail was waiting for the Murphy girls. They awoke each morning in anticipation of just such hope that the comic strip and Grandma’s loving message would be there.

  Then they would listen to her show, which started at nine a.m. Sara would turn up the sound on her laptop propped up on the kitchen counter while she got their breakfast ready. Together, they would listen with rapt attention to their Grandmother “talk live” on the streaming broadcast.

  Hannah placed her fingers on the keyboard and noticed that her hands were shaking. It was all she could do to keep focused as she typed her daily greeting to the girls. Everything was happening so fast. She could fight it—or, embrace it. The choice was hers. But still, she was somehow stuck. The prospect of going it alone terrified her. She took a deep breath. Her heart began to race and her forehead grew warm. She clicked on the send button and closed her eyes. She would never scale the mountains that loomed before her if she refused to let go of the past.

  Chapter 3

  Vanderbilt University

  1975

  The first time Hannah had ever seen Peter, he was walking with an attractive co-ed across campus. While she found him particularly nice-looking upon first glance, she was not in the practice of stealing other girls’ boyfriends, nor dating ones who were smarter than her. Peter was a brilliant scholar. She later discovered that the co-ed was just a friend from his Quantitative Biology class. Hannah and Peter shared the same free period, which was a secluded corner of the library, where they each holed up daily to study. Eventually, they started up a conversation, and that was all it took to spark a fast and exciting romance.

  Peter Murphy was the only son of Ingrid and Jamison Murphy, the wealthiest family in Brentwood, which was a small town just outside of Nashville. The Murphys owned several furniture stores across Tennessee. Hannah had transferred to Vanderbilt from Ohio to earn a big-school degree with aspirations of becoming a psychologist, and was avoiding distractions of any kind acclimating to campus life, far from her humble small hometown of Akron. But for the blond-haired boy with the flirty blue eyes, she made every exception. He was a senior—a pre-med student, and one full year ahead of his classmates. He made her feel like a blundering idiot every time she got within fifty feet of him, which was often, as they were inseparable. He adored her spunky, fierce approach to life, her ash-blonde hair, which was cut in a shoulder-length pageboy that swept across her toned shoulders when not pulled off her heart-shaped face with a colorful headband. He loved her smooth, rosy-pink complexion, full, dark brows, and kind, luminous blue eyes that positively sparkled when she laughed. She loved the tall, lanky lacrosse player who, at six-four, towered over her petite five-foot-three-inch frame. He had a boyish grin, scads of wavy, sun-kissed highlights in his auburn hair, and a pronounced Adam’s apple that added to his chiseled, European features. His chestnut eyes were playful and warm, matching what she knew to be an old soul behind them.

  And so it was, by the year’s end, Hannah had found herself talking with the handsome boy who became her regular study partner, and eventually, her boyfriend.

  Hannah and Peter dated for six months before they gave in to the throes of passion and finally slept together for the very first time on Hannah’s twenty-first birthday. She admired his sense of honor in waiting until she was “ready.” It only made her love him all the more. The very next day Peter asked Hannah to be his wife. It was as simple and perfect as that.

  The two moved in together and began to immediately plan a wedding for that spring, when Peter would be continuing his graduate studies, much to their parents’ collective chagrin. The demands of medical school were grueling, and they were both still so young. Nonetheless, love prevailed, and the two tied the knot in a small roadside chapel that doubled as a recording studio with a neon motorized highway sign that was a saddle that tilted like a bucking bronco. Hannah did her best to make a comfortable home for Peter, although funds were tight and schedules punishing. They decided to take an apartment on campus in order for Peter to be close to his classes and the hospital, enabling him to rest as much as possible between studying and running grueling intern hours at the veterans’ hospital.

  When able, Peter picked up bartending shifts at a small bar called Lucky’s for extra cash. Hannah worked full time as a receptionist at a women’s clinic and manned a hotline at a community crisis center in the city most evenings. The newlyweds absolutely refused to take any money from Peter’s parents, as there was the issue of pride and self-sufficiency—another notable quality of Peter’s sterling character, and just another one of the thousands of things that Hannah loved about him.

  It was enough for Peter that his parents funded his tuition and fees, of which, he pledged he would pay back fully once he got his medical practice up and running.

  Hannah, two years shy of her Bachelor’s degree, opted to put her psychological studies on hold in order to bring in a reliable salary to support the two of them, while Peter continued to study and put in his hours at the hospital. But, by spring, the babies started coming, one by one, assuring with each blue blanket, an end to any hope that Hannah might have had of ever finishing school and getting her own degree—for then.

  Together, she and Peter eventually had three sons within a span of eight years. First came Tyler, a quiet, pensive child who made parenthood seem like a breeze, until two years later, when Marc arrived with his booming set of lungs and need for constant attention. Six years passed before the Murphys found that they had been blessed with boy number three—Broderick, with his continuous smile and delightful little giggle that was truly infectious.

  Hannah simply loved being a mother. The last-born of three herself, she had never gotten to experience caring for younger siblings growing up. In spite of this, she adored her new role and displayed a fierce maternal instinct that few could match. The family moved to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in the spring of 1988, when the youngest had just turned one. While Broderick was starting to take his fist steps, Peter was making strides with his career, having joined a prestigious team of cardiologists at Cleveland General that ensured a bright future.

  Hannah volunteered at the local community center in the city on occasion to assist with the food bank, clothing drives, and, of course, manning the crisis hotline from time to time. This, she could do from home, and really didn’t mind the interruptions, as it brought even more purpose to her day, and further enabled her to hone her skills and earn in-field credit hours that would eventually be needed to earn her degree.

  Hannah was happy that life had brought her back
to Ohio. The fond memories that she had of growing up there, were ones that she’d hoped to impart onto her young family. Whatever the future would bring, she knew they would face it together.

  Chapter 4

  Cleveland, Ohio

  1945

  Hannah’s father, Lt. Colonel Robert Courtland, had met Hannah’s mother, Charlotte, at a local bar in Cleveland, where Charlotte worked as a dancer. The supper club attracted swing dancers, GIs, and lonely hearts. It was a hide-away appropriately called the Sweet Heart’s Club, and on any given night in June, when the troops returned on furlough from distant shores, no red-blooded woman was safe from the tenacious charms of the soldiers who came to Sweet Hearts to dance the night away.

  Hannah loved to recount the story of how Robert had been persuaded by his Naval pals to go along one particular evening, and how reluctant he was to do so, as he was pining for a foreign girl whose name, years later, he had forgotten. He had met her in Naples, where his battalion had been stationed. She did not speak a word of English, but managed to hold his fascination for one single afternoon on a shoreline, where he saw her one warm summer day gathering shells along the beach. “I mean to go back someday and marry her,” he told his shipmates, who all dissuaded him in jest.

  “If you can find her, mate! She’s a starfish in the sea. You’re dreamin’ wide-awake!

  “Plenty of American Tootsies to choose from. Jus’ look around, why don’t cha? Come along with us to the club. We’ll show you what you’re missin’!”

  And so Robert did. Reluctantly, he joined the group and somehow ended up on Mayfield Road, sitting at a table near the stage, drinking expensive wine that was imported from none other than Italy, where they had just served their country with prideful hearts. When the curtain parted and the music came up, there appeared to him, a goddess in the floodlights.

  The fourth dancer from the left was a sultry, buxom brunette with mile-high legs and movie star eyes. She moved like magic, and her bright, cheerful smile was positively infectious.

  Robert spilled his drink the instant he saw her, never giving mind to the fact that he had completely soaked through the front of his starched Navy-issued whites with crimson wine.

  “I was a goner from the get-go,” her father would recount, savoring the memory that never lost its power to glaze his eyes over with the image of that incredible night.

  Robert had decided then and there that he would have to know the beautiful dancer’s name. Embarrassed by the stain, he could not risk her thinking he was off-kilter, so he sent a message backstage scribbled on a matchbook, along with a yellow rose he bought off of the Maître d’s lapel on a trade—his ivory-handled sterling pocket knife in exchange for the flower. In Robert Courtland’s world, it was well worth the sacrifice, even though the knife was an heirloom of sorts. In the end, it proved to be a very lucky charm, because not twenty minutes later, the beautiful woman emerged from her dressing room with both the rose and the pocketknife in hand.

  She had searched the entire club for the patron who asked to make her acquaintance. Bruno, the Maitre d’ had shown Lottie, as she was known, the heirloom knife that the sailor had traded for the rose, letting her have it when she asked. “Keep it, Cherie!” He smiled. “I was just having some fun with the fellow.”

  The sentiment touched her so deeply that she just had to meet him herself.

  Bruno escorted Lottie to Robert’s table, and when their eyes met, all at once, they knew that every tomorrow that was left to be lived would be within each other’s embrace.

  “We just knew,” Hannah’s mother would retort. “The way your heart knows the way home.”

  Hannah loved that story and would yawn copiously as her mother tucked the covers snugly beneath her six-year-old chin. She never tired of hearing it, and often begged her mother to tell it to her over and over, hanging on every word, picturing her parents dancing in the moonlight for hours that night, never wanting to leave each other’s side; feeling as if they were floating on air.

  When Hannah was older, and later, when she had her own children, she would the same story, adding just enough poetic license to the tale until the story began to take on a power and persona that was bigger than life. Like the finest spun fairy tale, the romance of Robert and Charlotte Courtland became family folklore and was, as far as Hannah was concerned, the greatest love story ever told.

  Chapter 5

  Akron, Ohio

  The Courtlands were stationed in four different cities throughout Roberts’s remaining tenure in the US Navy, until 1966, when he opted to travel no more and settled his family squarely in the heartland of the nation in Akron, Ohio, where the family home remained for the next forty-one years.

  Robert Courtland was a master salesman. He sold everything from cutlery to picture books in order to support his family. “So, what are you selling, Hannah Marie?” he would ask. “Everyone is selling something. It’s who you are that makes them want to buy from you. Essentially, then, they are buying a part of you. Deliver on your word always and you’ll sleep well at night. There’s nothing more important than that.”

  Hannah did not remember spending much time with her father during her childhood because he was frequently away on business. He was not there for picnics or road trips or tea parties, but she did cherish the times he was able to spend with her and her siblings. She’d always remember those wise words, which she would carry with her forever, because Robert Courtland was as good and honest a man as ever there was. His life and what he stood for was gold. She loved him with all her heart.

  Charlotte Courtland had continued to work much of her married life, teaching dance classes several nights a week at the city college and at a private studio on weekends. She performed in local theater productions when she could, never stopping her hectic pace, even for the considerations of pregnancy, when, at thirty-eight, she found herself to be expecting a fourth child.

  “When is the baby going to be here?” Hannah asked as she helped her mother fold the warm clothes from the Whirlpool dryer and stacked them into neat little piles on top of her father’s woodshop table.

  “Very soon” Charlotte smiled. “Do you want a little brother, or a little sister?”

  “I don’t care. Either is fine with me,” Hannah said. “I am finally going to be able to be a big sister for once!”

  Hannah was the youngest thus far in the family and had two older siblings. Muriel was eighteen and wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around her little sister, and JR—Robert Jr., was a very aloof and indifferent fifteen-year-old. Basically, little Hannah had been, up until very soon, on her own in her childhood bubble.

  This did not faze Hannah quite as much as her parents might have feared. Hannah was quite content to entertain herself with her games and dolls on her own. There were a few neighborhood children on the same city block whom she played with from time to time, but for the most part, for ten-year-old Hannah, the hours between the end of the school day and suppertime were whiled away in the backyard, riding her shiny Schwinn bicycle, or with her nose in a chapter of a Nancy Drew mystery, propped up against the cherry tree in the backyard, or on her princess pink chiffon bedspread next to her goldfish, Keith’s, fish tank.

  Being so far in age from her siblings might have proven a problem for a less precocious child than Hannah. Instead, she thrived in the advantages it provided when she found herself more typically than not in the presence of adults, who spoke and laughed and joked with her as if she were not simply an impressionable young girl, but an old soul instead. She was known to have a reputation of scolding her peers for any myriad of childhood mischiefs that she felt transgressed the moral canons of the sisters of the Holy Trinity and her Catholic tutorage. It was not uncommon for her to run in tears to Mother Superior or Monsignor Moriarty whenever she had witnessed the defaming of a textbook, or far worse—a bible. Hannah had little tolerance even then for rule-breakers, even beyond the
tenants of the faith. A rule was a rule, and there should be consequences, she portended, for those who broke them. In short, life for young Hannah was very much seen in black or white.

  Hannah could even hold her own with her father’s stodgy poker buddies, who came to the house once a month to play cards, and who often brought her little gifts like quarters and coloring books. She would greet them at the door with a handshake and a smile. Robert would let her serve them cold bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer from the fridge, and collect the metal tops as payment. She would then sit on her father’s lap until it was her bedtime.

  On occasion, Charlotte would take Hannah to work with her at the dance studio, which was once an old garage that had been converted with wooden floors, dance bars, and full-length mirrors. A local businesswoman, Mrs. Ava Kerner, owned the studio. She loved dancing and was once was a prima ballerina herself, as evidenced by the countless black-and-white photos of her looking like a movie star that covered the wood-paneled walls of the studio office. Too old to teach full-time, and further suffering from the limitations of multiple sclerosis, she’d hired Hannah’s mother to instruct her clientele—assorted-aged neighborhood children—in the finer points of everything from ballet to jazz.

  There was a small room adjacent to the studio, where Mrs. Kerner set up her office, and where Hannah would watch cartoons on a small Panasonic television propped up on a card table, while her mother taught the classes. The Saturday afternoons with Ava Kerner were sublime. She was a frosty old woman with a tightly wound gray chignon, who cussed like a sailor, used a walker, and wielded a yardstick, growling orders to everyone around her—except for Hannah. Mrs. Kerner seemed to soften and smile when it was just the two of them sharing a sleeve of Oreos and an episode of Scooby Doo. Little was said during those visits, but once the cartoon was over, Mrs. Kerner would shuffle her way back into the studio with her tyrannical summation of the dancers’ progress. Everyone feared her booming voice as she tapped the floor with her yardstick and staccato directives, “Point your feet! Butts in! Use your damn brain!” Often she would turn her sour scowl toward Hannah and confide, “It’s really not for everyone to find their wings, but the good ones . . . they show themselves eventually.” She would wink as if it were a secret thing she had just said to Hannah; as if it were one of life’s guarded gems of wisdom. And it was.