by Shania Twain
I could not imagine the boys being separated. They were crushed by the loss of our parents, and it would have been cruel to have taken them from each other. In fact, I believed strongly that all four of us staying together was the most emotionally supportive choice for everyone. I was barely old enough to qualify for becoming Mark’s and Darryl’s guardian, but I felt naturally obligated to step into that role. I was convinced that we needed to stick together, and I felt they were counting on me for this.
So, I rambled on to Mary, either I would commit myself to assuming the family responsibilities or run away to Africa. Whatever I decided, however, I would have to quit music. When you’re twenty-two and have just lost your parents, logic becomes a relative concept.
Mary listened quietly to this young woman she’d known from childhood unraveling. When I finished talking, she kindly but firmly encouraged me not to quit music—and certainly not to run away. As I said, just as I’d had the role of protector thrust on me, Mary willingly found herself playing surrogate mother to me, and as so often happens between mothers and daughters, I didn’t regard her advice seriously at first, because how could she possibly understand the enormous pressure I was under? She did, of course. I gradually began to put more stock in what she had to say regarding my future and that of my siblings.
One day Mary called to tell me of a golf resort called Deerhurst that she had just been to, located about an hour and a half north of Toronto, on the outskirts of a town called Huntsville. “They have a Vegas-style production they run there featuring various styles of singers and performers,” she explained with a bit of a sparkle in her voice. “Before you go ahead and quit music, please promise me you’ll go there with me to see what it’s all about, okay? Then you can make up your mind.” I wasn’t sure how this prospect solved anything, given that it was so far away. Not only did I feel it was essential that my brothers remain together, they needed to continue to live in their home, amid familiar surroundings. So even if there was a job for me at this Deerhurst place, how could I possibly accept it?
Mary has an infectious positivity to her personality, so although I was feeling entirely discouraged about knowing what decisions to make next, Mary motivated me to at least consider checking out Deerhurst. So with a bit of gentle coaxing, I agreed, albeit reluctantly.
13
Wind Beneath My Wings
It took a while to make up my mind, but in May, just as the snow was melting, Mary picked me up and drove me to Huntsville. I had never heard of the town, but as we drove south along Highway 11, I realized I’d passed it many times on my way back and forth between Timmins and Toronto.
Several kilometers past Huntsville, a winding road took us around countless bends and up and down a few hills before depositing us at a golf resort overlooking tiny Penn Lake. Deerhurst was not nearly as developed as it is today. The centerpiece of the complex was a charmingly rustic main lodge (which is still there but modified), set amid rolling acres of greenery. The stage featuring the resort’s musical production Viva Vegas was in the lodge showroom, which at the time was the property’s original, main reception building. Quite a few condominiums surrounded the main lodge, though only a third of what is there now. I was impressed with the place—my perception of the resort was that it was an exclusive rich man’s retreat. Way out of my price range, that was for sure.
Mary and I met with Brian Ayers, the producer of Viva Vegas, which ran there six nights a week. Brian was tall, soft-spoken, and friendly, and he explained a little bit about the small production and suggested that I stay to watch it that night to see if I felt it would be the right fit for me, and vice versa. He also gave me an impromptu audition in the piano lounge. I was nervous, to tell you the truth, but I must have acquitted myself well, because after just a few songs, Brian offered me a role as a lead singer in the main show. I was flattered but didn’t really know what this meant. I had never been in a produced stage show before.
The Viva Vegas production had me squirming in my seat and sweating at the prospect of becoming a cast member. It bore little resemblance to rock or country bar stage setups and was patterned after the type of show most commonly seen on the Vegas strip, or a mini version of Le Moulin Rouge, with topless dancers in rhinestone bikini-type costumes and fishnet stockings. (Only this was Canada, and topless dancers were restricted to performing exclusively in licensed strip clubs.) A six-piece band that included a small horn section backed two lead singers: a handsome gentleman in his fifties named Sam, who looked years younger than his age, and a tall, wiry-haired woman with a wide smile. I’ll call her Sheila.
Sam was a great entertainer and sang beautifully. I always enjoyed watching him perform. He was very cool and charming onstage—an old crooner type, in the manner of Dean Martin, with a voice incredibly similar to Johnny Mathis’s. A second man, Frankie Vogol, served as the show’s emcee. Also a very smooth and fluid entertainer; you knew right away that he had been doing this for years.
Sheila, with big, lashy eyes and a round, pretty face, was also very talented. Her voice had a lot of power and range; she was a fine comedienne and a reasonably good dancer. She projected confidence with a dynamic stage presence. It was intimidating for me to imagine that I was going to share the stage with such an all-rounder. She reminded me of one of those versatile entertainers who’d just walked out of a performing-arts academy à la the movie Fame. In fact, all the younger members of the cast gave me that impression. In contrast, my musical education consisted mainly of learning as I was earning, singing in bars, community centers, old-age homes—pretty much anyplace that would have me. My only formal training, with Ian Garrett, amounted to but a fraction of what these performers obviously had under their belts.
I explained to Brian that the only way I could take the gig was if the pay supported my family’s needs. If I was going to leave our family home in Timmins, I would have heavy monthly rent, as with my younger sister, two teenage boys, and a dog, we would need a house. Brian, sensitive to the situation with my family, offered me a generous salary that would enable me to afford a decent rental while still meeting the expenses back home. Although the style of performing required of me was totally outside my comfort zone, and taking this job would mean relocating my family at a fragile time in our lives, I took a deep breath and signed the contract. It was a big decision to make, as I was taking the responsibility of moving my family and imposing change on everyone due to my limited access to work and ability to provide. I felt trapped by the lack of options and was nervous about plunging into so many unknowns. The world felt too big for me at that moment. Every step felt gigantic, like I had to stretch beyond my reach to get from one footing to the next.
My contract required me to perform as a lead singer in the main production six nights a week and, afterward, entertain in the piano lounge or the Four Winds dance bar. Some nights I appeared in all three. I enjoyed the variety, since each venue called for a different genre of music. Over the few show seasons I spent at Deerhurst, a typical night’s performance would take me through numbers like the Village People’s “YMCA,” the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love,” a solo ballad like “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” the old French song “La Vie en Rose,” written and sung by the great Edith Piaf, then perhaps a Latin medley—whatever the show’s producers suggested for me.
The Four Winds featured whatever was popular on Top 40 radio, which I preferred, along with the same musicians and a few of the dancers. I especially liked working the piano bar, which was called the Cypress Lounge, probably because it came closest to my earlier desire to play in the more intimate setting of coffeehouses after years of loud, smoke-filled bars. Instead of slinking around a stage in some curve-hugging costume, I sat demurely on a stool, accompanied by a guitarist or a piano player, and sang material like Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and Rita Coolidge’s “We’re All Alone,” along with a list of yesterday’s and today’s Top 40. Great atmosphere in that lounge, I thought: the patro
ns actually listened appreciatively some of the time.
The main show was a different story. Up until this point, I had worn mostly comfortable outfits designed for moving freely and wore either flat shoes or went in bare feet onstage. Setting foot in the dressing room at Deerhurst was like culture shock for me. Picture ten girls crammed into a space about the size of a large closet, a long, narrow space with a tabletop, a bench, chairs, and lit mirrors that ran the full length of the walls on both sides. Rhinestone-embroidered garments hung from the walls and the ceiling, along with feathers, headdresses, scarves, wigs, and drapes of every fabric and color dangling overhead.
The girls glued tiny rhinestones on the outer corners of their eyes, which looked odd close up but gave off a pretty sparkle from under the stage lighting. I really didn’t want to glue those things on my face. The same went for the false eyelashes. First, I did not know how, and I was extremely awkward at working with these fussy, messy things, and, second, I thought for sure that I would get a rash or something from the glue irritating my skin. I felt a bit ridiculous about putting on the showgirl-style stage face, as it seemed tacky and over the top to me, but I soon got into the spirit of the glitzy look and became efficient with it.
I’d never been a makeup-wearing kind of girl: only blush, a bit of eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss for me. Foundation? Never wore it, only ever used it the times I applied it to my mother’s face on special occasions. The first time I tried it myself, it felt as if someone had coated my face with pancake batter, like a mask, and I could not wait to scrape it off.
The costumes I had to wear were also alien to me. During fittings, I probably looked like an astronaut getting into her spacesuit for the first time. The outfits were amusing in the sense of making me feel like I was playing a game of dress-up, but was I really going to have to walk out onstage half naked in these? The whole thing felt so weird: tits perked, belly button bare, and lots of legs—either high slits or everything short. If I did wear anything that covered more skin, the fabric was flashy and glitzy. The way I looked at it—maybe the way I had to look at it in order to go through with it—I was no longer going out onstage as myself, I was performing in character. For example, one act had me playing a member of the Supremes; in another, I played the American Indian member of the Village People. (In the interest of historical accuracy, the real Villagers had been an all-male fivesome.)
Then there was the footwear. Sheila wore three-inch stiletto heels. I had probably never worn anything higher than an inch in my entire life. How on earth was I going to stand in these stilts, let alone walk and sing in them? Adding to my discomfort, the fishnet stockings itched like crazy, as the professional-quality ones were coarse and scratchy.
Brian introduced me to the cast of about fifteen, six of whom were dancers. They were all lovely, patient girls and, thankfully, were considerate toward me even though my hiring prompted extra rehearsals for everyone in order to prepare me for the show. Coming in on weekends could not have been fun for them, but they did it graciously. The dancers, primarily two girls, Kelly and Karen, spent extra time teaching me how to walk gracefully in those giant heels as well as to memorize the complicated choreography. This wasn’t like singing in a club, where you do what you feel onstage.
Nothing was freestyle or ad-lib. All group performances were staged exactly, with different colored Xs and strips of tape, each color indicating different people and their positions, all over the floor of the stage. For example, there might have been two white Xs for my and Sheila’s two center positions, our “home” X for the spotlight position, then maybe three red Xs to indicate a vocal group number off to one side of the stage so that we were properly spaced and centered downstage for that number. The tape was a stage-blocking guide. Marking the stage surface with tape for this reason is common in all stage productions, but for me it was completely foreign to even have to think about where I had to be and when. Even the mics had colored tape labeling them so that there were no mix-ups. Sheila’s always had a thick, red-colored coating that caked between the meshing of the microphone cap. The soundman, John Noble, cleaned our mic caps, but her lipstick never seemed to come out, so there was no mistaking hers. It was daunting to have to think about so many details when performing, as before I’d only ever thought about the music and communicating it to the audience and performing by feel. I was in way over my head here. But I had to press on and learn this stuff, or else I was out of the best possible job I could hope for at the moment: with a decent salary and no traveling, so that my siblings and I could be together. And I was still getting to carry on musically, even if not exactly in the way I had envisioned. I had several weeks in which to rehearse, and by the time of my opening show in the ballroom, I had managed to get everything down.
The moment I was hired, I explained to Carrie, Mark, and Darryl that I had found a steady music gig to support us and that we would all be moving to this place none of them had heard of. As you can imagine, they were anxious about leaving Timmins, our parents’ home, and everything familiar. I was asking a lot of them, I realized.
After rehearsals, I would look around Huntsville for a place to live. My brothers were still in school, of course, so although it was only early summer, I wanted to give them as much time as possible to adjust before September. I found a newly built bungalow just outside of town, about ten minutes up a dirt road in the middle of the bush. This suited me just fine, and I knew that the kids would like it, too, being in the bush. The house was far from ideal, but it was the best I could do on relatively short notice—and still being relatively short of funds. By the fall, I figured, we’d find something better. We’d have to, as the bungalow had no running water and therefore no functioning toilets, either. That meant hiking down to the river to haul five-gallon jugs of water back to the house, while baths consisted of lathering up on the riverbank, then diving into the water. And since the toilet couldn’t flush without plumbing, the bush out back had to suffice as the loo and poo. As for laundry, I’d carry baskets of dirty clothes down to the river, and—in a flashback to our days living on Proulx Court in Hanmer—resort to my hand-washing skills, only with no hot water or my dad to help me wring out the big things, like jeans. This was more like camp: hand washing, soaping, and scrubbing everything against the rocks. I was as discreet as I could be because I didn’t want anyone to see me putting laundry detergent in the river; I knew I’d be told off or reported to the ministry. But I was getting by, and at the time, I would have been likely to tell them where to stick it unless they had a better idea of how they thought I could get the laundry done. Because that was my reality: I had to get things done with what I had. I had a cold, black river, some detergent, and my two hands, so this was my laundry room, period.
Until my family got there, I slept on the carpeted floor with no mattress and brushed my teeth in the small creek that crossed the driveway and ran down to the river. If I heard a car coming, I’d quickly stand up and hide the brush behind my back, looking nonchalant, so as not to let on what I was doing. It would be rather embarrassing for anyone to know that I was paying to camp in a rental home.
Now, this was real backwoods country, the kind of remote place where cousins married each other, your uncle was also your grandpa, and so on. I’m exaggerating, of course, but you get the idea. This rental house came with no locks on the doors, and being a young woman all alone out here was—understandably, I think—a little nerve-wracking. But I’d brought our family husky-shepherd cross, Sadey, with me from Timmins, not so much for protection as for company.
She was also a comforting reminder of my mother and father. In the days after their deaths, poor Sadey laid down on my parents’ shoes, which were on the floor mat by the back door. She did not move from that spot for days. It wasn’t like she had ever done that before; Sadey was expressing her grief in this touching way, trying the only way she knew how to be close to them in their absence. It meant a lot to me to have her with me in Huntsville. She was used to wanderin
g around outdoors, so I could let her roam free to sniff and scout the bush.
The two of us had a routine every night when I’d get back from work, often as late as one in the morning. I’d pull up the drive, roll down the window, and call out to Sadey. At that time of night, sound would carry far into the woods. Wherever she was, she would hear me and come racing back home. Sometimes it would take her a few minutes, so I would just wait in my GMC Jimmy truck until she trotted out from the tree line of the bush surrounding the house. Since the bungalow didn’t have any locks on the doors, I always felt better having her by my side, given the late hour.
The nearest neighbor lived about ten minutes away in any direction. Unluckily for me, one of them was a guy named Norman, who used to stop in whenever he felt like it. He frequently had alcohol on his breath, regardless of the time of day. I would hear his long white, rusty car barrel up my driveway and then screech to a halt.
I was afraid of him, as he spoke with his face directed toward the ground, making only occasional eye contact. It didn’t seem like he was all there; something was just not quite right about his behavior. I’d hurry outside, to cut him off at the pass, so to speak, before he could make his way inside. I acted friendly enough, calling out, “Hey, Norman, what’s up?” but I was always wary. We’d stand there making chitchat about the weather and other superficial topics for a little bit, then I’d try to help him on his way. (One good thing about half-witted drunks: they are often highly suggestible.)
“So, where are you off to?” If that didn’t work, sometimes I would flat-out lie and tell him I had a friend waiting for me inside or that I was on my way into town to meet someone. I always had to think on my feet with Norman, and whenever he finally left, I felt as if I’d just squeezed out of a tight spot.
