American Diva

by Julia London

  Jack was a betting man, and at that moment, he was betting he and Audrey would be heading back to the airport just as soon as he could get their stuff together. And if she wasn’t of a mind to go just yet, he was contemplating picking her up bodily and carrying her away from these bloodsuckers.

  Twenty

  So anyway, I told Danny’s lawyer he could stick it, and if Danny wants to see his boys again, he’ll just drop that whole thing.” Gail paused to exhale the smoke from her cigarette. “Can you believe his shit?”

  “No,” Audrey said, staring into the little stream that ran behind her mother’s house. The previous owners had made a little oasis out of the lawn and the stream, but since she’d bought the house for Mom, no one had weeded down here. The Johnson grass was as high as the fishing platform where she and Gail were sitting.

  “I don’t think it ever crosses his mind that all this fighting isn’t good for our kids,” Gail said, as if she were completely innocent. From what Audrey knew of it, she started the fighting more often than not. She couldn’t guess how many times Gail had called to complain she didn’t like who Danny was dating and refused to let her sons around the skank, as she put it.

  But this morning, Audrey was content to let Gail talk, because her mind was a million miles away. She couldn’t manage to accept that she’d been called home under the pretense of life or death to hand over ten thousand dollars for Allen’s emergency room visit that was not, by any measure, an actual emergency.

  That was beside the point, really—she would have handed over one hundred thousand if that was what they needed from her. What she couldn’t accept was that they didn’t seem to need her. In any capacity. She was nothing but a checkbook to them. Somewhere along the way she had ceased to be a sister or a daughter.

  Audrey swallowed down tears of helplessness as she watched the minnows swim about and Gail went on about Danny. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but wherever she went these days, she felt like she didn’t belong. She’d never felt as alone as she had the last couple of months, which was ironic, seeing as how she was never alone. But she felt lonely at her core, almost as if somewhere along the way she’d lost Audrey.

  She didn’t know what was important to her any longer, didn’t know what she wanted or what made her happy.

  The only ray of warmth she’d felt in the last few weeks was Jack. Just like the warmth that spread through her the moment she saw him walking down to the creek. He stood below the platform, his hands on his hips, and smiled up at her. “Ever catch anything from up there?”

  “Snakes,” Gail said. “Come on up here, sugar, and we’ll keep you safe.”

  Jack chuckled, the sound of it so soft and familiar that Audrey wanted to fling herself into his arms, bury her face in his shoulder, and let him cover up the world from her sight.

  She did the next best thing—she swung her legs off the side of the platform and jumped down.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Gail asked as Audrey stepped in front of Jack and looked up at Gail. She felt his hand on her arm, and allowed herself to sink back against him, allowed herself to feed off his strength. “Don’t know,” she said. “Maybe to see Dad.”

  “Oh God,” Gail said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Remember Hayley Grant?”

  “Sure. Blond and pretty, and everything I wasn’t.”

  “Well, Dad’s dating her now.”

  Jack’s hand tightened around her arm, but he didn’t move, just stood behind her, propping her up as Audrey tried to process the information. “Hayley Grant is a year younger than me,” she said incredulously.

  “That’s why I am warning you,” Gail said cheerfully. “Tell Mom I’ll drive the boys to Bible School, okay?” she said as she lit another cigarette. “And if you see Allen, tell him to quit stealing my smokes! Man, I’ll be glad when he moves out!”

  Audrey relayed Gail’s information to Mom, who was busy cleaning the kitchen and could only grunt something under her breath in reply. She didn’t see Allen, either. When she asked, Mom told her he’d walked to town.

  So a half hour later, after walking through what constituted a media gauntlet in Redhill (a Fort Worth TV crew, the local biweekly paper, and radio), and answering a handful of benign questions (My brother is fine. The tour is going well.), Audrey and Jack were standing in front of the godawful, million-dollar house Dad had built. They were staring at half of a car that was, inexplicably, on the front lawn.

  “Looks like it might have been a Roadster,” Jack said, eyeing it thoughtfully.

  “It is half of a car,” Audrey protested.

  “But it’s the good half,” Jack said. “And he’s still got the motor.”

  “What good is a motor without the car?” Audrey asked.

  “There’s my girl!” Dad’s voice boomed at them from the front door.

  He strode out onto the lawn, Hayley Grant on his heels. Unlike Mom, who seemed to shrivel up as she got older, Dad looked healthy and fit and even younger than his fifty-five years. He was handsome and he knew it—he’d had more affairs than Audrey believed even he could count. He grabbed Audrey up in a bear hug and squeezed her tight, jerking her back and forth like a dog with a chew toy before setting her on her feet. “I heard you were in town.”

  “Gail?”

  “Nope. Hayley’s mom works at the hospital. Oh hey, you remember Hayley, don’t you?” he asked, stepping back and grabbing Hayley’s hand.

  Audrey forced a smile. “Of course.” She stuck out her hand. “Hi, Hayley. You look great.”

  “Thanks!” Hayley chirped as she grabbed Audrey’s hand and pumped it several times.

  With a beaming grin on his face, Dad turned to Jack. “And who is this?” he asked.

  Audrey quickly introduced him as her friend.

  “Oh yeah?” Dad said. “What happened to Luke the Kook?”

  “He stayed with the tour.”

  “Not surprised,” Dad said, hitching up his pants. “That boy never missed a moment in the limelight, did he?”

  Jack snorted.

  “Speaking of limelight, Dad,” Audrey said sternly, “could you please stop talking to Entertainment Tonight? That story about me singing a Pasty Cline number in a bar when I was six is a lie, and you know it.”

  “Oh hell, they love that sort of feel-good stuff,” he said congenially. “Now if I could remember what you were really doing at six, I’d tell them that. But I don’t remember,” he said, and laughed loudly, clapping Jack on the back. “How about a beer, there, big guy?”

  “Ah, no thanks. I’m working.”

  “Working! Boy, this isn’t work!” Dad laughed. “Come on in and at least drink some lemonade. Hayley was hoping you’d come by, Audrey, so she whipped up a can of it.”

  “Y’all come in!” Hayley echoed.

  Apparently this little fling between Dad and Hayley had been going on long enough for Hayley to set up house. Audrey reluctantly followed Hayley inside, but not before shooting Jack a pleading look.

  Hayley led them all into a sunken living room. The floors were Saltillo tile and the furniture right out of Discount Barn. Plastic greenery adorned the valances of every window, as well as the corners and the shelving around a massive plasma TV. Above the fireplace hung the head of a stag, and at the other end, Dad had put up mirrors behind a built-in bar. The room looked like someone had smashed a Wal-Mart and a pub together.

  “I have asked Gene a hundred times if I have asked him once to get rid of that car on the lawn,” Hayley said as she swished to the bar in her kitten heel sandals. “But he won’t hear of it! He keeps telling me he’s going to get the other half and fix it up.”

  “Why don’t you put it in the barn?” Audrey asked.

  “Can’t,” Dad said, accepting a beer from Hayley. “Barn’s full.”

  “What about the shop?” Audrey asked.

  “Oh,” Dad said, flicking his wrist. “I sold that a couple of months ago.”

  He’d sold the shop? The same
auto shop that had been in the LaRue family since 1931?

  “Can I get you some lemonade, Jack?” Hayley asked, a little too sweetly.

  “No thanks,” Jack said. He stayed back, leaning up against one of the posts that marked the entrance to the sunken living room, just watching.

  “You sold the shop?” Audrey asked incredulously as she sank onto a bar stool. “Why?”

  “I don’t need that shop. It’s more of a headache than anything else. Besides, I’m getting into NASCAR.”

  “How are you going to live?” Audrey asked.

  “Whaddaya mean?” Dad asked with a frown. “We do fairly well on our joint ventures, don’t we?” he asked, gesturing between himself and Audrey.

  Unlike Mom, Dad had no problem accepting her charity—he accepted it with gusto. Their “joint ventures,” as he liked to call it, was really a stipend she paid him every month. She’d originally offered to do it a couple of years ago when the economy wasn’t doing so well and he was having trouble making ends meet. Somehow, the stipend had stayed in place.

  “So what brings you to Redhill, Audrey?” Hayley asked as she poured lemonade for her. “You sure don’t get down this way very often, do you?”

  “Because it’s almost impossible to get to within any reasonable amount of time,” Audrey said. “And I’ve just been really busy.”

  “Oh I bet you have,” Hayley said, nodding eagerly. She leaned across the bar and smiled brightly at Audrey. “We’re so proud of you in Redhill. So what’s it really like, being a big star?”

  “Don’t bother her with that, Hayley,” Dad said sternly. “She comes home to get away from all that, don’t you, girl?”

  “Well, actually, this time I came home to see about Allen.”

  “Allen?” Dad said, still smiling. “Oh, you mean that bit of trouble he had a couple of days ago?”

  “A bit of trouble? I thought it was more a matter of life or death.”

  Dad laughed loudly at that. “That’s Leanne for you,” he said, referring to Audrey’s mother. “She can make a mountain out of a molehill like no one I’ve ever seen. You should have called me, Pumpkin. I’d have saved you a trip.”

  “Come on, aren’t you a little worried about him?”

  “Who, Allen?” Dad shrugged. “Way I see it, there’s not a lot any of us can do. The boy is twenty-six years old. If he wants to throw his life away like that, who of us is going to stop him?”

  “You know, I always thought he had those tendencies growing up,” Hayley opined. At Audrey’s questioning look, she said, “You know . . . drugs and that sort of thing.”

  She spoke as if she had any knowledge of Allen at all. When they’d been in high school, Hayley had been a cheerleader and very popular. Allen had been overwhelmingly shy and had hung on the fringes of his class beneath a crop of long sandy brown hair and baggy clothes. Hayley had no idea who Allen was, and the fact that she was trying to pretend she did made Audrey want to reach across the bar and strangle her. But instead, she said, as politely as she could, “I don’t think he developed those tendencies until later in life. But he needs our help now.”

  “He’ll work it out,” Dad said jovially. “So how are you, kid? Have you had a chance to think any more about that race car?”

  “Dad,” Audrey said wearily.

  “I’m just asking you to help out, Audie,” he said. “I’m lining up sponsors as we speak.” He swiveled around on his bar stool to Jack. “Did Audrey tell you about my plans?” he asked eagerly, and when Jack politely shook his head, Dad launched into a tale of how he was going to be the next great thing in NASCAR.

  It was all Greek to Audrey. As he talked, she got up and walked to the big picture windows. Just outside was the pool, and beyond that, a long stretch of field that had been burned a crispy brown by the early August sun. Next to the picture windows was a bookcase on which several framed pictures had been artfully arranged. As Audrey perused them, she noticed they were all of Dad and Hayley in various locations. There was a picture of Dad and Gail and Dustin and Logan, and one of Allen and Dad holding up a huge fish somewhere.

  There wasn’t a single picture of Audrey. Her CD was sitting on the shelf below the pictures, but there wasn’t a picture. She felt like an outsider looking in. Maybe she was an outsider. She’d left so long ago, it was hard even to remember what it was once like being here.

  An hour or so later, when Jack was looking a little glazed in the eyes, Hayley announced she hated to run out, but she had to get to her aerobics class. Audrey took the opportunity to bow out, too, saying she had to get back to Mom’s.

  Just as Hayley was leaving, Jack’s cell rang, and he stepped aside to answer it.

  Audrey and Dad watched Haley drive away. “She’s great, isn’t she?” Dad asked.

  “Yes . . . but she’s younger than me, Dad.”

  “So? Age is just a number, Audrey Jane.”

  She nodded. “I guess it is, because you and Mom are the same age, only she seems so much older.”

  “Well,” he said, hitching up his pants with a grin, “I work at it.”

  Audrey smiled and hugged her father. “I have to go back, Dad. I need to see what I can do to help Allen.”

  “Help him what?” Dad asked.

  “Help him what?” she exclaimed. “He is on a path to prison! I swear it seems like no one cares about that but me!”

  “Now watch it, Pumpkin,” Dad said. “Don’t come home and act all high and mighty with me. You don’t have any idea how much help I have given Allen. You have no idea what it’s like watching your only son slip away like I have. But there is nothing you or I can do about it. Until Allen wants to make some changes, all the treatment centers in the world ain’t going to help him. You just haven’t gotten to the point of understanding that like the rest of us. It is what it is.”

  Audrey’s shoulders sagged. “You really believe that?”

  Dad put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. ”Hell, I don’t believe it, I know it. You’re feeling guilty because you live in another world, but I’m telling you, don’t. There ain’t nothing harder to change than a drug addict and tiger’s stripes. You can throw all the money at him you got, and it won’t change a bloomin’ thing.”

  Perhaps . . . but Audrey wasn’t sure she was willing to throw in the towel just yet. “It just seems like there ought to be something I can do,” she insisted weakly.

  “Have you asked your mother?” Dad asked.

  Audrey groaned and shook her head. “She can hardly even look at me, Dad. I don’t know why she despises me so.”

  “She doesn’t despise you, Audrey. She loves you. You just got to learn to look at this from Leanne’s shoes. She always wanted to get out of Redhill.”

  “I’ve tried to look at it from her viewpoint,” Audrey said.

  “Well, try a little harder. So what do you think about that car?” he asked cheerfully as Jack strode into their midst.

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Sure you do. Jack tells me you are playing to sold-out audiences and that your talent is out of this world.”

  Audrey shifted her gaze to Jack and smiled. “He said that?”

  “He damn sure did,” Dad said with a big smile. “So if you got all those sold-out audiences, then surely you have a little extra dough for your old man, right?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Audrey said. “I’ll be lucky if I break even on this tour.”

  “Ah, come on, now,” Dad said, his smile fading. “You’ve got money. I know you’ve got money to help out your old dad.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Jack said, putting his hand out to Audrey. “But if we don’t get going, we’ll never make that flight, and you have to be in Nashville today.”

  They had no flight to make, they had their own plane, and she didn’t have to be in Nashville until tomorrow. Jack was trying to help her out.

  Audrey put her hand in his. “You’re right. If we don’t go now, we won’t mak
e it.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your flight. What about my car?” Dad demanded, his temper flaring into the danger zone.

  “I’ll have my business manager call you, Dad!” Audrey said, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek before allowing Jack to pull her away to the Cadillac.

  Dad was still talking as she got in, his face getting red as he went on about something to do with his car.

  “Remind me to have Rich call him,” Audrey said as they backed out of the drive.

  “Remind me to cross Redhill off my list of vacation destinations,” Jack said dryly, and hit the gas, barreling down the road back into Redhill. Just before they reached the edge of town, however, he turned left instead of right and headed for the town’s cemetery. He drove inside, parked under a huge pecan tree, and cut the engine.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, turning to look at her. “You don’t need to be here.”

  “No kidding,” she muttered, and slumped in her seat. “I told you my family is a piece of work.”

  “Audrey,” Jack said, “I don’t mind telling you that I have never in my life been closer to a Jerry Springer show waiting to happen than I have been in the last eight hours. These people don’t need you, they want to use you.”

  The moment the words were out of his mouth, she began to tear up. It was maddening to be on the brink of tears so damn often! She squeezed her eyes shut, but two tears slipped out nonetheless and she swiped helplessly at them. “Ohmigod, I am so embarrassed,” she said.

  “Don’t be. You can’t help it.” He put his hand on her knee and squeezed it. “But I don’t think you are doing yourself any favors here, sweet cheeks. You’re only adding to your stress. Over the last few hours I have seen you start to shrivel up like a withering vine.”

  “Really?” she asked sorrowfully, knowing full well it was true. She could feel herself withering.

  “Really,” he said. “I’ve got an idea. The plane won’t be serviced for another couple of hours. You don’t need to be in Nashville until tomorrow. I know a place where you can go to really get away from it all for a few hours.”