by Lisa Smartt
Seeing Dave for the first time after the accident is still one of the most chilling memories of my life. Some friends had driven him home and agreed to stay with him until we got there. We walked in the door at 4:30 am. He was sitting silently in Shannon’s favorite chair, holding Collin wrapped in Shannon’s red sweater. Collin was sleeping peacefully and Dave was just rubbing his little blonde head back and forth. Quiet tears poured down Dave’s face and onto the sweater but he never sniffled or wiped the tears. He just sat there. Silently. Dave’s head and right hand were bandaged and some of the blood had leaked through the bandage on his hand. We later learned his hand was cut because he knocked over a tray of medical stuff in the ER and then pounded his hand into the hospital floor. Security had to be called. If you’re feeling criticism toward Dave right now you’ve never been in love, really in love, and then lost that person.
The next six months was brutal. That’s the only word I can think of to describe the process of learning to live without the person you thought you’d spend your retirement years with. For a while, he and Collin lived with his parents in Evansville, Indiana. We’d go up for a visit every week or so. I’d never seen a person’s appearance change so much in six months. Dave had always looked like a tall, blonde movie star except he didn’t have the crazy haughtiness that makes some movie stars wreck hotel rooms or leave their wives. But life without Shannon was aging him. His parents said his sleep was erratic. He lost twenty pounds, stopped shaving, got an ulcer, and eventually gave up the pastorate of the church in Chattanooga. The leadership of the church told him to take a few months off and not to worry. But a few months turned into six months and Dave finally told them he couldn’t come back to Chattanooga. Ever.
That’s when Doug asked his boss at the bank to consider hiring him. This would do three things. #1. It would give Dave a reason to take a shower every day. #2. It would move him and Collin to Sharon where we could look out for them. #3. It would give Dave some feeling of financial independence. His parents were supportive of the idea. So six months ago Dave and Collin moved into a small rent house a mile down the road from our family farm.
Doug was worried Dave might not fit in at a small town bank. But those worries were unfounded. He’s always on time. He’s friendly to co-workers. It’s like he finally remembered what it’s like to breathe, to work, what it’s like to eat a good hamburger, or see a movie. He started living again. Maxine, an older woman we’d hired to help with James, gladly took on the responsibility of Collin as well. Everything seemed to be moving forward. Hopeful.
But I was still unsure of his cooperation about a California trip. He hadn’t really made any kind of trips since Shannon’s death. He’d made it clear to Doug that this one was not a priority. Determined to change his mind, I waited outside the bank one afternoon to make one more plea. As he walked out of the bank, I smiled because he finally looked like Dave again. The old Dave. The funny, good-looking, full-of-life Dave. Maybe not 100% but closer than he’d been since the day Shannon died. He wore a white shirt with a navy jacket and gray dress pants. A fresh haircut.
When he saw me coming, he grinned and put up his hand. “I’m sorry, Carlie. Tell Ashley congratulations, but I need to stay here. I need to work, and Collin needs me to be here with him. I just can’t leave him right now.”
“Your parents have already volunteered to come down to stay with him. I talked to them. C’mon, Dave. This will be good for you. You know me. I’m going to make your life miserable until you agree to come. I can be like a planter’s wart on your rear end. You know that, right?”
“Look, I’ll come on one condition. Collin has to come with me. I can’t leave him right now.” He leaned against the old white Toyota Camry he bought after the wreck. “Would that work?”
“Absolutely! We’ll make it work. Do you think your mom would be able to come so you can go to the party? We’ll be glad to get her a plane ticket and a separate room.”
He opened the car door. “I’m sure she can. And yes, you can make your victory lap now.”
Chapter 4 CARLIE: Look Out, Julia; Here Comes Ashley
One of the papers said having my family and Ashley Harrison’s family in town is like having the Beverly Hillbillies in Hollywood. I added to the mayhem by telling the perky Entertainment Tonight girl that Uncle Bart might wear overalls to the after party and that all of us plan to have our teeth in for the evening’s proceedings. I like to mess with ‘em because some of ‘em don’t have any sense at all and messin’ with ‘em is just too darn easy.
When a reporter asked Doug what he was wearing to the Oscars, he said he’s wearing the same tux he got married in. I know. A lot of men gain weight when they first get married and wouldn’t be able to wear their wedding tux almost four years later. Those men clearly haven’t tasted my pork chops, or my omelets, or my other stuff. Doug looks the same way he looked on the day we married. Ridiculously out of my league.
Ashley and I decided we didn’t want our hair done by some fru-fru expensive hairdresser so her cousin, Marjory, agreed to meet us in the hotel room at noon wielding a flat iron and a curling iron. When Ashley got nominated for the Oscar, all these designers started clamoring to design her dress. But she assured them she wanted to just buy it off the rack from her aunt who owns a bridal store in Birmingham.
Oh, how we country girls love causing a stir! She tried it on at the store and loved it but decided she wanted it in teal instead of purple. So she had to pay the extra $56 for a special order plus alterations. It made the front page of the LA Times that Ashley Harrison paid $276 for the dress she was wearing to the Oscars. It was as though the earth was no longer spinning on its axis. When People magazine reported that Ashley’s mama planned to wear the same dress she wore at Ashley’s brother’s wedding, it was like Mars had exploded and contaminated all of North Dakota. Ridiculous. Ashley’s mama looked beautiful at that wedding. And when an older woman finds a periwinkle number that holds everything up well, she should hang onto it for just this sort of occasion.
I liked the way Ashley was handling success. Character is the way you are when no one’s looking, but it’s also the way you are when you get fame or money…or both. Ashley was still the same girl we met in the diner that day. I was determined to help her stay that way.
When I opened the hotel room door, she was standing in the hallway wearing long denim shorts and a pink t-shirt that said Southern Girls Got Grit. Now of course, as a writer, the misuse of the word “got” distracted me but I quickly got over it and said, “You definitely have grit, Girl! You definitely have grit.” She was carrying a small brown case filled with make-up in one hand and a long flowing dress covered in clear plastic in the other.
“Oh, so this is the famous dress, yes?”
“Yeah. I’m surprised reporters haven’t been staked out trying to get a look at it.” She raised her voice a little, “Hey guys, it’s just a dress! It’s not a cure for osteoporosis!”
We both laughed. “Come on in. Marjory should be here soon. Are you getting nervous, Girl? I mean, this is…well, it’s a big night.”
“I guess. Mama’s excited. Said all the folks back home are having viewing parties. First Baptist in Florence opened up the family life center and they’re showing it on a big screen and givin’ away popcorn and homemade desserts. So I mean, that feels like a little bit of pressure but I figure there’s nothin’ I can do about it, right? If the Baptists wanna eat brownies at the family life center while watching Julia Roberts whip my butt, that’s their prerogative, right? I have been practicing my ‘I lost and I’m disappointed but I’ll get over it’ expression. I think I’ve got it down pat. What’cha think?” Ashley clapped enthusiastically and smiled in that sweet show all the teeth way she smiles. Then she glanced over like she was giving Julia her best!
I laughed. “Wow. You got it down pat. But what if you don’t need that? What if you, well, what if you win?”
“Win? Don’t you read the papers or watch the entertainme
nt shows? Carlie, I’m not gonna win. And gosh, I hope you’re not disappointed about that. Julia Roberts has got this one. All the papers say it’s her year. She died on screen. She literally died on screen as an 80-year-old woman after telling her husband she’d written a best-selling novel under a pen name and all the money was hidden away in a Swiss bank account that he would never see because she’d donated all the money to a local animal shelter because she knew about his affair with their investment broker twenty years ago. No offense, but that’s quite a bit more dramatic than playing a single girl going to the Kiwanis Pancake breakfast with a blind date.”
“But Ashley, he really was a blind date…I mean, the guy was blind. I thought that was brilliant classic comedic writing on my part. Obviously a lot of readers thought that too. And you played it perfectly. You did.”
“Let’s just concentrate on having fun tonight. Let’s give the papers a rest and clap enthusiastically when Julia walks on stage.”
“You got it. But you better have a mini-speech ready. Just in case.”
Chapter 5 CARLIE: Rednecks and Red Carpet
Doug and I had to walk the red carpet early in the afternoon because nobody really cared that much about our presence. The media and the fans were all about catching a glimpse of Johnny Depp or George Clooney. That’s weird ‘cause other than Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? George Clooney hasn’t done anything that seems that impressive to me. But who am I to say? People must have figured we were set designers or assistants to producers or directors. Truth is, there are a lot of B-list celebrities at the Oscars. We joined that throng. When we stepped out of the car, one guy yelled out, “Who are you?”
I yelled back, “I’m Carlie. Who are you?”
He laughed and said to a girl next to him, “They must be support staff.”
But Doug and I walked that carpet anyway, and we looked good too. He was wearing his black wedding tux and I was wearing a royal blue sequined dress he had given me before we were married. We had found the dress while wandering around the mall in Chattanooga on our first date. He later gave it to me as a gift after he determined to woo my affections. I love the word “woo.” And I couldn’t think of anything better to wear to the Oscars.
They let us wait in an area inside where we could look out and see Ashley and her mama get out of the limo. Of course, I had already seen Ashley in the hotel room. She looked like Cinderella, with a little more rear padding than most books or movies portray. Oh, and she has dark brown hair instead of blonde. I mean, who’s to say Cinderella didn’t have dark hair and a little more in the caboose? And it was definitely worth the extra $56 for Ashley to order the dress in teal. It was striking and she wore an expensive undergarment too that held everything in nicely. MeeMaw didn’t like it when the actresses were falling out of their dresses on Oscar night and neither did I. Ashley looked beautiful but she had everything tucked in appropriately. Classy. Marjory had given us both simple up-dos with loose curls around our faces. We determined to be satisfied with the end result.
When Ashley got out of the car, everyone knew who she was. They shouted. They clamored. They ran to the ropes to shove microphones in her face. She handled it beautifully. Her southern charm and humility made her a crowd favorite. Her mama smiled pleasantly the way mamas do when they’re proud of their kids. But I could tell she would have been equally proud if Ashley had gotten some kind of teacher award or if she were voted the young Alabama farmer of the year for Farm Bureau. At one point, I saw Ashley hug a young female reporter from Entertainment Tonight. I later learned the young reporter had told Ashley her dress was beautiful and that she was the classiest person on the red carpet. I agreed.
As predicted, Julia Roberts took the Oscar for best actress. And Ashley flawlessly did the rehearsed clapping and smiling. When she arrived at the party later, we all cheered as though she had won. Doug and I teamed up with the movie studio and hosted the party on the fifteenth floor of the Grand Hotel in a rather quaint ballroom. Ashley took off her shoes and hugged my neck whispering, “I wouldn’t even be here without you. Thank you, Carlie. Thank you.”
Ashley was invited to tons of Oscar parties hosted by famous people. But she chose to go to one. It made me think about what my daddy always said, “You better dance with the one that brung ya.” Ashley Harrison knew who had “brung” her to the Academy Awards. Her family and our family. Of course, we invited all the movie people including Matt Cooper and Crystal Van Gogh. Most of them showed up for about fifteen or twenty minutes max and then left for their next stop on the party tour. I was glad I didn’t have to live in the fast lane. So was Ashley. We had choices. And now that she had been nominated for an Academy award, well, she had a lot more choices.
Uncle Bart complained that the after party began about five hours after his bedtime and that he didn’t understand a party beginning in the middle of the night. Aunt Charlotte told him they would go to sleep at their regular 8:30 pm and that I would call and wake them and they would put on their Sunday clothes for the party without complaint. I did call them. They did put on their Sunday clothes. But Uncle Bart forgot the “without complaint” part.
Dave quietly stood next to Doug most of the evening. They visited for a long time with Ashley’s dad about the stock market and the ridiculous price of housing in California. Dave wore his dark gray suit but had already removed the black striped tie and put it in his coat pocket. Maybe he was just tired. Uncle Bart was right. It was the middle of the night and not everyone had been at the award ceremony with all its accompanying adrenaline rushes. When Ashley’s mom fell asleep in a black leather chair, her dad called it a night, or morning rather. He asked Uncle Bart and Aunt Charlotte if they wanted to share a cab to the hotel. Uncle Bart said, “How much you reckon that would set me back?” Mr. Harrison said it was on him. That sealed the deal and the four of them said their good-byes.
Ashley approached us with a smile and a sense of peaceful resignation, “Is it wrong to want to call it a night?”
I jumped in. “Absolutely not. You smiled. You clapped. You ate boiled shrimp. Sister, your job is done…until next year. Next year you’ll be on the big stage.”
She laughed. “You’ll have to write my speech then. I mean, you’re the writer. I’m just a lowly line reader, remember?” She sat down in a big red chair and painstakingly removed a silver clip out of the back of her hair. In one motion, all her lovely dark hair fell to her shoulders and she shook her head as though she were finally free of the up-do and the expectations that went along with it. Dave watched the entire process as though he were watching an artist prepare a canvas. I’m sure no one else noticed. But that’s what I do. I notice people.
Ashley is beautiful in an odd way. Kind of like Barbra Streisand. It’s not that she looks like Barbra Streisand. No. It’s just that she isn’t exactly the standard Hollywood beauty. Her teeth aren’t veneered. Her hair and eyes are a natural brown. She lost twenty pounds for the movie, but she’s still much rounder and curvier than most Hollywood actresses. One magazine declared her this year’s heftiest nominee. What a stupid word. Ashley isn’t hefty. She’s radiant. Beautiful.
Ashley didn’t seem to notice Dave staring. She pointed to the window and told us the movie studio was all lit up in honor of the Academy Awards. She grabbed her silver shoes which she’d hidden under a table. Doug, Dave, and I walked to the window with her. The city view from the fifteenth floor was lovely in a city kind of way. Ashley put her right hand out and touched the window gently. She spoke thoughtfully as though she were an old woman looking back on her life. “This is one crazy town, friends. But it’s home. It’s not just a trite statement, y’know? I really do feel honored to have been nominated. I knew I wouldn’t win. But it was amazing just to be there tonight. Amazing.” Ashley looked out the window. And Dave looked at Ashley.
I put my arm around her shoulder. “Just know this. We’re proud of you, Girl. Real proud.”
Doug grabbed my hand. “Well, I better get the famous writer
to bed so she can dream about her next book and so she can start workin’ on your speech for next year.”
Ashley looked at both of us. “Thanks, you two. Again, there’s no way I’d be standing here if it weren’t for you guys. Both of you.”
Dave looked at Doug. “I’ll ride with you guys, if you don’t mind. Mom called at 1:30. Collin’s having some night wakings. I guess not being in his own bed and all. I told her to try music. He likes Harry Connick, Jr. Shannon got ‘em hooked on it when he was teething.”
Ashley touched Dave on the arm. “He’s got good taste in music.”
“He didn’t get it from me then. I like Willie and Waylon.”
Ashley clapped her hands. “Hey, there’s nothin’ wrong with a little Willie and Waylon now and then. Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys is a classic, Dave. A classic.”
He looked down at the floor while he nervously messed with the tie in his coat pocket. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. If anyone questions my low-brow music I’ll just tell ‘em that a famous movie star thinks I’ve got great taste. Well, I guess I better go check on the boy.” He gave Ashley a quick hug and turned to leave, but then turned suddenly and looked into her eyes. “Oh, and congratulations. You were a class act tonight. You made all the southern girls proud. And I know your mama and daddy were proud too.” For a brief moment his face turned slightly red. “And trust me. Their opinion’s worth a whole lot more than the Academy.”
“You’re right. Thank you. And thanks for coming.” She put her hand on his arm again. “Look, I know this trip couldn’t have been easy. Carlie said the last time you were here was with Shannon. I remember. I do. I remember meeting you guys in the hotel that mornin’ and thinkin’ you were perfect together. And I never told you this, but I need to tell you now. What you said at her funeral? That tribute? Well, I’ve never forgotten it. I’m sure no one who was there will ever forget it.”
