Blended Notes

by Lilah Suzanne

  Grady offers Clay a drink, and they walk back to the kitchen at Clay’s shuffling pace. They pass the music room and home gym. “You sing, right? Vaughn mentioned that.”

  “That’s right.” Grady pauses, knocked unsteady; his father talked about him, his father talked about what he does.

  “His mama was a singer for a time, Vaughn. Her and her sisters. Had a stage act and all.”

  “Really?” He’d had no idea. Memaw could sing and play some instruments. Grady always figured his musical tendencies came from her. Back in the kitchen, Grady gets two glasses and ice from the now-functional ice maker and pours them both some sweet tea. “What was her name?”

  Clay takes the glass from Grady and nods his thanks. “Lyle. Emmeline Lyle.”

  Grady sees Clay off to his car, after learning Emmeline’s sisters’ names and that Clay has scheduled his knee replacement surgery. “I’m glad to hear it,” Grady tells him, hunched next to door of Clay’s bulky sedan. “Remember to send me the bill.” Clay will be out of work for some time following the surgery, and not working means no money, because he works for himself. Grady can’t let that happen, though it’s not likely Clay will take money from him. “I’m having Vaughn’s car fixed up,” Grady ventures. “Why don’t I send it back to you so you can sell it?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Clay says, busying himself with adjusting the air-conditioning vents and rearview mirror. “It’s rightfully yours.”

  Grady shades his eyes from the sun and leans farther down. “If I bring one more junk car into the garage, Nico’s gonna have my head. You’d be doin’ me a favor.”

  Clay considers it, then nods his slow nod. “All right.”

  “All right.” Grady stands, taps the hood of the car, and sends him on his way. He can’t imagine what Clay thinks about the gang of cameramen parked at the end of the driveway. He probably doesn’t care to think much about it all—someone like Clay, who is sensible and practical and down-to-earth certainly has no use for gossip magazines. He reminds Grady of his granddaddy in that way, though Granddaddy had a rascally streak that kept Memaw on her toes.

  That evening, he takes takeout leftovers up to their home office and searches the Internet for Emmeline Lyle and her sisters Glory, Josephine, and Maribelle. After hours of digging, he finds only that The Lyle Sisters once worked with legendary bluegrass singers The Blue Mood back in the late ‘60s. Filling in the pieces like this, finding something of himself in a person he never got the chance to meet, should be exciting. Mostly, though, he’s bitter. Vaughn didn’t just deprive Grady of a father, but of a whole family, a whole history. If Grady had known about his grandmother, would that have changed things? Would he have tried harder to have a relationship with Vaughn? Could they have found a common ground? Could music have saved Vaughn as it did Grady? Grady closes the laptop and gathers his dishes. It’s too late; it’s always too late for him.

  22

  Grady starts a new day with a song stuck in his head, as if he dreamed it to life—the same two lines of notes in a loop—and it’s only after he rises with the sun to jog in the woods, lifts weights and showers and then stops to fix the loose railing upstairs himself, that it dawns on him. It isn’t a song he knows; it’s not one he’s written or performed before. He pauses on the bottom step, twists the screwdriver, runs the notes over again— Yep, that’s new. And if a song refuses to leave him alone, he’s gonna write it down and compose something sooner or later. Once the railing is tightened, he has nothing else on his agenda, so it may as well be sooner.

  Grady drops the screwdriver onto the coffee table in the living room, searches for a paper and pen, and finds neither. Thinking, he puffs his cheeks out, then blows out a frustrated breath and heads upstairs. The song rolls over and over, more insistently now that he’s paying attention to it, more urgently with every passing beat.

  “Oh, what are you doing here?”

  Nico doesn’t turn from the desk, but he does startle and slam the laptop closed. “I don’t know how many times I have to explain to you that I live here,” he remarks, his shoulders held stiff and high: a tell.

  “No, I meant—” Grady moves close enough behind him to see the snarky quirk of one eyebrow. “I meant why aren’t you at work?”

  Nico pivots to the side with his legs sharply crossed. “Gwen was…” He tilts his head in annoyance, “…concerned that I was spending too much time at work and avoiding you.” He blinks as if to gather patience. “Though she phrased it in a less diplomatic way.”

  A grin tugs Grady’s lips; he’s sure she did. Down the hall in their bedroom, Grady’s phone rings. “Oh, shoot, I was supposed to call your mom right about now.” He’d been sidetracked by that song. That song. Grady grabs a notepad and pen, drops sideways onto the weird orange chair, draws a rough staff and clef, then starts to fill in the notes he keeps hearing. Nico’s phone goes off.

  “Yes, I’m with him,” Nico says after taking the call, instead of “hello.” Grady can tell Nico’s eyes are on him as he scribbles down the bones of a song. “I’m honestly not sure,” Nico says to the phone, then, “I am… Okay… I will ask him… I like how you never call me anymore by the way… Sure, sure…” Grady looks up when Nico goes quiet and his face shifts through several expressions as he listens to whatever Amy is saying. “Okay. Love you, too.” He sets his phone down and stretches, then says to Grady, “Daily phone calls, huh?”

  Grady erases a G-flat and replaces it with an F-sharp. “We have nice chats.”

  “About?” The eyebrow rises anew.

  Grady loops the song in his head and adds a few more notes. “Your brother. Gardening. You. Your dad. Doctor Oz.” Grady taps a beat in 3/4 time with the end of his pen; his eyes dance over the notes. “Did you know thousands of Americans have fatty livers?”

  “What does that even—” Nico walks over to him. “You know what I don’t actually want to know. What are you working on?”

  Grady marks down some chords, after moving his fingers in place as if pressing the corresponding strings on his guitar. “I think it’s a lullaby,” he says.

  Nico scans the notes, then Grady’s eyes. “Will you play it for me?”

  The first time he played a song for Nico in his old house, in the basement he used as a practice space then, he felt as if Nico saw him, really saw him, and all Grady wanted to do was keep showing him, offering piece after piece of his fragmented heart, as if he knew then somehow that Nico would be the one to help him put it back together. “Soon,” Grady answers. “It’s not ready yet.”

  Nico skims over his hair, fleeting and soft. “Okay. Oh, she wanted to know whose tuxedo she should coordinate with for the wedding.”

  “Yours, of course,” Grady says right away. “She’s your mom.”

  Nico’s shoulders tense. “She considers you her son, too.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not, really,” Grady points out. Like a son and actually a son are two different things. He loves her, he knows she loves him, but their relationship isn’t complicated and anchored with memories and a lifetime of love like an actual mother-son relationship. “Be honest: If she had to pick one of us, life or death situation, who would she pick?”

  Nico crosses his arm and lifts his chin. “That’s not a fair question. You and I both know she’d pick Lucas.” Nico’s belief that he’s always second-best to his brother is more imagination and insecurity than reality. Amy goes on and on about both of them equally, and, if Nico has to hear all about Lucas’ accomplishments, then certainly Lucas gets an earful about Nico’s. She’s tremendously proud of her sons, both of them.

  When Grady looks up, it’s clear that Nico is prepared for a fight, but Grady just doesn’t have the energy. “Just tell her to wear whatever she wants. Can we drop it?”

  Nico’s head tilts the other way, and his jaw works. He runs a hand through his hair and says, “No. All I do lately is drop it. I’m
sorry if that makes me bossy or whatever, but enough.”

  Grady folds up his little paper, tucks the music in his pocket, and stands facing Nico. Today started so well, too. “Fine, then. Say what you need to.” Maybe he’s tired of hopping around and over things, maybe he needs to hear that everything has gone to shit and Nico has had enough, he’s over it, because lord knows Grady is. Nico takes a breath, and Grady braces himself. “We should give her another chance,” he says.

  “What? Who?” This is not the conversation Grady was expecting. “You’re not avoiding me because of the lawsuit and cameras and tabloids and everything?”

  “Hmm? No.” He flaps his hands. “Fuck those guys, I don’t care. Lillian. Your mom? Not because you owe her anything, but because you owe yourself some closure, I want to hear her out.”

  Grady shakes his head; he doesn’t understand. “Sweetheart, she left. That’s what she does. There is nothing to hear out.”

  “You don’t know that,” Nico says. Grady’s eyes helplessly track the exquisite line of his throat.

  “You don’t know her,” Grady counters.

  Nico’s posture slumps, defeated. “That’s because you won’t let me. Look, I know she’s a mess. And I know she’s hurt you. But if my family is becoming your family like you said, then your family is becoming mine.”

  Grady’s chest goes tight with warmth, with panic. He has no family to offer Nico, no mother to treat Nico like her own, no father to dole sage advice, no annoying brother to share, no extended family to warmly bring Nico into the fold. He has only abandonment and emptiness and heartbreak. “I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “I know.” Nico’s face softens; his body shifts into Grady’s space. “And I appreciate it. But I’d like to remind you that my entire career was essentially helping hot messes get their lives together, or at least look together. I can handle her. I can handle all of it. Promise.”

  Grady looks at his feet and nods. He knows it’s true, because Nico is the strongest, kindest, most determined person he’s ever known, and it blows him away how capable he is. “You deal with so much for me already.”

  Nico hums, “That’s true. And then you take your shirt off, and it’s all worth it.” Grady whips his head up, and Nico smirks.

  “You’re in it for the abs, then. I knew it.” Grady holds his laughter, trying to look betrayed and not really selling it.

  Nico replies with an indignant, “No.” He adds, “Your ass is fantastic, too.” Grady tilts Nico’s chin up with a crooked finger, so he can put his lips on the warm pulse point of Nico’s neck. “Oh, ‘Abs and Ass,’ there’s your lullaby song title,” Nico says, and Grady puffs a laugh against his skin.

  “I love you,” he murmurs.

  “I love you, too,” Nico says. “So we can give her one more chance? For me?”

  Grady sucks the spot where his lips had been resting; he pulls at Nico’s skin until his hands come up to grip Grady’s hair and he gasps. “For you—” Grady says, pulling away to look at the darkening spot just below Nico’s jaw. “Anything.”

  Nico’s phone rings again, and, when Grady pulls away, Nico tilts it so Grady can’t see the screen. “I should, uh—” He answers the phone with a terse, “Hello. Hold on.” Then he strides into the bedroom and closes the door. Grady stares at the door in confusion. Nico’s certainly allowed private phone calls, but that was strange. Curious now, Grady opens the laptop to see what Nico was hiding from him, but Nico returns too soon.

  “Who was that?” Grady says, closing the laptop when Nico appears in the doorway.

  “Oh.” He makes weird face, a cross between and grimace and a smile. “Work. Stuff. Hey, you hungry? I’ll scrounge up a late breakfast. I didn’t really eat yet.” And he’s gone again, down the stairs, leaving Grady to follow, bewildered and worried. What is he up to?

  23

  Knoxville is three hours or so away, not far, but between Nashville and Knoxville is a whole lot of nothing. On tours when they have these long stretches of in-between, he’ll sit by a window and knit or just watch the infinite stretch of highway. He’s transient in those moments—not lonely, or meaningless, but outside of himself. No matter how good or bad things may be, the abiding truth of it is: This too shall pass. Today in Nico’s car, as the hills start to become the Great Smoky Mountains on the horizon, the turmoil of their lives is outside of them for just a while, even where they’re heading and why.

  “You know what Dolly Parton did when she was having trouble with her record company?” Grady asks. They’ve just passed another billboard for Dollywood.

  “Started a country music-themed amusement park?” Nico guesses.

  “She actually dreamed her whole life about having her own amusement park.”

  Nico muses, “Don’t we all,” as he merges right for the approaching exit.

  “She started her own label,” Grady continues. “Course, the only person with the sort of leverage Dolly has is Dolly…”

  “And maybe Clementine,” Nico says.

  Grady chuckles. “Yeah, maybe Clem.”

  Since it took Lillian an entire day to respond that she could meet with them that evening if they came to her, they decided to get a hotel for the night instead of driving back late—and likely disappointed. There are no five-star hotels in Knoxville, which doesn’t bother Grady so much. He was poor for a long time; money and luxury don’t mean a whole hell of a lot to him. It’s nice and all, but he can cope without it.

  “I’m just used to a certain lifestyle now,” Nico says, half-joking and half-not, trailing his sleek suitcase behind him through the parking deck. “I bet if Stomp takes us for all we’re worth, Clementine could let us use one of her houses, right?”

  On the tip of his tongue is the reminder he keeps bringing up to Nico: that until they’re married, it’s only Grady who stands to lose everything; that it’s not too late for Nico to get out. But Grady leaves it to sit unsaid and sour in his mouth; he doesn’t want to talk about all that. They check in and go up to their room. It’s nice enough; the hotel is decent. The downtown is small, but charming and laid-back busy in the way college towns tend to be. They eat a late dinner and wait, unpack for the night and wait. Grady watches TV, and Nico works on his tablet, and they wait.

  “I’m gonna say it.” Grady stretches his arms and yawns. If he sits on this couch much longer he’s gonna conk out.

  Nico frowns. “Let’s give her a little longer to prove us wrong.” Grady tips sideways onto the arm of the couch and pretends to fall asleep.

  “Okay, fine. You were right; she’s bailing.” Nico says. Grady pretends to snore; Nico laughs and pinches his side. “Jackass.”

  And then, there’s a knock on the door.

  Nico rises to answer it when Grady doesn’t, and from the couch in the corner Grady can hear her, though the open door blocks his view.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I— I was nervous, so I made banana bread, and it took longer than I remembered.” Lillian laughs as Nico steps back so she can enter the hotel room. It’s funny, Grady always expects her to look different, as if she’s bigger and louder and brighter in his mind than she ever is in person. Next to Nico she looks so small, timid, and soft. Grady has to force his heart to harden against her.

  “That why you took off last time? To make banana bread?”

  She hangs her head, and Nico takes the foil-covered loaf from her hands to put it on the table by the window. He pulls one chair and then another over to the couch, setting them across the coffee table. “Why don’t we…” Nico gestures at the chairs.

  “Thank you for calling me,” Lillian says to Grady. Her hands are clasped tightly in her lap; her right left jogs restlessly. Grady hates how much she looks like his Memaw and Granddaddy both; it unsettles him.

  “It was Nico, not me.”

  She dips her head again. “All the same. I do appreciate it.�
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  “What happened?” Nico asks, in his gentle-yet-no-nonsense way.

  Lillian licks her lips and wrings her hands and says, whisper soft, “It’s harder to break old patterns than I expected.”

  A silence stretches out uncomfortably. The hotel room is so quiet that when the air-conditioning kicks on it sounds like a sudden startling roar.

  Lillian reaches for her purse, which is beside her chair, and sets it in her lap. “I brought some pictures.” When she pulls a few photos out, Nico leans over eagerly. She places them on the table as she explains each one. “This is me and Mama and Daddy; I was about four here.” Grady’s seen that one before, or a similar one, the three of them on the front steps of the trailer: Memaw and Granddaddy with dark hair and faces round and smooth with youth, Lillian with two blond braids and a stuffed bunny tucked under one arm. Grady spent plenty of time poring over the photo albums and bins full of pictures when he was a little boy, trying to find a connection to this person he barely knew.

  “And this is me and Vaughn and Grady. He was two, maybe?” This one Grady hasn’t seen, and he doesn’t remember taking it: It’s the same set up as the previous picture, but with him in the center with wispy white-blond curls, Vaughn on one side, and Lillian on the other. Two-year-old Grady is grinning madly and clearly a half second away from bolting off the steps. “It was hard to keep him still long enough for a picture.” Lillian laughs.

  Grady’s skin prickles with pins and needles, and his muscles go tense. He’s jittery and irritated at her effort to claim him, as if she knew what he was like, as if she gets to laugh at the little boy that both of them left behind. “I wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t keep still,” Grady says, the words bitter and biting.

  Lillian’s face falls, then twists angrily to match his. “Not like you made me feel welcome in your life, Grady. That’s why I left before.”

  “Oh, it’s my fault. Right, of course.” His voice trembles with anger, and he has to look away, not at her, not at Nico who wants so badly for this to be something else but Grady can’t— She found it right away, the raw wound that says it’s his fault: He’s too emotional, too energetic; he needs too much, wants to be loved so desperately that it’s pushed her away, pushed everyone away, and it’s only a matter of time before Grady and his life are too much for Nico, too. There is a reason he keeps his baggage locked up tight and shoved far, far down where he never has to look at it.