Page 8 of If Not for My Baby
“Honey. I’ll miss you worse than you know. But this might be something worth doing. It’s not that long. We’ll be reunited before you know it.”
“Yeah.” I shift on my feet. “I did call the insurance company when I was leaving work. It would give us enough for the clinical trial.”
I expect relief, but my mom’s brows furrow a bit. “Don’t worry so much about me. Don’t you want to do this for you?”
“Sure,” I lie. But I guess it does feel good to have someone who isn’t Mike, Everly, or my mom recognize my voice as decent.
“Good. It’ll fly by. Everything will be waiting for you just the same when you get home.”
“Please don’t backslide to any exes while I’m gone. Especially not Paul.”
“Oh, God,” she says with an eye roll. “Never Paul. I’ll be fine, I swear. I’ll have Beth and Willow to keep me company.”
I look at her once more. Her sleepless eyes. Her dulled skin. This flare-up has been a rough one. And yet that Dianesparkle still pushes its way through. “Mom, are you one hundred percent sure about this?”
She saysnever Paulnow, but I remember the post-Kevin depression that made her call Paul last time. How she didn’t leave the couch for two weeks. How I had to help her shower.
“One thousand percent, actually,” she says, rubbing her shoulder. “Go call Ev.”
I bury that petrified part of me—the one that has never left this town, the one that is tangled up in knots thinking about how sick my mom could get, howlonelyshe’ll be here without me, and how many shitty guys she might lean on to fill the void; the one that thinks it’s a given that I will fail catastrophically and crawl back home with my tail between my legs—deep down inside of me. Somewhere I won’t be able to find it for the next eight weeks.
I tell myself I’m doing this for us. For our future, for our debt and all the medical bills. For my mom, who gave everything up to take care of me since she was just a kid herself. Now is my chance to take care of her with more than a measly waitress’s salary.
With my new, steely resolve, I call Everly back and accept.
—
Packing is a whirlwind. Not the experience—for my first time, I am a pretty methodical packer, thank you very much, and each outfit is planned down to the number of times I will need to re-wear my lucky black jeans with the rip on the butt.No, the whirlwind is what the act of packing has done to my bedroom. It looks like theWizard of Oztwister hit my closet.
But I’m feeling decent about my chosen wardrobe, and I have a Greyhound bus ticket leaving for Memphis tomorrow morning and an email in my inbox from the tour manager, Jen Gabler. It reads:
Hi!
So thrilled to have you joining theKingfishertour. Ev had great things to say about you and your voice is great. Lionel cc’d here will meet you at the Graceland Inn at 1 tmw and get you over to sound check. Will be tight before the show but should be fine. Lionel pls send Clementine the set list, lyric sheets, travel itinerary, and contract. Choreo is minimal—Halloran prefers a more intimate & authentic vibe for his shows. Should be fun!
xx Jen
Sent from my iPhone
The Graceland Inn sounds promising. I’m notnotan Elvis fan, and I haven’t stayed in a hotel since that elementary school Alamo trip. It’s not like my mom and I have the money to go anywhere worth spending the night.
I’m filling out the contract when she slinks in and plops herself on my bed.
“Mom, you’re squishing all my underwires.”
She makes a face but rolls weakly to the side so I can slide them out from under her.
“Have you googled this guy?”
“Not really,” I say, sitting back at my cluttered desk to sign the deal. “That’s tomorrow’s homework. Why?”
I’ve heard of Halloran, like everyone else—I don’t live under a rock. I’ve heard “If Not for My Baby” on the radio and at bars and parties. For a handful of months when the single was released, you couldn’t escape it even if you tried. Those haunting vocals charged at you from every speaker in the country.
But I haven’t heard his other music. To be honest, I probably couldn’t pick Halloran out of a lineup. My plan is to do extreme amounts of googling and album listening on my way to Memphis.
“He’s only thirty-two. Awfully handsome if you ask me,” my mom says, scrolling on her phone. “And seems like a very kind soul.”
I roll my eyes. “You know that’s all PR training, right?”
