Lowdown and Lush Read online

  I’m stunned. Shocked into silence. That bastard. That motherfucking, pompous, self-righteous bastard. My head spins with the ways I can bring the asshole down. I’ll fucking ruin him. I have the money to do it. I’ll run him so far into the ground that he’ll never—

  “Michael?” Her voice sounds sharp as she calls my name over the phone. “Did you hear what I said? Do you not have any response to that?”

  “God. Yes, I heard. And I’m so fucking sorry. I’m just, um… I’m not sure what to say. What if you don’t live at the loft with me? Would that fix it?”

  I have to admit I’m relieved when she says, “No. And even if it did, it’s not what I want. The loft is going to be our project together, like the album. I want to do that with you. It means a lot to me.”

  “That’s my girl. We’ll make it into a real showpiece. And, Sunshine, what your dad said? It’s not true. Not a word of it. Please don’t let him turn this into something ugly and wrong. You are a beautiful, talented singer and I’m a musician who has the ability to bring your voice and your music to the world. That’s all we’re doing here. Making beautiful music and sending it out to the world.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. Then she speaks, and her voice is already stronger and more assured. “You’re right. He thinks he knows everything, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t understand this or me at all. It’s his loss. But my mama, Michael. What am I supposed to do about my mama?”

  I stretch out on the bed, growing all warm and fuzzy as I listen to her country Texas twang. This is my fault. By giving her the dream, I’ve ruined her relationship with her family. I need to find a way to fix that, or I haven’t done right by her. “You’ll see your mom, Sunshine. I promise you. I’ll make sure of it. Just leave it to me, okay?”

  “What are you going to do?” she asks, ever the skeptic.

  “Nothing right now, but when the time is right, we’ll make sure you get a chance to check in with your mom. And until then, I’m going to ask if Mel and Joss can come stay for a bit. Help keep you entertained.”

  “I thought you hated Joss,” she says, and I can almost hear her eyes rolling over the phone line.

  “I have hated Joss at various times in my life,” I admit. “But I don’t hate him right now. I can tolerate him, and as much as it pains me to say, he’s the best lyricist I know. If you want help getting your original songs down, he’ll be a huge help.”

  “Mel was awful sweet when they came to the show last month.”

  “Yeah. Mel’s a great gal. I’ll call them in the morning and see when they can come. Now, are you going to be up here in the morning?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Good. You sleep tight, Sunshine. The house won’t be ready for another couple of weeks, but I’m here at the Hyatt. I’ll get you a room first thing in the morning. Let me know when you leave, and call me from the road. You got it?”

  “Yes, Michael. Have I mentioned you’re bossy?”

  “Once or twice. Can’t wait to see you.”

  “You too,” she says softly.

  I take the phone away from my ear and press “end.” Then I lie on the bed and think about the holy rolling reverend and his filthy mouth. Who the hell calls their only daughter a whore? It makes me sick. I’ve said some pretty crappy things to people in my life, but I would never, ever say something like that to my own child. It just confirms my own experiences. Parents are hell on their kids.

  Any father ought to be ecstatic to have a daughter like Jenny. She’s beautiful, talented, and the kindest human being I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. I shake my head silently, alone in my hotel room. Why can’t parents ever realize that, no matter how old, their children are at their mercy? The drive to get love and approval from the people who created you is so strong that, even at Jenny’s age, you crave it. I feel my stomach knot as I unwillingly remember how hard I used to try to get that approval from Loretta.

  It’s a Tuesday afternoon at three p.m. and I’ve just gotten off the bus from my first week of middle school. I’m eleven years old, kind of tall and gangly, and I’m so excited because I know she’s going to be as happy about this as I am. See, Loretta loves art. More than anything in this world. She paints, she draws, and she reads about art all the time. Day and night. Sometimes, I think she might love art more than me. My dad says that’s silly, but it’s a passion for her and it makes her happy, so we need to support it.

  Well, I’m supporting it and then some. I burst into the house yelling for her. “Mom? Mom! I’m home and wait till you hear this!”

  There’s nothing but silence for a minute and I think maybe she’s gone somewhere, but then I hear her out in the garage, where my dad set up a studio for her in one of the bays. He parks his car in the driveway now so that she can have a place to paint.

  “I’m out here, Michael. What in the world are you yelling about?”

  I jog through the kitchen and laundry room until I get to the garage. She’s on her knees on the floor, surrounded by canvases. They’re covered in acrylic paints—black, red, brown. Dark colors, violent colors. She looks up at me and her hair is a mess, her face smeared with red paint so it looks like she’s bleeding. Her eyes are…wild. It’s the only way I can describe them. I’ve seen her like this before. Dad says that it’s best to just leave her be when she’s like this, but I want to tell her my news so badly that I ignore the voice inside my head that’s telling me to stop, turn around, and walk away.

  “Mom, guess what?” I ask, breathless.

  “What do you want, Michael?” she shoots out rapidly.

  She continues to slap paint on the canvases seemingly at random, not even using a brush, just squeezing the paint tubes onto her fingers and wiping them all over the canvases.

  “The art teacher at school, Mrs. Williams, is having a community art show to raise money for the school.”

  “Mmhmm,” she mutters as she holds a tube of ochre paint high over the garage floor and squeezes it.

  The paint streams down, landing in a pile on the concrete. I watch, fascinated, as she plunges her hand into the mess and starts to spread it.

  “So, um, she’s inviting artists from the neighborhood and kids at school to donate stuff and then they’ll auction it all off. She asked to put my painting of Chester in it. You know, Walsh’s dog? When I told her you were an artist, she said you could donate too and she’ll put our paintings up together. A mother-and-son exhibit. Isn’t that cool?”

  Her head snaps up and she pauses in her ceaseless spreading of paint on the garage floor. She looks at me, and for just a moment, I sense that she sees me—actually sees that it’s me, her son, standing there in front of her. But then the look is gone and the wild eyes are back.

  “I don’t have time to give paintings to your stupid school auction, Michael. I’m going to be showing my paintings in New York, where the professional artists are. Now go on. I’m busy,” she snaps. Her gaze drops back to the mess below her and she picks up another tube of paint, holding it and squeezing it over each of the canvases in succession.

  I watch her for a minute, my heart clenched so tight inside my chest that it’s making my eyes sting. I bite my lip to remind myself that I don’t cry. I’m eleven, and I’m a guy. Guys don’t cry. Mom even said so last week.

  I turn back to the door and walk out of the garage. After I’ve gotten myself a peanut butter sandwich and turned on the TV, I call my dad at work. He’s an accountant. It sounds boring to me. Mom says that it is boring.

  “Dad?” I ask as he picks up.

  “Hey, kid! How’s it going?”

  “Um, it’s good. I’m home from school, but Mom’s out in the garage putting paint all over the floor. She has that look, you know?”

  I hear him sigh and then clear his throat. “Okay, son. Don’t worry about Mom. She’s just having one of her days. Leave her be and I’ll come home early. How’s that?”

  “Okay.”

  “You had anything to eat yet?”


  “Yeah. I have a peanut butter sandwich, and I’m watching Men in Black.”

  “Homework?”

  “Yeah, but it’s just a chapter of reading for history.”

  “All right. We’ll work on that when I get home. I’ll bring some pizza for dinner so Mom doesn’t have to cook. Everything else good?”

  “I guess so. Dad?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “Is Mom going to be showing her paintings in New York?

  “What? No. You know mom’s paintings are just her hobby. You need to have an agent and all that kind of thing to show in New York. Where’d you ever get that idea?”

  “Nowhere. I just figured that’s what artists do.”

  He sighs again. “There’re all kinds of artists, Mike. Some do stuff like shows in New York, and some just paint for relaxation. Mom’s more like the second type. I’ve got to go so I can get out of here and bring you dinner. We good?”

  “Yeah, Dad. We’re good.”

  I open my eyes, readjusting to the sterile hotel room in Dallas. I feel the dull throb I get in my head whenever I think about Loretta. She caused everyone she ever came in contact with a headache—no reason her son should be any different. But I still can’t help myself, so I get up off the bed and walk to the closet, where I’ve stored my suitcases. Inside, I open up the largest one and reach into the pocket that lines the lid. There, covered in bubble wrap, is the one thing I have left of her. I pull it out and lay it on the bed, where I carefully unwrap it. Once it’s uncovered, I stand straight and look down at the eight-by-ten painting of a dog.

  She gave it to me a month after I told her about the art show. My dad had gone to the art teacher and explained that I’d been confused about my mom’s painting, and that she didn’t like to show her paintings in public. “She’s just too shy,” my dad said to Mrs. Williams. I remember feeling a hundred shades of humiliation wash over me that day. I was sick with it. And sick with the thought that I’d reached out to her with the one thing I knew she loved, and she’d still rejected me. I vowed at that very moment that I would never paint another picture again. I kept that promise even though it meant I got a D in art that semester.

  I look down at the intricate painting of the golden retriever. He’s sitting in a bed of sunflowers, his goofy face showing no signs of the fact that he’s smashed someone’s flower bed. His tongue is lolling out of his mouth, and behind him is a sunny, clear, blue sky. The style is impressionist, the canvas filled with hundreds of tiny, separate brushstrokes. Viewed from a certain distance they meld together to create a whole. Loretta was a genius at that. When she was sane enough to pull it off.

  She brought this painting of Walsh’s dog to me out of the blue one day. “Here,” she said, thrusting it at me along with her discomfort. “I knew you wanted a painting to put with yours in the show at school. I thought, since you did Chester, I would too. So now they’ll sort of match.”

  I took the painting from her hand in slow motion, awe washing over me at how amazing her work could sometimes be.

  “Um, it’s really good, Mom. But the art show is over. They had it last week. Some old guy who breeds golden retrievers bought my picture of Chester.”

  My mom swallowed and then her eyes darted to mine for a moment. “Oh,” she said. “Well, you can have this one anyway. Or give it to Walsh. Whatever.”

  Now, that painting of a golden retriever who died a decade ago is the one thing I have left of the woman who gave birth to me. I should burn it like she burned my heart over and over again when I was a child. I sure as hell shouldn’t admire it. But I do. I keep it and I admire it. And sometimes when I look at it, I’m tempted to pick up a brush again, dip it in the bright, viscous paint, and turn a blank slate into a window to my soul. But I don’t, and I won’t, because I know that, when I do, it’ll be the beginning of the end for me just like it was for her.

  JENNY ARRIVES bright and early the next morning, her car loaded with belongings. I have her pop the trunk and start hauling shit out. I think she brought the entire contents of her tiny house minus the furniture.

  “Go grab a bellman, will you?” I direct her. “It’d take me six trips to get all this crap upstairs.”

  She rolls her eyes then sashays off to the bell stand. I watch her tight little ass wiggle in her jean shorts as she goes. Damn. The next four months are going to be sheer unadulterated hell.

  After we get Sunshine’s gear up to her room, I suggest we go to eat. I haven’t eaten anything yet and she has the metabolism of a rabbit. She’s pretty much always willing to eat—one of many things I adore about her.

  We slide into a booth at the trendy, little breakfast joint near my new warehouse. The guys and I had this tradition when the band was still together. We’d go to breakfast the morning after a show—or really any morning after we’d been out partying—and I’d order for the table. It started off because everyone was always so fucking hungover that they couldn’t think enough to order. For some reason, I was always the only one who was coherent enough to point to items on a menu. So it stuck, and ever since, I’ve been the breakfast guru and I order for the table.

  I trained Jenny in this protocol early on in the tour, so she doesn’t even open the menu when the waitress drops it on the table in front of her. I open mine, find exactly what I want in two minutes, and order us up a couple of Louisiana breakfast platters complete with andouille sausages, grits, and eggs with hollandaise sauce. I add a carafe of black coffee with a pitcher of half-and-half for Jenny along with a couple of O.J.s and call it good.

  “How you doing, Sunshine?” I ask as I look at the way her long, blond hair flows over her shoulders. I can almost smell the sweet lavender scent that follows her everywhere. It makes my stomach clench in a way that being hungry for food never could. “You feeling a little better after the mighty reverend’s attack?”

  “I’m okay. I know he isn’t right. It just hurts that he’d think it much less say it.”

  I reach over and fun a finger along her arm. “Sunshine. Some people—some parents—are assholes. They just are. And I’m sorry to say it about your dad, but it’s the truth. He thinks that his religion gives him the right to decide what is and isn’t allowed in your life. It doesn’t. I don’t know much about the whole thing, but I do know that, even if your old man has a special relationship with God, that doesn’t mean he knows God’s every thought and wish. He’s not an extension of God. At least not any more than any person is. He’s just a man who has spent a lot of time talking about God. I think he’s confused himself with the one he’s spent so much time focused on.”

  She gives a small laugh. Jenny and I haven’t talked much about religion. Loretta raised me Catholic, at least for a while, but I haven’t practiced any sort of religion since I was sixteen. I just can’t believe in a God that would let the shit that happened to my family go unchecked. He might be real, but he’s not in my corner if he is.

  “I don’t want to talk about him though,” she says with a sad smile. “I want to talk about the loft and the album and all your plans for me.”

  I give her what she wants—a break from the bad stuff for a bit. I tell her about the guys who are coming in to engineer the album and some of my plans for the arrangements. Then I tell her that I called Joss and Mel this morning and they’re coming in a couple of days.

  “But here’s the deal,” I say as I lean back after scarfing the last bit of my eggs. I swig the dregs of the coffee in my cup and pour another cup from the carafe. “Mel asked if she can document the making of the album. You know she was on Lush’s last tour—” I stop for a moment, reminded of the clusterfuck that the band-ending tour created. And with no small part of the blame for that lying in my shoulders, I take a deep breath and continue. “And Dave showed us all the photos she took. We might still release them in a book of some sort. They really were amazing. Sort of hard to look at sometimes, considering what we know now, but still. She’s a great photographer.”

  “So, she’d
want to photograph me recording and stuff?”

  “All kinds of shots, both before and during the recording sessions. She’d start this week when you’re working with Joss on lyrics.”

  She nods her head slowly, digesting this information.

  I lean forward again and put my hand over hers. “I know it seems strange to think about someone following you around with a camera all the time, but first of all, Mel is the best. You’ll hardly even notice her. It’s how she gets such good shots. She fades into the background, and before you know it, you’ve gone on about your life and she’s taken photos of it and you didn’t even know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And secondly, Sunshine, you’re going to have to get used to having those cameras around. It doesn’t go away, and the more music you make and sell, the more cameras will be there. You might as well start learning to ignore them now, because as famous as you’re going to be, there will be a whole lot of them.”

  She gives me that raised eyebrow, indicating that she thinks I’m blowing smoke up her very fine ass. She doesn’t seem to realize I’m being serious. But she will when this album goes platinum. I may be an idiot about a lot of things in life, but I know the music business, and I know she has exactly what it takes to be a mega success in it.

  After breakfast, we stop by the loft to see if the workers have started on the renovations, which they have. Then we head back to the hotel, where we both grab our guitars. We camp out on the balcony of my suite and start working on refining some of the songs she’s written. It’s by the far the best afternoon I’ve spent in a long time. The only thing that mars it is the knowledge that it can only last for a few months. Then I’ll have to let her go. And that’s going to hurt like hell.

  Jenny

  IT’S DINNERTIME when Mel DiLorenzo arrives at my hotel room door. I answer her knock and smile when I see her. She’s tall and has what might be the world’s most perfect figure, just like her sister, Tammy. She’s also the perfect rock-and-roll fiancée with her cut-off shorts and cowboy boots. Her legs are about a mile long, and her plain, white T-shirt is the backdrop for the silver necklaces and bracelets that cover her. Her thick fall of dark-red hair is pulled up into a ponytail, and I have to admit that I’m jealous of the color.