Can’t Keep a Good Girl Down: Chapter 4

Chapter Four

In the afternoon, Dave Digby stands up and says he’s going to get some lunch at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, a nearby meat-and-three. The rest of us stare at him. Not even fried southern food stirs us from our blank state.

“Heather? Anything from Arnold’s?”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat something anyways.”

“Okay.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”

“I’m leaving in a few minutes. If you change your mind, let me know.”

“Mashed potatoes.”

“That’s it? Are you sure you don’t want anything else? They have killer fried chicken.”

“Umm…. No. I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”

Digby brings me back a Styrofoam container full of mashed potatoes, buttered and blended to the consistency of baby food. Perfect. With chunks or without, buttery, salty, or with cheese, I’ve always loved mashed potatoes. When my mom made them, with real Russets, butter, milk and salt all mashed by hand, I’d scoop a mountain onto my plate and dig a hole in the middle for more butter. No gravy, ever. Except on Thanksgiving.

In grade school, I gobbled up the baseball-sized faux potato goop plopped on my plate with an ice cream scooper. In college, I made large bowls of instant mashed potatoes almost every night. Sometimes I added margarine and salt, sometimes I nuked in a Food Lion brand American cheese slice. When I felt like splurging, I microwaved a real potato and mashed it up on my plate with fake butter. During my freshman year, potatoes comprised my dinner about as often as Ramen noodles and bologna sandwiches.

The white blob that Dave hands me tastes like the box it came in, and it’s neither Arnold’s nor the potatoes’ fault. My taste buds aren’t working. I eat my side dish like a kid taking her medicine while Warren and Dave huddle over plates of fried meat and hockey puck-sized biscuits. How can they be hungry? And how can they eat all that food when it tastes like cardboard? Am I the only one that can’t taste anything on Day One Without John?

With the remains of our southern-fried lunch still strewn on the coffee table, a woman I have never seen before shows up to visit Warren. “Warren!!!!” says the poised woman with dyed blonde hair. Her name, I find out, is Renee. She’s in full makeup and wearing a floral dress that looks like something a 1950s housewife would wear. Looking proud of herself, Renee hands Warren a large wicker basket full of homemade chocolate chip cookies, corn bread, and a jar of homemade apple butter, all perfectly arranged and wrapped just so in a pink cloth.

To me, me with nothing but Chapstick on my lips, my eyes swollen from random waterworks, this woman seems so…together. Renee chatters away about nothing for her entire stay. I think she has a crush on Warren and this is her way of making inroads.

Too bad for her, Warren has a girlfriend who, at this very moment, is biting her nails at her mortgage company job until she can bolt over to Big Red to see her beau. When Miss Renee finally leaves, Warren doles out the cookies. I put one in my hand and stare at it as if it’s an art project. I can feel the gooey melted chocolate as I chew a bite of cookie, but it doesn’t taste much different than the mashed potatoes. Odd how grief can dull the senses, as if all my energy is going into the business of coping.

Warren, Dave, Dave’s girlfriend, and I sit together and with company until daylight fades. During the time considered “happy hour” by professionals itching to erase the day with a rum and Coke at the closest bar, John’s friends migrate to Warren’s bachelor pad to dull the rough edges of their grief with whatever beer or liquor they could find on the way over.

The markedly mulleted Neal R., usually boisterous on arrival, enters quietly and heads straight to the overstuffed black chair.

“RCN!” Warren calls from the kitchen. He ambles over and gives Neal one of those masculine, minimal body contact hugs and a slap on the back. (By the way, we call Neal “Rock Climber Neal” or RCN for short. He’s not a rock climber, but he apparently climbed one once, or told someone he did. Hence, RCN.)

“Hey man, how ‘ya holdin’ up,” Neal responds as he slumps into the chair, his spunk dormant behind his glasses. Even his mustache droops.

“Fine fine. There’ve been people over all day. Pretty cool.”

Another knock. It’s Julie, the wide-eyed platinum blonde who has known John since high school. She migrated to Nashville with her now-ex-husband, Jay (long before he became Smilin’ Jay McDowell, upright bass player for BR5–49). Julie’s a drummer. She’s cool, smart and trustworthy. She has barbed wire tattooed around her bicep. And she teaches an aerobics class, which makes her one of the healthiest people I know.

Warren’s girlfriend, Dana, finally free from her hectic job processing mortgage loans, shows up next. Her sensible black heels click-clack across the wood floor as she strides across the huge living room, stopping to say Hi to us all. She touches Warren’s arm and the two of them disappear into his bedroom. I can hear them talking, in low quiet voices.

More friends and friends of friends arrive at #302.

“Craig! Dude, you shouldn’t have!” says Warren as he rejoins his guests. He re-enters the living room to find a 12-pack of Michelob on the bar. Casserole? Not here, just beer!

Stacey, Alyson, Michelle, Dana’s friend Dawn, Julie’s friend Cherry, Blair, Tony B., the hippie chick who’s into Wicca, and Suzette, a rockabilly musician who knows everyone, round out the mourning happy hour crew.

Warren puts Junior Brown’s Junior High into the CD player, The energy of the room shifts from relatively quiet to relatively animated.

I got a star on my car and one on my chest,
A gun on my hip and the right to arrest
I’m the guy who’s the boss on this highway
So watch out what you’re doin’ when you’re drivin’ my way
If you break the law, you’ll hear from me, I know
I’m a-workin’ for the state, I’m The Highway Patrol

As soon as Junior’s “Guit-Steel” (his self-designed guitar/steel guitar combo) kicks in with the twangy “Highway Patrol,” I’m reminded of the night this past June when John and myself, along with Warren, Stacey, RCN and Blair, saw Junior Brown and band at the Station Inn, Nashville’s best-known bluegrass venue. My arms stung with sunburn from spending the afternoon splashing around in the swimming pool with Stacey, John and Warren. The men stayed in the shallow end, standing in waist-high water and drinking Busch beer held in Styrofoam koozies. Stacey and I alternated between the lounge chairs and the water, but since my fair skin doesn’t bronze like Stacey’s, I spent more time practicing my dog paddle and flutter kicks than laying out in the sun. And I still ended up beet red.

That night, the four of met RCN and Blair, one of my closest friends next to Stacey and Alyson, at Tabouli’s, a restaurant near Belmont University that serves cheap Mediterranean food and pasta. Over Gyro sandwiches, hummus, and beer, we talked animatedly, excited to hear Junior Brown at a legendary club, while our legs stuck to the white plastic furniture in the outdoor patio. It was one of those sublime, carefree summer Saturdays, with no responsibilities, no troubles, and the luxury of a whole day spent with friends and my beau.

The hubbub in #302 snaps me out of my happy memory. By six o’clock, 20 people have gathered in #302. The day of mourning has morphed into a party. On any other day, I would be delighted by an impromptu get-together. Today, not so much.

What is everybody doing here? How can these people, who say they are John’s friends, stand around laughing and talking like nothing even happened? Don’t they understand that this is a SAD day? I can barely make a sentence, much less engage in party chit-chat. Isn’t anyone else sad? Isn’t anyone else silently falling apart like me?

“Can I just go hide in John’s bedroom?” I ask Stacey and Alyson, who are standing near the half-dead plants in front of the windows. “I didn’t expect so many people, at least not all at once.”

“You could…I don’t think anyone would be offended,” Stacey says. “But, you know, everyone’s here for the same reason. Considering John and Warren had so many parties here, it kind of makes sense that people would want to have one now.”

True. I opt not to hide in John’s bedroom, which I could pretend the sloshy waterbed is carrying me out to sea. But even as I visit and commiserate with friends, I feel like an outsider. My grief seems different than everyone else’s. Who else here feels like a widow whose love life is over, before age 25? Can I claim the official title of widow, since we weren’t married? Technically, we weren’t even dating when he died. But with only two weeks between breakup and death, does the breakup count? It seems inconsequential in the double-whammy of losses. Most of the others here have significant others to console them. Mine is…somewhere else.

I can’t dwell on the widow thoughts much right now, for I must pretend to enjoy tonight’s “revelry.” I put on my friendly smile like an actor puts on a mask. I have a feeling I’ll be doing this a lot.

As I study the room and its occupants, it becomes clear that I’m not the only one grieving. Blair, perched on a barstool, seems lost in thought next to RCN, who is yammering on about the “Dancin’ Outlaw” documentary featuring Appalachian dancer/oddball Jesco White, God knows why.

Blair plays guitar and sometimes sings for an instrumental surf rock band called Thee Phantom 5ive. He plays his role as a trés cool ‘50s-esque musician on and off stage. Aside from Levi’s and (hopefully) underwear, I don’t think he owns any clothing from this decade. He sports a nicely combed ‘do, stuck in place with a dollap of pomade. He has an incredible wardrobe of vintage tuxedo jackets. Where Warren is uncomplicated and boyish, Blair, barely 30, is complex and brooding. He is an old soul inside a spark plug body. He’s held the same job and same townhouse apartment with the same roommate — a friendly silver-haired man named Steve — for years, which is different than my tendency to move around every year or two.

Blair flips open his Zippo and fires up another unfiltered Camel, my presence distracting him from RCN’s film analysis. We exchange hellos and another full, long hug. He came straight from the auto parts distributor where he works, yet somehow still manages to look hip. He’s wearing a vintage gas station jacket and a Thee Phantom 5ive T-Shirt.

“Pretty amazing huh,” he says, taking a long drag, his eyes watering, but not from the smoke. “I still can’t believe it. I mean, he was the greatest guy, such a standup person. Everyone liked him, he had a good job, I mean…why him? Why him and not some murderer, some fucker on the street? Why take him? Hell, he was only 29 years old.”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” I say, looking down at the bar where someone doodled a hand flipping a fat middle finger. “I know God has a reason for everything, but I can’t figure out any reason for this. Maybe it will come later, I dunno. It just…it just doesn’t make sense.”

“God has a fucked up way of working,” Blair says, and exhales another plume of smoke.

RCN, not one to suppress his emotions, is openly upset now, having honed in on our conversation. “I just talked to John the other nahht,” he says in his thick Kentucky drawl. “He was at Craig’s Labor Day party.” He sighs, remembering the holiday that was only a few days ago. “Good times. Damn, I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him.”

Similar conversations transpire among us. Meanwhile, Warren digs through his entertainment center and unearths a stack of photo albums. John had boxes of pictures, so we had lots to pore over. Aside from college photos of a thinner, more tanned version of himself, John had photos of himself with almost every celebrity that appeared on “Crook & Chase”: John with Charlie Daniels, John with Pam Tillis, John with Hulk Hogan.

Warren reloads the CD player: Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Lucinda Williams, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys.

Wooly man Craig raises his bottle of Miller to make a toast. He looks like a lumberjack after a long day in the forest: overalls, huge mane of unkempt black hair and a full Grizzly Adams beard.

“John loved life more than anyone I know,” he says, with a hint of a southern drawl. “He lived full speed ahead. He was a no bullshit guy. So we shouldn’t be sad right now. I think the best way to honor him is to celebrate his life the way we celebrate every weekend, not mope around because he’s gone. So here’s to you John. Cheers.” Craig raises his beer can high in the air.

Well, okay. Might as well have a drink.

Note: To get a sense of what this is all about, please read previous chapters one, one part 2, two, and three. Claps, comments, follows, referrals to agents and book publishers (!!) all encouraged.