Say Goodbye Page 26

  He stayed in a coma for two days and then, on Friday, February 9, at 2:00 a.m., he died without waking up.

  Laurie and her mother were home asleep when the call came. They drove at insane speeds down 410 to get to Northeast Baptist, where the ambulance had taken him, though strictly speaking there was no reason left to hurry.

  He was pronounced dead at Northeast Baptist, which made the nursing home’s statistics look better, and Laurie and her mother were home again by 5:00. They tried to call Corky and got no answer, so they sat sideways on the couch, facing each other, holding hands and drinking hot chocolate while the sun struggled to rise. Laurie went over her last conversation with Grandpa Bill three or four times, and her mother repeated everything the doctors had told her.

  “Listen, Mom,” Laurie finally said, “do you still keep a stash?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Dope, Mom. Marijuana. Chronic. Don’t bother acting innocent, I’ve known about it for years. I could smell it coming out of your room at night.”

  Her mother sighed, waited too long to attempt a bluff, and finally went to her bedroom. She returned with a baggie and a small metal pipe. “Do you do a lot of this on the road?” She was obviously self-conscious about asking, and equally unable to stop herself.

  “No, Mom. I don’t even drink. It just seemed like this might be a good idea right now.”

  It was. Laurie felt them both relax as they passed the pipe back and forth.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” her mother said.

  “It was this or lie, and you were always a lousy liar. You made me into an honest person because I was always afraid I’d be as bad at it as you.”

  “You’re such a cypher,” her mother said. “We’re sitting here talking trivia and I don’t even know you anymore. You’re some kind of vagabond, living in motel rooms, making your living in bars, just a disembodied voice on the phone once a week. Now that Daddy’s gone, I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.” She was as stubborn about crying as Laurie, and the tears seemed to dry up in her eyes without ever falling.

  “Mom,” Laurie said, and put her arms around her. “I love you. I’m the same person I always was. I take my stuffed tiger on the road with me and I still read Cosmo and I still can’t cry when I’m supposed to.”

  “But are you happy? Your grandpa always asked me that. He would call on Sunday nights after we’d both talked to you and ask if I thought you were happy.”

  She wished she’d known that while he was still alive. “Yes,” she said finally. “When we’re playing, I’m really and truly happy at least one hour a day. How many people can say that?”

  Eventually, with a cold drizzle falling in the halfhearted daylight outside, they went to bed. Laurie lay awake for an hour or more and finally took a pen and notepad off her night stand and wrote:

  People die and leave you needing more

  And it’s so hard letting go

  Something broke inside and I’m afraid to let it show

  And it’s so hard letting go.

  A few minutes later she was asleep.

  Ashes

  After the memorial service, Laurie and her mother and Corky went to Brackenridge Park. They had Grandpa Bill’s ashes divided between them in paper bags and periodically one of them would take out a handful and sprinkle it around. Laurie went off by herself to the Japanese Gardens and scattered the last of her share among the exotic plants by the koi pond. Then she sat and watched the turtles swim in the murky green water. It seemed a better existence than her own, or Ron Tuggle’s: Both air and water were equally breathable. And if things got tough you could pull in your arms and legs, like the little sculpture that Gabe carried on tour, and sink into the soft, warm mud at the bottom of the pond.

  Corky found her there. “You okay, Sis?”

  She looked up at him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Bad question.”

  Corky sat on the bench next to her and they watched the turtles together. After the agony of the memorial service it was a relief for her to be with somebody who understood what she was feeling without her having to talk about it.

  Eventually he said, “Did Mom tell you I’m thinking about joining the Navy?”

  “She told me. I hate the idea of it. How could you stand to have somebody tell you what to do every minute of the day?”

  Corky laughed. “Like I’ve done such a great job running my own life the last four years? Flunked out of school, quit or got fired from every job I’ve had? Maybe…” His voice changed, developed a sudden artificial nonchalance. “Maybe I should go on the road with you instead. I could sleep on the bus, eat the leftovers from those party trays backstage, meet girls, get high every night. What do you say, could you use an extra roadie?”

  She saw he’d been thinking about it for months, pinning his hopes on it. Panic chased all her words away.

  “Corky, I…”

  “Yeah, I know, it was a dumb idea. What do you need a loser like me for?”

  “Corky, there’s no bus. There’s no party trays. Somebody might hand us a joint once in a while, but other than that we’re lucky not to have to pay for our own beer. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Corky, I can’t save you. I’m not sure I can even save myself.”

  Corky’s expression changed from self-pity to wonder. “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s getting that way.”

  “Whoa,” Corky said. Then, softly, “Whoa.”

  That night she called Sid the Shark and told him to find somewhere for the band to play.

  Into the breach

  Eight days later, on February 19, she flew to Dallas to meet the rest of the band for a gig in the Deep Ellum arts district. No banners or signs this time, just tired smiles, still she felt a tension go out of her that she’d been carrying since the Minneapolis airport.

  During the long week in San Antonio, Melinda had FedExed her a dub of the “Carry On” video. Laurie watched it for the first time while her mother was at work and quickly found out why the director hadn’t cared about traditional coverage. He had processed and manipulated the footage until there was some question about whether he’d needed the band as a starting point at all.

  A recurring shot of Laurie anchors the video, most of her face in darkness, the rest in washed-out black and white, a grainy sunburst behind her, a ball of light erupting from her mouth as she sings in ultra-slow motion. During the verses a hugely magnified drop of sweat runs down Gabe’s face. Mitch’s guitar neck bends under the weight of pounding chords. Dennis seems to be screaming in pain as he flails in single frames with his drumsticks, thick tendrils of oily smoke winding around him. Shots of the crowd show roiling bodies and an occasional demented face swimming into focus and then slipping away.

  It was a hellish nightmare of a video and Laurie loved it without reservation. Gabe, whom she’d been calling at least every other night, assured her the rest of the band loved it too. VH-1 had passed on it—“too murky, not their sort of thing” according to Melinda—but MTV had scheduled it for 120 Minutes the following Sunday night.

  That Sunday they were in Boulder with the night off, crowded around the TV in Laurie’s room, snow falling outside, Laurie and Gabe low-balling again. “They’re not going to play it,” Laurie said.

  “They’ll play it,” Gabe said, “only Rachman will come on first and make snide remarks about ‘Don’t Make Promises’ which he was of course much too cool to ever play.”

  “No,” Laurie said, “they’ll start it and then Beavis and Butthead will come on and stop the video and talk about how much it sucks.”

  “Will you guys shut up?” Dennis said. “I’m trying to watch the show.”

  In fact “Carry On” appeared just before the end, sandwiched between two other videos, aired, as it were, without comment. When the show was over, Laurie turned off the TV and Dennis said, “That was cool.”

  �
�It was brilliant,” Gabe said.

  “It was,” Laurie said, “a black rose among broken beer bottles.”

  After a brief silence Chuck nodded. “That about says it all.”

  The next Friday they were in Flagstaff for their first-ever return engagement, where Melinda faxed them to say that “Carry On” had not made it into MTV’s Buzz Bin, where it would have gotten maximum exposure, “for reasons not clear to me or anyone else involved.” It was “in the rotation” but not “in the power rotation.” Ardrey had suggested they shoot “Neither Are We” with a “VH-1-friendly” director. “Better VH-1,” Melinda quoted him as saying, “than no TV at all.”

  Neither Are We

  A week later—on Monday, March 4—they were in Provo, Utah, which had been transformed by an influx of software companies into a shiny miniature Silicon Valley. They came back to the motel from a nearly all-male audience to find a fax from Ardrey.

  “I KNOW YOU GUYS DO NOT HAVE MUCH FAITH IN ME,” it read, in hand-printed block capitals, “AND I CANNOT SAY AS I BLAME YOU. BUT WE HAVE ONE MORE SHOT AT A VIDEO, SO WE ARE GOING TO GO OUT IN STYLE. NEXT FRIDAY, THE 15TH, GENERAL RECORDS WILL FLY YOU TO LA FIRST CLASS. A LIMOUSINE WILL PICK YOU UP AT LAX AND TAKE YOU TO A MEETING WITH DONALD BAILEY, WHO HAS DONE VIDEOS FOR SARAH MCLACHLAN AND MELISSA ETHRIDGE. YOU WILL STAY AT THE CHATEAU MARMONT, WHERE JOHN BELUSHI DIED. THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE SECOND PLACE PRIZE ON JEOPARDY! BUT I THINK IT WILL BE PRETTY SWANK. THANK YOU JOHNNY GILBERT. SEE YOU IN LA LA LAND.

  “SINCERELY, MARK J. ARDREY.”

  “Cool,” Dennis said, after he’d read it. “A limo.”

  “They’re just going to recoup it out of our royalties,” Laurie said.

  “Not to be heartless, here,” Gabe said, “but I don’t think royalties are an issue at this point.”

  “You’re right,” Laurie said. “Let’s take it while we can get it.” Though she realized she was supposed to be jaded, the idea of being in another video kept her up that night and got her out of bed fully charged the next morning. She’d been ready for it since the first time she saw MTV, back in 1982, before Warner Cable carried it in San Antonio, watching it at her cousin’s house in Houston. They’d made their own video late that night, self-consciously lip-synching to Hall and Oates, leaving behind a devastating piece of blackmail if anyone ever discovered it.

  The band was getting the rhythm of the road again, playing well, drawing good crowds, especially when they went anywhere near a city they’d visited the previous fall.

  Laurie finished “Letting Go” and when she brought it into the band she felt more awkward than she had since their first days together. “This is okay, isn’t it?” she kept asking.

  “It’s fine,” Gabe said. “It’s just the first song you’ve ever brought us that wasn’t written from somebody else’s point of view. This is actually you talking, for once.”

  “Yow,” she said, reaching for the lyric sheet. “Let me have it back. I’ll fix it.”

  Gabe snatched it away from her. “Don’t even think about it.”

  On Friday, March 8, they checked into a Motel 6 in Albuquerque. It would have felt like spring, if there had been any trees or flowers to bloom. Mitch was nursing a cold and it had left the whole group sluggish, as if their collective battery had run down. Laurie went to register while the others sat in the van, out of sight of the desk clerk, a habit that saved time, questions, and the occasional request for a security deposit.

  After she’d filled out the card, the clerk handed her two keys and a fax from Melinda.

  “Can’t believe the news from General,” it began. “I have calls in to everybody. Don’t panic, don’t believe anything you hear. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  In fact they’d heard nothing, and panic seemed the only option. The desk clerk pointed her to a pay phone at the gas station next door. Laurie walked, then ran toward it, forgetting to say anything to the others. As she dialed, it occurred to her how much she’d come to hate pay phones: it was impossible to have a human, private conversation there, and yet the alternative, using a room phone in front of the rest of the band, was even worse. It was such a part of the road experience, where everything was rented and disposable, no home-cooked food, no animals to pet, no trace left behind, not even the scent of her perfume on a pillow.

  She got Melinda’s machine at the office and no answer at home or on her cell phone. The receptionist at the Warner office in Burbank hadn’t seen Melinda and told Laurie that Mark Ardrey was “unavailable.”

  Laurie got in the van and handed the fax to Gabe, who read it once in silence and once out loud. “No Melinda,” Laurie said, “no Ardrey.”

  It was sound check time. They drove downtown to Gold Street where Sid had booked them a return engagement at the Fabulous Dingo Bar. They set up the equipment, then Laurie called Melinda and Ardrey again and left the number of the club. After sound check they sent Chuck out for breakfast burritos from the Frontier and they all sat at the club and waited for a call that didn’t come. Every hour Laurie called both Melinda and Ardrey again, until Warner’s switchboard closed, and then she just called Melinda.

  Laurie felt like she had a sunset inside her as she got up on stage. Her stomach burned from eating too fast with too much on her mind, from total somatic tension, from a formless sense of doom. All of them except Dennis played distractedly, with too many mistakes. The crowd forgave, but did not surrender their hearts.

  At two o’clock California time, as Laurie was turning in, there was still no answer on Melinda’s cell phone, still the same message on her machine.

  Laurie finally fell asleep before dawn and woke up stunned and disoriented at ten o’clock. The phone was ringing. She fumbled the receiver off the cradle and then couldn’t remember what to say.

  “What?” she said. No, she thought, that’s not right. Was it “hello” you were supposed to say?

  “Laurie, it’s Mark.”

  “Who?”

  “Mark Ardrey. Did I wake you up?”

  “No, I had to get up to answer the phone.” She lay down, on the verge of sleep again. “Where am I?”

  “You? You’re in Albuquerque, at least that’s what Melinda told me. So what have you heard?”

  The previous night came back to her. “Heard? Other than an ominous and incomprehensible fax from Melinda, we haven’t heard anything.” She sat up, finally awake. “So what’s all this mystery about?”

  “Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news…”

  “Out with it, Mark.”

  “General fired me.”

  “Oh, God. What happens to us?”

  “Don’t I even get a ‘Sorry, Mark, hope you’re okay?’ ”

  “Maybe another day. What happens to the band?”

  “I’m sure nothing’s going to happen to you. You’ve sold 30,000 units, which is respectable considering how little money and effort they put behind you. You’ve got great reviews and great word of mouth on the live shows. They’ll assign you to somebody else at the label until it’s time for the next record, at which point you can look around the company and figure out who you want to work with.”

  “So what happens to you? Are you set up with another label yet?”

  “Me?” Ardrey said. “I’m gone. I’m out of this business. I’m going to find someplace where you’re not washed up at 34. Maybe I’ll go to some podunk town and write record reviews in the Sunday paper. Maybe I’ll buy a horse and wagon and go live with the Friends.”

  “Sorry, Mark,” she said. “Hope you’re okay.”

  Melinda was still not answering. Laurie went to the front desk, borrowed a magic marker, and wrote “ARDREY CALLED, CANNED. WHITHER MOSS & BAND?” and talked the desk clerk into faxing it to LA.

  Melinda finally called as Laurie was closing up her suitcase. Gabe was already on his way down to the van.

  “I can’t find anything out,” Melinda said. “It’s the weekend, everybody’s gone. Yes, Ardrey’s out, but that’s not necessarily bad for
you. Maybe he’s taking the fall for you.”

  “What fall would that be?”

  “It’s a figure of speech. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “I assume this means no video shoot next week.”

  “Don’t assume anything. Just play hard, drive safe, and I’ll call you on Monday.”

  The video shoot indeed turned out to be canceled. It wasn’t until April 1, however, that Ross Claybeck actually called Melinda and told her that he was dropping Laurie from the General roster.

  The band was in Atlanta trying to catch up on a week’s worth of too little sleep. Laurie took the call at two in the afternoon. Gabe was reading with a booklight in the heavily draped room and Chuck was snoring in a sleeping bag near the door.

  “It’s not just you,” Melinda said. “They’re letting all of Ardrey’s artists go. I mean, Claybeck has a point. The record’s had six months and three videos, and nobody else is going to have the motivation to work it. They’re all looking ahead to the fall releases.”

  Laurie didn’t say anything. Against her silence, Melinda’s words began to spin like tires in loose sand. “All is not lost,” Melinda said somewhat desperately. “You’ve made a good start, you’ve got name recognition, all we have to do is find a friendly ear at another label. I was talking to David Anderle at A&M the other day and he said something nice about you, I’ve got a call into him, I—”

  “I have to go,” Laurie said.

  “Laurie, sweetie, are you okay?”

  “It’s not like we didn’t see this coming,” Laurie said, amazed at how normal her voice sounded. She knew that sounding reasonable would get her off the phone faster than anything else, and getting off the phone was what she wanted most at that moment.

  “That’s true, isn’t it?” Melinda said, and Laurie could hear how badly Melinda wanted off the phone herself. “Now we have to make some decisions about—”