The door swung open, banged closed. She was gone. I wasn’t sure I’d see her when I got back out front, or ever again.
I was fine with it, okay?
But I found myself wishing the show was already over, the evening, the holidays, thisyear. I gripped the sink counter’s edge, staring at myself in the mirror. The show must go the hell on.
I went into the far toilet stall, latched the door, and leaned my cheek against the cool tile of the wall.
I always have a good show. That was not the parting shot for the ages that I would have planned for this reunion. But it was the truth.
Oh, I was supposed to be coy and Midwestern about it, wasn’t I? Say something to cut any compliment in half and toe the dirt with my boot?
But I didn’t play that game. Our little band got people off their butts, dancing—people who wouldn’t normally get off the couch to do anything at all came to see us play Wednesday nights, out past their bedtimes. We gave people what they wanted: a good dang time.
Was I supposed to pretend that Doll Devine wasn’t the reason people came out? Pretend that women didn’t come out to McPhee’s on a school night, leaving the laundry undone, so they could imagine themselves shimmying in one of my tight-fitting dresses? And you can guess why the men showed up.
Everyone came out tofeeland then went back home to get lucky or to get out their old records and, well—sorry if I wasn’t supposed to admit that my voice reached into people’s hearts. Reached in and gavea little tweak. That’s what it felt like to listen to a good country song, you know? Like, when I first heard Patsy Cline, I didn’t know how to feel—elated and drunk, turned on, sad. Most people feel a little sad listening to Patsy. Her regrets became yours. And still, all these years later, when I heard one of her songs, I always remembered the saying that country music is three chords and the truth. The truth, like a gong inside your soul.
A good country song, a true one, no matter how many chords it uses, no matter how rustic or slickly produced, sang to the inside of you and burst you wide open, lashed you raw and brand-new, and left you thinking of all the hurt you’d survived.
Now, some seemed to think country was about location, but not everyone can be from the same place. Not everyone can be born and raised.
Country wasn’t a dot on any map, not a way you were brought up, not a way you styled your hair, not a pair of boots you slipped into. Anyone can buy the trappings and put it on like a—
I was reminded of the guy on the bus, asking about mycostume. And now Marisa suggesting the wordcountrydidn’t belong in my mouth. Telling me I had to talk some certain way, couldn’t name myself, couldn’t make myself anything I wanted.
Some might put it on and get it wrong, and maybe I’m one of them, to think I am country even though I’d lived in the city my entire life. And not therightcity. Chicago is no Nashville, you’re thinking. No Austin.
But country wasn’t a place. It wasn’t one kind of music, either, or one kind of singer. Country was that gong—loud, hollow, ringing on and on unanswered.
If you know what I mean, you never have to ask. Am I allowed? Am I invited? If your soul reverbs with loneliness when you hear a fiddle singing sweet, even in a crowded room and with someone on your arm, no matter how you’re living, then, cowboy, you’re country enough.
I’d barely had a minute to myself in the stall when the ladies’ roomdoor swung open again. I listened for Marisa to start barking whatever she’d come to say now that I was trapped, or for Rooster to ask if I was okay or Lourey to wonder how long five minutes could possibly be, but it was only a couple of customers, laughing. I turned my other hot cheek to a new patch of tile.
“Isn’t it ridiculous?” one of the women said. “You go. I just need to fix my face.”
The other stall door shut and latched. “You’ve seen them play before?” the other woman said from inside.
“Couple of times with Steve.”
“Steve,”the other said. “Why keep coming to shows if you don’t like the band?”
I lifted my face off the wall.
“Because it’s a hoot,” the woman at the sink said. “All that country girl crap. The people-watching, alone. Now that I’m not with Steve anymore, I don’t have to watch him drool over the slutty singer.”
“Is she slutty?”
“I don’t know what she is,” the one at the mirror said. “DollDivine. Blow-up doll, more like.”
I was strangely flattered anyone would think I had the rack for it. I stared at the placard on the back of the stall door, where a poster sleeve had long ago been covered with graffiti, stickers for bands who would never play here. Someone had recently added a unicorn sticker to the corner, and she was pristine and pleased with herself.
“Is she out there?” said the one in the stall. “Which one is she?”
“Behind the bar, earlier. Brunette, sequins,” said the other. “Going for a retro pin-up thing?”
“Oh, I saw her,” said the one in the stall. “That was Steve’stype?”
“Yeah, he’d get a hard-on for that trailer trash and then invite me back, like, no thank you.”
