I meant it, even though Callie was quick to point out that I didn’t exactly have a good reputation before Joni released that song.
Anyway, just because I meant it doesn’t mean I was going todoit.
Boy, did you lose your shit,the Kurt Cobain in my head says.
Joni Jewell’s got nothing on you,the Scott Harris says, trying to calm me. Most fans don’t know that Scott Harris had terrible stage fright. He had to get high before every performance. Not like me. For me, the performancewasthe high.
Callie told the press I didn’t know what I was saying. So-called journalists called medangerous, unstable, ahas-been, like they were schoolyard bullies throwing out angry taunts. I wonder if they even remember the things they called me before:visionary, important, ahead of her time.
Mom’s the only one who called me anything that stuck: Bad Mother.
Bad Mother, Big Brother’s
Watching you
Bad Mother, mother fucker
Ain’t you blue?
Mom called me shrill long beforeRolling Stoneever heard my voice. Sometimes I think she wishes I were one of those stars whose drug use got the better of them, like Janis and Jim and Jimi. It’d be so much easier, with me out of the picture.
I walk to the Bose speaker in the living room and turn it on. Satellite radio. I scroll until I reach the nineties grunge station.
I turn the music up, but I can still hear Joni Jewell’s incessant warble inside my head.
Louder still, so that it feels like the hardwood floor beneath my feet is thumping.
Louder still, until I can’t hear anything but Kurt Cobain screaming in my ears.
His honest screams are so much prettier than Joni Jewell’s weak falsetto, aping her namesake for all she’s worth. When will the world notice that they’ve been hanging on to every word from a singer who can’t even be bothered to find her own voice?
Be authentic,my husband always said.Peoplewantto listen to something real.
I used to be something real.
But they all stopped listening to me.
18Lord Edward
I’m back in Manhattan and I can’t move; it’s as though I left the bottom half of my body somewhere else. Anne’s waiting for me on the other side of the street, the paparazzi crowding her. The headlines will read,Lady Anne’s Good-for-Nothing Brother Leaves Her Waiting.
That’s too long for a tabloid headline. They’d be cleverer than that.
Lady Anne Waits, Lord Eddie Ditched Their Date.
They love a good rhyme.
I wake abruptly, pressing the heel of my hands into my eyes. My dreams are terrible—a side effect, supposedly, of the opiates—but being conscious isn’t any better.
I roll over and discover what woke me: My phone is ringing. Set to vibrate and perched on one of the downy pillows, it makes the whole mattress shake. In London, it’s morning. Whoever’s calling must think I’m still in the UK, which means that Anne’s campaign to get me here stealthily worked.
I look at the screen. It’s not a number I recognize.
I was thirteen when Dad and Anne gave me my own phone. The calls started almost at once: unknown numbers at odd hours, a voice on the other line saying, “Hey, how are you?” as though we were old friends. Groggy and still half-asleep, nervous about offending anyone by admitting I didn’t recognize their voice, I kept up my end of the conversation—where I was, what I’d done that day, when I’d last seen my mother, whom my father had been out with that night.
The very next day, the details of the call would be published on the cover of some tabloid. The voice on the other end had been a grown man pretending to be a classmate, or perhaps they had a son or daughter who’d done it for them. My father would scold me for falling for such an obviousploy; Anne would roll her eyes in disgust. Even when she was my age, her expression communicated, she’d never been so dumb.
I stretch my arms overhead, fully awake now. For months, I’ve been living in the UK. The doctors thought it would be better for me if I recovered with my family close at hand.
