James shrugged.“Sort of.But are any of us still ‘ourselves’?Sometimes I think I’m exactly who I always was.Other times, I think I’d be a stranger to my previous self.”
Stevie let her eyes flicker back to the stage.She felt James’s gaze on her.It was as though he could see right through her, as though he could hear her thinking: Am I still the self who could perform night after night?
“You’re a musician,” he said firmly.
“I don’t know about that.”Stevie blushed.
“You are.It’s something you can never escape from,” James said.“What’s your instrument?”
“I’m a vocalist,” she said timidly.“But I can play a little bit of piano and a lot of guitar.”
James grinned and leaned over the table.“Stevie Nicks, you’re carrying a secret talent around, aren’t you?”
“It didn’t used to be a secret.”
James laughed again.A bartender brought over Stevie’s beer and congratulated James on his last set.“You’re up again in five,” he said before disappearing behind the bar again.It was hard to believe how rowdy it was for a Sunday.
“You’re getting on that stage with me,” James declared.
Stevie was mortified at the idea.“I can’t.”
“You can!”James said.“And you will.We’ll do a little improv.You can sing whatever song you like.Just tell the musicians where you’re headed, and they’ll follow along.They’re brilliant.They can sense a change in key coming from five months away.Hey.”He spread his hands out on the table and continued to look at her steadily.“If you’re a musician and you’re not playing, you’re ignoring your own beating heart,” he said.
Stevie was caught off guard by the poetry of it all.She leaned back, watching as James drank up the rest of his beer and got to his feet.He winked, then said, “Meet me on stage in five minutes.Let yourself live.”
For the next few minutes, Stevie sat at attention, her hands shivering with the frantic beating of her heart.She watched as James made the rounds, saying hello to regulars, before returning to the stage and fist-bumping a few other musicians.He gestured vaguely out to where she was sitting, presumably telling them that she was going to come on stage and “show them what she was made of.”Stevie thought she was going to scream or cry or throw up.But when James turned to look at her again, all she could do was get to her feet, take another sip of beer, and walk up to the stage.She felt the audience behind her, calm and quiet, curious.
“We have a real treat tonight,” James said into the microphone, speaking to the audience as though they were all dear friends.“My friend Stevie is going to perform for us.You ready?”
At once, the band began to play a jazz-ified Stevie Nicks-sung tune, one that felt stitched into the back of Stevie Franklin’s mind.When it came time for the other Stevie to come in, Stevie Franklin felt herself open her lips and begin.Her voice was gritty and textured and entirely hers—an homage to the Stevie her mother had loved so well.Immediately, the audience cried out and clapped.They loved her.Their love beamed out and flowed through her, making her sing wilder and with more freedom.By the time James came in with his saxophone solo, Stevie’s eyes were filled with tears.
When the song finished, James reached across the stage and gripped her hand.“You have to stay!”he said.“They love you!Sing with us the rest of the night.Make us the happiest musicians this side of Lake Michigan.”
Stevie laughed.She knew that if she remained on that stage a moment longer, she’d burst into tears.“I have to go, James,” she said.“But thank you for a beautiful night.”
* * *
Stevie booked a room at a downtown hotel called The Pineapple, where she sat on a thick mattress and watched traffic purr through the streets below.Jazz still filled her ears.She checked the time and saw it was nearly nine thirty, which meant it was seven thirty in Los Angeles.She tried to imagine what her daughter was doing right now.Was the baby asleep?Was her daughter exhausted, trying to eat dinner, clean, or take a few moments for herself?Stevie remembered her own early days with her baby, with her little Joni, the pain that had lingered between her legs for days, the anger and fear that had slowly burned away to make space for confusion and love.She’d sung to her baby Joni, hoping that her singing voice was more comforting than her normal one.Joni was a crier, which Stevie had privately felt was an indication that Stevie wasn’t enough, that she wasn’t fit to be a mother.
It was in those soft and terrifying moments that Stevie had most missed her mother, the woman she’d never really gotten to know.She had no memories of her.She was a mystery.
When Stevie’s daughter, Joni, had first met her husband, Sam, Stevie had immediately felt dread in her stomach.At the time, she couldn’t say why.Call it mother’s intuition.Call it fortune-telling.
Joni and Sam met a few years ago at a work function.Not long after they began dating, when Stevie was still none the wiser, Stevie and Joni met at a breakfast place in Los Feliz, Joni’s brand-new neighborhood, which wasn’t far from Joni’s brand-new job as a marketer for a fancy underwear brand.Everything about Joni’s early twentysomething life felt brand new and impossibly glorious to Stevie.Although Stevie couldn’t pretend to understand the appeal of marketing, she definitely didn’t want her daughter to grow up to sell insurance.
Joni had never really cared to make music, which was fine with Stevie.Being a musician felt like something other people were allowed to do, luckier people than Joni and Stevie.Even Will and Ella, at that time, seemed washed-up, their band all but forgotten.Stevie had heard that their relationship hadn’t survived either, although she’d learn soon after that they’d gotten back together and even gotten married.
“I met a guy,” Joni said that morning at the breakfast spot, taking delicate bites of her fruit bowl.“He’s pretty high up at the company.He thinks my marketing copy is really precise.”
Stevie blinked at her daughter, befuddled.Precise?Marketing copy?Was her daughter speaking a foreign language?But before it was too late, she remembered to smile and say, “Honey, that’s amazing.What’s he like?”
Joni explained that Sam was tall, blond, and handsome, and from a prominent family with roots in Berkeley.He’d been instrumental in the founding of the underwear brand, although he now spent half of his time traveling and the other half overseeing the goings-on at the company.
“Can you imagine having all that freedom?”Joni asked, breathless.
Stevie smiled, trying to echo her daughter’s excitement.“I can’t wait to meet him!”
But meeting Sam had been disastrous in nearly every sense of the word.The meeting didn’t happen until Sam and Joni were engaged, about six months after they’d met.Stevie had whiplash.How could a young woman whom she’d so recently taught to read and ride her bike make a decision like marriage?Stevie was invited to an engagement party at Sam’s parents’ place in Berkeley, to which Stevie planned to drive, until Joni swooped in and paid for Stevie’s plane tickets.
