CHAPTER 4
The band takes a break around ten o’clock, and the energy in the bar shifts. People drift toward the bar for refills, cluster in groups to chat, or head outside to get some fresh air. The sudden relative quiet feels kind of strange after hours of constant noise.
Dolly appears at my end of the bar, sliding onto the stool beside me with a sigh of relief.
“Lord, have mercy, my feet are staging a rebellion.”
She kicks off one shoe and rubs the arch of her foot, completely unselfconscious about it.
“You must be Eleanor. I’m Dolly.”
“I figured. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Uh-huh.” She looks me up and down with a frank assessment. “Mavis said you’d be pretty. She was right. Got those family cheekbones.”
“Yeah, everybody keeps saying that. I didn’t realize our cheekbones were a known feature.”
“Mavis told us all about your family and even showed us pictures a time or two. Your grandmother and Mavis sure looked a lot alike.” Dolly points to Presley for a glass of sweet tea. “Mavis used to say her sister traded her soul for a Buckhead address. I mean, no offense.”
“None taken. I’m actually fascinated. No one in my family ever talked about Mavis. What was she like?” I ask. “Mavis, I mean. Everybody talks about her, but I never…” I trail off, not really sure how to finish that sentence.
Dolly’s expression softens.
“Oh, she was a force of nature. That’s what she was. Stubborn as a mule, generous as a saint, but absolutely terrible at minding her own business.”
She laughs, a warm sound that crinkles the corners of her eyes.
“You know, that woman would give you the shirt off her back and then tell you exactly what she thought of your life choices while helping you put it on.”
“Well, that sounds… intense.”
“Oh, it was. But here’s the thing you need to know about Mavis. She never told you anything she wouldn’t tell herself. She was much harder on herself than anyone else. She held herself to the same standards she held everyone else to.”
Dolly takes a long sip of her tea.
“When she got sick, she didn’t want anyone to know. Kept working right up until she couldn’t anymore. Wyatt had to practically carry her upstairs those last few weeks.”
I think about Wyatt’s face when he talks about Mavis, the grief that still looks so raw.
“He loved her.”
“Sugar, we all did. But Wyatt…” Dolly shakes her head. “He came back from overseas all broken up inside. Not physically. I mean, some of that too. But in his heart. In his spirit. And Mavis saw it. She gave him a job, a purpose, a reason to keep going. She saved his life, and he knows it.”
The band is returning to the stage, instruments being tuned and adjusted, and the noise level is rising again.
“Dolly, why are you telling me all this?”
She looks at me with eyes that have seen decades of joy and sorrow.
“Because Mavis believed in you. I don’t know why, ‘cause she never explained it, but she was convinced you were supposed to be here. That you needed this place as much as it needed you.” She pats my hand with fingers that are surprisingly soft, despite years of hard work. “I’m just trying to help you see what she saw. The rest of it’s up to you.”
The band launches into their next set, and Dolly slips off her stool, sliding her feet back into her work shoes with a grimace.
“Duty calls, honey. You need anything, just holler.”
She is gone before I can respond, weaving through the crowd with her tray held high.
By midnight, I am exhausted in a way I have not been in years. I have spent the past four hours watching, listening, and trying to understand this place I have somehow inherited.
