“You know Chris Stapleton?”
“No,” admits Pauline.
“Ha! I didn’t think so. You should listen to him, though. He’s really amazing. A-mazing. I’ll send you some clips.” Pauline doesn’t know whatsend you some clipsmeans.
“Is that why you called, Nicole? To tell me about this person named Chris Stapleton?”
“No! Of course not. I called—well, just to say hi, really.”
Pauline waits. Fat chance of that. She waits some more.
“And also.”Here we go,thinks Pauline. “Things aren’t going so great between me and Richard, Mama. I just need some time to figure things out. We’re—separated. For now.” The rest of the words come out all in a rush, tripping over each other. “I was wondering if maybe I could send Hazel up to you all for a bit. So I can clear my head. So she can get out of what has, frankly, become a toxic environment.”
“Toxic environment? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Would that be all right, Mama?”
Well, hell. Would that be all right? Can a coon cat stalk a mouse? Pauline knows the answer to both questions, but for some reason she makes Nicole work for it.
Richard is Nicole’s third husband.Three husbands!First there was Hazel’s dad, Cole. He was a singer. “Singer-songwriter,” Nicole always used to correct if on accident you just saidsinger.Not that it matters now; they split when Hazel was three. Cole is writing songs about someone else now. “Come on back home,” Pauline had told Nicole at the time. “Live with me and your dad. You’ll have your brothers nearby.” But, no, Nicole didn’t think she was cut out for life in Maine; Nicole thought she was meant for bigger andbetter things, warmer winters. After Cole came Gary the concert booker. It seemed to Pauline as though you couldn’t throw a stone in Nashville without hitting a concert booker. Eighteen months that marriage lasted. Then a period of being single, years, and onto Richard. Richard the record producer, making the big bucks. They live in a mansion, Pauline has seen photos, although to hear Nicole tell it’s just a regular house. Those are Nashville standards, Pauline supposes. Pauline doesn’t understand this impulse of Nicole’s, to marry again and again, this inability to let things stand as they are. Pauline loves Billy to the moon and back and needs to change husbands like she needs to change into an evening gown to boil corn. One is plenty. One is more than enough.
“Let me think about it. Okay, Nicole? How long are you thinking?”
“I don’t know—a few weeks? A month?”
“A month!” Pauline sounds grumpy but her insides are skipping along like a girl on the way to a birthday party. Her granddaughter! For a visit! For a month!
“I mean, maybe not quite a month. Could be three weeks, three and a half.”
“Can she fly by herself up to Portland, do you think?”
“She’s thirteen. ’Course she can fly by herself. And Daddy can pick her up on the other end. Right? Would that work, for him to go down to Portland? She could arrive in the evening so he doesn’t have to miss a day of hauling. When it’s time for her to come back I’ll fly up and fetch her home.”
“Now when would this be?”
“I was thinking—day after tomorrow.”
“Day after tomorrow?” So soon!
“I bought the ticket already. I probably should have asked you before doing that. I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t know what else to do. I need some time to think, Mama, that’s all. I need some air.”
“Isn’t that expensive?” Pauline asks. “To book last minute like that?”
“I’m not concerned aboutthat.” Nicole’s laugh is a tinkle, a wind chime, the high note of a xylophone. “Believe me, the cost of a ticket I paid for with Richard’s credit card is the very last thing on my mind right now. The veryverylast thing. Ha! After what he—oh, never mind.”
“Let me think about it, okay? Let me just figure a few things out.”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Bye, Mama.”
Ninety seconds later Pauline calls Nicole back. “I thought about it,” she says. “We’d be so happy to have her.”
“Oh, Mama, thank you.Thankyou.”
“But I work a lot in the summer. Your dad too.”
