Graceland, p.5
Graceland, page 5
I gave him a hug. “If you’re sure. I mean, as long as you’re willing to drive as far as . . . necessary.”
“Absolutely.” But from the look in his eye, I could tell there was more. “You don’t mind if it’s Jordan who drives, right?
“Of course not,” I said. Almost immediately, though, I wondered if that was true.
I’d met Jordan almost eighteen years earlier, after crashing on George’s sofa for a few weeks. Still struggling to put my life back together, I’d moved out of his place, begun renting a room from one of his customers, and purchased my first cell. Its buzzing woke me from a deep sleep.
George’s voice sounded scratchy and oddly strained. “Hope, I’m in kind of a tough spot and wonder if you could do me a favor.”
He’d been driving back from Boston and was pulled over for a missing license plate light. He’d had more than one drink, and the cop cited him for DUI. Could I come pick him up at the Stoneham police station?
On the drive over, I tried to make sense of his final comment: “I don’t want to alarm you, but you may not recognize me.” Had someone at the bar roughed him up? Had the police?
Once I’d identified myself at the station, I sat on a wooden bench and checked my phone. In my peripheral vision, I noticed a tall blond woman in a black skirt and mauve pumps come through the inner door. A hooker, I assumed, and poked at my messages, not wanting to stare. The woman walked over and stood directly in front of me until I looked up.
“I hope this isn’t going to damage our friendship,” she said with a soft, southern accent. Under a heavy layer of foundation and lipstick, the woman had George’s face.
I took a minute to process this new information. Aware that whatever I said would set a tone for our future relationship, I chose my words carefully.
“Only if you ask to borrow my sweaters.”
I knew nothing about gender performance or fluidity back then, but on that drive home, Jordan referred to herself as a cross-dresser.
“Don’t people these days prefer ‘transgender’?”
“Cross-dressing is different from being trans. If I were trans, I’d actually be a woman, born in a man’s body.” Instead, she explained, the feminine side of her simply demanded an outlet. “Cross-dressing makes me feel whole.”
Given the auto-repair business, Jordan said she was content to be George during the week and Jordan on weekends. People could refer to her according to how she presented—George or Jordan—and use “he” or “she” pronouns, respectively.
That was when I learned, too, about the reasons George had left Memphis. My uncle Vern, who’d started his only son tinkering with cars at six years old, had heard rumors about George’s cross-dressing. They’d argued, and Uncle Vern ended up in the hospital with angina.
“It was actually my mom who suggested I put some distance between myself and Memphis for a bit,” Jordan said. “I picked the Boston area because I knew a drag queen who’d moved there. And yes, Hope, that’s a different identity, too.”
Over the years, because of our work-week schedules, I ended up spending most of my free time with Jordan. We went on walks, took in movies, and worked through the New York Times crossword puzzle together. Now, though, as I tried to imagine traveling through the Deep South with six-foot-five Jordan in her poufy wig, heavy makeup, and Italian pumps, my stomach tightened. Even in supposedly liberal Boston, a cross-dressing person brought out the nasty in some people.
“I’m hoping we find Mom and Dylan in Fairfield,” I said as I wiped cracker crumbs from my mother’s counter. “But if we have to chase them all the way to Tennessee, do you think folks will be okay with Jordan?”
“I’m a southerner, Hope. These are my people.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, some of them just don’t know it yet.” He grinned. “Not to worry, I’ll be careful.”
I wanted to hit the road as soon as possible, but George convinced me we should go home and get a few hours’ sleep. He was right. It made no sense to arrive in Fairfield after midnight, when everyone would be asleep. He’d pick me up at four a.m.
We headed home. As we turned out of my mother’s parking lot, George was still shaking his head. “I don’t get why your mom would do this. What’s her deal with Graceland, anyway? How many times does she need to see it?”
“She probably wants to commune with the King’s spirit one last time,” I said. “Who knows? The woman is a complete cipher. I’ve never been able to crack her code.”
George patted my knee. “In fairness, sweetie, she didn’t give you much chance.”
He was right. My mother had abandoned my father and me when I was six, jetting off to resume her role in the rebooted Light Within, which had moved its filming from New York to LA in the late sixties. My father had always insisted the word “abandoned” was too harsh since Mom returned to Memphis most weekends and holidays, but it felt right to me. For the first year, whenever she packed to leave, I hid under the kitchen table and sobbed. The image of my mother with suitcase in hand weighed on me throughout my childhood, like a heavy wool coat reshaping its wire hanger.
“Your dad was such a sweetheart,” George continued. “I was surprised he and your mom stayed married.”
“Me, too, but he adored Mom. Tolerated her eccentricities.”
“I remember how I’d show up at your house around supper time, and your dad would fix me a Swanson frozen dinner and I’d join the two of you watching Odd Couple reruns. He was such a sweet man.”
“He was. He didn’t deserve to be abandoned like that.”
“You didn’t deserve it either, Hope.”
“Sure.” I picked up my phone, checked again for messages. I wasn’t going to argue with George, but I knew better. Deserve my mother’s abandonment? Far worse than that. I’d caused it.
After George dropped me at home, I wandered through the dark, silent house, searching for God knew what. A note, perhaps? Something that said my daughter had thought about me, had cared that I might worry? I found nothing. No scrawled envelope on the kitchen counter, no memo pad next to my computer, no Post-it stuck to the bathroom mirror.
Dylan and I had argued the night before. No worse than any of our fights, and I’d been more upset than she was. Or so I’d thought.
I’d come home from work to find her in my bedroom, rifling through laundry baskets of unfolded clothes, flinging T-shirts and shorts around the room.
“That’s one way to get the laundry out of those baskets.” I joked, jimmying off a pump. “I can show you other methods, whereby the clothes are arranged thematically, in piles.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “You’ll need those skills at college.”
She didn’t lift her head. “Not doing college.”
I stood lopsided on the one pump. Dylan had hinted at this before. Never a strong student, her grades over the past year had gone from mediocre to terrible, but she still had senior year to change that. “Dylan, college is important. You don’t want to wait tables for the rest of your life.”
She held up a camo T-shirt, tossed it in a pile. “I’m going to be an activist.”
I kicked off the other shoe, sending it flying. It hit my dresser. “That’s not a job.”
“Okay, an activist filmmaker.”
“Then you’re better off waiting tables.” I wasn’t being fair but couldn’t stop myself. “You’ll make more money.”
“That’s what’s important to you? Money?” Her voice was cold.
“I know what it’s like to struggle, Dylan. It’s no fun. You need a career, a job that’s secure.”
“Like yours?” She jerked a finger toward her open mouth.
“Is my job that bad?”
“You can’t be serious. Working in little cattle stalls? Sucking up to your boss? Chanting, ‘You gotta believe’?” Dylan gathered the pile of clothes she’d been collecting and headed toward the door. “You make fun of Olivia, but at least she’s an actress, not a fake.” She slammed the door behind her.
I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. Dylan didn’t mean it. She was trying to hurt me. Succeeding, in fact, but that was okay, because, honestly, she was right about my job. Gary and his slogans had sucked all the joy out of it. In recent months, I’d fantasized about finding a new job, doing marketing for a nonprofit like Heifer International or an AIDS foundation. I longed to be part of a team, working toward something I believed in. I’d felt that way once before, when I’d worked for Aaron back in Memphis. Unfortunately, after fifteen years at EduLearn, I worried that my skills wouldn’t transfer, or I’d have to take a pay cut. Mostly, though, I worried about my resume. That, too, contained a lie.
I sat at my computer desk and opened Outlook. I’d email Gary, let him know I wouldn’t be in the office tomorrow. He wouldn’t like me disappearing again with little warning, but what choice did I have? Assuming we caught my mother and Dylan in Fairfield, I could work all weekend.
An email popped up from the iTunes account Dylan and I shared, confirming the charge to my Visa for downloading two dozen Elvis songs. Dylan must have chosen some music for the road. I scrolled through the list, pausing briefly at the first song: “That’s All Right (Mama).” Somehow I couldn’t read it as reassurance.
In the two hours since I’d found the newspaper article about Aaron in my mother’s trash, I’d calmed down a little. My mother might have printed that piece for any number of reasons. Over the next week, both presidential nominees would announce their choice for running mate, and Aaron was strongly favored for the Democratic VP spot. Given that I’d briefly worked for Aaron—which, apparently my mother remembered, though I’d never been sure—that would explain her interest.
I leaned back in the office chair, hands clasped behind my head, and considered the worst possibility. Even if my mother suspected I’d been involved with Aaron and guessed he was Dylan’s father, she wouldn’t share her suspicions with my daughter. Not without telling me. This was my mother, for heaven’s sake. The woman wasn’t evil. She wasn’t . . . Andromeda.
It was past eleven and I needed to shower and pack. Instead, I sat looking at my desktop. The background photo was Dylan and me at Nauset Beach, our hair blowing wildly, our arms wrapped around one another. Had that been two summers ago? Three? So much had changed.
I’d sworn I’d be a better mother to Dylan than mine had been to me. Was I? I felt ashamed to admit it, but when Dylan had turned down my offer of a Cape Cod vacation, I’d almost been relieved. Much as I longed to spend time with her, an entire week alone together made me nervous. In a tiny Airbnb, there’d be so little space, so much time for quibbling and probing. Dylan’s oblique reference to her father a few days earlier had twisted my stomach like a dishrag. Thank God that for most of her life, Dylan hadn’t been all that interested in the man. She’d asked only a handful of questions and seemed satisfied with my answers.
At midnight, when I crawled into bed, I checked my text messages. No response from Dylan. Not then, and not when I woke every half hour until 3:30 a.m.
Chapter 5
Dylan
I’ve always wondered if Olivia would have chosen to stay at Rose and Rudy’s if she’d known about the ferret castle.
Even from the outside, you could tell their house was a mess. The wraparound wooden porch was sinking in one spot, and the screen door had this huge, gaping hole. Rudy held Olivia’s arm as they climbed slowly up the steps. I followed, carrying her oxygen tank in its little cart. Despite his ridiculous man bun, Rudy seemed okay. Olivia said he’d danced in Broadway shows like Hair and Grease, but he was most famous for dancing on sofas in Furniture King commercials.
Rudy held open the screen door and hollered for Rose. A heavyset woman tottered down the hallway. Rose had huge doe eyes, like a Disney princess’s, and her white hair was cut chin-length with bangs. “Livvy!” she called out. “So good to see you!” Her voice was all gravelly, like she used to smoke, too. She hugged Olivia then pulled back, gesturing to the tubing around Olivia’s face. “What’s all this?”
“Air,” said Olivia with an exaggerated sigh. “Turns out we need it. Who knew?”
Rose pouted her bottom lip in sympathy, but her expression seemed a little smug. I may have put on a few pounds, it said, but at least I’m breathing on my own.
Rudy showed Olivia to the guest room and me to a small study with a pullout sofa “courtesy of Furniture King.” The room smelled like cat pee, and in one corner, cardboard boxes and tubes were taped together, like kids had made a fort. When something furry slipped past one of the cut-out windows and slid down a tube, I shrieked.
“We’ll put the ferrets in the basement,” Rudy said, shaking the structure until another one emerged and ran across my feet. Rudy herded it from the room.
I kept my eye on the boxes, not sure if there were more furry things inside. When Rose returned carrying sheets and a pillow, she insisted I go look at the far wall, covered with publicity shots from The Light Within.
“That’s me,” she said, indicating a busty blonde, seated beside a guy in a tux. “And that’s your grandma,” she nodded toward the dark-haired woman with heavy mascara resting a hand seductively on the man’s shoulder. “From Season Two. That’s when Andromeda started getting all that attention.”
I’d watched some clips of the soap on YouTube. The worst part was the tacky opening music and baritone narrator. “Even when darkness surrounds us, we still have The Light Within.” Yeesh.
Rose pointed to another photo. “And this was from Season Four, when Andromeda plotted to steal Krista’s husband.”
“Did she succeed?”
“Oh, you know soaps. They go back and forth for an entire season. But no, in the end, the bad girl never wins.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Not in that world.”
Rudy grilled salmon for dinner. Rose lowered herself into a dining room chair, complaining about the heat and her swollen ankles. She opened a bottle of wine and offered glasses to everyone, including me. Olivia raised her eyebrows but didn’t stop me from taking it.
The ferrets ran in and out and slithered between everyone’s legs. They made my skin crawl. Rose scooped one onto her lap and talked to it like it was a baby. An entire wall was devoted to photos of the ferrets dressed in ski sweaters, cowboy hats, T-shirts, French berets.
Rose kept sneaking glances at Olivia’s oxygen concentrator, tucked into a corner beside her chair. When Olivia reached down to adjust the tubing, Rose peppered her with questions. How many hours a day did she need it? (“All of them.”) “What would happen if our power went out?” (“I’d switch to the portables.”) “What if you run out of portables? (“You don’t want to know.”) To each answer, Rose nodded earnestly.
“So why Graceland, Liv?” Rudy asked as he set mismatched plates on the table. “Didn’t you get enough of it when you lived in Memphis?”
“I took Hope to Graceland when it first opened and never went back. It was too sad, so soon after we’d lost him.”
Rose muttered, “So soon after you lost him.”
There was an awkward silence, so I jumped in. “Olivia’s going to meet with the curator.”
Olivia met my eye, and her brows lifted almost imperceptibly. A warning?
“Are you?” Rose asked. “Whatever for?”
“Ann and I are just catching up,” Olivia explained. “Her mother was a friend in Memphis.” Olivia turned to face Rudy. “Did you know that Dylan is quite the budding activist? She helped form her school’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance.”
Rose looked annoyed at the abrupt shift in topic. Rudy turned to me. “So nice that kids are coming out early these days. Good for you, Dylan.”
“Actually, I’m not gay,” I explained. A ferret leaped onto my lap, and I shoved it off. “I think I might be pansexual, but I’m still exploring.” “
“Pansexual?” Rose chuckled. “You’re attracted to cookware?”
“Rose!” Rudy snapped. “Don’t be rude. That’s the new term for bisexual, isn’t it, Dylan?”
“No,” I said, a bit snippier than I intended, but Jesus, old people thought they knew everything. “It means I’m attracted to people regardless of their sex or gender identity.”
Rudy said he’d been involved with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and asked a lot of questions about my GSA protests. “What you’re doing is important work,” he said. “I hope you continue it in college.”
“I’m not sure college makes sense for me.” I felt pleased with that mature turn of phrase. “I might be an activist filmmaker. Like Michael Moore.”
Rudy flicked his eyes to Olivia, who’d taken that moment to help herself to more asparagus. “Well,” he said, “you’ll figure out what’s best for you. I wish I’d finished college. Dancing on sofas was hard at sixty.”
“If we’d both stayed in LA—” said Rose.
“But we didn’t, Rose,” he interrupted, though not unkindly. Still, Rose turned her head with a sniff. “And so now, I’m seventy-eight and work the grill at a breakfast joint to pay the electric bill.”
“Enough about you, Rudy,” Rose said, pouring herself more wine. This was her fourth glass, by my count. “Teenagers don’t want to hear about old people. Let’s talk about when we were young and beautiful.” She turned to me. “Did your grandmother tell you how she and I met Elvis?”
Given Olivia’s earlier warning, I hesitated. “A little.”
“Okay, but has she told you the whole story?” She drew out the word “whole” like it was borderline dirty.
“Rose?” Rudy smiled nervously, his eyes on Olivia. “I think Olivia should decide what stories to tell Dylan.”
“Oh, not that!” Rose said. She was clearly drunk. “Not to worry, Liv, I don’t intend to spec-u-late.” She made it three separate words.
I didn’t know where to look. A ferret circled my feet and I nudged it away.
