Golden Girl(77)

Willa can’t believe how good the song is. It’s every bit as good as Ed Sheeran. As soon as Brett finishes, Willa claps like crazy and says, “Play it again, please? I want to take a video of you singing so I have it.”

She thinks he might balk at the idea of being taped, but instead he smiles and sits up straighter. The sun is on his face, and the dunes and a thin blue ribbon of the ocean beckon beyond him. The song is even better the second time. Willa’s heart aches with the lyrics, and although she has never been to Ohio, she is suddenly there as her mother would have been, way back in the 1980s, her feet on the dashboard of Brett’s car, which thrums with the bass line of the stereo, wind rushing in through the windows, bringing the smell of fresh-cut grass, her heart filled with passion, restlessness. But if love doesn’t get any sweeter than this, then what is Vivi looking for?

Willa is envious that someone loved Vivi enough to write this song for her. And confounded that her mother never mentioned it. To anyone.

When Brett finishes, Willa says, “I can’t believe you’re not famous.”

“Well,” he says. “That’s the rest of the story.”

The rest of the story. His tone of voice—and the fact that he’s now managing a Holiday Inn in Knoxville, Tennessee—means the story doesn’t end the way it should.

“You read your mom’s book?” Brett says.

Willa nods reluctantly. She started Golden Girl right after their phone conversation but she’s only on chapter three. She’s so tired at night that she sometimes falls asleep before she can make it through even one page.

“My band flew to LA to meet with executives at Century Records.”

“Did they not like the song?”

“They didn’t like ‘Parmatown Blues’; they said it was too regional. And it was. But they liked ‘Golden Girl.’ They let us make a demo in their studio and then they talked about us staying in LA permanently. We could write some more songs, play some bigger venues, try to get some exposure while we worked on an album.” Brett stops. “Then your mom called to say she was pregnant.”

“What?” Willa says. She’s up on her feet, and instantly, she has to pee. “Wait, I’ll be right back. Two seconds.”

Willa races to the bathroom, thinking, I have a sibling! Willa has heard some crazy stories from Facebook friends about the surprises they’ve found in their genealogy studies, and honestly, Willa thought these stories strained credulity. But now! Willa has an older brother or sister, and that is why Brett Caspian drove through seven states to get here.

But as Willa washes her hands at the sink, she studies herself in the mirror and thinks, No, that’s not what he’s going to tell me. He’s going to tell me something else.

She curses herself for not getting farther along in the book.

When Willa retakes her place at the table, Brett looks extremely uncomfortable. “I gather Vivi never told you she got pregnant in high school?”

“No,” Willa says.

“Well,” Brett says. He seems hesitant to continue. “She called me in California to tell me she was pregnant, and I flew home.”

Willa feels the BLT shifting in her stomach. What is he going to say next?

“The second half of that summer was a confusing time,” Brett says. “I can see that more clearly now, from a distance. We were just kids. We weren’t sure what to do. One minute, Vivi would say she wanted to keep the baby, the next minute she said she thought we were too young to be parents. She didn’t know what to do about Duke. We wanted to have the baby and stay together, but we also wanted to have a future.”

“Did my mom have an abortion?” Willa says.

“We never had to make that decision,” Brett says. “She showed up at my house early one morning to tell me she’d miscarried.”

Willa is speechless. Her mother lied to her! Lied right to her face! “She had a miscarriage? She lost the baby?”

“Yes,” Brett says. “I was pretty upset, but your mom was relieved, I think. It saved us from having to make a decision, anyway.”

“So then what happened?”

“Then…I flew back to California. Vivi ended up going to Duke, and that was the last I saw of her.”

“What about your music?”

“It never took off,” Brett says. “I was only gone a couple weeks but by the time I got back, John Zubow was working on another project. My bandmates, Wayne and Roy, blamed me for leaving, but the truth was, we had no money and they missed Parma and wanted to go home. I pushed to have ‘Golden Girl’ released as a single, but Zubow wasn’t a one-hit-wonder kind of guy. He wanted to put his money behind a band that would have longevity. He was looking for the next Aerosmith.”

Willa says, “The song is so good. And it just died on the vine? No one ever heard it?”

“Zubow wanted to sell it to someone else to record. John Hiatt was interested. But I didn’t want to sell the song. I didn’t want to hear John Hiatt or John Fogerty sing a song I’d written for Vivi.” Brett laughs. “In addition to managing the Holiday Inn, I play guitar on Friday nights in the bar there during happy hour. It gets pretty rowdy on football weekends with all the Vols fans. I play cover songs mostly, but I always slip in ‘Golden Girl,’ and some folks think they’ve heard it before and are shocked when I tell them I wrote it. I made CDs of it that I sell out of a box for three bucks apiece. I’ve sold six hundred and twenty-four copies to date. I tell myself one of these days, it’s going to get into the right hands.”