Open Road Summer(29)

Still, after I hand Dee the notebook and settle into my couch, my mind trails back to Matt’s bare chest. Even his abs don’t interest me as much as the inked sentences across his ribs, and I feel a strange jealousy. Matt got to know his mom, and he loved her enough to get a tattoo commemorating that love. I technically have two mothers—the biological mother who left me and the stepmother my dad married—but neither of them feels like a mom. It seems as if there’s only a tiny lexical difference between “mom,” “mother,” and “stepmother,” but that difference matters. That difference can leave a moon-crater-sized dent in your childhood.

The press often calls Dee’s small-town-girl rise to fame a Cinderella story, but I’m the one saddled with an evil stepmother. Don’t get me wrong. The other women my dad dated were no better—mostly bottle blonds bathed in cheap perfume.

With neatly combed, mousy hair and her local librarian job, Brenda isn’t like any of those other women. She’s the only one who never stayed the night, never bustled out awkwardly in the morning, shirt on inside out. My dad was fun before Brenda. It took us some time after he got sober, but we were figuring it out. The more I spent time with my dad, ordering pizza and watching movies, the less angry I felt. But then he ruined everything and proposed to Brenda. He didn’t even ask me first, nor did he seem to notice my resistance.

They got married the summer before I started high school, and the past three years have wedged us farther and farther apart. Brenda moved in, of course, and the more she hovers, the harder I thrash. When I’m actually in the house, I hole up in my makeshift dark room—my bathroom, where I change out the regular lightbulbs for red ones. Brenda is not, and never will be, my mother, and I don’t hesitate to remind her of that. So . . . not exactly a tattoo-worthy relationship.

In the camera bag I brought on tour, I stashed a picture, stuffed up against the padded side. It’s the only picture I have of my parents, taken when I was five—one of my first attempts at photography. The focus is imperfect, the angle is tilted, but it’s still one of my favorites. I snapped it right as they looked at each other, smiling like two people who were in love.

Dee’s still far away in songwriting land, so I sneak a look at the picture, tilting it toward me from within the bag. People always say I look like my dad, with the dark hair and faintly olive complexion that comes with Native American ancestry. But my mother’s eyes are my same color green, her bony arms and legs mimicked by mine.

My mother left almost a decade ago, and my mind has since blacked out many of the places where she used to be. Maybe it’s a hardwired coping mechanism, my brain keeping me from remembering the best and worst of her.

There’s only one memory that stands out with sparkling clarity—from when we lived in Chicago. She took me to downtown in a subzero windchill to see the department store windows decorated for Christmas. I remember the bitter cold on my face, my puffy jacket zipped to my throat, my hands balled up in wool mittens. She was thrilled, skipping through the snowy streets, and I felt so special that she let me go with her.

With equal clarity, I remember arriving home to a mix of relief and fury on my dad’s face. I huddled upstairs as he told my mother: You can’t just leave with Reagan and not tell me! I’ve been panicked for hours, not knowing where you two were or if you were okay!

My mother, with her swinging, waist-length hair and skinny limbs, was like a wild horse. The more fenced-in she felt, the more she bucked. Six months after having me, she took off on a road trip, leaving only an I’ll be back next week note on the coffee table. I only know this because of my dad’s drinking problem. One night, two years after we moved to Tennessee, he’d come home from the bar bumbling poetics about how fast I was growing up. You were so teeny when you were born, he said. I could hold you in the crook of one arm. I’d mumbled uh-huh as I poured him another glass of water. He kept musing, mostly to himself—When your mom ran away after six months, I was scared as hell because you were so tiny, and I didn’t know what to do. But we stuck it out, me and you, kid, and I fed you formula bottles and rocked you every time you cried. We’re gonna be okay, pal.

Before long, he fell asleep sitting up in the recliner, and, though I braced myself by hugging a pillow, the tears never came. Crying doesn’t change things, and it certainly can’t change a person’s nature. My mother was built to run, unfit to be settled. Throughout the course of my childhood, she took off for weeks at a time until, finally, she never came back.

Of course I wondered what I did wrong, but that’s not why I resent my mother. I resent her because my dad loved her, and she destroyed him by leaving.

If I lost my dad the way Matt lost his mom, I don’t know how I’d cope. My dad’s not perfect, but he does love me. Even in the years he was drinking, he held down a job, put food on the table, got me birthday presents and everything I needed for school.

I give my secret picture one last glance, at my dad’s smiling face. I may not have a mom, but, for maybe the first time ever, I feel lucky all the same.





Chapter Eight

Wichita


I woke up in Wichita with dread in my stomach, as thick and slimy as motor oil. This morning, Dee has her usual routine: early-morning radio shows, sound check, preshow press, concert. But I have my own appointment today, to get my cast off. I hate the doctor’s office, with all the invasive questions and probing. I hate it so much that I consider, as I have so many times in recent weeks, wrenching the cast off with a pocketknife and a few tugs.