FAME and GLORY (3 page)

The loss of Alan Alexander was tragic on so many levels.  Debra spent a long time in a state of shock that approached that of someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  She never went back to dancing, but rather took a part time position as a clerk typist in her late husband's real estate office.  The others in the office were supportive and gentle with her, and, after a while, Debra regained a sort of emotional equilibrium.

Brandee's grief was much different.  While Debra suffered quietly, Brandee didn't know how to be quiet.  She became louder and more outrageous at school.  She was a quick learner in all areas, and that included learning to swear like a sailor on a weekend pass.  “Yes” and “no” became "fuckin' a” and “fuck no".

As her body began to blossom, Brandee took her penchant for pushing the limits of her attire a step further.  She scoured Victoria's Secret looking to be pushed up and out.  One day in school, her English Classics teacher was attempting to explain "décolletage".  Brandee blurted out, "Oh!  You mean when you can see my big-ass boobs."

Only in the area of her music was Brandee able to channel her turmoil effectively.  A great natural singer, Brandee had much more than that in mind going forward.  She knew that she needed to get some professional training, but there was no one in Las Vegas year round who could be of the kind of help that she believed she needed.  That's where Alan Alexander's life insurance policy came in handy.

Brandee was able to spend most of each summer in San Francisco.  Her own research had told her that professional training between the ages of 13 and 17 was going to be crucial to her success.  It's during those years that her burgeoning womanhood and the hormonal changes therein could play havoc with her voice.  A professional voice coach would be able to harness those changes and help her acquire the depth that would transform her from a great girl singer to a young woman that people would remember forever.

Brandee placed herself under the care of Racheal Geyer, a lyric soprano famous for her coloratura in performance.  Brandee knew that Miss Geyer would be able to train her to incorporate the soprano trills and runs that a coloratura is so famous for having in her arsenal.  Brandee could go high.  She wanted to go higher still.  Combining that with her growling voice would be, she figured, just the ticket to fame and, she hoped, fortune.

Ms. Racheal Geyer was a hard taskmistress.  When she felt that Brandee wasn't working hard enough, her lips would become thin and she would tap an impatient drumbeat on her desktop.  Ms. Geyer was a very serious voice coach.  An affectionate wife and mother, she wasn't the most personable individual when she taught.  That was fine with Brandee.  She had a mother.  She wasn't looking for a mother figure.  Ms. Geyer (and that's what Brandee called her throughout the time that she was her student) maintained a taciturn, businesslike demeanor with Brandee, and Brandee flourished under her tutelage. Each fall, Brandee returned to Nevada a more professional performer.  She had developed a depth to her voice that was partly due to maturity but mostly due to Ms. Geyer.

Brandee Alexander had grown into a beautiful young lady.  She had long blonde hair that hung down in natural waves about two inches below her shoulder blades.  Men liked to walk with their arms around her shoulders just to feel the golden blanket under their forearms.  Her blonde hair had just enough natural red shine to gleam under the stage lights like an Oklahoma sunset.  She had never enhanced her hair color artificially.  She was just naturally blessed.

Brandee's eyes were blue but they had flecks of gold in them.  They were slightly almond shaped and sparkled when she laughed.  She did occasionally wear colored contact lenses when on stage.  The contact lenses were to correct a slight astigmatism that came on when the lights hit her just right.  The color was to set off her eyes depending on what color she was wearing for that particular performance.

Not everyone at Del Sol High School was enamored with Brandee Alexander.  The reasons for that were twofold.  Certainly much of what she went through with her peers were a result of jealousy.  Beautiful blondes are almost universally mistrusted and slandered by other girls.  The existence of the famous "blonde jokes" that were so popular among teens in Las Vegas were evidence enough of that.

Her physical charms weren't the only wellspring of conflict between herself and her classmates at Del Sol.  One thing that Brandee never needed to be trained in was the art of simply being a performer.  While this served her well on stage, it caused her to be accused of being somewhat of a phony by some.  When she sang "God Bless America" on the 4th of July, almost everyone there would have thought that she was somewhere north of Betsy Ross in her patriotic fervor, but not everyone was captured.  When she finished a performance at her own school toward the end of one school year, by saying, "Good night Del Sol, I love you all," she captured many hearts, but she caused some heads to shake and eyes to roll.

There were those who believed that she was just a touch too slick on stage.  Some believed that the tears in her eyes during the opening bars of "Love to My Gift" were probably placed there by strategic use of an eye dropper just before the lights came up.  Everyone granted her their ears.  Not everyone was ready to grant her their trust.

 Some of this came about through Brandee's own doing. She could sing gospel pitch perfectly.  She could sing "Carry You to Jesus" with a catch in her throat and tell a hushed crowd how very much it meant to her...then regale her friends with scathing bathroom humor shortly thereafter.  She never lost the penchant for foul language that she had acquired after her father's untimely and premature death.  She was just too accomplished as a performer to let it be widely known that she was a deeply conflicted young lady.

The Alexanders had never been a particularly devout family.  Their belief in God was always carried out in a slightly haphazard fashion.  Christmas and Easter would find them in a back pew of Christ Church Episcopal Church on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas.  Christ Church because it was close to home.  A back pew so they could avoid being detained by the Rector at the end of their time there.

Debra had tried to teach Brandee some of the famous stories of the Bible.  While Brandee thought the story of Joshua knocking the bejesus out of Jericho with trumpets and a loud shout to be fascinating, she showed little interest beyond that.  She did enjoy hearing her mother sing to her though.  Debra sang Bible songs to her daughter at night, before Brandee went to sleep, but at no time did young Brandee have any kind of religious foundation established.

Little surprise then, what happened after Alan was tragically taken from his family.  Brandee blamed God for her loss and firmly turned her back on Him.  She did not consider even the nominal Christmas and Easter church attendance.

"What kind of asshole loving God would do such a thing to a little girl?" she used to ask.

It was a rhetorical question though, because she had no interest in hearing any answer other than the one that she had already formed in her own mind.  She decided that she would put faith only in that which she could see and touch, and that which hadn't hurt her.  She further decided that her trust would be hard earned and easily lost.  As for God, He could kiss her ass and say goodbye.

In short, Brandee had become what many performers before her had become.  She had a thrilling voice, a beautiful figure, and the face of an angel.  She was also a lost, sad, and angry child inside.

When Brandee Reneé Alexander walked across the stage of Del Sol to receive her perfunctory handshake and diploma from the school vice principal, she believed that she knew where she was going.  She had already been in touch with, and had sent demo tapes to, some of the major record labels.  When that hadn't worked as quickly as she would have liked, she sent out those same demo tapes to talent agencies in the major cities.  She ran into some resistance though.

The labels sent her form letters in return.

"Thank you for your interest in becoming a part of the yadada yadada yadada family.  We will be in touch should we be interested in pursuing a professional relationship with you.  Best of luck. Sincerely, Blah McBlah.  Yadada  Yadada Yadada Records."

Some of the talent agencies called her back.  They were admiring, but hesitant to throw their weight behind someone who had only, so far, achieved local notoriety.  They were impressed by the name Racheal Geyer and wanted Brandee to stay in touch but felt that her star needed to shine a little brighter and with a wider beam.

Brandee was a little bit at a loss as to what to do next.  She was undaunted in her desire, and she was ready to leave Las Vegas anyway, but she wasn't sure which path out of town she wanted to take.  Her personal life had gotten a bit too dicey for her to stay in Southwest Nevada.

She had gotten into a rather unfortunate relationship with a man from Henderson who later turned out to be married.  When his wife found out about Brandee, she had little desire to hear that Brandee was just as surprised as she was.  The wife nicknamed her "Bitch ass tramp" and not in a good way.  Brandee saw this as a good time to smell the air somewhere else.  She loaded up her car, kissed her mother goodbye, and hit the lonely Nevada highway.

One of Brandee's few good friends in high school had graduated a year ahead of her.  Her name was Charlene.  Brandee had nicknamed her "Chaz".

The two girls had an easy relationship, partly because there was no rivalry involved.  Chaz was dark where Brandee was light.  Chaz was tall (5 '8") where Brandee was on the short side at 5' 2 3/4".  Chaz had dark hair cut short, while Brandee had her famous long wavy tresses.  Chaz was certainly pretty but they never seemed to be in conflict where the same romantic entanglements were concerned.  Brandee missed her good friend terribly and saw a chance to reunite.

Chaz had gone away to college.  She was now in her 2nd year at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.  When she found out that Brandee was ready to leave the desert, she badgered Brandee until she agreed to enroll in college in the far northern reaches of California.

There are few places more different from each other than Las Vegas, Nevada and Arcata, California.  Las Vegas was glitter and glitz.  Arcata was Birkenstock and remnants of the 60's.  Las Vegas was the desert.  Arcata was that famous Redwood Empire mist.  Brandee hoped that all of the differences would herald a change for her as well.

Brandee knew that Arcata wasn't going to be a hot spot on the road to fame and glory.  She was going there to escape the chaos that was her entanglement with a married man.  She hadn't taken a deep breath since she had started singing publicly years before.  Maybe the relatively hidden confines of Arcata could be that for her.  She knew that it wouldn't be long before her hunger to be who she felt she was destined to become would resurface.  Arcata was for now.  Just for now.

Brandee enrolled in classes at Humboldt State University.  She took an accounting class and a business management class as well as some Humanities classes.  She still felt that her future would be on stage, but she knew that some accounting would serve her well as a professional performer.  Certainly she expected that a business manager would be in her future, but it never hurt to know what was happening with the money that she made.  She still expected that the money would be substantial.

Chaz was thrilled to be able to spend time with her friend again.  She showed Brandee all of the sights, and took her to the hot spots that the college town had to offer.  Brandee brought down the house on karaoke night at The West Wind, just as Chaz knew that she would.  Brandee was a magnet for the young men of the bar scene in Arcata, also just as Chaz knew she would be.  It amused Chaz to no end when one guy after another would make a pass at her golden voiced friend.

Not to say that Brandee turned them all down because that certainly wasn't the case.  She was a passionate young lady.  It showed in her music and it showed in her social life.  In her first 8 months away from the desert, Brandee had hooked up with three or four different men.  None of them could hold her attention long term though.  It was going to take someone special to attract, and hold, Brandee Alexander.

She paid for school with what she had saved while in Las Vegas as well as with the part time job that she found at Humboldt Bank and Trust in Eureka.  Her job was just an eight mile drive from her house and a six mile drive from school.  She found that she could work 22 hours a week as well as carry a twelve credit class load.  She was a quick study, both in school and at work.  If she could study 12 hours a week, she would be obligated to put aside 46 hours a week between school and work.  She could handle that and still have a social life with Chaz and/or whoever was the flavor of the month in her bedroom.  She often said to Chaz (and meant it both as a geographical statement and a statement of her sense of relative contentment), “This is a good place.”

Brandee started her time at the Bank and Trust behind a teller window.  Soon, even though she was still just a part time employee, she was given the chance to become an apprentice account manager, learning the ropes in case she decided to make HB&T her career.