Her Wild Oats (33 page)

*

The next morning brought whole new depths of hell. It felt like little guys with hammers were pounding into his brain and his mouth tasted like he’d swallowed a wet ashtray, but somehow he got himself up and into the lobby in time for bag pull, and in time to say goodbye to Arizona.

“You look like you could use these,” she said, handing him a glass of fresh orange juice and two aspirin.

“Why are you leaving, anyway?”

“I have to clean up some of my own messes. You’re not the only one who gets to screw up around here, you know?” She smiled and winked. “I have a whole other life and job in LA—a good job where I left some people in the lurch.”

“But it won’t be the same without you,” he tried to say without coming dangerously close to crying.

“I know, but think of it this way. The second you get home you just know you all will be in family therapy for about the next hundred years, so you might as well enjoy this time you have with the guys. All they’ll do is give you a little shit now and then. Listen, I gotta fly. There’s the Greyhound that’s going to take me back to Murphy’s to pick up my car, and after a quick stop at the hospital I’ll be on my way home. I’ll call you, OK?”

One more quick hug, and she was gone. Oats got onto the bus, where everyone sat waiting for him to finish saying goodbye. As he walked down the narrow aisle to his bunk with nothing on his my mind but aspirin and a nap, someone counted off and the guys all started singing that old Eagles song, “It’s Another Tequila Sunrise.” Hoagy was right. Oats guessed it could have been a whole lot worse.

*

The new tour manager, a guy named Tim, showed up later that afternoon and immediately got them lost going to the next gig. He made them use dorky laminated luggage tags with numbers—instead of their names—on them, then misplaced the list and they all ended up with the wrong bags that night at the Comfort Inn. But Bobby Lee said Ted was a pro and that Arizona was a tough act to follow but they would get used to it.

A couple of days after Tim arrived the band had a day off, and they hightailed it back to the hospital to check in on everyone and have a little memorial service for Dickie. It was remarkable how much better Melody looked; she was up and about, and she and Pete had been having walker races down the halls of the clinic. In a few more days, Greg would be taking Pete home to finish recovering at the Dewdrop Inn.

Stephanie was still pretty out of it, but not as bad as she’d been—her prognosis was good, and Kira’s husband had finally shown up and she was doing better, too. Sarah Jean was hoping that Charlotte would bring Valerie (Oats’ half-sister, he had to keep reminding himself) out from Nashville and they’d all end up at the Dewdrop too for a while. No one knew if Charlotte would go for that plan, of course, but Oats had a feeling that if anyone could make it happen, it’d be Sarah Jean. She was awfully hard not to forgive, when push came to shove.

*

They all gathered around in the chapel next to the hospital and looked at a poster-sized blow-up of Dickie holding his guitar, with a recording of him playing some tasty licks and singing a silly old blues song; then they went outside and found a secluded wash surrounded by scrubby bushes. Bobby Lee and Willie used a flattened beer can to dig a makeshift hole.

“Really, we should scatter these in a bar, but oh well,” Bobby Lee said as he handed Willie the box containing Dickie’s ashes. “Here, man, you do the honors.”

Willie poured the contents of the box into the hole. Everyone stood silently in a circle for a moment, and then it was over.

At the very end, Eddie pulled Dickie’s
Snakes on Elaine
DVD out of his backpack and threw it in with the ashes, and Oats reached into his jacket pocket and added the condoms that Eddie had given him before he left that first long-ago morning. Somehow that made everyone feel a little better.

Oats drifted away from the group, then ran over to the hospital. It felt crucial that he see Melody before getting back on the bus.

A present! I have to get her a present.
He ran into the hospital.

“Excuse me, where’s your gift shop?”

An orderly pointed him in the direction of a small shop filled with strange and overpriced items—most of them even weirder than the stuff they sold at Murphy’s. Everything seemed to be geared to either little kids or old people like his parents. There were hats embroidered with “fear nothing,” “I am a warrior,” and “I am strong”—but he couldn’t imagine Melody wearing anything but her baton-twirler helmet. He saw a whole display of miniature hand-painted teapots and wondered why anyone would need that in a hospital, or really anywhere.

“Can I help you?” A white-haired woman stood behind the counter.

“Yeah, I’m looking for a present for my friend.”

“How about a lovely necklace or bracelet?” The woman pulled a tray of trinkets out from under her counter. There were pendants that said things like “love,” “strength,” “hope,” “joy,” “serenity,” and “peace.” The one that said “love” was the prettiest, and Oats kept picking it up and putting it down, unable to decide. Finally he played it safe and settled on “hope.” Then he chose a card with a cool picture of an old steam locomotive that said “keep on chuggin’” inside.

“Can I gift-wrap these for you?” the old lady asked, smiling sweetly.

“Sure! That’d be great.”

He was impatient at how long it took for the woman to wrap the gift, and when she tallied his bill he was shocked at the price, which wiped out all his cash.

On his way to Melody’s room, a tall figure blocked his path.

“Hey, man, everyone’s looking for you. Bobby Lee sent me to find you. We gotta go. Hey, what’s that?” Eddie asked.

“Nothing,” Oats said as he tried to hide the ribboned gift behind his back. “Tell them I’ll be right over. I have to do something.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, man, I’ll be right there.”

“Oh, I get it.” Eddie grinned. “It’s a girl thing.”

“Just go, OK? Tell Bobby Lee I’ll be right over.”

“Too bad we gave all our condoms to Dickie,” Eddie said, causing Oats to turn predictably red. But Eddie left and Oats made his way down the hall to Melody’s room.

*

A nurse was adjusting Melody’s IV.

“Please don’t wake her,” the nurse begged. “She really needs her rest.”

Oats took in the scene: Melody was sound asleep, clutching her baton in both hands. He stood there for a minute, under the nurse’s watchful eye, then placed the gift and card on her bedside table and slipped out of the room.

Coming Home

25

Arizona opened the door to her little house in Venice hoping that Jerry would be out, hoping she’d have a few minutes to adjust to being back home. She still had misgivings about the decision to give her marriage another go, but here she was, trying hard to do what seemed to be the right thing.

No such luck—the sound of TV baseball came blasting in from the den. She found him sprawled on the sofa.

“Well,” she said, “I came home.”

“Come on over here and watch the game with me. Don’t worry about dinner, we can go out and get some Thai or something.”

Arizona stood still and tried to remember her yoga breathing. She had promised herself that she’d give Jerry the benefit of the doubt.

“Listen, sweetheart,” she began. “I need to talk to you about a couple of things.”

“Sure, after the game we can talk all you want. Come on, baby, you’re always so intense. What’s so important that it just can’t wait?”

“Well…” she said. She’d wanted to approach this conversation in a controlled, adult manner, but found her heart pounding, anger rising inside. Then, against all her better judgment, she delivered a laundry list of complaints. “There’s money missing from my checking account, and you never told me you owned a gun, and I found some pictures of Stephanie, some very sexy pictures…and there’s other stuff, too.” Jerry sighed and hit the mute button on the remote.

“Aw, honey—Steph’s just a friend, you know that.”

“Come on, Jerry, what am I supposed to think? I saw the pictures. And I saw the two of you together on the road. I didn’t make that stuff up.”

“Are you gonna believe me or your eyes? Besides, the last time I saw Stephanie she was riding off somewhere with that bastard guitar player. I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”

“Oh my god, Jerry, you don’t know…really, why would you, now that I think about it? No one would have thought to tell you.”

“Ari, you’re not making any sense. Whoa, look at that play! This is an exciting game. Hey, would you call the Thai place and order some of that curry chicken?”

“Jerry, stop. Listen to me. Stephanie and Dickie were in a horrible accident.”

“What? What are you talking about? How would
you
know?”

“I was there. I saw the whole thing. She’s been in intensive care ever since that last day you saw her. Dickie died in the crash.”

“Why would you say that? Why would you deliberately try to hurt me?”

“If I’d been trying to hurt you with a made-up story I would have killed her, not him. Honestly, for a smart guy you can be some kind of an idiot.”

The blood drained from his face. He got up and walked out of the room. She heard him slamming the refrigerator door and loudly popping the top on a can of beer. A few minutes later he came back, picked up the remote, and turned the sound back on.

“Hey, we’ve both had a rough day, Ari. Let’s not fight, OK?”

Arizona thought about outlining all the levels of his betrayal, going down the list item by item. But suddenly the things she needed to talk to him about—the money, the email passwords, his affair, the gun, that strangely threatening note—seemed like too much to handle all at once. She’d hang in awhile, see how things felt tomorrow. She was tired. Maybe the situation would seem more manageable in the morning.

Arizona called the Thai place. Then she settled into her side of the sofa to watch TV. Jerry tried to make up for his tantrum by being sweet and attentive, but it was painfully obvious that he was going to do what, as a lawyer, he’d always said anyone accused of a crime should do: deny everything. She didn’t know what to make of it.

They shared dinner and a bottle of wine, and went to bed a few hours later. It felt surprisingly good to snuggle up in sweet-smelling sheets on their big, soft bed after all those nights on cheap, scratchy motel bedding. She could give him the benefit of the doubt. She could give it some time. Jerry gave her a kiss.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he whispered, before rolling over and going to sleep.

*

The time that followed was a blur of catch-up intensity. Thousands of emails awaited. There were phone calls to be returned, a boss with ruffled feathers to be smoothed, and a million post-production details to be sorted out. Things had indeed fallen apart in her absence, and Arizona barely had a minute to eat or go to the bathroom. Somehow she found time to check in with Kira, who was getting better and stronger every day.

“Bark! Bark! Bark!” yelped Arizona’s cell phone one morning.

“Kira, hey, how are you doing?”

“I’m great. They say I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow. I was wondering, though, how I’m supposed to get home. My husband was here for a while, but he had to leave to go shoot a commercial.”

“Oh, honey, we’ll send a car for you. Just say when.”

With Kira back and determined to pick up her Emmy and Oscar statuette dress-up business where she’d left off, Arizona’s life was even busier. Every day she determined to talk to Jerry about her list of issues; every evening he came home making an obvious effort to be attentive and cuddly and she lost her nerve. On the few occasions she managed to broach the subject, he swore with lawyerly roundabout arguments that there was nothing to worry about, nothing to hide, nothing had happened. Not the type to let sleeping dogs lie, Arizona couldn’t figure out how to wake this one up. So she worked eighteen-hour days and tried to put her feelings on hold.

One early morning at the office she opened her email to find a message from a sender she didn’t recognize, subject:
an offering
. She almost hit “delete,” thinking it was from an online marketer or some other kind of spam—but something made her take a look. The message was from Stephanie, just days away from leaving the hospital. In emotional, flowery writing Stephanie thanked her for her help in her time of trial. She wanted, she said, to make amends for any hurt and upset she’d caused.

I don’t expect you to forgive me and I know there’s nothing I can do to make it right, but I want you to know I’m truly sorry. What I need to tell you is that it will never happen again.

Arizona didn’t know what to make of this. She thought about reporting the message as spam, then didn’t. As she tried to craft a short response that walked the line between
Oh, honey, it’s OK
and
What were you thinking, you bitch slut asshole?
another note rolled in from Stephanie—a bittersweet, hilarious recounting of that last ride with Dickie. This woman could crank out one hell of an email.

Arizona couldn’t help herself.

“Imagine my surprise…” she typed in the subject line. Then she wrote about her own weird afternoon with Dickie in the tour bus, and hit “send.”

The rest of the day was lost in a flurry of charming “get-to-know-you” back-and-forth. Stephanie, in a series of emails attempting to make amends, assured Arizona that it was over with Jerry—the whole thing had been a big mistake and she was very sorry to have caused any pain. Arizona, hearing this, relaxed into an honest conversation. She couldn’t have been more surprised that she actually was beginning to like this woman.

The next couple of days were a blur of activity punctuated by delightful, funny email exchanges with Stephanie. Her boss, Grayson Lathrop, was driving her crazy. Annoyed at her for abandoning him, he was more demanding and unreasonable than ever.

“Ari,” he shouted from the inner office for the hundredth time one morning, “bring me the thing.”

Her job, she knew, was intuiting what the “thing” might be. But suddenly she wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. Instead of walking back to his office with an assortment of files, one of which might—or might not—be the “thing,” she appeared in his doorway empty-handed to find him sitting at his desk, assembling a miniature model of Stonehenge while his phone rang, unanswered.