Jonas tilts his head to the right, a pen sitting behind his ear. He’s relishing his night out from the basement as he pulls out the pen, positioning it above his notepad, milking his moment, savoring his dramatic pause, delighting in watching the eyes of the music press turn toward him.
Then, in his best impression of a casual, nice, convivial reporter, he shrugs a shoulder as if what he’s about to say is really no big deal. “I was wondering if you’d consider doing a cover of the Josie Cotton song “Johnny Are You Queer?” for your next album. So maybe you could just talk for a minute about the fact that your ex-husband, the inspiration for your now Grammy-winning breakup album, left you to be with another man, left you because he is, in fact, g*y?”
That is the secret of my success, the bittersweet reminder that you can write a breakup album and it can be great and you can win an award and be thrilled beyond your wildest dreams, but you’re only here because you are the biggest idiot in the world. Because you loved a man wildly, crazily, passionately. But oops! He was never really into you at all.
Eat your heart out, Shania. Cry me a river, Faith Hill.
Chapter Four
I return to New York two days later, after a forty-eight-hour blur of interviews, meetings, meals, and parties, determined not only to put Jonas behind me, but also to keep Matthew with his blue eyes and penetrating questions far away. He’s a rock critic and anything more than a flirtation from afar would be dangerous.
Having a six-year-old helps immeasurably because Ethan spends a good chunk of the flight home explaining a new card game he’s invented. I don’t understand most of it, but the game makes perfect sense in his world—it’s a combination of Pokemon, Lego Star Wars, and Harry Potter because it involves picking cards, making characters, and trying to get a ghost helmet that transforms into a black dog if you use it to battle bad guys before you get a healing stone to ward off dark wizards. Or something like that. By the time we land, collect our bags, hail a cab, and shoot back through the Midtown Tunnel toward our home on Thirty-Sixth Street, Ethan is exhausted from the talking and the travel.
Once we’re inside the apartment I purchased a few months ago with the earnings from Crushed, I help Ethan get ready for bed, then tuck him under the same dog-patterned quilt he’s had since he was born.
“Ethan,” I say, smacking my forehead when I remember he has homework tonight. “It’s Tuesday, so it’s sound share tomorrow.” That’s the thing about being a mom—you don’t get to escape from daily life, even when your husband waves the rainbow flag, even when a bottom-feeder rubs it in your face, even when you win an award you didn’t let yourself dream of ever winning. The very morning after Aidan left me, I still had to make sure Ethan brushed his teeth and ate his toast and didn’t try to wear his favorite ratty little Yoda T-shirt to school. There’s no time to wallow in the mocha-chip ice cream when you have a seven in the morning wake-up call every day, no matter how good or bad you feel.
“Mom, can we skip it tonight?” Ethan half moans. At the same time, he swings his legs out of bed, knowing skipping homework is not an option. He’s in kindergarten, so homework is sort of a relative term. But his school assigns “sound share” homework to its kindergartners. The sound share letter this week is G.
He walks across his room, every square inch of walls filled with posters from the Harry Potter movies and shelves with the books, to a maroon-colored, kid-size desk and grabs his Scooby-Doo notebook and a pencil.
“G for Grammy. Three things about Grammy,” he says. “Number one: My mom has one. Number two: They’re really cool. Number three: I touched a Grammy.”
“Okay, love the idea, my sweets. But, number one, the Grammy is being engraved right now, so I don’t even have it.” Thank God, because there’s no way I want to let that little puppy into a kindergarten classroom. “Number two, you need to be more inventive with your answers. And number three, let’s find a photo of one online.”
About fifteen minutes later he selects: his mom has one, it’s an award for music, and it’s the shape of an old record player. Then he crawls back into bed and promptly falls asleep. I adjust the quilt, tucking it snugly around his body. I kiss his cheek, dim the lights, then make my way to the kitchen, where I fill a supersize mug with water from the tap and pop it into the microwave for a minute.
I pick up my cordless landline to find seventy-two messages on my voice mail. I’ve already fielded another dozen or so on my cell phone—calls from my parents in Maine, as well as my best girlfriend, Kelly, who lives here in New York. I punch my voice mail code—the date I lost my virginity in the backseat of Kyle Sutcliffe’s maroon Chevette in eleventh grade—and reach for a pen and paper, as I drop a Ceylon black tea bag into my mug.
As I wait for the tea to steep, dunking the bag up and down, I steel myself for a mixed assortment of messages. First the well-wishers. My next-door neighbor to the right, my next-door neighbor to the left, my doorman, the Chinese deliveryman (I hate to cook, so we’re on a first-name basis, commiserate over sucky relationships, and even share cold noodles now and then). Then, Haley Mauvais, who owns the guitar shop in my hometown (When would I come back to sign a picture for his wall?); Kyle Sutcliffe (How did he get my number?); Cranberry Morris, my booking agent (Am I free for a special one-night gig at the ultra-cool club The Knitting Factory in late March because they’d be delighted to have me in the Main Space? And can I perform on Late Show with David Letterman this Friday before my gig at Roseland Ballroom that same night? Yes and Yes!); and Jeremy, who runs my label.