Chapter 47

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Liz said, looking at me intently.

I only nodded and put down the remote control for the DVD player. We’d gone through the junior high yearbooks and elementary school class photos until we got to the bottom of the box. That was where I moved the DVD of Liz Larimer’s first live performance that my mother had located in a box in our attic.

“Is this what Jill asked you about the other day?” Liz inquired.

I nodded again.

“Fuck,” Liz said, shaking her head. “Well, let’s see it!”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Mom said the beginning is pretty shitty.”

“Nope, I’m ready,” Liz declared. She picked up the remote herself and hit the Play button. I saw the last few seconds of Emily Perkins’ baton routine and I wished my dad had used the zoom feature a little more liberally.

The crowd cheered and hooted when she finished and the makeshift emcee (a senior whose name I couldn’t remember) came on.

“Next to the stage, a sterling representative of the freshman class if I’ve ever seen one, Miss Lizzie Larimer performing ‘L.A. Song’,” the smarmy little prick said. Dad did use the zoom focus when Liz appeared. She was looking back over her shoulder with the same half smile I’d grown to really love.

She paused the frame on her face.

“I was looking back at you,” she said. “Christ, I look like a total dork. I was in my dressy gingham.”

She started the video again.

“‘Loonie Lizzie, ‘“ a loud voice on the screen yelled just before Liz sat down. Then I heard a voice I hadn’t heard in almost four years.

“Young man, if you cannot sit silently then you should leave now. I will silence you if you make me,” my father said.

The camera jostled slightly and Dad pushed the lens to its maximum extension. All you could see was Liz sitting at the piano. There were a few catcalls and hoots but those had died down by the time the piano intro got started.

“‘She hangs around the boulevard, ‘“ Liz sang on the screen. “‘She’s a local girl with local scars.’”

“Holy cow,” I heard Dad mumble. We watched the performance and I found myself singing along. When she finished, Liz got up and walked off the stage. The auditorium was almost completely silent except for some applause down front. Liz was gone by the time the rest of the crowd started to clap.

I had just started to hit the button to stop the video when I heard my dad again.

“I bet you feel pretty stupid now, don’t you?” he asked in a harsh voice. “That girl is very, very talented. Where are you going to be in 10 years, you little shithead?”

I put my hand to my mouth and snorted.

“What?” Liz asked.

“Dad!” I said, laughing. “He always said cursing only demonstrated a lack of vocabulary and a lack of thoughtfulness. That kid must have really pissed him to get called a shithead. He called me a turd-bird once when I was being a little prick but I’ve never heard him call anyone a shithead before.”

Liz gave my hand a squeeze and we moved forward to the end of the show. The auditorium was almost bereft of students (it was a Friday night in Margaretta Township; there were brain cells to kill), leaving only parents of the contestants. I remembered that my portion of the proceedings had been completed so I went down to get Dad.

“Ready?” I heard my teenage self ask.

“Let’s wait for the winners to be announced,” Dad said.

“Seriously?” I asked. “This was a race for second, Dad. Liz killed them.”

“Yes, she did,” Dad confirmed. “Do you know her?”

“Some,” I replied. “She’s a sweet girl but a little ... odd.”

“You just make sure that you remember what we talked about last week,” Dad said.

“I will, Dad,” I said. “I’ve ... Mom likes Lizzie a lot. I watch out for her.”

Suddenly the rest of the conversation came into my mind and I hit the pause button.

“What?” Liz asked.

“You can watch the rest of this without me,” I said as I quickly got up. I headed off to the bathroom. I might as well have stayed. I still saw the video in my mind even though I’d never watched it. My dad had put his arm around me.

“You’re a good son,” he had told me. “I love you and I am very proud of you.”

I was splashing water on my face when I heard a soft knocking on the bathroom door.

I stepped back because Liz rarely waited to be invited in before she entered. The door would have hit me in the back but she didn’t come in.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said in a choked voice. She pushed the door open slowly until she saw I was out of the way. Then she pushed it open and came forward to hug me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, no,” I said. “I just ... I’d forgotten about the last part. I mean, I remembered standing there and watching them give you first place. I remembered that Virginia Alcorn was pissed that she finished second. I remembered that you donated the winnings to the charity the show was supporting. I thought it was odd then but it makes total sense to me now. I just ... I didn’t remember the rest of it and it hit me...”

“I thought it was very sweet,” Liz said. “I liked that part better than watching me on stage. I’m glad that you have that to remind you of how your dad felt about you.”

“Yeah,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth.

“He meant every word,” Liz said. “You can tell from the tone of his voice. He wasn’t just reciting something he said all the time. He meant every word. You are a good son. Somewhere, he still loves you and he is still very proud of you.”

“When you got famous, I’ll bet he tracked down the kid that gave you shit and pointed it out to him,” I said. “I mean, he wouldn’t have said, ‘told you so’ or anything like that. Well, he might have. He called the guy a shithead after all. Mom woke me up at oh-dark-thirty one morning to tell me you had a song on the radio. She called me in Austin ... again, really early in the morning ... to tell me you had an album go platinum. They were pretty proud of you, too.”

“When is Mrs. Blakely coming to visit?” she asked.

I chuckled.

“Uh, you’re my girlfriend,” I noted. “You can call her Annabelle. Am I going to have to call your parents Mr. and Mrs. Larimer?”

“Probably. I still do,” Liz said with a smile as she led me back to where our late supper waited. I hadn’t heard room service arrive while I was in the bathroom.

“So, your mom?” Liz asked.

“She usually comes down in mid-summer for three or four weeks,” I answered. “A lot of it will depend on where I am. I mean, she spends time with Marcie and everybody else but I still like to think she actually visits because I’m there.”

Liz smiled and used her fork to pick some food out of my bowl. She had a club sandwich with fries. I had gone for the steak salad.

“I wish I could see her sooner,” Liz admitted. “I’d love to give her another hug ... to thank her for raising a guy I’m pretty fond of.”

“She could probably fly to Nashville for a weekend pretty easily,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Liz agreed. “Or ... we could go there.”

I frowned.

“Hear me out before you toss the idea in the garbage,” Liz said, tossing a fry in my direction. “Going through that stuff today ... it made me think. Maybe it is time to let bygones be bygones. Hearing your dad give that guy hell made me wonder if there weren’t a lot of other people that are nice that I just didn’t know. I knew your dad ... through you ... and I knew he was nice. I was looking at the back of the old class pictures. Your mom wrote the names on the back that she could identify and a little note about where they are. Ricky Reynolds is a grade school principal. That was pretty cool.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He calls Mom every time there is an opening to see if she wants to apply.”

“I guess looking at the pictures in the yearbook, it occurred to me that there were a lot more people that didn’t give me shit than did,” Liz admitted. “It was just six or seven assholes that ruined my perception of the whole place.”

“I don’t know, Liz,” I said. “I remember things the way you do. It wasn’t six or seven people. It was six or seven groups. The jocks were awful; the cheerleaders were terrible; the majorettes looked down on you; the debutantes looked down on everybody; the party crowd were jerks all the way around. Yeah, the leaders of those groups were the chief tormentors but their minions weren’t a lot better.”

“Maybe,” Liz said. “I’d just like to see your mom and put a few more things to rest. I told you: Loony Lizzie is gone. I know that she isn’t coming back. I keep wondering if some of those pricks think she’s still lurking underneath. Plus, you know, I never got to ride anything at Cedar Point. They had some cool things and I’d like to go visit again. I have a lot of good memories from there. There was this one hot guy ... I think he was my first stalker. I don’t know his name ... Trevor or something gay like that. I swear, every time I’d perform, he’d be there.”

“Sounds like a total creep,” I said.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “But he was hot in a douchey sort of way so I thought about ... you know ... just fucking him and giving him a thrill. He was way into me. I think he liked hairy armpits.”

“There are guys like that out there,” I offered. “Usually if a girl has hair under her arms, she’s a total freak in bed. I’m talking ... monkey love.”

“Uh-hmm,” Liz agreed. “Plus, you know if she ain’t shaving her pits, she ain’t shaving the beaver.”

“Be just like a 1970s porno movie,” I said. “Have to fight through the trees before you go spelunking.”

Liz cracked up and shook her head at me.

“You got me on that one,” she said. “You picked up on the game pretty quick.”

“So, you want to pay a visit to Ohio?” I asked.

“I want to pay to a visit to your mom,” Liz corrected. “If it is in Margaretta Township, I’m OK with that. How about you?”

“I’ve been back a time or two,” I said. “It wasn’t too bad. But, you know, the circumstances were shitty. I went back to bury Dad and to help Mom out with stuff at the house. I didn’t run around much.”

“Let’s talk to your mom and see what she thinks,” Liz suggested.

We returned to the sitting area after we ate. The television was off so I popped the DVD out and returned it the jewel case. Liz plopped her cute little tushy on my lap when I sat down.

I found I really enjoyed having her there.

“We should plan to visit your parents,” I said. “I remember them, sort of.”

“They remember you,” Liz said with a sigh.

“Did I do something to make them hate me or something?” I asked.

“No,” Liz said. “But Mom is going to do her best to embarrass me.”

“It’s what parents do,” I said with a laugh. “I think Mom is already sorting out the pictures of my naked baby butt to show you.”

“Yeah, well, I doubt she’ll regale me with stories of finding papers with Mr. Travis Larimer written on them,” Liz admitted with a blush.

“No, but she’ll have some stories for you that are probably more embarrassing than that,” I said.

Liz sighed again and shook her head.

“You ... you always just play off my mortifying moments,” she said. “I mean, I just confessed that I planned to marry you when I was 12 and you just ... roll with it.”

“I planned to marry the older sister from ‘Friends and Family’ when I was 12,” I related with a laugh. “Well, maybe not marry but I definitely wanted to see her boobs. Shit, when I was 12, I wanted to see your boobs.”

“At 12, I probably wouldn’t have shown them to you,” Liz said, smiling at me. “At 13 or 14, oh yeah, I’d have flashed you if you asked. At 15, I’d have shown you everything you’ve already seen. Thanks for not making fun of me.”

“There is nothing to make fun of,” I said. “That’s why I’m making up for lost time now. I mean, shit, now you’re a train wreck! You have a douche boyfriend that can’t keep his hands off of you. You’re stuck singing jingles for used car lots to make ends meet. You don’t have a single friend that hasn’t already been to rehab or on her way there. God. Total fucking loser!”

“You got the douche boyfriend part right,” Liz said.

“And the fact I can’t keep my hands off you,” I added helpfully.

“I don’t recall anyone asking you to keep your hands off me,” Liz pointed out.

“Good,” I said. I wasn’t making any sexual advances. I was just massaging her back like I’d done earlier.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s next for us,” she said.

“Well, we’re still figuring out how things work,” I replied.

“We are,” Liz said. “But ... well I’ve spent the last few months thinking about where things are headed for me. Professionally, it’s one thing. I know it’s going to be 12 or 14 months after I’m away from RFN before I can release anything new.”