Presley feels pounds lighter as she traipses back across the street in her rain boots. She doesn’t realize she’s humming Everett’s tune until she’s unlocking her apartment door. She hasn’t been able to get the song out of her head since she first heard him sing it. She doesn’t know the title. It’s not the one about his mama but the one about a man who’s lost his way. She sits down at her desktop computer and googles Rhett Baldwin. What she learns transports her back fifteen months.
She’s just arrived home from being out at dinner with friends. Loud music greets her at the back door. Wanting to avoid a scene with her mother, she tiptoes down the hall toward the stairs. But her mother hears her.
“Presley!” Renee calls out. “Is that you? Come here a minute.”
She can tell from her slurred speech that her mother’s been drinking. Sure enough, when she enters the study, her mother is sprawled on the sofa, stemless glass in hand with a red wine stain down the front of her white blouse.
“What is it, Mother?”
“Listen! This young man sounds like Johnny Cash. He wrote this song himself. It went viral on its own. I’m gonna sign him and make him a star.”
Presley had ignored her at the time. Renee’s alcoholism was at its worst, a month before a bout with pancreatitis marked the beginning of her downward spiral toward death.
She has no trouble finding a video of the song on YouTube. The man singing into the microphone and strumming his guitar like a professional is Rhett Baldwin, aka Everett. She replays the video over and over, listening carefully to the lyrics. In the song, this man, who Presley assumes is Rhett, turns to his mama for help when his excessive drinking and fighting gets out of control.
The first night they met, Everett told Presley he doesn’t like the person he is when he drinks. He posted “Show Me the Way” to YouTube eighteen months ago. Presumably, he’s been sober for at least that long. But that means nothing. Renee quit drinking too many times to count. The ease in which Presley downed those two glasses of wine at lunch today serve as a reminder of how fast one can fall off the wagon. She spent her young adulthood taking care of one alcoholic. She has no interest of traveling down that path again. Presley let her infatuation with Everett overpower her common sense. As much as she’s missing Everett right now, she knows their breakup is for the best.
25
Everett
Because of heavy traffic around the Charlotte area, the drive to Atlanta takes Everett longer than expected. His mom is asleep when he arrives at the hospital at nearly eleven o’clock on Monday night. The sight of her face, bruised and swollen beyond recognition, is like a knife in his heart. Her broken left arm is in a cast past her elbow, and a rectangular gauze bandage that presumably covers a laceration is taped to the side of her neck. Tubes provide oxygen and deliver fluids to her lifeless body. Her lips are slightly parted, and he can see the gaping hole in her upper jaw where her left canine tooth is missing. That bastard. How could any man do this to any woman, particularly one as sweet and honest as his mother? She took care of his mean ass for thirty-four years. And this is the thanks she gets?
Everett lowers himself to the recliner beside her bed, but he’s too wired from his trip to sleep. He watches his mom sleep instead, vowing to let nothing bad happen to her ever again. He finally drifts off around two, and when he wakes, his mom is staring at him with roadmap eyes through slit eyelids.
Everett sees how much it pains her when she tries to smile through cracked lips. In a weak and raspy voice, she says, “If you’re trying to outdo me with the black eye, you’ve lost the contest.”
“No doubt about that.” Everett doesn’t explain his black eye, and his mom doesn’t hound him with questions. She knows he’ll tell her the truth when he’s ready. He doesn’t hold back his tears. “I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you here with him.”
She reaches for his hand with her unbroken arm. “Hush now, sweet boy. You have your own life to live. The last thing I want is to be a burden to you.”
“You’ve never been a burden. It’s you and me against the world. Remember, our words for when times are rough?”
She nods. “You and me against the world. Did you sort through your problems?”
He shakes his head. “Things are more complicated than ever.”
“Since we’re both in a bad place how about we support one another while we figure out our lives?”
“I’d like that very much. I definitely need my mama right now.”
“And I need my son.” She squeezes his hand before letting go.
Doctor Mullins enters the room wearing a white jacket over blue scrubs as though he’s been in the operating room. He’s a distinguished-looking rich dude with hair graying around the temples. The doctor gives Everett’s eye a hard stare, but doesn’t say a word about it.
“How’re you feeling today, Mary?” the doctor asks in a gentle voice that makes Everett soften toward him.
“A little better.” His mom looks at her doctor with pleading eyes. “Can I go home today, Doctor? My son is here to take care of me now.”
“Hmm.” He listens to her chest with his stethoscope. “I’m pleased with your progress, but I’d feel better if we give it one more day.”
Mary presses, “Tomorrow morning, then?”
The doctor smiles at her. “As long as you don’t have any setbacks between now and then.” He spends several minutes typing on his iPad before leaving the room.
For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, Mary’s room is a constant beehive of activity. Around
