Last Ride to Graceland (8 page)

“All right,” I say to Philip. “I'll answer you one question. Shoot.”

I would have thought he'd want to know where the hell I got the Stutz Blackhawk, or where I was planning to go next. Why I have a bunch of numbers written on my arm like a Holocaust survivor or how I'd ended up here, behind the airport, in the parking lot of this broken-down dive. Any of them would have been good questions. The kind I'd like the answer to myself.

But instead he leans in and says the last thing on earth I'd expect him to say. “Just tell me this one thing, Cory Ainsworth. Do you need any money?”

As I
drive back down the bumpy road, past the strip joints and freight warehouses, I keep trying to wrap my head around the fact Philip had called my mother a wild child. It's hard to see your own mother that way. I guess it's hard to see your mother at all. For thirty-six years Mama was the most important person in my life—the one phone number my fingers could always remember, even when they were drunk or lost or scared. Hers is the name
I still cry out in those bad dreams, the kind where I think I'm falling. But in other ways, she was always ­unknowable—the first and last mystery of my life.

It's not like I think she was a prude or anything. Leary and the other kids in Beaufort might have seen her as nothing more than a church lady, but I always knew better. My mama was a survivor. She had that wary look of people who've seen things they never wanted to see, but now that they've seen them, they can't forget.

Here's an example. It was the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, so I wasn't even sixteen. I couldn't drive. But there was something in me that came up fast that summer, shooting out of the ground like kudzu, and I liked older boys. Mama made them come into the house and tell her and Bradley all sorts of stuff about their parents and their future plans. It's like she had a checklist in her head and she was adding up the pluses and minuses as they talked. But somehow she still didn't like Joel McGee, the boy I was seeing that summer, even though his father was an optometrist from Charleston and his future plans included med school and joining the family practice.

Nothing trumps med school. Nothing. Bradley rolled right over for him. Mama, not so much.

She said, “If you want to date a younger girl, then you'll have to play by younger girl rules,” a line I'd heard a hundred times. Joel had nodded and assured her that he'd have no trouble getting me back by eleven and that yes, he would love to join us for lunch next Sunday after church. And somehow he even managed to work in the fact he played the guitar. I'd told
him she was a fine musician, he'd said, that she'd taught me everything I knew. Maybe the three of us could strum a bit on the porch after Sunday lunch. He had a particular admiration for James Taylor.

Ordinarily, this would have charmed her, but Mama had an instinct for trouble. It's like she could smell it coming down the road a mile away, and when Joel and I left, she came out and leaned on the front porch banister, watching us get into his car.

When we got back that night, she was still standing there in pretty much the same position.

It was eleven thirty-five. I said, “Shit,” and slid out of the car. Joel wanted to walk me to the door, but I wouldn't let him. No amount of James Taylor was going to save him now.

Mama followed me through the front door and across the den, down the hall, and into my bedroom, listening to my cockamamie excuses about movies letting out late and traffic on the bridge.

“You've been to Smuggler's Cove, haven't you?” she said.

That's exactly where we'd gone, and I don't know how a woman the age my mother was then—which, come to think of it, was pretty much the age I am now—knew where the local teenagers went to make out.

“He writes his own lyrics, Mama,” I said, and went into the bathroom. It was all I could think of to say. Mama came right in after me, still nagging about how Joel was entirely too old for me, and I said he'd been a perfect gentleman and we'd only talked about music, and then I sat down on the toilet and pulled down my panties and a big clump of sand fell out of them and went splat on the bathroom floor.

It's hard to recover from a moment like that. Mama just looked at the sand there between my feet and said, “So maybe I'll leave you alone to take your shower.”

She spoke with that cold, icy calm voice she saved for the times when I was in deep trouble. Her expression was an equal mix of disapproval and the absolute absence of surprise. 'Cause the apple never falls very far from the tree, does it? That's what people always say, and everybody likes the edgy girl, unless you're the edgy girl's mother, and everybody roots for the rebel, except maybe the woman who'd taken her own shot at freedom sixteen years earlier and was still paying the price.

“I'll give you some privacy,” said Mama, in that tone that could make an angel's wings shrivel and fall off her back. I got into the tub and turned on the water as hot as it would go, stood under the steaming, punishing blast, letting it wash away any trace of Joel McGee and the sandy dunes of Smuggler's Cove. But I've never forgotten the look on Mama's face that night. Was this the same woman who had taught me to sing along with Cher when I was seven? Who had turned the pepper mill into a microphone and who'd braided my hair while it was still wet, just so it could come out wild and free? It seemed like she'd always been pushing me forward and pulling me back in the same breath, that she wanted more for me out of life, but then feared that if I found it, I'd leave her.

I guess it's no surprise that the next Sunday, Joel did not come to dinner. Instead, Mama and I went out alone, to the Chinese buffet, while Bradley stayed behind at church to help count the collection money.

We hadn't talked about that Friday night. I had stayed home
Saturday to play Scrabble with Bradley. We'd made popcorn and watched
Who's the Boss
?
And I'd worn a pink linen jacket and pantyhose to church, even though it was hot. I had sung loud and hard on all the hymns. Nobody could say I wasn't trying. But when we finally found ourselves alone in the booth of the Chinese restaurant, staring each other down across our spring rolls, Mama just looked at me wearily and said, “Do you at least know how to take care of yourself?”

Here's the thing. I knew at once what she meant. It was one of those rare times where there were no veils or pretending between us.

“I'm a careful girl,” I said. “You raised me that way.”

We ate the rest of the meal in silence. I sat in my space while she sat in hers. And at some point after the plates were cleared but before we got our ticket, I blurted out, “You know, nothing happened Friday night.”

She just looked at me.

“We didn't do it,” I said. “I wanted to. I was ready. I got Connie Baker to drive me to Savannah when we were out for spring break and I went to Planned Parenthood and I got the pills and I took a whole pack and was halfway into the second one. So I know it was safe. But when I showed them to Joel, he said it was unromantic that I had preplanned it. He said I'd stripped all the spontaneity out of the night. He said I killed the mood.”

Mama put her elbows on the Formica tabletop and laid her chin against her fists. “He claims he's going to med school,” she said, “and you're telling me he doesn't understand the world any better than that?”

“I know. But you gotta remember, he's also a musician. A songwriter. And they don't even try to make sense.”

She sat back against the orange vinyl cushion. Maybe a minute ticked by, maybe less. I was so nervous my heart was pounding. The waitress brought the check and the fortune cookies, but neither one of us said thank you, even though that sort of thing is ordinarily automatic for my family. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is an improbable conversation between a mother and a daughter, and you're right. But through the years when I was growing up, there were times when, out of nowhere, I'd catch a glimpse of the woman behind the mother. This odd little part of her that slipped out in certain moments, like when she was singing Cher into the pepper mill or skinny-dipping in the Polawana River. I guess the person I was seeing was Honey, although I didn't know it at the time.

Mama was frowning, looking down at the bill like something wasn't adding up. “So you're telling me that you were going to Savannah and getting yourself on birth control pills, counting it out for a month and a half . . . and that put him straight off the idea.”

I nodded. “I think he wanted to be the one who, you know, the one who decided when it was time.”

“And on that golden day, just pray tell what was Mr. Joel planning to do?”

“I don't know,” I said miserably. “Pull out, I guess.”

Mama took a slow, deep drag on her tea and picked up the check. “You can do a lot better than that boy,” she said.

I wait
for the first stoplight I hit in town before I look in the envelope: four hundred freaking dollars, all of it in twenties. I came on this trip to solve a mystery, and it seems like I've only managed to make it deeper. Why the hell would a complete stranger offer me this kind of money? Even before I knew how much it was, I thanked him over and over and told him I'd repay him as soon as I'm settled, but he and I both know that I'll never get settled. This is payola, not a loan, and if he was buying himself anything, it was probably the back of my head. Besides, he didn't give me his full name or address, so how the hell would I ever find him again, even if I were so inclined? And what was he doing out at sunrise on that deserted road with four hundred dollars in his pocket, all in small bills? He had pulled out a wad, the sort of wad I didn't know men carried anymore, not even politicians in middling-sized Georgia towns. And he gave the whole of it to me based solely on the fact he'd once known my mother.

He'd even said he hadn't known her very well, although that's obviously a lie. Hearing she was dead wounded him. I could see the little flinch from behind the aviator shades, and yet he had asked for no details, had sought to know pitifully little about her life or her death. Granted, it's all pretty suspicious, but I do the math, and the math doesn't work. Mama got pregnant no more than six weeks before she left Graceland, it's the only thing that makes sense.

“Just promise me you won't sleep in the car anymore.” That's all the man said as he handed me the money. “It isn't safe.”

It's just past eight, and there's a long line at the drive-thru. I
order sausage biscuits for both me and the dog off the dollar menu. Just because I'm flush for the moment doesn't mean I should blow it all at once, but at least this answers the question of how I'm going to get to Fairhope. As I'm waiting to pay, my eye falls on a building just past the McDonald's. A big sign says
HEART OF GEORGIA CARDIOLOGY
and across from it is the Macon Services for the Blind, the entrance to which is ironically well landscaped. In fact, it's the prettiest little patch of land I've seen since I rolled into town. And between these two fine institutions, with the name written in tiny letters, almost as if they're ashamed of their purpose here among so many noble causes, is a third medical office.

DNA Testing.

I look down at the seat beside me. If there's one thing I have in this car in undeniable abundance, it's DNA. The smell of Elvis is on the seats, and the smell of Honey too, and honey, and then there's the matter of this lipstick imprint on this cup. Could there be some lingering saliva on that straw? Leary was right, it's probably blood on this Kleenex, not chocolate, and almost certainly the blood of Elvis himself, rendered on his way home from the dentist office. Because that's the last place he ever drove to, you see, a bit of trivia that is well documented on all the websites. I look down at the Kleenex, with those tiny little flecks of blood.

That trip to the dentist was the last time Elvis was ever sighted alive, at least by the general public. A photographer snapped him at about two in the morning, coming back into the gates of Graceland, riding in this very car. The lens had been pointed straight at Elvis and Elvis alone, giving the photogra
pher a tight close-up of his face. There was no way of knowing who was driving or if anyone was beside him or crammed down in the back. It was the middle of the night for normal people, but around lunchtime for him, because day and night were reversed for Elvis, as anybody who has followed his tale well knows. He would awaken at sunset, which meant if he was on tour that his evening's performance in effect marked the beginning of his day, with time to party and decompress afterward. If he was home in Memphis, he would run any errands, such as this final trip to the dentist, after sunset, because a man as famous as Elvis couldn't get his teeth cleaned in the middle of the day. A riot would have broken out. The whole city was prepared to stay awake to service the needs of their favored son, from movie theaters to jewelry stores to car dealerships.

His entourage was held hostage to this strange rhythm as well, eating breakfast at midnight and going days at a time without ever seeing the sun. Hard to imagine Mama in that world too, even harder to imagine than her lolling around in the beanbag chairs of the Juicy Lucy. When I was growing up, Mama would come rapping on my door every morning at six thirty sharp, even on Saturday, telling me the day was wasting. Was getting up early her attempt to get back the 365 days of sunlight she lost during that year she lived with Elvis?

“That is one cool car,” says the kid at the drive-thru window. I am sitting down so low that I have to reach up to give him the five, and he hands me the bag and my change with a kind of reverence. His voice drops, the way I'd imagine people start whispering when they enter the Sistine Chapel, because you just can't use a normal tone of voice when you're in the middle
of something that's obviously holy, something that's just sitting there before you, sent from God on high to explain you to yourself. The kid flinches, like he's almost blinded by his own reflection in the hood, and I wonder all of a sudden if that was why Elvis did such a good job of breaking America's heart. Because he kept showing us ourselves, even when we didn't like looking at it. He kept showing us what happens when a poor boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, gets all the money and sex and fame in the world and still isn't happy.