Miss Me When I'm Gone (30 page)
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Authors: Emily Arsenault
Diane’s theft and attempted destruction of Gretchen’s notebooks and files—plus the similarity of her car to one of those described by the librarian—proved enough for investigators to question Diane and take samples of her hair and fingerprints.
When the hairs matched the ones found on Gretchen’s coat the night of her fall—and the fingerprints those in Shelly’s house the morning of her death—they managed to get a confession out of Diane. When she’d begun to suspect that Gretchen knew about her father, she’d begun to track Gretchen—following her home, and to the library, afraid that Gretchen would report what she knew. She didn’t go in for the reading, obviously, but decided to confront her in the parking lot afterward, when she saw that Gretchen was all alone. Diane claimed to have no intention of harming her—just to talk to her, before the information got into the wrong hands. When it became clear that Gretchen not only knew about Diane’s father but suspected Diane of involvement in Shelly’s death, the conversation became heated. Diane pushed Gretchen. Diane said she didn’t mean for her to fall and hurt herself. When she saw how hurt Gretchen was, she panicked and grabbed her purse to make the incident appear like a mugging.
Shelly’s death was another story. Diane knew about Shelly and her father as early as high school. It was confirmed when Diane had overheard Shelly threaten to expose her father in 1985—and her father’s futile offers to pay for her silence. On her jog early that morning in 1985, Diane had stopped at Shelly’s house, determined to talk some sense into Shelly—with a first payment in hand from her own savings. Despite the early hour, Shelly had welcomed her old friend inside and begun brewing her a pot of coffee. But the conversation had quickly turned bitter. It was clear Shelly had made up her mind. Diane, realizing this, snapped.
When Shelly’s back was turned, Diane struck her on the back of the head with an iron that had been sitting on Shelly’s kitchen counter. When she realized what she’d done, she hastily removed what evidence she could find. She wiped the handle of the iron clean, washed her hands and face in Shelly’s sink, and took one of Shelly’s T-shirts so that she wouldn’t have to jog the last half block home in a bloody shirt. In the rush to get out quickly, she’d forgotten about the roll of money she’d brought in an attempt to bribe Shelly.
Even before she mentioned seeing Frank’s car in Shelly’s driveway, people naturally wanted to believe it was him. Diane’s father and Judy and Linda were already convinced of Frank’s guilt before she ever said a word.
I attended some of Diane’s trial, when my mother was able to watch my son, Joe—the spirited baby previously known as Charlie Bucket. He didn’t seem like a Charlie Bucket when we met him. Or even a Charlie.
Diane was convicted of murder one for Shelly, involuntary manslaughter for Gretchen. I was there the day they read the verdicts. It was important for me to be there—important for the book I was writing—a combination of Gretchen’s words and my own. That was what her family, her publisher, and I came up with. I’d quit my job after Joe was born, anyhow. After my first couple of days with him, I’d felt time would be better spent with him than in front of my old newsroom computer. I had no idea what I was going to do next, and no plans to decide till after he turned one.
When it was all over, someone tapped me on the arm outside of the courthouse.
It took me a moment to recognize Kevin—I hadn’t been there the day he testified. But I noted his snug maroon dress shirt and black-checked tie.
“Hey,” I said. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your stubble.”
He smoothed his tie against his chest. “And I almost didn’t recognize you without your little belly.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said. “I know it wasn’t little.”
“How’s the baby?”
“Good,” I said. “He keeps me pretty busy. He’s really into strained peaches at the moment. And flashlights. Those are, like, his two big things right now.”
We didn’t talk for long. Kevin still missed Gretchen, he said. And he would be sure to pick up a copy of the book when it came out. He wasn’t sure he’d want to read it, but he’d want to support Gretchen’s family.
“For that scene at Frank Grippo’s house, did you write it like I was there, or like I wasn’t?” he asked.
“Both ways,” I said. “The way she wrote it and the way you told it.”
“You think that’s how she’d want it?”
“I can only guess,” I admitted. “But I tell myself so. With every page.”
We headed away from the courthouse together as we talked.
“Are you going to be around town again?” he asked, when we reached a corner together. “Research for the book?”
“Probably not,” I said. “I’m almost done, except for the trial material.”
I watched him nod. I thought of telling him I’d dash off an e-mail to him soon, maybe to clarify the paperboy parts of the book. But I knew I had those parts down pretty well. There was no need to talk to him again—as much as I’d have liked to try to keep this person—with a tiny bit of Gretchen in him—close.
“Well,” he said. “I’m glad to hear you’re almost finished. It must be a hard book to write.”
“Hard. Yeah. I’ll be sad when it’s over, though. It feels kind of like something Gretchen and I are doing together.”
“I know what you mean. Hey, where’s your car parked?”
“In the garage around the corner.”
“You were smarter than me. I did street parking. I’m probably getting a ticket as we speak.”
“I’d better let you go, then.”
We said good-bye. I headed quickly to my car so I wouldn’t have to watch him walk away.
“I Believe”
Tammy Wynette Highway
Itawamba County, Mississippi
Tammy Wynette never had the money or the mainstream following to build a shrine to herself—a ranch or an amusement park. Dolly’s got Dollywood and Loretta’s got her lower-key ranch and museum outside of Nashville. (And it’s not just a female phenomenon—let’s not forget about Conway’s Twitty City, may it rest in peace.)
If there was a Tammyland, what would it be? I think Tammy would have liked something with a spa and a botanical garden. Something as classy as she always tried to be.
But I don’t think this world was meant to have a Tammyland. A Tammy that could have had the long-term career confidence or financial freedom to set up such a place might have been an entirely different woman.
So Tammyland has to exist only in our minds. It is what we wish for our Tammy. It’s a magical place full of song and sequins and self-love, where we can all eat banana pudding and take a bubble bath with Burt Reynolds.
It’s a place where the potential measures up to the life that is lived. Where the happiness so desperately sought is finally found. It’s not really a place that exists for most of us here on earth. Most of us will not ever have our Dollywood, our Graceland, our Loretta Lynn dude ranch of adoration.
Tammy’s life was such a contradiction between success and sadness, and left behind such bittersweet longing. Like most of our lives will. Like most of the lives of the people we’ve known and lost. There is always so much more that should have been explained, so many longings left unfulfilled.
Tammyland is where we can enjoy her voice without a tear or regret for the tragic parts of her life, or the way it ended too soon—only a feeling of warmth and a simple, loving statement:
Yes, that’s who she was.
Where Tammy might sing her favorite song, “Till I Can Make It on My Own,” forever, because she never will, not quite. And where that’s actually okay—because it has to be.
—
Tammyland
Thank you to Laura Langlie and Carrie Feron—and everyone at William Morrow—for your enthusiastic support of this book.
Thanks to Nicole Moore and Cari Strand for early readings.
And, as always, warm thanks to my husband, Ross Grant, for driving with me all the way to Red Bay, Alabama, and back, for midnight cupcakes, for buying me that Tammy Wynette CD back in 2002, and for so much more.
Plus a kiss and a smile to sweet Eliza, who kindly waited till this book was finished to arrive.
Meet Emily Arsenault
E
MILY
A
RSENAULT
is the author of
The Broken Teaglass
and
In Search of the Rose Notes
. She lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.
Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
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Q&A with Emily Arsenault
Are you a country music fan? How did you research the country artists Gretchen featured in
Tammyland?
I am a fan of classic country. That’s not to say I dislike contemporary country music—I just haven’t been exposed to much of it. When I was in my early twenties, I found myself at a Willie Nelson concert rather by accident, and really enjoyed it. After that I started listening to Willie and his contemporaries.
I started my research simply by being a fan—by listening to the music of the classic country stars and watching lots of their old performances. I’ve also read many of their biographies:
Coal Miner’s Daughter
by Loretta Lynn and George Vecsey,
Still Woman Enough
by Loretta Lynn and Patsi Bale Cox,
Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business
by Dolly Parton,
Stand by Your Man
by Tammy Wynette and Joan Dew,
Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen
by Jimmy McDonough,
The Three of Us: Growing Up with Tammy and George
by Georgette Jones and Patsi Bale Cox,
Tammy Wynette: A Daughter Recalls Her Mother’s Tragic Life and Death
by Jackie Daly and Tom Carter,
Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline
by Ellis Nassour.
Another great resource on the topic of women in the history of country music is
Finding Her Voice: Women in Country Music 1800–2000
by Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann.
Once I’d actually started writing this book, I went on a road trip similar to the one Gretchen took in
Tammyland
—stopping at Nashville; Loretta Lynn’s ranch; Tammy Wynette’s hometown; Patsy Cline’s memorial in Camden, Tennessee; and many other related places.
What made you choose to have Gretchen single out Tammy Wynette as her favorite?
Like Gretchen, I have great admiration for all of the musicians she wrote about in
Tammyland
. But it made sense to me that Gretchen would be interested in Tammy’s contradictions and complexities.
While Dolly and Loretta are very easy to accept as sassy modern women, Tammy Wynette can be more of a challenge for someone who identifies herself as a feminist. I think, though, if you watch interviews with Tammy or read her story, there is something fascinating and irresistible about her. She is very sincere, and it’s hard not to like her. Her vulnerabilities—as extreme as they sometimes are—make her very relatable, very human.
Gretchen knew, deep down, that she wasn’t as confident in her choices as she liked to let on. And I don’t think someone with a history as complex as hers—and her family’s—would begrudge Tammy her emotional trials.
Why did you choose to make the narrator, Jamie, pregnant?
A few reasons. In general, I wanted Jamie and Gretchen to be in very different places in their lives and relationships. At the time of her death, Gretchen had just gotten a divorce. In contrast, I wanted Jamie to be facing new motherhood. In an earlier, much different draft, she had a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, but I found that didn’t quite work. It didn’t seem realistic to me that Jamie would drag a small daughter around with her as she went talking to Gretchen’s sources—possible murder suspects. Nor did it work for Jamie to keep leaving her daughter with a babysitter. With a pregnancy, I could make her behavior a bit more risky. Even though Jamie’s choices are not always sensible, she doesn’t consider herself a parent yet, so perhaps she feels she has license.
The decision to make Jamie pregnant may have also had something to do with the fact that I was newly pregnant around that time I was revising that aspect of the book. This allowed me to put in some silly things about pregnancy that I could relate to. Jamie does a number of things I’d wanted to do when pregnant but didn’t get around to—like going to a Chinese buffet by herself and eating a pile of sugar doughnuts.
Both your last book (
In Search of the Rose Notes
) and this one feature old female friendships revisited. Why do you think you’ve returned to that theme?
I didn’t revisit this theme deliberately. The friendships featured in the two books are very different.
In Search of the Rose Notes
explores childhood and adolescent friendships. The narrator of that story is uncomfortable revisiting an old friendship that reminds her of an old part of herself she’d rather forget.
I think that college-age friendships can be much more idealistic. The friends you choose in your early twenties are often a reflection of who you think you are, of who you
want
to be.
I attended an all women’s college, and the friendships I formed there were very intense. We had high standards for one another and felt a strange sort of sisterly protectiveness of our friends that I’m not sure we would’ve felt at a regular college. We were always in one another’s business. I felt we had to constantly justify our relationship, academic, and career choices. We always had to prove to ourselves and our friends that we were being strong women. It was a healthy approach to friendship, but sometimes it could get irritating. Sometimes I’d find myself wanting to slack off or take risks that I knew I couldn’t justify to my friends or to myself.
This sort of friendship is closer to the one that Jamie had with Gretchen. Now, years after college, in a transitional stage in her life, Jamie wonders if she is living up to everything she thought she’d be back when she and Gretchen were college friends together.
Is the book autobiographical in any sense? Are Jamie and Gretchen based on anyone you know?
Not really. I share a few qualities with both women, but nothing significant. Like Jamie, I haven’t been the most glowing pregnant woman. I tend to get grumpy if people ask me too many personal questions or make my pregnancy their business. (As I answer these questions, I am less than two weeks from my due date.)
My writing process is, like Gretchen’s, very sloppy at first. I tend to write longhand and buy lots of new notebooks as a strategy for getting a fresh start on a project. I would pity anyone who had to try to make sense of a book project of mine midway through, as Jamie is asked to do for Gretchen.
As with my second book,
In Search of the Rose Notes
, the nature of Jamie and Gretchen’s friendship is based on my personal experience, but the characters themselves are not really based on anyone I know.