Miss Me When I'm Gone (4 page)

“There’s a lot in here about Shelly.” Mrs. Waters picked up a stapled stack packet of papers and flipped through it absently. “Things she never asked me much about. But apparently she was back in our old hometown a lot, doing research. It was going to be another travel memoir, I suppose. This time going north, to New Hampshire.”

“That’s where you and Shelly grew up?”

“Yes. Emerson, New Hampshire. Gretchen visited there a great deal when she was little. Before Shelly died, and then, after that, just some holidays. Do you know how Shelly died, Jamie? Did Gretchen tell you that?”

“She had an abusive boyfriend?” I offered reluctantly.

“Yes.” Mrs. Waters opened her hands and let the packet fall back into the crate. “That’s right. He was an alcoholic. They fought a lot, and one day, he killed her. He beat her with an iron, and she died.”

I nodded, horrified. Gretchen had never told me this detail, about the iron. She had never put it so starkly. She’d always made it sound like it was all a natural consequence of Shelly’s hard-living choices. That something like that was bound to happen sooner or later. Hearing this now, I was shocked that Mrs. Waters was in as decent shape as she was. How sad to have a sister die that way—and now a daughter die almost as young.

“So Gretchen really didn’t tell you much about the new book, I take it?” Mrs. Waters asked.

“Not really. She mentioned that this one was going to be kind of about the men of country music, rather than the women. That it was going to be a sort of companion book.”

“Sort of . . .” Mrs. Waters said. “From what I’ve read, it looks to me like she started with that idea but got kind of . . . distracted. The book became much more personal.”

“Hmm. Well, she did say it was pretty different from
Tammyland
. More serious, I guess, in a way. She did say that. But the last we really talked was a few months ago.”

Mrs. Waters nodded.

“Yes. More . . . serious.
Tammyland
was so optimistic. I don’t know how I, as her mother, feel about her wanting to write about these . . . darker topics. Ones so personal for me, not just for her.”

Mrs. Waters stirred her coffee, then set her spoon aside. “Sometimes, as a parent, you can do everything . . .
everything . . .
but then you wake up on a day like this, and realize that it was never going to be enough.”

She hesitated, then turned a little red—as if remembering that you’re not supposed to say such things to women in my condition. I didn’t mind, but I didn’t feel I could say so.

“But . . . uh . . . Gretchen’s manuscript.” Mrs. Waters seemed flustered for a moment, then took a sip of coffee, which seemed to refocus her.

“She obviously put a lot of work into it, and, I suppose, wanted people to read it . . .” Mrs. Waters continued. “So I think it’s important that someone take that on. Someone who cared about Gretchen and valued what she had to say.”

She took another long sip of her coffee.

“I think of you as one of her best friends,” she said quietly.

“Oh. Well, thank you for saying that.”

“Maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. I suppose in college you don’t pick
best friends
anymore? But what I mean is, you were a solid friend to her. I was happy when she introduced me to you. It was what she always needed the most—solid friends.”

“I’d be happy to take this stuff,” I murmured.

“You shouldn’t feel rushed at all,” Mrs. Waters said. “Just look through it at your own pace. I know you must be so busy, and I know you’re only going to get busier. I picked you because I trust you. But I want you to take your time. It could be a year, it could be . . . well, I don’t know. But eventually, I’d still like to feel that what she wrote is honored.”

I cleared my throat. “Of course I’m glad to help.”

“Her agent’s name is Tracy Pike. I don’t have her information.Nathan got ahold of her number, so I’ll make sure you get that. You probably want to contact her yourself. She might be able to tell you more about what Gretchen’s plans were, if she sent her a recent draft.”

“Sure,” I said.

Mrs. Waters closed her eyes for a moment.

“Oh. Yes. I didn’t tell you about Gregor and the laptop. When the police went and chatted with Gregor, they took her laptop. They haven’t been able to locate her cell, and I suppose they thought her e-mails and things would give them a sense of who she’s been communicating with.”

“Why? Is there something they’re looking for?”

“Not in particular, from what I’ve gathered. But I think they need to eliminate the possibility of . . . um . . . foul play, I guess they’d call it. Before they can say for sure if it was a random act of violence . . .”

“Or that she slipped and fell?” I asked uneasily.

“Jamie, they haven’t made this public. But there are some reasons to think it wasn’t just a fall.”

I waited for her to continue. I wanted to know the details—at least, I thought I did—but didn’t want to press her for them.

“She didn’t have her purse on her,” Mrs. Waters said. “And it wasn’t in her car. The librarian and the cashier at the 7-Eleven both said that they were pretty sure she had a purse when
they
saw her. Just before. And there were bruises on her arm. Like someone might have grabbed her. A tear on her sweater in the same spot . . . that again, the librarian claims she doesn’t remember Gretchen had at the talk beforehand. And it wouldn’t be like Gretchen to wear a torn sweater to a reading like that.”

“I see,” I said softly. I disagreed, but perhaps Gretchen’s habits had changed since we’d been close.

“Not enough to say for sure if there was a struggle. But enough to say there could’ve been one.”

“I see,” I repeated, my heart thumping hard.

What a horrifying possibility—for all of us, but especially for Mrs. Waters. Maybe it was a mugging—it was starting to sound like it. Maybe something else—but who would want to hurt Gretchen?

“The police have told us these things and asked us to be discreet about it for the moment,” Mrs. Waters said softly. “But I wanted you to know.”

Mrs. Waters stared out the window for a couple of minutes, watching a maple branch flutter and sway.

“Anyway . . . in terms of Gretchen’s files . . . Gregor assured Nathan not to worry, he had everything of his and Gretchen’s backed up on this thing called a Time Capsule. Does that sound right to you?”

I sipped my juice and tried to recover from what Mrs. Waters had just told me.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “It’s a kind of external hard drive, I guess.”

“He said it was saving both of their work every day. What exactly Gregor’s ‘work’ was I don’t know.” Mrs. Waters used air quotes. “Anyway, he says if we bring up a laptop like hers . . . a Mac . . . he can easily transfer everything that was on her original right onto a new computer. It was a backup for in case one of their laptops got lost or stolen. Very easy replacement.”

“Okay.”

“Nathan’s going to pick up a laptop you can use. He says he can get a good deal, and that he can go up to Gregor’s and get all of the files.”

“You know, I don’t mind doing that. I’d kind of like to go up and chat with Gregor.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’re already doing too much.”

“How about Nathan contacts me when he has a chance to get a replacement computer, and he and I will work it out?”

I had a feeling Nathan would be easier to convince than Mrs. Waters. And I really did want an excuse to go see Gregor face-to-face. He would know a lot more about what Gretchen had been up to before she died. Whether or not I found it enlightening, I wanted a better sense of this. I had this sad notion that it might diminish some small wedge of my guilt.

“So,” she said, leaning forward and trying her best to smile. “Tell me. How is the little one?”

“Very good. Pretty active, recently. I’d always heard of
kicking.
It’s the somersaulting I didn’t realize . . .”

I trailed off. Mrs. Waters was staring out the window again. As we sat in silence, a tabby cat came mincing into the kitchen.

“Is that Muriel Spark?” I asked. Muriel was one of Gretchen’s two cats. She and Jeremy had gotten them together, but he’d let her keep them when they divorced.

“Yes. She and Theodore Roosevelt are staying with us now.”

“Permanently?”

“Yes. I couldn’t let anyone else take them. Gretchen would want me to baby them like grandchildren, I’m sure. I like having them here in the house. Even though it seems they don’t actually get along.”

“They never did, Gretchen said. Theodore used to tackle Muriel and take chunks of her hair out.”

“We’ve already had one incident like that. Lots of cat screaming all of a sudden, and then I found Muriel hiding in a closet.”

“I’d always be willing to take one, if it got to be too much,” I offered.

I meant it, too. I missed having a pet. My own cat, Sadie, had died at age eighteen shortly before I got pregnant. I still missed her, and I’d feel comforted, somehow, to get to take care of one of Gretchen’s cats.

“Sweet of you to offer,” said Mrs. Waters. “But the last thing you need right now is a new pet. And to be honest, I want to keep them both. They’re both Gretchen’s.”

I nodded, feeling insensitive for having offered. Besides, Mrs. Waters had already made it clear how I was to honor Gretchen.

“And anyway,” Mrs. Waters said softly, almost wistfully, pointing at my stomach. “You have that one.”

Chapter 7

It took me about a week before I could bring myself to look at Gretchen’s stuff. Sam had kindly taken the boxes out of my trunk and lined them up in our coat closet, where they’d be accessible but not visible.

On the first day I was feeling motivated, I pulled out the box full of printouts and dragged it into the living room, in front of the couch. I had a couple of hours before work and intended to dive in.

First, I grabbed a stack of manila folders, thick with printouts. I checked out the subject labels Gretchen had scribbled on them:
Tammyland Three, Tammyland August, Patsy Cline, Tammyland Dolly Parts, Tammyland/Loretta, Endless Tammy.

Clearly drafts of
Tammyland.
Still, I opened
Endless Tammy.

“Your Memory’s Finally Gone to Rest”

Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee

I really came here to pay my respects. I dressed the part—black skirt and neatly ironed blue top—although I wonder if I’ve fooled anyone. I try to cut through the attached funeral home and am met by a somber, besuited gentleman at a desk who asks if he can help me—and to whom I blurt out the ridiculous response: “Um . . . yes. Can you please direct me to the crypt?”

After he points me toward the double white doors and tells me to take the elevator, I berate myself for not using the word
mausoleum
. That would have been the polite word, correct? I’m not experienced in these matters, as no one I know has ever been interred in one of these structures—only buried in a cemetery or cremated. Is it a southern thing? A celebrity thing? I’m not sure. Either way, this place feels sadder and less organic than a cemetery. As I walk through the third floor (where I know, from online research, Tammy lies), scanning for her name, I notice a strong, strange smell that reminds me of rusty pipes and stale dishwater. A series of misters blows perfume into the air, covering the odor momentarily.

By the time I reach Tammy’s name stretched across a marble panel, I regret that I’ve come here. I don’t know if this is respect at all, me here staring at the cards and letters and silk flowers of recent mourners, some of them clearly relatives and actual friends. I really didn’t come here to gawk, but how else would it look to someone who knew her? As long as I’ve known the nature of her death, I’ve found it very sad. It is, admittedly, an outsider’s sadness, however deeply I might think I feel it.

Tammy Wynette’s death came after years of medical problems and a reliance on painkillers on a Michael Jackson scale. Versed—a medicine usually used only in hospital settings as a presurgery anesthetic—was found in her body during her autopsy. By the time she died, her physical existence had long since passed from unhealthy to freakish and terrifying. The details could easily break your heart.

You could say she performed herself to death. She had medical problems by the time she was in her mid-twenties. She started taking Preludin in the sixties to help ease her debilitating stage fright. And as she became more famous, her medical problems (primarily intestinal problems and adhesions) worsened. She had to have an emergency hysterectomy after her last daughter was born. For years, she had countless abdominal surgeries followed by rushed returns to stage aided by painkillers to which she quickly became addicted. She needed the drugs to keep up the act and they eventually killed her, as everyone close to her knew they would.

Tammy was perhaps an easy candidate for both performance anxiety and addiction. You can see it in some of her early performances—an uncertainty in her posture and her facial expression, a desperate determination to present herself precisely and perfectly. Despite all of the neediness and emotional inconsistencies her biographies expose, she always appeared—or tried to appear—the dignified lady.

I’ve seen footage of her last Grand Ole Opry performance once, and will never watch it again. It made me cry. And not in the “Tear in My Beer” kind of way you’re supposed to cry when you listen to old country music—more in the “humanity is capable of such unbearable agony” sort that perhaps no art or music can capture. In this performance, she was fifty-four years old but she looks about eighty. By then, she was so thin and worn from the drugs that everyone in Nashville thought she had AIDS. She tells the audience she is “feelin’ wonderful” when she is so clearly, painfully not. Her black satin jacket is buttoned incorrectly. She seems confused, is hoarse and gasping for air, and can’t make it through “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.” The younger country star Lorrie Morgan comes from offstage to carry her through the song’s final lines. Tammy was, according to her friends and staff, unhooked from medical equipment just before she went onstage—and then rushed away in an ambulance immediately after the performance. This was apparently not an unusual sequence of events in her final years.

Tammy died one year after that performance. As I watch the footage, it’s surprising she even made it that long. Her final days and death are so horrifying I hesitate to draw a lesson from them.

There is something about a painful death that threatens so overwhelmingly to detract from our sum feelings about that person’s life.

It is difficult for me to think too hard about Tammy’s life without having it all point, ultimately, to such a sad and painful death. I think it is often that way when you know someone who has suffered so at the end. While, of course, I never knew Tammy, I
do
know what it is to carry that sort of weight for someone who’s gone too early, too tragically.

With Tammy, there is still her music. I can listen to “Till I Can Make It on My Own” and her version of “Gentle on My Mind” a few times and know she’s left something here besides pain—know that she accomplished something of great value, even if pain was inevitably mixed up in it.

Most people don’t leave any songs behind. Those of us left with the pain of an early death must be creative in hearing the other notes of that accompanying life—however soft, however low. You have to really listen for them. Train your ear to find them. Even if you have to strain. They might not be so loud and clear as Tammy Wynette’s songs. Even if you find it impossible to separate the life from the death. That’s simply your lot, having loved someone who died painfully—to endure that with each thought of her, for the sake of still hearing her echo.

This one hadn’t made it into the final
Tammyland
at all. Probably a good call. In
Tammyland,
Gretchen had touched on how Tammy Wynette died, but seemed to avoid focusing on it too much. Probably because it could easily bring down the generally spunky, optimistic tone of the book.

Apparently I’d stumbled upon
Tammyland
’s gloomier “deep cuts.” In a way, this piece felt more like the Gretchen I knew than the voice in
Tammyland
had.

When we were in college, she’d always had an obsession with the death penalty, and her senior thesis was about Karla Faye Tucker, a Texas woman who was executed for murder in the late nineties. The title was something like
That’s Our Girl: Karla Faye Tucker and the American Media.
I still remembered her sitting at her computer, typing, saying,
A banana, a peach, and a garden salad. That was her last meal—can you believe that? Well, what a sweet, dainty little thing! Who eats salad when there’s no tomorrow? I mean, how about at least a brownie for the road?

Are you mentioning her last meal in your thesis?
I’d asked her.

Are you kidding me? I’ve got a few pages about it.

I wondered then if she found the death penalty barbaric or just strangely, morbidly fascinating. I was never sure.

Now, as I began to reread the Tammy piece, an uneasy feeling came over me. It felt almost as if Gretchen could be writing about her own death.

I thought of Mrs. Waters’s words about Gretchen’s purse, and the bruises on her arm and tear in her sweater. How long had she lain there on the concrete, bleeding alone, before someone came and found her?

I couldn’t shake the image. I replaced the folder, put the box back in the coat closet, and took out my laptop. Googling “Gretchen Waters” and “accident,” I found some of the articles about her. They all basically resembled the one I’d read two days after her death. None of them mentioned the details Mrs. Waters had shared with me. One of them mentioned what she’d bought at the 7-Eleven: a Mountain Dew and a small bag of chips. Another lamented the poorly maintained public steps, which were steep and crumbling.

I read the articles again. So she’d made it down the stairs just fine, gone to the 7-Eleven, made her purchases, and then headed back up the stairs. So Gretchen had fallen
backward
? How often does one fall backward while walking up stairs? I wondered. Had she been drinking? She’d confessed to me that she hated readings, and that she often had a drink or two beforehand to make them more bearable. But that wouldn’t be enough to send her tumbling down a flight of stairs. Had she maybe forgotten something, then headed back down again?

More than one article mentioned that an autopsy was planned. Could one tell the direction she’d fallen from an autopsy? Her mother hadn’t mentioned the autopsy, and I certainly wouldn’t have asked. Part of me didn’t feel ready to think about it yet. But another part knew I wouldn’t be able to let go of Gretchen without knowing.

For now, I just pictured Gretchen in her final evening. Most young women, if they had any doubts about the safety of a neighborhood, would have gotten into their car right out of the library and driven home. Not Gretchen, though—no, she had a quirky cluelessness about her. Of course she went wandering across a dark, empty parking lot in an unfamiliar city, in search of junk food. Probably wearing her cute little camel coat and round-toe buckle shoes, looking a good decade younger than her thirty-two years.

I closed my computer and got ready for work.