“A bad penny?” Gavin asked. “She can’t sing anymore?”
“It’s just an expression, baby boy. She just didn’t know when to stop is all.”
“Why did you stop?” Gavin asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Frances said. “It was a long time ago.”
“Grandma. You remember, I’m sure. Was it Grandpa Al? Did he make you stop?”
“Al? Oh no, he loved to hear me sing. He used to call me his nightingale.” She smiled and looked out the window. The hills were a verdant green, the fields full of rising cornstalks, the leafy tops of beets and carrots, the compact globes of lettuce and cabbage.
“It’s a difficult life, Gavin. Traveling all the time, always someplace new to perform. And we had to be at our best. People paid good money to hear us sing, and we had a responsibility to give them a show that was worth what they paid. Eventually it got to be too much work, and you know, I really wanted to settle down and have a family.”
“And you couldn’t do both?”
“Not back then you couldn’t.” She turned to face him. “Today, you can fly from Madison to Los Angeles in a couple of hours. I suppose you could fly out one day, perform on a TV show, then fly home the next day. But back then, we had to drive to Chicago and get on a train. It took a couple of days just to get there.”
He turned down the two-lane road that led to Starlit Lake. Through a screen of woods, he could see the very end of the lake and the tourist cabins that clustered there. He kept driving as the lake widened. Along the north shore, a half-dozen big, rambling houses had been built, each of them on an acre or more. The Brand house was the fourth one in. A curving driveway led from the street through a small patch of woods to the house itself.
The front faced the lake and had always been better landscaped. The house was three stories tall, with dormer windows on the third level. The room Gavin and Archie had shared as kids was back there, facing the woods. The rear windows had freshly painted green shutters.
A half-moon gravel drive passed the house’s back door. Erica’s sedan was already in the square lot, also gravel, where overflow cars were parked when the whole family was there. The backyard was left unmowed, amidst a scattering of pines and low shrubs, so that natural grasses could grow there, providing shelter for small wildlife, birds, and bugs.
Aunt Ida opened the back door and stepped outside. Her white hair was in a perfect bouffant, and she wore a pale-yellow sundress with filmy sleeves and matching yellow sandals. As usual, she wore enough jewelry to stock a small store: a dozen gold chains around her neck in different styles, gold bangle bracelets on each wrist, and gold rings with chunky stones on each finger.
“If Ida left a single piece of jewelry at her house, I’d be surprised,” Grandma Frances said. Gavin laughed as his grandmother stepped out of the car and embraced her sister. The three girls had never been tall, and the years had caused them to shrink. Both Frances and Ida barely topped five feet.
Frances and Ida walked around to the front of the house, talking, and Gavin dragged in the luggage.
Erica was in the kitchen drinking a glass of orange juice. “My grandma wanted to get here first to grab the pink bedroom,” she said. “You want to put Aunty Frances next to her?”
“How about if we put Myrtle next to her, then Frances? Myrtle can be the buffer.”
Myrtle was the middle sister, and she often mediated between Frances’s bossiness and Ida’s spoiled behavior.
“Good idea,” Erica said. “You need a hand?”
“Slap my butt and call me Sherpa, but you could bring in the groceries.”
One of Grandpa Al’s jokes had been a variant of that, ending with call me Shirley. No one knew where it had come from, but the kids had appropriated it after studying the climb to the top of Mount Everest and the role of the Sherpa porters.
Gavin climbed to the second floor, the traditional domain of the parental units, and saw that Erica had claimed one of the rooms there. He took the one next to hers, with a view of the lake, placid and sparkling in the morning sun.
He heard another car pull up in the back drive, and when he got downstairs, he was disappointed to find it was Archie and his grandmother, not Miles. When would he arrive, anyway? Where would they put him and all his stuff? And where would he and Miles be able to slip away, far from the prying eyes of his family?
After Myrtle and Archie were settled, the three cousins walked down to the lakefront together, to the small beach and the wooden dock where a rowboat was tied up. Three dark-green Adirondack chairs were clustered under a pair of swamp maples, and they sat down together.
The water lapped gently at the shore, and in the distance, they could hear a powerboat taking someone out water-skiing.
“How come you’re here so early?” Gavin asked Archie. “I thought you had to work every day.”
“Took a sick day. Don’t tell my boss.” He looked at the two of them. “So what do we do now?”
“When’s your friend getting here?” Erica asked Gavin.
He shrugged. “He said today. But he’s driving here from Nashville.”
“Is he really some big music producer?” Archie asked. “That’s what your dad says.”
“He’s produced songs for a bunch of different artists,” Erica said. “But I don’t think he’s ever done a whole album.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Recording an album?” Archie asked. “I thought we were just practicing for this show.”
They both turned to Gavin. “Don’t look at me. Miles invited himself up here.”
“Booty call!” Archie said.
Gavin was determined to keep the secret. “He’s just this guy I kind of know.”
“Yeah,” Erica said. “Guys I
kind of know
are falling over themselves to chase after me too.”
Gavin crossed his arms over his chest. He wished he did know why Miles had volunteered to come all this way, which he’d done before they’d gone to bed together. Had that been his way of sending a signal to Gavin? Was it just that he liked the Sweethearts’ music? Or was there something else going on, something that Gavin couldn’t see yet?
A Hip Vibe
After lunch, the sisters chose to take naps, and Gavin, Erica, and Archie decided to see how the three of them sounded together. “What do you want to sing?” Erica asked as they walked up the gravel drive away from the house. “‘Apple Cider Time’?”
Archie groaned. “Aren’t we going to sing that enough?” He began to sing the Jason Mraz song “I’m Yours,” and Erica chimed in at the chorus. Gavin was embarrassed that he wasn’t sure of the words or how to sing the tune, so he just listened. The two of them sounded so great together, their voices melding together as they walked between the trees.
“That was great,” Gavin said when they finished.
“Why didn’t you join in?” Erica asked.
“Didn’t know the words.”
“What do you know?”
His mind was a blank. He’d never been one to sing along with the radio, and when he had listened to the music on Miles’s playlist, he’d been focusing on so many different things that the words never penetrated.
“
This land is your land
,” Archie began, looking at Gavin.
At least he’d learned that in school. “
This land is my land
,” he sang.
Erica continued the melody, and then they all sang together, Gavin the baritone, Erica the soprano, Archie the bass.
“That was fun,” Erica said when they finished.
It was, Gavin thought.
They sang a couple of other folk songs they’d all learned as kids, and then as they walked back down the drive toward the house, an SUV pulled in behind them and they stepped aside to let it pass.
“That’s Miles,” Gavin said, waving.
Miles waved back but drove onward, stopping by the house. When they reached him, he was standing by the side of the SUV with the back hatch open. He looked great—another one of his concert T-shirts stretched over his chest. Board shorts that hung to his knees, his hipster goatee below his smile.
Gavin introduced them all shyly.
Archie looked in the back of the SUV and said, “Holy cow. You’ve got a lot of equipment here.”
Miles looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t sure what I’d need, so I loaded up the truck.”
“
And moved to Beverly
,” Erica sang.
“
Hills, that is
,” Gavin added. They’d often watched black-and-white TV shows of the sixties together as kids, memorizing the theme songs.
Archie finished the lyric with, “
Swimming pools, movie stars
,” in his bass.
Miles laughed and applauded. “I like the way you guys connect with each other.”
They decided on the fourth bedroom on the first floor, the one that faced the back drive, as the recording studio. By then, the three sisters were awake from their nap, and they were introduced to Miles and marveled at all the equipment he’d brought.
Gavin felt proud in a proprietary way. It looked like things were going to work out. But he was eager to get Miles on his own, away from the family, for a kiss and maybe something more.
While Frances, Myrtle, and Ida bustled around the kitchen arguing about what to make for dinner, Gavin and his cousins helped Miles bring in all his equipment. Erica and Archie were both much more knowledgeable about what he’d brought, and Gavin ended up being the Sherpa again as his cousins helped with the setup. By the time dinner was ready, they had most of the stuff organized.
“We can do the rest after dinner,” Miles said.
They all sat down in the dining room, and Gavin was surprised to realize that this was the first time he could remember without at least a token member of the parents’ generation around.
“I’d love to hear about some of your experiences,” Miles said to Grandma Frances as they passed around the platter of roast chicken. “What was your first radio appearance?”
Frances looked at her sisters. “That was the Texaco Star Theatre, wasn’t it?”
Ida nodded. “With Gordon MacRae as the host. He was so dreamy!”
Gavin thought it was adorable, the way his great-aunt could transform almost immediately into a star-struck teenager.
“And you were on the TV version too, weren’t you?” Miles asked.
Aunt Myrtle nodded. “With Milton Berle as the host. The last time we were on, they had Gertrude Berg as special guest.” She turned to her sisters. “Remember how she forgot the words to her song and that little girl had to get her back on track?”
Each of the sisters had their own memories, and Miles lapped it all up. Gavin kept looking at him, then looking away quickly, hoping no one at the table would notice.
“You know a lot about that old-time music, don’t you?” Archie asked Miles.
Miles shrugged. “It’s the kind that interests me.”
“Not Pitbull and Gloria Estefan?” Gavin asked. He turned to his grandmother. “Those are some of the current artists Miles has worked with.”
“I thought a pit bull was a kind of dog,” Aunt Ida said. “Is that the name of a band too?”
Miles gently explained who Pitbull was, and Aunt Ida said, “Oh, yes, I know that song.” She sang, “
Haha, it’s Mr. 305 checking in for the remix
.”
Gavin’s eyes opened wide at his aunt’s high-pitched rendition of the opening lyric, and then Aunt Ida stopped and smiled.
“We’re not encased in amber,” Grandma Frances said. “We do follow modern music.”
Gavin caught Miles’s eye and saw he was entranced. It was going to be a good couple of weeks—as long as he could get some alone time with Miles too.
After dinner the grandmothers sat on the porch, and the younger generation turned around the lawn chairs to face them.
“Can you all sing something for me?” Miles asked.
“Gavin doesn’t have much of a repertoire,” Erica said. She turned to him. “Why don’t you pick something and start, and we’ll all fall in.”
Gavin was stressed. What if he was off-key? He’d embarrass himself in front of his family and Miles. Then he remembered what his father had said, that it was time he acted like an adult. Without thinking, he sang the first line of “Amazing Grace,” and his grandmother joined him, their voices blending sweetly. Then Erica and Aunt Ida came in, followed by Archie and Aunt Myrtle.
Erica soared on the last line, her soprano climbing, and Archie began beat-boxing in his bass. Grandma Frances faded, and Gavin was left carrying the main line.
The last notes disappeared into the gathering dusk, and then Miles stood up and applauded. “That was great,” he said. “I love the way your voices blend so effortlessly. It’s as if you’ve been singing together your whole lives.”
“Well, we have,” Grandma Frances said. “My sisters and I sang together from the time we were babies. And there was always music up here at the lake.”
“I can tell,” Miles said. “You guys are going to be terrific at your concert.”
The grandmothers went to bed soon after, leaving Gavin in the yard with his cousins and Miles. They all walked down to the lakefront to watch the last rays of the setting sun.
“Do you sing, Miles?” Erica asked.
“Not like you guys,” he said. “I’m more of an instrumentalist.”
“Sing something for us.”
He shook his head. “I never sing without at least a keyboard.”
“Come on,” Gavin said. “We sang for you.”
Miles turned to Archie. “Will you help me out with the rhythm?”
“Sure.”
He began to sing, a song Gavin quickly recognized as Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams,” and he wondered if Miles too had seen the YouTube video of Archie’s group perform the song. Archie began beat-boxing, and Erica added her soprano, and when they got to the chorus, even Gavin had to join in because it looked like they were all having so much fun.
After they finished, they lay around on the grass for a while watching the stars come out. Then Erica said, “Hey, Arch, can you come up to the house with me? I have something I want to show you.”
Gavin sat up. “Yeah, I guess we should all go up there.”
“No, you and Miles stay down here.” Erica tugged on Archie’s arm. “Arch, come on.”
After they left, Miles turned to Gavin. “Do your cousins know that you and I are…”