The Break-Up Album Page 2

  But you said you’d love me

  You said you’d stay with me

  And now I’m that girl

  Saying those words

  But you said, but you said, but you said…

  There’s more to it, but you sort of get the gist from those lines. Because that’s sort of the essence of that phase of a breakup. The denial, the begging, the pathetic “but you said you loved me” pleas, whether public or private. Like there was a contract. So you try to negotiate your way back by saying, “What we have here, Your Honor, is a man who pledged to love this woman forever. I urge you to force him to honor his contractual obligation.”

  And yet, there is no argument more pointless—none in the entire universe—than the one that begins with the words, “But you said you loved me.” You will never win; you will never emerge victorious like a successful high school debate student. Nope, when it comes to love, a thoughtful position paper will not win him back.

  The last note fades, the crowd claps, and I wave to the audience. I feel that familiar rush from performing—a pure sort of joy that never grows old. And the song, it does this thing to me—every time I sing it, I feel like it stitches me up a little more, like the music heals my heart bit by bit. Maybe the music is why I’ve started to move on. Music mends.

  The usher escorts me offstage and back to my seat in the third row. As Katy Perry takes the stage to present the final award, my palms start sweating and butterflies take flight in my belly, while she rattles off the other names: Bruno Mars, Panic at the Disco, Adele, and Bianca Sweetwater, the American Idol winner from last year.

  Will she ever say mine, I wonder?

  Maybe I wasn’t really nominated. Maybe it was all just a dream. You’ve been punk’d, Jane Black.

  Natalie squeezes my hand. Ethan starts tapping my arm in excitement.

  Time has slowed to a glacial crawl. Finally, Katy Perry says, “and Jane Black for Crushed.” Okay, I was actually nominated.

  Then she pauses, another endless, interminable hiatus as she opens the envelope, before she says, “And the winner for best album of the year is…”

  She won’t say my name again, she won’t say my name again, she won’t say my name again. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. There’s no way. There’s no way. There’s no way.

  “…Jane Black for Crushed.”

  I put my right hand on my mouth in disbelief. This didn’t just happen. It can’t have happened.

  But there’s applause somewhere. Arms around me. A squeal of joy. Another squeeze. A bear hug. Huge, euphoric smiles on the three people surrounding me, like they knew it all along, like they were in on the joke.

  Yes, a joke. It must be a joke. A great cosmic joke and Katy Perry and the whole Recording Academy and even the broadcast network carrying this awards show must be in on it, too.

  Then Owen whispers in my ear, “Stand up and go to the stage.” I follow his orders and step past my sister and into the aisle. She gently nudges my arm and I put one foot in front of the other.

  I’m walking down the aisle, up the steps, to the middle of the stage. Katy Perry gives me a huge hug, like we’ve been friends forever or something. Then she hands me the most adorable little inanimate object I have ever seen in my life—a golden gramophone on a wooden base.

  I roll through several curse words in my head a few more times, super fast, so I can get them out of my system before I speak into the microphone.

  “Holy sh—” I begin, then try to catch myself. But it’s too late. It still comes out as, “Holy shit.”

  There’s some laughter. Oh God, are they going to give me the hook now? Are they going to fine me, take away my award, pull me offstage?

  But I can’t unsay the words, so I make the best of it. “I guess I should have taken it more seriously when I made that New Year’s resolution not to swear.”

  More laughter.

  I look out at the crowd. “As you can guess, I didn’t prepare a speech,” I start, recovering from my verbal snafu. “I didn’t believe there was a rat’s chance I was going to win. So, suffice to say, I really am in shock. But I’m in bliss, too. Jubilation. Ecstasy. Take your pick. This is more than I ever imagined and all I can say is this is without a doubt the single coolest thing that has happened to me professionally.”

  I barely even take a breath before I continue. “And there are so many people to thank.”

  I start listing names—my label, my brother, the band.

  “And of course, my family. My parents watching from home in Maine, and my sister who I adore is here with me. My sister’s kids, I know you’re up late and loving it in New York. And my amazing son, Ethan, in the third row there. And to everyone who bought the album, bought a song, listened to a song, a snippet, a line, a verse. I thank you all. And I suppose, yeah, what the hell. It’s no secret that Crushed is a breakup album. So I guess tonight, I can say thanks, Aidan, for dumping me.”

  Chapter Three

  Jane

  “Jane, shall we assume you’re pleased the FCC relaxed its profanity clause to allow the use of an expletive for emphasis, especially in fleeting and isolated remarks?” Harrigan’s voice carries across the room as he asks the first question, and for a brief moment I wish it were just the two of us, him interviewing me, so I could listen to his swoon-worthy accent all night from my perch behind this mike.

  Winners. My God, I must be hallucinating, but there are countless reporters in here, too, all ready with questions for me. Me! A Grammy winner!

  Harrigan’s infused his question with a touch of playfulness, which is his journalistic style, as I learned from the few interviews I’d done with him, not to mention the times I’d run into him at industry fetes as well as hole-in-the-wall clubs in Manhattan as we both happened to be catching an up-and-coming band—the next Vampire Weekend or Arcade Fire, we’d often say to each other in passing. Of course, there was my effusive thank-you call to him after I’d read the review that changed my life and my rankings on iTunes.

  “No need, of course. Just doing my job,” he had said six months ago when I called him. “But I adored your album. I was playing it when you called, as a matter of fact.”

  Adored. Why did British accents have to be so sexy, especially with words like adored? I could live off that word said that way, and how it sent shivers down my spine, as if it were said for me alone. Because I wanted to be adored. I’d been without any sort of adoration for years.

  “No, you weren’t,” I said in disbelief. I still couldn’t quite compute that the same critic who’d panned my first three records would dub anything I’d done essential.

  “Actually, I never play and tell,” he teased.

  Now, I clutch my statuette even tighter. I’m never letting this go. “Thrilled,” I say, then quickly add, “Fucking thrilled.”

  They laugh. I’m with kindred spirits now, because if anyone curses more than musicians, it’s reporters. “I’m actually really sorry about that. It slipped out. Well, obviously it slipped out. I really never thought I’d win. And I’m kind of superstitious, so I thought if I prepared a speech I’d be tempting fate. So when it happened, that was just my gut reaction. Holy shit.”

  “Just in case there was any confusion,” a reporter from the back of the crowd barks out.

  A wire service correspondent raises his hand and the Grammy publicist points to him. He’s wearing a suit and a dark red tie. He holds his reporter’s notebook and a tape recorder. I remember his review: “With a touch of Joss Stone–esque vocals, Jane Black croons heartbreak in a voice that is equal parts your best aged whiskey and a fresh jar of sweet honey.” I like him.

  “There were rumors you were considering quitting before this album. How close did you come to hanging it up?”

  I stroke the gramophone a bit. I’m really liking how it feels under my fingers. I may sleep with it on my pillow tonight. “I actually had an offer from my father to join the family business in Maine—
building boats. So I suspect all the lobstermen in Maine can be grateful tonight because I probably would have been an abysmal boat builder.”

  Then a petite young reporter with blonde hair clipped tightly in a twist and a lip gloss smile says, “Was there one thing in particular that made you decide to stay in the music business, Jane?”

  She cocks her head to the side, pen poised, innocently waiting for the answer. I half want to say, Did you listen to the album? ’Cause all my reasons are there in vinyl, sister.

  But of course, I’m still high right now, still delirious. So I don’t say that. I can’t say that. Instead, I offer, “There were some personal circumstances that led me to keep singing.”

  Personal circumstances being a broken heart. Just a few months before Aidan left me, I had been seriously contemplating what to do next. I hadn’t had a hit album. I was barely making enough money from music to get by. Was it time to get a real job? Avril Lavigne was a tender seventeen when she hit pay dirt, Joss Stone a whole year younger. Same for the queen, Taylor Swift herself. I was nearly twenty-eight, with a family, with zero hits, and simply praying that the rent-controlled building Aidan, Ethan, and I lived in at the time wouldn’t turn co-op so I could afford to keep chasing the dream. Then Aidan gave me the inspiration of a lifetime, the pain I needed to finally be good.

  The publicist points to another journalist, a woman who’s about my age and works for a national magazine. “Jane, can you talk about why you think this album has been so successful?”

  I push an errant strand of hair off my cheek, then answer. “When you look back at things in your life that really hurt, sometimes the easiest thing to do is put a song on, right? I guess I finally wrote something meaningful enough for people to blast in the car.”

  There are more questions—how does it feel to win (electrifying), what will you do next (I volunteered for library duty at my son’s school this Wednesday, so that’s the next thing on my to-do list), what was going through your head in the moments before (um, well, not swearing onstage)? I could stay here all night, with this glass of water, holding this trophy. I could answer questions until my voice turns croaky. I’m still glowing.

  “Jane, in your final song on Crushed, in ‘Something Like Normal,’ you sing about opening the door, walking out, and finding something like normal. There’s a lovely sort of hopefulness of finding love again.”

  It’s Harrigan. I look at him as he sets up his question, taking in the crisp black tie, the cut of the suit, the little sliver of white handkerchief peeking out of the pocket so properly, then his dark hair and dark blue eyes. So ridiculously handsome that it’s almost not fair. As if that sort of good-looking should be outlawed. “Is there anyone in the wings and do you believe it’s possible to love like that again?”

  I laugh, a truly self-deprecating one. I have to, really. “Definitely not anyone in the wings. Actually, I’m trying to see if I can set a new record in the music industry for celibacy,” I say, doing my best to keep the press corps entertained. “The Guinness Book of World Records might be getting in touch with me soon, I’ve heard.”

  There are a few dutiful chuckles. Then I pause to consider his second question and to give that one a serious answer. Sure, I’ve entertained the occasional not-safe-for-work thought about Matthew, as many women do. I’d imagined my hands in his hair, on his arms, under his shirt. His voice in my ear, whispering all sorts of sexy things he’d do to me. But he’s off-limits. He’s a critic, so I can’t go there with him. Besides, he’s not asking about sex. Why yes, I’d love to have fantastic, toe-curling sex, please sign me up. He’s asking about love, and that’s a whole different story.

  I look down at this fabulous golden thing of joy in my hand. I could write an ode to this little baby. I am happy now, in this moment, completely happy. But love? Crazy-in-love, write-a-song-about-it love? I don’t know if I even want to believe it’s possible anymore. However, just for tonight, I’m not going to be cynical or sad or jaded.

  “Yes. I do believe it’s possible.”

  His question fades and there’s only one more. I hear a familiar voice, an unmistakable nasally whine. I know instantly it’s Jonas Applebaum.

  Jonas started his website JonasRipsMusic four or five years ago in his parents’ basement and still lives there. The name of his online “zine,” as he calls it, is meant to be a double entendre, but he mostly just rips musicians, not even their music, but their clothes, their hair, their significant others. A few weeks after Crushed was released he wrote, “Black could have shown a little more boob on the album cover.” Yeah, that’s what I want to do—show more cleavage, when I already worship at the altar of the genius who invented push-up bras.

  “Jane,” he begins slowly, clearly enjoying the taste of my name in his mouth, as if he’s rolling it around on his tongue like a maraschino cherry. “You’ve been notoriously quiet about why your marriage ended,” he says, as if notoriously is a bad word.

  Reflexively, I shake my head, self-protective instincts kicking in. I know what’s coming next. I can feel every single muscle in my body tighten.

  I haven’t talked about why my marriage ended. But that’s because I was barely a D-list celebrity at the time. No one asked. I was an afterthought, even in the indie music blogosphere. Even Jonas’s notoriously spiteful site didn’t mention that I’d been dumped on my ass or why. When the album was released a few months later and rose up the charts, the reviews, like Harrigan’s, did start to mention that the songs stemmed from the breakup of my marriage. Still, I didn’t trot out the gory details, nor did anyone ask for them. I am a private person. I don’t want the world to know my personal business.

  Jonas tilts his head to the right, a pen sitting behind his ear. He’s relishing his night out from the basement as he pulls out the pen, positioning it above his notepad, milking his moment, savoring his dramatic pause, delighting in watching the eyes of the music press turn toward him.

  Then, in his best impression of a casual, nice, convivial reporter, he shrugs a shoulder as if what he’s about to say is really no big deal. “I was wondering if you’d consider doing a cover of the Josie Cotton song “Johnny Are You Queer?” for your next album. So maybe you could just talk for a minute about the fact that your ex-husband, the inspiration for your now Grammy-winning break-up album, left you to be with another man, an up-and-coming folk singer Ben Hoover, who opened for your concert tour a few years ago?”

  That is the secret of my success, the bittersweet reminder that you can write a break-up album and it can be great and you can win an award and be thrilled beyond your wildest dreams, but you’re only here because you are the biggest idiot in the world. Because you loved a man wildly, crazily, passionately. But oops! He was never really into you at all.

  Eat your heart out, Shania. Cry me a river, Faith Hill.

  Chapter Four

  Jane

  I return to New York two days later, after a forty-eight-hour blur of interviews, meetings, meals, and parties, determined not only to put Jonas behind me, but also to keep Matthew with his blue eyes and penetrating questions far away. He’s a rock critic and anything more than a flirtation from afar would be dangerous.

  Having a six-year-old helps immeasurably because Ethan spends a good chunk of the flight home explaining a new card game he’s invented. I don’t understand most of it, but the game makes perfect sense in his world—it’s a combination of Pokemon, Lego Star Wars, and Harry Potter because it involves picking cards, making characters, and trying to get a ghost helmet that transforms into a black dog if you use it to battle bad guys before you get a healing stone to ward off dark wizards. Or something like that. By the time we land, collect our bags, hail a cab, and shoot back through the Midtown Tunnel toward our home on Thirty-Sixth Street, Ethan is exhausted from the talking and the travel.

  Once we’re inside the apartment I purchased a few months ago with the earnings from Crushed, I help Ethan get ready for bed, then tuck him under the same dog-pattern
ed quilt he’s had since he was born.

  I smack my forehead when I remember he has homework tonight. “It’s Tuesday, so it’s sound share tomorrow.” That’s the thing about being a mom—you don’t get to escape from daily life, even when your husband waves the rainbow flag, even when a bottom-feeder rubs it in your face, even when you win an award you didn’t let yourself dream of ever winning. The very morning after Aidan left me, I still had to make sure Ethan brushed his teeth and ate his toast and didn’t try to wear his favorite ratty little Yoda T-shirt to school. There’s no time to wallow in the mocha-chip ice cream when you have a seven in the morning wake-up call every day, no matter how good or bad you feel.

  “Mom, can we skip it tonight?” Ethan half moans. At the same time, he swings his legs out of bed, knowing skipping homework is not an option. He’s in kindergarten, so homework is sort of a relative term. But his school assigns “sound share” homework to its kindergartners. The sound share letter this week is G.

  He walks across his room, every square inch of walls filled with posters from the Harry Potter movies and shelves with the books, to a maroon-colored, kid-size desk and grabs his Scooby-Doo notebook and a pencil.

  “G for Grammy. Three things about Grammy,” he says. “Number one: My mom has one. Number two: They’re really cool. Number three: I touched a Grammy.”

  “Okay, love the idea, my sweets. But, number one, the Grammy is being engraved right now, so I don’t even have it.” Thank God, because there’s no way I want to let that little puppy into a kindergarten classroom. “Number two, you need to be more inventive with your answers. And number three, let’s find a photo of one online.”

  About fifteen minutes later he selects: his mom has one, it’s an award for music, and it’s the shape of an old record player. He crawls back into bed and promptly falls asleep. I adjust the quilt, tucking it snugly around his body. I kiss his cheek, dim the lights, then make my way to the kitchen, where I fill a supersize mug with water from the tap and pop it into the microwave for a minute.