I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the SOUTHERN FRIED WOOLF by Drēma Drudge Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Drēma Drudge
Pub. Date: January 23, 2023
Publisher: Wit & Whimsy
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 288
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/SOUTHERN-FRIED-WOOLF
Briscoe Chambers is not only the
manager of her country music star husband, but a graduate student trying to
complete her Virginia Woolf thesis by fall - the same time her cheating
husband, Michael, has an album due to avoid being in breach of contract. No
problem, right?
Except his co-writer will be Velvet
Wickens, his idol who has been opening shows for him. And who happens to be the
one he's cheating with. Now Briscoe has been asked by their record label to
ensure the album gets finished on time. To accomplish this, they must all live
together for the duration of the writing of the album.
And by the way, Briscoe knows.
Fans of the writing of both Taylor
Jenkins Reid and Virginia Woolf will enjoy this novel that has plenty of sweet
tea, country music, Virginia Woolf, and heartache.
Reviews:
"Southern-Fried
Woolf is an uproariously funny, deeply insightful, and engagingly
complex novel on many levels." - Rick Neumayer, author of Journeyman and Hotwalker
"A
celebration of how books and music can help one transcend life's daily trials,
Southern-Fried Woolf is a quick-witted and erudite novel, drenched in a love of
literature and music." Self-Publishing Review
"Drema Drudge has taken a typical novel outline and made it into an even more exciting and unique story. From Briscoe's thesis being woven into each chapter to being a part of every thought and emotion she has, the story captivates the audience from start to finish."- Literary Titans
"Drudge
pitches us into Nashville's vivid world, full of fascinating characters and
expertly depicted settings. You can almost taste the sweet barbecue beans and
hunks of honeyed cornbread."- Maggie Humm, author of prize-winning
novels Talland House and Radical Woman: Gwen John
& Rodin
"A cleverly plotted, character-led novel combining country music and Virginia Woolf. Now there´s a mix!"- A 'Wishing Shelf' Book Review
Chapter 1
2018
I
push my whining phone across the bed with my toes until it dangles over the
edge like an imperiled onscreen Marvel superhero. Not that it stops ringing. I
admire my freshly polished toenails, (sunset chrome, very cool), but force my
fingers to return to the home keys while my thoughts hunt for a similar perch.
I sweep my hair off my shoulder with determination; my graduate thesis I have
nicknamed Beastis is due too soon to allow interruptions of any kind, I sternly
warn myself. I thwart the creeping dusk with the twist of a lamp switch to
extend the day, and I once again position my fingers. This time, I actually
move them:
In what has been seen by some as her most autobiographical work, Virginia
Woolf weaves into her novel, To the Lighthouse, a “femininely” knitted
and “masculinely” knotted marriage of covert and subtle madness, though not one
without warmth and love. She challenges the reader with a paradox: She makes
sacred the domestic arena while revealing madness by the domestic activities
themselves, thus showing us the “twisted (and twisting) finger” of one of the
main characters, Mrs. Ramsay…. …and of herself,” I type while frowning at
my insistent phone, while wondering how much shit I’ll get for using the word
madness, and especially in relation to Woolf. I highlight it to consider it
carefully in light of previous and present scholarship, to decide if it even
makes sense to use it.
Hell,
madness is a word literature has pretty much co-opted for centuries. Then
again, it’s also one that can be seen as making light of mental illness. That’s
a topic for my feminist mother, “madness” in women in literature.
The
marimba stops, then almost immediately resumes, bones on metal, and finally it
registers that the noise is my husband’s ringtone.
I
groan and lean across the time-softened quilt for my phone. My shifting sends a
cascade of mini-chocolate bar wrappers onto the floor as I rescue the phone
just as it vibrates over the edge.
Wait,
could this call mean Michael actually wants to speak to me, even though
he has Queen Velvet around? Hope grows the flimsiest bones and then sags back
to the ground, the garbage cartilage it was to begin with. Hope, the enemy of
peace. Sponsored by Tanqueray and tonic, my thesis writing beverage of
choice.
Staying
home this leg of the tour was so I could work on my monstrously overdue thesis
(not to mention the screaming towards-us Ride ‘Em Benefit), not tell the band
which bus cabinet the TP is hiding in. Some days I feel half road manager
(which I am), half toddler wrangler (which I have repeatedly shouted that I am
not).
After
months of research, of Pinterest boards full of quotes and sources, of online
JSTOR searches so extensive and particular if the search engine had been human
it would have chortled, after false starts and over fifty proposed thesis
statements, after asking myself (and my mother) again and again what I want to
say so my advisor won’t have to sort my thoughts for me like a drawer of
mismatched socks, I finally have a long, admittedly conjoined, couple of
sentences with as many branches and as much punctuation as I think I can get by
with, though it still doesn’t embrace all I want to explore about Woolf
and domesticity, about anything and everything Woolf, and most especially,
about all things Lighthouse.
A
well-crafted thesis statement launches the logic and thus the essay, so it is
imperative to get that right, or so says my mother. This might be the one, the
thesis statement. It feels close.
I
sit up and hit the talk button on my phone harder than necessary.
“Hey,
Briscoe,” Ben says, his voice billy goat deep but gentle as a kid’s. It can’t
be good news if the huggable one is calling, and from Michael’s phone.
It
isn’t.
Michael,
I am informed, has fallen off the stage during a show and sprained his arm; Ben
claims an Ace bandage and a sling will take care of it.
“Hand
Michael the phone.” With a musician, any arm or hand injury is potentially
worrisome. Ben says that the doctor is still finishing up with Michael.
“Fine.
I’ll book myself a flight.” I open Kayak, click on the “flights” tab, and plug
in “Alabama.”
“No,
it’s just a minor sprain,” Ben says.
My
fingers freeze at the edge of panic in his voice which seems more at the
thought of me flying to them than about Michael’s welfare. My suspicion rises,
and “not again” knots in me. I wonder if I’ll finally get the Tiffany’s
sapphire necklace to complete the ring and bracelet set if I’m right. Or maybe
I’ll ask for earrings this time.
“I’ll
have him call you in the morning, after his pain killer has worn off.”
In
the background, Michael shouts at someone to leave him alone.
My
involuntary ab crunch vaults me into a sitting position and knocks my MacBook
onto the floor.
“Ben,
hand him the phone.”
“Hang
on,” Ben says. A door slams, and I hear a muffled announcement made by the
hospital’s public address system blares – some doctor needing to report to some
room.
I
pick up my computer, shake it gently, relieved nothing shakes back.
“Ben?
Benny?”
Finally
I get a response. “He’d had a few, said he’d open for himself when V. had to
leave unexpectedly.”
“Idiot.”
At
the best of times, Michael is not inhibited. I count it a mercy he fell off the
stage before he could remove his pants. Not that he ever has, but you never
know, if it might get him attention.
“He
must have had more than a few,” I say, belatedly scrolling through social
media, which tells me plenty about the incident, except why Velvet fled the
tour. It slowly sinks in. “V. left? Why wasn’t I notified?”
If
I’d known I was going to be called upon to be rational, I would have started
drinking earlier and less leisurely. Michael’s tumble explains my phone pinging
like it was possessed about an hour ago. I had convinced myself to ignore
the messages because I assumed they were related to the show, how great Michael
was, etc. Where exactly has Patrick, Personal Assistant and Keeper of All
Things Social Media, been, though, to tell me what was going on?
I
click on one of the videos so courteously provided by my followers and watch
Michael’s not-so-glamorous fall. As he lands on his arm, my eyelids slam, and
my stomach clenches.
On
the video, fans come forward to help, security pushes through. The person
recording moves unsteadily closer to Michael, who rolls over and groans. The
clip ends. I play it again, pausing it right as Michael’s face turns towards
the camera. Oh, god. He closes his eyes as if he’s been defeated by David and
his slingshot.
But
why hasn’t Patrick alerted me? Heads. Will. You know. “If it’s only his
arm, tell him to call me, no matter how late. Nothing wrong with his mouth, is
there?” I say to Ben as I text Patrick, who is only in town because he drove me
back to Nashville so we could prep for the benefit as the rest of the crew
headed to one last concert before coming home long enough for Michael to
cohost the event with me. I turn my laptop back on. It still works, a minor
miracle performed by the surely minor angel assigned to me because I’m not
the star of my marriage. I need a lanyard with a badge reading “Support Staff”
to wear all the freaking time. Ben breathes into the phone, which is about as
excitable as he gets. That’s usually comforting.
“I’ve
asked Joy to have brunch with you tomorrow.” “Why?” I hope my tone doesn’t
reveal my dislike of his wife. She works in the health care industry in some
high level capacity, and mercifully, I don’t have to interact with her
much.
“Just…please,
Briscoe. I don’t want you to be alone right now.”
I
hang up without promising to have brunch with his irritating wife, and I watch
the video again, guessing new answers to a couple of questions.
Like
why it was suddenly okay for me to leave the tour for a few days when Michael
has always insisted on having me in his pocket, or at least immediately
accessible for troubleshooting for those times when Patrick isn’t tough enough.
It explains why Michael now cares about my schooling when he regularly laughs
at my mother’s academic fetish that I have contracted. He literally howls every
time one of us says “Woolf.”
This
same man told me to “Go, go, go” when I confided how worried I was about being
able to meet the deadline for submitting my overdue thesis and prepping for the
benefit. (I should have come home sooner, but I was afraid to leave him alone.
Rightly so, wouldn’t you say?)
I
shoot Michael a text: Call me before remembering Ben has Michael’s
phone. No answer. For a few seconds I contemplate calling V., or even Robert,
V.’s husband. But you don’t make calls when you don’t want to know the answer
to what you have to ask if you do call.
The
possibility that my husband of a decade has been with that moth-eaten
Southern Belle who dresses in head-to-toe Manuel or its ilk…not a rhinestone
within the lower 48 safe from her. (No shade to Manuel’s gorgeous work,
obviously.)
Michael’s
atrocious taste usually amuses me, but I hadn’t thought his sexual and romantic
inclinations so banal, so textbook tacky country. Even if he is a hat act with
an insatiable need to be adored. Typical performer personality. Not entirely
true. Therefore, not entirely false.
A
quick call to Janice, Michael’s publicist, to fill her in (but she’s already
seen the news) and tell her I’ll send her a release to approve as soon as I
can. I hang up without saying goodbye, without explaining why I feel the need
to write it myself.
My
fingers type five different scenarios as quickly as possible to release to the
press. The last one: “Because he’s a selfish prick who doesn’t know what he
has, and he’s had a musical crush on V. since he was a teen.” That one seems
truest, not that Janice would ever let me send that one out. I email her the
mildest one and await her tweaking.
I
go find more tonic water and lime, ice, and most importantly, more
Tanqueray.
After
pacing our bedroom, I strip the bed and toss everything into the corner to
avoid even the idea of Michael’s scent. I spread the antique quilt back atop
the naked bed and hop onto it, wondering how many stories the quilt has borne
witness to. My and Michael’s is just one more. Someday, it will belong to the
past, too. (It smells of the past, not of Michael, I am relieved to
discover.)
The
inevitability of death has never frightened me. Oppo site, really.
I
turn off the lamp and watch the darkness finish conquering the sky out my
window before turning it back on and running for the bathroom, my hands over my
mouth.
With
damp eyes and fresh breath, I get back to work. They don’t call it the ivory
tower for nothing. In the event that I have had a breakthrough, I email
my mother my current thesis statement and text her to check her inbox, wishing
my words to convey what I won’t allow myself to mention. She lives alone on a
mountainside, so I think I know what her advice would be about my
marriage.
Sucking
on a piece of ice, all that remains in my glass, I fire off more useless texts
to the band, then hunker back over the laptop.
Mother
responds. Let the clouds part; let the sun shine – she approves of my thesis
statement. Actually, she says “This works.”
It’s
enough. I drill at the thesis, erecting guideposts, a frame. I’ve come to enjoy
this intellectual stimulation that is the antithesis of writing country
songs.
Before
you get your cut-offs in a twist, I don’t mean that disparagingly. Country
music is meant for the emotions, and I love it for that. I need it. God, how I
do. Intellectualism has no place in it. But academia is a marvelous
place to hide.
I
don my manager hat and, not ignoring my phone now, soothe venue owners and
friends, promising answers as soon as I have them; I wisely leave social media
for Patrick, wherever he is. Not answering my texts and calls, that’s for
sure.
The
brawny aroma of gin and the citric tang of lime fill my nose and mouth as I
make myself another drink. As I fight down nausea again, half-seen images from
the road come to mind, things I wouldn’t allow myself to comprehend before.
They didn’t have to throw it in my face. I left them alone, didn’t even
confront them before I left; what more did they want? I wasn’t even sure it was
happening. When I asked Patrick, he avoided the conversation so adroitly that
in retrospect I know he either knew or had his suspicions. Bottomless lust.
Humans clutching onto one another as if anything could stop the
inevitable.
I
think of inventing a reason to wake our housekeeper, Bernita, but what would I
say?
I
glance at the title of my essay once again.
Knitting and Knotting: The Paradox of Domesticity in To the
Lighthouse
Heart
aching, I begin with the quote that started me thinking from the get-go. That
twisted finger seemed no throw-away item when I noticed it.
“ What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found
a crumpled glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its
twisted finger, hers indisputably?…she opened bedroom windows. She shut doors.
(So she tried to start the tune of Mrs. Ramsay in her head)” To the
Lighthouse (26).
I
add the definition of twisted from the OED, Oxford English Dictionary,
the dictionary’s dictionary, so that I don’t appear to be cherry picking. I
mean you always are when it comes to essays, because there’s no other way to do
it, but you’re not supposed to seem like it.
I
check on when twisted was first used to mean unbalanced to be sure I’m
on the right track. I am. You don’t, Mother has drilled into me, want to give
the committee any excuse to reject your work. They will find enough holes
anyway, no matter how carefully you write, she says.
There’s
also the combining nature of twisted, as in braiding; I make a note.
My
mother suggested early on that I add my personal thoughts on Woolf’s novel to
my essay to warm up the committee. She spat out at the time that this is a
recent academic “concession to readability and accessibility.” She disapproves
of those who think academic jargon is BS. (That would be me and anyone, say,
under 35.)
Accessibility.
That’s what I love about country music. It’s utterly relatable, even for those
who refuse to acknowledge that it is. It’s take-off-your-Spanks and stay
awhile. It’s “feel every last pain or drink a beer or two and forget anything
hurts. Your choice.”
I first read To the Lighthouse all in one sitting.
Which,
as you will learn, isn’t entirely true. It is true of the first time I
read it as an adult. Its sentences and point-of-view shifts thrilled me with
their complexity, with the novel’s mundane subject raised to the level of
worthy of Woolf’s scrutiny. Which made me dislike my own life a little less and
find it deserving of examination, too.
The next day, I read the novel again. In all, I read it six times before
I felt comfortable talking about it; the novel’s intricacy and cleverness
demand and reward more than a single reading. What drew me most was Woolf’s
complicated stance on domesticity. It confused me. Why were there such moments
of discontent and near madness in the book related to the topics of marriage
and parenthood, paralleled with moments of tenderness in the Ramsays’ own
marriage? Why elevate domesticity to an art at times, but then make it seem
mindless and unfulfilling?
And
underneath those socially acceptable questions (because literature), my heart
asking, am I no better than a fool? For the academics in the balcony, and to
maintain my sanity while I wait for my jester, here:
The paradox manifests, unexpectedly, in the structure and style of To
the Lighthouse. It plays itself out in the choice of specific words and is
reflected in the larger overview of the novel. Both in its details and its
framework, the novel dynamically expresses the self-contradictions of Mrs.
Ramsay (and Woolf herself) when it comes to the role of nurturer, caretaker,
wife, and domestic angel. The “angel in the house” was a Victorian ideal, a
wife who was submissive and devoted to her husband and household in all
things. She was self-sacrificing and pious.
The Ramsays’ astute son, James, comments upon the ambiguity of life: “For
nothing was simply one thing” (95). This phrase keys us into Woolf’s design. If
we forget to apply this to the entire novel, however satisfying that upper
layer might be, we miss its rich, meaty core.
To make her point, Woolf uses symbols, as writers do: a boot is not just
footwear on Mr. Ramsay — it symbolizes his discontent and desire – it
represents the journeys he would like to make with those shoes. By having James
tell us outright that everything is more than one thing, Woolf invites us to
reexamine her writing for symbols, a practice not unfamiliar to readers of
Woolf, or, indeed, to literature as a whole.
In part, the ambiguity of domesticity in To the Lighthouse is
bound up in Woolf’s choice of multifaceted words. One I focus on is the word
“twisted,” as seen in the opening quote, a word that can be negative (as in a
snarl) or positive (uniting).
Woolf chooses a young woman who wants to be a painter, Lily Briscoe, a
house guest determined to have her “vision” upon canvas, to “see” the Ramsays’
marriage as art for us.
Mrs. Ramsay insists that Lily must marry, as if all young women must, but
Lily does not wish to marry. Throughout the novel, Lily repeatedly gazes at the
Ramsays’ marriage, at the complex relationship, at her own longing to be a
painter, rather than a wife, examining them with her paintbrush. She cannot
bring herself to desire such a union or be part of an institution she views
with ambivalence at best.
To lend to the argument that Lily is studying marriage, (as is Woolf), in
the abstract, rather than individuals, neither of the Ramsays is given first
names in the novel, something this reader finds disconcerting and
dehumanizing for the characters, however much she understands the author’s aim.
Here, perhaps more than anywhere, we see remnants of Woolf’s original ambition
that became part of her novel The Years – to write a novel essay, something
that will be revisited later.
It says even more about Woolf’s relationship with her own mother and her
own leanings towards art rather than motherhood if Mrs. Ramsay symbolizes
Woolf’s mother, and it’s safe to say she does. Woolf’s family vacationed at a
place similar to this when Woolf was a child, which also nods to the
autobiographical.
****
Since
Michael won’t contact me, regardless of what Ben says, I’ll go to him. I send
Patrick a text telling him I have to take off and that he should hire temps if
he needs extra help prepping for Ride ‘Em. Not that he does – his checklists
have checklists. We’re nearly ready. As much as I hate to desert him, I can’t
think about tablecloths just now.
I
pack and jump into my car, but a vehicle swoops into the drive before I can
leave it. Patrick hops out and literally stands in front of the car in his red
Iron Man pajamas with outstretched hands while I tell him to move and curse him
until he motions for me to get out.
After
I bless him out for not being on top of The Story, and only half hear his
lame-ass excuse (something about an argument with his boyfriend, the extended
version), I stand with my arms crossed while he tries to explain why it makes
no sense for me to go, especially since he needs my help. (He is the one
helping me, but whatever.)
“Let
Michael sleep it off. Ben swears he’s bringing him home as soon as the doctor
okay’s it. They just want to be sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”
“A
concussion? Nobody said anything about a concussion.” “No, he doesn’t for sure have
one; it’s routine to keep patients overnight to be sure they’re
okay.”
“I
know that. Everyone knows that. But are you sure they don’t think he has
one?”
I
lean against my car door, the faintly vanilla scent coming from the partially
opened car window competing with my ire. Insects chorus, asking me if I really
want to go to Alabama.
Not
so much. And does Michael deserve to have me rush to his side just
because he decided to be Public Idiot #1? I take the opportunity to razz
Patrick mercilessly about the pj’s, naturally, before sending him for Round 2
with his guy. “Listen, I know you’re Iron Man and all, but trying using your
words and not your gadgets on him, ‘k?”
He
put his hand to his forehead and staggered. “RDJ…” We both adore Robert Downey
Junior, incipient wrinkles and all. Who doesn’t love a wiseass?
Patrick
doesn’t apologize, but he looks hangdog enough that I kiss him on the cheek,
and he says I should have that brunch with Joy. Except I haven’t told him about
the invite. So yeah, a part of me knows to get ready, get ready, get ready like
that preacher on TV says. But the part of me that wants to be face down in cake
at least three hours a day already knows.
Considering,
my preparations involve ordering a cake. Happy Fake Birthday to every damn acre
of my expanding posterior end.
****
Sleep
denied, the next morning I groan around the house, shove the remains of the
cake down the trash disposal, and chase it with water, then ready myself for
brunch with Joy. I care about Benny, dammit, so of course I’ll go, regardless
of my light cake-and-gin hangover.
Eventually,
I’m dressed and made up (red Grecian-style blouse, dark wash jeans). My hair is
brushed and clipped up. I pull on heeled white sandals to give me a tiny hint
of height aided by the rise of hair at the front of my head.
I
can’t get out of our gates: news vans and reporters with mics and cameras block
the driveway of our mini mansion on Moran Road. I wave and yell out the window
for them to let me through. They know better than to be on private
property.
I
duck my head and stomp the gas with what must be a wicked grin.
The
reporters run towards my vehicle for a statement. I go. I continue unimpeded
when my foot nudges the gas pedal, so I assume I’ve successfully cleared them
with no to minimal loss of life. I suppose the news will tell me soon enough of
anything to the contrary. Musicians have great lawyers, so whatever. ( Jesus, I
can feel your judgment. So maybe I peeked over the dash at the last minute and
my path was clear. Way to ruin my story.)
Brunch,
as expected, is agendaed. This is Nashville. No one gets together just to eat,
although get-togethers always include food. Which those of us under a certain
age and above a certain status studiously avoid.
Why
is it the more money you make, the less food you’re supposed to eat?
I
have had my pre-brunch shop, feeling the hollowness of too many bags in my
trunk, but preferring that to more cake. Maybe. At least for now. It’s hard to
avoid the shops at Green Hills, especially when I’m in a mood because denying
myself just serves to remind me of all the times my father and I did
without.
At
the chic Green Hills restaurant, Etc., Joy covers my hand with hers and says
how “sorry” she was to hear the news. Our food arrives, apple and kale salad
for me, the roasted beet salad for her, grilled sour dough on the side for us both
that neither of us will touch.
Joy
insists on us clinking our wine glasses together as the colorful plates are
arranged before us, and my “smile” surely qualifies as little more than a
grimace.
After
the server leaves us with a promise to return to refill our water glasses, I
reclaim my hand and assure Joy that Michael will fine in no time, noting how
she pretends to hide her triumphant smile with a too-late head duck: Haven’t I
heard? She is sorry to be the “bearer of bad news,” but Ben let “slip,” (her
hand now crossing her chest) — Michael is having an affair with Velvet (or, as
we all call her, V. Appropriate nickname, wouldn’t you say?). According to Joy,
when V. told Michael she couldn’t stand the guilt and was leaving the tour,
Michael got drunk. Quickly. Then, the fall.
You’re
afraid your “Oh, that rumor again” doesn’t sound convincing, so you stay for
another half hour, finger the stray strand of hair hanging out from the front
of her so-last-decade ponytail-through-ballcap style, ask if she’s ever thought
of getting highlights. Order another glass of wine. You’re so convincing she
asks for your stylist’s number, which you promise to text her. You won’t.
When
she heads to the bathroom you gulp from her wine glass, gargle, and spit the
liquid back into it. Then you pull out a Xany, dangle it over her drink, and
reconsider. At least she told you. You swallow the pill yourself, something you
ever only take when you’re under mega stress. You realize you are referring to
yourself in second person in your head, probably so you don’t implode. You
will encourage her to “drink up” when she returns. You will not finish yours.
Because driving. You’d have to be naïve to have not entertained at least the
possibility this seasonal infidelity of Michael’s could come around again, and
of course, you strongly suspected it had. But with V.? Too bad you’re
not writing as much as you used to, because country songwriting benefits from a
constant chaffing of the sorrow bone.
While
you wait for Joy to return (ironic name), you open your purse and contemplate
swallowing another pill. You refrain. In this marriage, one of you has to have
some self control, no matter how slim a margin. You try not to think about that
sluggish kitchen drain this morning after its meal of stale cake.
I
expend any remnant of restraint saying goodbye to Joy. I deny her news again
even as I pull her in for a hug, slide her colorful Hermes scarf from her neck,
and shove it into my pocket.
As
I leave the lil’ brunch of horrors, I thrust my Mercedes into drive with my
right hand while extending the middle finger of my left in an unmistakable
gesture of contempt at the rando jackass in front of me with the raised phone.
When a video of your husband falling off the stage is trending, there’s no way
someone’s lifted cell phone is taking a selfie.
The
punk with the phone jumps out of harm’s way, no doubt getting video of my
squealing tires, too. So? Why should I care about my public image when
my husband doesn’t care about his? (Sane Briscoe says Don’t do this.
Potential negative viral video opportunity alert. Sane Briscoe isn’t
driving. She also wasn’t doing the point-and-buy at Absolution and Z Gallerie
before brunch with Joy. Had to almost sit on my trunk to shut it.)
When
I dig into my pocket for a tissue, I come up with Joy’s scarf instead. I gag at
the pea soup smell, start to toss it out, but pause and put the swathe of
multi-colored silk on the seat beside me. Bernita might like it.
There
are many things I ought to regret, like being the dummy who left my husband
alone with that puma, V.; taking the scarf, I do not. Follow the bouncing ball:
Joy gets her money from Ben, who gets his money from Michael. Michael’s money
is partly mine. Ergo, my scarf to take.
But
there’s this: what do you have to do to smell of pea soup? Michael’s
cell is still off, I discover, when I attempt calling while tearing through the
miles, pausing at red lights, pushing the yellows, leading the greens, barely
seeing the split-rail fences, the brochure-like backdrop of horses and the
spurts of blue chicory flowers; the white, undulating blossoms of the
sourwood
trees that would calm me any other day. The cradle of mountains feels more like
a coffin today. I want to drive somewhere that I can see for miles, with flat
land not concealing the future that is momentarily beyond me.
My
grip on my phone would be attempted murder if I were holding anything
living.
“Michael,
I’m jacked up on white wine and gossip and if that pony-tailed, ball-cap-wearing
Joy is right about you and V. (I tighten my lips, twist my head repeatedly),
you’d better call me back. You’d better call me either way.” I pause, then add,
“How’s the arm feeling?” I punch “end” with my thumb and toss the phone onto
the black leather seat beside me.
Not
that I have any doubts about the veracity of what Joy claimed.
At
least I won’t suffer the indignity of people thinking he traded me in for a
cliché of a younger woman. I’m almost 29 to V’s what, darkening months of
45?
If
I were ever tempted to have an affair, I would warn Michael. It’s the decent
thing to do. I’d give him the chance to provide what he wasn’t, if he would.
Just like he could have given me a chance. Except, in this case, what can you
give a man equal to the contact high of the presence of the overly lacquered
(hair, nails, shoes) reigning queen of country music from the royal family of
the same? Normal, married love must seem like a dead, plucked, bird by
comparison.
I
speed around a curve, regretfully successfully. My hand drops from the steering
wheel to cup my left breast. High, firm, full size D. Pretty much legendary. I
know my physical strengths and weaknesses in great detail – Michael’s fans
aren’t afraid to tell him and me that he could do better, regardless of
how hot Patrick reassures me I am. Am I really inventorying myself? My third,
trending to fourth, wave feminism is in serious danger of lapsing. Not like
anyone knows what fourth wave exactly means yet (like anything, you often don’t
know what something is until after it’s over), but I would prefer to advance
it. This is not doing it. My nose is fine, whatever, unremarkable. Loretta Lynn
cheekbones, tapered chin. My heavy brown hair could be listed in both the asset
and liability columns, capable of being either unruly or straight. Gray eyes.
Overall, a pleasant enough picture.
Ah,
but as a feminist, I am not trying to be anyone’s picture (Read the seminal
essay by Laura Mulvey called “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Also known
as the “male gaze” discussion. Fine, lazys: it says the camera, via men,
who wield the camera, objectifies women, in film and elsewhere, for men’s
pleasure. As a feminist, women are supposed to not care if men want to look at
them while still wanting to look at themselves. A tough line even for a fourth
waver, even if I have been married a decade. Who doesn’t like being admired?
Which means striving to conform to both attractiveness norms and standards
while pretending to give no fucks. Confusion inherent. Contradiction-infused
theory – feminism, not Mulvey per se. End parenthetical. Include written device
at the end of this sentence for sticklers who might see it as a mistake
otherwise.)
An
aftershock of Michael’s betrayal hits in all its magnitude, and I can’t breathe
until I remind myself that I’m not some tuberculin Victorian rose dying of
rejection.
As
a result of my rescuing our marriage (and his reputation) from his ridiculous,
ill-considered early fan fuckings, I now wear a tight size 8. I was a size 4
before his first indiscretion, a hard-won victory brought about by treating
carbs as poison and the gym as my church. Still, not even close to the size 0
Velvet wears (I sneaked a peek at a jacket label of hers once, and I am 5’4”
versus V’s what, 5’8’, curses upon her and all her skinny-gened, vocally
blessed, taller ancestors), so maybe the betrayal is partially about
what, in calmer moments, I prefer to think of as my bonus-sized body.
I
beat the dash until something rattles, then pet the poor thing like it’s a pony.
As
Michael’s road manager, my job is to contact the media, scout venues, and
manage stuff. I’m not supposed to have to oversee my husband’s tragically
delicious dick.
You
know he is head over for V., but with fandom bordering on obsession, professional
adoration, you think/thought. You remind yourself that V. is a
decade older than Michael, which makes her fifteen years older than you. So not
exactly a deb. Something to cling to. Something to further despair about.
Why
should I have been on guard? Everyone knows women years are
automatically doubled in terms of desirability or not. Even feminists know as
hard as women secretly pray to Our Lady Botox, that’s the perception.
What
I hadn’t factored in for this newsbreak of an affair but should have is the
powerful aphrodisiac fame is on both sides. I unlock my phone and try calling
Michael’s crew instead, sequentially in the order I think they might be
frightened enough of me to answer. They are, it would seem, to a man, too
frightened to answer. As they should be.
For
a moment, I consider calling my mother, but she’s not exactly my go-to in times
of trouble.
While
we wait, then (biting on fingernails, catching up on the digital plague, the
inquiring emails/notifications that have overtaken my phone) some necessary
backstory. ****
My
mother left my father and me for a decommissioned forest fire tower in West
Virginia, when I was 12. We all thought it would only be until her grant ran
out, until she had finished the book on Virginia Woolf’s abandoned essay-novel
that my mother had been working on for a decade. Turned out her leave of
absence extended not just from the University of Nashville, but from us, her
daughter and husband, too. Who knew that her funding would be renewed instead
of her commitment to her family?
Still,
I loved visiting her. As small as my mother’s cabin in the shadow of the tower
was, she must have had 300 books ranging along the walls on worn oak planks
resting on piles of flat rocks, the combo serving as shelves. No need to
lock the place, because who would climb half a mile up Blair Mountain after
nothing but her books, papers, and clothes?
On
my visits to Mother’s, I was drawn to her Woolf books. Since I was named after
Lily Briscoe (though I’m Briscoe, no Lily), a character in To the Lighthouse,
I asked my mother to read the novel to me. She sometimes read Woolf’s short
stories and essays aloud, but never Lighthouse. Which felt like being
allowed to smell dinner without getting one bite. It left me with the
impression that there was something illicit about the novel, making me
determined to read it.
I
waited for my mother’s daily compulsion to take hold, for her to get dressed
and start muttering to herself, as was her wont. One afternoon, when she threw
her camo army jacket around her shoulders and left without a word, I seized the
opportunity.
I
never knew if she’d be gone ten minutes or ten hours, because she always
marched out in what can best be described as a fugue state, carrying a tablet
and pen. Funny how she never forgot those items but never asked me along and
never even said where she was going. Usually, it didn’t matter, because I
always had a book du jour, or Virgil I (her dog) and I would keep one another
company, if she hadn’t taken him with her.
More
afternoons than not, I was content to sweep the room with the sparsely bristled
broom, remake the bed so I could touch the threadbare quilt with its log cabin
design, and sit by the empty wood stove with a book, pretending it was cold
out.
This
insert-day-of-the-week (because summer), the small air conditioner groaned in
the cabin like it was tired of August already. As soon as the door shut
behind my mother, I dragged one of the two next-stop-kindling chairs in the
house to the shelf and took down the novel from which my name came, sat on the
bed, touching the book’s cover as if it could reveal the mystery inside. My
mother had shown it to me on numerous occasions, told me that Virginia’s
sister, Vanessa, had drawn the original cover, which seemed to mean something
to her.
The
edition my mother owned reproduced the abstract pen-and-ink-drawing with its
thick lines that could have represented a tree instead of the intended
lighthouse, or, to my eye, what resembled a forest fire tower. How fitting, I’d
later think, that the design was as incomprehensible to me as the novel
itself.
I
flipped through the pages and noted the sweeps of my mother’s sharply curved
handwriting, like Appalachian train tracks. My fingers traced her ink and the
spots where the paper was indented by the passion of her pen. Her notes per
page almost rivaled the amount of Woolf’s words there.
In
one spot, my mother’s marks inched alarmingly across the print.
I
shut the book and tossed it back onto the shelf. It fell, as if preferring to
be in my hands; I picked it up and slid it back between Orlando and The
Years.
What
a magic trick Woolf pulled off, inspiring people to co create alongside her in
her book, putting their own thoughts in writing beside hers even though she’s
gone, a potential conversation in every copy.
My
mother made every book in her collection hers with a pen and her tripled
dog-earing. Once upon a time her cabin was crowded with boxes upon boxes of
essays and articles, a small building’s worth of paper and bent books out
back was moved to a storage shed in Logan because one of her Department of
Natural Resources friends who still habitually checks on the tower (and thus my
mom) claimed it was a fire hazard, and her out there on a mountain littered
with pine trees and unraked carpets of leaves in every direction.
I
can just picture my mother frantically hauling water from the hand pump to save
her research, if there had been a fire. Since birth, I have been surrounded by
the detritus of both of my parents; the scent of her aging layers of paper,
foxed books teaching me that more than humans age; the fading covers of my
father’s vinyl albums representing his tremendous, unseen, contribution to the
music scene, the yellowing sleeves inside adding to my education with their
inevitable, progressive decay. When I asked my mother once what an intriguing
mound of paper in the dining room was, she shrugged her narrow shoulders and
said they were students’ papers to grade and Woolf-related research as if they
were one and the same to her.
Above
all, Woolf’s books held court in our house. Until Mother left, a prime shelf in
the bookshelf held the novels, surrounded by various biographies of her and
scholarly works.
I
was in high school before I realized Woolf wasn’t her own subject like Science.
When my guidance counselor asked what I might want to major in when I went to
college I said, “Woolf.” “You mean literature?”
That
afternoon I called my mother and told her she had made me unfit for human
society. When I explained, she laughed before warning me not to major in
literature. “Dad told me not to major in music.”
“He’s
right.”
“I
must have the weirdest parents in the whole world,” I said.
“Undoubtedly.
Hey, can you send me a box of Goo Goo clusters?”
In
the background, Virgil howled, and Mother tutted him quiet in an unfamiliar
sweet tone.
On
the day I had my Come to Woolf moment in my mother’s cabin, I ended up pulling Lighthouse
back off the shelf, tried reading it. Impressions came to mind, but I
couldn’t follow the plot, if there was one. It was like being in water, not
sure which direction I was headed, but enjoying the sensation.
The
opening words were about a boy with scissors and what was it, a page from a
catalog? A battle between parents about whether to comfort the boy or
immediately force the inevitability of reality on him: it was going to rain the
next day, and the trip he hoped to make to the lighthouse was out of the
question. An immense family with a flock of guests in a small, moldering
vacation cottage. A motley group that for some reason put me in mind of the mix
of people my father and I, then, served Thanksgiving dinner to at the Rescue
Mission every year.
I
didn’t understand the plot. It seemed like Woolf was someone learning the
language who doesn’t yet know how to put sentences together, how stories are
told. I felt the urge to help her along, to ask her to settle down enough to
choose a person’s story to tell. One person, not a whole group at once or
flitting like a bird from shoulder to shoulder. Then again, something about her
method seems generous, like a schoolteacher calling in turn on one student
after another, leaving no one out.
Ultimately,
her writing urged me to read the novel again, became a code to break. Genius.
Each time I reentered it when I was older, I found something new to admire, to
study, and I realized I was the one lacking, not her style. But that came
later.
The
day of my first reading, I had read most of “The Window” section of To the
Lighthouse, the first part, before my mother came quietly into the
darkening cabin with Virgil, causing the remaining light in the room to shift
into the crevices between the logs.
She
sat on the edge of the cot beside me, the canvas sagging beneath us.
I
closed the book guiltily and reached for the stale remains of my breakfast,
bread that hadn’t quite become toast in my impatience to read, smeared with
what I had thought was blackberry jam but turned out to be clove-laden apple
butter, a wet, devil-dark taste.
Virgil
stood on his hind legs and leapt for the hunks of bread I tossed him.
“Well?”
my mother asked.
“It’s…it’s…”
I sobbed, though even then I knew my mother expected a more coherent
answer.
As
she leaned over to touch my face, I noticed that her hands were stained brown,
and I fought the urge to remind her that she shouldn’t have picked up with bare
hands the walnuts she’d cracked. I hoped her hands would stain me, so I would
have something tangible to remember her by when my visit ended.
My
mother’s sun-dried face softened. “Nothing about Woolf is easy. If it were, I
would have moved on years ago.” Implied: my father and I are not complicated.
Like country music is not. We’re plain spoken. Maybe not as clever as Woolf.
And that is our failing. That is the defect that causes her to reject us
the way she rejected her parents’ fortune. Nothing uncomplicated, nothing
that could ease life’s passage with its comfortable simplicity and warmth, is
worthy of her attention. I didn’t have those words, not then, but the
impression stayed with me.
She
rinsed her hands in the sink, dried them on the red and white plaid towel,
leaving streaks of brown. She chased the light back out from between the logs
by switching on a lamp. Then she crossed to the shelf. Hands on her hips, she
reached decisively for a substantial, blue-covered paperback.
“Try
this,” she said, handing me the book. “It’s Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage
Out. I think you’ll enjoy it. Especially the debate about writing versus
music.”
“But
you named me after Lily. I want to understand this book.”
Affection
brought on by direct contact with Woolf made my mother’s face a lit house at
night. I desperately wanted to provoke that expression myself.
She
sat beside me again.
“The
best way to understand it is to read it several times in a row. Each time write
down every question you have about it. Then go back until you’ve answered all
you can. Let me know what remaining questions you have.”
“You’ll
answer them for me then?”
She
grinned, the skin about her eyes bunching. “I don’t know that anyone could. The
good news is that there are no ‘wrong’ answers. There are right ones, but no
wrong. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you differently,” she said, frowning.
“And never forget: there are no answers without questions.”
I
weighed the book in my hands, felt the softened cover. “Why haven’t you made me
read Voyage before if it’s so easy?” My mother’s mouth opened wide with
ready laughter.
“If
you force someone to read something, they’ll hate it, guaranteed.” Her knees
met, and she pulled them to her chest and crossed her arms around them, as if
she were about to do a somersault. “And I didn’t say it is easy.”
We
sank into the moment until my stomach rumbled, which she heard without giving
the slightest indication that it was her problem.
It
wasn’t.
“Why
don’t I make dinner?” I offered.
“None
for me,” she said, getting up and emptying the zinc washtub of pillows,
liberating it of its secondary function as a reading nook. She snatched up the
water bucket and headed for the pump, admitting the scent of pine as she opened
the door.
When
she returned, she sat at the place I had set for her at the log-fashioned
picnic table, eating the Thrive chicken noodle soup and the improvised Reuben
sandwich made from canned corned beef, and after finishing her pickle spear,
forked one off my plate. I surrendered my second pickle with a smile before
getting up to boil a pot of water to wash the few dirty dishes. Once done, I
refilled the pots and put them back on the stove for her bath water.
After
her bath, we read in our respective cots far into the evening, me traversing
one word of Voyage after another, until our books fell from our hands
when our eyes closed. I understood the book better than Lighthouse, but
I can’t say I enjoyed it nearly as much.
My
father fetched me home the next morning, just in time for me to start a new
school year, and I waved at my mother from his dusty Ford truck, calling back
for her to bring Voyage with her when she returned. It would have been
unthinkable to take it myself. It would be like assuming I had a right to
a piece of her.
When
I learned she wasn’t coming home for Christmas that year, I visited a
secondhand bookshop in Hillsboro Village and located a copy of The Voyage
Out, wrapped it, and put it under the tree for myself. I read Rachel to the
other shore and discovered a crossover couple, the Dalloways, in the novel that
made me want to read another of Woolf’s books: Mrs. Dalloway. By then, I
liked Woolf more. Or maybe I was just accustomed to her fiction.
Mother
belatedly sent me a journal and a set of fountain pens for the holiday. The
bottle of ink in the package leaked all over and into the journal. At my
father’s insistence, I wrote her a thank-you note.
About Drēma Drudge:
Drēma Drudge
is the award-winning author of the novels Victorine (March 2020) and
Southern-Fried Woolf (January 2023). A graduate of the Naslund-Mann Graduate
School of Writing, she and her husband, musician and writer Barry Drudge, have
two grown children, a new granddog, and live in a picturesque town in Indiana.
They also host the podcast MFA Payday. Learn more about Drēma and get a free
literary fiction short story at: www.dremadrudge.com.
Check out Drēma’s
blog and get recipes from SOUTHERN FRIED WOOLF! https://dremadrudge.com/blog/
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Giveaway Details:
1 winner
will win a $25 Gift Card from Bookshop.org, US Only.
2 winners
will receive an eBook of SOUTHERN FRIED WOOLF, International.
Ends February 21st, midnight EST.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
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1/23/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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1/24/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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1/25/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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1/26/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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1/27/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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1/28/2023 |
Excerpt |
Week Two:
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1/29/2023 |
Excerpt |
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1/30/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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1/31/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/1/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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2/2/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/3/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/4/2023 |
Review |
Week Three:
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2/5/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/6/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/7/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/8/2023 |
IG Review/Facebook Post |
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2/9/2023 |
Review |
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2/10/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/11/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
Week Four:
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2/12/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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2/13/2023 |
Review |
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2/14/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/15/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/16/2023 |
IG Review |
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2/17/2023 |
IG Review |
Thank you so very much for sharing about my book! I truly appreciate it! :-)
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