A Glass Darkly

(Nashville, 1978)

“Three women,” Leanna Carpenter said, tossing the magazine across the table. “Three fucking women, and they’re still calling him lonely.”

Brenda Mercer, the woman she’d hired to write her official autobiography, sat across from her in the downstairs parlor. Between them, the latest issue of The National Spotlight lay on the coffee table.

THE WOMEN IN HER HUSBAND’S BED! LEANNA CARPENTER’S “PERFECT” MARRIAGE EXPOSED.

Brenda picked up the tabloid.

Leanna took a sip from her glass of wine. The double-page spread featured pictures of Christian Calloway, technically her manager (and her husband, as the government liked to call him).

The photos showed him outside restaurants and hotels with various women. The article blamed his affairs on Leanna’s touring schedule.

Brenda lowered the zine. A pair of dark, brown, bespectacled eyes stared back at Leanna.

Brenda was near enough to Leanna’s age, with long, brown hair that flowed to her hips. Her blouse was buttoned high. Her skirt reached her ankles. Leanna liked to joke that she dressed like a Sunday School teacher. Matronly, but the woman had the most expressive dark eyes that took in the room with the astonishment of a newborn baby.

Leanna had pictures on her mantle with Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, their arms around her as though someone had just called them together at a picnic. Finely upholstered furniture, crystal lamps, and chandeliers decorated each room. It had been six months, and Brenda still seemed taken aback by the way Leanna lived.

Brenda cleared her throat. “While Leanna Carpenter sings about love, her husband seems determined to spread it around. His paramours include a waitress, a secretary, and one mystery woman who refuses to reveal her occupation,” she read aloud.

Brenda paused. “Maybe she doesn’t have one.”

“Then he’s probably supporting her.” With my money, Leanna frowned. Christian had always been quite generous with his lovers.

“Papparazzi or a leak?”

“Hell if I know.” Leanna sighed. The earlier tabloid stories about her not having children had bothered her less. The Spotlight had once called her barren. A few months later, it claimed she was a radical feminist who refused to give her husband a child. Her publicist had wanted to issue a denial. Leanna had told him to leave it alone.

She’d gotten used to people’s unnatural fascination with her life.

Leanna had been famous since she was running the church circuit singing Gospel Bluegrass with her parents. The Carpenter Three, people called them. They praised Leanna’s big voice and the way she could bring an audience to its feet. They didn’t hear her father screaming at her in the car when she said she was tired. They didn’t see the meetings with leering older men she’d had to sit through since she was ten years old.

At sixteen, she’d been scouted at the mall for print modeling. At seventeen, she appeared on a nationally televised variety show. The next year, she’d signed her first major deal. By 1978, she was a country singer with a mansion outside Nashville and a publisher who wanted her life story.

Brenda folded the paper. On the back was an old publicity photograph of Leanna. Her red hair was brushed into Farrah Fawcett waves. Makeup had painted the freckles off her nose. A nose job had done the rest. In the photo, her green eyes looked watery.

“How did you meet him?” Brenda asked. “Christian?”

“Through a girlfriend. They used to date.”

She reached for her cigarettes.

“I suppose I thought he’d be different with me,” she murmured.

“He wasn’t?” Brenda held out the lighter. “You think he could have leaked this himself?”

Leanna shrugged.

Christian. Really, there was nothing particularly wrong with him. She could talk with him all day, but didn’t necessarily want to go to bed with him at the end of the night. She’d loved him, even romantically at one point, but probably not in the way he wanted.

Honestly, she couldn’t recall him even raising his voice at her. They had three dogs together— Irish Setters that Christian visited twice a week. He’d joked once that, “He didn’t want to argue in front of the children.”

“We… can talk a little about the marriage in the book,” Leanna decided.

“My editor will love this,” Brenda said, leaning forward to light Leanna’s cigarette. “He keeps telling me the book needs to be more candid. I thought we’d given people plenty to talk about.”

Leanna raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been in show business for twenty years.”

“Unfortunately, Christian may have given us more material,” Brenda said.

Leanna shook her head. “The editor wants something people haven’t heard.”

“Maybe the issue of kids?” Brenda suggested.

Leanna glanced at the recorder between them. The cassette’s little wheels were turning.

“Would you turn that thing off for a sec?”

Brenda pressed the button.

“Good. This stays between us.”

“Of course.”

Leanna waited until Brenda had closed the notebook, too.

“We tried, but… ”

Brenda’s face fell. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No need to be,” Leanna said, waving a hand. She took a drag of her cigarette. “I don’t want to spend years explaining myself to people who’ve already decided what happened. If I’m a bad wife, then I’m a bad wife.”

The open garden doors carried a breeze that lifted the magazine’s edge. Brenda put her hand over it.

“Don’t worry. We can talk about something else,” she said.

“Do you have much of the story written down?” Leanna asked.

“It’s coming along.”

Leanna raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been saying that.” Brenda had been living in Leanna’s guest room for months, another fact the press went crazy over after Christian left.

“When do you suppose I could see it?” Leanna continued.

“I want to get it right.”

There had been tapes and questions and afternoons that lasted into supper. Leanna had begun putting off other appointments so they wouldn’t be interrupted while writing— and doing other things.

Leanna chewed her bottom lip. She supposed a book took time.

She got up to close the garden doors and saw a blue Buick parked outside the gates.

“That car’s back,” Leanna called over her shoulder.

Brenda came to look.

“It followed me home from the studio yesterday,” Leanna said. “I gave the police the license plate number.”

“Can you see who’s in it?”

“No.”

Brenda drew the curtains. “Well, you do have a lot of admirers,” she said.

A display held the Grammy Leanna won in 1974 for “Blue Collar Man.” Four years later, people still asked her to sing it everywhere she went. A few columnists had begun using the phrase ‘one-hit wonder.’

“I used to sing before,” Brenda said, aside.

“Oh? You recorded music?”

Brenda laughed. “No, silly, at home. I wanted to sing professionally when I was younger.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“My father said I didn’t have the face for it,” Brenda said, looking away. “And I needed to make a living.”

Leanna frowned. Funny, Brenda was one of the most beautiful women she had ever laid eyes on. “Was your father always an asshole?”

“Only when he was drinking.”

“You could sing for me.”

“Certainly not.”

“Oh, come on. Have a little fun.”

Brenda shook her head, but her cheeks glowed red.

They stayed downstairs until the windows became dark. At the foot of the stairs, Brenda placed a hand on Leanna’s back.

“Try to get some sleep.”

“Will you be up much longer?” Leanna asked quietly.

“I’ll come up when I’ve finished writing,” Brenda said.

Leanna went upstairs slowly. She could feel Brenda’s eyes on her back.

Having sex with the person who was supposed to be working for you was probably a bad idea. It hadn’t stopped Leanna, and the giddiness hadn’t worn off in the few weeks since they’d started fooling around. She’d never felt quite like this with Christian, or with anybody else she could remember. Butterflies filled her stomach as she opened her bedroom door.

She changed into a nightgown and got into bed with a book. She left the door ajar so she would hear Brenda coming.

The clock struck 11 pm without Brenda showing up.

Leanna swallowed her disappointment. She’s just my ghostwriter, she argued with herself. A girl could dream, right? She laid the book on the bedside table and waited a little longer before turning out the light.

—------------------

In the morning, Leanna had coffee brought out for two. When Brenda didn’t show up, she asked the maid whether she had seen her.

“She went out last night.”

Leanna’s brow furrowed. “Did she say where?”

“No, ma’am. There was a car waiting.”

Brenda’s purse was still beside the sofa. Leanna opened it and found her wallet, her keys, and the little case she kept pills in.

Strange. “What kind of car?” Leanna asked.

“I couldn’t tell.”

Leanna’s mind immediately went to the Buick.

“Did you see her talking to anyone?”

The maid shook her head.

Leanna’s heart climbed to her throat. If the waiting car had been the blue Buick, Brenda wouldn’t have gotten into it willingly. Leanna jogged over to the garden doors, shoved them open, and ran outside.

The street was empty.