Twang by Julie L. Cannon

tucked my song notebook into my guitar case, and put everything in a pathetic, but neat line near the door. It was funny to think that this motley collection was the sole accumulation of the life I’d lived thus far.
    That made me think of the humongous interior of my new home, Harmony Hill—room after room waiting to be filled. Mike said there were interior designers by the dozens who were eager and willing to help me decorate the place in any style I chose, whatever my personality called for. He’d brought me magazines full of ideas, and he kept saying, “What’s your pleasure, Jenny?” and finally, after he’d heard, “I don’t know,” so many times, he stopped asking.
    As I waited for him and his truck, I looked around my room trying to see it with a decorator’s eye so I could tell them how I wanted the interior of Harmony Hill. It was comfortable, cozy and all the colors went together; the wood on the bed and the tables matched, the curtains complemented the bedspreads as well as the paint on the wall. But the main thing that I liked about it was that not one single thing was broken down. No worn out, broken-down furniture or threadbare linens. Thecarpet was plush and unstained. I remembered how I’d tiptoed around those first days, not used to the niceness of it all.
    I felt a rush of melancholy as I envisioned myself walking around inside enormous, empty Harmony Hill, up the winding staircase and through the echoing hallways. I got into bed and pulled the bedspread around me tight. It wasn’t too long when a bittersweet thought zipped in. How proud Mr. Anglin would have been to see my mansion! He’d often talked about his trips to Europe, where his greatest delight was seeing all the beautiful architecture. It was all I could do not to cry tears of joy because I’d “made it” in the country music scene just as Mr. Anglin had predicted but at the same time weep that he wasn’t here to see it. Because of my foolishness.

    Tall, stately trees and manicured lawns in Brentwood made a person think they were driving into some glossy two-page spread in
Southern Living
magazine. Harmony Hill was magnificent; a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion worth more than half a million tiny cabins like the one I grew up in. More than I ever imagined owning. The first time Mike and his agent, Arnie, took me to see it, Arnie kept talking about how it was Scottish Georgian style because the architect had combined stucco and brick. “Miss Cloud,” he said, in his high, breathless voice, “if you’ll notice, the stucco is scored to look like stone blocks, and this makes a lovely contrast with the brick corner blocks. Don’t you think the cut stone window lintels are absolutely beautiful?”
    I nodded. I had no idea what a lintel was. What I saw was a pretty, perfectly symmetrical two-story house that wasn’t made of wood. I walked around inside, Arnie following along at my elbow, chattering endlessly, saying “Now, this is what you call Southern grandeur, incorporating elegant iron railingsand archways as artistic statements, and absolutely begging for furniture that looks as if it just arrived from a Parisian flea market.” When we toured the two wings on either side of the central area, I discovered one was a state-of-the-art media room, and the other, as Arnie declared, was “a generous kitchen, suited for a five-star soiree.”
    I followed him through a laundry room, office, library, rec room, exercise room, butler’s pantry, screened porch, sunroom, walk-in pantry, guest suite, loft, balcony, three-car garage, and five bedrooms. There were six bathrooms. I couldn’t possibly need six bathrooms!
    Overwhelmed, I was ready to tell Mike I’d changed my mind, that it just wasn’t my style. Until I paused on the front steps, imagining myself wearing a voluminous hoop skirt, holding a Chinese paper fan in one hand and a sweating glass of lemonade in the other, while making coy faces at the Tarleton twins. Scarlett