her expensive clothes, enrolled her in a private school, let her try on all her fancy evening dresses, and sometimes brought Tally down to the studio to watch her work under a track of amber lighting with a dozen men standing around her while Mell wore nothing but a bra and panties.
Mell’s attentions weren’t motherly in nature, Tally could see that now. She had treated Tally like a favorite girlfriend’s little sister. But at the time, she felt that the connection between them was maternal. Tally had grown fond of Mell and her spontaneous generosity and was nearly beginning to envision staying with Mell forever when she overheard her father tell Mell, after he’d consumed far too much of her expensive whiskey, that Virginia Kolander blamed him for Janet’s death.
“Who’s Janet?”
Tally picked up on the tentative tenor in Mell’s sultry voice even from behind her closed door.
“Tally’s mother! The woman I was going to marry!” Thewords were slurred but the tone unmistakable: Bart Bachmann was still in love with Janet Kolander, Tally’s mother, dead twelve years.
It wasn’t long after that evening that Mell announced she was moving to Paris and was not taking any of her New York staff.
Her father had enough money saved to buy two one-way tickets to Nashville, where friends of his “from way back” owned a horse ranch and offered him a job in the stables.
“Sometimes you gotta be the one with the shovel, Tally-ho,” he said after his first day mucking, the airy elegance of a Manhattan condo far behind them.
She sat at a rickety two-seat kitchen table and watched him pull off boots caked with manure and straw. “I miss Mell,” she said.
“You miss having everything handed to you. That’s a dreamer’s life. It ain’t real. In the end, you have to make your own way. It’s okay to have a little vacation from reality, but you can’t live like you’re on vacation.”
“Why not?”
He set his boots down by the front door to their minuscule apartment. “Because you wouldn’t be happy.”
“Mell was happy.”
He moved toward her and knelt so that his eyes were level with hers. “Two things you need to know, Tally-ho. First, that was Mell’s life we were living. She’d made that life for herself, and we were just visiting. Second, Mell was not happy.”
“She looked happy to me.”
“Money has a way of doing that. Think about it, Tal. Don’tyou think it was kind of weird she asked us to come live with her after knowing me for just one day?”
“But you went.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “I thought it would be a nice break, Tal. And I wanted you to see what money can buy and what it can’t. I don’t have any regrets about going to New York, and I sure don’t have any about leaving. Look how quick she let us go.”
Even now, with her eyes closed and her back warm against a tower of concrete far from Tennessee, Tally still winced when she remembered Mell zipping out of her life as quickly as she’d zipped into it.
There hadn’t been any mother figures to intrude upon her life after that. Bart had dated a few women since: the manager at Luigi’s who let them sleep in the basement when they arrived in Dallas with no money the year she turned thirteen. The manicurist at an upscale salon in Houston who bailed Bart out of jail when he was arrested for driving with no license, no registration, no insurance, and outstanding traffic violations from years past. The flight attendant who took them to Switzerland for Christmas two years ago.
But no one Tally itched to think of as a mother.
Amanda was storybook maternal, everything she’d seen from a distance when she watched other mothers: gentle, kind, generous, insightful, and protective. And she didn’t seem like one to claim half an inheritance that had been left to someone else. Buther dad didn’t want to trust his sister. He didn’t want to trust anyone.
He had come home early from his job as a chauffeur the day
Mell’s attentions weren’t motherly in nature, Tally could see that now. She had treated Tally like a favorite girlfriend’s little sister. But at the time, she felt that the connection between them was maternal. Tally had grown fond of Mell and her spontaneous generosity and was nearly beginning to envision staying with Mell forever when she overheard her father tell Mell, after he’d consumed far too much of her expensive whiskey, that Virginia Kolander blamed him for Janet’s death.
“Who’s Janet?”
Tally picked up on the tentative tenor in Mell’s sultry voice even from behind her closed door.
“Tally’s mother! The woman I was going to marry!” Thewords were slurred but the tone unmistakable: Bart Bachmann was still in love with Janet Kolander, Tally’s mother, dead twelve years.
It wasn’t long after that evening that Mell announced she was moving to Paris and was not taking any of her New York staff.
Her father had enough money saved to buy two one-way tickets to Nashville, where friends of his “from way back” owned a horse ranch and offered him a job in the stables.
“Sometimes you gotta be the one with the shovel, Tally-ho,” he said after his first day mucking, the airy elegance of a Manhattan condo far behind them.
She sat at a rickety two-seat kitchen table and watched him pull off boots caked with manure and straw. “I miss Mell,” she said.
“You miss having everything handed to you. That’s a dreamer’s life. It ain’t real. In the end, you have to make your own way. It’s okay to have a little vacation from reality, but you can’t live like you’re on vacation.”
“Why not?”
He set his boots down by the front door to their minuscule apartment. “Because you wouldn’t be happy.”
“Mell was happy.”
He moved toward her and knelt so that his eyes were level with hers. “Two things you need to know, Tally-ho. First, that was Mell’s life we were living. She’d made that life for herself, and we were just visiting. Second, Mell was not happy.”
“She looked happy to me.”
“Money has a way of doing that. Think about it, Tal. Don’tyou think it was kind of weird she asked us to come live with her after knowing me for just one day?”
“But you went.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “I thought it would be a nice break, Tal. And I wanted you to see what money can buy and what it can’t. I don’t have any regrets about going to New York, and I sure don’t have any about leaving. Look how quick she let us go.”
Even now, with her eyes closed and her back warm against a tower of concrete far from Tennessee, Tally still winced when she remembered Mell zipping out of her life as quickly as she’d zipped into it.
There hadn’t been any mother figures to intrude upon her life after that. Bart had dated a few women since: the manager at Luigi’s who let them sleep in the basement when they arrived in Dallas with no money the year she turned thirteen. The manicurist at an upscale salon in Houston who bailed Bart out of jail when he was arrested for driving with no license, no registration, no insurance, and outstanding traffic violations from years past. The flight attendant who took them to Switzerland for Christmas two years ago.
But no one Tally itched to think of as a mother.
Amanda was storybook maternal, everything she’d seen from a distance when she watched other mothers: gentle, kind, generous, insightful, and protective. And she didn’t seem like one to claim half an inheritance that had been left to someone else. Buther dad didn’t want to trust his sister. He didn’t want to trust anyone.
He had come home early from his job as a chauffeur the day
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