Once Upon a Rose, Page 2

That did it. All she could think of was the old

  RCA emblem depicting "His Master's

  Voice," a spotted dog listening to a

  gramophone, head cocked exactly as was

  Bucky Lee's cowboy-hatted head. Deanie

  didn't just giggle, she didn't just laugh.

  Wilma Dean Bailey, in that gentle English

  backdrop, howled. Once she began she was

  incapable of stopping, and the laughter tumbled from her,

  speeding beyond her control.

  She looked down at her feet, trying to curb

  her hilarity, taking deep breaths, but her feet

  reminded her of his cowboy boots and the five-inch

  lifts he tucked into the soles. So she tried

  to concentrate on her fingers, but that merely caused

  her to recall Bucky Lee's one attempt

  to play the guitar and the sour chords that rang from his

  prop instrument between takes.

  Through her tears she could see the horrified

  glances of the crew members Ping-Ponging between

  Deanie and Bucky Lee. Then she heard a

  terrible, now-familiar sound: the slamming of a

  trailer door. This time it left the aluminum

  steps rattling, and a potted mum spilled off the

  top landing. Everyone knew exactly what that

  meant: Bucky Lee Denton would not make

  another appearance until the next day. If at

  all.

  Suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore.

  She wiped under her eyes, where tears had dampened

  her mascara to the consistency of molten asphalt,

  and assumed the most contrite expression she could

  manage.

  "Goddammit, Deanie!" bellowed the

  director. "How the hell could you do that?"

  All eyes were now fixed on Deanie in her

  rayon Tudor gown with Velcro

  fastenings and plastic-seed pearls and birdhouse

  headdress. She swallowed. "I'm sorry,"

  she whispered, her voice raspy with laughter and

  guilt.

  No one responded. As the cast wandered off

  to collect their paychecks and the crew went through the

  motions of striking the set for the day, Deanie knew

  she was once again the victim of her lifelong

  curse.

  Bad timing.

  Wilma Dean Bailey's very existence was a

  virtual synonym for rotten timing. For instance,

  the name "Wilma Dean" was a bit of quixotic

  whimsey on her mother's part. As groping

  teenagers, Lorna Dune and Dickie

  Bailey made an early exit from the film

  Splendor in the Grass to get married. By the

  standards of Winslow, Kentucky, they had

  demonstrated tremendous restraint.

  Ten months later their daughter was born, and

  Lorna named the dark-haired infant "Wilma

  Dean," after the character portrayed by Natalie

  Wood in the movie.

  It wasn't until several years later, when

  the film was finally aired on television, that

  Lorna saw the entire movie. Much to her

  openmouthed shock, the Wilma Dean in the movie

  suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in a

  mental institution.

  But it was too late to change Deanie's name.

  The precocious tot was already scribbling it on every

  wall and overdue bill she could get a crayon

  on. Lorna was, of course, concerned about the

  eventual psychological ramifications of naming

  a child after a suicidal heroine, so she kept her

  daughter away from any and all Natalie Wood

  films, including Miracle on 34th

  Street and Scu.a Hoo! Scu.a Hay!

  Besides, Lorna rationalized, the Deanie in

  Splendor in the Grass ends up okay.

  Warren Beatty marries another woman. So

  what?

  About this time Lorna made another unfortunate

  discovery. Her husband, Dickie Bailey, whose

  all-night revels with fellow good ol' boys had

  earned him a slew of randy nicknames, finally

  decided he was not cut out for marriage and

  fatherhood. Within a week he was gone. Lorna

  never did find out what had happened to her

  ex-husband. Their contact ceased with the signing of the

  final divorce papers.

  Years later she saw an "Oprah" show on

  bigamists. One guest, an overweight shoe

  salesman sporting a limp string tie and

  exaggerated sideburns, looked suspiciously

  like Dickie Bailey, but Lorna could never be

  sure.

  With steel determination and hard work, Lorna

  managed to scrape together enough money to leave their

  rural Kentucky home for Nashville. All

  she wanted was a chance to begin afresh, to raise her

  daughter away from the back-handed whispers of

  Winslow. Even worse were the pitying stares of other

  women, the mutters of "Poor Lorna, can't

  hold on to a man." She'd had enough.

  In Nashville she found a job as a

  truck-stop waitress. The hours were grueling but

  the tips were usually good, and Lorna found

  happiness in the anonymity of the place. Even the

  regulars only passed through twice a month. It

  was well worth the occasional painful pinch from an

  amorous trucker.

  Little Wilma Dean, meanwhile, grew from a

  giggling child to a woman of startling beauty. By the time

  her daughter reached high school, Lorna,

  alarmed by the way the customers would grin at her

  daughter while dripping grits in the lap of their

  jeans, had banished her from the truckstop.

  The irony that her daughter bore an uncanny

  resemblance to Natalie Wood was not lost on

  Lorna.

  "Why, ain't she the spitting image of that gal

  from Rebel Without a Cause?" gasped a

  beefy trucker with a paper napkin tucked into his

  red flannel shirt.

  "Who?" inquired a doe-eyed Deanie as her

  mother shoved her through the restaurant door.

  "Never mind," spat Lorna, glaring at the

  customer.

  No one was really surprised when Deanie was

  elected homecoming queen her senior year in

  high school. Although she was, in the buffered words

  of a guidance counselor, "no student," Deanie

  was easily the most popular girl in her class.

  Not only was she the best cheerleader for the state's

  worst football team, she was also the president

  of the choral society and had the lead part in the

  school's production of Annie Get Your

  Gun.

  What did surprise folks was the freak

  hailstorm that hit Nashville the day of the

  homecoming parade, tearing the corrugated roof

  off the gym and ending all hopes of Deanie receiving

  the ceremonial five-and-dime crown. Graduation

  came and went with all the pomp and celebration of a

  used-tire sale. Once again, bad timing and

  Wilma Dean Bailey were inexorably linked.

  With her diploma in hand, Deanie began

  searching for a job, only to discover that businesses were

  less than thrilled at the prospect of hiring

  an uncrowned homecoming queen who could carry a

  tune. By the end
of the summer, Deanie had finally

  found a job. Like her mother, Deanie became a

  waitress. Only Deanie, as if to prove her

  independence, worked at a Krispy Kream

  doughnut shop.

  A crucial revelation hit Deanie that first

  fall after high school. She felt something vital

  was missing from her life, an emptiness that left

  her feeling incomplete. After ticking off the

  possibilities on her fingers, she realized that

  what was lacking was music.

  For as long as she could remember, she had been

  involved in chorus classes or school-based

  musicals. As her interest in music grew, her

  voice, always pleasant, mellowed into a rich

  instrument of unexpected depth. When she sang,

  she wasn't just Deanie Bailey; she could

  imagine being anyone in the world. For her, music was

  magic. Her voice alone had never let her

  down; it was the one thing she could always count on.

  Lorna, noticing her daughter's interest yet

  not quite understanding it, even gave her a guitar from the

  Sears catalog for her sixteenth birthday, and

  Deanie became good enough to accompany the chorus and

  strum along at school assemblies.

  Deanie, who had lived a life free from the

  shackles of ambition, suddenly knew what she

  wanted to become. With the tenacity of a spawning

  salmon, Deanie set about becoming the next

  Patsy Cline.

  She told no one at the Krispy Kream about

  her aspiration, only her mother and a friend from high

  school who had become a receptionist at a new

  company, Era Records. Her mother treated her

  announcement as seriously as she had taken

  previous proclaimations from her daughter.

  When Deanie was eight, she decided she

  wanted to be a princess. "Fine,

  dear," a weary Lorna mumbled.

  When she was eleven, she wanted to become an

  Olympic figure skater. "Very good, honey,"

  Lorna replied.

  Now Deanie wanted to become a country singer,

  and Lorna patted her daughter's head and asked

  her to bring home two dozen assorted doughnuts

  as a treat for the other truck-stop waitresses.

  About that time, Deanie realized that just mouthing other

  people's songs was no longer enough. Although she could put

  tremulous emotion behind most tunes, it was really

  just musical play-acting. It didn't feel

  absolutely right.

  Most country songs didn't fit her

  personality, as she couldn't identify with the raw

  emotions. Sure, she had faced rough times with her

  mom, but they had faced them together. Never had she

  been truly frightened or threatened or depressed.

  Since she'd never had a dog, she had never even

  experienced a dog's death, nor his running away

  or chewing a favorite slipper. She'd never

  once owned a pickup truck.

  Above all, she had never been in love. As a

  whole, the life experiences of Wilma Dean

  Bailey were not the stuff of great songs.

  But that didn't stop Deanie. Her first efforts

  were laughably awful, about wayward men and forgiving

  women. She borrowed from her mother's life, but it

  didn't ring true. Then she tried lyrics about

  Paris and grand romances, two more adventures she

  had yet to experience, although "gay Paree" did

  rhyme rather nicely with "his dungarees."

  One evening, while soaking her throbbing feet in

  a tub of Epsom salts, she heard a radio

  interview with a country songwriter.

  "You have to write what you know, what you're

  familiar with, what touches your heart," the writer

  stated. "Otherwise you won't believe it and, more

  important, other people won't believe it."

  Without bothering to dry her feet, Deanie

  hopped out of the tub and grabbed her guitar. In about

  an hour she had written a song about a former

  beauty queen working in a doughnut shop. Even after

  playing and replaying the song into a tape

  recorder, she felt an unfamiliar thrill

  rush through her.

  "This is it," she marveled aloud. "This is how

  it's done."

  After that, songs came easily and quickly,

  usually when she was at work, cleaning the

  coffee machine or waiting for a customer to decide

  between the chocolate frosteds or the sugar-coated

  bismarks. Although she still had to experience the fodder

  of most country songs, Deanie had discovered she

  possessed a unique ability to convey lyrics.

  Phrases would come to her, snatches of offhanded

  comments. The speaker would leave, toting the white

  pastry bag, forgetting all about the conversation

  overheard by the eager young woman behind the counter.

  By keeping her mouth shut and her ears open at

  work, she heard enough from the customers and the other

  waitresses to fill a dozen lifetimes of

  country songs. Everyone had a story to tell, and

  Deanie added her own words and imagination to spin their

  tales.

  She became a voracious reader of country

  music publications, and for the first time she regretted

  not taking her school years more seriously. There was

  so much she didn't understand about the business,

  phrases that meant nothing to her but seemed to be of

  great importance to those in the music industry.

  She never came to work without a tape of her

  latest composition in the pocket of her apron,

  on the off chance that someone might want to hear her

  songs. One afternoon two long-haired men came

  to her counter discussing a recording session.

  Deanie was awestruck by their easy music

  banter.

  "I write songs," she blurted.

  The other waitresses rolled their eyes at

  Deanie, and she felt a furious blush creep

  up from the neckline of her starched gingham uniform.

  One of the men raised a graying eyebrow. "Oh

  yeah?" He crooked a finger, and she leaned over

  the counter. "I'll give you some advice,

  doll," he whispered.

  He then offered a suggestion that was nothing more than

  a very Southern variation of the age-old casting couch.

  Deanie was stunned, certain that she had not heard the

  man correctly.

  In a voice loud enough to be heard across the shop,

  he repeated his lewd proposition. Her eyes

  held his as she reached behind for a fresh pot of

  coffee, smiled at him, and poured the scalding

  brew over his hand that rested on the counter.

  The man howled in pain, but Deanie maintained

  an expression of serenity and informed him that

  refills were on the house.

  As he ran to the bathroom, muttering oaths and

  shaking his hand in the air--a futile

  attempt to cool it off--his companion

  grimaced apologetically and took one of her

  tapes. He promised to get back to her within a

  week with an honest appraisal of her work.

  A
s the first week stretched on into the second and

  third and still she'd had no word, she realized it was

  useless. She had no way to contact him anyway,

  since she didn't even know his name. She chalked

  it up to experience, but the exquisitely close

  brush with the music world had made her more determined

  than ever.

  Then her friend, the record-company

  receptionist, convinced a low-rung executive

  to grant Deanie a five-minute interview.

  She called in sick at the Krispy Kream,

  terrified at the prospect of crossing the

  threshold of Era Records smelling like a

  glazed doughnut.

  Dazzled by the feel of plush, unstained carpet

  under her feet, awed by the glossy photographs

  of stars and near-stars lining the hallway, Deanie

  followed her friend to the executive's tiny,

  windowless office.

  He was young but prematurely bald, which gave

  him an aura of intelligence he did not

  deserve. He listened politely to her tape,

  cutting each song off after fifteen seconds.

  Finally he leaned back in his vinyl swivel

  chair, his fingertips steepled together in a

  practiced gesture.

  "Well well, Jeanie ..." he began.

  "Deanie," she corrected, with the most

  submissive smile she could manage.

  "Deanie? Oh, well," he frowned before

  clearing his throat. "Where are you presently

  employed?"

  She swallowed before answering. "At the

  Krispy Kream."

  "Ah. I see. Well, Jeanie, I

  suggest you hold onto that job and keep on

  working--" He was interrupted by the bleep of his

  telephone and gave her a dismissive nod. She

  snatched up her tape and left as quickly as

  possible, her cheeks burning with anger and

  humiliation.

  Three weeks later, as she was closing up the

  shop, she heard a car radio blaring from the parking

  lot. It was the new single from Vic Jenkens, the

  country crooner with matinee-idol looks and a

  smooth-as-molasses voice. Deanie

  paused, a wet, coffee-stained rag clutched in

  her hand as she wiped down the counter.

  Vic Jenkens was singing her song.

  The rag flopped to the linoleum floor. She

  blinked, dumbfounded at hearing the words she'd

  penned while sitting on her own bed coming from a car

  radio. From Vic Jenkens's voice--her words

  set to her tune created on her Sears

  guitar.

  The car either closed its door or left the

  parking lot, she never knew. All she was sure

  of was that her song had faded, leaving her under the

  humming fluorescent lights of the empty

  Krispy Kream.

  How did it happen? Her mind whirled as she

  stumbled into the parking lot, her sweater askew, her

  white-soled shoes crunching the gravel. Her

  hands trembled as she fumbled for her car keys,

  numbly recalling that they were in her apron

  pocket.

  Her apron pocket. Then it came back

  to her: The song Vic Jenkens had recorded was

  on the tape she had given those Music Row

  guys, the friend of the man she had spilled coffee

  on. They had stolen her song.

  Her first thought was to call up a radio station--

  any radio station--and proclaim herself to be the

  composer of the new Vic Jenkens hit. Clearly

  someone had laid claim to the song, or she would have

  heard from his manager or the record company. She

  had devoured enough fan magazines to have a vague

  idea how those things worked.

  But it would have been absurd, a ranting

  Krispy Kream waitress calling a radio

  station at midnight announcing that Vic Jenkens

  had stolen her song. Unwelcome images

  flooded into her mind, of people who claimed to have been

  kidnapped by aliens or of diehard Elvis

  sighters. She suddenly envisioned herself being

  interviewed on television, in her Krispy

  Kream gingham and ruffled apron, the mandatory

  hairnet glimmering under the TV lights, trays

  of doughnuts stacked behind her. She would look like a

  crazy woman.

  With no proof to offer, no evidence other than

  her word against theirs, Deanie would be better off

  claiming to be Bigfoot's love child. By the time

  she climbed into her bed, she was convinced she had

  best let the whole thing go. This was an important

  lesson, she muttered to the foam pillow.

  Never again would she be so stupid. Never again would she

  be so trusting.

  By the next morning she was feeling better, even

  a little pleased. The song had been good enough for those

  guys to steal. Deanie decided she must be on the

  right track.

  Within three weeks, the song was hailed as the

  most brilliant of Vic Jenkens's career. It

  was everywhere, not only blasting from car windows, but at

  the mall and in the Krispy Kream and on

  television. Everyone seemed to be humming

  Deanie's tune. Even at the Piggly

  Wiggly, the damn song wafted over the poultry

  case.

  Just when Deanie thought she would explode, the

  impossible happened: Vic Jenkens himself

  strolled into the Krispy Kream.