I walk offstage after our first show in New Orleans close to crying. The Superdome crowd I just left cheering has no idea how I’m feeling, which I’m glad of. In the miniature galaxy of the stadium, the dark dome filled with collective emotion, I gave them enough. I gave them what I could.
Still, the performance of “Until You” was our worst yet. Creativity comes with plenty of volatile shifts from highs to lows. On lows like tonight my frustration feels like drowning, choking my exhausted lungs with fury.
When I pass Eileen, I hold up my hand, knowing what she’s going to say. Our rehearsal in the hotel room set us back. Of course it did. Because Max kissed me, then clearly regretted it.
For the record, I don’t regret it. Sure, it was probably a bad idea in the long run, but I don’t believe in regrets. Even if I did, I could never regret kissing Max Harcourt. Kissing Max was like hearing a forgotten favorite song for the first time in years.
It obviously wasn’t the same for him. I’m unable to shake the memory of the hurricane in his eyes when he stood up from the piano, the . . . resentment. Writing songs ripped from my own emotions, I’ve started to suspect people forget I feel the emotions first. When they find their way into my voice, it’s only because I’ve walked through them, shouldered them myself, first.
It’s what I do now with the lingering sting of where our kiss left us. The feeling follows me into the dark wings, down into the greenroom.
Under the uniform metallic lights of the stadium’s inner workings, I smile in reply to every perfunctory congratulation from everyone I pass, wishing I could meet them with more enthusiasm, like I wish I could’ve given fans more in our performance of “Until You.” When everyone, every crewperson, every fan, is there for my show, the guilt of every rough day or distracted moment is overwhelming.
It’s how I felt struggling through “Until You” onstage. This mess with Max is making me disappoint everyone.
In my private dressing room, I take my time changing out of my costume, hiding in the solitude. I know I’m going to have to face Max. Talk this out. Figure out what happened, what we can do, how we save the song. I’m putting it off, though, because I suspect when we discuss it, Max will choose to leave rather than find a way to move forward. We’ve been down this road once, and while the breakup inspired the biggest hit of my career, I’m not eager to walk it again.
I meet my eyes in my dressing room mirror. I look nothing like the star who lit up the video screens in the stadium, my digital replicas moving in synchrony. I look miserable. Small. Overwrought.
I don’t want to return to my room, the scene of our kiss, where the baby grand piano looks like a gravestone standing in the middle of the space. Nor do I want to regroup with Eileen to discuss what I already know I need to fix in the show. Instead, I straighten up. In the mirror, I shake off some of my disappointment. No more moping. I leave the dressing room, looking for my mom.
Holding warm beignets, we walk through the French Quarter. It’s late, but New Orleans isn’t asleep. Its lively cheer is charming, music spilling from second-story windows over the friendly clamor of the nightlife.
I feel happier, stabler, more like myself. It’s remarkable what wonders New Orleans donuts and hanging out with my mom can work.
People we pass ask me for photos or autographs, which I oblige until more start to congregate, drawn by the crowd. I keep my crowd face on, reminding myself how genuinely grateful I am for fans’ support, despite the inescapable nervousness of moments like this.
It’s fine until I hear one voice call out, “Give Wesley another chance!”
In fact, in the past couple months, I’ve noticed darker currents emerge in The Breakup Record’s public discourse. Plenty of Wesley’s fans have eagerly pinned our divorce on me, with collections of misconstrued quotes combined with outlandish cheating conspiracies.
His worshippers don’t make me fear for my safety in public, despite the distaste of the invocation of Wesley. However, they’re not the only faction who worry me. Worse have been the dude-bro defenders of Jacob Prince, who I memorialized on one of The Breakup Record’s less flattering portraits. Jacob went on to star in some superhero movies. The macho ones, not the fun ones.
In some startled late-night internet sessions, I found out I’m exactly the sort of woman his fans hate. In the months since, I’ve generally learned which forums not to peruse and what sorts of profile pictures to scroll past. Still, the stuff some commenters wish would happen to me, or want to do to me—it’s upsetting reading.
While everyone in the French Quarter right now looks welcoming, the mention of one of my famous exes has me on edge. I know people have unwanted opinions on my love life. I know I even invite them. Still, I don’t need to hear them personally, and I definitely don’t want to hear them—or worse, whatever insults or complaints the crowd might have for me—when I’m practically on my own in public past midnight.
I decide I need to make my escape. “Hey, everyone,” I call out, projecting my voice with exhausted muscles. “Sorry I can’t stay—I’m with my mom—but thank you so much for your support. It’s sincerely so nice to see you!”
I start pushing my way through the crowd. Just when I’m wondering whether I should’ve brought security, Mom grabs hold of me and fearlessly strong-arms me away in a manner that screams don’t mess with the pop star’s mother.
We finally get free, rounding the corner. This street is no more vacant, the never-ending party spilling from the nightclubs. However, nobody in my immediate vicinity recognizes me—yet.
“Here.” My mom pulls sunglasses from her purse.
I put them on gratefully despite the hour, then pull my hair out of my sweat-slick post-concert braid. “Thanks,” I say. “Sorry. I know dealing with crowds is . . . not normal mother-daughter stuff.”
Mom laughs. “Honey, no part of this tour is normal for me. I mean, it’s a Thursday night, and I’m walking around New Orleans after a rock concert. A year ago, I never would have imagined any of this.”
The second the sentence is out of her mouth, her smile slips. I know what she’s remembering, what she’s realizing she just said. Of course she wouldn’t have imagined this a year ago. A year ago, she was married to my dad, certain she was spending the rest of her life with her soul mate.
I don’t believe in regrets, but I wonder if my mom does.
“I know it’s not the year you expected,” I say gently, “but I’m glad you’re here.”
When she smiles, she looks like she’s fighting past something. “Me too.”
We wander down the street without destination, Mom handing me the beignets she held while I was signing autographs. The liveliness of the city luminesces from every storefront and corner. Under the stately railings, the endless rows of signs scream out their names in vibrant light. Clubs, live stages, restaurants. Music is practically physical here, part of each crossbeam and doorway.
While I’ve spent plenty of nights in New Orleans, my mother’s words seem to make the scenery new. In fact, neither of us could have imagined visiting the city like this.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to speak my feelings about my parents’ divorce. For one, I haven’t figured out how exactly I feel. Of course I cried when I hung up the phone after my dad gave me the news. I felt like I was holding the hand of something dead.
I wondered if their split was my fault, or something similar. If my fame, the way the edges of the spotlight reached even my once-normal family, had somehow contributed strain or scrutiny their marriage could not withstand. It wound up being one more worry, one more open file on the rare nights when fame frightens me, one more item on the list of places I can never again visit inconspicuously and former friends who’ve pressed me with manipulative agendas.
Even so, I respect my parents’ individuality, their maturity, their freedom. I know they would not have made the decision unless in some way it was what they needed. I have my own life, my own home, my own relationships. They have theirs.
The whole pop-star paradigm makes knowing how to feel even harder. One misconception about me is that I didn’t grow up pretty much just like everyone else. I lived in the same Midwestern suburban home where my parents do now, or did. I struggled with math in school. I loved soccer.
Instead, people unconsciously pretend my life started with my first charted single or my Billboard cover. Reporters and documentarians grab hold of the fragments of musicality in my childhood, the piano recitals, the high school performances—the start of the story of Riley Wynn—and forget the rest.
I kind of forget it myself sometimes. It scares and saddens me. I don’t like the feeling of falling for the illusion, of following fans and critics into pretending I never existed outside the stage. It makes me want to hold on to the hurt of my family’s wounded remains.
No matter how hard I cling, I still haven’t wanted to get into it with either parent, or known how. When my mom helped me move, we only ever reached her feelings on the end of my parents’ marriage, although in fairness she was the shoulder for plenty of my crying over my own failed marriage.
Another misconception about me is how narcissistic people say I am—they assume my musical preoccupation with my own feelings, my own relationships, means I’m uninterested in anyone else’s. It does not require world-class sociology to understand why people assume it of me, a very famous, very wealthy young woman.
Nevertheless, it’s flat-out fucking wrong. I’ve known my mom was having real difficulty with the divorce. Getting into my own more complicated feelings in the meantime has felt . . . I don’t know. Unfair. Upside-down.
I will eventually. I know I will.
Just not yet. I have enough heartache of my own for now.
“You know, I moved around a lot as a kid,” Mom says into my silence. “My dad was always relocating us for his work. I hated it. I decided, when I grew up, I wanted to put down strong roots in one city for the rest of my life.”
The overture surprises me. My grandfather was in the Navy. While I never met him, I’ve heard stories of everywhere my mom lived, far-flung corners of the country captured in the changing locales of her old family photos. I did not know it was what inspired her to settle down so decisively at twenty-six, when she married my dad.
She bites into her beignet, the lights of New Orleans reflecting off her eyes. “But then my only daughter became a pop star and I got divorced,” she continues. “It’s funny. Not ha-ha funny, just . . . I guess I’m realizing just how easily my roots can be pulled up again.”
I nod solemnly. My imagination can’t quite grasp what she’s describing. Living in one place with the family she raised was everything for my mom. It was her dream.
What I’m doing now, this tour, is all I’ve wanted my whole life. If I lost it overnight . . . It’s impossible to comprehend.
“You can put down new roots, Mom. You don’t need Dad for that,” I say. It feels simplistic even to suggest. Shallow. The idea of imparting wisdom to my mom—to either of my parents—seems outlandish. Still, I want to help.
“I know,” she replies. “But . . . I’m not sure. Maybe I’m ready to want something new.”
Something new. I find myself thinking of Max. Music was never his dream, not enough to sustain him. Now he’s trying it on for new reasons, with new perspective, with more life in the rearview mirror. Maybe what you want in life can change. Maybe now he’ll finally fall in love with music.
With—everything.
Like she’s reading my mind, my mom eyes me inquisitively. “Why were you and Max so stiff tonight?” she asks.
I feel my shoulders slouch. The New Orleans clamor seems to press inward, chaotic now instead of cheerful. “Tell me it wasn’t that bad,” I plead.
“I’m sure only your mother noticed,” she reassures me.
“He kissed me.” Like all my favorite lyrics, the simple statement isn’t really one sentence. It’s hidden verse upon verse, questions I’m unable to face, inchoate feelings crashing into each other in the depths of me.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to surprise my mom. “Mm-hmm,” she hums, fixing her gaze on the street corner we’re approaching, where the peeling paint does nothing to diminish the facade’s finery.
“Nothing to say?” I press. I doubt the humor in my voice hides how desperately I want her opinion. I need help with the Max question.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mom replies.
I purse my lips impatiently. “Mom, just say what’s on your mind. You think it was a mistake? Max and I did this once already. You think I should focus on myself after my divorce? Or Max is too unsure of what he wants to start something real? What?”
The look my mom gives me is searing.
“No,” she says evenly. “That’s what you’re thinking. I’m thinking . . .”
I wait, hungry for clarity. The questions in my head grate like dissonant chords waiting for resolution.
“You wrote a whole album about heartbreak,” my mom says.
“Yes?”
“Well.” She pauses. “I’d like to hear a love song at some point.”