THE NEXT TIME they quit, Chet Atkins did not ask them for another favor. He could see what the road was doing to them, and he, better than anyone, could hear the unraveling now. He might have been able to carry them a little further, but the kindest thing was to let them go back home. He worried about Maxine, but it wasn't fair to Jim Ed, who was starting to schedule more and more concerts with Helen Cornelius, or to Bonnie, who, Chet knew, had been looking for an exit for longer than even she herself realized. The thing that had made them great—their three voices becoming one—was now the thing that would have to separate them and end it. He had seen it before—the end of a sound, and the end of fame—though never quite like this, never all in the same family, and never such a sound.
Was the sound itself going away? Sometimes he thought it might be, but even he couldn't quite be sure.
This time, the Browns made the decision over the telephone, from their own homes, rather than gathering together. It wasn't quite as hard, in that they had already done it once before, but still, it wasn't easy. Jim Ed was relieved, and Bonnie was thrilled, which was not lost on Maxine, who, after hanging up the phone, had a change of heart.
She drove up to Bonnie's farm the next day. She didn't think she could change Jim Ed's mind—he was in love, and there was nothing dumber, she knew, than a man in love—but maybe she could come to some sort of agreement with Bonnie. Perhaps they could finally turn to Norma and the three sisters could sing. Maybe they could start all over. Maybe it would be even better than before.
It was July, the height of green summer in the South, and the farther she drove, the more she came to believe she would be successful in her endeavor to reclaim Bonnie from her farm. When had she never not gotten what she wanted?
The cinderblock honky-tonks, situated at the various intersections between dry and wet counties, beckoned to her, even in the bright heat of the day, but she kept going, eager to get up into the Ozarks before too late in the afternoon. She imagined the cold gin and tonic her sister might have waiting for her, and was surprised and disappointed, when she finally pulled in at the end of the long ascending driveway—the view of the green valley sublime below her—that there was no such refreshment awaiting her, nor was there any vodka to be found in the house. She wanted to ask for a sample of the bourbon she knew Brownie must keep somewhere but didn't dare betray her weakness before so intimate a witness as family. Still, she knew it was there somewhere and could not stop thinking about it.
"How are you?" Bonnie asked, giving her a hug.
"I'm okay," Maxine said. "All things considered, I'm okay." She had told Bonnie she could stay only for a day, and Bonnie figured that Maxine just didn't want to be alone after the breakup, that she wanted to talk over old times. It was the sweetest part of the summer for Bonnie and Brownie, when so much was ready to be harvested and when the food tasted best, a time when all the hard work they had put in over the spring and early summer no longer seemed like work at all.
Bonnie and Brownie had the feeling that they were getting away with something—their happiness—and they were aware that there were people in the world who would never know the same. They marveled at this, and perhaps had their own edges moderated or sanded down a bit by this realization—but in other ways, it made their own happiness even deeper.
They didn't deserve it, and they didn't not deserve it. Fate had nothing to do with it; it was just the way things had turned out, and they never ceased to be grateful for it, particularly when Maxine came to visit, bringing with her, almost like a stranger, that massive, crackling discontent.
Midsummer, there really wasn't time for Bonnie to devote herself to a visit by Maxine, but if there wasn't time then, with the days still at their sleepy fullest, then when would there be?
Watering the garden at first light, sometimes when the crickets were still chirping, and with the garden looking bejeweled when the sun came up, and with the water already soaking down into the soil before the heat of the day could evaporate it—and watering it again at dusk, as if putting it to bed—was a feeling richer than having money in the bank, with bowls of the day's pickings resting on the kitchen table, and the certainty, or near certainty, at that time of year, that the next day would bring still more bounty, and the day after that even more.
Maxine could suck the air out of a room. Not necessarily in a bad way: her presence simply always announced itself in such a manner, with its longing and expectations, so that a bystander ended up feeling some sort of response was required. Sometimes, as at a party, that was a fun thing, though other times—such as at home, in the lazy summer, with the garden being Bonnie's focus—it could be a bit taxing.
In all these minor conflicts, however—the mild resentments, and the too narrow attentions to self—each sister would remember Birdie, and the selflessness with which she had raised them. Is the future as uncomplicated, really, as a coin flip, with one daughter assuming that such devotion and singular attention were her mother's lifelong desire, and becoming so accustomed to receiving it that she comes to depend on it, always needing more, while another, lavished with the same attention and warmth, responds instead by trying to return that kind of devotion to the world, keeping only a modest amount for herself?
"Let me show you the garden," Bonnie said. "Brownie's still at work. What would you like for dinner?" She helped Maxine with her bag. The children were down at the creek, playing with friends. Bonnie stopped in the kitchen to pour Maxine a glass of lemonade and to show her the day's harvest, and while Maxine had known for a long time that Bonnie had another life than touring, and perhaps a better life, Maxine had always managed to put that knowledge aside, or to hide it beneath the surface.
She saw it now though as if for the first time—saw it most fully—not so much in Bonnie's newly relaxed demeanor, but in the beauty of the kitchen: brighter and more modern, certainly, than Birdie's had ever been, and yet somehow harking back to those days. The afternoon sunlight illuminating the lemonade pitcher, the lemonade's translucent fibers suspended, and the stainless steel bowls of produce—redleaf lettuce, greenleaf, radishes, green beans, snap peas, and tomatoes with their pungent, summery smell—combined with the density of Bonnie's happiness lead Maxine to understand finally that which for years she had been trying to avoid seeing or knowing.
Bonnie handed her the lemonade and asked her to come down to the garden. The sun was blazing, and Bonnie tossed Maxine a straw hat.
I don't have a chance in hell, Maxine thought. It's over. She wondered how and when her sister had grown up and away from her; at what point had she slipped away from her control? She doesn't care if she ever sings again, Maxine thought. Jim Ed had left her for Helen Cornelius, was what it felt like, Norma had gone off to college, and now Bonnie had turned her back on her, just as she had on Elvis, and chosen Brownie and her new family.
Bonnie entered the waist-high garden like a woman entering surf, wading in slowly, pausing often and putting her hands down to pluck one leaf or another. The day's weeds had already been picked and lay drying in the yard, curing and withering like hay. Maxine loved a good tomato. Bonnie remembered this, sought out a small one she had passed by earlier in the day, picked it, and handed it to her. Maxine took a bite from it as if it were an apple and was surprised at the jag of envy she felt, rather than pleasure, at how delicious it was. She took a sip of the lemonade—the ice cubes rattled as she did so, and she flinched, remembering her yearning—and for a moment, there in the heat and the sun with her sister, and with the green growing odor of the garden, her head swam, and she thought, All right, lay down your burden, step forward, and all will be all right.
"Are you sure you're all right?" Bonnie asked, direct if not blunt, and again Maxine was surprised; she didn't remember such confidence or assurance, such fullness.
"Yes," Maxine said, wondering how she would bring up her plea. Trying to figure a way to rephrase it, repackage it. Maybe later that night. Maybe not quite yet.
"I know it can't be easy on you," Bonnie said. "I know how much it meant to you."
Maxine followed her into the garden, moving cautiously, almost as if entering a jungle.
"I don't think I can stop," Maxine said, and now the peacefulness that had been present in the garden seemed to be vanishing quickly, as if it had been only an illusion. Bonnie stopped her casual tending and turned to look at Maxine, again with that new directness. They could hear the cries and shouts and laughter of the children off in the woods, the children coming back from the creek.
"Well, you have to," Bonnie said, her tone different, and Maxine thought, Why, she's looking at me like I'm the enemy.
"It's just that we've worked so hard," Maxine said. "We've finally gotten free of Fabor, and we've made so many connections now. Hell," she said, "we've got Chet Atkins on our side. Do you know how many singers would kill for that?"
"No," Bonnie said, and Maxine, misunderstanding, said, "Well, plenty. Any of them would. I've been thinking," she said, "and I don't think it's right to turn your back on a gift."
"No," Bonnie said again, still in the middle of the garden but giving all of her attention to Maxine; and Maxine was about to press harder, even while knowing it to be a mistake, but the children came bursting from out of the woods, whooping and singing, then pausing at what they understood instinctively was a scene of conflict before recognizing Maxine, whom they had not seen in a long time.
They hurried over to hug her, calling out her name; softening her, in that regard, yet sharpening the ache, the terror, as she came to know further that which Bonnie had chosen and why she had chosen it.
Maxine's own children were back in West Memphis, with a babysitter. Why, she wondered, had she not thought to bring them?
They shelled peas that night, as they had when they were children. Brownie sat in the big overstuffed recliner, watching a baseball game, and Bonnie and Maxine side by side on the couch in an uneasy truce, fingers working quickly, rarely even having to look down. It seemed to Maxine that there was nothing in the world that would not remind her of music, and of their career—the Washington Senator she had dated was not playing that night but was sitting on the bench, having been demoted—but neither Bonnie nor Brownie commented on it, as if having forgotten, and they all three watched the game in contented silence while the children played board games upstairs.
The room filled steadily with the green flesh aroma of the split hulls, the fiber mushy sometimes beneath the shellers' thumbnails, and they all three worked in unified silence, lulled by the trance of the hunter-gatherer, proceeding moment by moment into the uncertain future, against which any stockpiling was always only a partial solution. The pleasure and gratification of ancient tasks.
That night there was a summer storm, and each of them awakened to the sound of limbs and branches landing on the tin roof, followed by the shooting-gallery drum of hail. Bonnie got up and went out onto the porch, worried for her garden, but there was nothing to be done; she knew she would just have to wait for morning, and hope that the broad leaves of her plants and the care with which she spaced them would be sufficient to protect the underlying vegetables. Brownie came out onto the porch with her briefly to admire the lightning, put his arm around her, and told her it would be all right.
"She wants to go back," Bonnie said, and Brownie nodded and said, "You had to know that she would." They stood there smelling the scent of fresh storm-clipped foliage—basil, tomatoes, parsley, dill—and with a tremble in her voice, Bonnie said, "I'm afraid it's going to be all ruined," but Brownie rubbed her back and said, "Nonsense, you've seen storms worse than this before. Don't worry," and then went back to bed, craving, as ever, sleep, working from a lifetime deficit he would never quite be able to catch up on.
In her room, Maxine cursed the storm's sound and pulled the pillows over her head, and worried about her drive home. The power went out sometime after midnight, but by that time she was asleep again, dreaming that she was a child at home and that none of the fame had occurred yet and none of the unhappiness; and when she next awoke, the sun was up high. It was midmorning, Brownie was long gone, off to work, and the coffee brewed in the kitchen was already too strong to drink. She poured a glass of orange juice and went out into the garden, where Bonnie, who had been working since dawn, was just finishing the cleanup.
Neat piles of leaves and limbs were stacked for burning, and Bonnie had gathered all of the shredded parts of her garden, had salvaged the vegetables that had been cut or clipped or partially bruised by the storm. There were still drifts of hail in the yard and in her garden, so that it looked as if she were working amid fields of snow, but the sun was melting those patches quickly and all the world was steaming; and despite being out in the hail, Bonnie was sweating.
There was an electricity in the storm-scrubbed air, and Maxine was ready to walk to town if necessary to secure some vodka for the orange juice. The children were still sleeping, but she had to get on the road. She would ask the question, even knowing full well what the answer would be, and then she would leave and would try to figure something else out; though how she could push on without the other two parts of her sound, she had no idea, knew only that the orange juice tasted flat and unsubstantial.
"I was thinking," she said, "what about a reduced schedule? Maybe just each spring," she said, and then, remembering the garden, "or each fall, once the children are back in school."
"Maxine," Bonnie said, with a quick flame of anger that even now she regrets, "it's over." Bonnie was clutching a handful of plants that had been cut down by the storm, and her temper, her anger, seemed to her to be coming from the new-lashed soil itself. "We had more than our fair share," she said. "Nobody can take that away, but it's gone now. You go ahead and do what you want, but I'm done. I don't want any more to do with it. I want to remember it how it was.
"Things end," Bonnie said. "You've got to stop clinging to it. You've got to find something else worthwhile in your life." She paused, knowing she had said enough, but it was like there was some kind of momentum now, in the opening-up, that wouldn't let her. "It's pathetic," she said. "Nobody wants to hear us anymore. I don't want to hear us anymore."
Maxine just stood there as if cast to stone. The garden was sparkling again but the steam made it look like it was burning. She stared at her sister—her little sister, whom she had saved—and for a moment wanted to say I understand; and for a moment, feeling the whip of Bonnie's words, and their truth, she wanted to say I forgive you, for she knew how much Bonnie would regret, later, having said them.
But those were not the words that came out. As if speaking in another's voice, or from another's heart, Maxine did the only thing she had ever done when hurt, which was to fight back. " Sure" she said, her voice dripping with scorn now, "go ahead and say it: I fucked up. You always picked the right guy, and I always picked the wrong one. Go ahead and say it: I told you so." Maxine gestured toward the garden, then up at the house. "You with your damned perfect life," she said.
"All right," Bonnie said slowly, looking straight at her, eyes glittering, and Maxine wondered, with shock, Is she enjoying it, is she savoring it? Even now, in the remembering, she cannot be sure.
"All right," Bonnie said again, speaking evenly now—finally getting somewhat of a grip on her temper— "I told you so."
There wasn't a whole lot of room left to negotiate after that. Maxine turned and hurried up to the house to pack. Bonnie wanted to apologize, wanted to follow her up to the house and explain, but she knew where that would lead, to more arguing and pleading, and that it might awaken the children.
This is the kindest thing, Bonnie told herself, and bent down and went back to work in her garden, trying, in only the course of a day, to get it back to where it had been.