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Overview
Just out of grad school, Laney is ready to embark on a new phase of her life. Leaving California to head back east, she’s got three thousand miles to reflect on her past before moving ahead to the future. With a box of mixed tapes at the ready, she envisions a trip spent reminiscing about first crushes, high school, family issues, and college loves and losses—her most precious memories. What she doesn’t picture is her mother in the seat beside her—which is exactly what happens when her mom invites herself along for the ride. Soon, Laney’s giving her mother a crash course in retro hits from her formative years—and a history of her life that her mom never knew about. As they roll through the American landscape, Laney and her mother discover that their lives are no one-hit wonders.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480452312 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 11/12/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
<DIV><P>Emily Franklin is the author of <I>The Girls' Almanac</I> and <I>Liner Notes</I> and numerous novels for young adults. She has edited three previous anthologies, including <I>It's a Wonderful Lie: 26 Truths About Life in Your Twenties</I>.</P></DIV>
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels
Side A
Blue Sky
— Tom Waits
C'mon, C'mon
— Sheryl Crow
Fountain of Sorrow
— Jackson Browne
The Gambler
— Kenny Rogers
No Sleep Till Brooklyn
— Beastie Boys
Summer Breeze
— Seals and Crofts
The Piña Colada Song
— Rupert Holmes
Gardening at Night
— R.E.M.
Paris, Texas
— Ry Cooder
Carefree Highway
— Gordon Lightfoot
Sneaking Sally (Through the Alley)
— Palmer
Glory Bound
— Martin Sexton
Side B
Both Sides Now
— Judy Collins
Isn't She Lovely
— Stevie Wonder
Play Me
— Neil Diamond
I Will Be in Love with You
— L. Taylor
Empty Pages
— Traffic
Sister Golden Hair
— America
Taxi
— Harry Chapin
Whenever I Call You Friend
— Loggins
I Saw Her Again
— The Mamas and the Papas
Remember the Feeling
— Chicago
For You
— Bruce Springsteen
Can't Let Go
— Lucinda Williams
These are the two cross-country driving scenarios I have pictured:
One :
My best girlfriends and I drive through random states and pick up crappy souvenirs from each place — pens that undress women when you turn them upside down, glass balls filled with snow that flutters over some landmark, shot glasses from saloons called things like the Dirt Cowboy. With the windows rolled down, we listen to seventies favorites like "Summer Breeze," "Hot Child in the City," and "Right Down the Line."
We say things like, "Gerry Rafferty? I always forget he sings that. I love that song!" And when "Same Auld Lang Syne" comes on, and it's late and dark and the lights of Vegas or Tahoe are just appearing over the dash, we cry a little, since it's such a sad song. But then, we gamble and eat steak dinners for $1.99 and stay in a plush hotel and win big. Or, we go to some run-down bar and play pinball and check in at the Blue Bell Inn, roadside, where we meet handsome, smart guys who are also doing the cross-country thing, but with eighties tunes. Together, we're our own not-sold-in-stores CD.
Two:
Without a shirt and while holding my hand, my boyfriend is a safe, confident driver. Past all the tourist spots like Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, even Savannah, we drive for hours a day and sleep at bed and breakfasts with rich cultural histories. At night, there are no televisions, so we read our books out loud to each other. We aren't sure of our destination, only that we'll know when we get there. The landscape will reach out to us and we will be sure that this spot is where we are meant to be. Also, the boyfriend is very good-looking and an excellent mechanic.
But what happens is:
Neither the friends nor the Road Trip Guy — who has never actually existed — can make it. Sure, my girlfriends and I had always talked about a cross-country trip, but the reality of hovering at thirty years old didn't leave us the time to do it. Somehow we'd missed our opportunity at music video-style driving. Now we're simply too old or too busy to sling a backpack into the trunk and get our tank-topped selves into a convertible. Or maybe that's just my excuse.
At the very least, we're all scattered: Red-haired Casey, my college friend, is in London working as a professional puppeteer. Tall, glamorous Maggie's off in Hollywood — her role of being lifelong friend to me is tempered with her role as Superstar Wife to People magazine's "Sexiest Man Ever." Completing my group of friends-as-seen-in-a-hair-care-advertisement is Shana, whose brown hair is perpetually a different shade. Shana who is meant for a road trip like this. Shana, my funny, irreverent summer camp friend, who isn't here because — well, that's another issue altogether.
What I do know is that my girlfriends and I would have made the perfect shampoo copy — you know, the glossy photo spread ones where each woman has different hair so you can tell them apart, or identify with the one who's most like you. "Oh — that's me! I'm the curly brunette!" or "She's got a ponytail just like mine."
And as for my Imaginary Road Trip Man — he might be out there, somewhere. But if I've ever met him — my ideal — I probably didn't recognize him. Sometimes I think the greatest guy around could be right in front of me and I'd pick the guy next to him. Or maybe I'd pick the right guy, but manage somehow to mess it up.
So, since I am alone — please not forever, but at this point who knows — I've looked at the road trip as time to myself. Or maybe that's just my rationalizing why I'm making the three-thousand-mile drive by myself, unkissed, unadored in the pit of Southwest canyons. Unappreciated in some revolting motel that, unlike in fantasy, really is disgusting with mothy sheets and someone's forgotten underwear in the shower.
Of course this isn't how I planned this trip. But here's what I figure:
If I can't have Fantasy Guy along for the trip, I'll be the heroine of my own never-filmed John Hughes movie, cute and perky with a sound track to boot, or — moody, quirky, half filmed in black and white to the tune of Ry Cooder's eerie melodies following me as I drive through the rock and sand west. To make like a camera and film myself — instead of being a part of it and feeling my way. But it's hard — how do you know why you do what you do? And even when you figure it out, what to do with the knowledge?
My artistic motives professor made us start our final year of graduate school training with our backs to him. Each of us stood in the bright hall facing huge empty canvases. He instructed us to start even though we had no oils, no watercolors, no charcoal, just a dry brush.
"I want you to create here," the professor said. He'd been there since the late fifties and rumor had it that he'd smoked pot with beat poets and had his share of undergrads visit his tapestried office, but we all listened to him as he paced back and forth, his paint-splattered shoes echoing on the linoleum. "When you can't make something work, when you can't figure out your motivation, you become paralyzed. Start with all the images of paintings, of art, of creating something whole, and then stop the fragmenting process..."
I don't remember everything else he said. I just remember standing, looking at the plain white sheet ahead of me and thinking, This is what I have to do — not just on the canvas, but in my life.
When I'd started my advanced degree in art restoration, when I'd taken chemistry and memorized cleaning calculations, I felt like I was accomplishing something — fixing paintings, degriming unappreciated sculptures, helping. But now I'd finished my degree, earned my papers, and lined up a job back in Boston and I wasn't sure I could do it — make the art or my life whole.
Maybe the hippie-professor guy was right, maybe I've patched up enough items — myself included — and now I'm ready to move forward, not distancing myself, making my past into vignettes, but cohering my memories so where I've been and where I'm heading fit together.
So this was my plan. I would pack up my things, ship them back east with the ease of hot sweaty moving men, and I would hit the road with my coffee and snacks, with my music, and try somehow to figure out where I came up empty — and how to fix it.
And I wouldn't be truly alone — I had my mix tapes. Each one signified a piece of my life — two summer months, a year in high school, a boy I no longer knew, a friendship that had crumbled — and this made for excellent time travel. I could listen to each one and be right back there, and maybe regain whatever it was I left behind. In traipsing back into these memories, these specific periods in time, maybe I could sort out how I came to be here — three thousand miles away from where I started, and no real idea either how to get back or what exactly I hoped to find once I did.
Of course, I could fly back to Boston where my new job lies in wait. Where I know I have to face facts — get an apartment (alone), live at my parents' (with them) until I find a place, and go to a wedding (also alone) where Marcus (call him my Backup Guy) is the groom, and possibly reconcile the fact that I might never speak to Shana again (more me alone, but as a withered old woman with no other old granny — we planned on aging together — to dance with). So, sure. I could fly back to Boston and get it over with. But I think it's time I took this trip — alone or otherwise.
Of course, like my Road Trip Guy, or my fabulous girlfriends who could magically drop their lives to join me on my journey, my alone time vanished, too. But not in the way I imagined, not when I got the phone call that my parents were in town, not when they announced they were coming over. Something in my father's tone let me know they had something to tell me — something that I knew meant a major change in my plans.
Copyright © 2003 by Emily Franklin