Chapter 23
The trick about the contract turned out to be getting Mom to sign it. Or rather, working up to asking her to sign it. Since I hadn’t told her much about Auburn the past year, I knew I’d feel awkward just bringing it up. Like, “Oh, by the way, my band is being offered a provisional contract. But I need you to sign it before my dreams can come true.”
I waited until a night when both Kent and Mom were home, so I’d only have to explain things once. They were in the living room, watching some show on TV that I didn’t remember the name of. It was a reality show, judging by the cut-aways to confessionals/interviews, but I’d never seen it before.
I took a single deep breath and passed through the threshold. The two of them were sitting on the couch, so engrossed in the show that my only greeting was a half-glance from Mom. I had the contract in my hands, but she must have missed it when she looked.
“Hey guys,” I said, holding up the packet. “I, um… I sorta did something.”
That got their attention. My mom’s brow wrinkled as she reached for the remote. Another second, and the TV went quiet. “Honey, what did you do?”
“Well, I—I mean, our band as a whole—we sort of got… Here.” I held the packet out for her to take. It was hard to keep from breaking into a wide grin.
Mom flipped through it quickly. Behind her, Kent tried to scan the pages too, but he didn’t have a good angle. I doubted he caught anything by the time Mom closed the packet and set it on your lap. “Ashley, what did you do?” she repeated.
“We got signed! Well, kinda. There was this woman the day we tried out to perform at Cat’s Cradle—we performed at Cat’s Cradle, by the way, and it actually went pretty well—and when I came in to pick up the new Queen Anne’s album the store owner told me that she bought all of our CDs and left her card, so I called her and she set up a meeting. And it was actually supposed to be…”
She held up a hand to stop my verbal spillage. “Hold on, I’m not sure I follow. Could you start again, from the top?”
I sighed; all I wanted to talk about was the latest development, and getting into the details didn’t entice me as much. I could tell the conversation was going to be a long one, if I had to revisit every event that had led to our sorta-signing. The only decent furniture in the room was the couch Mom and Kent were already occupying, so I just leaned against the wall.
“Okay, what was the last thing you remember about our band?” I asked.
Kent answered for her, even though we could barely see each other from our respective positions. “You came up with a name.”
“Um, yeah…” So this was going to be a long conversation. “Well, after that, we started looking for gigs. And it took forever to find someone who would even let us audition. The old man who owns Cat’s Cradle finally did, but it didn’t go well.” I paused, since Mom looked like she wanted to say something.
“You should have asked me,” she said, “I could’ve convinced my boss to let you play. Right, Kent? We could have helped you out with that…”
It sounded like she’d assumed I was talking about something that had only happened a few months ago; I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was closer to a year and a half. “That’s okay, I think we learned more from the audition. Anyway, he said we should try out again once we had more experience. So we tried to play downtown, and the principal saw us and offered to let us perform at one of the assemblies. But that didn’t turn out well.”
I wanted to say more, to tell Mom how it had felt to fail in front of every single one of my peers. But that would have meant going into too much detail for what I wanted to be a quick story. “Anyway, even though none of those were that great, when we tried out for the old man again he said he’d let us play. So we did, and we made these CDs to sell.” Mom’s frown made me pause again.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “When was all of this?”
“That was a few weeks ago. But the performance at school was last semester.” I could practically see her doing the mental math, trying to figure out just how long I’d been withholding news about Auburn.
After a moment, she nodded for me to continue.
“And then, like I said, I went to pick up the Queen Anne’s CD, and the old man told me someone had bought all of our CDs. Which seemed a little crazy to me, but it turned out to be true. Diane said she bought them to get our attention; she works at Almond Records down off Detroit Street. When we went there it turned out she wasn’t actually an agent, so we had to deal with this jerk Barry. He gave us a contract though, and said that if we do well at the shows these next few months he’ll sign us.” I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to finally be done with the story.
Mom blinked a few times. “Whoa, that’s… A lot to take in. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“Because you’ve been busy with Kent,” I said. “And besides, I didn’t feel like there was much to report.” That wasn’t quite true; in some ways I knew I’d wanted to punish Mom by withholding that side of my life from her.
Her brow drew down as she looked back to the contract. “Okay. I guess I’m just a little hurt that you didn’t tell me any of this while it was going on. Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to tell you, but there was never a good time. You were either at work, tired from work, or hanging out with Kent. When was I supposed to tell you?”
Judging from the scowl that leapt to Mom’s face, I could tell I should have omitted that last sentence. “Whenever you felt like it. I always listen to you, don’t I? Even when I’m with Kent.” She gestured to the TV to prove her point. “Even when we’re doing something else. I make time for you.”
“Yeah, I know you try.” As hard as it was to swallow my feelings—which I was surprised to discover included a fair amount of anger—I made myself do it.