The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane (7 page)

They chatted idly for a few minutes, while Carnegie packed school bags, and attempted the detangling of hair. Looking down she realized Sienna once again had shoes on the wrong feet and odd socks were just adding to the frustration. She tried to angle the phone so she could rest it on her shoulder while she worked hurriedly to correct her daughters look.

“Nate, here… talk to my daughter Olivia for a sec. I just need to fix a fashion disaster on my youngest.” She handed the phone to Olivia who had been hovering, along with her sister.

Both were fascinated at who it might be at the end of that phone that held their mothers interest, and theirs with such intensity. Olivia put the phone on speaker, refusing to have this moment without her twin sister Sobian, just in case, it was really him.

“Hello.” She said nervously.

“Hi! Olivia is it? How are you?” He asked innocently, his American accent booming back clear and obvious.

“Are you
THE
Nate Bowman, as in…
THE
Nate Bowman?” She had to know before the conversation continued. Neither of them were really expecting the answer.

“Yeah, I’m Nate Bowman.” Well he was. What else could he say?

“As in Sheeva’s Disciples’ Nate Bowman?” Now it was Sobian’s turn to start the interrogation.

“Yeah, that’s my band. We are in Europe at the moment, just doing some interviews and an acoustic set tomorrow night before the main concert in Germany.” He answered casually.

If they hadn’t been frozen to the floor, they may have dropped the phone. It didn’t make sense. Nate Bowman had called their mother at 7.20am on a Tuesday, for no apparent reason. Now, they were talking to him via speaker phone. They grabbed each other’s hand, and then the unthinkable happened. They began to scream like wailing Banshees.

Carnegie looked up from the feet she had just corrected and ran over, removing the phone from their hands. They continued to scream, with a stream of tears in their eyes.

“I’m so sorry, my girls just went insane.” She said to Nate, so apologetically.

“It’s OK. It happens all the time, I’m used to it.” He replied. He had changed the phone to the other ear, since the other one had a ringing in it, which may or may not go away in the next hour.

“Well, it’s your call Nate, is there something you wanted?”

“No, just thought I would touch base, and tell you again how much I enjoyed your story.” There was silence for a moment.

“I’m so pleased someone likes it.” Was about all Carnegie could think to say, she looked over her shoulder at her oldest two, who were in recovery from what looked like a nuclear holocaust.

“I take it that, my daughters know who you are, even if I don’t.”

“Appears so, how about I call you another time, maybe a different time to this. It seems that you have priorities in the morning.” Nate could hear that he had disrupted the flow of her gauntlet.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea, well thanks for the call. Have a great day.”

“Oh... it’s night here. Well, late afternoon anyway.” It was just something he said to hold the conversation together, before it ended badly.

“Oh, of course... Sorry about that. Well have a great night, and thanks for the call. Bye Nate.” She said casually.

“Bye Carnegie, and thanks, for the chat.” He hung up, pleased he had called, yet a little nervous that it hadn’t been the right thing to do. Time would tell.

Carnegie Lane turned to her daughters, still not recognizing the magnitude of what that call had done to them.

“Come on you two, you have a bus to catch.” She said, trying to restore order.

“MUM! That was NATE BOWMAN! Like… how do you know him?” Sobian asked, still shaking.

“I don’t, it’s a long story, now get your shoes on.”

“MUM!!! Do you know who he is?” Olivia was continuing the interrogation that would not end until they had answers.

“He’s in a band, some band, and I sent something off to his sister a while ago, and now we email.”

“You email him? What could you have possibly sent to his sister in the first place, that lead to Nate Bowman calling for a chat? What’s going on?” Both of them had their hands on their hips waiting for an answer. For a moment, it looked like they were the parents, and she was the child, busted for escaping the window in her room late at night.

“It’s a long story, I wrote a book, well it’s not a book yet, but I hope it will be. I sent it to Katalie Bowman in London, she’s an agent, and somehow, he read it. He emailed me a few times and told me what he thought of it. That’s all. It’s nothing; now get your shoes on.” They grinned from ear to ear looking at each other.

“You wrote a book? Are we in it?” They asked, determined not to move until the revelations of this morning were well and truly on the table.

“No, it’s fantasy fiction, and you will be fantasy fiction if you don’t hurry up.” She started to mobilize them, which worked to a certain degree.

“Do you know what Nate Bowman looks like?” They questioned, knowing it may come as a shock for her to recognize who it was she was talking to, since it was clear, she had no idea.

“Nope, wouldn’t know him if I fell over him in the street.” Carnegie Lane replied casually and honestly.

Sobian grabbed her hand and led her to their bedroom. The walls were covered with posters. Even though she had cleaned this room a thousand times, she had never paid any attention to the walls, or even who it was that her children had decided was their idol of the moment.

“See this wall Mum; this is our dedication to Nate Bowman. The rest of the room is our dedication to his band. So you see… Now you know. He isn’t just a someone. He is to most of the world what Robert Smith is to you. Mum…you
know
Nate Bowman! Don’t you know what that means?”

Carnegie could hear her, although she wasn’t really listening. She was staring at photos of her new friend, wondering how she had missed this. She sat down on the bed, mesmerized.

“How old is he?” She questioned. He didn’t look a day over thirty, if that.

“He’s forty one. Nearly the same age as you.” Olivia said, pleased she had her facts right.

It took Carnegie a moment or two to get herself together, but she did it. Then once again she became the mother to two daughters, who were hoping for a day off.

“Well, that’s all very interesting, now go! Get your lunches and off to school.” She said with authority as she got up and left the room without looking back. She didn’t need to look back, Nate Bowman was now permanently imprinted in her brain. She suddenly had a moment of being star struck. If he were to call her back, she only hoped she didn’t say something stupid. She also felt an overwhelming desire to go to the gym.

Carnegie didn’t know it then, but flying in a mail cargo container in the belly of a British Airways plane, was a letter from Katalie Bowman, slowly making its way to her place. The letter was offering her management with all the appropriate paperwork included to formalize the invitation.

The world continues to turn, regardless of what is happening in the background of your life. With the kids gone, Carnegie turned to the bathroom and began scrubbing it with rubber gloves and bleaches not really fit for human consumption. Yet her world
was
moving forward, even if it felt like it was still. It was only Tuesday, and the repetition of her life blended every day to become one. She didn’t know about the package, and what you don’t know, can’t change anything. That includes housework.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Carnegie Lane, mother of four, idol to inanimate objects, almost Author, was about to be represented by one of the most prestigious literary agencies in London.

I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesdays grey and Wednesday too, Thursday I don’t care about you it’s

Friday I’m in Love

“
Friday I’m in Love”

Written by The Cure

The Cure – Wish Album 1992

5

After
the children were gone and the bathroom was squeaky clean, Carnegie decided to go and check her email. Just in case. There wasn’t one, and she was almost disappointed. She decided to YouTube some songs, this time, they weren’t blasts from the past. She looked up Sheeva’s Disciples, and clicked on one. There were pages and pages to get through. To her, having to discover new music was daunting. She had, for so long, been caught in a cycle of repetitive memory.

As the song began to play, she decided she liked it. There was bass, drums, rhythm guitar, and there was lead. Then, there was an amazing vocal. She went into the girls rooms and looked through their CD collection. She found five Sheeva’s Disciples CD’s, which amazed her. Most bands these days were lucky to have two, let alone five. She grabbed one randomly, and went and put it into her large boom box stereo, the one with the speakers fit for a small stadium.

For the rest of the day, she discovered a new band, a new sound, and it gave her a lease on life she never knew possible. Time flew along with the increments of the songs; one by one she made her way through four CD’s.

The bus dropped off the kids at the corner of their street. They could hear the music booming from nine houses away, and even by their standards it was loud. The older two looked at each other, bewildered. It wasn’t The Cure, or The Police, or anything that to them felt ancient and primitive. She was listening to
their
music. The old lady at number fifteen watched the bewilderment of the girls as they approached her house. She was in her front yard attending to her rose garden, somewhat unsuccessfully.

“Your mother does that all day long. No rest for any of us. It’s just not right.” She was attempting to gossip, it didn’t work.

In fact, the girls weren’t listening to her at all. There were still too many things that needed answering, starting with the mystery book. The younger two just followed on behind, oblivious to whatever it was that had possessed their older sisters this week. To the little ones, the twins were odd, and although they loved them, they had no intention of really getting to know the individual personalities that were hidden behind one persona. Everyone got their names mixed up, every one asked, which one was which. To Sienna and Connor, it was obvious, so they just found the continual questions annoying.

When they walked in the door, they turned off the music. Their mother walked out of Sienna’s room, which she had been cleaning, and greeted them joyfully. They put the kettle on, fed their little brother and sister cake, then they made themselves and their mother a cup of coffee.

“Come and sit at the table with us Mum, I think it’s time we had a little chat.” said Sobian in a tone mimicking her mother as if it had been artfully practiced.

Carnegie went over and sat with her girls. She had a feeling this was going to come, so now was as good a time as any to fill her daughters in on what her life had been like, especially for the past year. The girls were only fifteen when their father left. They’d really only had a shell of a mother since then. The sudden change did need explanation.

Carnegie went to her room and brought out the printed manuscript of her book, the title page stared back at them:

“
Impossible things
” by Carnegie Lane.

She told them about the dream, about the idea, how it had consumed her every day for a month. They joked that to them, she didn’t seem much different and hadn’t even noticed she was even more absent than usual. Then she told them how she searched and found an agent. One single agent she chose from a photograph, that she believed was the right one. It was truly a coincidence that Katalie Bowman was sister to Nate Bowman.

She told them about the emails, and how really, he was just being nice. Both of the girls agreed that maybe their mother was good enough to be an Author.

“You do realize Mum, that if you become a friend to Nate Bowman, we get free tickets to the shows, and our social standing in the whole world will change from average to perfect.’ Carnegie laughed at their innocence.

Her experience with bands in her life so far, had been nothing but disappointing. Especially when she had been the one encouraging most of them in the first place, only to be left on the side lines when it mattered.

“You do realize that your reading way too much into this whole situation. What I think, is we just wait and see. Right now, I don’t even have an agent, I don’t have my manuscript accepted to be published, so therefore, I’m still just… ‘
me with a story
’. As for Nate Bowman, I’m sure he is just being polite.” Carnegie sighed a little as she got up and started making pancakes for dinner.

It had become a ritual in their home to have pancakes for dinner, not for breakfast or for any other reason.

Those two girls had a different idea completely, and if their mother wasn’t going to use her new found position in life, then they would use it for her. It could have been the beginning of the end for both of them, proclaiming their way to stardom before it had physically presented itself. They were too young to see it coming, and Carnegie Lane was too off the planet to even notice.