Pretending to Dance by Chamberlain Diane

Author:Chamberlain, Diane [Chamberlain, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250010735
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

32

By the time we piled into the van three days later for our trip back home, Russell and I were pretty well worn out, though Daddy seemed almost perky. His publicist had called our hotel that morning to say how thrilled—that was the word she used—the publisher was with the response to the tour. She’d spoken with the six bookstores we visited and they were happy with their sales, even though a couple of stores had only a few people in the audience. In those stores, I’d done my best to fill the seats, walking through the aisles in my Doc Martens, encouraging people to come listen to my dad talk about the “importance of pretending.” I thought that sounded better than “pretend therapy.” Still, while I got a few people to come listen to him, I discovered I couldn’t make people do what they didn’t want to do. I couldn’t make them buy his book. But the publisher was happy and he was happy. That was all that mattered.

Charlotte and Raleigh—the two towns where he’d had radio interviews—had the best turnouts by far.

“So, we have to remember that for the next time,” I’d said the night before, as we drove to the hotel from the book signing in Raleigh. “More radio interviews!” Neither of them responded, and I figured they were tired out and ready to crash at our latest in a string of hotels.

In general, though, the four days on the road seemed to have energized my father rather than tired him. Every time I spoke to my mother, she sounded worried and I had to constantly reassure her he was fine. In our phone call that morning, I told her he had more energy than me. That wasn’t quite true, of course, but something was definitely going on with my father. There was a lightness in him that was new. He wanted to go to Russell’s family’s pig pickin’ on the way home, too. “We have to eat somewhere,” he’d said the night before as we planned our itinerary. He’d nodded toward Russell. “I’d rather eat with your family than at another McDonald’s any day.” Although I was anxious to get home so I could talk to Chris and Stacy, if the pig pickin’ would make Daddy and Russell happy, I was all for it.

“How about some music?” Daddy said to me now, as we pulled out of the parking lot of our Raleigh hotel.

I groaned. I was really tired of his music collection and the thought of four more hours of it was almost too much for me.

“Maybe we could just listen to the radio for a while,” I suggested.

“Nah,” Russell said, “I personally haven’t gotten my fill of Willie Nelson yet.”

I laughed. Russell really had issues with some of Daddy’s taste in music and I knew he’d gotten his fill of “On the Road Again” a long time ago.

“Oh well,” Daddy said from his chair behind Russell. “If she doesn’t want to hear the new music we bought her, it’s her loss.

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