I stood up. “I’m the one percent,” I yelled, “so it can happen to you! Let’s be abstinent.” I was a witness.
I always felt that need as a preacher’s daughter. If I thought that was a lot of responsibility, try being a preacher’s wife. Mom was the first to tell me her life was all about business. The business of the church, and then the business of their children. And then it all ended, and she hadn’t seen it coming. She spent decades putting her brilliant business mind to work for our family behind the scenes. Dad had the ideas, she would fine-tune them and pull them down a bit from the stratosphere. Then Dad would sell it. He was the pitchman who could sell anything. If my dad can make people believe in God, I always thought at the start of my career, he can surely make people believe in me.
He did for a long time, but I had to fire him as my manager in 2012. He thought I was following my mother’s wishes, but he had made some bad deals for me. Just stupid stuff that people promised to him and he believed. Bridges were burned, and I didn’t know how many until I tried to cross them. It took about five times to really fire him before the message stuck. The first time I chickened out and did it in an email. I finally just said it to his face.
Now, in the gym before the concert, I realized my dad was talking to me. I turned to face him and answered, something about the performance. His face changed, and I realized he smelled the vodka on my breath. His eyes widened in surprise, and then narrowed in a look of concern or pity, I wasn’t sure. I turned quickly, glancing at two cupcake moms eyeing me. They sat next to each other and chatted through smiles as they went up from my shoes to my dress to my hair. I smiled back at them and they looked away. I wished I had a girlfriend here with me. I blamed myself for not making more of an effort to get to know other moms at school, but I also knew I was barely hanging on. I just wasn’t capable of small talk with strangers.
I leaned over Ace to whisper to Eric. “I feel like everyone’s staring at me,” I said through a closed smile that matched the cupcake moms’. He gave me a look that told me that was because they were. My husband can always tell what’s on my mind.
Finally, the kids started the performance and everyone cheered. Maxwell spotted us in the crowd, and I let out a “Whoop” when we made eye contact. I was so proud of her. It’s enough that this piece of my heart walked around outside of me, but to see her be so confident and happy was a blessing. I felt real joy. I was pulled into being present, forgetting everyone else around me. Just there. I wished it could be like that all the time.
When I performed, I was always present, but it had been years since I was onstage. My kids had never even seen me perform. The only time Eric had seen me sing in front of an audience was when I was promoting my second Christmas album in 2010, but that had been on a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float surrounded by dancing muffins and gingerbread men. Eric couldn’t really get a sense of me as an artist in that setting. For about a year, I’d been writing and recording music in my home studio—raw and from the heart. It was music I was really proud of. But I still worried that to my family I was like a pop star in theory only.
The assembly ended, and my anxiety returned. Stronger now. Parents descended from the bleachers to greet their kids. The gymnasium seemed brighter, and even louder. I needed to get out of there.
Maxwell came over and we gave her huge hugs before the students needed to go back to class. Ace looked up at her, his eyes wide, and I remembered that no matter how well you know someone, seeing someone perform temporarily changes how you see them. I became very conscious of what I wanted to tell her. I’d read enough parenting books to know not to say what I’d heard as a kid from people who meant well: “You looked beautiful.” Or, “You were perfect.” Instead, I told her I loved seeing her perform. “You looked so happy up there.”
My dad started in, praising Maxwell to the heavens. I looked away. She and her friends headed back to her classroom, and Ace started pulling Eric to the door. They were going to throw around a football, and I was happy to cheer them on. But there was something else I had to do.
“Dad, come to the house,” I said. “I’ll ride with you.”
He has this way of cocking his head when he is excited, a constant movement that shows all the energy inside him. “Of course,” he said.
“I wanna play you some of my music.”
As we made our way to the house, I could barely talk. I got Dad talking about the new car and his photography hobby and business, which he could talk about for hours. It was how I negotiated a lot of conversations with people at that time. I listened to every word, but only chimed in now and again to keep them going.
For the past year, I’d both dreaded and dreamt of letting my dad hear this music. As my manager, my father heard every demo I ever made. He knew all my music before it was even produced. But I hadn’t told him I had been writing. And I had not just been making music about what I’d been through in life, there were songs about him.
We got to the house at about 9:30, and Dad had to navigate his Mercedes around the party rental trucks already lining up. That night I was set to host a Halloween party. Eric and I had become famous for our extravagant parties, especially on Halloween. Every year I posted a photo on my socials of the family in costume, and in 2011 I even announced my second pregnancy in a Halloween post of me holding my bump in a tight mummy costume. I put pressure on myself to make each year bigger and better than the last. My friend Stephanie, who I’ve known since fifth grade, is an amazing event planner and I asked her to put together a Halloween party that would also celebrate our friend Koko’s birthday. In our circle of friends, I have always treated every birthday as a sacred event. I always collected the candles they’d wished on, carefully placing them in a Ziploc bag to give to them to hold until the wish came true. My friends joked that they had drawers full of ungranted wishes, but if they refused to take them, I secretly held them for them. I couldn’t give up on their wishes.
As soon as my dad and I got into the house, I got a new glittercup going. There was comfort in the weight of a full tumbler, the slosh of the ice as I took sips. Liquid courage to go downstairs to the recording studio. Ozzy Osbourne had it built when he lived there before me. He was so sweet, but let’s just say we have a different design aesthetic. The studio was all black and scary when I moved in. I made it mine, lightening the room and overlapping pretty rugs to create a sound cocoon.
I took a rolly chair at the console, bending my leg to put one foot up on the chair as I absently swiveled back and forth. I kept catching eyes with the idols that I’d put up to inspire me. A blown-up Polaroid self-portrait by Stevie Nicks in the 1970s, wild-haired and wild-hearted, leaning into the camera to fix her lipstick. Keith Richards smirking at me in sunglasses, sitting on a private jet in L.A. with Ron Wood in 1979. An eight-by-ten of Led Zeppelin in 1970, the four of them just on the verge of becoming rock gods. What would they all make of a pop star afraid to even press play for her daddy?
He was quiet, as if he were afraid of changing my mind. In hindsight, I am sure I seemed petrified. I realized, within that year of writing, how much I went through without letting him know. His choice to leave my mother was like a bomb going off in my life, and I still found myself clinging to whatever I could hold on to. The feeling of displacement made my anxiety so much worse, and I drank more to quiet those thoughts. He didn’t mean to hurt all of us so badly, but I knew for a fact that he had realized his decision would have consequences. I know he knew that because that’s what he had taught me. But I had kept that from him. And now I needed him to hear that I was singing about him.