could play backup on a few of the songs in concert. When Emma had heard this, she’d had to bite her lip to keep from pointing out, “Gertie didn’t write to them, either.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Stu would say in response.
Gertie was now sitting cross-legged at the side of the stage. Her back was very straight, and the placidity of her face at rest was so open it was unnerving. Emma thought she looked like someone who had been living on the fringes of society, though the homeliness of her canvas-sack outfit no doubt played a role in this impression. Next to Gertie, Emma felt ordinary. Diminished. A little foolish, too. It was the way she usually felt around vegans—who, Emma was sure, probably had it right after all. But Gertie was beyond vegan. Gertie probably strangled rabbits with her bare hands.
Emma tried to ignore the dustiness of the stage as she lowered herself to sit down next to the older woman. After she’d dropped out, Gertie had lived in tents, in shelters, and on the street. A floor probably counted as high luxury. “Did you ever get a tattoo, Gertie?”
“No,” she said. Emma half expected a hippie screed about toxic ink, but the other woman only reached over and patted her hand. “I change my mind too much for that. Of course, I never had a baby either.” Gertie’s eyes were wide and sincere. She even seemed to blink less than other people. “Babies used to be a way to tame a woman. And I always needed to be free.”
Emma flinched and glanced away, watching two roadies readying a piano in the wings. She didn’t know what she’d expected to hear, but it had felt important to speak to Gertie, as though she were some holy woman come down from the mountain. Now Emma only felt nettled. “How’d that work out for you?”
Gertie’s face was as mild as ever. “I got more freedom than I bargained for.” Songs on her original album had hinted at a distrust of modern life, but she’d told Stu that her turn away from the world at large had more to do with a bad LSD trip than anything else. “You’re braver than I ever was.”
“I don’t know about that.” Emma hardly knew how to describe herself anymore. The pregnancy weather was a kind of separation that felt like it was as much from herself as from Stu. With every day that went by, she felt less in control of her own life. Deep in her bones, Emma feared the baby would force them off course. “It was brave of you to reach out to Stu. But it’s bad timing for the comeback, isn’t it? What with a deadly virus going around and all. Kind of a dangerous time to rejoin society.”
Gertie pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them where they bulged up under her dress. “Maybe,” she said. “I can’t say I know much about joining or rejoining. I never even joined a band! Didn’t want to compromise when it came to the music. Or anything else for that matter.” She shifted her legs back out in a stretch, oblivious to any possibility of giving offence. “But the truth is I think things are coming to an end.”
Emma closed her eyes. The poor woman had been living in the trees for years. There was no need to take her counsel about artistic integrity or anything else. But Gertie’s words still felt like needles under her skin. “That’s cheery,” she managed.
“I shouldn’t say that to a pregnant lady, should I? But we’re too connected to keep going the way we have been. Everyone can see who has what and who doesn’t.” Without asking permission, she placed a hand lightly on Emma’s belly as her face eased into a smile. “I might be a paranoid old hippie,” said Gertie, “but it’s time to come together, child.”
* * *
The pain was a trip, Emma decided. It was a trip because it was realer than real. It was an overload of new sensation. It was stinging and burning, a trial by fire. She was being born again, like a phoenix. Maybe that was what life should be about—change and challenge and new experiences.
“Are you sure about this, Em?” Ben was leaning up against the inside of the band’s trailer with his arms folded across his chest, a pose that showed off both his defined drummer’s biceps and