The Ohio River in Youngtown flowed clear, not like Sossity Chandler remembered it as a child, polluted with coal dust and industrial waste. The state had cleaned it well enough that her production team decided to use it as a background for a video of her latest release, which was selling well. The video would go on YouTube. Amy, her personal assistant, brought her a battle of Goose Island IPA. She sipped and watched the crew tear down cameras and sound recording equipment.
“You coming back to the hotel?” Amy asked.
“In a while. I need to be alone. The tour is starting to get to me. I’ll be back at two.”
Amy nodded. Sossity Chandler had in her a good dose of the introvert. Often, the clutter of concert tours—the shows, endless interaction with producers, fans, with her own band members and staff, the television interviews, endless conversation with agents and managers—overwhelmed her. She needed silence and needed to be alone. At such times, she went off by herself, drove, ate out alone, and sometimes went to services at an Episcopal Church that observed liturgical hours, to a library or a museum. Her times of solitude, of anonymity, restored and gave her strength to continue performing with the level of energy her audiences expected.
She watched the crew pack their equipment and drive off. Amy left. Sossity found herself alone by the riverbank. She finished off her beer, tossed the bottle in the back seat of her car, and breathed a sigh of relief, the air going out between her lips like a prayer of thankfulness.
Turning to go to her car, she noticed someone standing fifty yard or so away from her. The figure—a woman dressed in brightly colored full skirt and white blouse—waved. Sossity waved back, her curiosity stirred by the young woman’s odd dress. She had long hair and pale skin. Sossity ponder and, curious, walked over to where she stood.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” the woman—she might have been thirty—replied. “You’re Sossity Chandler, aren’t you?”
She spread her arms, palms open. “That’s me.”
“So cool to meet you. I have all your CDs. I saw you plan in Cleveland last year. I’m Deidre.”
Sossity shook hands with her. Up close, she noticed the girl’s big eyes and very long hair—it fell past her waist in a dark brown cascade. Behind her (she had not noticed this) stood a weather-beaten house. Deidre noticed her gazing at it.
“Can I invite you in for tea?” she asked.
Sossity hesitated she had spent time with several fans on this concert and was weary of meeting people, but this woman’s unique appearance and simple manner intrigued her.
“Sure.”
“My boyfriend’s here. He’s asleep and won’t bother us. Maybe I’ll wake him up. He’d probably like to meet you too.”
“If you and I have tea first and just quietly before you wake him, it’s a deal.”
Her face lit with happiness. “Sure,” she beamed, lowering her voice as if they were already inside. “We’ll be quiet. Come on. Let’s go in.”
To Sossity’s surprise, the girl took her hand. Holding hands, they walked down an overgrown flagstone path and into her cottage. The interior looked cluttered but not messy; a bit neglected but not dirty. A large central with a kitchen on one side and windows all around took up most of the house. She saw three doors, probably leading to bedrooms. Old furniture stood in the spacious room: a weather-beaten couch and chair, a dining set near the stove and refrigerator, a bookshelf and table covered with magazines and pieces of brightly colored paper, a coat tree. The windows looked out at the river. Sossity smiled.
“Nice place.”
“It belongs to my mom and mad. They let me live here. What kind of tea do you like?”
“What have you got?”
Deidre got down a cherry wood container filled with bags. Sossity selected English breakfast tea. Deidre pick chamomile. She plugged in an electric pot.
“Have a seat.” She pointed to the couch. Sossity sank into it. The water in the electric pot began to boil.
She noticed art on the walls—very nicely done art. “Did you do these paintings?” she asked. “I like them a lot.”
“Thank you. Yes, I did them all.”
“Did you study art?” she asked, wondering if the young woman was a talented amateur or had trained somewhere?”
“I went to the Pratt Institute in New York.”
“I’m impressed.”
She shrugged and continued to prepare tea. After she had placed tea bags in the cups and got out a honey pot, she sat down in the chair across from Sossity..
“Are you hungry?”
“I could eat something.”
“I’m vegan, but I’ve got some black bean burritos you might like.”
“Sounds good.”
She got out what looked like left-overs and heated them in the oven. By then their tea was ready. They moved to the table, ate and sipped their tea.
“Burritos are great.”
"Thanks so much. You know, I really love your music, especially Labyrinth.”
Labyrinth was Sossity’s second CD. She had released it ten years ago.
“Do you have a favorite song?”
“I like ‘Drunken Moon’ and ‘The Last Time Now.’ But my favorite song is ‘Cloud Shadows,’ your first hit. I play it over and over. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t play it.” She gestured at the windows. “Cloud shadows pass here a lot. When they do, I read the messages.”
Sossity blinked. “Messages? Where”
“In the clouds. In the breakers that roll in to the sea they speak to me.”
Sossity hesitated and then asked, “What do they tell you?”
“Different things. Last night the clouds were lit by moonlight. They were beautiful. They told me someone beautiful would come to see me when the dawn broke.”
“I’m flattered that you say that to me—if I am the one.”
“You are. I got inspired to painting something.” She pointed.
Sossity looked at an easel with a half-finished painting mounted on it. Sketched in bold stokes that were remarkably evocative, a mass of sea roiled. Blank spaces rose above it, but she saw a moon, intricately sketched, the traces of mountains and craters done with photographic precision looming over a mass of clouds, some partially rendered, some completed, reflecting moonlight. Though half-finished, the moonlight on the clouds radiated beauty and gentleness. Deidre noticed Sossity’s rapt attention to the painting.
“I did that this morning.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s the message I saw in the cloud shadows. I’ll finish it soon. I paint the realities I see.
Sossity thought to leave, but Deidre asked, “Can you sing a song for me?”
The look in her pretty and the gentle, lovely vulnerability she saw in the barefoot girl wearing a long skirt, a voluminous blouse, and a necklace of large beads around her neck, made Sossity feel ashamed of her impulse to love.
“I don’t have a guitar.”
“I have one.” The girl scurried away and came back with Yamaha classical.
“Do you play?” Sossity asked.
“A little. Can you do ‘Cloud Shadows?’?”
She played, singing softly (remembered Deidre’s sleeping boyfriend). Deidre listened with an intensity that charmed Sossity. She leaned one ear toward her, tilting he body just slightly, lightly holding her long fingers on the arms of the chair in which she sat, lips slightly parted, eyes full of intensity and passion. When Sossity finished playing, she relaxed back in the chair.
“That was so beautiful,” she murmured.
“I’m glad you liked it. You’re a fabulous audience.”
Just then a door opened. A young man, tall, thin, wearing old-style wire-rimmed glasses, came through a door. He had on jeans but no shirt. He looked from Deidre to Sossity and then did a double-take. Sossity smiled.
“Yes, it is me,” she said.
“I heard ‘Cloud Shadows.’ I thought Deidre was playing the CD. Let me go get a shirt on.”
He turned and went back in the room. When he emerged with a shirt on, Deidre went to him and put her arms around him, introducing him as Allen.
“We’ve never had a celebrity in the house before.”
“We had Johnny Depp. He came here to buy one of my paintings.”
“I forgot about him. And we’ve have you.”
She gave him a mock punch on the arm. “Silly,” she said. “I’m going to finish the painting.” With that she went over to her easel and began mixing colors on an old-fashioned palette.
“Can we step outside, Miss Chandler?”
Just outside the door, Sossity explained how she had come to the cabin.
“As you can see, Deidre is in recovery. She hit some whitewater a few years back, started doing hallucinogens. She ended up in a mental hospital. We met and came here. It’s her parents’ cabin they let us live here.
“Do you think she is getting better?”
“You didn’t see her a year ago. She was stark, raving mad. She’s coming out of it little by little.”
“I wish her the best. She’s a beautiful woman, inside and outside. I’d like to stay in contact with her.”
“She will want to send you the picture she’s painting.”
“Her art is remarkable.”
“It would be good for her,” he said. “The more she is aware of the outside world, the more she will take her focus off fantasies.”
“You’ll hear from me.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure. I want to say good-bye to her.”
They went back inside. Deidre stood at her easel, painting furiously. The canvas had filled with amazing swirls of lien and color, at once realistic and abstract. Allen touched her shoulder.
“Sweetie, Sossity has to go now.”
Deidre put her brush down and took three long steps to where Sossity stood. She threw her arms around her. They shared a long embrace.
“Thank you so much,” Deidre said, eyes full of tears.
“Sure, baby. I’m leaving my address and phone with Allen. I definitely want this painting on my wall and I so much appreciate that you’re doing this for me.” Sossity felt disgusted by her words and the patronizing tone of her voice, which sounded like how she would speak to a small child. Deidra Bennett was a woman and human being, not someone to whom you must speak in slow, deliberate phrases so she could understand. “I like it a lot. Your art is beautiful. So are you. Can I come back and see you sometimes?”
She nodded. They held each other a while longer and Sossity said good-bye. Allen followed her out. She gave him an email address and phone number. “Write me. I do want to see her. In October we’re doing a concert in Pittsburgh and one in Cleveland. I’d like to visit then. Maybe you guys can come to one of the concerts. I could send you tickets.”
“Your heavy stuff and a huge crowd would be too much for her.”
“I’m doing a fund-raiser in Pittsburg before the other show there—my folky stuff, just me and my guitar, small audience, small venue. Maybe that would work for her.” She looked up at him. “What do you do, Allen?”
“I take care of her. I had a job in marketing for a firm in Philly. After I met her, I left to live here. It’s a better deal than what I had. And, of course, I love her.”
“I can see that.”
She took leave of him, walked over to where her car was parked, got in and drove off. The words to the song she had sung—she had sung it hundreds of times over the years—resounded in her mind as her Lexus climbed out of the Ohio River Valley and up to the flatter, more stable land that lay on the bluffs above it.
