So long, see you around, but never a final goodbye.
Fred Fagler
The last few stops in Amy Barnwell’s cross-country farewell tour took her into Iowa, with Chicago – her original hometown – as the destination. So far, the tour had been a disappointment. The crowds that had followed Amy throughout her musical career were deserting her, finding her routine a little stale. Amy was ready to go into a private life, but she was hoping to leave with a bang, not an embarrassing whimper. She was counting on this last tour to leave an indelible mark in the American popular music culture.
Amy had first appeared onstage at age seventeen and over the next twenty-odd years had developed into one of the top female artists of her generation. Her act was unlike those of her competitors, because her talents were multiple and she displayed them during her routines. She could play the piano, the guitar (electric and acoustic), and the banjo; she told stories and jokes; sang songs in all styles in a characteristic alto voice that was immediately recognizable; she sometimes danced by herself to the rhythm of her own music.
The Community Center Theater of Ames, where one of her last performances was to take place, had a capacity of less than one hundred and fifty seats. Despite its small size, it seemed cavernous because it was virtually empty the night that Amy performed there.
Ignoring the poor attendance, Amy displayed her talents to the best of her ability. Her performance, however, was received with stony silence from some and tittering and derisive murmurs by others, mostly college students that were still on campus and were short on entertainment opportunities. It was, in fact, one of the biggest flops in her distinguished career.
She was not booed, for Midwesterners are too polite to do such a thing; but it was clear that her audience could not wait for her to get off the stage. Perceiving this, Amy cut short her routine and, to the sound of anemic applause, ran backstage into the arms of her manager and promoter, Wally Stubbs, a man who had become wealthy representing her for over a decade.
Wally did his best to play down the disaster, attributing it to poor acoustics, inadequate lighting, and the coarseness of the inhabitants of this benighted hellhole. Amy, however, was disconsolate. “I want to be alone,” she said, dismissing Wally, and returned to her hotel room to drown her sorrows in Southern Comfort and Coke cocktails.
As she downed one icky sweet glass after another, Amy’s mood became increasingly somber. She had given up love, the hopes of building a family, a quiet suburban life, all in a chase after success. She had been out of touch with her sister for over a decade, her childhood friends were forgotten. Everybody was familiar with her public persona, but nobody really knew her. Nobody would miss her after she was gone.
These morbid thoughts, fueled by alcohol, made her reach for her overnight bag in search of her sleeping pill bottle, an item she seldom resorted to but always carried with her for emergencies. Perhaps Amy intended to take only a couple and sleep off her disappointment, but somehow, she began swallowing pills between successive gulps of liquor. Minutes later, she dropped the empty bottle and the half-filled plastic cup and fell to the floor.
* * *
The bright fluorescent light hurt Amy’s eyes and the burning sensation in her throat and mouth was almost unbearable. She did not recall ever feeling so uncomfortable, but her head was stuffed with cotton candy so she could not be sure if something like this had happened before. She gagged, but nothing came out.
As consciousness crept in, she realized something was very wrong. She had probably attempted to take her own life and failed.
She started to cry, but then a nurse came into the room. She tried to put a stop to her sobbing and snorted.
“How are you feeling?” asked the nurse.
Amy clenched the blanket and snarled: “How many pills do I have to take to put myself away?!”
The nurse’s expression changed from solicitude to peevishness. “You surely took enough pills to kill a horse. I wish you would have seen what we pulled out of your stomach.”
“How come I didn’t die?”
“For one thing, the pills you took had expired over two years ago. Also, a maid was passing by and heard strange noises coming out of your room, opened the door, and found you thrashing on the floor.”
Amy’s anger turned into tears. “I can’t even manage to kill myself!” she sobbed.
The nurse placed a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “Now, calm yourself. Nothing is worth taking your own life.”
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Wally Stubbs. He beamed: “Oh, Amy dear, you are awake! You gave us quite a fright!”
Amy re-focused her frustration and directed it at the impresario. “Wally! What are you doing here? Did you come to complain about losing money again?”
“Oh, that! Yeah, the gate last night was pathetic. We should have figured out that after the school year ended at State half of the town’s population would be gone. I should have tried harder to get you a gig in Des Moines.”
“I’m done with gigs” pronounced Amy.
“Au contraire, my dear!” chirped the flamboyant man. “Have I got a deal for you!”
Amy closed her eyes tiredly. “You never give up, do you? What do you have now? Another visit to Jackson?”
“No, no, no. We barely escaped with our lives last time there. This is much safer and more likely to let you recharge.”
“There is no recharging for me. I’m finished!”
“Just listen to me! Do you remember the time you did a couple of shows at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids?”
“Well, yes. It was a nice place. But there’s no way they would book a washout like me.”
“I am not trying to get you to appear back at the Paramount. At least not yet.”
“Stop teasing me. What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember your performance last night?”
“Yeah, the flop before a dozen people? That’s what drove me to take the pills.”
“Did you notice a bearded middle-aged man sitting in the front row?”
“Not really.”
“Well, the fellow was there scouting.”
“Scouting? I’ve been performing for over twenty years. What’s the need to scout by coming to one of my shows? It isn’t as if I am unknown. I’ve even performed at the Super Bowl!”
Wally tried to be patient. His client had been through a lot and was fresh from a suicide attempt. “He knows your work and is a fan. But like everyone else, he has read the rumors of the decline in your performance and needed to make sure before he acted.”
“Acted how?!!” replied Amy, her voice shrill by annoyance and fatigue.
“OK. Listen to me now,” insisted Stubbs. “This man, Brad Eggers, recently inherited lots of money and some property from a widowed aunt. He is a farmer and doesn’t know anything about show business, but has this notion of converting a mansion he now owns in Cedar Rapids, a couple of blocks from the Paramount, into a new theater where he would run variety shows. He came to see you to find out whether you would be a good choice for his opening act.”
“And?”
“He loved it! He thinks your voice has gotten a little rough with age, but all the same he’s fixing to sign you up for a month of performances starting in late September, if we can come to terms.”
“Every night?”
“Two shows a day. Matinee and evening. You’d be the artist in residence. There would be other performers, of course.”
“And after the month is over?”
“You could go on a new tour. I’m sure that they would want to see you in Dubuque and Des Moines and Minneapolis and of course Chicago.”
“But this one is my farewell tour. I’m retiring!”
“Well, consider the performances in Cedar Rapids to be the end of the tour. Better wrap up with a month in that city than a night in Chicago. But maybe you should take some time off while the new theater is finished.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I want to prove that Ames was a fluke. Find me a dozen places to appear while we wait. But please, not Jackson or Tuscaloosa, if you can help it.”
“I’ll get on it!”
* * *
Amy had reservations about resuming her farewell tour while construction of the new Eggers Hall was ongoing. Having to visit some of the same cities twice in a few months posed an increased challenge to her public image. “Baton Rouge was okay the first time, but going to another college town reminded me too much of the flop at Ames,” she would later complain to Stubbs about one of the stops in the renewed tour. Neither would refer to the chilly reception by those attending her Baton Rouge return appearance, this time at a community theater instead of the famous River Center that had hosted her on her last visit. Second-rate locales also hosted her uninspired performances in Tallahassee and Flagstaff and all points in-between.
Finally, the Eggers Performance Hall opened its doors to considerable fanfare in downtown Cedar Rapids, featuring Amy Barnwell as the main attraction. Ebbers hired a small band to provide backup and engaged a local rock group to serve as curtain raiser. They all did their jobs competently and provided an adequate framework for Amy’s act.
Alas, Amy was not up to par herself. Two months of mediocre performances in second-rate locales had left her demoralized and exhausted, and the lukewarm reviews in the local papers of her recent venues had eroded her self-confidence. Perhaps she should have spent the time trying to develop a new act instead of trotting up and down the continent, but these self-recriminations came too late.
Two weeks into the Cedar Rapids run, the night after a desultory performance before a nearly empty house, Brad Eggers came to Amy’s dressing room and announced: “I’m terminating our contract for cause. You have three days to wrap up your affairs. I’ve talked to my lawyers and they say I’m justified in what I’m doing.”
Amy sat at her dressing table, staring at her tired features in the mirror as Eggers made his exit. After a while, she got up and staggered back to her hotel. She found a nearly full bottle of Southern Comfort and two cans of Coke waiting for her.
She poured herself a glassful and then another and another. She rummaged through her travel bag and found the brand-new bottle of sleeping pills she had bought in Baton Rouge, and downed two pills with her cocktails. Then she did a double take: She had to do something to fix the rest of her life, not terminate it. She put the pills back in the bag with great effort. She threw herself, still dressed, on her bed. She was not going to try to die this time.
* * *
Amy moved back to Chicago and bought a ground-level condo in The Loop. She took up painting and discovered she had a good eye for color and shape, and became an accomplished modern painter. Her studio became a favorite tourist attraction; she made more money selling her art than in her farewell tours.
Twenty-five years went by, and only those of the older generation still remembered her. She never married but raised several seal-point Himalayan cats, placid creatures that stretched out next to her, slept in her bed, and sat on her lap. She went to sleep one night with Jenkins lying by her side and did not wake up.
Retrospectives of her career mushroomed shortly after her death. All of them emphasized her years as a performing artist and her success as a painter later. The failure of her farewell tours was uniformly ignored.
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