All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [93]
One of those summers, he showed up at Mamaw and Papaw’s in the MGB to take me on a road trip to see our wonderful cousins in Pennsylvania, and I felt very weird that I was going to be with him after not having seen him for at least a full year, which to a young child can seem like a lifetime. As we set out, he put something from a small gray film canister in his mouth, and when I asked what it was, he told me plainly it was speed. That was my dad’s way, being transparent, and plainspoken, thinking such honesty was the enlightened way to parent. Even though I was only nine or ten, I had been around enough drugs in my short life to know what amphetamines were. I was scared to death, and the speed seemed to fit the portrait of my dad painted by my mother, as well as my grandparents’ concern about his “lifestyle,” as they called it. When the MGB broke down in Catletsburg, only a few miles from Ashland, I was enormously relieved our trip had come to naught, feeling I had narrowly escaped something terrifying and would be safely returned to Morningside Drive.
Breaking into the entertainment business had become Mom’s obsession while we were living in California. One night she and Sister went to a Merle Haggard concert and managed to meet him in the parking lot. My mother is nothing if not beguiling and they ended up traveling with the great star on his tour bus for the next few days. I was left home alone during their escapade
I have pieced together that this sort of thing happened a lot. I tend only to recognize the absences when a story is being told about my family and one of the listeners will look at me and ask, “Where were you?” My mother and sister’s adventures, positive and negative, had so dominated my own life that I often had no idea where, in fact, I was while they were living theirs. I have put things together by asking family members and friends and doing childhood work with professional clinicians. So often when I start such work, guided back in time, giving that little girl who still lives in me a chance to express herself, the first thing out of my mouth, or the first thing I write, is, “Where is everybody?”
I spent another joyful, mostly carefree summer after fourth grade with my grandparents, but this time my sister stayed in California while she and Mom worked on their act. I missed her, but I flourished under the attentive care of both sets of grandparents. I guess my mother and sister had a promising summer, because I would later learn Mom decided Sister, who was only in eighth grade, would not be entering high school in the fall, so that the two of them could pursue Mom’s burgeoning quest to make something special out of her life. I would hear snippets from family and in some cases friends, such as my old pal from Hollywood, Gabrielle, who wrote that my mom and sister had crashed with her mom and her for a while in L.A., and often fought terribly in their small apartment. I later learned they also spent time working on their act and hanging out with musicians in Las Vegas and Austin. As for me, one evening toward the end of August, the phone rang, and Mamaw answered it in the kitchen. After a few moments, she told me to go play outside. I was climbing our wonderful big friendly tree in the front yard when she came out and said, “Ashley, you’re not going back to California to live with your mother and sister. You’re going back to the river to live with your dad.” She was clearly upset. I went and sat on the side stoop, stumped. I hadn’t spent any time with, much less lived with my dad in years.
Mamaw told me she and Papaw wanted to keep me there and wondered how I would feel about that. I was surprised they wanted me—that anyone wanted me—and I naturally loved the idea. I had often fantasized about