Hang On
By Nell Gavin
Description:
In 1973,
"crazy" Holly unexpectedly falls in love with Trevor, a roadie for a
famous
English rock
band. From the moment they meet, dreams of marriage, children, and
a normal life are
suddenly -finally -within Holly's grasp.
Trevor takes her
with him on tour and introduces her to the backstage world of
Rock & Roll.
When she steps onto the band bus, she enters a world completely
different from
her life back home, where she works at a low-paying job, chases
cockroaches with
a shoe, and sleeps to escape the pain of hunger.
Holly has a
bigger secret. Plagued by panic attacks, periodic rages, and depression,
she needs to
learn why her mentally ill mother committed suicide, so she can save
herself.
Thus far, she has
found no answers. She must conceal her symptoms from Trevor
in order to keep
him, but as their relationship becomes more serious, her illness
becomes
increasingly difficult to hide.
Can Holly keep
the crazy at bay for long enough to let her dreams come true?
HANG ON won the
silver medal in the Living Now Book Awards under its original
title, All Torc’d
Up.
Caution: Some
strong language.
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
February, 1958
On bad days,
Mommy stretched out on the sofa, wrapped herself in blankets and didn’t speak.
Her eyes were
strange and unfocused, and her voice was distant whenever I prodded her to
respond to
a question. Her
answers sometimes didn’t make any sense, or she let them drift off and fade
away,
unfinished.
Sometimes she told me to leave her alone and go find something to do. I would
obediently
turn on the
television, and watch it for hours. Mommy listened to the radio or slept, and
let me play by
myself, find food
for myself, fend for myself. It had always been like that, with her
intermittent “bad
days.”
Since I couldn’t
read yet, and Mommy didn’t like to read to me on bad days, I would tell her
stories, making
them up to go along with the pictures in my Golden Books, which I held in my
lap while
sitting in the
crook of Mommy’s limp arm. I always pulled her arm around me in a kind of a
hug.
Sometimes I made
her tea with cold tap water and a tea bag. When I would offer her the cup, she
would
take a sip and smile,
then place it on the table and forget about it.
I would try other
things to entice Mommy to notice me on bad days. I played my red 78 rpm
record, “Tina the
Ballerina,” and twirled and danced to it in front of her. I sang the songs I’d
learned
from children’s
programs on television. Or I drew her pictures, which I would tape to the
refrigerator
myself after
Mommy absently told me they were “good.”
Mommy would
occasionally lift herself up to go to the bathroom, then would patter barefoot
into the kitchen
and open the refrigerator. She might grab a piece of fruit or a few slices of
bread, or
merely shut the
refrigerator door again, seemingly preferring hunger to the effort involved in
food
preparation, or
even in making a decision on what to eat. Then she would get herself a glass of
water
from the faucet
before settling back on the sofa.
Sometimes the
effort of getting up for fresh water was too much, and Mommy would drink my
stale tea, still
waiting for her on the table. When she did, I was very proud.
Mommy had had one
bad day after another for a long time before she went away. Just before
she left, she’d
stopped changing her clothing or combing her hair. She stopped giving me baths
as well.
When I would
speak to her, she’d stare back as if she didn’t know who I was. Other times,
she’d run her
fingers down my
cheek, then let them fall as if it all required too much strength.
I lived on grape
jelly sandwiches and water on most bad days. I made the sandwiches myself,
leaving trails of
sticky jelly that eventually hardened into a kind of cement on the countertop,
the table
or the floor,
creating a feast for the cockroaches. For a treat, I would pull a kitchen chair
over to the
counter, climb
up, and help myself to handfuls of sugar from the canister on the shelf. Mommy
never
said anything
about that. Sometimes I’d pull a carrot from the refrigerator—they had long
white hairs
growing from them
the last time I got one, and were kind of floppy and limp—or I would find an
orange
and saw it in
half with a steak knife, then suck on it.
The last summer I
spent with Mommy, she had a friend, Jack, who came to see us. He took us to
the movies and
the beach, and took Mommy out to eat and dance while I stayed with the
babysitter,
Trudy.
Mommy had lots of
good days that summer when she sang, lifted me up in the air, or tickled
me. She took me
to the park where she pushed me on the swing. She told me stories and fussed
over
my hair, twisting
it into curls and setting it with bobby pins after my evening bath so I could
look like
Shirley Temple in
the morning. I liked Shirley Temple movies a lot back then. Mommy talked and
talked,
sometimes about
things I didn’t understand that involved my Daddy, whom I didn’t remember ever
meeting.
Sometimes she talked about Jack. She told me about the places the three of us
would visit
someday, and the
house we would live in with a swing set in the yard. Mommy and I went shopping
for
pretty clothes so
we could look our best for Jack. We made Rice Krispies treats together, and
Mommy
cooked for us,
day after day, one wonderful dinner after another, with vegetables and dessert.
Sometimes Jack
ate with us and later read me bedtime stories.
On warm sunny
days, Mommy often threw open the windows. The two of us stuck our hands
into buckets of
soapy water and scrubbed down the kitchen and appliances, then polished all the
furniture. Mommy
swept and mopped and vacuumed, humming the whole time. She did the laundry in
the basement and
hung it out to dry on the clothesline in the tiny yard behind the apartment
building.
My sheets smelled
like sunlight in summer. As if nothing made her tired, Mommy cleaned and folded
laundry long
after I went to bed.
That summer,
Mommy wore lipstick and dresses and took me to restaurants or on a bus to the
zoo. We went
downtown on the El train and got rock candy at Carson’s, then visited the Field
Museum
to see the
Egyptian mummies. We went to lots of places that summer and did lots of things
together.
That summer was
nice, but as soon as it got cold outside, and the days got shorter, Mommy’s
friend stopped
coming to see us. She got quiet more and more. It seemed as though winter was
longer
than summer.
Then Mommy was
gone. I could still recall what she was like on the last day we were together,
and how she had
told me to “always be a good girl” before sending me off to bed. She’d had
tears rolling
down her cheeks,
but she had had more energy than usual that day. She had also seemed more
decisive
than usual.
Looking back, I knew that she had made her choice and roused herself to an
action she could
not have taken in
her usual lethargic state.
I had offered her
my doll that night, asking her if she needed it to feel better. Mommy had
shaken her head.
She had hugged me especially hard, and for a long time, before letting me go. I
didn’t
wonder what Mommy
had meant when she’d said, “I’m really sorry, Pumpkin. Please don’t hate me.”
She’d often say
that to me. Years later, I would merely wonder where Mommy had gotten the gun.
I clearly
remember being roused from sleep by hands lifting me. I heard sirens and
unfamiliar
noises, but
managed to blend them into my dream for a little longer.
“Johnson. Hey.
Would you grab that doll for me?” The voice was gruff and authoritative, but
somehow very
pleasant. It didn’t register in my mind as familiar. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it.
And it’s freezing
out. Get me that
blanket off the bed and cover her up real good for me, okay? I can’t do it with
one
hand.”
It was a man’s
voice—a stranger’s—and it broke me free of my dream. I opened my eyes to find
a policeman
holding me close to his chest. Johnson was pressing a blanket around me and
tucking my
doll into my
arms. The rotating blue lights of two police cars parked in front of the
building swirled
around my room,
which was otherwise lit by one small lamp on my chest of drawers. I heard the
police
car radio down
below, an approaching ambulance, and the loud, anxious voices of our neighbors
in the
street.
“Mommy!” I
screamed, twisting in the policeman’s arms. “Mommy!”
The man held me
tightly and said, “Shhh. I’m not gonna hurt you.” I saw him look around the
room, sparsely
furnished with a little bed, the chest of drawers and a rocking horse. He would
have seen
that my room was
messy and covered with dust. The entire apartment was filthy. Leaning away, I
saw
the grim look on
his face, but didn’t understand enough to be embarrassed or ashamed of the way
we
lived. I didn’t
understand any of the expressions that crossed his face, or why it softened and
was angry,
sad, and sorry
all at once when he looked down at me.
The frosted
windows were smeared with little fingerprints and months of grime. Red Kool-Aid
had spilled on my
bed sheets weeks ago. The pillow had no pillowcase and was badly in need of a
washing. My
dinner for the last two nights, an open bag of stale potato chips, was spilled
on the
bedroom floor. A
cup of milk was on the windowsill from last week and was now a yogurt-like
solid
floating on clear
yellowish liquid. In the kitchen there were cockroaches and a mess of dirty
dishes in the
sink and on the
countertops, but there was very little food in the pantry or refrigerator.
I was wearing
street clothes instead of pajamas, and probably smelled as though I hadn’t
taken a
bath or changed
clothes in a week or longer, because I had not.
“I couldn’t find
a suitcase,” Johnson said.
“Use a paper bag
then. Try under the sink in the kitchen.”
“I want my
Mommy!” I insisted, sticking out my lower lip in a frightened pout. I squirmed
and
pushed against
the policeman’s chest. “Mom-meee!” I screamed. Then I lapsed into hysterical
tears,
arching my back
and wailing.
Someone in the
hallway called out, “McNulty!” and my policemen answered, “In here!” Then he
looked at me and
cooed, “Shh, Baby. Shh.” He did not say, “It will be all right.” As a third
policeman
came into my
room, McNulty absently patted my back and asked, “How old would you say she
is?”
“Four, I guess.”
“That’s what I
was thinking, too. My Chrissie’s about the same age.”
The other
policeman—McNulty called him “Costello”—leaned over to study me. I stopped
crying
and looked back
at him warily, sticking my thumb in my mouth and glaring. I pressed my shoulder
and
cheek into
McNulty’s chest to edge away. I reached my other hand out of the blanket and
anxiously
twirled a lock of
hair. Then I couldn’t endure his examination any longer and pushed my face into
McNulty’s chest
to hide.
“Natalie Wood in
Miracle on 34th Street,” Costello said. “That’s who she kind of looks like.
Maybe even
prettier.”
“Yeah, she’s a
real cutie, that’s for sure,” McNulty said. “Aren’t you?” he asked, bouncing me
slightly, but it
wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t answer.
I peeked out at
Costello, who was still looking at me, but now he seemed angry and upset.
Costello looked
mean, and he scared me. I didn’t like him.
“Son of a bitch,
I hate this kind of shit,” he muttered. He turned abruptly and left the room.
Johnson returned
with some paper bags. He opened my dresser drawers and quickly stuffed the
bags with
handfuls of my pants, shirts, underwear and socks. He then moved to the closet
and pulled
down my dresses
and my winter coat, dropping the hangers onto the floor in a messy pile. He
came over
to me, pushed the
blanket aside, and slipped a pair of socks and shoes onto my dangling feet.
Outside the
bedroom, a rush of footsteps pounded up the staircase and into the apartment.
“Where is she?” I
heard someone call from the hallway. I caught sight of two men carrying a
stretcher.
“Is she alive?”
Johnson shook his
head. “She called the station to say she was gonna shoot herself, and to come
get her kid. We
got here, and she was already gone.” He pointed to the door across the hall.
The men
disappeared into
the other room. Johnson glanced at me and quickly closed the door behind them.
“Let’s get the
kid out of here.”
I stiffened.
McNulty shifted me to his hip in the confident and practiced manner of a daddy
who
had done it
countless times before. He gently stroked my cheek with one long, thick finger.
I didn’t pull
away because I was
too afraid.
Johnson
continued, “The suicide note has a phone number for the grandmother. We’ll
bring the
kid to the
station and call her from there.”
McNulty look down
at me. I was sniffling, sucking my thumb, and hugging my doll.
“What’s your
name, sweetie?” he asked gently.
I responded
around my thumb with a sound like a low grunt.
“Say it again,
sweetie. What’s your name?”
“No!” I said more
clearly, pulling my thumb out of my mouth. Having heard that they were
taking me
somewhere, maybe jail, I was starting to panic. “I want my Mommy!” I demanded.
“Her name’s
Holly.” Costello had come back from another room. “It’s in the note.”
“Holly, little
darlin’, you’re going for a ride.”
About the Author:
Nell Gavin was
raised in Chicago. She spent a number of years
in Texas, before
settling in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she now lives
with her husband
and two sons.
Nell is also the
author of Threads, the Reincarnation of Anne
Boleyn, which was
a William Faulkner finalist for Best Novel.
Review of Hang On by Nell Gavin
4 stars
Holly Salvino is the product of a mother with periods of
severe depression and a father she never knew, who left before her first
birthday. Her grandmother is a harridan, and probably a large part of the
source of Holly’s mother’s mental issues. Certainly she contributed to Holly’s
anxiety and depression, since the child went to live with her at age four,
following her mother’s suicide. Holly is beautiful, which actually makes her
more standoffish; growing up as she has, she doesn’t have social skill sets for
women or men. A friend and co-worker, Angie, introducers to the world of
backstage rock-and-roll, and her first encounter with an English roadie,
Trevor, is like mutual alchemy creating the Philospher’s Stone and transmuting
dross into gold. The problem is, can Holly truly rise above her background and
the former molding of her character, and become the “normal” type of person she
desires to be?
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