How Dolly Saved Me

I am weeping nearly as loudly as I am singing Dolly Parton’s “Just Because I’m a Woman,” as I drive the Turner Turnpike from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Hurtling down the turnpike through uncontrollable tears may sound risky, but I know people who read the newspaper while making this trek. Or trim their nails, apply mascara, work on their laptop or even change their shoes, for Chrissake. The flat, straight road which rides atop treeless plains does not speak to my soul’s geography of Tennessee hills and woodlands. Plus, like my marriage, the turnpike is terminal. Stops forever in Oklahoma City. Dolly and I belt out the chorus together, just two women wailing about the injustice of women making mistakes.

Dolly’s songs often bring me to tears. She writes songs that make me feel she knows me. Been in my boots, so to speak. I don’t know if I give her special attention because she’s from my home state of Tennessee, or because she brings back vivid memories of me and my younger sister on Saturday nights, glued to the television watching “The Porter Wagoner Show.” Back then we were completely unified in our fascination of Dolly whose entire country music persona was about as alien to us as a teenage boy. We were enthralled with her towering blonde wigs, the little mole next to her mouth, the tight rhinestone outfits, and of course, those breasts, which were a popular subject of jokes when I was growing up – many of them made by Dolly herself. She simultaneously exuded purity and sexiness, which was a heady combination for two young girls raised in the Southern Baptist tradition.

I suck back my tears because I’ve pulled up in front of the house in Oklahoma City where my dear friend, Lianne, lies dying of colon cancer. We cry, though infrequently, with each other about her whole situation, though the fact of it is the permanent landscape of our friendship now. She’s moved into her daughter’s house in OKC, and I try to make the weekly trek to see her.

The sun is setting, and Lianne’s eyes are drooping from all the pain meds she’s taking. Her daughter, Mary, and I agree I can come back later in the evening for another brief visit. On impulse I make a few calls home and decide to take a room at the Embassy Suites. I feel rather free. No kids, no papers to grade, no laundry or house to clean. A mini-vacation. Lianne’s daughter seems relieved I’m staying at a hotel. She’s exhausted with her 15-month old twins plus the newborn she’s watching for extra cash, not to mention caring for her dying mother. I am tempted to give her a little rendition of the chorus from Dolly’s song “9 to 5.” I think better of it after seeing her worn face struggling to remain complacent as the babies wail in the background.

The hotel I’ve chosen has a small convention center. The spacious lobby, with its potted palms and gushing fountains, is filled with middle-aged women toting large canvas bags stenciled with “2013 Oklahoma Writers’ Association Conference.” When the registration clerk tells me it’s free Happy Hour for all guests, I am immediately and appropriately happy. The bar is packed. The stereotype of writers as drinkers seems suddenly apropos – think Ernest Hemingway. Or perhaps all these women (okay, I see now, a few men) are like me and simply grateful to have a free night to let their hair down and slam down a few cold ones. After dropping off my bag in my room, I mosey downstairs and elbow my way to the bar. Never imagined a writers’ conference would be so hopping! Apparently the attendees have been partying for a while because the conversation is loud and not just a few attendees have smeared lipstick and slightly red cheeks. The thin woman at the bar next to me has long, dark hair parted on the side. Her black glasses slightly askew, she turns to me.

“Hiya. Here’s my card. Check out my book in the book seller’s room. It’s on special discount for the conference.” Her accent is not Oklahoman.

“I’m just here for Happy Hour,” I say though I’m impressed with her shameless promotion. I ask the bartender for a glass of red wine.

“Doesn’t matter. Book’s for sale anyway.”  She holds the card in my face, and I take it along with the merlot. The card reads Amy Sanchez, Associate Professor, Feminist Rhetoric, University of Alabama. She seems expectant so I take a stab at conversation.

“You’re a long way from home,” I venture.

“You’re tellin’ me.”

She takes a sip from her highball and I swig the wine. Immediately, my limbs warm.

“So, I’m thinkin’ you’re not here to learn how to write,” I say. My own teaching career is limited to eighth grade Algebra at a Tulsa public school. She tilts back her head and finishes off whatever was in the highball. Orders another.

“Nope. Here leading a break-out session for academic writing.”

Break out session? I picture a room full of sweaty professors tackling a bout of acne. I am out of my league.

“Oh sure,” I say, like I know. I order a second glass, not wanting to be one-upped by an Alabama woman. Can’t think of any Dolly lyrics pertinent to the situation. Then I remember all her songs about the small town eighteen-year-old girl trying to find her way in the big city. I haven’t come from the country and I’m fifty-one, but I’m definitely green when it comes to writer’s conferences, break-out sessions, and academic whatever. Just give me a simple algebraic formula to solve.

 “You listen to Dolly Parton?” I ask. She’s the only female writer I can come up with because I’m feeling a little woozy and also distracted by the free appetizer buffet behind the bar area. Amy shakes her head and orders another. The bartender raises his eyebrow, and I know think he’s planning some juicy stories to tell later on to the staff. Screw him. Maybe Amy’s drowning a hidden sorrow, like me. Maybe she has man trouble, and in my head I hear Dolly’s “My Heart Started Breaking.”

Oh, sing it Dolly!

I head to the buffet table. The array of little Smokies, raw carrots with Ranch dip, and damp crackers with sweaty cheese does not put me off. I am famished.

With my plate piled high, I slide into a booth and a balding man slides in across from me. His name is Jim, and he writes science fiction. Like Amy, he also has a book for sale in the book seller’s room. He tells me all about it, and I’m grateful he’s the one carrying the conversation since I’m not sure I can string two coherent sentences together at this point, though the raw broccoli and Ranch are helping. When I open my mouth to talk, I am surprised by what comes out.

“Yeah, I’m a writer,” I say.

“What’s your genre?” he asks and runs his finger around the rim of his glass. I’m thinking what he’s really asking is “are you single? Are you available?”

Well, Miss Dolly I’m not as desperate as your chiquita in “Single Women” though this guy thinks I might be. Unfortunately, I have only a slight idea about what Jim means by genre, but I’m game to try.

“I’m an academic writer,” I lie. I hope this totally backs Jim off, but his eyes light up.

“Yes,” I say, “I am a feminist. Writing about female rights and all. University professor.”

He freezes with a stalk of cauliflower halfway to his mouth. God, I wish he had hair, but then if he had hair he probably wouldn’t be sitting here hitting me up. According to Dolly’s “Dumb Blonde,” he’d be going after that bleached blonde at the bar who’s encircled by the rest of the men in the room.

“I study feminist methodology in grad school!” he exclaims enthusiastically. My heart sinks. “I’m especially interested in disability rhetoric.”

Holy Shitake, what is this man talking about?

“Well, my. My-my-my-my-my-my,” I say and wipe my forehead.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Jim asks. He looks genuinely concerned.

“Yes, please.” And a tourniquet for this truth loss I’m suffering. While he heads to the bar,  I quickly Google stuff about feminist rhetoric and disability, but I can’t make head nor tails of it. I notice Jim returning and that’s when I see he’s got a terrible limp, or rather a rolling type of gait that reminds me of a friend whose son has cerebral palsy. Okay, now I get why he would connect with an author who writes about disability. I flush, but I want to let him know about Dolly.

I take the glass of water and chug it as Jim sits.

“You listen to Dolly Parton?” I ask.

“Uh, no. Not much for country music.” He takes another cheese and cracker from my plate.

“She wrote songs about people with disabilities.” I’m warming to my subject. “Yeah, she wrote a lot about poor children and I think she considered that a disability, so to speak, because these poor people in her songs always died young. I don’t think she thought that was fair.”

“Well, alright. Is she your specialty?” He nods excitedly.

My specialty? My specialty was raising my kids and working two jobs and finding time and money to keep my house from falling down around us while I also took care of my parents who are getting up there in years. Then I realize he’s still thinking I’m a professor – apparently professors have specialties?

“Yeah, she’s my specialty,” I say and smile because Dolly Parton does seem to be my specialty. At least today. “Listen to these lyrics.” I quote him lines from “Daddy Come and Get Me” about a young woman whose husband committed her to a mental asylum so he could run off with his lover.

Jim’s working his mouth like he’s chewing on a heavy thought. The food in my stomach has helped sop up some of the wine sloshing around in there, and I’m feeling less dizzy. Think I might risk another glass.

“You should write a paper,” he finally declares.

 “Hmm. Great idea.” I rest my elbows on the table like I picture some professor might do. Then I realize that I’m supposed to be at Lianne’s house for our agreed-upon evening visit. I jump up from the table.

“Uh, so nice to meet you, Jim.” I hold out my hand, and he shakes it and doesn’t let go. “I have a… meeting that I’m late for.” I gingerly pull my hand from his clutch.

“I didn’t get your name,” he says and tries to stand, but I’m too fast for him. I act like I don’t hear.

“See you later!” I call over my shoulder and hightail it to the parking lot. The text I send Lianne’s daughter is completely garbled because my fingers are two steps behind my brain, but she understands it somehow. She’ll leave the door unlocked.

I’m probably too tipsy to drive but I rationalize that Lianne’s house is only a few blocks away. Once there, I let myself into the darkened home that smells of diapers, talcum, and fried chicken and tiptoe back to Lianne’s room. She’s in bed with the reading lamp on which illuminates the walls of bookshelves stuffed with her favorite books brought from her house in Tulsa. Lianne lies propped against pillows, her eyes closed and a book open across her lap.

“Li-a-ane,” I whisper. Her eyes open, and she smiles her beautiful, warm, intelligent smile while patting the blanket on the space beside her. I climb into the bed and hold her carefully because I know she has a lot of pain.

“Hi, girlie,” I say.

“Hey you. You smell like wine.”

“I’ve had a few at the hotel.”

“Wish I could say the same,” she says, and we giggle softly, then fall silent in the weak glow of the lamp.

“Are you scared?” I ask.

“No. Not really.”

I am scared. I don’t want her to go. I’m not ready for it. “There’s a writers’ conference at the hotel. Maybe I could take you to some of it tomorrow.” Lianne has written many historical romances. None published. It’s the one thing she wishes she could do before she dies. Publish a book. I think maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it because it might only make her feel sad. She is still and quiet, and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep.

“Nah,” she whispers finally. “I’d rather we go to the park. I want to feel the sun on my face.”

“That would be nice.” I don’t mention that the forecast is for thunderstorms all day. Instead, I tell her about Jim and my pretending to be a college professor, to make her laugh. Which she does.

“He thinks you’re going to write an article on Dolly Parton as a feminist?” she asks. I laugh again. The whole evening has a surreal quality to it. “She has a song that I used to sing all the time after Joe left me,” she confesses.

“Really?” I’m surprised. Didn’t take Lianne for a Dolly fan. She closes her eyes and begins to hum and then softly sing. I join her. In whispers, we sing the chorus from Dolly’s painful lament about women having to start over after divorce.

I cry, and she hugs me tight but doesn’t understand that the reason I cry is not because I am starting over again myself, but because Lianne will never have the chance to start anything again, whatever her dreams may be. My heart is shattered.

“I didn’t know you liked that song,” I say after I get my tears under control. I’m fast at this now from a lot of practice.

“It’s been twenty-five years since Joe and I divorced, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of that still. The pain. The children.” She sighs.

“That’s damn depressing. I only have two years of divorce under my belt. I do not want to be crying still, twenty-three years from now.” And I really don’t. The burden of my sorrow, my regret for leaving Tennessee decades ago, my rolling hills with their sun-dappled canopy, just to have it all end so abruptly in Oklahoma… I want to lay that down so bad every damn minute.

“Well, you’ll be, what?” she muses. “Seventy-something. It’ll give you something to do.” We both laugh quietly. She shifts under the bedcovers, and I release her. Her eyes flutter, and I think her sleeping aids are working on her. “Tell me about Tennessee,” she says dreamily. She knows I plan on moving back there some day. She always wanted to go with me after her retirement from teaching. I settle back into the pillows and sing softly lines from Dolly’s “In My Tennessee Mountain Home,” just like I used to do when rocking one of my babies to sleep so many years and memories ago.

I lie quietly next to Lianne, the soft purring of her emergency oxygen machine lulling me to sleep.

***

I wake with a start. Mary, with one of the twins on her hip, stares at me from the doorway. Lianne is asleep but daylight shines weakly through the blinds. I get up and stumble to Mary, whisper that I accidentally fell asleep – so sorry! She smiles. Tells me I’m alright, not to worry. I kiss Lianne on the forehead and leave a little note promising to come back later.

Back in the car and heading to the hotel, I try and organize my thoughts through a pounding headache. My mouth feels like a yellow dog slept in it. Thank God, today is Sunday. My children spent the night at their father’s house. I think I have my bases covered. Fortunately, I haven’t missed check-out time, and I walk with my head down to the elevator.

“Hey! Hey, it’s me, Jim. From last night!”  His voice comes from behind me at the elevator banks, and I blush to my hair roots. I look like I’ve slept in my clothes because I have. I turn part way, try to hide my rumpled face and noxious breath.

“Hey,” I mumble, ashamed of my last night’s pretense.

“After what you said last night, I got online and did some research on Dolly Parton,” he says. His voice is excited and earnest, and I want to crawl into a hole. Or the elevator. Whichever comes first.

“Anyway, her life story is so cool. She’s a multi-millionaire but she came from abject poverty. One of twelve children in a family from the Appalachia region.”

Well, duh, I think. Hadn’t he heard her “Coat of Many Colors” song? Jim follows me onto the elevator, and I studiously stare at the panel of buttons. When the doors open on the fourth floor, Jim has the nerve to follow me out of the elevator. He prattles off facts about Dolly, and I am only half listening because I can’t find my card key anywhere in my purse.

“Okay Jim!” I say and whirl around. His eyes widen, either at my anger or my sleep-hangover-mussed-face-breath. He steps back, rather awkwardly. I realize he’s sweating from trying to keep up with me through his limping gait.

“All of this is to say that you inspired me,” he says rather sheepishly. “I have decided that I want to write my dissertation about Dolly Parton being a feminist, and… and….” He takes a deep breath and then shifts his weight. “I was hoping you would allow me to use some of your articles about her. I wanted to research them but I didn’t catch your name….”

The gig is up. So much of me wants to brush him off, get in my room and lock the door. But I know I am guilty.

“Jim. My name is Lily Simpson. I’m not a writer, not a professor, not even here for the conference. I live in Tulsa, and my best friend is dying of cancer a few blocks down from here, and I came to visit her.”

Both of us are frozen by my confession. Then his shoulders slump.

“You lied to me?” he asks. His face is not angry, only hurt. I guess I was expecting anger because it’s all I get now from my former husband. All I got for the last several years - seemed like he was angry with the whole world. Maybe it’s good he’s gone.

“Because I don’t trust men,” I say. The truth of this stuns me, though Jim seems to take it in stride.

“We’re not all bad,” he says finally. I raise an eyebrow. “Let me prove it to you,” he says.

This guy keeps surprising me. What could he want with me now, after what I’ve done and said, and not said? He reaches into his canvas tote and pulls out a stack of papers.

“I got these handouts for you. Because I thought we might go together to the academic writing break-out session… but yeah, I know.” He heads me off at the pass. “You’re probably not going.” He hands me the collection of papers.

He steps back to leave. “Sorry about your friend.”

I breathe in sharply. Had not expected this kindness. “Thanks. Really.”

We stare at each other for a long minute. I slide the card key in and open my door.

“There’s something I discovered,” he says, and I am strangely pleased he can’t seem to end the conversation. “Dolly wrote a lot of songs about women being left by their men.”

“Tell me,” I say.

“But the most songs she wrote, out of 3000 songs, mind you, were love songs.”

I nod. “Some women never learn, you know?”

“Yeah, some people never stop trying, I guess,” he says with a little smile. This Jim was full of something, and I was beginning to suspect it was not bullshit. “Can I call you?” he asks, and I know I am not ready for this. Not at all. Not yet.

“Um. No. But maybe I’ll call you?” He hurriedly writes his name and number on the top of the papers I’m holding, before I change my mind, which he seems to know is imminent.

“Have a great day, Lily.” He smiles and limps down the hall to the elevator bank.

I am exhausted. Once in my room, I fall back on the bed. Suddenly, all my wandering thoughts about Dolly and why she touches me are starting to fall into place. Dolly wrote her life and in doing so, she captures my own life. She wrote about women’s desire to be taken seriously, to be loved, to be allowed to make mistakes, to get equal pay. She wrote about her love of butterflies and sunsets and crickets. She wrote about poor children, about poverty in the mountains, about the value of family and mothers when they seemed to have no value. And she’s still writing, still bravely telling our story, in spite of everything.

I need to see Lianne then get back home. I check out and find my car, and once back on the road to Lianne’s place, words come to me in fits and starts. I want so bad to tell Lianne my new thoughts, but I immediately swallow my exuberance when I see Mary’s face as she opens the door.

“What is it?” I ask and am terrified. Like I hadn’t known a day like this was coming and coming soon.

“I mean, she’s not waking up.” Mary moves aside to give me room to pass. The baby’s twin sister is strapped into a bouncy seat in the kitchen doorway and howling like her brother. I make a beeline to Lianne’s room. She is there, under the flowered duvet cover pulled up to her waist. She is still but breathing, but I have never seen her face so utterly without movement.

I want to lay my body right down on top of hers, to clasp her and beg her to suck life from me. Instead, I sit next to her and hold her face in my hands. I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, then the end of her nose and the corners of her lips over and over and whisper to her to stay. Please don’t go yet. Please, my precious friend, for I cannot yet imagine my life without your gray eyes crinkling at the sides in a smile.

“Hospice nurse is coming,” Mary says quietly. A knock on the door draws her attention. I hold Lianne’s hand which is small-boned and blue-veined and slack.

Mary and the nurse talk in matter-of-fact voices in the den while the babies bang on a plastic toy with matching hammers. Lianne’s face is lit by the sun streaming through the window, and normally she would have asked me to adjust the blinds. She does not ask me anything now. I close my eyes to try and feel her, to listen, to see if she is asking me anything at all through the space between us which seems so great and empty. I am afraid to open my eyes at the same time I am afraid to keep them closed.

Mary taps my shoulder. “Hospice says only days now.”

“They’ve said that before.”

“I know.”

Mary moves to shutter the blinds and I stop her.

“She told me last night… she wanted to feel the sun on her face today.” I smile weakly. Lianne is so brave to still desire, to have this hope.

“Okay,” Mary says, frowning, and I know she will close them as soon as I leave, afraid of causing her mother discomfort with the heat. I want to feel a deeper connection with Mary but we met too late in Lianne’s life. She does not ask me to stay, and I understand. We are unable to cross into each other’s grief.

I smooth Lianne’s hair from her forehead. Her gray hair, peppered with brown, is full and curly now, fully grown back from years of chemotherapy. I cannot bring myself to leave her, but Mary’s private needs are filling the room. On my way through the den, I scoop up the baby boy and relish his heat and weight on my chest until he struggles for freedom. The child’s father was an unknown sperm donor, and I can see no sign of Lianne in him anywhere, which makes me cry.

I stumble from the house to the car, get in and sob with the door open and the rain drumming the Oklahoma clay. I cannot leave, I cannot. Then I am held by the irrational fear that if I don’t leave, she will die. As long as I plan to return she will stay alive.

I turn the car back to the turnpike and Dolly’s voice comes through the speakers., and I roll the windows down and sing with Dolly and cry and cry. Lianne loves me, believes in me. She always said she knew someone very brave was hiding in me. We were so… together, as teachers, as former wives, as mothers, as women wanting love and the world. The worn stack of papers with Jim’s name and number flutter on the seat, and I quickly roll up the windows so they will not fly away. The words I had been formulating earlier flow through me, and I sing, at the top of my lungs, my own song. The song I’m going to tell the world from now on.

Take my hand, lead me into the cave

Of your heart. Love makes us brave.

To never fear is to never live,

I am an explosion of desire…

Rebecca Hinshaw, 2025