AnnieLee couldn’t get enough of the stories. She’d learned how it took two full years for a kid named Pollyanna Poole to get a label to listen to her songs—and how the first thing they’d told her to do was change the name her beloved mama had given her. Six months later, the newly christened Ruthanna Ryder got a publishing deal with AMG Music, wrote “Big Dreams and Faded Jeans,” and watched another singer take it to number one on the charts and keep it there for sixteen solid weeks. “Didn’t know whether to jump for joy or cry for jealousy,” Ruthanna had mused.
Yesterday, as AnnieLee sowed beet seeds, Ruthanna had told her about how hard it was to be on tour. “The day starts at four thirty a.m. so you can hit the morning radio shows to promote your concert,” Ruthanna had said, sipping on Maya’s rocket fuel coffee. “And it doesn’t end until you’ve played your heart out onstage and then signed your last autograph outside the venue. You stumble onto the tour bus somewhere on the wrong side of midnight and fall into your bed, and by the time the sun comes up you’re in a different town. And then you do it all over again. Because the only thing harder than getting to the top, kiddo, is staying there.”
It sounded impossibly glamorous to AnnieLee, even if Ruthanna tried to convince her otherwise. She talked about working around the clock and barely having time to eat, about sweating blood trying to make enough money to pay the band, the production staff, the promoters, the organizers, and the concert spaces, “not to mention forking out a regular four figures on your spangly outfits.”
“It’s not a normal way to live,” Ruthanna had said.
Tell me more, was all AnnieLee could think.
She was lying in the sunshine, taking a five-minute break, when Ruthanna threw open the back door and said, “Tomato-gate.”
AnnieLee sat up and looked over at the Early Girls she’d planted and staked the other day, wondering if Ruthanna thought she needed to put a fence around them. Because that would be…well, weird.
“Do you know why salad is significant to country music?” Ruthanna said, coming outside and folding herself onto a cushioned bench at the garden’s edge.
“Um, because salads are good for you, and country music is, too?” AnnieLee guessed, slipping her work gloves back on.
Ruthanna said, “Yeah, I’d laugh if the truth weren’t so damn maddening.”
Then she told AnnieLee about what a powerful radio consultant had said about women in country music. Male musicians, he’d argued, were the truly important artists—the “lettuce” in the playlist salad. Female singers should just be sprinkled into airplay now and again as garnish.
“‘The tomatoes of our salad are the females,’” Ruthanna said. “That was his exact quote. And that’s why they call it Tomato-gate.”
“I hope you called him up and gave him the what for,” AnnieLee said, angrily weeding now. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t believe a man would think that—men had all kinds of dumb and crazy ideas—but to say it out loud seemed like another thing entirely.
“Program directors have been telling their DJs not to play two women back to back for as long as there’s been radio,” Ruthanna said. “Labels didn’t think women could headline on the road or even make hit records. As far as they were concerned, we could sing our pretty little hearts out and just be happy opening for George Jones.”
AnnieLee yanked out a dandelion and threw it over her shoulder. “But that’s BS,” she said. “I mean, look at you. You’re a superstar.”
“But I had to work ten times as hard to get half the attention.”
AnnieLee was letting that fact sink in when she heard the rumble of a car coming up the driveway. She turned to see Ethan Blake pulling up in his battered truck, and her heart gave a tiny little hop. Did he know about all this? she wondered. Did it make him mad, too?
“And all the while,” Ruthanna went on, “a good-looking guy with a big hat, tight jeans, and a thimbleful of talent could get a record deal.”
AnnieLee watched Ethan swing his long legs out of the cab. He was wearing broken-in Levi’s, a faded chambray shirt, and lace-up work boots, and his hair was still wet from a shower. “Ethan’s got more than a thimbleful, though,” she said. “I’ve seen him play.”
“I wouldn’t give him the time of day if he didn’t,” Ruthanna said. “He’s one of the good ones—as a musician and a man.” Then she nudged AnnieLee with a perfectly polished toe. “You two getting along better now that I’ve asked him to look out for you?”