FAME and GLORY Read online

  Just as the road straightened a bit, Brandee woke with a start. She looked at her husband and took his right hand. The previous 3 years had taught her that, though he was right-handed, Jake was perfectly willing to drive with his left hand if she wanted to hold his right hand. She squeezed his hand a little and said,

  "Good morning, honey."

  Jake gave her hand a return squeeze and said, quietly, "Good morning, songbird. How's my girl?'

  “I'm good I guess. My neck is a little stiff though. This road isn't the most conducive thing to a nap in the car, is it?"

  He replied, "No it isn't, baby. We'll be in Red Bluff pretty soon though. We'll stop there. That will give you a chance to get out and stretch your legs and move around a little."

  She laughed. It was the sparkling laugh that had so intrigued Jake on the night that they had first met. It reminded him of crystal wind chimes. He marveled that even her laugh had a melodic quality. When she was really amused, like now, it rang out clear and true.

  "We aren't also stopping so you can get a venti quad shot caramel macchiato with extra foam and double whip, are we?" she said. She knew his weakness for that tasty concoction from Starbucks all too well.

  He feigned ignorance, widening his eyes that she would even think that he might have his own desires in mind on such a day as this.

  "M' lady, please. You know that I live only to serve you. Your every impulse is my life’s command."

  This was Brandee's cue to put her finger in her mouth, feigning illness at the corny phrase that he used from time to time. Though he was a doting husband, he was certainly not without a will of his own. The couple clashed at times and their arguments could get quite loud. Brandee had grown up in a somewhat tumultuous household and wasn't hesitant to speak her mind at a relatively high volume. Jake hated conflict, but he had learned that backing down from Brandee would create a tsunami that would overwhelm his own wants and needs. So fight they did, but making up they did even better. Jake pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. They had miles to go, and a big night ahead.

  ***

  Brandee was born Brandee Alexander on December 10, 1986 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was born just a couple of weeks before the New Year, inspiring her father, Alan, to nickname her "tax break". Brandee's mom Debra used to work on stage as a dancer. For the most part, Debra's career was in the casinos and nightclubs that bordered Vegas' famed Strip, but occasionally she would land a spot on one of the big stages on the glittery path that Las Vegas is so known for. Most of the people that she worked behind on stage were second and third line singers that no one ever heard about. Debra remembered fondly, though, her rare opportunities under the bright lights dancing behind the likes of Cher, Dolly Parton, Tony Orlando, and Dawn.

  Debra Alexander's maiden name was D'Angelo and, while she was a talented dancer (with legs, she was told, that went on for miles), her career was never very stable. When the economy took a downturn, the shows failed to sell out. A showroom needs a 92% full house to make a profit. When the folks didn't show up, the big acts sometimes came down with "strep throat" or (and this was a common one) "exhaustion" and the show’s run would be over. The dancers on the big stages would trickle down a few blocks to the 2nd line houses. The dancers that they would replace in the 2nd line houses would be left to the poorly lit dives like O'Sherry's and Slots of Luck. More than once, Debra D'Angelo had needed to make ends meet without a job on the horizon. It was then that she had spent some time as a stripper, using the pseudonym Crimson Delight. She had never told Brandee about those times and hoped she would never know.

  Times got better for Debra D'Angelo when she met Alan Alexander. She met him in the least romantic place possible. They found themselves in the same place at the same time in the produce aisle of the local Safeway. They struck up a conversation about the comparative value of the Golden Delicious vs. the Granny Smith. Before they knew it, the great apple debate had turned into a dinner date. She discovered that he was a real estate broker with a taste for good wine and long conversations. They were married a year to the day from their first date.

  Brandee came along on December 10, the same year Debra and Alan were married. She was 8 pounds, 8 1/2 ounces, and came into the world with lungs full of mad. She gave the receiving nurse a blast with her first full breath. She let the nurse in the hospital nursery have it when she gave Brandee her Vitamin K shot. She let the newborn ward know her opinion when the blanket slid off of her, leaving her cold. Brandee Reneé Alexander was here, and dammit, the world was going to know her opinion.

  Young Brandee was a sharp little thing. She picked up the basics of crawling then walking then running months earlier than her peers. She loved to run around outside her family's two-story home, but she loved falling down almost as much. Jake wouldn't have recognized the goddess on the bar stool if he had seen that same goddess when she was seven years old. Most of the time, she had a skinned leg or a scraped chin. Only later, when she realized that attracting the opposite sex could be just as much of a game as the ones that she had mastered earlier, did she let the butterfly out of the caterpillar's cocoon.

  Brandee began attending Del Sol High School in Las Vegas. She got along well with her teachers that first year, though she was "coded" a couple of times for wearing tops that showed a little bit of her tanned and toned tummy. The punishment for that was dressing in P.E. gear for the rest of the day. When the males of Del Sol saw her in P.E. attire, they knew that they had missed out on a pretty good look before she had been apprehended by the fashion police.

  Brandee was a very good student when she chose to apply herself. She had a natural aptitude for math and science, and probably could have gone on to college in one of those fields had she chosen to do so. She discovered what was to become a lifelong passion though, while enrolled at Del Sol. That passion was singing.

  Every high school in Las Vegas had a choral group. Each choral group had one or two talented soloists. No other high school had Del Sol's Brandee Alexander. She gained local notoriety when she was only 13 years old, belting out "God Bless America" from the back of a float as it traveled down Fremont Avenue on the 4th of July. Her local fame spread as her vocal wings spread. She sang "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" at the Clark County Fair. That performance was captured on local access television and was requested as a download from the station's website so often that the station’s antiquated server imploded. Brandee was hot, and it had nothing to do with a cropped shirt or low cut blouse.

  While she was most prominently known as a singer, her musical gifts ranged beyond her vocal talents. She quickly became a talented keyboardist too. She could make a piano bend to her will. She played jazz organ, and, later, the synthesizer as well. She was able to play some guitar but not to performance quality as quickly as she had mastered the keyboard instruments. Brandee had little doubt, though, that if she needed to become a guitar player to do what was necessary, she wouldn't lag too far behind Jimi Hendrix. Brandee was simply a supremely confident young lady, and it really stretched to all areas of her life. When she set her sights on a goal, that goal was half accomplished. Happy with the response that she had received for her "God Bless America” and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" during the summer, Brandee set her sights on performing for a crowd in a place with better acoustics than afforded her by Fremont Street or the Clark County Fairgrounds. Later that fall, she set the arena on fire performing "The Star Spangled Banner" before a University of Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin' Rebel basketball game.

  Lots of young ladies can sing, but Brandee was a breed apart. Years later, Jake marveled at her clear soprano voice as she sang quietly with the radio, but she could do so much more than sing high notes and sing them well. She had almost as much range as there are octaves detected by the ear. She could soar to the top of the mountain like Mariah Carey. She could dive into the valley with Patsy Cline, growling and wailing in equal parts haunting and inspiring. It was said she could bring a tear to a dead man's
eye with "I Have Never Been So Much in Love Before". She could absolutely bring a crowd to its feet with power ballads like Heart's "What About Love", or Brandee's own composition, "Heat Beyond Fire".

  Brandee Alexander had always suspected what was behind the drive that pushed her in her music. The reasons were twofold. Much as her mother didn't want her to know, Brandee did know the lengths to which her mother had to go to keep a roof over her head before her daughter was born. When she was 12 years old, she had found a yellowed picture of Crimson Delight in the bottom of a drawer and recognized her mother's much younger face.

  In addition, there was the tragic event of January 16, 2001. Brandee's father Alan had been killed by a drunk driver in a fiery car accident when he was returning home on the I-15 one rainy night. Brandee had just turned 14 years old a month before.

  That was a pivotal time for Debra and Brandee. Debra grieved for her husband terribly. She had never been as happy before him and suspected she would never be as happy after. She cried herself to sleep night after night after night.

  Brandee grieved too, but in a different way. She was an only child and took on a greater sense of responsibility for her mother's care than a young teen should have to bear. She became angry that such a thing would happen to her Dad, and listened as her mother sobbed each night after she thought Brandee was asleep.

  What all of this taught her was that she needed to be better than she was. In all ways. She needed to grow up faster, in her mind, so she could be a help to her ravaged Mom. Not knowing that her father had carried a substantial life insurance policy, Brandee imagined that Debra might have to go back to being that awful Crimson person, and she couldn't bear the thought.

  The loss of Alan Alexander was tragic on so many levels. Debra spent a long time in a state of shock that approached that of someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She never went back to dancing, but rather took a part time position as a clerk typist in her late husband's real estate office. The others in the office were supportive and gentle with her, and, after a while, Debra regained a sort of emotional equilibrium.

  Brandee's grief was much different. While Debra suffered quietly, Brandee didn't know how to be quiet. She became louder and more outrageous at school. She was a quick learner in all areas, and that included learning to swear like a sailor on a weekend pass. “Yes” and “no” became "fuckin' a” and “fuck no".

  As her body began to blossom, Brandee took her penchant for pushing the limits of her attire a step further. She scoured Victoria's Secret looking to be pushed up and out. One day in school, her English Classics teacher was attempting to explain "décolletage". Brandee blurted out, "Oh! You mean when you can see my big-ass boobs."

  Only in the area of her music was Brandee able to channel her turmoil effectively. A great natural singer, Brandee had much more than that in mind going forward. She knew that she needed to get some professional training, but there was no one in Las Vegas year round who could be of the kind of help that she believed she needed. That's where Alan Alexander's life insurance policy came in handy.

  Brandee was able to spend most of each summer in San Francisco. Her own research had told her that professional training between the ages of 13 and 17 was going to be crucial to her success. It's during those years that her burgeoning womanhood and the hormonal changes therein could play havoc with her voice. A professional voice coach would be able to harness those changes and help her acquire the depth that would transform her from a great girl singer to a young woman that people would remember forever.

  Brandee placed herself under the care of Racheal Geyer, a lyric soprano famous for her coloratura in performance. Brandee knew that Miss Geyer would be able to train her to incorporate the soprano trills and runs that a coloratura is so famous for having in her arsenal. Brandee could go high. She wanted to go higher still. Combining that with her growling voice would be, she figured, just the ticket to fame and, she hoped, fortune.

  Ms. Racheal Geyer was a hard taskmistress. When she felt that Brandee wasn't working hard enough, her lips would become thin and she would tap an impatient drumbeat on her desktop. Ms. Geyer was a very serious voice coach. An affectionate wife and mother, she wasn't the most personable individual when she taught. That was fine with Brandee. She had a mother. She wasn't looking for a mother figure. Ms. Geyer (and that's what Brandee called her throughout the time that she was her student) maintained a taciturn, businesslike demeanor with Brandee, and Brandee flourished under her tutelage. Each fall, Brandee returned to Nevada a more professional performer. She had developed a depth to her voice that was partly due to maturity but mostly due to Ms. Geyer.

  Brandee Alexander had grown into a beautiful young lady. She had long blonde hair that hung down in natural waves about two inches below her shoulder blades. Men liked to walk with their arms around her shoulders just to feel the golden blanket under their forearms. Her blonde hair had just enough natural red shine to gleam under the stage lights like an Oklahoma sunset. She had never enhanced her hair color artificially. She was just naturally blessed.

  Brandee's eyes were blue but they had flecks of gold in them. They were slightly almond shaped and sparkled when she laughed. She did occasionally wear colored contact lenses when on stage. The contact lenses were to correct a slight astigmatism that came on when the lights hit her just right. The color was to set off her eyes depending on what color she was wearing for that particular performance.

  Not everyone at Del Sol High School was enamored with Brandee Alexander. The reasons for that were twofold. Certainly much of what she went through with her peers were a result of jealousy. Beautiful blondes are almost universally mistrusted and slandered by other girls. The existence of the famous "blonde jokes" that were so popular among teens in Las Vegas were evidence enough of that.

  Her physical charms weren't the only wellspring of conflict between herself and her classmates at Del Sol. One thing that Brandee never needed to be trained in was the art of simply being a performer. While this served her well on stage, it caused her to be accused of being somewhat of a phony by some. When she sang "God Bless America" on the 4th of July, almost everyone there would have thought that she was somewhere north of Betsy Ross in her patriotic fervor, but not everyone was captured. When she finished a performance at her own school toward the end of one school year, by saying, "Good night Del Sol, I love you all," she captured many hearts, but she caused some heads to shake and eyes to roll.

  There were those who believed that she was just a touch too slick on stage. Some believed that the tears in her eyes during the opening bars of "Love to My Gift" were probably placed there by strategic use of an eye dropper just before the lights came up. Everyone granted her their ears. Not everyone was ready to grant her their trust.

  Some of this came about through Brandee's own doing. She could sing gospel pitch perfectly. She could sing "Carry You to Jesus" with a catch in her throat and tell a hushed crowd how very much it meant to her...then regale her friends with scathing bathroom humor shortly thereafter. She never lost the penchant for foul language that she had acquired after her father's untimely and premature death. She was just too accomplished as a performer to let it be widely known that she was a deeply conflicted young lady.

  The Alexanders had never been a particularly devout family. Their belief in God was always carried out in a slightly haphazard fashion. Christmas and Easter would find them in a back pew of Christ Church Episcopal Church on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas. Christ Church because it was close to home. A back pew so they could avoid being detained by the Rector at the end of their time there.

  Debra had tried to teach Brandee some of the famous stories of the Bible. While Brandee thought the story of Joshua knocking the bejesus out of Jericho with trumpets and a loud shout to be fascinating, she showed little interest beyond that. She did enjoy hearing her mother sing to her though. Debra sang Bible songs to her daughter at night, before Brandee went to sleep, but at no time did young Brandee have an
y kind of religious foundation established.

  Little surprise then, what happened after Alan was tragically taken from his family. Brandee blamed God for her loss and firmly turned her back on Him. She did not consider even the nominal Christmas and Easter church attendance.

  "What kind of asshole loving God would do such a thing to a little girl?" she used to ask.

  It was a rhetorical question though, because she had no interest in hearing any answer other than the one that she had already formed in her own mind. She decided that she would put faith only in that which she could see and touch, and that which hadn't hurt her. She further decided that her trust would be hard earned and easily lost. As for God, He could kiss her ass and say goodbye.