Tenney Shares the Stage

Mud Pie and Melodies

When Tenney, Dad, and Logan get home, Aubrey’s accordion tune drifts through the open living room window, wheezy and slightly flat, like a breath of old perfume. She stops the instant she spots Logan, drops the accordion on the couch, and races over to hug him. He looks startled but hugs her back. Tenney barely asks where Mason is before Dad guesses he’s in the garage fixing another broken amplifier, and the word lights up Logan’s face.

Before Logan can chase after Mason, Waylon pops up from behind the couch and licks Logan’s hand. Logan yelps and steps back, and Aubrey giggles. Tenney can’t help smiling, too, despite how strange it feels having Logan in her house. “That’s just Waylon,” she tells him. “He’s a lover, not a biter.” Waylon gives a friendly bark, as if agreeing, and Logan looks reassured.

Mom pokes her head in from the kitchen and asks if Logan’s hungry, since they’re having spaghetti and turkey meatballs, broccoli, garlic bread, and mud pie for dessert. Aubrey warns him that dessert only comes to those who finish their broccoli, a family rule. Logan admits he actually likes broccoli, so Aubrey offers up her own share, and everyone laughs, even Logan.

Aubrey drags Logan to the couch, thrilled that he’ll finally hear her play. Tenney sets the table, keeping half an eye on Aubrey’s private concert, worried that Logan will try to “fix” her playing the way he sometimes does with Tenney’s own. Instead he just listens and offers an encouraging smile. The accordion looks almost too big for Aubrey, but she pushes and pulls until a full melody cascades out. Logan and Tenney applaud, and Logan calls it awesome. Aubrey takes a proud bow, puffing that it’s hard to work the bellows because her arms are small. Logan tells her, sincerely, that he’s impressed, since he could never manage the accordion himself. Aubrey beams, and Tenney’s annoyance at Logan melts a little.

Dinner teaches Tenney more about Logan than weeks of rehearsal ever did. He asks Mason about the amplifiers he’s fixing, cleans his plate, and answers every question Dad and Mom throw at him. Between bites, Tenney learns Logan was born in Pigeon Forge, has a younger brother, and loves bike riding and Indian food nearly as much as broccoli. He’s played guitar since he was four, taught by his dad, and shrugs that he taught himself drums from videos online, which floors Mason, who took lessons and calls him more talented than they realized. Logan turns red and studies his plate. Dad jokes that four is exactly how old Tenney was when she insisted he teach her.

When Mom asks why they haven’t met his dad yet, Logan mumbles that he’s on tour, in Japan he thinks. Tenney says that sounds cool, but Logan just shrugs, looking the way Waylon does at the vet.

Dad rescues the moment with the story of his high school band’s tour through eastern Tennessee, a saga involving a seventy-nine Cadillac, a combusting amplifier, and a mob of furious heavy metal fans. Mason and Aubrey groan, having heard it fifty times, but Logan wants the details. One story leads to another, then to Mom singing “Achy Breaky Heart,” and soon everyone is singing along, Logan included. By dessert he’s grinning wider than the state of Tennessee.

After dishes, Dad heads to the garage to patch Logan’s bike tire, and Mom sends Tenney and Logan into the living room, where Waylon sprawls near the wall of family instruments: Dad’s guitars, Mom’s Autoharp, Mason’s mandolin, and older antique pieces too delicate to play. Tenney explains they used to jam together every Sunday, and mentions, surprising herself, that Logan should come sometime. He looks out at the darkening sky and calls her lucky to have a family so wrapped up in music. She shows him a tres guitar from Cuba, its strings set in pairs for salsa rhythm. He tries it and gets back a rich, tangled wall of sound, more complicated than expected.

Then Logan spots her retired “beater,” set aside since Dad gave her a mini Taylor a few months back, and says it looks like the guitar his own dad taught him on. They trade instruments, and facing the moonlit oak tree outside, Logan picks out an original melody, light and catchy, nothing like his usual fast, hard-edged songs. Tenney loves it instantly. Logan admits he wrote it but never played it at rehearsal because he assumed she wouldn’t like it. She insists they finish it together, and he agrees, both of them beaming.

Dad calls them outside to report the tire’s patched, though it needs replacing soon. Logan tries to wheel the bike home himself, but Dad insists the Grants will drive him.

Riding home squeezed between Dad and Logan in the truck, Tenney watches the streetlights thin out until Logan’s neighborhood feels almost rural, though they’re just a few miles from her own house. When they drop him at his small white house at the end of a long dirt driveway, he thanks Tenney and Dad for having him over. It was really fun. She tells him she’s excited to work on their song, and he agrees, shyly. His smile as he wheels his bike into the dark stays with her.