Rock Star
Heidi Fettig Parton
Word Count 742
1. At the age of 46, Dolores O’Riordan—lead singer of Irish rock band the Cranberries—died in a hotel bathtub. Her death was declared an accidental drowning after excessive drinking.
2. It’s 2023. I’ve outlived Dolores by six years. I haven’t ugly cried since my mid-forties. I’m experiencing a saltwater deficit.
3. All I’ve ever wanted is to write and publish a book. But wait that’s not completely true. I’d give up that dream if I could be a rock star.
4. During the eight years I was divorced—in the early to late 2000s—I hated sleeping alone. Now, fully ensconced in menopause, I sometimes want an entire queen (not king) bed to myself, I want an entire room, and sometimes … an entire house.
5. After three years studying Irish mandolin, I can only play three chords—though I can “pick out” many reels, jigs, and hornpipes. Things are going much better on the bodhrán, or Irish drum.
6. Until a month ago, when I saw the spooling lyrics on Spotify, I thought Dolores was singing “Salvation,” not “Zombie” in the chorus of the Cranberries’ song “Zombie.”
7. When, at age 38, I left my job for love, I had no idea I’d still miss that career 14 years later. It’s kind of like how you don’t know you’re making love to someone for the last time. It’s kind of like how you don’t know when a goodbye is not just a “see you later.”
8. Contemplated Facebook Marketplace ad: Mid-century modern, gently used Irish bodhrán player seeking indie folk band. Contemplated tattoo: Three chords and the truth.
9. The Cranberries played First Avenue on November 28, 2009. My heavy-laden breasts dripped with milk for my third child, a newborn. I’ll see them when they come through next time, I told myself. The Cranberries next (and last scheduled) Minneapolis concert was canceled due to illness. What was Dolores ill with, ticket holders asked at the time?
10. Menopausal insomniac becomes addicted to the New York Times word game, Spelling Bee. Must achieve genius status each night before putting her iPad to sleep!
11. I’m a year overdue for my second colonoscopy but a July-born Cancer, I dread letting go of my shit.
12. What happens to a menopausal crab who loses her cyclical monthly moisture? Can salvation descend without water?
13. If she hasn’t achieved Spelling Bee genius status by 11 pm, she consults the comments section, where hive-minders, like a guy named Steve, share detailed hints.
14. U2’s aging lead singer Bono always looks like Bono. It’s different with female rockers, like Natalie Merchant and Alanis Morissette. I see my own age reflected better on their faces than in my own bathroom mirror.
15. Even when coffee dehydrates her and causes tongue barbs to grow, she can’t give it up. So, she goes on stinging those she loves.
16. On the top of a bookshelf sits a framed photo: four-year-old me in a red coat with white faux-fur cuffs standing in snow. Her small body casts a long blue shadow behind her.
17. My husband recently told me, “When we look in the mirror, we see a memory.”
18. It’s puzzling how often I miss the word “SEVENTEEN” when “S, E, V, N,” and “T” comprise five of the seven Spelling Bee letters (enter STEVE).
19. There’s another long blue shadow now, casting itself back across the pieces of my life long gone, across opportunities abandoned.
20. Men once had penis barbs. Scientists have tried to determine why these “fell” away. I have the answer: women began to outlive their own slippery salvation.
21. The Cranberries 1996 album, To the Faithful Departed, has a song entitled “Salvation.” I was listening to this album back when my music played on a CD player. I always skipped this song.
22. Listening to the song “Secret Smile” from Twin Cities-based band Semisonic brings up the memory of how it once made me swell and swoon. My apologies to poet Jack Gilbert, but the memory is not “more than enough.”
23. Irish tunes have weirdly specific titles, like if I were to name my first slip jig composition something like “Katherine O’Kelly likes Penis Barbs.”
24. Even with my newfound knowledge, I may always sing the chorus of “Zombie” my way: SAL-AL-VAY, SAL-AL-VAY, SAL-AL-VAY-VAY-VAY-SHON. Salvation comes to me through the driving bass line, and Dolores’s crushed-velvet vocals; it's the sound of an empathetic God on a bender.
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Heidi’s writing can be found, or is forthcoming, in Brevity, Forge Literary, Fugue, Multiplicity Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, River Teeth Journal’s “Beautiful Things,” Sweet Lit, The Manifest-Station, and more. Her Brevity essay, “The Once Wife,” was recently nominated for the Best American Essays 2023.