Wait for Me

As Elle and Josie’s secret musical partnership deepens, Elle suggests they audition for a record label together, but Josie wants to wait until their songs are more polished. Sensing Elle is homesick, Josie invites her to her family’s home for Thanksgiving. Elle is stunned to discover that Josie comes from an immensely wealthy family and grew up in a mansion. Josie explains she was “disowned” for choosing country music over classical piano and that her parents are keeping her brother out of the Vietnam draft through his university enrollment. Elle is angered by the disparity in their backgrounds, but Josie insists she is also a disappointment to her family.

At the Thanksgiving party, Josie’s parents are cold to Elle. Later that night, a scream leads Elle to an upstairs bathroom where she finds Josie’s twin sister, Jaclyn, bleeding from a wrist wound in a bathtub, with a razor nearby. Elle uses a mountain remedy of yarrow root to treat the wound and rouses the semi-conscious Jaclyn by singing Josie’s song, “Jaclyn in Her Iris Fields” (121). A doctor arrives and credits the remedy with saving Jaclyn, while Jaclyn credits the song. Josie reacts with shock and some jealousy upon learning that Elle sang her song. When Elle reveals that she was once a mountain healer, Josie is further unsettled, while her mother questions whether Elle used witchcraft. When Mrs. Starling offers Elle money for saving Jaclyn, Elle refuses, explaining that mountain healers do not accept payment. Josie tells Elle there is something “off” about her and that she cannot help her, then disappears down the hall. Elle spends the night in the yard and leaves before dawn the next morning, feeling betrayed. Back in Nashville, Leo comforts her by playing his banjo, and Elle resolves never to hear Josie speak her name again.

Back in Nashville, Elle mourns her broken friendship with Josie. For Christmas, she returns to her mountain home without the success she had hoped for and withdraws into grief. Her mother, Susannah, encourages her to begin again, recalling a story about how Merry had helped her grieve for Reuben. Elle tells Susannah everything that happened with Josie.

In the spring, while listening to their new radio, Elle hears a familiar melody. It is her song, sung by Josie Starling and released under the title “Heal Nothing.” The DJ explains it is from Josie’s new album, supposedly written for a beloved soldier named Luke who left for the war—someone Elle has never heard Josie mention. Devastated and enraged by the theft of her most personal music, Elle realizes Josie had made her doubt her own talent, and that she had allowed it. Her grief turns to fury, and she begins packing her belongings, including her guitar, determined to take action.

This interlude is presented as the second draft of a song by Marijohn Shaw, titled “A Song for My Mother” (140). The lyrics describe a shooting star hitting the forest floor, followed by the observation that a song Marijohn wrote is no longer her own. She then questions what she may have stolen from her absent mother and what her mother may have stolen from her. The section ends with the instruction, “CUT. TRY AGAIN” (140), suggesting that Marijohn rejects this version and intends to revise it.

Elle drives to Nashville and confronts the record executive, Arlo, outside his studio. She accuses Josie of stealing her song, and as Elle lists all 10 tracks from her Merry album one by one, Arlo’s reactions strongly imply Josie recorded multiple songs from it. Arlo asks whether Elle copyrighted her songs and warns that, without copyright protection, it would be her word against Josie’s, whose family is highly influential. He offers Elle $500 for her trouble, which she refuses, demanding songwriting credit instead.

Arlo says he cannot give her credit but offers to record an album with her after she threatens to go to the press. He also expects her to adopt a more commercial, feminine image. Elle initially refuses the offer. However, after talking with Leo, a musician from her boardinghouse, she reconsiders. Leo advises her to take the deal but make Arlo wait at least a day before accepting. Elle follows his advice.

In May 1970, Elle begins recording her album, feeling like she is playing a role. The studio songwriters, led by a man named Hal, deem her “naïve” and have her record a shallow pop song called “School Girl Crush.” Elle struggles with the song’s inauthenticity and insists on playing her guitar during the recording, which Arlo initially resists. She turns off all the studio lights and insists that Arlo record her performance, creating a track that contrasts her raspy voice with the sugary lyrics. Elle persuades Arlo to keep a cat’s meow at the end of the song, and her new persona—a schoolgirl with a guitar and a cat—is born.

The song becomes a massive hit, and Elle spends the next two years touring, playing a part she feels is a lie. She sends money home to her mother and grapples with her loneliness. Despite her success, she remains troubled by Josie’s continued acclaim for the songs she stole. To celebrate her success, Arlo takes her to a secluded waterfall and gives her a limited-edition, pink-and-white-gingham vanity guitar. In 1972, at a rainy festival in Texas, Elle rebels. She walks onstage barefoot, wipes off her lipstick, and sings her own song, “Heal Nothing,” to an enthusiastic crowd that demands she play it again.

Following her triumphant festival performance, Arlo wants Elle to record her own version of “Heal Nothing,” but she refuses because it would require paying royalties to Josie. When she tries to write a new album of her own songs, she suffers from severe writer’s block, struggling to find inspiration beyond the grief that shaped her first album. Seeking advice, she talks to the songwriter Hal, who tells her she needs to live more—fall in love, get married, and get divorced—to have material to write about.

Arlo suggests that Nashville has influenced her too much, telling her she has “too much Nashville” in her (160). He suggests she return to the country to find her inspiration again. Elle tells him she cannot go back to her home mountain. As an alternative, Arlo gives her a map to a remote wooded area in Lenora, Pennsylvania, and advises her to bring a sleeping bag, expecting that she will need only a week or two to write.

Marijohn Shaw writes the third draft for a piece titled “A Song for My Mother” (162). The lyrics reveal a narrator with two fathers, one met in 1973 and another who was never met and may not have known about the narrator’s existence. In a self-directed note, Marijohn decides to discard all of these lyrics. However, she opts to save the line “if he ever knew about me” to be used as a song title (162).

Elle drives to the isolated shack in Pennsylvania, reflecting that despite Arlo’s manipulations, he is one of the few people she trusts. She arrives to find the cabin is a luthier’s workshop, filled with mandolins in various stages of completion hanging from the ceiling. The sight immediately reminds her of Merry, and she realizes that her inability to write stems from her continued avoidance of Merry’s death. Exhausted, she falls asleep on the floor.

She is awakened by a man holding a gun to her face, who drops it to steady the swinging mandolins when she reaches for the light switch. He is the luthier, and he is surprised to find her there. He reveals he is Arlo’s cousin and was not told of her arrival. He doesn’t recognize her as a famous singer, and she introduces herself only as a songwriter. To give her privacy, he sleeps outside by a campfire. From the cabin window, Elle watches him and is captivated as he plays the mandolin and sings with a hauntingly beautiful voice, inspiring her to write her first new song lyrics since Merry’s death.

For three days, Elle and the luthier, whom she mentally names Weston, coexist in silence. As she begins to overcome her writer’s block and write new songs, including one about Josie, he works on his mandolins. One afternoon, after she repeatedly sings an unfinished lyric, he sings the perfect concluding phrase from a distance. On the third night, Weston accidentally cuts his wrist on a bottle cap he uses as a mandolin slide. Elle rushes to his side and treats the wound with a goldenseal paste, a remedy Merry taught her.

The act breaks their silence. Weston reveals he knows who she is and is familiar with her song “School Girl Crush” (173). Elle admits that she fears her songs arrive too late to prevent or undo suffering, and Weston suggests that they may still matter to someone else. He admits that hearing her sing is the best part of his day. He warns her not to get “mixed up with” him (176), but the connection between them deepens. Later, Elle goes for a swim in the creek, and Weston follows. In the water, he tells her he has been waiting for someone to be with him, just as he is, and she turns to face him.

Elle’s writer’s block vanishes, and she spends her days writing new songs, processing her rage and grief over Josie. Weston provides insightful feedback, and they begin playing music together. Elle tells him the full story of Merry’s death and how she feels responsible, and he comforts her, suggesting she embed clues about Merry in her new album to reclaim the narrative from Josie. Weston notices Merry’s cracked mandolin in her car and offers to restring and polish it; Elle initially cannot agree, knowing those strings were the last thing Merry touched, but finally nods when he argues that instruments are meant to be played.

Elle confesses she has never been with a man. He kisses her, and they become physically intimate on the cabin floor. She stays with him for six weeks, writing enough material for three albums as their romantic relationship develops. As autumn approaches, she knows she must return to Nashville and asks him to come with her, but he gives no clear answer. On her last morning, she wakes to find him gone without leaving a note. He has also taken Merry’s mandolin. A final paragraph jumps forward to 1991, revealing that the mandolin resurfaces after a meteor strike and is shown in a news broadcast in the hands of a young woman named Marijohn.