The Lost Queen of Crocker County: A Novel Read online

  In my least perky voice, I say, “Hey, let’s call Nick, tell him his movie’s a piece of crap, and then order pizza. There’s a marathon showing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’ll cheer us up.”

  Sidney’s eyes widen. “Who are you?”

  I greet him like I greet everyone: Bond style. “Willow,” I say, hand outstretched. “Jane Willow.”

  “No, seriously, what happened to you as a child?” Sidney’s brow furrows. “Mean imaginary friend? Lead paint? I thought midwesterners were polite.”

  I nod. “Pathologically polite. Something in the corn, maybe.” I pause, glance up at my wall of accomplishment, proof of solid midwestern work ethic, and think of my mother. “Every bedtime, my mother made me repeat her down-home mantra: Work hard. Be nice.”

  Sidney takes that in. “Well, one out of two isn’t bad.”

  I walk to the window and stare out at the hilly, Los Angeles sprawl. “Look, Sid, America doesn’t care that I was a film studies major. They don’t care that I know that the awful nine-minute dirt scene employed nonsynchronous sound and that the denouement was one big deus ex machina. They don’t care that one of the perks of Cinegirl’s remarkable popularity is this beautiful office. They don’t care that I say inappropriate things at inappropriate times. They don’t care what I look like, and they sure as hell don’t care if I’m socially pleasant. My guess is they have better things to do than ponder the motivations of a film critic.”

  I turn to him. “They love me because I tell them the truth. Like the Master.” I point at my shrine to film critic legend Pauline Kael on my desk, which includes a small sign—WWPKS (What Would Pauline Kael Say)—propped up on a miniature easel, along with a classic photo of the famous, late film critic draped in a writerly scarf. “Now, she was a woman with balls.”

  Sidney nods, uncrosses his legs, and focuses his attention on the photo of my parents. Sidney knows it’s home I’m avoiding, not my parents, but nevertheless, I tread lightly.

  “My parents were just here two months ago, Sid. I took them to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, even let them sleep in my bed. They can fly here whenever they want.”

  My parents are getting older, and I should try harder to see them. It’s difficult for them to travel, even if Dad does have his own plane—Hawkeye, his single-engine dream. But they’ll have to come to me. I don’t go home. Ever. I can’t.

  “And I haven’t told you the news.” I put my shoulders back, proud, and turn toward Sidney to see his face. “I’m planning a surprise trip for them—five-star treatment.” I pause. “Red-carpet treatment.”

  “Really.” Sidney sits up a little straighter.

  “Yes. My dates for the Oscars—Mom and Pop. I’ll have to tell Mom that she can’t wear her housecoat and cardigan, and Dad will probably give several A-listers unsolicited legal advice.” I take a deep breath in preparation for the real news. “But the tickets to the Oscars is the small surprise, Sid. This is the big surprise.”

  I pull up a photo on my phone from the Century 21 website of a townhome in the heart of Studio City with a Sold banner. “No more Iowa winters for Mom and Pop,” I say, showing him my parents’ new home away from home. “What it really means is that they can come to me rather than me going to see them, that I can see them whenever I want instead of once a year.”

  Sid stares for a moment, and his voice breaks a little when he says, “So this is what you’ve been saving for.” He doesn’t look up, just keeps staring at the photo. “Well, that’s really something.”

  When he finally looks up, he sees me scowling at some sort of children’s party invitation on the top of my mail pile. It is adorned with a big, pink heart. When I pick it up, he says, “Ah, you really do have a heart, Jane Willow.”

  “Shut up, Sid,” I say, cringing at the thought of attending a kid’s party.

  “And it’s gone again.” Sid nods and leans against my desk.

  The pink-hearted envelope features balloons, and the inside invitation has a birthday cake with seven candles.

  To: Ms. Jane Willow

  From: Maria Pacheco

  What: Felicia’s Birthday Party

  When: Saturday, 11 a.m.

  My assistant, Maria, has also attached a Post-it Note to the bottom of the invitation. Please know this will be totally lame…nothing like your usual fancy events…money’s tight lately. Anyway, for some reason, Felicia wants you to come. Don’t feel obligated.

  I stare at the note, lingering on “for some reason.” Three small words can pack quite a punch. Maria probably thinks I don’t know Felicia exists. I’ve never bothered to tell Maria that sometimes, when Maria’s sitter gets flaky and she brings Felicia to the office with her, Felicia and I hang out. When she’s supposed to be in the conference room coloring until she dies of boredom, I sneak her into my office and teach her things every little girl needs to know, like why it’s imperative that producers stop overusing gerunds in movie titles. Finding Forrester, Drowning Mona, Being John Malkovich—okay, I really do love that one—but come on already, and I teach Felicia the harsh truth: people who don’t know their favorite movie when asked are just plain dumb. When she tells me she thinks Frozen is silly and how she loves animals even more than she loves cupcakes, we watch Born Free together, and I introduce her to the “other” Elsa. Lions are her favorite.

  “Have you told your parents about the house yet?” Sid asks.

  “I’m gonna call them tonight,” I say. “Mom’s gonna cry”—I smile—“and Dad’s gonna tell me I spent too goddamned much money, but then he’ll tell all of his friends about it and be secretly proud.”

  Sid gazes out the window. “Why do you never go there?” He pauses before he says the next word. “Home.”

  My stomach twists and knots up.

  Ah, home. We leave home to truly know it. If that isn’t a load of crap. I left home because I needed to forget who I was. To me, this is as clear as a midwestern sky full of the brightest stars in space. Truth is, I tried so many times to go home. Whenever I got close to going back, got brave enough to confront my past, a new movie emerged, new characters’ arcs that came full circle without me having to. Eventually, today became tomorrow, tomorrow became someday, and someday never came.

  Answering the question isn’t an option.

  It’s time to bring him out, the spy who loves me in my dreams, so I say, “We have all the time in the world.”

  Sidney has one last question. “Was that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service playing in here earlier?”

  I shrug his question away.

  “You say you’re all about truth, Jane, but…” He stopped. “Secrets are dangerous things.”

  “Okay.” I nod with purpose. “You want the truth?” I blurt, then I soften. “Truth: I tear up when Wilson floats away in Castaway. David Lynch films put me to sleep better than Ambien. And I love James Bond films because my dad and I… They remind me of happy times.” I look out the window, a break from the truth.

  “Jane.” Sidney lowers his head. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, you’re right. My past is complicated.” The truth begins to unravel. I head in a different direction. “Sid, you grew up here.” I stretch my arms toward the window. “It’s exciting here. Botox gone wrong, fashionable cults, Mercury in retrograde, Steven Soderbergh at Whole Foods. Life here is one big, fantastical Tim Burton movie. We live in a city that nobody wants to leave.” Fred Allen was right. Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake one another for stars.

  I sigh. “Life in Iowa is a rom-com cliché. Predictable dialogue. Incessant talk about the weather. Slurpees. Bad casseroles. Crying in sentimental movies, and using ‘cute’ as a definitive, stand-alone film critique. It’s abysmal. And don’t even get me started on the overwrought, over-referenced It’s not heaven, it’s Iowa bullshit. Middling movie. Middling, saccharine, vapid drivel—they’re just fields
, trust me; I’ve detasseled them. No dreams, no heaven. You think it’s some storybook landscape that can heal with its good old-fashioned horse sense, but there are as many broken people there as there are in your city of broken dreams.”

  Time stops where I come from, I want to say. No twist ending there, I want to say. And let’s face it, we’re all holding out for the twist. Even though the secret I bear is evidence of the contrary, I say, “Nothing happens there.”

  Before Sidney can respond, my phone rings. “Willow,” I say. “Jane Willow.” I smile at Sidney. “Is this Cheryl from Century 21? All the paperwork’s ready. I just have to fax—” I stop to listen. It isn’t a woman’s voice. I smile again. “Who is this? Did my parents put you up to this?” I cover the mouthpiece and playfully whisper to Sidney, “Apparently my parents are dead, Sid, so I’ll finally be planning a trip home.”

  For a moment, I smile wide.

  And then I drop the phone on the floor.

  Chapter Two

  Sidney’s face loses all expression for a moment and then worry settles in his brow as he picks the phone off the floor and hands it to me.

  The policeman on the phone is still talking, but all I can hear is what he said just seconds ago.

  Plane crash.

  My whole body goes numb. “Uh-huh,” I say, barely audible, followed by “I understand.” But I don’t understand. Not really. I only heard the words: Plane crash. Dad at the helm. They were together.

  “Yes. No,” I choke out. I clench my hand, my nails digging deep into my own flesh. “I understand.”

  The truth seeps through to my insides, and my body betrays me. My posture sinks into submission. My vision is blurred with emotions so foreign, I have to reintroduce myself to them.

  Shock. Nice to meet you. Anger. How are you? Pissed off, I presume. Loss. It’s been a while.

  The policeman’s kind voice softens as he tells me how he had known my parents. How everyone knew them. How as police chief he looked up to my dad. How True City would feel this loss. How they were real gems.

  I drift between present and past. I stare hard at the clock, willing it to slow. But it doesn’t listen. The second hand moves in a perfect cadence, a mean metronome reminding me of what was, what will never be again.

  Time does not stop. It keeps tick-tick-ticking away from things that should’ve been: heartfelt phone calls, refused trips home, red-carpet dreams.

  “Was it my dad’s fault?” I clear my throat and squeeze the phone to calm my trembling hand. “Was there anything he could’ve done?” I can tell Sidney thinks this question is odd, but making things right, proper revision, would have been important to Dad.

  The policeman on the phone tells me there’d been an engine malfunction, and as I often do, I say the worst thing possible. “Thank God. If he hadn’t done everything he could to right that plane, that would’ve killed him.”

  Sidney closes his eyes for a few seconds, then opens them, as if to blink away my unfortunate phrasing.

  I search for the right words.

  Words are not permanent.

  “He believed in making things right.” I swallow away the lump in my throat.

  I hang up the phone, stare, in shock.

  “My dad,” I finally say, unable to look at Sidney. “He thought life was one giant rough draft.” My voice breaks, and I try to disguise a hiccup-breath, the kind of breath one takes midsob.

  “Jane.” Sidney rises to his feet, walks to where I stand, touches my shoulder.

  I look out the window, avoid my own reflection, and think of Dad’s words. “He’d say, ‘We all screw up at some point. Try not to let it be you. But if it is you…’” I turn to Sidney, as if always-sunny Los Angeles were unworthy of my father’s words. “‘That is to say, if it is you, if you screw up, just make it right, kid.’”

  But how can I make anything right? My parents are dead. I can hear my father’s voice, as if we are both sitting on the porch together again, searching for the right words.

  Dead.

  Deceased.

  That is to say, gone.

  A full-body chill takes hold, a harsh reminder that I may never be warm again. Sidney’s questions keep coming. What can I do to help? Do you want me to have Maria clear your schedule? Are you okay?

  I can’t answer a single one.

  Instead, flashbacks arrive with haunting speed, faster than any director could ever storyboard. No time to recover. Mom and Dad holding my hand as we walk into Star Wars, my first time in a theater. Mom singing “Madam Librarian” while watching The Music Man. Fresh watermelon picnics under the big willow tree. Dad taking the training wheels off. Restoring the Aston Martin. Mom laying out patterns for Bond Girl–inspired prom dresses.

  Cornfields and unconditional love…everywhere.

  Sidney reminds me this is real. “This is… God, I’m so sorry, Jane. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I know.”

  Sid reluctantly leaves after I convince him I need a moment, and the second he does, the tears unleash.

  This.

  This is the moment I’ve dreaded my whole life, the moment I thought wouldn’t come for another twenty years. They will go to their graves not knowing what happened to me, what I did, why I couldn’t come home for all these years, what kind of person I really am. For this, I am grateful. They deserve at least that.

  But they will also go to their graves never knowing the truth, never knowing that because I am weak, because I couldn’t bear to face what I’d done, I let the magnitude of my secret and my shame outshine my love for them, and for that I will never forgive myself. Who could?

  I should say something to someone, but my words are not my own. I am somewhere else, with someone else’s words. I close my eyes and imagine us together one last time. My parents and I take off, flying through the air in Dad’s single-engine dream. Dad clears his throat to temper his vulnerability and tells Mom, “Darlin’, you’re outta this world.” She knows this is his version of “I love you,” and she prefers it. She avoids looking at the impossibly blue sky ahead and at the tiny squares of land below, and instead looks at Dad.

  This imaginary flight with my parents is the biggest montage of my life, and the screenplay in my mind writes itself, flowing out of me with the beauty of a perfect, backward glance.

  I write how the sky had been their playground, how two people, husband and wife for forty years, courted each other in the clouds. I write how the big, blue Iowa sky—the only place Dad would ever sing—was their heaven. On the ground, they were servants to the ordinary, but up there? Up there they were ambassadors to the moon.

  But if I think about what they saw in the last minutes before they died, if I think about how they loved it when the cornfields caught the golden sunlight of their crisp, autumn Iowa sky, I will have to remember other things.

  I sniff away the moment, the day, everything that hurts, and look around my office at the life I’ve created for myself. The language of it all overwhelms me. Words. Words everywhere. For a woman who judges people by their actions, the irony is right there, right there in the pile of papers on my desk, in the framed awards on my wall, in a decade’s worth of reviews—a barren wasteland of words is what remains—a bittersweet consolation to a parentless child.

  I feel the bitter part come through. It is yesterday. And the day before that. Any day that isn’t today. Any day in my past. Any day when a girl could bury a secret part of herself in a soil so rich, so fertile, it’s hard to imagine anything unable to survive there.

  But that was yesterday. And today is today. So I will push the inevitable onto tomorrow.

  After all, there is all the time in the world.

  And tomorrow, I will finally go home.

  Chapter Three

  I slump into my recycled bamboo chair at the Crossroads Café, the least crowded restaurant
on my way home from work. Sid had begged me to come to his house, to drink away my sorrow with him, but I am finally going home tomorrow, and I have work to do.

  A young, gum-chomping waitress fueled by organic food and blind optimism bounces over to my table, her extra-small T-shirt proudly displaying a button that reads Real food has mud, not blood.

  Her voice smiles. “And how are you today?”

  I muster a nod. My parents are dead, I want to say, but she seems really, really happy.

  “Hi, I’m Clara,” comes out in a singsong cadence. “I’ll be helping you today,” she says with a wide smile and teeth so white it hurts my eyes.

  You can’t help me.

  “Can I get you started with an alkaline water or a shot of wheatgrass or maybe—”

  “Bourbon.” True bourbon is made from at least fifty-one percent corn, and since I’m heading back home where endless cornfields blanket the horizon, maybe this will help me acclimate.

  “Aw,” she says with an apologetic pout. “We don’t serve alcohol here. Rough day?”

  When I don’t answer, she nervously glances up at the poster hanging next to my booth, and with my eyes, I dare her to try to cheer me up and invoke its message: Give Peas a Chance.

  Do it, Clara. I’ve got nothing to lose.

  There are no follow-up questions, because she doesn’t really want to know how I am. Nobody out here does. Not really.

  I am suddenly aware that I am far away from my home, that I have been far away for a long time, and I’ve never been so alone. Two other sets of silverware stare back at me, two-for-one meal specials scream out in loud fonts, and laughter from happy tables for two, three, and four fills the room.

  I imagine if Mom and Dad were here. How Mom would tell Clara the waitress that she has lovely blue eyes and ask her if she got them from her mother, and how she’d listen for an answer, really listen without interrupting, like people here do just so they can talk about themselves. And then Dad would say, “Jesus Christ, Mary. Ya can’t ask a thing like that. Maybe her mother’s dead!” That last part, the morbid stuff-you-shouldn’t-say-out-loud part, would somehow be louder than the rest of the sentence and attract a roomful of disapproving glares. But that wouldn’t matter, you see, because somehow, Clara would find this all charming, and before Dad could finish his free iced tea refill, they all would’ve exchanged numbers, and she would have plans to stay on our farm on her way out East. She would love my parents because they are as real and bright as a giant, Iowa harvest moon.