The Lost Queen of Crocker County: A Novel

by Elizabeth Leiknes

  “Everyone knows you.”

  I nod. “From Cine—”

  “We remember people here.” His voice, stern and confident, makes me almost apologize. I now realize he has no idea about Cinegirl or about who I’ve become. He only knows the part of me I’ve abandoned.

  Before Jane.

  As After Jane in Los Angeles, I create blockbusters and bombs with my words. But here I am, Jack and Mary Willow’s only daughter, who never came to visit. The shittiness of it all forces my barbecue sandwich into my throat.

  “You’re the Crocker County Corn Queen.” His stare, deep and knowing, cuts through me, like he knows this and so much more.

  He extends his hand through the open window. When my hand touches his calloused skin, something shoots through me, something equal parts happiness and sorrow. I study him, look for evidence of our connectedness, but see nothing.

  In my haze, I imagine writing my way out of this.

  Once upon a time, I saw a farmer wave at me and I kept driving. I lived happily ever after. The end.

  But if this is a fairy tale and I am the narrator, this man is a gatekeeper, the character who catalogs people’s entrances and exits in and out of a land called True City.

  “It’s good to be home,” I lie.

  He looks at me like a parent about to deliver wisdom, and I brace myself. “Your true home, Janie, always opens its door. It always forgives.” Then he lets out a quiet affirmation. “Romans 5 something, I think… He loves us at our darkest.”

  I put the car in drive and give him a goodbye look. He glances at the darkening sky.

  “There’s a storm a-brewin’, Janie Willow.” With this, a sharp gust of wind erupts; this time, it’s like an announcement. When he stretches out his arm, the lower half swings hinged at his elbow joint, like a farmhouse door opening with ease. A welcoming gesture perhaps—entrance back into a land he guards.

  But then I notice his finger point toward the passenger door as I pull away. I accelerate until the sight of his overalls fade. When I look in my passenger-side mirror, I see the shoulder strap of my purse hanging outside the car, flapping and tethered, flying proud, stupid, and aimless through the air.

  Once again, I revise. The idiots are obviously driving around.

  • • •

  What is it about the air here? More oxygen, maybe? I can’t comment on the science, the chemistry, with accuracy; but with every breath I’m feeling annoyingly dizzy, like the air itself is urging me to take stock of my life. Seems a bit pushy, if you ask me. All of my achievements from the last eighteen years fade a bit in this strange, thick air. Strong and simple particles shake my memory loose, try to have their way with me, but they do not know who they’re dealing with.

  The farmer’s gate disappears into the fold of a small hill, and I endure another mile of unsettling inhalation. Memories flood my mind. I am ready to call Sid, tell him I’ve contracted some sort of flu that’s affecting my ability to act rationally. Everything around me has slowed down, flashing in deliberate, familiar images—giant red barns that reach toward the clouds, metal mailboxes with neatly painted Andersons and Smiths, bales of hay piled with the precision of someone who takes pride in small things.

  When I pass the Browns’ farm, the wind picks up, causing Mrs. Brown’s rooster weather vane on her machine shed to go temporarily berserk, its red tin arrow landing in my direction when I glance up. The chest-high corn sways at first, dances, really, and I try to dismiss how enchanting the wind looks whipping through the corn rows, stalk by stalk bowing slightly as I drive by, like the land itself recognizes me as one of its own.

  A half mile down, I turn left in an autopilot maneuver, and although I want to change course and alleviate the twinge of pain deep inside me, a gravitational pull fights against it. I drive right to it, defying all good sense and disobeying my rule of never looking back. The car idles for a moment at the beginning of the turnoff, the beginning of so much, but within seconds I am face-to-face with it. Face to tree rather.

  I get out of the car, and when I walk across the ditch to confront what I’ve been avoiding for eighteen years, I feel the sky give way. Just one drop at first, then too many to count. As usual, I once again bring rain. With each step, I feel the heaviness of it—the oldest willow tree in Crocker County—tower over me. Strong branches sprout thousands of leaves, now shimmering in the wind, but my gaze falls on the showstopper—its trunk—too big to hug even if I’d wanted to. I imagine the root system so widespread by now it must have its own life, and I am compelled to take off my boots. My feet tingle with what lies buried below, with what happened here, but when the tingle becomes an ache, I abandon it and leave it behind.

  I get back in the car as the rain subsides and follow the path—a long lane that leads to a white farmhouse planted firmly at its end. It was my grandfather’s farm, given to my dad even though he chose not to be a farmer. Although I’ve driven down this lane hundreds, thousands of times way back when, now it seems like all roads have led to this one. I sit in the driver’s seat and stare at the house, the only home I’ve ever known. It is my home. And it isn’t.

  My memory has betrayed me. The wraparound porch—the same one I hated as a girl because the tiny wooden slats were a nightmare to paint—now looks less like the barrier I remembered and more like an invitation. One could do so many things while on that porch—watch a sunrise, watch a sunset, watch a daughter grow.

  Without thinking, I wait for my parents to walk out, slam the screen door, planks creaking beneath their feet. But all I hear is the rope rubbing against the rubber tire as the wind makes it twirl from the giant willow tree. The rope frayed its way to breaking several times over the years, but Dad replaced the rope, put it back up every time in hopes there would be reason to have it. That is to say, he’d hoped to be a grandfather someday.

  I carry my hollowness with me as I put one foot in front of the other, climb the porch steps, and search for the courage to walk past the two empty rocking chairs, freshly painted barn red. I open the front door, which I know will be unlocked—the very idea of locking a door seemed unneighborly here—and I am home.

  My clothes still damp with rainwater, I step across the worn door jam and cross yet another invisible threshold. I watch my eighteen-year-old self walk past me and venture out into the world. I try to recall if I’d waved goodbye to my parents on my final exit, but when I glance behind, I see a young girl not looking back.

  I walk into the living room, sit down in one of the two gray-corduroy La-Z-Boy recliners, his and hers. I’m in Mom’s. Her weekend cardigan, the lavender one with the missing button and a rumpled tissue peeking out one pocket, is draped over the armchair and smells like her lilac perfume. I breathe it in, try to hold it inside me.

  I know what’s in the DVD player without having to look. It’s what my mother fell asleep to every night—her all-time favorite film, and according to her, the best musical ever made. Most critics would say it’s no West Side Story, no Guys and Dolls, that the Iowa native Meredith Willson was neither Rodgers nor Hammerstein, but Mom thought The Music Man was in a league all its own. She thought it was better, because when we watched it, she said we were better.

  Like a bittersweet reminder, I glance at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the north wall of the living room. My father built them when Mom’s reading habit began to take over the house. Madam Librarian, he’d call her when she gave a book more attention than him. I can still see her reading face, weathered from a full life, yet according to my father, the prettiest face in Crocker County. That was Mary Willow: midwestern as a pot luck, a woman who owned dozens of cardigans—practically perfect for every temperature.

  Before I can resume play, find out the last scene of The Music Man Mom had watched for the very last time, I realize something so right, so pure that it hits me with the weight and precision of a truth found out too late: Dad was Mom’s
Harold Hill.

  My eyes well up as I redefine the father I thought I knew, revise my memory of him. In his fantasies, he was James Bond, but in reality, he was exactly what a grounded, pragmatic midwestern girl wanted—someone to make her feel out of this world. Someone to fly with, to make her believe in dreams.

  Believe so, kid, Dad would say, channeling the moxie required for unbridled hope—the kind of hope that practical people bet against. Believe so, he’d say, for when Mom, when we all, needed it most.

  Something calls me to my bedroom, so I climb the wooden stairs, prompting a creak on step three and a bigger creak on step seven, like always, and when I open my bedroom door, I am breathless. I have stepped into my childhood.

  Everything. The. Same.

  My framed poster of Iowa, my center of the world. My oh-so-high-school red-and-black comforter that replaced my little-girl Strawberry Shortcake set. The wallpaper border that looks like a film reel. My wall of movie posters: The Shining, Ghostbusters, Raging Bull, Back to the Future. My small bookshelf full of little-girl things—Nancy Drew, Laura Ingalls Wilder—and my tall bookshelf representing my teenage obsessions—my Ian Fleming collection, a Christmas gift from Dad, in order from my favorite to least favorite, From Russia with Love first, Live and Let Die last. My heart flutters a little when I see my ’64 Corgi toy car, an Aston Martin replica complete with ejector seat, missiles, and the signature Silver Birch paint job.

  On the top shelf is all things movies. Not the types of heavy film-theory books I read in grad school, but the fun ones meant for someone newly fallen for film: How to Read a Film, Cavell’s The World Viewed, and of course, my shrine to my then-and-now idol, Pauline Kael. When other mothers had been buying their daughters Judy Blume books, mine was buying me the semantic stylings of the legendary film critic Ms. Kael: I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Raising Kane, When the Lights Go Down. I had them all and knew every word.

  By now, the heart of True City is putting on their funeral attire, getting ready to pay their respects to my parents, and it’s almost time for me to go. It is. But I’m not ready to leave. Not yet. I need to remember another time, so I sit down on my bed and sink into a long-ago summertime evening. Mother is tucking me in. She buttons her cardigan, then pushes open the wooden bedroom window, swollen with humidity, lets the rickracked curtains dance as the finally cool breeze joins us in our nighttime ritual.

  Outside this bedroom window, the daytime sun blazes, but not in this dreamscape I’m in. Here the lights are off. Iowa starlight floods through the window. I wait for Mother to take her spot on my bedspread’s worn red-and-black quilt square. Right on cue, a gentle tuck of my hair behind my ear, the ritual begins. “Janie, what do we always do?”

  “Work hard. Be nice.”

  Then I recall the sweet voice that once helped me drift into sleep. Shirley Jones had nothing on my mother, though. “Goodnight, My Someone” was a tune she sang to me hundreds of times. She sings me good night.

  Her voice pours over me.

  She tells me dreams are my own.

  Drifting, I whisper, “Am I your someone…or is it Daddy?” Quieter. “It’s okay if it’s Daddy.”

  “That old coot?”

  I let out a sleepy laugh. “Mommy, are there really dreams up there?”

  Mother speaks like an authority on all things celestial. “I’m sure of it.”

  I shut my eyes, take in a child-deep, relaxing breath. Half-asleep. “Do you have a dream, Mommy?”

  “Sure do,” she whispers, and smiles as she watches her greatest dream breathe in and out, a cadence so beautiful it could make a mother thank her stars.

  Chapter Seven

  The clock in the kitchen reads a quarter to Time to bury your parents.

  I’ve changed into proper mourning attire, a black Betsey Johnson shift dress and modest heels. I’ve made several phone calls to make sure what I have planned for the funeral is on schedule. It’s time to go, but my body moves in slow motion, each step, each movement a deliberate stall tactic to put off the inevitable. I inch around Mother’s lemony-clean farmhouse kitchen, the perfect set kitchen for a film starring a nurturing protagonist whose job it is to love.

  I take in all that Mother has made here—breakfast, lunch, dinner, peace, I hope. What do I make, besides enemies? I scour my memory for the last time I actually created something of my own, but can’t remember when. Truth be told, I make criticism, plot it out scene by scene, and then have the audacity to wonder why the audience doesn’t want an encore showing.

  Everything on the counter is neatly in its place, tidy with pride, a midwesterner’s prerequisite for leaving the house. You never know, Mom would say. When I open the refrigerator, it too is organized with purpose—milk close to the front, veggies nestled sensibly in the crisper, and now I see it: my favorite. “Heaven in a casserole dish,” I say out loud to no one, knowing that in Los Angeles this would be an impossible metaphor, an oxymoron even, given their prejudice against overcooked, rectangular food.

  But this dish, Mother’s scalloped corn casserole, transcends, makes you feel like you might, in fact, have died and gone to heaven. She always made it before she and Dad went flying, so they’d come home to a finished dinner. Died and gone to heaven casserole. The irony hits me when I see the untouched casserole, no pieces gone, uneaten by those who have already died and gone to heaven.

  Mother used to make it for me when she sensed I needed it—when discotheque knocked me out of the spelling bee, when E.T. went home, and later when, unbeknownst to Mom, the Before Jane turned into After Jane—and here it is now, when I need it the most.

  I lift the oblong Pyrex dish out of the fridge and place it on the kitchen table. After peeling back the plastic wrap and breathing in the sweet and salty goodness in perfect proportion, I sit down at the kitchen table and serve myself a big square. It was as good cold as hot, and I let my fork pierce the golden-brown and crusty top, then buttery corn bread crumbs and saltine crackers, and right when I’m struck by the layers I’d forgotten about, I reach the soft middle. The main feature. The heart.

  The flavors awaken in my mouth. Paprika, farm-fresh eggs, a dash of pepper, a pinch of sugar. And corn. Of course, corn—both creamed and whole kernel, straight from the field. But today the corn is not the star. I think of Mother, beautiful and golden, and swallow the last bite.

  I put the remaining casserole in Tupperware, walk into the breezeway, and open the deep freezer. Might as well save it for someone else. What greets me when I open the lid takes my breath away.

  Stacks and stacks of labeled containers full of the same thing. I don’t have to open them to know. Scalloped corn casserole perfectly preserved for the chance that Mary Willow’s only child might come home. I look through the labels, which date back two years to the last time I had mentioned I might make a visit.

  JUNE. Summer’s coming.

  My busy time, Mom. Summer movie previews.

  JULY. Go to the parade?

  Sorry, Dad. Deadline for War Horse. Can’t make Spielberg wait!

  OCTOBER. Corn Festival.

  Preparing speech for American Film Critics Award ceremony.

  NOVEMBER. Thanksgiving.

  UCLA guest speaker.

  DECEMBER. Christmas.

  Best of holiday movies top-ten list.

  JANUARY. New Year’s.

  Getting ready for Sundance Film Festival.

  FEBRUARY. Dad’s birthday.

  Oscars wrap-up.

  MARCH. Dad’s retirement party.

  I’m out of excuses, but the thought of being back there makes me short of breath.

  APRIL. My birthday.

  Hell no. This would mean looking back, confronting the secret that paralyzes me from living my life.

  MAY. Mom’s birthday.

  This is what shame does. It makes you miss your mother
’s birthday, and there’s no excuse for that.

  I let the freezer lid fall shut, slump onto the linoleum floor, and for the first time in years, cry. An indescribable chill seeps into my bones as I sit shivering on the cold, hard floor. When I notice the coatrack by the breezeway door, I force myself up, walk to it, and grab what hangs from the brass hooks—four of Mother’s cardigans.

  I put on the first one, slate-gray with pearly, iridescent buttons. The scent of fresh-cut lilacs wafts through the air, and I pretend it’s confirmation that she’s here with me. When that doesn’t seem enough, I put on the second, baby-girl pink with frayed wristbands, then a third, sunshine-yellow, buttery enough to melt in your mouth. Not willing to leave any part of her behind, I put on the last one, blue as a cloudless sky.

  I tug on all of the layers, all I have left of my mother tightly wrapped around my cold self, and dream of how warm Mother had been. She is here. I hear her. Of all the babies in this whole wide world, I got you. You. The best one. And then in utilitarian fashion, she tempers the compliment with some practical midwestern common sense. Now put on a cardigan. You never know what the weather will be like.

  You know, you really don’t.

  Chapter Eight

  Even though I’m wearing four layers of my mother, I am still cold. Eighteen years cold. When you are consumed by shame, there’s not a lot of room for warmth. I can’t seem to peel myself up off the linoleum floor, and with the deep freezer full of yesterday’s abandoned dreams staring back at me, I cling to the phrase that justifies my truth: it is what it is.

  This phrase, this small, fatalistic dose of succinct syntax is cliché-tastic. Given its lameness, it should be a writer’s kryptonite, but for me, it represents a truth most people can’t accept: there are no second chances.

  Your wife left you for her personal trainer named Rocco?

  It is what it is.