I walk over to the two coffins, side by side, the way it should be. Trying not to sound like a broken little girl, I whisper my final words. “Goodbye, ambassadors. Outta this world.”
Chapter Twelve
I am lost.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ve torn off into the dark night on the blacktop road that leads out of town, and I intend to drive until I’ve composed myself enough to confirm my reservation and pay for one night’s stay at the Sandman Motel. I can’t sleep at home for my first night back in True City. The idea of finally sleeping in my mother’s home without her being there seems wrong. I’ll pay a moving company to pack everything up and send it to storage, and when I can, I’ll put the house on the market. Everyone will live not-so-happily ever after. The end.
Goddamn it, I hate it here.
I drive past farmhouse after farmhouse, aglow like fiery magnets for happiness. The more I drive the worse I feel, and finally, after bouncing past every corncrib, flying around every road surrounding True City, I cannot outrun the lie: I am not from here. Someone from here would not have avoided coming home for any reason, no matter how shameful. Someone from here would have come home to visit her parents, no matter what.
I am used to city lights, so I am humbled by the absolute blackness that I see before me. My headlights illuminate my way through the darkness—the same darkness I normally relish in brings me no comfort tonight, yet without darkness, there would be no stars.
And how can I describe the stars here? I used to think we all saw the same stars, but these are not regular stars. I’ve seen those. These stars are archetypal, like somehow they are the originals and all other stars are mere imposters. No, these luminescent balls of fire are the ones from which copies have been made, to be scattered all over the universe, like borrowed wishes.
Right now, Los Angeles stargazers watch the sky—at Eagle Rock, at the Griffith Observatory, splayed out on their backs like little disciples next to the Hollywood sign—and they think they’ve cornered the market on stars, that their stars are brighter, more real, that the rest of us poor saps in the world are looking at inferior stars.
But in this exact moment, I know something they don’t.
Here, in the black Iowa night—a place for beginning and ending, birthing and dying, loving and losing—this is where the stars are.
Every culture has looked for pictures in the stars. We want so badly to make sense of it all, find meaning from nothing more than chance groupings, and tonight, so do I. The Navajos believe the Milky Way is a bridge linking heaven and earth. So I gaze at it, take in its vastness, frantically search for them, my ambassadors to the moon.
I extinguish my doubt of all things ethereal and instead embrace divine possibilities, create my own celestial story where my parents, temporarily in the dark, awaken as stars. Born of a gravitational collapse, now held together by their own gravity, they burn brighter than the rest, and I worry—because the more massive the star, the shorter its lifespan. But I know them. They’re optimists. Workers. Philanthropists. They will evolve, recycle part of their matter into the interstellar community, and create a new generation of stars. In my star lore, they inspire billions. In my star lore, my parents own the sky.
So I drive. The stars surround me, but I need them to guide me. Like a sailor who needs help navigating in the dark of night, I look to the sky. Give me something. Some sign as to where to direct my lost soul. An extra twinkle somewhere, maybe in some constellation. I’ll figure it out. Come on. Give me something. A flicker in Orion’s belt to tell me I’m a boastful jackass. A glint in Cassiopeia to verify my vanity. A shimmer in Canis Minor to remind me I’m the lesser dog.
I glance out the driver-side window for my sign.
Nothing.
Why the hell am I even here? I don’t know. I admit it.
Here are the bravest, weakest words I’ve ever uttered: I surrender.
Together, the Aston Martin and I travel down the blacktop. One barn. Two barns. Three. I scour the sky for a sign.
Nothing.
Screw you, Universe. Thanks for mocking my vulnerability.
I pass the Stephens’ farm. Exhausted, I glance down for a split second to check the clock. 9:15 p.m. When I look back up, a flash of a white, shadowy shape enters my peripheral vision from the right side of the road, and in a blur, it streaks toward my car.
Before I can slam on the brakes, there’s a loud thud, and a louder thump, as whatever it is flies up and bounces off the front grill and then the right side of the hood.
With my foot still on the gas pedal, I scream, then scream again just to make sure I’m alive.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I hold my breath as the iridescent, yellow dashes on the blacktop flash by in quick succession.
That did not just happen.
My hands grip the steering wheel, and my foot lets up on the gas for a moment, but something in me won’t allow me to slow down completely. To turn around to see what I’ve hit.
It’s too dark to stop. It was probably a raccoon. This damn state is teeming with nocturnal wildlife, and with the Raccoon River nearby, it makes sense that animals would be out hunting food.
Yes. That makes sense.
I drive.
There’s no law against hitting a raccoon, right?
No. There isn’t.
I drive.
I drive until I recognize the Smiths’ farm. Then the Holts’. Then I drive back into town, settle into the Sandman Motel, and vow to sleep away the day.
• • •
Morning comes. Doesn’t anyone honk or yell here? I force myself out of the lumpy motel bed, decide I will not make the instant coffee sitting in a packet on the nightstand.
Then, like an alarm clock, my conscience rings. Thump. The night before floods back in short, mean flashes.
Thud.
And then again. Thump.
Fine. I will retrace my evening drive, find the poor animal I’ve hit, stiff legs pointing to the morning sky, say sorry, and clear my mind.
This whole trip will fade into a hazy, neutral blur.
I sit at the foot of the bed, put on the only other outfit I’ve brought: jeans, my Ramones T-shirt, and leather jacket I scored from the UCLA Thrift Shop. While dressing, I watch one of the few stations that come in on the small television. When I hear the words, when I see the picture in the top right hand of the screen and my eyes meet the eyes of a beautiful young girl, I freeze.
The words won’t stop. They keep coming.
Breaking news. Gruesome hit and run. Small town of True City. Victim: eighteen-year-old girl. Left in the ditch.
And I stop breathing.
Chapter Thirteen
In Iowa, guilt is a religion. The people bow down to it, make sure it’s always with them, a talisman-like conscience to keep small sins from becoming big ones.
I buried my guilt years ago.
But now, just like that, just like riding a shiny red bicycle down a long country lane, I ignite my former relationship with my old friend: Guilt, sister to Shame, brother to Blame.
I slide off the lumpy motel mattress, fall to my knees, and let the guilt flow through me; I let it punish me for a sin bigger than words—a sin so big it makes the horror of burying both of my parents merely seem like a bad day.
In my mind, I hold up a dewy-wet daisy—the He-Loves-Me-He-Loves-Me-Not kind—the kind with which one makes deals with God. But this time I’m not looking for a boy’s affection. I’m looking for salvation.
I will be a better person.
I pluck an imaginary petal.
I will do things that matter.
I pluck another dewy, white petal.
I will be nice to shitty movie producers.
Just make this a bad dream. A nightmare. A wake-up call.
Another petal. I close my eyes.
When I open my eyes, please let the television show me anything—a weather report, the current price of corn and soybeans—anything but her face.
I pluck.
Then open my eyes.
He loves me.
Not.
I look at the television screen, and the young girl stares back; her bright eyes sparkle with youth and possibility. Left near a blacktop road. Intensive care. Critical condition. Coma. Crocker County Regional Care Center.
I grab my knees, rock on the dirty shag carpet. A flood of emotion settles in my throat where words should be. What I’ve done, this insidious thing, blocks my airway, chokes me with guilt.
Words finally break through. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” I am Superman yelling to no one. I close my eyes, fly around the Earth, turn back time. My life flashes in reverse. I move in high speed, backward, out the motel door, back into last night, jet-black except for a few billion of the brightest stars I’ve ever seen. The Aston Martin drives backward down the blacktop, but this time, I don’t keep driving. No thud. No thump. Instead, I go to my house, watch the stars from our front porch, in Mom’s red rocker, while nestled tight in four layers of lilac-infused warmth. I find my parents, shining bright. I bow down, tell them I’m sorry.
But I can’t stop. I need to go back farther, so I keep flying, keep reversing time. I spin, spin, spin back three days, ten o’clock Central time. Mom and Dad are getting ready to take up Hawkeye, fly away the afternoon. I pick up the phone, tell them, “Don’t go flying today. I’m coming home.”
But it’s still not enough. I fly harder. Faster. Back to where it all began and ended. One year, two, ten, eighteen. I am surrounded by corn, a labyrinth full of tall rows, switching this way and that, confusing me, forcing me to succumb to fear. But this time, I don’t leave her.
Sunlight pours through the motel window, reflects off the face of my watch. Time has not stopped. It has not reversed. This isn’t Hollywood. And it sure isn’t heaven. It’s just Iowa. You have to do your time here. Do the hard work. I recite a midwestern commandment: “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”
No redo. No revising this time.
I put on my shoes, grab my keys to keep my hands from shaking, and walk to the door. I need to make it right. I have a confession to make to the True City Police Department.
Chapter Fourteen
I drive down Main Street, the road to all destinations in True City, until I reach the police station. I turn the car off, listen to the tick-tick-ticking of the resting engine, unable to touch the car door handle. Instead, I look out the window. Farmers and mothers alike move down the street in a small-town cadence, and farther away, Jack and Mary still stand tall, still reach for the sky. From across town, they watch me. I hear my father. If you’re wrong, kid, make it right.
I make myself open the car door. And step out. One foot. Then the other. My heavy feet heel-toe their way in autopilot fashion until I reach the front door of the station. Everything slows. Bullet time, as they say in the movie business, made famous in The Matrix. One millisecond, one frame at a time.
On the drive over, I’d practiced a confession in my head, and now, I practice it again. I must pay penance for this, I’ll say. I must pay penance for everything. In between steps, I imagine my life’s mistakes playing out on the film screen in my mind. It’s clearly an Alan Smithee film. What real director would claim such a pile of shit?
I see the mise-en-scène staging on Main Street as a brief diversion on my way to incarceration. In my panoramic mind, a passerby wearing a ruby-red cardigan swirls with the blue storefront awnings and stark trim around storefront doors.
The police station door comes into sharp focus, and right on cue, the musical score in my head juxtaposes a melodic female vocal with harsh minor chords that say transgressions, retribution, impasse, all pointing to some existential struggle. I know what Paul Thomas Anderson would add here. Symbols of biblical proportion, no doubt. Frogs falling from the sky. Reminders that the future is unknown in this midwestern Magnolia.
An urgent gust of wind shocks me back to reality. I grab the police station door handle, but when I do, the wind sweeps down the sidewalk, makes hats fly, tree branches dance, and storefront signs on hinges swing themselves into a frenzy.
I look toward the wind, try to understand it. My world darkens when something blows in front of me, blocks the light. I put my hands to my face and find the culprit: a piece of blue paper stuck to me.
The sky-blue flyer with black print speaks to me. Wants me.
To come see…The Music Man?
The Music Man?
I am in so much trouble. True City, River City—it’s all the same. I. Am. A. Criminal. The surrealism of it all swirls in my mind, and yesterday’s dizziness returns. How can this be happening? How can any of this be happening? I think of what this movie meant to Mom and Dad, and my heart aches.
The flyer flies out of my hand. It whirls in a small eddy formation, suspends for one exaggerated moment, then lands flat against the glass station door in front of me. It reads Coming This Christmas.
“Hey, give me a hand?” A boy has somehow gotten the slide of his trombone hooked on the door handle of the building next door, True City’s newly renovated community theater. He stands half-in, half-out of the arched theater door tangled in humiliation and brass. A Sweethearts candy falls from a small box in his back pocket, falls onto the sidewalk and shatters.
The old brick building, now new with possibility, features a dark-blue awning with the tragedy and comedy masks donned in John Deere hats. Above the front door, a sign lit with marquee lights reads True City Community Theater. On the left side of the building is a thirty-foot-tall mural of True City, complete with my parents’ grain silos watching over endless cornfields.
“Sure, just a sec…” I take one last look at the police station door, turn away from it, and run toward the boy to help him dislodge his trombone.
His kind voice and Opie Taylor freckles make me think he might say, “Gee, thanks, lady,” but like so many other things that have surprised me since I’ve returned to this place I call home, his reaction is not what I expect.
“I hate this trombone,” he mutters. When he looks at me, I see something familiar in his eyes, something I’ve seen before, something that reminds me of a long-lost friend. “My mom’s making me be in this dumb musical. It’s so friggin’ stupid!” His eyes pale, letting sadness in. “Especially now.”
I continue to hold the door while I look at him, listen to him. His impolite tone is unusual for a God-fearing Iowan boy, but it’s hard for a woman on the verge of being arrested to be critical. He looks at me, waits for me to react, but when I don’t defend his mother or the fine art of musical theater, he says, “Thanks,” and squirms his free hand out to half shake mine. “I’m Connor,” he says, and scoots inside, now holding the door open for me.
He starts to walk toward a deep and shiny stage at the front of the large room, an amphitheater that still smells new. Actors, townsfolk really, bustle about. Some hand out props. Others clutch their scripts.
I almost say you’re welcome when he thanks me. I almost tell this stranger-turned-Connor how I’m in the middle of something and have to go. But when I try to speak, time slows; a relentless zoom shot pulls me in with it, up toward the stage. Something beyond my control takes hold, and I can only listen. A middle-aged man in the middle of the stage begins to address the actors, plead, really, and I feel compelled to walk toward him.
“Now I know you’re upset about Bliss, but bloody hell…” His voice trails off, unable to find the right tone. I now recognize him—it’s Mr. Linart, my foul-mouthed high school English teacher, who is apparently the closest thing to a drama coach True City can find. Because he always thought British profanity was less likely to get him in trouble with the school board, Mr. Linart would replace
American curse words with British ones when he felt passionate about something, and he often felt passionate—“Hey, you bollocks had a crap ton of verb-tense errors in your last essays” and “Holden Caulfield is such a bloody wanker”—but he was so fun and taught us more than any other teacher so that none of us ever ratted him out. It appears the habit has stuck with him in retirement.
“Look. I know you’re all upset. I’m upset. But stop arsin’ about. The show must go on.” He gives a sad, nervous tug on his argyle sweater vest. “Bliss would want it to.”
With this, the teenage boy who is playing Harold Hill begins a series of slow nods. My legs weaken, and with my gaze still fixed on the stage, I slump into one of the new, plush theater chairs, two rows back from center stage.
“Okay, Josh, good job, lad! Your lovely Marian, the librarian, can’t be here right now, but we have work to do.” Mr. Linart rubs Josh’s head with a new vigor. “You are Harold bloomin’ Hill! Not some lousy git.” Mr. Linart is a whirling dervish. He darts to left stage center, slams his coffee-to-go cup down on a prop table, and addresses the cast. “Harold Hill is so bloody brilliant that he can will things to happen, or pretends to anyway.” Mr. Linart is now waving his hands in the air like a half-bloke, half-dude crazy man with patriotic identity issues. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, does it, as long as somebody, even one person believes it?”
“Believe so,” Josh says—declares, really—from across the stage. Then louder. “Believe so.”
“Abso-bloody-lutely!” Mr. Linart yells. “It’s not the unofficial mantra of True City for nothin’, lad! Believe so allows a total duffer to play Beethoven when he doesn’t know how to play a barmy note! Harold Hill isn’t a con man, kids; he’s a bloody shaman!”
I can’t take my eyes off the faces on the stage before me. There is a reverence here, a palpable gravitas I would mock under normal circumstances, but I am in my last hour of desperation, so I take it in, lean into it. The six brass players now look ready to play. Connor’s scowl has disappeared, his trombone back in his hands. Josh now holds his head a little higher, with the promise of an against-all-odds glimmer in his eyes, looking like a young Harold Hill on the verge of a miracle.
The Lost Queen of Crocker County: A Novel Page 8
