I slumped into the driver’s seat, grabbed the steering wheel to calm my shaking hands. I let the world open up, swallow me whole, so I could drown, sink down, down, down, watching pieces of me float away.
When I stumbled through my front door, barely able to stand, Dad was reading the paper and Mom was making dinner.
“Janie!” she said with her signature smile. “I was starting to get worried.” She walked over to me, placed her warm hands on my face like only a mother does, and then brought out the semi-pout, the one that says I’m so worried about you but I don’t want you to know. “How’s my girl, huh?”
Of all the things I could’ve cried over in the last eleven months—fear, death, birth—it was this, these four words, a mother asking her daughter how she was, that destroyed me. A lump throbbed in my throat and sent a surge of pain and pressure to my already aching head. Tears formed so fast that they began dropping onto the hardwood floor, falling and crashing like abandoned dreams.
“Think it might rain,” she said, stirring the Crock-Pot of meatballs.
“Yep,” I force out, trying to disguise my gasp-sob. I couldn’t let her see me cry, so I wiped the evidence away with my sweatshirt sleeve and tried to control my breathing. I squeezed the small piece of afghan blanket with one bright, colorful star, the only part of her I had left.
“Have a good afternoon?”
I let out a silent gasp-cry, disguising it as a little cough, and used the last bit of energy I had trying not to audibly sob. I had become a mother at 2:42 p.m., and by 6:48 p.m., I’d become a mother who’d lost a child.
As Mother peeled potatoes, something she could do in her sleep, I took off my coat, set the table, my back to her so she wouldn’t see my tears or wrecked face. When I placed Mother’s plate down, the place where the matriarch watches over the table, something happened, and my weakened body gave way, and I sat down so I wouldn’t collapse.
“Did you go to Charlotte’s today?” she said, peeling in a fury. When a few seconds of silence went by, she added, “That’s so great, honey. I knew you girls would work it out. It’s so important to have someone to talk to. Loneliness can destroy your soul.”
My back still to her, I let her see me nod my head, while my secret tears continued to flow.
She stopped peeling. “Janie?” Her sense of urgency made me nervous. “Stand up. Come over here.”
I froze.
“Stand up, honey. Let me see you; you sound funny.” She stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding a paring knife and serious concern.
Slowly, I helped myself up using the back of the chair for support. When she saw my face, she gasped. “Janie! You look awful. You must have caught an autumn cold. Why didn’t you tell me? Now, let’s fix you right up with some corn casserole.”
Then her face turned serious as she looked my body up and down. I tugged at my sweatshirt and pulled it down, hoping blood hadn’t soaked through my pants.
“Darlin’, you’ve lost some weight!” She smiled. “Yeah, you’ve lost a lot.”
She had no idea what I’d lost.
“See? Things are looking up, sweetheart,” she said and then gave me the kind of hug that makes you believe anything, just like a mother does.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Hello, Sid.”
“‘Hello’? Is that all you have to say, Jane? Where the hell are you?” Sidney wastes no time expressing his frustration.
I switch to speakerphone and distance myself from an angry Sidney Poitier Parker.
“I’m a criminal in disguise, Sid, on my way to perform a covert operation to bring someone back to life.”
Silence.
“You think this is funny?”
“Not. At. All.”
“I’ve called you, like, thirty times. What could be so important that you can’t even pick up the phone?”
His tone is slightly reckless, three shades past his usual lilt of concern, and I know right now he is nervously running his fingers through his dark-and-in-charge hair in the hopes of gaining control.
“Well, Sid, I’ve been simultaneously hiding from and spending time with the chief of police, trying to figure out how to save an innocent victim. All this plus consoling my best friend whose husband wants his kidney back because she’s in love with a trapeze-flying woman.”
“Wait,” he says. “You have a friend?”
Even in the most dismal of times, Sid can make me laugh.
“Either you’ve lost your mind, Jane, or you’ve been watching too many Charlie Kaufman films…or Iowa is a lot more interesting than I thought.”
“I know, right? Who knew?”
Silence.
“Sid? You there?” Something tells me he’s ready to go all father-figure on me.
“Seriously, Jane. What’s going on?” When I don’t say anything, he defines his version of a nightmare. “So Frank says—you remember Frank, right, Janie? That’s my boss. A very important man who signs our paychecks in case you’ve forgotten… Well, Frank says that he doesn’t care if you’re half-dead or in jail; he wants something to print for Cinegirl’s column by tomorrow. Oh, and Nick Wrightman really, really, really wants to know where you are, like a stalker wants to know where someone is, Jane.”
“You didn’t tell him, did—”
“No! No, Jane! I didn’t tell Nick Wrightman you’re in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere doing God knows what, but you’re missing the point. I can’t keep you from getting fired forever, and quite frankly”—he stops, like he’s afraid to finish the sentence—“I’m a little hurt that you won’t tell me what the hell’s going on.”
Seconds roll by, highlighting my ability to disappoint those I love.
“Sid,” I finally say in a tone close to a plea, “have you ever had to leave someone behind?”
“Come on, Jane—”
“No, answer me, Sid. Have you ever been on a proverbial sinking ship and had to leave someone behind who needed you, who was your responsibility, who was”—my voice fails me, breaks like a little girl’s—“who feels like she’s a part of you?” The silence saves me for a moment. “I’m not leaving her, Sid.”
The silence is now oppressive.
“Goddamn it, Jane.” But something shifts, and I hear Sid inhale, one of those deep breaths that represents a realization, like he’s accepting something that he knows is the absolute worst idea in the world. But he’s doing it for me. Because he’s my friend.
“I promise I’ll have something for you to print by the morning, Sid, and—”
“I know you will, or else we’re both fired. And figure this mess out, Jane. Whatever it is. Whoever she is. I will handle Frank and I will handle Nick and I will handle all the other goddamn messes that are surely transpiring as we speak.”
I tell him what he deserves, what he’s taught me to say. “Thank you, Sid. It’s not enough, but thank—”
I hear him smile. “Stop. You had me at—”
“No more movie lines, you said!” I laugh. “‘Cliché,’ ‘pedestrian,’ you said!”
“I actually said no more movie lines for you, not me. I get to do what I want. I’m the boss. Try to remember that, would you?”
I resist calling him Mister Tibbs, and I don’t make him guess who’s coming to dinner because I’m sure I’ll eat Mother’s corn casserole from the container, alone, in Dad’s chair tonight. So I settle for “Yes, sir…with love.”
He tries to hide his laugh, but I hear it. Loud and clear.
“Hey, Jane?” I let three beats go by because I know whatever he’s about to say is going to make me cry. “Whatever it is, you can do this. You can fix her. You’re the strongest bitch I know.”
Lots of witty retorts surface, float through the air like wispy clouds of possibility, but the lump lodged in my throat prevents me from speaking, so I pre
tend to lose the signal and fade away until all I hear is the Iowa air whipping through the truck, calling me toward her.
• • •
“Badge,” Nurse Ratched barks at me, barely looking up from the nurse’s desk.
I start to pat myself down, searching for an ID badge that doesn’t exist, because Kate Snelling doesn’t exist. “Shoot! I must have dropped it—”
“Kate!” I hear from down the hall. I remind myself that I am Kate, and turn around, hoping my wig is in place and none of my blond hair is escaping. It’s Rob Anderson, who tells the nurse to let me through.
She musters up a half shrug. “Your call, Chief.”
Rob skips greetings and bursts out, “She moved.” I stop breathing for a moment, soaking up what he’s said, soaking up the facts that Bliss moved and also that the saddest man I’ve ever met has a smile on his face.
I start moving toward Bliss’s room, my heart racing, and I fire off questions. “When? What happened?” I say, walking past a giant picture window with Jack and Mary Willow standing proud in the distance.
“Last night,” he says, keeping up with my pace. “There were a flurry of movements, five in a row. I did what you said, kept trying out words: first, her name lots and lots of times, but then I tried her boyfriend’s name, Mitch, and she moved her right index finger. He’s on his way down here. Maybe it will—”
“Hasn’t he been here yet?” I ask, moving toward Bliss’s bed.
“Says he hates hospitals,” Rob says, sounding unconvinced, but then adds, “Only been dating a few weeks; hardly a solid romance.”
Rob Anderson doesn’t realize he’s pacing from the bed to the window and back. I watch him for a while, listen to him talk more in five minutes than he did in an hour yesterday. Odds. Possibilities. Best-case scenarios. Doctors say it’s a good sign. Today, hope follows him around like a new companion.
“Uh, hello?” we hear a voice call from outside the hospital door, followed by a quiet knock. Mitch Blackman, the boyfriend, all six-foot-three quarterback and all-American, walks in. He glances at Bliss and then walks past her bed and stands over by the window.
“Mitch, this is Kate Snelling. She’s a therapist for…patients like Bliss,” Rob says, switching his focus from Bliss to Mitch.
When I shake Mitch’s hand, a feeling I can’t place emerges, and I let go before he does. “I’m so sorry, Mitch.”
“Thanks,” he says, watching Bliss from across the room. “So she moved last night?”
“Just a finger,” Rob says, “and just for a sec, but it’s something.”
“Yeah, totally. It’s something. Better than nothing, right?” Mitch fiddles with his Chicago Cubs ball cap. “So no talking yet?”
Rob shakes his head, stares at Mitch until he begins to bite his thumbnail. “You seem on edge, Mitch, wanna take a seat?” Just like that, Rob Anderson, doting father, becomes Chief Anderson, a cop built to scour the world for suspect activity.
“Nah, I’m fine… Me and hospitals just don’t—”
“Right.” Rob looks out the window for a moment, then says, “You know, Mitch, tell me again, if you would, what time you said you dropped Bliss off at home, because I’ve played it over in my head a hundred times…why Bliss would leave the comfort of her home and decide to go out walking in the pitch-black.” He turns back to Mitch now. “All alone.”
So many reasons to get out of this room. No wonder this poor kid is freaking out. Rob Anderson would freak me out even if I wasn’t guilty. “Mr. Anderson, I can leave, if you guys need to—”
“Nonsense, Kate. Stay.” Rob smiles. “Just a friendly conversation, right, Mitch?”
“Sure,” Mitch says, standing taller now, eyes scanning, looking toward the door like he could use an exit. “Like I said, Chief—”
“Call me Rob, Mitch.” Rob stops, stares at Bliss, then back at Mitch. “We’re all friends here, right?”
“Like I said, sir…Rob,” Mitch says, slightly panicked, now talking with large, athletic hand gestures. “I dropped Bliss off at nine fifteen, sir, right at your doorstep like you told me to because you were at the station. I remember the porch light on the right was flickering, and”—now Mitch’s hands are flying in a frenzy, and his face is contorted into a tense grimace—“and I watched her.” He looks over to Bliss’s bed. “I watched Bliss take the key from under the sunflower front rug, put it in the door, and walk inside. Sir.”
Something in Rob Anderson shifts, and he returns to being Dad, focusing all attention on Bliss again. “All right, son,” Rob says quietly, like he’s finished some impromptu investigation, then adds, “Sorry.”
I smile at Mitch Blackman, not a boy, but not yet a man, certainly not the one responsible for the crime. He’s somewhere between crying and punching a hole in the wall.
“I’m gonna take off,” he manages. “If she says anything,” he stammers, “call me. Please?”
The finality of the hospital door shutting hangs in the air, an uninvited guest that threatens the small hope left here. I break the silence. “Well, that was—”
“I’m an asshole.”
He sits in the chair next to Bliss, his elbows resting on his knees. In my head, I tell him he was just doing his job, but then I tell him to get his shit together because the real criminal is standing right in front of him. Nobody in Crocker County has a haircut like this. A blunt bang, really? And I’ve worn variations of the same outfit for three days now. What kind of cop are you? When you finally arrest me, I want to say, I am not going to look at your face; the thought of disappointing you is already making me want to puke.
I can’t say any of that, so instead I say, “You might be an asshole, but you’re a hell of a dad.”
He turns, a half smile trying hard to come to fruition but competing with doubt. “I’m off my game,” he says, followed by a breathless and apologetic, “I am so damn tired.” He closes his eyes, breathes in deep. “People guilty of something usually volunteer too many details…and he was doing that…and I thought maybe he was lying about how she got home…” He hangs his head and sighs. “I just had him scared to death.”
I look at Bliss, then back at Rob, trying to weigh out equal emotions for both of them. “Hey, Rob?”
“Yeah?” he says, head still hanging low.
“I have something… It’s worth a shot.” I take out my phone and walk toward him. “I heard she’s a Breakfast at Tiffany’s fan.”
He looks up, doesn’t try to help me, doesn’t try to stop me. I hit play, and after five plucks of a guitar, he smiles, looking like he’s swallowing away an emotion that is in some deep crevasse between happiness and regret. Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly starts to sing Johnny Mercer’s lyrics to “Moon River,” and I take Rob’s hand, get him out of the chair, over to Bliss’s side. Together, side by side, we hold the phone close to her.
When we get through a few bars, Rob smooths back a swath of Bliss’s silky blond hair.
Where are you, Bliss Anderson? Come back, Bliss.
Rob and I stare at Bliss’s hand, chipped purple nail polish and all, resting on the baby-pink hospital blanket. Even though we want it to move, to let us know she’s coming back, it remains still, and Rob’s hand squeezes mine so hard I want to wince. But I don’t dare.
Tonight, I will rewatch Breakfast at Tiffany’s and try to save my job by sending Sid a pithy review. I will beat him to his own question. Why a classic? I will then follow my rhetorical question with the truth: modern viewers need a timeless reminder that no matter who we are, we belong. Holly Golightly is annoying, but Paul loves her anyway, despite her many flaws, maybe even because of them. So I will enlighten Sid. I will find solidarity with Holly, another real phony, and together we’ll search for our Tiffany’s—that place that makes us all want to give a thing a name, call somewhere home. Belong.
Rob Anderson breathes in and out
, in sync with Bliss, watching his only child live her life somewhere without him.
We want the same thing, I want to say to him. Something wonderful waits for us, I want to say. But I just sit with him, with Bliss, and float away to “Moon River,” just the three of us, not a care in the world.
Chapter Thirty
I have to give Sid something if I want to stay here and keep my job at the same time, but I can’t bring myself to watch Bliss’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s tonight, here in Mom and Dad’s living room. Plus, something I can’t pinpoint is calling me.
This time I’m called to True View, True City’s drive-in theater on the outskirts of town. The mere thought of it conjures up the iconic final scene in Field of Dreams. The spotlit cornfield-turned-baseball field makes me smile and think of what Dad would say if he returned from the afterlife to have a catch with me. They’ve positioned the baseball diamond all wrong, and the way lights are pointing is not very efficient, and why the devil does my back still hurt if I’m a goddamned ghost?
I don’t know what will be playing there tonight, but whatever the film is, no matter how ancient, it will, no doubt, be justified by some sort of theme, as if it were True City’s idea in the first place, instead of someone else’s scraps. One has to admire that spirit of adaptability, an evolutionary must for a midwesterner.
My usual, preferred review-writing utensil, a felt-tip pen, doesn’t seem right tonight, too permanent for open-ended possibilities, so on the way to the drive-in I stop at Strickner’s Mercantile.
When I pull up on Main Street, I park between two empty cars, engines running, a typical sight in small-town Iowa. The only time one’s running car would be messed with here is if a friendly passerby needed to move it for a snow plow or an extra-wide combine during harvest. With each step toward the front entrance, I think of Mother, holding my hand as a little girl, off to Strickner’s for Care Bear stickers, a new kite, or a free watermelon Jolly Rancher from Miss Twila at the front register.
The Lost Queen of Crocker County: A Novel Page 17
