“Sorry,” the woman whispers to me. “This part. Always. Gets me.”
The woman wears her postpartum mania like an oozing, melodramatic badge of honor, giving us all a silent warning to tread lightly around her irrational behavior. I turn to bolt in the opposite direction, but to my horror, she touches my shoulder in some sort of cinematic solidarity, and I freeze.
“I’m in a hurry,” I lie and try to pull away, but she’s having none of it. She takes my hand. In LA, this would be some version of assault, but in Iowa, it’s neighborly. The Slurpee machine slurps, and a steady stream of beeps continue as new customers enter the store, but the woman keeps her eyes on Superman.
She continues to mouth the words as she watches the screen, and we hear Jor-El echo from the past, telling Kal-El that it’s forbidden.
Then, as if the woman’s seeing it for the very first time, she nods at me. “But he’s gonna do it anyway.” She beams. “He’s gonna turn back time to save her.”
For a moment, she lets go of my hand to conduct a silent mini clap. This is my chance to walk away. I’m free to go, and I know I should before this hormonally challenged woman calls this classic, Academy Award–winning film “cute” or “sweet” and shames Richard Donner’s legacy.
I take my eyes off the screen, prepare to leave. But then it happens. I hear the trumpets, the theme song that, for just a moment, makes heroes of us all. Now comes the full-bellied orchestra, the collective sounds of courage itself taking flight, dripping with possibility, strings and horns marrying their unlikely overtures, coupled with the iconic image of Superman, flying fist first, like an angry bullet, moving the Earth for love.
More customers enter, more Slurpees get slurped while Superman reunites with the five-minutes-ago Lois Lane, who is now safe in her car, not knowing the unfathomable act of love that saved her. When Superman looks at Lois, the woman he’s just saved, and simply says “Hi,” the woman next to me falls apart.
She begins waving her tears away like they might somehow dry up if she works hard enough. But they don’t. I am tempted to console her, but that would mean we have something in common, and I don’t want to admit I have anything in common with someone who cries in truck stops. What I really want to say is that deep down, in a place I keep protected from the world, I know exactly why Superman moves her to tears. From the Rockwellian scenes depicting Americana at its best to the moments when the impossible becomes possible, this movie reminds us of an undeniable truth: love can move the world.
This is what movies do—they remind us not of what we think, but of what we feel. Forget about other so-called lame American pastimes. No one has ever reevaluated their life while listening to Coltrane or had an epiphany while awaiting the conclusion of the ninth inning. Admit it. Jazz is annoying. Baseball is boring. But movies? Movies tell us who we are. Who we want to be. Hollywood, with all its shallow, out-of-touch shortcomings, is one more reason that this is the greatest country on Earth.
I want to tell this woman what I love about this movie. How I always choke up when Jor-El and his wife, even in the face of death, tell their only son they will never leave him. How he will carry them inside of him all the days of his life.
I want to tell this woman that her daughter’s sweet, warm baby smell is wafting up, making me dizzy with jealousy. What’s it like to have someone to love, to take care of, to move the world for? What’s it like to feel another you, whose heart is beating just inches from your own?
I suddenly want to tell my parents that I know how much they loved me, that I will carry them with me all the days of my life.
I want to tell this woman how lucky she is that she’ll never have to rely on second chances that don’t exist outside of Hollywood. I want to tell her that I’m a shitty person, and for the first time in my life, I want to confess why.
Instead, I blurt, “Your boobs are enormous.” I feel Sidney’s horrified glance, four states away.
The woman, laughing now, shakes her head. “I know, right? I could feed Dubuque with these things,” and rests a hand on her heaving, lactating cleavage spilling out all sides of the baby carrier.
“She’s beautiful,” I say, sneaking a peek at the sleeping, fine-featured face nestled safely near her mother, her everyday hero. The woman’s husband walks up, and when he sees his postpartum wife’s been crying—again—offers her his Slurpee, says they have to go.
“Good luck,” I say to her as her very own Superman wipes her leftover tears and they fly away.
A lonely sadness sweeps over me. Without warning, some long-ago instinct unearths itself from dormancy, and I find myself doing something no self-respecting, health-conscious Los Angeleno would ever do. I grab a diabetes-sized container, featuring a psychedelic spiral graphic, and like a good midwesterner, follow the directions on the see-through machine. Pull. And when I pull down the big red lever, it begins to flow. The slush is a color not known in nature, a turquoise-blue with a green undertone, sort of like the ocean if the ocean was dangerously close to a toxic waste dump. I begin to rotate my cup so the sugar-slop falls into it in consistent rings, little revolutions meant for someone who is preparing to come full circle.
I sip my Slurpee, the Midwest’s answer to the smoothie, let the cold punish me all the way down.
“That’s a dollar forty-three,” the clerk says when I approach the counter.
My God, I forgot everything’s practically free here. I add Funyuns, a Hostess cherry pie, and because I’m clearly experiencing some sort of psychotic break, a prepackaged barbecue sandwich.
Scan. Beep. Scan. Beep. Scan. Beep. “That’ll be four dollars and eighty-seven cents.”
I shake my head. In LA, I’d need two twenties to cover this meal that would feed an entire Pilates gym for a week.
The clerk has the Des Moines Register open to the syndicated Cinegirl column. He takes my money and opens the till but keeps reading. “I love this chick.” He laughs, pointing to my cartoon likeness. “She said Hole of Schmidt was a steamy pile of crap!”
Is going from kitten to chick a lateral move or a demotion? I lean over to look at the newspaper for effect. “Oh, I don’t think she said ‘crap.’” I point to paragraph two. “See? Just ‘excrement.’” His addition of steamy is a nice touch, though.
He looks down at Cinegirl, then back up at me. I think about how long of a pregnant pause I’ll put between Willow and Jane Willow when I introduce myself. I prepare for him to say, “Oh my God, it’s you—America’s favorite film critic,” maybe even call me what the Chicago Tribune once called me: “the female Roger Ebert.”
But instead, he puts my change in my outstretched hand and points to my upper lip, where toxic-blue Slurpee has accumulated.
I wonder if my idol, Pauleen Kael, got recognized when she went to convenience stores. I wonder if her sharp tongue had ever tasted a Slurpee.
I wipe my lip, collect my fifteen-hundred calories, walk toward the door with no identity and even less pride. Welcome home.
Willow. Jane Willow.
Revise.
Parentless, Childless, Single Woman with Slurpee.
With the suddenness of a midwestern storm, the whole convenience store seems inconveniently hopeless. I glance back up at the television set. Fox News has replaced Superman. Two truckers argue about the weather. The Slurpee machine glugs and sputters, exhausted. I switch my focus to a bossy neon sign on the wall in the shape of the Hawkeye state, flashing a message I don’t want to see: All roads lead to Iowa.
What a Schmidt Hole.
Chapter Five
1986
“That is to say”—I watched my father search for the right phrasing—“no, you may not be a Bond Girl for Halloween, Janie.” He smiled, looking like a ruddy-faced Bobby Knight post-victory. “You’re nine, for Chrissakes.”
As his words settled, I stood up straighter, tried to look older—a difficult t
ask in my Smurfs pajama-gown. I recited Holly Goodhead’s fictional résumé. “She’s a doctor, you know, Daddy. A space scientist.”
He glanced up from his current project—a gift from an old law school buddy: a broken, rusty, inoperable 1964 Aston Martin DB5, the unpolished “before” picture of someone’s well-designed dream. His life’s motto—everything’s a work in progress—in the form of an aged hunk of metal.
Old Spice cologne wafted through the garage as my father rolled around on the under-car creeper, its small wheels squeaking with intent. The headlights looked up as if to convince me of what it once was, to remind me of nature’s most miraculous law: all things return to their natural state eventually, no matter the journey.
“Hand me that suction cup,” he said and pointed to his countertop of tools. “I’m gonna show you how to get a dent out, kid.”
I handed him the suction cup. Excited by the notion of a second chance, I made another plea for a Bond Girl Halloween.
Instead of answering, he placed my hand on top of his. Together, we popped out a big dent in the front-left quarter panel. He opened the driver-side door, offered his hand, and helped me step into the empty shell of a car—no engine, no gearbox, no seats.
“It’s kind of a junker, Dad,” I said, surveying the empty, soulless car and sitting down on a small stool.
“Believe so,” Dad said.
“You think so, too?” I asked, thinking he meant that he also believed it was underwhelming. “Well, we could fix it by—”
“No, Janie,” he corrected me. “Not ‘I believe it is so’ but believe so. As in, if you believe in something enough, it will happen. Nothing nonchalant about ‘believe so,’ no matter how you slice it. It’s brilliant, see, depending on how you use it, when you use, and where you use it. ‘Believe so. Believe so.’ See the difference? You have to pick what syllables you’ll stress, just like you’ll have to pick what moments you emphasize in your life, Janie. Understand?” he said, closing the door. “Now, is this car amazing or what?”
I smiled. “Believe so.” I closed my eyes, released my ponytail, shook out my hair, and let the imaginary wind blow. It was like I’d stepped into a movie. I considered a camera angle I’d seen when Dad watched Moonraker, positioned my profile for optimal light exposure, and recited random lines as they flashed in my mind. I opened my eyes and yelled to an invisible Mr. Bond with the fervor of a first-rate villain.
Dad had now taken his eyes off the Aston Martin, replacing one dream by focusing on another. He looked at me, his only child. “Someday this will be yours, Janie.” He patted the almost-car. I didn’t recognize the look in his eyes but sensed I should listen. “Wherever you land, you’ll land there in style.”
I stopped driving the car that was going nowhere. “Land? I’m not going to land anywhere. I’m going to live here forever,” I said, betrayed by the very idea of Crocker County, the only home I’d ever known. Who would have wanted to leave the place that birthed John Wayne, Ann Landers, Gopher from Love Boat, and Captain James Tiberius Kirk? And even on a bad day, at least Iowa wasn’t Nebraska. Nebraska was unforgivable. Everyone knew that.
Things happened in Iowa. Buddy Holly died in Clear Lake. The world’s biggest strawberry was grown in Strawberry Point. Jesse James picked Iowa for his first moving-train robbery. That had to mean something.
“Daddy, did you know that Iowa is the only state that begins with two vowels?” I folded my arms for effect. “And Superman’s from Iowa.”
“He’s from Kansas,” Dad said, now inspecting yet another dent. “There’s a big world out there, Janie.”
Maybe there was. That I didn’t deny, but I could learn all about it. From right here. At home.
“Are we done yet?” I asked, knowing that for my father, nothing was ever really done.
“Only meat can be done. Tasks are finished.” His lawyerly tone grated on me. “A little hard work never killed anyone, Janie.” He perked up and looked over at the radio, its staticky oldies station filling the garage. “Speaking of death.” He looked at me and made a declaration that played out like a final crescendo. “At my funeral someday, this is the song I want, Janie,” he said, foot tapping the garage floor with the beat.
“Daddy! That’s sad.” I tried to control a pout.
He smiled. “But this isn’t,” he said, snapped his fingers, and belted along with the chorus.
Something about him flying, singing till the end of time, as if one lifetime would never be enough. For love, I think. Keeping time with the song, my father’s fingers now began to tap the Aston Martin, the dream that, unlike us mere mortals, would live forever.
I noticed my father glance toward the garage door. He would never admit it, but I knew he was looking for Mother. On the rare occasion he wasn’t with her, it was like he was always waiting for her to walk through the door, waiting to say what he always said when he saw her. Outta this world.
In a matter-of-fact tone, he told me that he knew he would go first. The men always went before the women. Then came his favorite four words. “That is to say,” he said, leaning into the very phrase that breathed life into his personal truth: nothing is permanent. “That is to say, no need for anyone to be sad, Janie.”
That is to say, the song would be for his widow. Mother.
That evening, Dad and I sat on the wraparound porch of our Iowa farmhouse and watched a crescent moon illuminate a tiny patch of sky. It was the stars that had us both searching. Against a backdrop as black as the fertile soil below, stars adorned our sky with an authority, a purpose to be pondered. They were the kind of stars that meant business. How could we attempt to describe stars so bright, so clear, that it seemed they belonged to just the two of us? “Bright,” he’d first said, rocking slowly, and then, “Clear.” But he stopped rocking when he found the right word. “Ours,” he said, comfortable with its perfection, his smile offsetting his gruff voice. Then my father said something that settled into me: “Finding the right word after a long journey of diligent searching feels like…home.”
Chapter Six
The morning sun screams through the windshield, makes me the object of an unforgiving spotlight as I drive past the Crocker County road sign, and then finally, True City, population 782.
Home.
A jury of 782 people (no, I didn’t say 7,000) wait to pass judgment. The Aston Martin slows and I am already eager to leave, to get the hell out of here and back to LA. My silver bangle, now hot from the sun, flames into my skin. Reminders everywhere. My past pops up in Sam Peckinpah-inspired slow-motion frames. I think of the first time I ever watched The Wild Bunch, relishing in Peckinpah’s violent yet artistic scenes, slowing down for ultimate tension. But as my own past now comes into focus, I wish I had a fast-forward button.
First comes the view of my high school, which from the hilltop leading into True City looks like three tiny rectangles. After another mile comes Charlotte’s farm, my childhood home away from home that sits at the base of the sledding hill. Finally, nestled in the valley, is my home, marked by the largest willow tree in the county.
A quarter mile from town, I see a farmer walking in the ditch, surveying the perimeter of his land. His image reminds me of Iowa’s unofficial slogan: Idiots Out Walking Around. After untying a large metal gate leading to his field, he lets it swing open wide and gives me a farmer’s nod, a barely-there lift of the chin.
When he motions me to pull over, I conduct a temper tantrum in my head. No, my name’s not Sweetie. No, I don’t want to talk about the weather, or why my plates don’t say Crocker County, or how your little grandson can drive the combine.
I slow the car and try to hide my aversion to the always-relentless midwestern friendliness. The barrier between us disappears when I roll down the window. The man in the Carhartt bib overalls ambles over to my driver-side window, leans in. He smells of manure, instant coffee, and hard work.
&nb
sp; “Welcome home, Janie Willow.”
We exchange stares. I sit up straight. How does he know me when I don’t know him? The only familiar thing about him is his Clint Eastwood-ness—tall build, straight shoulders, slight squint, almost-angry whisper in his voice. Not the Make-My-Day-Punk Eastwood, more Josey Wales.
“It’s…Jane now.” I pause. “Jane”—my secret agent introduction losing steam here in God’s country—“Jane Willow.”
“Janie, I was real sorry to hear the news. Good people, your folks.” As if out of reverence, the farmer removes his soiled John Deere hat.
The wind picks up, whistles through a nearby grove. A chill runs through me, leaving me exposed, off-center.
“They did a lot for me…for everyone here.” The man holds his head high, higher than I thought a man wearing muddy overalls could. He glances toward True City’s two giant grain elevators standing like proud beacons of hope. I try to look away, but I know it’s time I look, really look at them—monuments named after my parents, the two people True City considered to be the backbone of their small, humble town.
“Jack” stands on the left, the bigger of the two—although both elevators were the biggest in the country when they were first built—and “Mary” stands on the right, the perfect companion to her mighty mate; that is to say, her man of steel. I watch the two of them stretch into the sky, into another world. Outta this world.
“Well, might get some rain,” the farmer says, and forces my gaze to land back on him. “Clouds comin’ in.”
There it is. Meteorology once again at the forefront of conversation.
The farmer stares at me with a slow, quiet intensity, the type people in Los Angeles have no patience to perform. After three or four full, loaded seconds of him taking in the impractical heels on my boots and the faux-fur shrug around my neck that could surely strangle a person on a hay baler, he answered a question I didn’t ask out loud.
The Lost Queen of Crocker County: A Novel Page 4