Love in the Heartland

by Diana Currie

  Nathan reached across the nightstand to retrieve his cell phone and checked his messages. One missed call. It was not from his mother, father, brother, or even Gerard. It was from Melissa. Nathan listened to the message his agent left and then dropped the phone in his lap. She wasn’t mad at him for getting wasted at the party. She didn’t even care the paparazzi caught him falling into Stanley’s arms before escaping into the limo. In fact, Melissa was pleased.

  Nathan, darling. I sent you an email with links to a number of articles written on Zero Gravity’s premier. Everyone’s raving this morning about how glamorous all the stars looked, and every one mentioned just how sexy Travis Tague looked in his black Armani. I told you that suit was made for you. Anyway, I’m sure you’re sleeping off the after party. Yes, I saw the pics of you leaving! Don’t worry about them, the press seems to think you’re a very sexy drunk. I’m sending you over some new scripts to read through this week. I really think you’ll like the one about the race car driver who falls in love with his best friend’s sister. Call me once you’ve read them all. Bye bye, darling.

  He didn’t know why exactly, but Nathan always thought how his agent reminded him of Cruella de Vil over the phone. The last thing Nathan wanted to do was pick his next film. That would take careful consideration and a much clearer head than he currently possessed. He just couldn’t make another movie like Zero Gravity. The next one needed to have… substance. Thinking that maybe a little more sleep might be in order, Nathan’s hand brushed over the letter from Maddie Sherratt again. He picked it up and decided to read it one more time.

  He felt oddly guilty for letting this seemingly genuine young woman down. A lot of his fans looked up to him as a role model; Nathan knew this well. It pissed him off that a stranger who lived halfway across the country had the nerve to presume she knew anything at all about his life or how he felt about anything. Miss Sherratt was correct in one observation though. Nathan was lonely, and growing more so as each day passed.

  It was dinnertime in Wisconsin and Nathan thought a call to his mother was in order. He was sober now and figured he could fake excitement over his new film for a ten minute call with the woman who loved him most in the world. The phone rang four times and then the voice mail picked up. John and Nancy Foster were probably the last household in America with a land line as their primary telephone. They did in fact own a cellular phone but it was kept in the glove box of the car for road emergencies.

  Nathan left his parents a brief message recounting the good moments he experienced at the movie premier and assured them that he was well. Once again Nathan reminded his mother and father they were welcome to visit him out in California, all the while knowing they would never accept the invitation. John feared flying on airplanes and Nancy feared all of Los Angeles. He ended his message by telling them that he loved them both, and told Nancy to send his love to Rocky, the family’s ten-year-old husky.

  Nathan felt disappointed that his mother had not answered the phone. He wasn’t afraid to admit to himself that he needed to hear her voice. He wondered where they could be at six o’clock on a Sunday evening. Nathan could picture his mother setting the dining room table while pots boiled on the stove and the most wonderful smells wafted out of the oven. Nathan missed his mother’s cooking something awful. No amounts of Carl’s Jr. or In & Out could ever fill that void. Nathan’s stomach was desperately homesick for Nancy’s stuffed Cornish hens among several other dishes he grew up enjoying.

  Just about every part of Nathan felt homesick. He looked at his phone and then at the canary yellow fan mail that he was fast becoming obsessed with. Nathan read over the woman’s description of herself one more time. I’m 25, working towards a Bachelor’s degree in biology. I work in a research lab during the day and babysit my nieces most nights. I’m not married, but someday I’d like to be. I live with my mother and father in Amarillo, Texas.

  Nathan smirked recalling how this young woman gave him her phone number in case he wanted to “talk.” Nathan got letters with phone numbers quite often. At least this one wasn’t accompanied by a pair of risqué underwear. He spent a few minutes toying with the idea of calling this woman named Maddie. What would this girl do, if in fact her celebrity crush actually took her up on the offer to speak about his problems? She was a biology major, not psychology so he wasn’t worried about her trying to analyze him. Nathan chuckled to himself thinking that the girl would probably shit herself when she realized who was calling.

  He was sad and alone and wanted to talk to someone who’d listen. Briefly, he considered calling Melissa but then quickly dismissed the idea. The next name to come to mind was Gerard. Nathan remembered the little white pill hidden downstairs in his coffee table and part of him wanted it. He realized he was in trouble. He should have flushed the damn thing down the toilet the night before. Now, with the absence of any warm body nearby to comfort him, Nathan once again considered ingesting the mystery prescription Gerard had promised would make him forget his troubles. It was one little pill, how much trouble could it cause? It was very tempting.

  Nathan was so perturbed about the direction of his thoughts that his fingers immediately started dialing Maddie Sherratt’s number. A rush of nerves flowed through his body and he ended the call. He entered the ten digit number and stared at the screen for at least a minute before finally saying, “Fuck it,” out loud and connecting the call. Nathan Foster had never been nervous about calling a girl in his life. This one should be no different.

  The phone in Amarillo Texas sat on Maddie’s kitchen counter charging while it rang over and over. Nathan was beginning to worry that this call might also go to voice mail. If he didn’t talk to another human being soon he was going to lose his mind. He felt like he was the only person left on the planet. Just as he was about to lose his nerve and hang up the call was answered.

  A sweet timid voice filled Nathan’s ear as Madeline Sherratt greeted her unknown caller. “Hello?”

  Nathan cleared his throat awkwardly. “Um, hello. Is this Madeline Sherratt?”

  “Yes, it is she. Who is this?” she asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice. Maddie had rushed to answer the phone for what she was beginning to suspect was a telemarketer. The caller ID showed the caller’s number was blocked.

  “This is Nathan Foster. Am I calling you at a bad time?”

  Maddie laughed into the phone. “Nice try, Kyle. Are you calling to talk to Mom?”

  “Um, no. This is Nathan Foster. I am calling to speak with Madeline Sherratt,” Nathan politely explained a second time. This sort of misunderstanding happened frequently. It was the primary reason Nathan allowed Hank to make most of his personal calls on his behalf.

  “Knock it off, Kyle. You’re being cruel. I don’t call you and pretend to be Selena Gomes.”

  “I met Selena at a charity function in New York last year. She’s a very nice girl,” Nathan replied hoping he hadn’t made a huge mistake by calling this woman. He wasn’t sure how he had expected their conversation to go but so far they were off to a bad start.

  “Okay. You don’t sound like Kyle anymore. Who is this, really,” Maddie demanded.

  Nathan sighed under his breath. “My name is Nathan Foster and I’m an actor. I received a letter written on very bright yellow stationary from someone named Maddie in Amarillo, Texas. Was that you? I’m sorry to call out of the blue like this but you did give me your phone number with the offer to call anytime.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line and Nathan knew Maddie finally understood what was happening. Or she had hung up.

  “Maddie? Are you still there?” he asked warily.

  The color in Maddie’s face changed from a pale pink to ghostly white as the identity of the caller finally hit her like a ton of bricks coming down on her head. She couldn’t believe she ever mistook his voice for that of her younger brother. As his words echoed in her mind she realized how familiar the voice sounded. It was familiar, yet not what she expected. Of course
, Maddie never believed the actor would ever actually call her. She’d often wondered if he would even read her letters at all.

  Maddie quickly realized she hadn’t answered his last question. She sprinted through the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom, shutting and locking the door swiftly. She pressed her free hand over her heart and felt it beating wildly in her chest.

  “I’m here,” she replied as calmly as she could manage.

  Nathan smiled, happy that she was still on the line. Her voice pleased him. He wondered if Madeline Sherratt was as sweet and innocent as her voice made her seem. For the first time he also wondered what she looked like. He was surprised the details of her appearance hadn’t crossed his mind until that very moment.

  “Thank you for not hanging up. And please forgive me for calling you on a Sunday evening. I hope I didn’t interrupt something important.”

  “Not at all. I was watching last week’s episode of Walking Dead but it’s on the DVR.” Maddie struggled to keep her voice even as she spoke so as not to come across as a giddy, infatuated fan girl. Those adjectives described her to a tee but she didn’t want him to know that.

  “I’ve never seen that show. Is it good?”

  “You’ve never seen Walking Dead? The show is amazing and number one on cable by the way. What shows do you like?”

  “I like Homeland. And I’ve been watching Lost recently.”

  Maddie chuckled despite her best efforts to the contrary. “Lost? Nathan, come on. That show ended years ago. Where have you been?” She gently smacked the palm of her hand against her forehead. She felt like such an idiot.

  “Give me a break. I was thirteen when it first aired. I don’t know, I just never watched it,” he replied playfully.

  Maddie didn’t understand why she was talking about television programs with Nathan freaking Foster but she wanted to keep him on the phone as long as possible. Her best friend, Holly, was never going to believe this story.

  “Your voice sounds different on the phone than it does in the movies,” she commented.

  “I can assure you everything about me is different than the roles I portray in the movies.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that; I’m not under the delusion that those fictional characters are you and you are them. I meant you’re usually more upbeat in television interviews and things like that. Right now you sound sad, defeated almost.”

  “Yes, well, that is the reason you invited me to call you…”

  “Oh, of course. What did you want to talk about, Nathan?”

  He ignored her very direct question. “You were right; what you said in your letter. I haven’t been happy lately and I just wanted someone to talk to. Someone outside L.A.”

  Maddie was still nervous, intimidated, and more than a little confused about what Nathan had to gain by contacting her of all people. He said he needed to talk. She had offered to talk through whatever problem was bothering him. She’d noticed his drinking and partying and accused him of being lonely in a letter disguised as fan mail.

  Maddie was surprised he hadn’t lashed out at her disrespectful accusations and used her letter as kindling. But he didn’t. He called her for help, and now she was engaging in the most awkward conversation of her life. She began pacing back and forth in her bedroom as she talked with Nathan Foster, the man voted Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine last year.

  “So…” she began with butterflies feasting on her stomach cavity. “Zero Gravity’s L.A. premier was last night. I’ve already seen red carpet pictures and one of your interviews. How was it?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. First, I’d like to know more about you, if that’s okay.”

  Maddie kept thinking at any moment he might decide to end the call so she liked his promise that there would be a later. “Oh, sure. You want to feel confident I’m not a psycho, right? I get it.”

  “Please don’t misunderstand. I mean I feel like you already know a lot about me. I want to feel the same about you.”

  “I told you about myself in my letters.” Maddie said matter of factly. The embarrassment was only beginning to hit her. What had she written to him? It was difficult for her to remember but she was there was plenty of humiliating details.

  “How many were there?” he asked surprised.

  “Four in the last year. Which ones did your read?”

  There had definitely been four letters, of that much Maddie was certain. Three were sent many months ago when Nathan’s first big movie had made him a bonafide celebrity. The most recent letter Maddie knew by heart. It took her at least ten drafts to get her feelings out on paper in a way that satisfied her.

  “Just the yellow one.”

  “They were all yellow,” she said quickly.

  “The letter I have here in my hand calls me out on my abhorrent behavior recently. No one’s ever done that by the way. You said I was lonely. I don’t understand how you knew that about me. How you know me. All I know about you in that you’re twenty-five, you live in Texas with your parents, and you think my phone voice sounds like Kyle.”

  Maddie giggled. “Okay then, what else do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with ‘who’s Kyle?’”

  “Kyle is my twenty-year-old brother. I swear he was born to make my life a living hell.”

  Nathan smiled. He had one of those brothers too. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, for starters he’s my half-brother. My mother cheated on my dad when I was four years old and the affair ended with her getting pregnant. I don’t remember what happened since I was so young but from what I’ve been told my mother confessed the whole thing to my father and he decided to forgive her. They are still married and he’s always raised Kyle as his own son. I’m lucky my parents’ marriage survived considering Kyle is sort of a walking reminder of her infidelity. His biological father was Mexican and so Kyle’s skin tone is darker than the rest of ours. Everyone who meets him assumes he was adopted. It often makes things awkward when we have to explain the truth, but Kyle doesn’t like it when I let people think he was adopted. We grew up together though, so he’s just like anyone else’s little brother. He’s obnoxious, teases me every chance he gets, and he’s a foot taller than me. To sum it up, he’s a royal pain in my ass.”

  Nathan laughed. “That’s quite a story.”

  “Yes, well, I’m afraid to say that the drama only escalates from there,” Maddie said. “Kyle got his high school girlfriend pregnant during their senior year. Her name was Leanna. They found out after graduation that she was carrying twins and she completely freaked out. Kyle convinced her to keep the babies and promised to raise them himself if she didn’t want to. He never thought she’d take him up on that offer. Leanna took off last year, leaving Kyle alone withAddison and Rebecca. They’re eighteen months old now and I babysit them almost every night while he works to support them.”

  “So those are the nieces you mentioned in your letter,” Nathan said.

  “Yes. I’m still surprised you read even one of my letters. You must get hundreds every month.”

  “Sometimes thousands. My housekeeper is good about sorting through the envelopes and making sure I see the ones that stand out. May I ask you why you chose such a blinding shade of yellow to write on?”

  Maddie smiled to herself, beginning to feel more comfortable chatting with Nathan Foster. She settled back on her double sized bed and rested her head against a pillow. “Yellow makes me happy. Also because of my hometown. Amarillo is the Spanish word for yellow.”

  At the same time Maddie was making herself more comfortable in her bedroom in Texas, Nathan was doing likewise in California. He shuffled down between the sheets in his bed and lay on his side, one hand propping up his head and the other holding his cell phone to his ear. He quickly decided that calling Madeline Sherratt was the best decision he’d made in weeks.

  “So, tell me more about you,” he coaxed dropping the tone of his voice to a lower register.

  “No
way, I just told you a whopper. Now it’s your turn.”

  Nathan thought for a moment. There was so much he wanted to talk about but was still hesitant about revealing too much. Nathan had learned the hard way to be careful who he trusted. “I didn’t have a good time at the premier last night.”

  “Why?” Maddie asked with genuine concern in her voice. She had read on TMZ that Nathan had attended the after party in Hollywood and left in a black limo, drunken and alone.

  “It makes me very uncomfortable to watch myself on screen so premiers are always hard for me. My family wasn’t there to support me. And I didn’t even like the movie,” he admitted. “I hadn’t wanted to accept that role in the first place but my agent pressured me into it. She said my career needed a big budget flick like that to stay on course and I believed her. So I got drunk at the after party and made a fool of myself in front of colleagues and paparazzi alike. But in my defense the film truly is an abomination. I mean it, don’t go see it.”

  Maddie snickered. “Nathan, of course I’m going to see it! I see all your movies without fail. I’ve really been looking forward to its release.”

  “Have you seen the trailers? It’s just another disaster movie, nothing new or special about it in any way,” he argued. “What is there to look forward to?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked feeling embarrassed.

  “Not to me.”

  Maddie sighed. He was really going to make her say it out loud. “Well, you’re the appeal for me honestly. The world ending story line might be kind of hokey but isn’t there a decent love story too?”

  “Yes, a minimal one. I’m in outer space most of the film,” Nathan replied rolling his eyes.

  “The trailer showed you in a hotel room with Emma Watson. That shower scene alone will get thousands of women to buy a movie ticket.”

  Nathan scoffed at her words. He knew what she said was true, but that didn’t mean he understood his own sex appeal. Nathan knew what he looked like first thing in the morning. He witnessed the burps, farts, and ball scratching that none of his fans ever saw. They looked at him and saw the movie magic; the airbrushed magazine spreads, and the carefully choreographed television interviews. Hair and makeup stylists were on standby for every scene of every movie he ever filmed. None of it was remotely real.