Looking for a Love Story (33 page)

“This town is where I grew up,” Chicky said to me. “My folks moved here after they quit vaudeville.”

“After Joe canceled the gig at the Jefferson,” I said.

“You’ve got a good memory, Doll Face.”

“I just wrote a book about them.”

“So you did.” She gave me a fond little chuckle. “When my parents came here, they didn’t have much money—just what they’d saved to get them by for a few weeks if they were laid off. But the old couple who owned this diner wanted to retire and Pop had made friends with them when he and Mom stayed in Millertown before. They let him buy it for almost nothing down and pay it off over time. It took twenty years. Mom and Pop learned to cook, and Mom turned out to be a damn good waitress. Pop made a great lemon-meringue pie. They added to their family and they were happy—as much as most people are—but they missed show business. It gets in your blood, and you never really stop loving it.”

I turned to the wall of pictures. “It looks to me like they found a way to do something theatrical.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Miss Chicky, we have a table for you.” Pabir was standing behind us.

“Good,” she said, as she hooked her arm in mine. “Because when I tell you this next part, we’re both going to need pie.”

After we were seated and we’d ordered—pecan pie with vanilla ice cream for Chicky, lemon meringue for me—Chicky turned back to look at the wall. There was a dreamy expression on her face.

“Pop never talked about performing when I was a kid, but Mom knew he still missed the business, so she started having talent shows, right here in the diner. Two or three times a year she’d put up a little platform in the back, right where the pictures are now. People would strut their stuff and Pop would be the emcee. The prize was whatever the house pie was for the day.

“They kept the shows going during the Depression and World War II, and on the side, to earn a little extra cash, they started giving singing and dancing lessons—to kids, mostly. After the war, like I told you, some genius decided that Millertown didn’t need train service anymore, which killed off the local economy. And now the town had an empty railroad station to get rid of. My folks rented it and opened a theater school there. The school turned out to be a big draw for this place. Kids from all over came to take lessons and perform in Mom’s talent shows. Some people said that school saved Millertown.

“Between running the school and the diner, my folks worked hard. But we could always tell they loved it. And of course they had us to help out.”

“Us?”

“Their kids.”

“Plural? As in, younger brothers and sisters?”

“Only one sister. And she was older than I was.”

“But Ellie was pregnant when she married Joe. How …?”

“I was born five years later and named Eleanor, after Mom. Benny’s daughter, my half sister, Joanna, had been named after Pop; he was very proud of that.” She took a beat. “When Joanna got too old to be called ‘Baby,’ her new nickname was ‘Annie.’”

“Annie? But that’s—”

“Yes, Alexandra named your pooch after her mother. Annie was your grandmother’s name. I’m your great-aunt.”

CHAPTER 34

You know the feeling when you’re walking down a flight of stairs and it’s dark so you can’t see very well, and you think there’s one more step—but there isn’t? As your foot reaches for something solid, it can feel like the whole world is in free fall. That’s how I felt when Chicky dropped her bombshell.

“My dog is named after Benny and Ellie’s daughter?” I said stupidly.

“Yes.”

“Her name was Joanna.”

“Because it was a feminine version of Joe.”

“But everybody called her Annie.”

“It seemed to fit her better. My family was big on nicknames.”

“And she married my grandfather, and she had my mother, and my mother named my dog—”

“Doll Face, enough with the dog.”

“But it’s like one of those murder mysteries where the big clue has been in plain sight all along and no one noticed it. Annie sleeps in my bedroom. She eats her cookies there. And you’re telling me—”

That was when Pabir showed up with our pie and then hung around, waiting for us to give it a try.

I wolfed down a chunk of meringue. “Fabulous,” I said, and gave him my best
Now go away
smile.

But Chicky loaded up her fork with pecan pie and ice cream very slowly and put it in her mouth very carefully. She closed her eyes and did a little swoon. “Ambrosia, Pabir” she said. They exchanged a few little pleasantries while I tried not to scream in frustration. He finally disappeared. Chicky reloaded her fork.

“Are you telling me Joe and Ellie were—?”

“Shh, I’m soaking.”

“If you don’t talk to me, you’ll be wearing that damn pie!”

Chicky gave me a big fake sigh. “Elder abuse is not cool, Doll Face.” But I could see she was nervous about telling me the rest. That was what she did when she was afraid someone was going to be mad at her; she deflected. And who did that remind me of? Myself, that’s who.

“Talk to me. Please.”

“Joanna was Benny’s daughter, I was Pop’s. She was called Baby when she was little, then they nicknamed her Annie. Don’t ask me why my folks were so big on nicknames; it was just something they did. I was called Tiny for a while, and then I was Cutie. They finally settled on Chicky, because—”

“Chicky,” I broke in, “enough with the nicknames.”

“Annie was your grandmother. Alexandra’s mother.”

“So the story I’ve been writing—”

“Is about your great-grandparents.”

“And the Karras side fits in how?”

“Milos Karras was a truck driver working the Hudson River valley. He met Annie when she was waiting tables for my folks in the diner. They fell in love and got married, and Annie left Millertown. She was always the restless type. I used to put it down to Benny’s bloodline, but then I turned out to be pretty restless myself, so who knows? Anyway—”

“Wait a minute. Did Annie ever find out about Benny?”

“My mom told her about him. But not until after Annie got married. I think she waited so long because she was afraid, if Annie wanted to meet Benny, Pop might get hurt. Mom always looked out for Pop that way. But Annie didn’t want to meet Benny. She said Pop was the only father she’d ever want.” Chicky paused. “That’s one of the things I’m really grateful for. She said that to him just a couple of weeks before he and Mom died.”

“Joe and Ellie died?” I heard the dismay in my voice.

Chicky heard it too. “You wanted a happy ending, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Always.

“They had one for a while. But then there was a car wreck. It was her birthday and he was taking her out for a night on the town. They were only in their fifties. Way too young, you know?”

I remembered when
my
father died at fifty-six. “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“I was pretty crazy after it happened,” Chicky said. “I think I wanted to make time stand still. I tried to keep everything exactly the way it had been when they were alive.”

I remembered how I had felt when Sheryl was dating and I was writing
Love, Max
. “I know,” I said.

“I wanted to keep on running the diner and the school. It was as if I were keeping Pop and Mom with me, if I could do that. I didn’t want anything to change.”

“I know.”

“But Annie had moved on. She wanted to sell. Her husband
wanted to start his own business and he needed the capital. And to be fair, I was having trouble trying to be the boss of two businesses. I was in over my head, but I couldn’t face it.

“It got ugly between Annie and me—lawyers and the whole nine yards. But in the end, she won. The town offered to buy the school from us; the Masters Academy had put Millertown on the map, and they didn’t want to lose it. Pabir’s grandfather bought the diner. And I never forgave Annie.

“I started traveling, ran around Europe for a while, spent a few years in Hawaii, a few more in Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, you name it. I was so mad at Annie, I never came home to see her baby when it was born. When Annie died, I was out of the country and I didn’t get back in time for the funeral. After that—I don’t know, it just seemed easier to stay away. Before I knew it, your mother was a teenager. The last thing she needed was me coming into her life to play the loving auntie.

“I settled in Oregon for a couple of decades. But eventually you want to go home. The first week I was in New York, before I even moved into my apartment, I rented a car and drove up here to see the diner. Pabir’s folks were still here.” Her eyes were full of tears. “I can’t tell you what that was like … seeing the school and the diner.”

“I can imagine.”

She wiped the tears away and shrugged. “The rest of the story you know.” She started to signal for the check but I stopped her.

“Not so fast.”

“What’s left to tell? I fell and broke my hip. I moved to Yorkville House, decided to tell my parents’ story, and found you. I got in touch. And here we are.”

“Did you know who I was? When you read my ad?”

There was a hesitation. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me we were related?”

I thought she was going to give me a clever answer or try to avoid one altogether. She looked straight at me. “What would I have done if you didn’t want to write the story?” She took a deep breath. “Or if you didn’t like me? I’m not as strong as I appear to be, Francesca. Most people aren’t.”

“Didn’t you think I should know who I was writing about?”

“I did think about that. But you were down in the dumps, and nepotism is bad for the soul. You didn’t need to get a job because you were family; you needed someone to hire you for your talent.”

“Someone who couldn’t pay me.”

“And look how beautifully you handled that! I’m so proud of you, Doll Face!” She beamed at me. Then she said softly, “I needed to give you time to know me. And to know Joe and Ellie. You were looking for a love story to write, and I gave you one—ours.”

“Who says I wanted to write a love story? I’m the antiromantic, remember?”

“Nah. You’re a true believer who got discouraged. And pissed off.” She signaled again for the check. “Now, let’s get out of here so you can go home and finish my book. At my age I don’t have forever to wait for you.”

CHAPTER 35

After that day in Millertown, I finished the book in record time. And I was more determined than ever to sell it. I mean, wouldn’t you be after learning that you’d been writing your own family history? But first I engineered a meeting between Chicky and Alexandra, which was a whole lot less operatic than Chicky was afraid it would be. You’ve got to love my mother. She’s got her faults, but carrying a grudge has never been one of them. You show her a little old lady who looks teary, and Alexandra melts. Besides, Chicky was family. In her own scattered way, Alexandra is a family person—as long as she doesn’t have to wash their dishes. I mean, she did name my dog after her mother.

When I told Pete about the unknown branch of our family tree, he said, “We come from theater people? Well, you’ve always been a drama queen.” Unfortunately, he was on the other side of the globe, so I couldn’t get my hands on him.

But now I had this book to sell. I shared my fears with my loved ones.

“I know it’s not going to be easy to find a publisher. I haven’t written anything in four years,” I said to Chicky.

“It’s still the same problem: I’m trying to sell a book about people who lived almost a hundred years ago and worked in vaudeville—which most readers today can’t even spell,” I said to Show Biz.

“But I’m a much stronger person now than I was. I know how to handle setbacks. Sort of,” I said to Alexandra.

“I’m going to fight for this,” I told Sheryl on the phone.

“I’ll never give up on this project,” I said to Lancelot on our morning walk.

“Defeat is not an option for Francesca, aka Doll Face,” I said to Annie.

The first step was to find an agent, since Nancy was doing the motherhood thing. I compiled a list of book agents who had made it a point to congratulate me when
Love, Max
hit big, and started making phone calls.

The first round of turndowns for Chicky’s book—and my family history—were very nice. I think every agent used the word
charming
. They all wished me well in this brutally competitive market. Results: zip. I then turned to Plan B and contacted agencies where no one knew my name. Zilch. I turned to Plan C, and contacted agencies I’d read about on the Internet. Nada. Finally, I started sending the manuscript directly to publishers—and you can’t characterize that as a plan; it’s more like walking into a court of law when you’ve been accused of murder and saying you’re going to be handling your own defense. The response to that effort? Zip. Zilch. Nada.