Hey/Are you ready for this?/Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? “Another One Bites the Dust,” Queen
July 25th, 1996
Rose Moore left her split-level home on the pebbled shoreline of Clear Lake—a spring-fed body of water formed by the steady thrum of an ancient glacier—at 12:15 p.m.: Monday through Friday. Singing along to classic rock 8-tracks, Rose would drive her rust-free Mercury Cougar up the pot-holed road to the Muskie Lounge forlunch with her daughter each day.
Beginning her day at 3 a.m., Julie Moore was at KIMT News by 4 a.m. and off work by noon. This gave the TV news anchor time to herself, listening to the radio, its crackling hum, in her Pontiac Bonneville before meeting her mother at 12:30 p.m. They could have varied their restaurant, but it wasn’t worth the mental effort. This was how Julie put it, and Rose agreed.
—
Setting her macramé purse next to her on the booth, Rose took the lake-facing side. The afternoon sunlight caught a crystal hummingbird feeder that hung in the window and cast a rainbow across the mint-green linoleum floor. She hoped the feeder would not turn too much, that it would stay illuminated so that her daughter could walk in and through its full spectrum of light.
She studied the cars pulling in and out of the spots that clung at 75-degree angles to the sidewalk.
An 80s Jaguar, a Jeep Cherokee, and a compact Saab—but no Pontiac.
When their waitress, Donna, passed by, Rose clutched her elbow—pulling her back.
“Have you received a phone call from my daughter?”
Donna shook her head ‘no.’
Rose nodded, thanking and letting her go.
Julie was seven minutes late. Rose did not have a lot to give her daughter, not much but time itself. And she didn’t ask for anything in return for the hours she gave. She hadn’t needed to. Julie gave her the gift of arriving as though she was always about to go on-air. Her daughter treated each occasion as if she were sitting down to a broadcast. This was one of Rose’s favorite things about her daughter. Julie made it seem as though their conversations mattered. Their time together needed to be filled with chatter as the news had to be televised. It was in this manner that Julie arrived at this booth each weekday. Their time together was essential. There were things they must share, events to be recounted: their news. Twenty-four hours had passed since they’d last spoken.
When Donna walked by again, Rose reached out but only grazed the waitress’s arm before the woman looked back at her and shook her head ‘no,’ continuing on to refresh the over-caffeinated coffee in a man’s half-full cup.
Rose leveraged herself up on her forearms, palms pressing against the varnished, wood-planked table, and began walking to the phone booth in the restaurant’s vestibule.
Quarters slipped from her unpolished nails into the mouth of the machine. The phone rang twelve times before the click of Julie’s answering machine transferred Rose’s rapid breath onto tape; she hung up. An icicle falling, the thought shattered coldly through her: your daughter is gone.
“No,” Rose whispered. The booth had grown colder, the red vinyl somehow stickier when she returned.
At 12:56 p.m., Rose waved down a man entering and asked him if he’d seen a white Pontiac Bonneville on his way.
The man simply shook his head, ‘no,’ his long grey beard shifting side to side.
Rose walked again to the payphone, this time calling KIMT and asking for Julie.
“Julie didn’t show up for the newscast today, Mrs. Moore. We’ve been calling your house.”
“The line has been down.”
“It was that derecho yesterday, winds in from the East with a pressure system—”
“I don’t need your goldarn weather report, Janet!”
“Yes, mam.”
“I need to know where my daughter is—”
“We’ve already alerted the police, and they’re searching.”
“Dear lord . . .” Rose gripped the pay phone cord, the diamond of her wedding ring gouging into the thick, black plastic.
“Please let us know if you hear from her . . . ” the weather woman sounded unsure if this conversation should go on. Should they begin to postulate? No, they would not because Rose was hanging up the phone, collecting her purse, paying the check and running down the sidewalk to her car in her thick-heeled beige pumps.
The five-minute drive to Julie’s apartment laid a raw tethering of time between her nerves. She could hardly see the road. It wavered in her sight, lifted, and fell with her heavy pulse: not her daughter.
“Missing,” she felt the word drip from her chapped lips, twirled in the air like the last bit of water in a bathtub, a tornado circling the drain.
Her daughter’s life ebbed through her mind in synapses of images pressed between this current moment and a past that would not give way to the flow of panic but wave by wave coalesced into triumphant white rapids: Julie selling lemonade at a stand for twenty-five cents a cup—drawing a Mother’s Day card with broken crayons—planting red geraniums in a patch of dirt in front of their first house—kissing her freckled prom date on the cheek—driving her loaded sedan down the driveway on her way off to college.
These images coalesced over a hitchhiker in the distance, so Rose did not know if what she saw was real or a glimmering projection from inside her own mind. A flash of the hitchhiker’s long auburn hair brought Rose back to this moment where she realized, yes, this was real. She could see now.
She sped up and slowed down beside the woman, seeing that it was her. Only Julie had changed—was dressed in loose, acid-washed jeans and a baggy paint-splattered T-shirt.
Rose rolled down the window, “Julie?”
The young woman did not answer.
“Julie! Get in! Do you know how scared everyone has been? The Midwest just can’t take another missing newscaster; we’ve been terrified that you were the next Jodi Huisentruit—”
A pink hairdryer stuck out of her daughter’s backpack.
A group of women congregating in a church parking lot froze at the sharp crack of Ruby’s parched voice. A teenage boy kick-flipped his skateboard up to pause for the spectacle. A utility line worker stopped climbing a telephone pole to stare down, eagle-eyed, at the scene unfolding below.
“I can’t do this anymore—” Julie held her arms up to the cloudless, cerulean sky.
“Do what?” Rose asked, slowing the car to a languid roll.
“I can’t take those camera lenses on me, the routine—day in, day out. The perfect make-up, the perfect clothes—my car broke down this morning. My curling iron set my fake eyelashes on fire. And men.”
“What about men?” Rose yelled.
“Men either ignore me like I’m kryptonite or end up in the hospital because they’re so goddamn obsessed with me.”
“Who is it this time, dear?”
“Christopher.”
“Oh, and he was doing so well too.”
“Well, he’s hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor as we speak. Palpitations. My fault, he says.”
“Not your fault!” the utility line worker bellowed down.
The women from the church, who had grown nearer, echoed him: couldn’t be.
“He must have a pre-existing condition,” the teenage boy contributed, thoughtfully.
“Another one bites the dust,” Rose sang out, “And another, another one down, another one bites the dust, metaphorically—”
“Alright, just let me in, Queen,” Julie interrupted her, throwing open the car door as tears caught in the sills of Rose’s eyes. But still, all Rose could do was smile. Because her daughter was back, broadcasting. And this was all she—the mother of this radiant wonder—could ask for.