Queenie had been at her father’s desk at the Massey-Ferguson dealership in Chadron, Nebraska, for almost a month since her return from Madagascar. In that time she’d fired lazy Lefty Gilday and Toot Banks, both of whom drank on the job. Neither had sold a tractor or combine harvester or a baler in more than eight months. She wasn’t cleaning house so much as clearing deadwood. She’d thought also of getting rid of Derek Brooks, because he didn’t like taking orders from a woman twenty years younger, but Derek told jokes that kept buyers off guard, his mother was on the Plains Museum Board and, his father sat on the Dawes County Commission. Hector Gomez was a keeper because he spoke Spanish, and Larry Dunning, too, who started as a farmer and knew machines.
Her father’s illness distracted her mother from the dealership, which was a blessing. In the early days, her mother was a sales asset—good-looking women sold beer and cars, so why not farm equipment? It was rumored that more than one deal had been consummated after hours in the cab of a combine on the showroom floor. Queenie would have fired her mother, too, if her father hadn’t had his stroke.
In the five years Queenie had been gone, her father had let the business slide. John Deere and New Holland had usurped a bigger market share in the region, and while her father recovered, Queenie wanted to reverse that. She’d improve the showroom, make parts and repair operations more efficient, and give the employees more of a stake in the business, which, she hoped, would motivate the sales force.
That morning, she came into the showroom where an M 1800 tractor and a backhoe were on display—another small tractor would fit—and got popcorn and coffee. She waved to Hector and Larry in their office cubicles and to Helen in bookkeeping. Queenie was twenty-five, five feet six, one hundred and thirty pounds, and had on a blue caftan with an orange sash around her waist—odd for Chadron, but it was what she wore in Tana. She hid what men wanted to see—ample breasts and firm butt—and her hair was short and easy to care for. Her face wasn’t a model’s perfection—she’d broken her nose when she was thrown by a horse, and her ears stuck out, but her cheekbones were prominent and her mouth was luscious, except for the words that came from it.
Occasionally, one was born different from others, a quirky person who negotiated the world with a different compass, not that West was East, but whose mindset was calibrated to centimeters instead of inches and feet, to nanoseconds and Circadian rhythms, to water flowing underground. Queenie was such a character. She established her own rules apart from the nation and culture that barraged her with unwanted information. She was a free spirit with no identity. She protected herself from unwanted associations with riffraff males and females, from the constant invasions of aunts and uncles, her parents, and her brother. Still, she found herself in a gradual slide into confusion that came from exactly the influences she wished to avoid.
She’d arrived at this phase in her life via Bryn Mawr—recommended by a friend of her mother’s in Philadelphia. She’d majored in French for no better reason than Chadron was named for Louis Chartran, a French fur trapper, who had a trading post there. After college, she interned at the French consulate in New York and accepted an assignment to the embassy in Madagascar. She’d never imagined living in another country, much less on an island off Africa, but the word “foreign” pleased her, because her thoughts had never meshed with those of her friends in the separate universes they lived in.
Her main idea in life was to say “yes” to possibilities instead of “no.” In Tana she was seeing a woman named Nicole and a guy, Maxime, but she had her own apartment on a hillside near the embassy, and a taxi-driver friend jaunted her wherever she wanted to go in return for teaching his children English. She listened to reggae-esque jazz and zippy soul and was as close to being the No One she aspired to be. Tana had no tailgate parties, mall crawls, dog hotels, or traffic jams, no fast food or evangelists, no prejudices structured on a history of slavery. The landscape was lush green and had seascapes beneath a never-ending sky.
Queenie hadn’t meant to come back to Chadron, of course, but her father had keeled over during negotiations on a baler, and, knowing her mother’s penchant for hysteria and her brother Davy’s incompetence, she had no choice but to go home. She took a leave, flew to Paris, New York, and Rapid City, where Davy picked her up. They said hello but didn’t embrace, and, on the way to Chadron, Queenie got updated on her father’s condition in the hospital. “Touch and go,” Davy said. “He doesn’t care one way or the other.”
“Since when?” Queenie asked.
“Since Trump won the election, and Biden was sworn in.”
“Is that who he is now, a Trumpster?”
“No, he voted for Biden,” Davy said. “It’s who I am.”
Her father was in a private room, white all around. Since Queenie had last seen him, he’d lost weight and a sprinkling of gray had come into in his hair. He’d grown a beard, too, with silver tinges—for business reasons, he said, because farmers were imitating baseball players. “Did Davy pick you up?” he asked.
“I didn’t know he was a Trump Dolt.”
“He’s angry at nothing in particular and everything in general. Your mother and I voted the logical way, but here that’s against the crowd.”
“At least you haven’t gone around the bend,” Queenie said. “When your information’s wrong, you might believe the world is flat.”
“I’m doing better,” her father said. “They thought I was going to die, but I fooled them. And I’ll be back at work in a week.”
“Take your time,” Queenie said. “Get your rest.”
In her first two weeks, Queenie understood Madagascar was farther away than a return ticket. Davy was either in church or plotting against the government, and word was he had gone to Washington, D.C. on January sixth. Her father, when home from the hospital, was confined to bed, so Queenie’s mother fluffed pillows, provided meals, and ran errands the boss required. Queenie went to the dealership. Her mother had the farm chores, too. They kept goats and pigs, two calves to feed out for fall slaughter, and chickens for eggs and occasional meat, but the farm itself—four hundred acres—was leased to Avery Pratt, who had a promising basketball career cut short by a John Deere baler accident.
Chadron was Queenie’s definition of nowhere. The Cheyenne and Lakota had traversed this country because bison roamed here, but the westward movement of white settlers decimated the buffalo and gave the Indians smallpox. In the end, the invaders were left with marginal cropland and a view of low hills. The railroad between Omaha and Casper had a Chadron watering station that, over a century, had morphed into an agricultural supply center for the farms eighty miles in every direction. Chadron had no civic center, no major sports team, no symphony or sushi restaurants, no fashion shows or art exhibits. It had a hundred and thirty-eight TV channels and thirteen bars. Its economy was based on beef and pork—and feed for them, corn and potatoes—and, surprisingly, blueberries, and farm equipment.
Within three weeks, every negotiation and sale at the dealership ran through Queenie. She raised the hourly rate for their repair personnel to compete with Deere and New Holland, lowered commission sales’ percentages to the showroom workers, and added two women to replace the men she’d fired—Alice Armstrong, fifty-something, who’d farmed all her life up near Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, and Joy Merriwell, who’d studied agriculture at Chadron State and knew the area farmers and ranchers. Each of them made a sale her first week.
Queenie also detected discrepancies in the company’s books—mistakes possibly attributable to her father, but most likely due to the half-assed work of Elmer Johnson, CPA, who Queenie suspected of siphoning off money by billing extra for standard cab outfittings. Elmer, too, got the heave-ho.
Her mother was, by then, taking Valium to sleep better and make her more tolerant to taking care of a curmudgeon. Her father complained about his meds, TV programming, and bed sores. As he got stronger, he became more disagreeable, and at first Queenie thought his behavior meant he’d be back to his office sooner rather than later, but edging into Week Six, he had a relapse, maybe a TIA. The best overall solution, Queenie saw, was to sell the dealership—if she could get it turned around. This would net her parents plenty for retirement and free her to escape back to the life she’d forged for herself in Madagascar.
Selling wasn’t going to happen right away, though, and her mother waffled. “That place is your father’s monument to himself,” her mother said. “He wants to be carried out of there feet first.”
“He already accomplished that,” Queenie said, “and lived to tell about it.”
“His recovery is motivated by going back to work.”
“Maybe that’s why he had a relapse.”
“You can talk to him,” her mother said, “but he’ll say no.”
Without her father’s say-so, Queenie couldn’t put the dealership on the market—and she wouldn’t have, anyway, until it was doing better—so she didn’t know what to tell Adrienne, the ambassador at the embassy in Madagascar. She had a six-week leave, and limbo wasn’t a state Queenie liked or of which she wanted to be a citizen.
On a Friday, Queenie put in a full day’s work and had arranged an evening dinner with Bernice Drexler, the lawyer Queenie hired to deal with her embezzlement suspicions against Elmer Johnson and the termination complaint Left Gilday filed with the state employment commission. Queenie called her mother to let her know she was having dinner in town.
“Who is he?” her mother asked. “I hope you have a good time.”
“Bernice, the lawyer. It’s not entertainment.”
“Bernice is too young to know what she’s doing,” her mother said. “What happened to Quincy?”
“Quincy had a foot in the grave ten years ago,” Queenie said. “I’m doing the best I can for the benefit of the most people.”
“Someone said that before,” her mother said. “Who?”
“Jeremy Bentham,” Queenie said. “How’s Dad?”
“Sleeping.”
“I won’t be late,” Queenie said.
She’d reserved a table at Wilds Bar and Grill, which was as upscale as Chadron could provide. As Queenie cleared her desk, though, Bernice texted that her kid was throwing up. Hubby Ted left for his night shift at the meat-packing plant, so Bernice had no back-up. “You could come over here,” Bernice said. “That would work.”
“I’m not excited to watch a child be sick,” Queenie said. “How about lunch on Monday?”
“Good,” Bernice said. “That’s Ted’s day off. Where?”
“Somewhere,” Queenie said. “That’s the best place. I’ll let you know.”
Queenie was left with an existential decision. She had a few hours free. Her mother wasn’t expecting her home. But the options in Chadron weren’t many. She could call a high school friend—Gale or Felicity—who’d said in passing they wanted to get together, but Queenie didn’t want to hear about the travails of being a single mother in nowhere. Nor did she want to see a movie—The Addams Family 2—that pandered to stupidity. Recent movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer, wouldn’t get to Chadron for months. Anyway, she couldn’t go slumming in a green caftan.
She decided to stick with the script: dinner at Wilds. She had a collection of short stories to read, The Captive Spirit, and her iPhone had many distractions. She parked her mother’s Ford station wagon on Second Street, a few steps from the stair-stepped brick facade of the restaurant.
Inside, Stephanie greeted her—so read the woman’s name tag. She was a tall, slender blonde, who had a mischievous look. “Love your outfit,” she said. “Is that a galabeya?”
“Similar,” Queenie said. “It’s from Madagascar, where I live.”
“Wow,” Stephanie said. “That’s the island close to Africa.”
“You get an A in geography. I’m home for a few weeks to help my family.”
Stephanie smiled. “You have a reservation?”
“Queenie.”
Stephanie looked at her sheet “Is a booth all right?”
“I’d rather be on the terrazzo.”
Stephanie nodded. “I wish we had one, but this isn’t Siena.”
“It isn’t even Denver,” Queenie said.
Stephanie led past the bar and through the tables. A low hum of conversation surrounded them. The booths were quieter and more dimly lit. The one Stephanie stopped at had two place settings. “It turns out I’m alone,” Queenie said, “but leave the other silverware as a deterrent.”
“I get you,” Stephanie said. “Men are irresponsible.”
“Often worse.”
Queenie slipped into her seat. “I’d like a shot of tequila neat, with salt on the rim. Also, a wedge of lime on the side. Please.”
“Letting loose?” Stephanie said. “Your waitress will be right over.”
“I’m ready now,” Queenie said. “You bring it.”
Stephanie shammed a curtsy. “Yes, mistress, right away.”
Queenie wasn’t used to drinking alone. In Tana, she met friends at a veranda bar where they drank wine and gabbled and watched the sun fade into the trees. Here, though, a dull nothing. She checked her phone messages—none—and started The New York Times Spelling Bee.
The tequila arrived. “As you wished,” Stephanie said. “I brought a menu, too.”
Queenie downed the shot of tequila in one slug, licked the salt from the rim, and squeezed the lime into her mouth.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Stephanie asked.
“So far I am.”
“I mean, what can I do for you?”
“Bring me another one,” Queenie said.
“If there’s a different way to avoid your pain, let me help.”
“Do as you’re bidden,” Queenie said. “Later we can talk about later.”
Stephanie went away toward the bar, and Queenie watched her graceful stride. She was reminded of Nicole’s butt and the blond hair she let wander around her shoulders.
Then her waitress stepped up to the booth. “My name is Lola. Have you decided?”
“Decided what?”
“Have you found something you like?”
“Stephanie,” Queenie said.
“I mean, from the menu.”
Queenie flipped open the plasticized menu pages. “Anything vegan?” she asked.
“This is Nebraska,” Lola said. “We have the best steaks in the world.”
“Cattle do nothing but eat grass, tromp soil to dust, and fart all day. I know, because, in another life, I was from here.”
“My boyfriend’s a ranch hand,” Lola said.
Stephanie brought the second shot of tequila and, with a bow, handed it to Queenie.
“Merci,” Queenie said and drank the tequila straight down.
“You are a piece of work,” Lola said.
Queenie folded the menu. “I’ll have a house salad, French fries, and one more shot of tequila for the road.”
Lola wrote on her order pad and glared at Stephanie.
Alone again. Queenie read a few pages in a story about a woman in a Volkswagen who, on the New York Thruway, was stopped by a herd of cows. One of the cows thrust her head through the driver’s window. Queenie wondered what the symbolism was and whether this beginning had a plausible payoff. She closed the book and mused over the floating sensation the tequila was providing. No wonder so many people drink was her conclusion. The room hummed, the light pulsed with energy, the dishes clattered in the faraway kitchen. Queenie felt emboldened, ready, and justified in whatever she was about to do.
She liked random experience without forethought, so that regret never figures in later, but her experience beyond one drink was limited to throwing up an hour or so afterward. Tonight was new territory because she’d never lived it before.
At the next table, a couple was talking about immigrants who were buying land in Chadron. “Like they’re entitled,” the woman said, “because they have money at our expense.” Queenie was about to cast her two cents at the woman—they earned their money—but she tuned out the conversation because a man at the bar was watching her. He was Asian, roughly her age, and had long black hair to his shoulders. He wore a buttoned white shirt, so he wasn’t a farm hand. Queenie’s high school had had one Japanese kid, Clayton Satow, who was a senior when Queenie was a sophomore. He wasn’t an immigrant. Or a foreigner. He was born in Chadron. His father was postmaster. Clayton was quiet and bright, second in his class, and a good middle-distance runner. He went to Lincoln on a track scholarship, but Queenie hadn’t heard about him since then. Was this guy Clayton?
Stephanie led a young ranch couple to a table past Queenie’s booth. The man had on a shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, and the woman’s hair was swept up in a breaking seawave. Both of them had on cowperson boots. A minute later, Lola brought Queenie her third shot of tequila. “I hope you get a DUI,” Lola said, “and diarrhea.”
“You’re so kind,” Queenie said. “Thank you.”
Queenie drank the third shot, and, before her salad arrived, decided to find the bathroom. She extricated herself from the booth and stood up but had to get her bearings. Where was the bathroom and what were the obstacles to getting there? Stephanie, on her way back to the greeter’s post, pointed the way. “Down the hall,” she said, “past the men’s.”
Queenie wobbled a few steps and saw the Asian guy was now focused on the TV news. From her vantage, the screen was a blur of color, which described the news in general—shootings, pandemics, and wars. Everyone was afraid for the world, though in Madagascar Queenie never considered these problems.
The restroom was straight on through the tables and down a hallway. Her stride was a little off, but she negotiated past the men’s to the women’s. Three stalls lined one wall, and the middle one was occupied, so Queenie opted for the one that didn’t have toilet paper on the floor. She locked the door, lifted her robe, and sat.
The other woman finished, ran water in the sink, and left. Oh, the joy of being alone in a bathroom! Queenie peed and farted and, with several plies of toilet paper, dried herself. Her head spun a little, but she managed to get her caftan in place and unlatched the stall door. There was Stephanie. “I thought I should check on you,” she said.
“I’m good,” Queenie said.
Stephanie leaned in and gave Queenie a kiss on the mouth.
“What’s that for?” Queenie asked.
“You decide,” Stephanie said. “It’s meant as encouragement.”
“I have to eat.”
“We don’t have to do anything tonight,” Stephanie said. “No pressure. But I’m off at nine.”
Stephanie retreated. Queenie washed her hands and looked in the mirror. She wore no makeup, and her hair was short, so no adjustments were required. She appeared serious, though, as if a decision were upcoming that determined something, but that was true for everyone every second of every day.
Dinner was served—a copious salad, a plate of fries, and a tray of Newman’s Own dressings. Queenie slid into her seat and chose blue cheese over ranch. In a few minutes, Queenie had eaten every green leaf and tomato skin and onion flake and had cleared the plate of potatoes. She wanted dessert, though, which meant getting the menu back from Lola.
Lola was serving a table by the bar, and, beyond her, the Asian guy was staring at her again. The past bubbled up into the present. She remembered liking Clayton but couldn’t recall a single word they’d ever spoken to each other.
She averted her eyes and spotted Derek Brooks’s father, the county commissioner, and his wife Enid and another couple Queenie didn’t know finishing up steaks at a table in the middle of the room. She waved to Lola, and the Asian man waved back.
Lola saw the signal, came over, and rolled her eyes. “Now what?”
“I’d like dessert. Can you recite the lesson?”
“Three flavors of ice cream, raisin cheesecake, flan, and Cowboy’s Delight, also called the Cowpie.”
“I’ll have flan,” Queenie said. “Do you know the Asian guy at the bar?”
Lola turned around.
“Don’t be so obvious,” Queenie said.
“I’ve seen him around,” Lola said. “He does something at the college.” Lola scribbled on her pad. “Flan coming up.”
The embassy in Madagascar occasionally sent Queenie to get the opinion of Gerard Gascon, a crusty diplomat, who, better than anyone else, had his fingers on the pulse of both Madagascar and France. Every time Queenie went to visit him in Majajanga on the northwest coast, she and Madame Gascon made flan, which, to Queenie, was the perfect combination of arrogance and luxury and, therefore, not easy to achieve.
Queenie waited. The Asian man had either left or gone to the bathroom, so Queenie resumed the Spelling Bee. She was at AMAZING, three points short of GENIUS, but hadn’t stumbled onto the pangram yet. The tequila wasn’t helping.
A shadow interrupted her. Queenie expected it to be Lola with the flan, but it was the Asian man blocking the light. She looked up. “You’re not Clayton,” she said. “I thought you could tell me about your experience in Lincoln.”
“If I were Clayton,” the man said, “I’d have been deceiving myself all these years. I’m Jin Sang, the Seoul man.”
“You were watching the news,” Queenie said. “Anything exciting going on?”
“I thought Trump was going to be incarcerated today, but the networks can’t report what doesn’t happened.”
“Depends on which network,” Queenie said. “What are you doing in Chadron?”
“Studying your agricultural methods and researching what Korea might want to import.”
“You speak good American.”
“So do you,” Jin said. “I graduated from Stanford ten years ago. Are you from here?”
“My family owns a farm equipment dealership. My father got sick, so I’m reorganizing the business to sell, if my father will give his permission.”
“I should look at what you have,” Jin said.
“I assume you mean farm machinery,” Queenie said. “Massey-Ferguson is better than Deere and New Holland. Read the consumer reports.” Queenie found one of her father’s cards in her wallet, wrote her name on it, and handed Jin the card. “Monday to Friday I’m in the office.”
“Queenie,” Jin said. “That’s a funny name.”
“I was named for the bed, not for being anyone special.”
“I’ll call you,” Jin said. He put the card in his shirt pocket. “I like your caftan.”
Lola arrived holding an empty tray and elbowed Jim aside. “No flan,” she said. She handed Queenie a menu. “We have the other desserts I told you about.”
Jin went back to the bar.
“I want flan,” Queenie said.
“Because you’re spoiled,” Lola said. She slapped the bill on the table. “Pay up front.”
Queenie was dumbfounded by Lola’s ill-will but struggled from the booth. She picked up the tab and her purse and wended her way toward the entrance, where Derek’s father and his political entourage were ahead of her at the cashier’s.
Enid recognized Queenie. “God, you’re Abe’s girl,” she said. “What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been away,” Queenie said.
“Derek says you’re firing everyone over there,” Enid said, “and you’re creating a socialistic environment.”
“I’ve made my presence known,” Queenie said. “Businesses, in my view, don’t exist solely for the benefit of the owners.”
“You’re undermining our American values,” Derek’s father said.
They paid their bill, and the four of them went out, grousing about whatever it was Queenie couldn’t hear the details of. Queenie’s tab was $34.86 for three tequilas, salad, and fries. She handed the kid cashier a fifty.
“Where can I find flan in this town?” she asked.
“Ask Stephanie,” the kid said. “She knows all.”
Stephanie was at the greeter’s podium, so Queen stepped over.
“The Cafe Bonito won’t have it,” Stephanie said, “and the Italian Chef has gone out of business. Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“I’ll find out,” Queenie said.
Stephanie took Queenie’s receipt. “I’ll write down my phone number. If you get into trouble, call me.”
“I’m always in trouble,” Queenie said. “Thank you.” She handed Stephanie her change from the tab. “Give this to Lola and tell her to get therapy.”
Queenie pushed open the door and went outside. The sky had darkened in the west, though the hills were still outlined in blue. A few stars littered the sky. Queenie was in distress. She could brush off Lola’s rudeness, but Stephanie’s and Jin Sang’s flirtations were more disturbing because they were about love: Hah, love! They wanted sex. Sex was a different language without the same alphabet, like Swahili or Urdu. Years ago Queenie learned she didn’t like being anxious or sad, stressed or challenged, dumbfounded or angry. She kept sex removed from her whimsical embrace of adventure. In Tana, Nicole and Maxime were lovers but not close friends.
Her mother’s Ford was still at the curb—amazing that reality was still functional. It wasn’t locked, but Queenie fumbled in her purse for the ignition key. She got in. Before she started the engine, though, she checked with Siri. “Flan in Chadron, Nebraska,” she said into her phone.
Siri didn’t understand the question.
The Mexican restaurant was closed. So was the Country Kitchen, where Queenie had gone sometimes in high school. Zero flan. She drove the grid of streets—down Maple, right on First to Mears, back down Third and past the Satows’ well-kept bungalow. She remembered Doris Buckley’s trailer, Brad Gelhorn’s ranch-style with the spritzer bushes in front, and Leila Swink’s box-with-a-roof. The boys called her Leila Skank, and she’d gotten pregnant during sophomore year.
At the end of town the baseball field’s lights were on for a Little League game. A few parents and relatives were in the stands, and Queenie watched one batter strike out and another dribble a grounder to the pitcher. She moved along and turned east on Highway 20.
In the darkness beyond town, winter wheat was coming up, and alfalfa was getting its legs. Queenie drove a couple of miles, then slowed and angled the station wagon onto the berm. She got out and looped to the far side of the car and peed in the grass. A semi doing sixty zoomed past, and the driver blasted his horn. She used grass and weeds to whisk her bottom.
She was okay, a little shaky, but she knew who she was. And she had to do what she needed to now—that’s all there was to it. She scooted behind the wheel again, swerved the car around, and sped back to town and directly to the Safeway. The lot was nearly empty, so she parked close in. She counted fifty steps to where the sliding door whirred open.
In the entrance, she researched the recipe on her phone—eggs, vanilla, whole milk, half-and-half, and sugar. Queenie took a basket and walked down a random aisle. Her mother had sugar and eggs, but not whole milk or half-and-half. Vanilla was a question mark, so Queenie found that. Eventually she had what she needed and drifted to the cashier at number seven, where two people were ahead of her.
The guy waiting had on the conveyor everything wrong with the American diet—frozen pizza, diet soda, a box of doughnuts, Doritos, and Fritos. Queenie guessed TV was the lifeblood of this man. The woman at the credit-card stand was Mrs. Murchison, Queenie’s ninth grade algebra teacher, but she looked so frail Queenie was afraid to say hello to her. Anyway, help appeared. A kid with acne opened aisle eight. Queenie went through and paid $17.98.
On Highway 20 East, Queenie still felt the echoes of tequila. Her headlights splayed out into the fences on both sides of the road, brightening the posts and darkening the crops and pastures beyond. No traffic was oncoming, and no one passed her. Several times she doused her headlights to get a better idea of the silvery moon, less than a quarter, that was askance in the southeast. Stars flew around. The pavement was pale-colored. Queenie slowed to accommodate the not-seeing-so-well—fifty, forty, twenty. She cared about the glory of the human mind she had no words for. Light reached her from the moon and stars at 186,000 miles per second.
Queenie’s parents were in bed, maybe not asleep, but Queenie wasn’t going to inquire. She set about her tasks in the kitchen—oven to 350 degrees, opened the milk and half-and-half, and cracked three eggs. She found the dish her mother used to make cakes in—a shallow, oval ceramic one painted with birds around the rim. She whisked the eggs and milk and melted the sugar in a frying pan. She heard Madame Gascon’s voice: Pas trop. Seulement exactement, tu vois? The sugar turned golden brown, and when it was perfect, Queenie poured this syrup around the bottom of the dish, as she saw Madame Gascon do five weeks ago that seemed now like a year. Queenie added in eggs and milk and, voilà, into the oven in a water bath.
What Queenie hadn’t considered was the forty-five minutes it took to bake. In her state, she couldn’t read or chat on the phone, though she texted Madame Gascon: Je fais du flan, ta recette. J’espère que tout va bien sur votre terrasse au bord de la mer.
Queenie sent this and texted, Adrienne Benaux, the ambassador: Le reviens. Ne sois pas assez pour me rendre obsolète, which Queenie hoped would keep her job intact. After that, she searched You Tube for Bryan Adams, Emmy Lou Harris, and the Barr Brothers.
She was about to put in her ear buds when her mother called out, “Queenie, come here right now.”
“Pourquoi?” Queenie asked.
“Come!”
Queenie opened the door to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother was in her nightgown standing by the bed on her father’s side, her face terrified and tears streaming down. Her father was staring at the ceiling with his eyes open.
“Well, shit,” Queenie said, “what happened?”
“We were holding hands watching The Bridge, that series from Sweden, and Abe jerked a little. I thought he was drowsing off. I heard you come home, but I watched to the end of the episode. When your father didn’t turn off the TV, I nudged him but he didn’t move.”
“Mom, he’s dead.”
“That bastard,” her mother said, “after all I did for him.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Queenie said.
“And I forgave him so much.”
“We have to call someone,” Queenie said, “the sheriff, I think.”
Queenie found the number of the Dawes County sheriff’s department and punched in the digits. The dispatcher answered. “Is this an emergency?” a woman’s voice said.
“No, except for us. My father died. We want to know what to do.”
“Where are you?” the dispatcher asked.
“County Road Eighteen,” Queenie said. “Two point six miles north of the highway.”
“We’re working an accident up at the state line,” the dispatcher said. “Someone will get to you, but give them a few minutes.”
Queenie hung up, pulled the sheet over her father’s eyes, and embraced her mother.
Her father’s death was a shock but not a surprise. He’d ignored the doctor’s recommended diet, didn’t do PT, and got his blood pressure up about stupid television programming. He evinced little interest in subjects that heretofore had been on his mind—the Colorado Rockies, what was going on at the dealership, and how much money he had in the bank. Even if he didn’t want to die, he was ready to.
“We should call Davy,” her mother said.
“He’s in Trumpland,” Queenie said, “somewhere between Here and Unreality.”
“That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t know.”
“It’s late,” Queenie said. “Tell me what you meant about forgiving Dad.”
“We had thirty-two years of never-bliss,” her mother said. “I don’t want to talk about it now.”
“He can’t hear us.”
“Everything is long ago and too difficult to put into words.”
Her mother went into the bathroom and called Davy while Queenie wandered through the living room and opened the front door. With no porch light on, she made out the lane from the yard to the county road. A car’s headlights far off passed along the highway toward town and disappeared over a knoll, and all Queenie was left with were miles of black all the way to the horizon. She stretched her arms above her head, leaned into the porch railing, and gazed up at the miraculous stars. Galaxies spread out above her in disarray, and black holes consumed universes that remained undiscovered. She saw distances impossible to know.
What she’s hoped for—going back to Madagascar—was gone now, and she had no easy answers to her days ahead. What she had to do should make sense, but she didn’t know how that could happen.
Headlights and blue flashers came through the night, and Queenie turned on the porch light and went inside. “They’re here,” she called out.
The flan was still baking—it had been forty minutes—so Queenie swung into the kitchen and opened the oven door and smelled vanilla. The heat wafted toward her.
Her mother appeared. “Davy’s coming tomorrow,” she said. “What did you make?”
“Flan. I’m not sure I did it right.”
“Why flan?”
The ambulance coming down the lane threw moving red lights onto the kitchen ceiling. Queenie set the flan on the stovetop, got down a plate, and turned the dish over.
Three people emerged from the ambulance—two men and a woman—and Queenie opened the side door for them. “In here,” she said. “He died a couple of hours ago.”
“I know you,” the woman said. “You were in my class.”
“Hello, Hilda. I remember you.”
“Are you living here again?”
“For the time being,” Queenie said.
“Show us where to go,” one of the men said.
In the bedroom, one man examined the body, while the other made a checklist of death. Hilda brought the gurney from outside. The three of them swaddled Queenie’s father in a sheet and lifted him from the bed onto the stretcher.
“What happens to him?” Queenie’s mother asked.
“We take him to the morgue,” Hilda said. “Contact Chamberlain’s if you want the funeral home to make arrangements.”
“We know the Drabbels,” Queenie’s mother said. “They used to farm down the road from us.”
The paramedics paused, ready to leave.
But a moment existed then for Queenie when a balance shifted between there and here, between the present and the future. “You want some flan?” she asked, “or do you have to rush off?”
“Flan,” Hilda said. “What’s that?”
Queenie got out five plates and set them around the table. “Sit down,” she said.
She put the flan at her place. It was golden brown on top and yellowy on the sides. She cut it in half with a pie knife and the halves into thirds. The EMTs scraped chairs away from the table. One of the men seated her mother.
“Sorry about your father,” Hilda said.
The others sat, and Queenie, standing, distributed the quivering slices. “No seconds,” she said. “This is a celebration of whatever we have to hope for, and I want one piece left for myself tomorrow.”
