The Secrets on Chicory Lane: A Novel(39)

Dad was crushed. Just in the few months I’d been away, he had aged a decade. His hair was completely gray, when a year earlier it had been a little salt and pepper. He handled it well, though, kept a stiff upper lip, and seemed to be more concerned about how I took it. The funeral in Limite was attended by all my parents’ church friends—a small but supportive crowd.

I didn’t see Eddie, nor did I attempt to contact him. He didn’t send a sympathy card. I wasn’t even sure he knew my mother had died. His mother surely must have known, and wouldn’t it have made sense that she’d tell him? Whatever.

My father hoped I would stay in Limite for the rest of the summer, but I had another secretarial temp job that I wanted to get back to. I’m not sure I could have remained sane in that town with the ghost of my mother hovering over me, disappointed that I had left the front door unlocked and caused baby Michael’s abduction, as well as mortified by my dating the boy she had wrongly accused of the crime. It was better to be back in Illinois. Besides, that’s where Derek was, and I needed someone like him at the moment. He may have been a nerd, but he was sensitive and kind; and he loved me.

We got married in February 1979, when I was twenty-four. By then, we had moved into an apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago, one of the nicer neighborhoods in an exciting but difficult city. I fell in love with it despite the oppressive winters, the traffic, the crime, and the crowding. It had art, theater, and music; film and literature; culture and food; and all the things that made a big city worth the trouble.

The big problem was that Derek and I were both writers. Big mistake. The competitiveness was mutual. His first book—a nonfiction political tome about Nixon’s administration—was a bestseller. I was still struggling to write that first—no, third—novel and finding my voice, as well as holding down a nine-to-five job as a secretary.

The other issue we came up against was children. Derek wanted children; I was ambivalent. It wasn’t that I didn’t want children, I just didn’t feel ready. I felt as if I had things I needed to accomplish first. Nevertheless, I gave in, and we tried. And tried. When nothing happened, both of us were tested and it turned out I couldn’t have babies. I was fucking infertile. It took over a year to find out that the reason was because I had an ovarian cyst the size of a watermelon. I’m exaggerating, but that’s what it felt like to me when I was diagnosed. I underwent surgery in 1981 at the age of twenty-six, which left me with a seventeen-centimeter scar on the outside of my body, a severed fallopian tube, and more scarring on the inside. Part of my ovary had to be removed; it was a big deal. Afterward, my hormones went berserk. The doctors told me that if I ever did conceive, it was likely that I’d have an ectopic pregnancy, and that didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. So I made it a point not to have a child. I went on birth control again, which helped with the hormonal imbalance, but it wrecked my marriage.

In the spring of 1982, Derek and I separated after three years and two months of matrimony. The divorce became final in 1983, just around the time I turned twenty-eight.

Thank goodness my first good novel—the initial Patricia Harlow romance—had been accepted by Harlequin and was due to be published later that year. It was what kept my spirits up. Otherwise I might have considered myself a failure—both in love and in work. The breakup was messy and painful, and Derek wasn’t very understanding. We don’t speak or communicate now. The last I heard, he was living in Seattle, happily married—to his third wife—with grandchildren. Good for him.

I suppose that experience soured me on relationships. It was a while before I boarded the dating roller coaster once again, but I did so with a completely different attitude. Somewhere along the way I had decided that my goal was simply to find companionship, enjoy it while it was there, and move on when it was over. To tell the truth, it was very liberating. There was no longer pressure to become the ideal American housewife and mother. I could just be me, fall in love with whomever I wanted and for however long I wanted, and concentrate on my work.

That may sound selfish and egotistical, but I’m here to say that I’ve been very happy with that situation. The only people I’ve had to please were my agent, my editor, my readers, and myself. And that was enough. I’ve lived with three different dogs since the early eighties—much better companions than men, I must say—and still enjoyed the company of the opposite sex on my own terms. I suppose my political and social attitudes kept moving further left during the late seventies and early eighties. Even though I wrote trashy romance novels, I became a fiercely independent feminist. So sue me.

The Forgotten Promise generated decent reviews and surprisingly good sales. Harlequin wanted more, so I gave it to them. I’m proud to say I’ve had a novel published every year since 1983, and then some—the odd stand-alone or anthology contribution. I quit my day job and became a full-time author in ’84, and I haven’t looked back. I moved to different places in Chicago twice and have lived in my current residence—also in Lincoln Park—since 1998. A townhouse, all to myself. Heaven on earth.

My career really took off in 1986 when Hollywood made a movie of The Forgotten Promise. It turned out to be a sleeper hit, and more people started buying my books. I’d like to think it was all about talent, but the practical side of me acknowledges that success in the publishing world is primarily dependent on luck—just as it is in any of the arts. I felt truly blessed when my luck held out again four years later. In 1990, they made a film of my 1989 novel, The Moon Pirate, which also happened to be my first New York Times number one. With one of Hollywood’s most popular heartthrobs cast as the love interest, it attracted a lot of female moviegoers. For some Tinsel Town reason I’ll never understand, the actress who played Patricia in the first movie wasn’t cast in the second one, so there was an inconsistency that I believe hurt what could have been a franchise. Another film based on one of my novels was produced in 1997, which didn’t do very well. I didn’t mind. Dealing with Hollywood was very stressful and complicated. The money was quite good, thank you very much, but I was happy just to be my own boss and be a romance book factory. There have been a few nibbles from Hollywood since then, but I didn’t allow myself to be bitten. I’ve made a very good living with the books alone. With the fame, of course, came a certain loss of privacy. For a while, in the early nineties, I often appeared on television—talk shows, game shows, and the like. I was thirty-six when my picture was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Not bad for a small-town girl from West Texas.