Tossing away my blanket in irritation, I click off the flatscreen as the credits roll on Drive, a screenplay Stella wrote over two decades ago about her start and evolution as a journalist. The movie also includes her husband, Reid’s coinciding journey as the drummer of the Dead Sergeants and the band’s history leading up to the height of their stardom.
While Stella and Reid’s love story played a large part in the movie, my father wasn’t mentioned, and the paper was thoroughly glossed over. Though one thing remains certain—Reid and Stella met around or close to the time Stella started working for Austin Speak.
In fact, it was Stella’s feature in Speak about the Dead Sergeants that drew a Sony executive’s attention, eventually getting them signed. Ironically, just before that twist of fate, Reid left Stella holding the bag of their budding relationship to move home and provide for his alcoholic parents. Thus, portraying him every bit the desperate, starving artist who was giving up on his dreams.
Even as Reid broke her heart, Stella made him promise not to give up. She even went so far as to have an expensive drum kit she won by chance delivered to where he fled to encourage him to keep believing. A few months after their breakup, the Sony exec attended a show, and the Sergeants, Reid included, were signed. Just after, Reid went on tour with the band, which led to years of separation between him and Stella. Years I conclude that she dated my father.
At the end of the movie, Stella and Reid reunite after the most incredible of coincidences in Seattle—half a country away from where their story began here, in Austin. Stella was house hunting—as she’d reported to Dad via email—when she stumbled upon Reid at an open house. Reid just so happened to be accompanying his lead guitar player, Rye Wheeler, who was interested in the now-famous A-frame Stella and Reid became cemented at.
Shortly after the mind-boggling, seemingly fated reunion, Stella and Reid got engaged, and Dad cut all ties with her.
The movie highly romanticizes Stella’s belief in fate and destiny and the part they played in Stella and Reid’s relationship throughout without a single hint of the fallout—my father and his broken heart.
On a mission for more, I grab my phone to start a Google search, and my heart skips a beat when I catch the time displayed in large numbers on my home screen.
11:11
Momentarily stunned by the sight of the time frequently mentioned in the movie—a time where superstitious Stella made wishes within those sixty seconds—I do my best to pass off the strange notion that arises.
Maybe it’s a sign for me.
Perhaps one of encouragement?
“You’re doing a shitty thing, Nat. Own it,” I utter dryly, batting the idiocy off. At this point, I’m grasping at all moral straws in an attempt to keep on with my investigation while combating the guilt.
Standing on the patio of my apartment—just a few streets over from the heavy traffic of Sixth—I decide downtown Austin remains alive and well with the ever-present varied lights and the level of street noise in the distance.
Dipping my gaze, I sweep my quieter road, which is riddled with a few potholes, and even fewer passersby. I imagine Stella three decades ago, nearly three years my junior, as she trekked her way through these very streets. Streets she frequented, determined to forge her future in journalism.
More curious than ever, I Google Stella Emerson Crowne. A list quickly populates of images and articles, many written by her. I take a seat in my lone chair—which takes up the whole of my four cubic feet of balcony—and began sorting through them. She’s given several interviews over the years, most of them in the last decade, due to her success. As I pick through the endless barrage of information, I become more and more frustrated when I don’t find mention of my father, especially in the earlier articles.
Unless Stella is a borderline sociopath who could lie her way through any test, my father meant far more to her than she’s allowed the world to know.
I know, and sadly, I may be one of a very few which leaves an acidic taste lingering on my tongue.
For the past twenty-five years, it seems they’ve both lived their separate lives pretending that the other doesn’t exist, but why?
It has to be purposeful, has to be. And if so, that means she’s buried their relationship history too. They seemed to be on amicable terms when they split.
Why did they break up in the first place? In the film, Stella was already in Seattle when she reunited with Reid.
Even though a lot of pieces are clicking together, I know I’m missing the most vital parts. Too many to feel real satisfaction, especially for someone in my field.
Did she leave my father out of that script to spare him? Was he hurt by it?
Can I let this go?
A resounding no thrums through my psyche as I try to grapple with the fact that everyone has a dating history, including my parents. But it’s the intimacy of the emails I’ve read so far, the underlying love, affection, and devotion between them that keeps me calling ‘bullshit’ on the movie and pacing my apartment until sunrise.
“There’s always an angle, Natalie,” I mutter beneath my breath for the umpteenth time as I set my tray atop the wiry metal table on the patio of the small bistro, which sits only a few blocks from Speak.
“It’s been a while,” Rosie, our gossip columnist prods as I take a sip of my lemonade, and she takes the seat across from me.
Per usual, she’s a cheap lunch date—her lithe figure taking precedence over hunger. Her plate is covered in mixed greens topped with a teaspoon of dressing—rabbit food. “What’s new, or should I say news?” I ask before taking a hearty bite of my brisket sandwich.
“Not a lot,” she says, glancing around the patio. A habit she no doubt formed back in L.A. where she stemmed from.
The sun collectively starts to beat down on us as she exaggeratedly pats her forehead with a napkin. I grin behind my sandwich in anticipation of what’s coming.
“I can’t believe I gave up California temperatures for this.”
Early spring in Texas is a toss-up in weather, though it’s mildly comfortable today—at least for me, which gave me the perfect excuse to get Rosie out of the office so our conversation didn’t drift into the wrong ears.
What Rosie Knows is one of the most celebrated and most-read columns at Austin Speak. With her connections in entertainment and media and her expertise in unearthing celebrity gossip, we got a considerable circulation boost when she started at the paper. She has a penchant, if not a God-given talent, for sniffing out news before any other source. She’s rarely, if ever, scooped.
In college, I followed her gossip blog and podcast like religion and brought her talent up to Dad on multiple occasions in an attempt to get her to Austin. So, when Dad finally made the call to recruit her, we sweetened the deal by offering to sponsor her podcast nationally through my mother’s media company.
Even with that bait, it surprised the hell out of us both when she accepted and traded in California weather for the sweltering Texas sun six months out of the year.