Tempted, she's reasonably glad her slingshot wouldn't fit under her dress.
I go to someone else’s movie. It’s late in the afternoon, crisp as a cracker and yellow as butter. The leaves are turning. Little Sokoki burns bright in the falling sun. It seems only yesterday that summer still idled against the walls, sat on public benches, lay on the grass, trying to catch its breath. Literally, only yesterday.
There’s a small queue outside the River House Theater. Is it Saturday? Am I attending a matinee? No one holds the hand of a child. There are no teenagers in the line. I think: maybe it’s that rare thing, a movie for grown-ups. I will lose myself in a movie, calm myself down. I know movies. I understand movies. If I watch someone else’s movie for an hour or two, I won’t have to watch mine.
I take my place in the line.
It’s not until the titles roll that I know what I’ll be watching. The town-city of Little Sokoki is having a Hitchcock festival. I’ve walked into The Lady Vanishes.
Sitting in the dark, eating an enormous bag of hot buttered popcorn, I am almost comforted. I am on a train hurtling through a seventy year gone Europe. I have nothing to do but watch. No one knows who I am and I know no one. There really is comfort in all this. No one sees the flames behind my eyes; no one hears the screaming or smells the blood. No one knows how she looked, her small perfect body floating face down in peagreen pondweed, small perfect goldfish nibbling at her fingers. No one knows what’s in my leather bag. I am alone in here, under my skull, buried in bone. I am hidden. I am safe.
When the movie ends, I take a small portion of my comfort with me as I walk to the library to sit in a large fat library chair, and all around me are books about ghosts and hauntings. So far, I’ve learned five things. One: there is no real proof that ghosts actually exist. Two: there is no real proof that ghosts do not exist. Three: an amazing amount of people believe in them. Four: no two ghosts are alike. Five: you can know too much about a thing, namely ghosts, thereby end up knowing nothing about ghosts at all.
And then I walk “home” in the gathering dark.
I find myself walking slower and slower. Walking slower still, I’m trembling. There is no one near me, no one looking at me. No car has braked as it passes, no grim faces peer out behind thick glass. And I realize as I search for these things, that I am not afraid of the police. Or that I am afraid of the police—but I am much more afraid of River House. I am afraid of my room. I am afraid of my laptop.
~
Fucking artists. If failure doesn’t kill us, success does. And if we manage to withstand what success does to us (one example of the many many examples who fail success: Norman Mailer, ace asshole, now finally shut up by death, at least here, in this reality), then curiosity is bound to bring us down in the end. Because curiosity keeps us working. Curiosity is at the root of all creativity. We have to know things, even if only how the story turns out.
~
Even when Kate died, he kept working. Less than a week after she drowned, he accepted a role: small budget film, quickly shot, he played a compulsive gambler with a seven year old son. The son lived alone in East LA motel rooms watching TV and eating takeout while Daddy went to the track day after day to try and beat the odds. And then out again at night for floating poker games. Brilliant movie. Heartbreaking movie. If he’d lived, he was up for another Best Actor Golden Globe. And if he got the Globe, why not another Oscar? Although, really, the movie seemed to me to be more about the boy than it was about him. For me, it was about the beauty and innocence of this child’s inner world while Daddy’s inner world was all about the ugliness of greed and the madness of the compulsive thrill of risk. (Called Cheat the Devil, it’s playing now; it’s playing all over the country to packed houses. People are coming out to see his last movie. Which means the first time producers are raking it in; for them, his death is a windfall, a monumental “lucky break.”)
But me, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t eat, I could hardly breathe. All I could do was cook what no one ate. He went off to work each morning and became someone else, someone with a character arc. And then he came home each night and became himself. A flatline drunk and a babykiller.
~
If I’m to live as long as it takes to get up those stairs, I need to eat. A pain in the ass, but there it is. Time to walk to Price Chopper again. Very very slowly. The body gets weak lying around hallucinating. Or having visions. Or visitations. Whatever.
I love the name. Price Chopper. Chop. Chop.
~
Life is here today, then gone, it seems—forever. Even the rare: those with ineluctable ability or a sublime gift or undaunted courage or unutterable compassion…where does such genius go? Christopher Reeve died. When it happened, I saw it in a paper someone was reading at a checkout. Christopher died. First he suffered. Then he stopped suffering. I hope.
People die. They go away somewhere, or they go nowhere, and they don’t come back, while the rest of us, all still living to one degree or another, take it, and take it, and take it. We’re here and we really have no idea if there’s a “there.” And we lose people like Reeve with floods of newsprint and then a fading away, a fading away, as if he never was. In ten years, in five, how many will ask: who was Christopher Reeve?
Dylan Thomas demanded that we rage at the dying of the light. And I do rage. I do. But not for my light.
~
Once before, I’d entrusted him with Kate. It was during one of his “bouts of sobriety.” He was in the midst of making a semi-independent movie about Charles Lindbergh, aging from a shy yet confident twenty-five year old to a defensive yet confident seventy-two, from the dashing young icon of the Twenties and Thirties, to the controversial fallen hero he is now.
That one should have won him his first Oscar, but the Oscars are political, and the US was, and is, still slightly in love with Lucky Lindy. There was a minor national outrage when the story suggested Lindbergh had had a hand in the death of his own child—an accidental hand, true, but stemming from his own bullying nature. Which was then covered up, and then—amazing happenstance—ferociously pinned on some poor schmuck who’d had the very bad idea of sending Lindy a ransom note. Hideous luck for the schmuck, but incredible luck for Lindbergh. (In the scriptwriter’s opinion, unvoiced in his script, this was the genesis of the name Lucky Lindy.) Even worse, everyone hated to learn of Lindbergh’s ties to Hitler and his belief that “inferior” people: criminals, the insane, and certain “races,” ought to be “eliminated.” This was voiced in the script. No wonder no one gave him an Oscar for that one. The academy flushed the whole movie: director, scriptwriter, cinematographer, actors, producers, whoever and whatever, down their private loos.
I loved that movie. He loved making it. We were in love with him and with me and with movies and with Kate. So I left him one evening to watch her. Where did I go? What was I doing? I haven’t the foggiest. If anything, it must have had something to do with my own career. About that time, I was writing a very promising script for a young and very promising actress…until the night she died of an overdose on the dance floor of a popular nightclub on the Strip, and the whole thing died with her.
When I got home Kate was in tears. The whites of her eyes were red as blood. Turns out he’d given her a bath, no harm in that, but he’d washed her hair with a strong medicated shampoo. Stuff got in her eyes and she’d screamed and screamed, screamed long enough and loud enough to bring in the neighbors. Who went away shaking their heads at how foolish some dads can be, poor man.
I said: that was a stupid thing to do. He said: how was I to know? I said: common sense. He said: I am far from common. Since Kate had forgiven him, and by now was happily nestled in his lap, I forgave him too. And we laughed at his folly. Kate laughed as well.
There is nothing more beautiful than the laugh of a child.
~
The girl is in the elevator. I’m on the ground floor with a plastic grocery bag in each hand; I’ve pushed the call button with my e
lbow, and when the elevator door opens—there she is, staring at me. Terrible to see her, but I try to be generous enough to feel heartened at the condition of her skin. It is less ravaged than the last time I was so close to her. She’s so much younger now, she’s merely a child. Beside her sits the dog who sat by the beautiful young man with the camcorder, the dog who stared at me in the parking lot behind River House the night I walked home alone. Dogs aren’t allowed in River House. Miss Jackson made sure I saw that clause in my lease. Signing, I barely took note. I don’t have a dog. No dogs since Prince. No desire for a dog since Prince. She’s also posted a sign behind plexi-glass in the lobby. No Dogs, it says, Infraction of this Rule is Grounds for Eviction. This dog has a piteous case of mange. I can see the blood on his back where he’s chewed the skin raw. He’s cleaner. I think he might be black. Prince was black, but much smaller than this dog.
I am so shocked by both dog and the almost child: prettier, cleaner, I think my heart actually stops. Then starts. Then stops again. Then starts. And I’m trying to back up fast, tripping over my own feet, turning to get away. I’m not psychic. If I were psychic I should never have gone off that day, never have left my baby, my only Kate, in his care. But I feel psychic now. There’s a malevolence flowing out of the elevator as a river of blood flowed out of Kubrick’s elevator in the lobby of the Overlook Hotel. So I run. Not outside. Not out of River House. For the stairs. The real stairs. I run for the stairs because something makes me think I can beat both of them to the third floor. Something makes me think I’d better beat them to my door or River House is going to kill me before I can do it for myself.
~
I’m taking a shower. I can’t recall when I last took a shower. Looking down the length of my dwindling body, watching the hair grow on my legs and under my arms—damn, a person shaves for years, as soon as she sees the first sprigs of body hair somewhere in her early teens, so she never even guesses at bottom she’s actually the wife of Bigfoot.
I have a rash on my thighs, on my stomach, my toenails could use clipping. I know I won’t bother shaving or clipping or tweezing, though I do wash. Then I get dressed for whatever comes next: pair of now baggy old jeans, old sweater (black turtleneck), white socks, sturdy brown walking shoes.
I’m lying on my futon again. It’s come down to this. Locking my door, gnawing a little cheese, drinking a lot of wine, laptop on the foot of the bed: unopened, unbooted, unused. I’m waiting for the signal to enter my closet and climb the stairs. There’s always a signal of some sort. Light. Music. Knocking. Banging. I’ve already removed my big bag, all the ceiling tiles, used my Price Chopper flashlight to look through the hole I’ve made in the back wall of the closet. Right at this moment, there are no stairs. There’s no room for stairs. No room for anything but ancient (and no doubt poisonous) insulation, ancient lathing, dust, filthy cobwebs, and the double layer of old bricks that are the backside of the outside walls. Shining the light up: nothing but more of the same. Shining it down: more of the same. But something will happen, even if only in my head. It’s entirely possible my head is where all the action is. But that’s the artist for you.
I’m not tired. I’m not much of anything at all…except numb. In Malibu, before the beginning of the end, I was a terrible mother. Gone half the time, distracted when I was home, irritable, frantic, important. But I loved Kate with all my Houdini heart. Now I don’t love anything, least of all myself. Yet I cannot stop the artist in me, cannot stop wanting to know, to make, to find out, to express.
What asses we are.
~
I don’t understand. I’ve just snorted myself awake and where am I now? I’m in the movie theater under River House. Did I get here through my closet, by climbing, not up, but down the stairs? Old stairs, new stairs, a ladder? I have no idea. No dust, no cobwebs on my black sweater. I remember no dream. Perhaps this is my dream.
Much more of this and something will break. He once said his cracks were showing. My cracks aren’t just showing, they’re exposing themselves.
The stained silver screen is blank. I’m sitting here alone, clamped to my seat. On either side of the theater, just as they were when I saw The Lady Vanishes, there are faux grottos, faux porticos, faux staircases leading into or out of walls. Behind all these are distant views of painted vineyards. Weaving through this awkward excess, nymphs and satyrs frolic, tra la. It’s meant to be Greek.
Twenty feet above me, the plastered Greek thing meets the Astrological thing. High overhead the ceiling is a blotchy teal blue and on it, rendered in flat white paint, wheels a badly drawn Zodiac.
For a moment, I touch an old self, a someone I once was; someone who laughed and caused others to laugh. For a moment he is here, sitting beside me, looking up and laughing. His laugh was cause for laughter. His laughter buoyed the heart.
For a moment, I am not who I’ve become.
For one single moment.
I think: The Last Ditch must be behind one of these tipsy walls.
Fuck. The laughter I almost laughed is coughed away like dust in the throat. I am not alone. My madly buoyed heart comes lose, bobs in waves of tossing fear. Ten rows in front of me, unmoving and silent, sits the old woman who became a young woman who has become a small child. She has turned in her seat; she’s staring at me.
I should get up now. Walk out of the theater. I should turn my back on the hall-walker, the door-knocker, the body shrinker, the age reverser. In a minute I could be back out on the main street of Little Sokoki. From there, it’s five minutes to the bus stop. If it’s too late for a bus, it’s fifteen minutes to the only interstate in Southern Vermont. I have a thumb. Moving fast and moving far, I could put all this, whatever it is, behind me. Problem is, my things are in my room. What little money I have left is in my room. The big bag is in my room—and what’s worse, what is in the big bag is in my room.
Or maybe I should simply wake up.
No matter what, I have to get back to my room.
I stand. Like a crab, I begin to move sideways, inching myself out of my row, seat by seat, turning towards the exit. And there’s the dog. It’s the same dog, though a smaller dog than he was in the elevator. He’s standing at the back of the theater, between me and the door into the lobby and from the lobby into the street. Once again, he has blood on his teeth.
The emergency exit is to my left and behind me. It’s under a false staircase, and to get to it, I don’t need to go anywhere near the child or the dog.
I’m out of my aisle and moving fast. The red of the exit sign is everything to me now. Nothing else exists but EXIT. Nothing.
Slamming my free hand against the release bar, I push open the door and am out. Out where there are stairs to climb. And I do climb, though these are not so much stairs as they are a fire escape behind the theater’s screen. There’s a movie flickering through it and I know immediately what it is. He loved James Whale. He loved Charles Laughton. The James Whale movie now playing features Charles Laughton. If I weren’t so bloated with fright, I’d be pleased at my hallucinatory choice of The Old Dark House. The scratchy black & white film has reached that great moment when Boris Karloff, rampaging around drunk, has released the mad brother from where the other, madder, characters have caged him, and this brother sets the gloomy old pile on fire.
The man who made Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein as well as The Dark Old House drowned himself in his own Hollywood swimming pool even though he was afraid of water. The note he left behind said, “The future is just old age and illness and pain. I must have peace and this is the only way.”
No really going out, there’s only a going up, and the farther up I go, the more unstable the fire escape. I’m scaling an outside wall of River House and I feel like Dracula scaling his castle walls.
I am insane. This is insanity. Or am I asleep dreaming I am insane? Waking up in bed, waking up in an empty movie house…have I ever really woken up? I don’t understand what is happening to me, what’s been happening s
ince I took a room in River House. I had an idea. It isn’t working. I have no ideas left. Except one. I could go to the police, give myself up. Could it be worse than what I do now? Horror stories make some kind of sense. There’s a monster of some sort. An infinite variety of monsters. In horror stories you either get eaten by the monster or you defeat the monster. Ghost stories have their own kind of sense. Something truly haunts a place. Or it haunts a person. A demon, the newly dead, a force, usually ill intended. But this story makes no sense at all. Unless somewhere along the way I died. Maybe on the bus. Or in Springfield. Maybe the homies killed me for what little money I had. Maybe I never left Malibu. Maybe I died in the fire that didn’t kill him—I killed him—but did get rid of our house and all we’d ever had together.
So, like the unnamed killer in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, perhaps I’m in hell. The killer’s soul is named Joe. I’m not as funny as Joe. Or as lucky in my companions. I get the Lizard Baby Woman and some stairs. And then there’s the dog.
It’s beginning to rain.
~
He met my mother just before she died. She had no idea she’d be dead in three days; that a very small time bomb was ticking away in the femoral artery of her left leg. All she knew was that I’d married a movie star. Not about to share her moment, she told no one we were coming to visit. If she had, her little apartment over a San Rafael, California, grocery store would have been wall to wall with co-workers, neighbors, regulars she drove in her cab. She made sure her latest lover, the very cheesy Rudy, was at the Northgate Mall in Novato, projecting someone else’s movie on a movie screen, followed by one of his frequent all-night “hanging out with the boys” thing. She made sure she had on hand a choice of any sort of liquor he could possibly want. For a new man, she dressed as I remember her dressing when I was young—very Tennessee Williams: something pink and frail and floating. She’d had her hair done; had long squared off nails glued over her gnawed fingertips.