Saturdays with Hitchcock

  Cy scrubs a few more seconds and then stops and looks at me. “You don’t get it, Maze.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “It’s not me that Gary really wants to hang around with. It’s you.”

  The idea that Hackett wants to hang around with me is too bizarre to deal with, so I put it away in the deepest drawer of my mind, where I hope it will get lost forever. I have other things to think about right now. My end-of-the-year project for history class is to interview an older person about what New Aztec was like when they were growing up. I’ve already done one interview with Grandma—filmed it, in fact, with my video camera—but after what happened Sunday, I’m nervous about going back for a second. What if she tries to remember something and can’t, and she starts crying again?

  “She’s fine,” Mom assures me. “I’m sure it was just a momentary thing. We all forget stuff as we get older.”

  Uncle Walt is lying on the couch. I wonder if he’s more worried than Mom is—she wasn’t actually there when it happened—but he just winks and says, “May the Force be with you.”

  So after school I walk to Grandma’s house. Cy doesn’t come along because on Tuesdays he goes to a cartooning class at the library. Plus after what he told me Sunday afternoon, I’m a little bit embarrassed around him. We finished doing the dishes without saying one more word about Hackett, and then we went to Cy’s house and watched, what else, The Princess Bride. But I couldn’t even pay attention to the movie because my brain had stopped working. The gears were all gummed up thinking about Hackett and how and why and what comes next. I don’t want anything to come next. I don’t even want to see Hackett again! I’ve decided I’m just going to pretend Cyrus never told me anything.

  Grandma is waiting for me at the kitchen table with a plate of homemade snickerdoodle cookies, and she seems fine, so I’m going with that. I can tell she’s been out working in her tiny backyard garden because there’s tracked-in mud on the kitchen floor and dirt under her fingernails. That seems like good news—nothing makes her happier than digging in dirt.

  “So, what else do you want to know?” she asks me, pushing the plate of cookies under my nose. “Last time we talked about what my grade school was like and what games we played and all that.”

  Phew, at least she remembers that much. I relax a little and take a cookie in one hand while I raise the video camera with the other. “Tell me about your parents. What did they do?”

  She leans back in her chair. “Well, Mom and Dad owned a little market up on Lebanon Avenue. Where the vacuum cleaner place is now. You knew that.”

  “What did the store look like? How big was it?”

  She looks out the window as if she can see into the old store. Her face gets kind of soft, and I zoom in for a close-up. It’s funny, but looking at her through the lens is almost like looking back in time. For some reason I feel like I can see what she used to look like before she was a grandma—or even a mother. Very pretty and very lively, with a quick smile that lit up her face.

  “The market was a small place and kind of dark inside. But they carried everything. My father was a butcher, so there was always fresh meat. My mother worked the cash register and did the bookkeeping. We got vegetables from the local farmers. Only what was in season, of course. You couldn’t get asparagus and green beans year-round like you do now.”

  “Did you ever work in the store?”

  “Oh, sure, when I was in high school. My friend Hank worked there too. He used to drive the delivery truck for Dad, but if there weren’t any deliveries to make, he’d help me restock the shelves. It was always more fun when Hank was there. He had such a great sense of humor.”

  This is the first I’ve heard of anybody named Hank, but I need to get this interview done, so I try to get her back on track. “How was your store different from the supermarkets we shop in now?”

  But Grandma is still staring off into space. “He was a few years older than me, but always so nice. I never meant to hurt his feelings. I was just so young and naive, I didn’t even understand what was going on.” She gives a little laugh. “Or maybe I was afraid to.”

  “You mean with Hank? What was going on?” I ask. I’m not sure this should be on film, so I turn the camera off and put it down.

  “Oh, I guess he had a crush on me. I was very innocent for fifteen. I didn’t understand that when a boy teases you like that and hangs around to talk to you when his shift is over, that means he likes you.”

  Huh. Was this something I had in common with Grandma? Apparently she’d been clueless about some boy liking her too. Well, how are you supposed to know unless they tell you? On the other hand, the idea of Hackett actually telling me, in person, makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  I decide maybe I should get this on film. Even if I don’t use it in the final video, it could be useful to me, so I turn on the camera again. “So, what happened to him? To Hank?” I ask.

  “We stayed friends until I went off to college. Hank couldn’t afford college, so he stayed here. But after I left, something bad happened to him. What was the story? Oh, yes! He’d been fishing in the Mill River up north, just below where the dam is. Some young boys, ten or twelve years old, were fooling around at the top of the falls, and one of them fell off the dam. Must have hit his head when he fell, because he didn’t even try to swim out of the current. What I heard was Hank jumped in to save him. It was very rocky right there, and Hank hurt himself jumping in—broke his arm, I think—but he got to the boy anyway and pulled him out. But it was too late. They couldn’t bring him around.”

  “The boy died?”

  Grandma nodded. “I saw Hank when I was home from college on vacation, and it seemed like that changed him. Not being able to save that boy. Nobody could have, of course, but he felt it was his responsibility and he’d failed at it. It changed him, took away his jolly humor. If I remember correctly, he joined the navy soon after that.”

  It was a pretty awful story, but I was relieved that Grandma’s memory was good enough to recall it. And I was also glad I’d kept on filming. I might be able to use some of it for my project.

  “I guess Hank was in the navy for a while, and then he moved to New York City. I remember thinking that sounded like the end of the earth.” Grandma looks down at her knobby fingers, examining them as if she’s surprised at how they look. I focus the camera on her hands, wondering how it feels to have arthritis buckle your joints like that.

  “Meanwhile,” she continues, “I met your grandpa at Illinois State, and that was that. He seemed so smart to me, and we got along real well. I moved back here and taught school for a year or two, but I was ready to get married when he asked. I guess my life doesn’t sound very exciting to you.”

  “So you never saw Hank again?”

  “Sure, I saw him sometimes. After he moved back from New York, he bought the Lincoln Theater. Every time Grandpa and I went there, he gave me a free box of popcorn. Of course, he didn’t like Grandpa much—they’d glare at each other like two boxers in the ring. When VCRs came out, and then DVD players, we stopped going to the theater and just watched movies at home so Grandpa didn’t have to put up with Hank giving him the evil eye. I haven’t seen Hank in years.”

  “I guess Hank must have sold the Lincoln Theater to Mr. Schmitz,” I say.

  Grandma laughs. “Maisie, Hank is Mr. Schmitz. Henry Schmitz. He still owns the place, as far as I know.”

  I’m so shocked, I put the camera down. Grumpy old Mr. Schmitz is Hank, who used to have a crush on my grandma? Who had a great sense of humor? Who jumped into a river to save a drowning kid?

  “I used to love going to the Lincoln.” Grandma is staring into space again. “The seats were red velvet, and the curtain that opened in front of the screen was gold. It was the most beautiful place in New Aztec.”

  I don’t tell her that it doesn’t look so great these days. There’s not much red velvet left on those seats, and half of them are broken. There’s no curtain over the scre
en either, and I doubt Mr. Schmitz has given out a free box of popcorn in this century. Still, knowing what I know now about him makes me like him a little more, or at least like the guy he used to be, Grandma’s old friend.

  “What were your favorite movies?” I ask her, picking up the camera again.

  “Oh, I loved The King and I with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. When they waltzed together, my friends all swooned. And also South Pacific. I’d dance around my bedroom singing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” We saw all the musicals. And Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. We all loved Audrey—she was small, but she had spunk. Oh, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. That was very racy for the times, and our mothers didn’t want us to go, but we sneaked out and saw it anyway.”

  “I haven’t seen any of those,” I say.

  “You can wait a few years for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. My girlfriends and I used to go to the Lincoln every Saturday afternoon. In those days it only cost twenty-five cents.”

  “Cyrus and I go to the Lincoln Theater every Saturday too,” I say. “It costs more than a quarter now, but it’s still cheaper than movies at the mall. And we like the old films Mr. Schmitz gets.”

  “Well, you’ll have to give my best to Hank next time you go. I think he’d remember me. Tell him Evelyn Hoffmeister from the market says hello.”

  Right. And then he’d give me the evil eye. Of course, he usually did that anyway.

  Grandma stands up and gets an old, dented pot from the drawer under her stove. “Do you want some tea, sweetheart?”

  “Sure.”

  She runs water into the pot.

  “What happened to your teakettle?” I ask her.

  “Oh…” She makes a brushing gesture with her hand, as if she wants to sweep my question away. “I had an accident.”

  “You dropped it?” Why would that hurt a metal teakettle?

  She turns to face me. “Don’t tell your mother. She’ll worry, and it’s not a big deal.”

  “I won’t tell her.” It’s an easy promise to make, since I usually tell my mother as little as possible.

  Grandma bites her bottom lip. “Last week I put some water on to boil and I forgot about it…and the kettle melted on the stove.”

  It melted? I get up and go over to the stove. My fingers brush the gray crust that surrounds one of the burners.

  “I cleaned it up,” Grandma says. “You can’t really tell.” Which isn’t true.

  “How long did you…forget about it?”

  “Oh, not that long. I got busy with something else and…you know how it is. It slipped my mind.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I’m sure that kettle whistled. And there are only four small rooms in this place—she couldn’t have been too far away. Did she leave it on when she went outside?

  She fixes us cups of Earl Grey tea with lots of milk, the way I like it. I’m still thinking about how long it must take to melt a teakettle when she brings the cups to the table.

  “You know what I just remembered?” she says. “I went to a dance with some girlfriends one night, at that lodge out on Raccoon Lake. Might have been a birthday party for someone. I was probably seventeen. Oh, I haven’t thought about this in years!” A smile creeps over her face. I think about picking up the camera again, but I don’t. It seems like Grandma is about to say something more personal than what I need for my project. “Hank was there, and we danced together a few times. There was a big porch on one end of the lodge that overlooked the lake, and we went out there by ourselves, Hank and I.”

  “After you…danced with him?” I try to picture my funny, forgetful grandma and old Mr. Schmitz dancing. Did they dance close together? Did he have his arms around her? I can’t even imagine it.

  She nods. “I think the party was almost over. We went out on that porch, and…and he kissed me.”

  “Mr. Schmitz kissed you?” I suddenly have an awful feeling that Grandma might be remembering things that didn’t really happen.

  She giggles in a way I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before. “I kissed him back too. And then I ran away. Isn’t that silly? I was such a scaredy-cat in those days. I guess I thought I’d done something terrible, kissing that older boy. I don’t think I ever told a soul. Until today.” She reaches over and pats my hand with her stiff fingers.

  I smile and take a drink of my tea. I don’t really want to be the keeper of Grandma’s secrets. I’m not sure I even want to be the keeper of my own secrets, but I guess I don’t have much choice.

  “Let’s film a movie scene and put it on YouTube,” Cyrus says. “We haven’t done that in a while.”

  “Okay,” I agree. “Can we use your dad’s tripod again?”

  “Sure. We got a ton of hits on our 2001: A Space Odyssey scene. You were so funny as HAL.”

  “Thank you, Dave,” I say in my robot voice, and Cy laughs. “You were really good as Don Corleone in The Godfather too. That one was really popular.”

  “I love doing Marlon Brando.”

  It’s Friday afternoon and pouring down rain, so Cyrus and I are in the basement at his house. His dad calls this the rec room, but the only recreation I’ve ever seen him do down here is watch TV. The washing machine and dryer are both rumbling in the corner, and Cy’s mother comes down every twenty minutes or so to check on them, so there’s not much privacy. Grandma’s at our house, making another of Uncle Walt’s favorite meals while Mom complains about the mess she’s making, so it’s noisy over there too.

  Cy hasn’t mentioned the thing about Hackett again all week, so I’m pretending it never happened. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I dreamed it. Or nightmared it.

  “We could do a scene from Back to the Future or The Breakfast Club,” Cy says.

  I nod, but I’m thinking of older movies. “Or how about a Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy movie, like Adam’s Rib…or, no, I want to play Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday in that scene where she calls the other reporter a double-crossing chimpanzee!”

  “Then what’s my part? The chimpanzee? Let’s do The Jerk, and I can be Steve Martin.”

  “You always want to do Steve Martin movies, but then there’s no good role for me,” I complain.

  “You can be the Bernadette Peters character,” he says.

  “Oh, right. The scene where she disco dances, or the one where she sings and plays the trumpet? I can’t do any of that stuff. I want to say the funny lines.”

  “Well, it’s hard to find a movie with two equally good roles,” Cyrus says. “Unless it’s, like, a love story or something.” We sometimes watch love stories, but we never film scenes from them. That would be gross.

  “Which is why we should just write our own movie and film it,” I say.

  Cyrus thinks it over. “That’s a lot harder,” he says.

  “I know, but then it’s really our movie, not just an imitation of somebody else’s.”

  “Maybe we could make it a fantasy,” he says. “It could start out with a grandmother reading a book to her grandson, and then suddenly the story becomes real, and—”

  “That’s how The Princess Bride starts.” I pick up my camera and start filming Cy’s cat, Edward Scissorhands, who’s lying on his back on the corner of the desk and is just about to fall off. He’s rolling over. Here it comes.

  “No, it isn’t,” Cy says. “That was a grandfather.”

  Ker-plop. The cat tips over the side of the desk, scratches madly at the air, eyes popping, then lands on the floor, feet first. He turns to lick his shoulder as if he hasn’t just humiliated himself. Got it—that’s going on my YouTube channel. I reach down to pet Edward, but he flounces away as if he’s not the least bit embarrassed by his clumsiness.

  I put down the camera. “Cy, our movie has to be something brand-new that nobody’s ever seen before.”

  “Is that even possible?” he asks.

  “I don’t know, but I think we should try for it.”


  “Well, there have to be two kids in it, a boy and a girl, so we can both be main characters,” Cyrus says. “Or we could get somebody else to do it with us. Like—”

  “No!” I cut him off before he can suggest the person I know he’s about to. “Just the two of us.”

  “Maisie, what kind of a movie has only two people in it? I was thinking Gary might want to—”

  “I knew you were going to say him!” I bang my fist on the desk, and the can of pens leaps into the air. “Why do we have to include him in everything now?”

  Cy stares at the blank computer screen. “We don’t have to. I just thought he’d like to do it with us.”

  Neither of us speaks for a minute, and then I say, “You know what? If we need another person in the movie, maybe it should be an adult. Uncle Walt could do it. I mean, he’s a real actor.”

  Cy nods his head slowly. “True. But he’s not in great shape right now. We’d have to explain why he’s all banged up.”

  I think this over. “Okay, I’ve got it,” I say. “One of us is a ghost and is haunting the other person. Uncle Walt is the father of the ghost. He was driving the car that killed the ghost kid, which is why he’s hurt too.”

  Cy’s eyebrows go up. “I like the ghost idea. If the father is injured, the accident must have just happened.”

  “Right. Maybe we can have a funeral for the ghost kid, and that’s the first time the other kid sees her.”

  “Her? You mean you’re the ghost kid? I want to be the ghost.”

  “My skin is a lot paler than yours. I look more like a ghost.”

  “So? Ever heard of makeup?”

  “It’s my idea,” I say.

  “But the ghost is the best role. You always want the best role.”

  “Well, sure I do. So do you!”

  Cyrus sighs loudly. “What does the other kid do? Just scream and run away?”

  “No, he…” What does he do? “He helps the ghost kid tell her father not to feel so bad because she’s happy being dead.”