35 mm Memory (6 story collection)

Catch (1)

           High above the audience in my theater’s projector room, I used to think of myself as the provider of a white-light-spark re-animating the on-screen stories of decades past, raising dead and forgotten films with powers comparable to E.T.’s glowing fingertip. The inheritance I’d received after my bond-trading bachelor Uncle died crashing his Dodge Viper while “chauffeuring” a German prostitute along the Autobahn had provided me with the money to accomplish my dream at age twenty-four. But in the two years since I’d bought it, the awesomeness that I’d built-up around the idea of owning a movie theater and showing ‘classic-films’ had faded. After my apartment’s eviction notice was final and I’d been forced to turn the projector room into my makeshift living space, my money-troubles were at a high-point, latching on and implanting themselves into my psyche with the territorial agenda of a Ridley Scott “facehugger.” My dream-job had become a present-day reality: an unprofitable business with one lackluster buy-out offer.

As “Field of Dreams” entered its final scene on theater two’s screen, Kevin Costner’s “Ray Kinsella” character playing catch with his youthful father, a hocking cough came from the near-empty audience. I noticed that my theater’s lone occupant was bent over in his seat, letting out a few choking gasps as he rocked back-and-forth. Worried that I’d be sweeping up a body along with his empty popcorn bucket, I descended the staircase, recounting my high school CPR training with each hurried step.

“Sir, you okay?” I said, placing my hand on the man’s back.

“I’m, I’m fine buddy,” he whispered, wiping some tears away from his flushed red cheeks. “Didn’t mean to disturb the audience.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” I said, opening my hand, inviting him to scan the empty theater. “It’s an audience of one, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Still, sorry about the noise,” he slurred out, elongating his “s” sounds as the closing credits faded in. “Movie’s ending gets me a little choked up. Literally. That damn game of catch gets me every time.”

As the man limped past me and up aisle, I noticed that the heel of his left sneaker was shaped entirely out of duct tape and the same silver bonding was wrapped around the arm of his windbreaker. Pushing through the theater’s double-doors, he switched his limp to his left leg. After watching him fall onto the dust stained lobby bench, I’d guessed that he was a little inebriated.

“Nice theater you got here, guy,” he said, running his fingers through the tangles of his salty brown beard. “I must’ve come on a slow night, huh?”            

“Lots of slow nights around here unfortunately,” I said. “This town doesn’t really seem to have an appreciation for classic cinema.”

“Well, fuck ‘em,” he said, leaning forward before emphatically punching the air. “The old stuff kicks-ass. That movie in there, “Field of Dreams,” I love that movie.”

“Yeah, it’s a good one,” I said, standing over the man. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’d kill for a coke,” he said, pulling out a ball of crumpled bills from his coat pocket, jarring loose a Polaroid photo in the process. “Just fill it up half-way though, heavy on the ice too.”

“One coke, coming up,” I said, turning away his money and closing the man’s grip back around his bills.

The man had his eyes glued to the Polaroid photo when I’d returned with his drink. I nearly had to put the coke an inch away from his peripherals to break the watery-eye stare.

“Didn’t see ya’ there,” he said grabbing the coke, blinking away a few tears. “Name’s Colton. Thanks for the freebie by the way.”

“I’m Colin,” I said, as Colton pulled a pint of Jack Daniel’s from his inside pocket. “Nice picture you got there.”

            There was a man in the photo, seemingly a more youthful Colton, smiling through a jet-black, clean-trimmed beard. A red-haired woman sat on the hood of a baby blue hatchback Honda, kissing Colton on the cheek.

            “That’s Sandy,” he said, pointing to the picture with a childlike, show-and-tell enthusiasm. “Picture from the day we bought that little Honda, first car we had together. Still got it too, drove it here as a matter of fact.”

            “Impressive, you and Sandy must be real proud of it,” I said.

            Colton smiled softly and nodded in agreement. He unscrewed the pint’s cap and added the Jack Daniels to his cup in one smooth motion. Taking a sip, he tucked the picture into his breast pocket and secured it with two chest-pats, just above his heart.

            “How’d you get into this movie theater stuff,” he asked.

            “Something I’ve always wanted to do. My grandfather used to take me to the movies when I was a kid. I loved it, the escape it provided. I thought that it’d be a great job to have.”

            “I never met my grandfather,” Colton bluntly stated, removing a gold chain out from the collar of his button-down. “This is all I’ve got of him. It’s one of those Christian medals. He’d gotten it for his First Communion and my dad gave it to me when I had mine.”

            My grandfather, or Gramps, had given me a similar medal when I’d had my First Communion. Like Colton’s, it had once been my grandfather’s and Gramps had told me to always wear it for protection. Asking him what I needed to be protected from, Gramps simply kissed my forehead, seemingly letting life answer my question for me. After my grandmother passed away and Gramps was diagnosed with dementia, I stopped wearing the medal. In my visits home, he never mentioned his medal’s absence around my neck—a memory that I guessed had been consumed by the dementia.

            “You got any cans, Colin?” Colton asked, now looking down into one of the lobby trash bins. “The movie ticket kind of set me back a little bit.”

            “Sorry, we just sell fountain drinks here,” I said, moving towards the front door and flipping the ‘closed’ sign outside, toward the Dayton, Ohio sidewalk.

            “Little early for a movie theater closing,” Colton said. “Nine o’clock?”

            “No one’s coming,” I answered. “You’re the first customer I’ve had all-day. I’ve got a long day tomorrow too. It’s closing time.”

            “If you build it they will come,” Colton said, placing his hand on my shoulder before breaking out in a laugh. “But really, I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again for the free mixer.”

            “No problem,” I said, opening the door for Colton. “And if you like old movies come back around, they’re all I show. I’m out of town ‘til next week, but hopefully I’ll still be in business when I get back and re-open.”

            “One question,” Colton asked, standing underneath the white light of the overhanging marquee. “If you could play catch with one person, dead or alive, like in the movie. Who’d it be?”

            “Kevin Costner,” I said, giving Colton a smile. “Goodnight Colton, it was nice to meet you.”

            I’m almost positive that Colton would’ve have said Sandy if I hadn’t answered his question like a smart-ass and even though he wasn’t any where close to being plastered, I was too sober to be getting into some soul-searching conversation with a stranger. Still though, as I laid in the darkness on my unfolded futon, I rifled through all the possibilities that a “Field of Dreams” game of catch would allow.

One game of catch with Gramps seemed appropriate. We’d play at a field as isolated as Ray Kinsella’s farm, back to a time when I didn’t have the stress of my struggling theater, when I still wore Gramps’s first communion medal and he remembered giving it to me. My theater was closing for that week so I could go back home and stay with my grandfather while my mom was out of the country on a belated second-marriage honeymoon. Being asked to watch over the man who’d watched over me for so many years felt wrong, and closing my eyes, letting the heaviness of the night take me away, I stopped thinking about all the stress in my life and instead thought about that game of catch.

35 mm Memory (2)

I miss the good old days, the days when you’d see a Bugs Bunny cartoon instead of a ten-minute-long set of commercials before a film, or when buckets of popcorn, bottles of pop and boxes of candies would sing, “Let’s all go to the Lobby” as they danced across an animated screen, happily asking us to eat and drink them during the intermission. I miss the days when the original version was the only version, when only in theaters actually meant “only in theaters,” and when a screenwriter’s idea of the distant, weird, hovercraft-filled future was 2001. When you spend your days owning a Cineplex because you love film, but can’t show any good ones, it’s easy to think back and idolize the good old days—the days that only exist through the fond memories of your elders.

*

         Getting off 696, the Detroit Zoo Water tower marking the exit, I drove past my street in Pleasant Ridge heading south on Woodward. I’d left Dayton early but told my mother I’d be home around six, hoping to enjoy the city I’d grown up in before assuming my week-long, home-body role as my grandfather’s caretaker.  Hungry and wanting to re-capture my own ‘good-old-days’, I headed west on Nine Mile and parked outside the China Ruby storefront—a hole in the wall that Gramps, my grandfather, sometimes had taken me to when my mom would be out at the bars, scanning metro-Detroit for a husband who wouldn’t run out on us.

           Beside the three stools along China Ruby’s four-foot counter top, there’d only ever been enough room in the restaurant for two, four-person tables. So closely packed that sitting down and getting up had to be done in one-at-a-time intervals. Despite the size, the owner’s daughter Chen, who looked young even when I was ten, would make each customer stand at the door and wait as she played hostess. Gramps and I would wait patiently as Chen carefully laid out Chinese Zodiac placemats, napkin-rolls of utensils and cups of water before leaving us to our table, softly telling us, “xie-xie”or “thank you.”

            A true American expert in Chinese cuisine, Gramps would always order an egg roll and a plate of orange chicken. Not to be out done, I’d usually get breaded almond chicken because its picture looked like chicken fingers on the menu. At the end of every meal, no matter the time of night, Gramps would start calling for a card-game with the owner, Bo.

          “Hey Bo, how about some dessert for the boy here?” Gramps would say.

           Bo would come from behind the counter with a smile, shuffling a worn-down deck of cards between his hands. Chen would follow behind with a bucket of Stroh’s vanilla bean and as Bo and Gramps would play cards, Chen and I would have a few scoops. I hadn’t been to the restaurant in a few years, before gramps was diagnosed with dementia, and as I walked to the door I wondered how the place would look and feel without the sounds of Gramps’s and Bo’s poker games while Chen and I giggled at the fact that both Bo’s and Gramps’s Zodiac animal was the pig.

           Unsurprisingly, the restaurant was empty. There was a woman behind the counter with the same, kind eyes as Chen, but as she extended her hand, inviting me to sit anywhere in the empty restaurant, her graying hair and wrinkled features told me that she wasn’t my child-hostess all grown up. I took the stool at the end of the counter, closest to the open-air kitchen at the back. I leaned over the counter to see if Bo was still working the fryer.

             His hair was now completely white but, standing against the chopping counter, his smile and the way he was shuffling his card-deck reassured me that it was Bo.

            “Bo?” I said, as the woman poured me a cup of something that looked more like dishwater than it did tea.

Bo’s smile turned into full-out laughter as he slammed the deck on the counter and shook my hand.

           “Dr. Joz’s boy!” Bo said. “I haven’t seen you in years, I ought to put you up on the wall. My hall of fame!”

             Bo pointed to the thin sliver of wall space high up behind the counter where he’d hung five pictures of himself and his regulars, none of which were famous. In all but one, Bo was crouched next to a customer with one arm around their shoulder and the other raising a ‘thumbs up.’ In Gramps’s celebrity shot, both he and Bo were grinning with big, open-mouth smiles as Bo gave a double thumbs-up and Gramps held open a hand of straight aces.  The picture looked recent, as if it had been taken in the last year, and I liked that Bo had it on display.  To any passer-by, in that picture’s frozen moment, there was no way of telling that Gramps’s hands were most likely shaking as he held up the cards, or that hours after the picture had been taken, he was back at home confused about where he’d eaten dinner or even what year he was in. In that picture, he was only a happy old man who’d come across a lucky hand while playing cards in his favorite restaurant.

          “So, what’ve you been up to? I really haven’t visited with Eddie since that picture was taken, almost a year ago I think, but I remember him mentioning something about you still being in school?” Bo said, motioning the older woman, seemingly his wife, back towards the kitchen.

           “Well, actually I’ve been out of school for a couple years now. I just bought a small cinema in Ohio about two years ago. Maybe Gramps got confused. I’ve been doing a lot lately. Almost too much for me to even keep track of.”

           “That must’ve been it. He’s come in here at night sometimes, now that I think about it. But that was what he’d said the last time I asked about you,” Bo said, before he let out a long, contemplative sigh.

            I had a feeling that Bo knew about Gramps’s dementia, but I didn’t want to push the issue. It wasn’t my disease to talk about. Besides, the dementia wasn’t full-blown, twenty-four hours a day; it was only the sundowner’s syndrome that was serious. For all I knew, Gramps still came to China Ruby for lunch, before the sun went down, played a couple hands over a plate of orange chicken and had Bo fooled. 

          “So, movie theater owner, huh? Ever show any Seagal movies?” Bo asked.

            Bo put himself into a karate-like stance before pretending to crack his neck in an exaggerated, comic fashion. We both burst out laughing.

            “Not quite. Although I think if he ever managed to make another movie that doesn’t go straight to DVD, there’d be a strong demand from my audience,” I said, clearing the laughing tears from my eyes. “My problem is that I own a theater in a city with no taste, but what do I know. By the way, how’s Chen?”

            “She’s great,” Bo said. “She’s training to be a chef right now, wants to specialize in Italian cuisine.”

            “That so.”

            “Her Father runs a world-class Chinese restaurant and she wants to cook pizzas. Go figure.”

            The woman who’d seated me, made her way behind Bo.

            “World-class? Bo, if this place were world-class then I think those pictures on the wall might actually contain some famous faces,” the woman said, setting down a hot plate of almond chicken in front of me. “I’m Jia, Bo’s wife. I don’t think I was ever around when you used to come in here.”

            “Nice to meet you,” I said, before looking down at the steaming plate.

            “Not too old for Chinese chicken strips, are you?” Bo said, slapping me on the back. “And your money’s no good here. It’s on the house!”

*

            The soft sound of gravel rumbled underneath the tires of my used ’88 3-series Bimmer as I pulled into the driveway of Gramps’s house. On a street full of colonials, the house’s awkward, outdated contemporary sixties design made it the sore thumb—something I’d noticed even as a kid. It looked like a two-tone shoebox. The lower level of the house was marked with cheap, light brown brick on all four corners leading up to its dark brown vertical wood siding on the second story. The lawn was cut, but the flowerbeds were empty, a regular site that had started when Gramps became a widower. As I walked to the front door the vertical blinds of the living-room bay window were drawn open, allowing for the fading glow of Gramps’s television to display the five o’clock news out to the neighborhood street.

            “The big-theater owner still won’t get a real pair of shoes, I see,” my mother said as she made her way up the hallway’s oriental runner.

            I waved back and quickly kicked off my vans, jarring a few pebbles loose from the crevices of the soles. As she brought me in for a hug, I noticed that besides the smell of pierogies on her apron, she no longer smelled like the Chanel No. 5 I’d grown up with.

            “Hello, Mrs. Beckman. I mean mom,” I said as she began to break the hug.

            “Colin, stop it,” she said, slapping me on the arm with a sister-like affection. “It wouldn’t be fair to Derek if his own wife didn’t take his last name.”

            “Fair is fair. Let me guess, Gramps is watching the tube?”

            “Bingo. How was the drive in?”

            “Fine, I got in a little early, so I got a quick bite to eat up the street at China Ruby.”

            “Oh God,” She said, putting her hand to her cheek. “I bet they were glad you were the only one walking in from this family.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “His sundowner’s has been getting worse, starting a little bit earlier in the night than it used to,” she said, pulling me into the dining room, turning the front doorway into a buffer between the living room and us. “Last month he got out of the house during one of his spells. Went to Bo’s restaurant, thought he was at a bar, kept asking for Mickey.”

            “Uncle Mickey? Gramps’s cousin?”

            “Right, Uncle Mickey. He walked the four blocks to Nine Mile, went in right before Bo was closing for the night. Nobody was there except Bo. Thank God.” She paused and furrowed her brow, as if she were collecting her thoughts. “First he didn’t really know Bo, thought Bo was the bartender. ‘Any minute now, Mickey’ll be here,’ Bo said, he kept saying.”

            “Uncle Mickey’s dead,” I said.

            “It’s the sundowner’s. Anyways, Bo ended up calling me and I went and got him.”

            “Is he ok?” I asked.

            “During the daytime, the early evenings, he’s his old self. Hands keep shaking and he’s a little forgetful but mostly his old self. You know I didn’t mind selling the house in Huntington Woods to move back in here and take care of him, but Derek and I are thinking that it might be time to put him in a home. At least get him a full-time, professional caretaker maybe.”

            “I bet Derek thinks that’s a good idea,” I said, giving my mom a look of disgust for the suggestion. “He doesn’t need to be in a home, we’ll be fine this week. Just watch.”

            “I know you two will,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “And you know I really appreciate you coming in. Derek and I have been putting off this honeymoon far too long. But go on in and see him, he’s been waiting for you.”

            As I walked into living room, letting my mom return to the kitchen, I could hear the loud, static-filled voice of the news commentator through the speakers of my grandfather’s box Sony television. The newsman was reporting live from outside city council chambers in regards to “yet another unproductive day of meetings, regarding the city’s budget concerns as the governor’s plan for a state takeover still looms.”

            “Jesus, you believe this?” Gramps said to himself, waving off the screen in disgust.

            “I don’t believe it,” I announced, causing Gramps to twist around in his seat.

            “Colin!” he said, jumping to his feet and walking around the front of the couch. “We’ve been waiting for ya, bubs! How was the drive?”

            “It was fine,” I said, thinking better than to mention my stop at Bo’s as Gramps brought me in for quick a hug. “Watching the news?”

            “Yeah, you remember how it is down there. Even when they get new people, smart people or at least honest people, they’ve still got the same problems. This city used to be great.”

            “Yeah, I guess some things are just unfixable.”

            Gramps nodded and moved across the room towards the cabinet bar he’d kept off to the side of the bay window. He shakily lifted up the hinged bar-top revealing a set of shot glasses, each one with a different year painted over the breast of the white Polish eagle design the glasses carried. They were old mementos from the Polish-Medical-Dental Association conventions he’d attended over the years. He lowered the bar-top back down and grabbed a bottle of potato vodka from the lower cabinet.

            “A drink!” he announced, as he fidgeted with the bottle’s wire hood. “To the movie man’s homecoming.”

            “No drinks!” my mom yelled from the kitchen.

            Gramps waved me in close, shadowing his mouth with the backside of his hand.

            “Look, she doesn’t want me to be drinking because, well, you know,” he whispered. “One nip, between you and me, won’t do either of us any harm. In fact, it might even make this meal tolerable.”

            I slyly smiled back and nodded in agreement. I stole the bottle from his shaking grip and quickly poured the shots.

            “This is the best Polish vodka you’re gonna have,” he said, lightly clanking his glass against mine. “Zuafa Mi.”

*

            Maybe it was my homesickness being cured, or maybe it was just the effect that good potato vodka can have on the mind, but sitting at the kitchen table, having heard Gramps’s old Polish, “zuafa mi,” or “trust me,” my mind wandered back two years, to my twenty-four year-old self and the day I made the movie theater, and the city of Dayton, my new home.

When I’d met with the old Polish-American couple that originally owned my theater, the husband, Gwidon, had plopped a stack of yellowing loose-leaf papers on top of the concession counter. It was a handwritten list spanning the mid-nineties all the way back to the fifties.  In different shades of blue and black ink were scribbled titles. Numbered all the way up to two hundred, Gwidon claimed that it was list of the films that had become his ‘all-time’ favorites. He told me that if he was going to put his “X” on the last dotted-line I’d have to promise to have my booker get the rights to at least ten of his movies each year. Trying my best to replicate Gramps’s charm, I gave Gwidon a quick wink and said, “Zaufa Mi” before signing my name to the contract.

            Although I’d kept my word and made it my theater’s direction to play only ‘old classics’ and nothing that the multiplexes were carrying, I learned the hard way that promises don’t pay the bills. Now, two-years later, I owned a theater that averaged five patrons per screening and had begun receiving advice from my booker not on what movies to carry, but rather on who I could possibly sell my theater to. I had inherited the money that I’d bought the theater with, and seeing as how my mom was against its purchase from the beginning, I had decided not to tell her that coming home and shutting it down a week was the first and only money-saving business decision I’d made in the two-years since I’d bought it.

*

            “Go ahead and get started. Derek called, he’s going to be a little late,” my mom said, pouring herself a glass of wine as I came out of my thoughts. “He had to take care of a few last things at the office before we leave tomorrow. The plate on the left is potato-cheese and the one closest to you Dad are the meat pierogies.”

            I reached for the serving spoon and began shoveling the pierogies on to Gramps’s plate—three meat ones and two potato-cheese. When I’d finished, he grabbed away the spoon and dropped the two potato-cheese back into the serving dish.

            “I think I had enough potatoes in the living room,” he said and winked at me.

            As the dim lighting of the rustic table-chandelier took over the room, I began to notice that Gramps had taken a turn to silence. My mom’s glass never seemed to be more than half-empty, and as the meal concluded, her and I started on the dishes as my grandfather continued to sit quietly at the table.

            “Dad?” my mom said over the steady stream of water pouring into the kitchen sink. I was on drying duty. “Dad, you want some desert or maybe want to watch some television?”

            “I’m not your dad,” Gramps said, shaking his head ‘no’ with his hands laid palm down on the table.

            I looked at my mother, and she nodded up to the clock above the sink.

            “I think the sundowner’s is starting up a little,” she whispered to me, before reaching for the last sip of her wine.

            “Honey, why are you drinking all that wine?” Gramps said, shakily pushing himself up from the table. “The kids asked you to cut it out.”

            “Dad! It’s me, Ann. Your daughter, Ann.”

            Gramps stopped in his tracks, and brought his shaking hand to the back of his head. He stood silently, murmuring something to himself and pointing, as if he were counting the air. As he closed his eyes and pursed his lips, I could tell he was trying to re-orient himself back to the present moment.

            “Gramps?” I gently said, hoping my acknowledged presence would bring him back.

            “I think I oughta’ hit the bathroom before we watch the game, all right bubs?” he said, and walked out of the kitchen towards the bathroom, using the hallway walls as a guide.

            “Can he go to the bathroom okay?” I asked, after I’d heard the bathroom door close.

            “He’ll be fine, just takes him a little bit of time,” she said, and returned to the sink.

            “So, did I catch all that right? He thought you were grandma?”

            “It happens sometimes. Thankfully when Derek’s around it’s enough for not to act out on it,” She said, with a smile and a laugh. “Hey, you better be careful. Everybody always thought you looked like Uncle Mickey. Maybe, he’ll try to get you to take him to one of those jazz joints they loved.”

             She nudged me with her hip, as if she was going to “bump” the smile out of me. I was surprised that she was so lighthearted about the situation, but I figured that since she’d been around for the dementia’s entire process, she had moved beyond the point of being capable of shock, past the time when its strangeness stirred up a strong enough desire to try to cure Gramps and was now simply numb to it all: surrendering to the reality of his degeneration, still caring and concerned, but knowing that the healthiest thing might be to allow herself to laugh once in a while.

            “Goddamn it!” Gramps yelled. The sound of slamming cabinets echoed from the bathroom.

            As I stood in the open doorway, my mother hiding behind me, Gramps rifled through the bathroom counter’s drawers.

            “Jane, where’s that Drain-O stuff?” he said flailing his hands as he crouched down to the drawer’s waist-high height, squinting into its shadowy opening. “Did you buy any of it?”

            “Gramps, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Damn clog. These damn hands of mine won’t let me really work that plunger.” He said.

His hands were shaking more erratically now, and the way his balding head was glistening under the clean, bathroom lighting, I guessed he’d worked himself into a sweat trying to unclog it.

            “Here let me try it,” I said reaching over the toilet bowl. He pushed my hand away.

            “No, no, you’re the guest,” he said. “I’m not going to let my only older cousin, clean up my shit. Tell ya’ what though, Mick, while I’m working in here, how’s about you fix us up a couple of rusty nails? We’ll have ourselves a real Sto-Lat.”

            He went back to his rummaging. I turned back to my mom, whose wide eyes revealed that the humorous forewarning of me assuming the role of Uncle Mickey was just as big of a shock to her as it was to me. She moved in front of me and put her arms on Gramps’s shoulders. Walking him out of the bathroom, she quickly nudged her head toward the toilet, silently asking me to take care of the clog.

As I plunged away at the mountain of submerged toilet paper, I could hear her gently re-orienting Gramps just outside the door. “Dad, it’s Ann, your daughter. Not Jane. Do you know where Jane is?”  The clog was heavy, and the water was at the rim of the bowl. “Right Dad, Jane’s gone. That’s not Mickey, dad, that’s Colin in the bathroom.” The hallway was silent, and for a moment the only noise was the swish-swash of plunger-made waves. “Right, Dad, Mickey’s gone too. You okay?” I stopped the plunger, and waited to hear Gramps’s answer. He must’ve whispered ‘yes’ because my mom and Gramps reappeared in the doorway again.

              I widened my stance and bent slightly over the bowl in an attempt to give my body some of the load. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gramps’s figure standing over me.

In one swift move my grandfather grabbed the plunger from my hands, threw it into the small corner behind the toilet and began digging the toilet paper out with his bare hands. With the dripping mound of paper in his hand, Gramps backed away from the bowl, a look of shock on his pale white face. Stopping at the bathroom wall, Gramps let his body slide down until he was sitting on the damp tile floor.

         As I wrung out my towel over the bathtub next to Gramps’s seated figure, the falling drops seemed to hang in the air an extra few seconds before hitting the tub floor. The visuals of memory can be so vivid, like moving pictures playing on a theater screen inside the mind. The films we don’t like don’t have to be played. Plenty of films have been banned. Scenes are cut or edited as if they never existed—the memories that the film itself wishes to repress and never revisit. Gramps’s illness was like a rogue-projector, disobeying its human-operator and running the 35 mm memories through its reels, sprockets and drums, spewing confusion from its lens. Focusing images that the audience wants blurred and randomly sharpening the scenes we’ve intentionally made hazy.

         By the time Derek had arrived home, Gramps had forgotten the scene and was in his bed, eyes closed, and peacefully drifting back into a dream world of another old memory. I was in my mother’s childhood room, the one I always used to use for sleepovers, listening through the wall as Derek and her discussed flight plans and the morning’s travel arrangements. I’d applied a little bleach to the tile after Gramps had collected himself from the floor and as I pulled my comforter up to my chin I could still smell the sting of Clorox from underneath my fingernails. My mind was no longer scrambling, I’d calmed down and began to fall-in line with Gramps. Hoping that we might end up dreaming of the same memory.

Readjusting to the Light (3)

            I like waking up to the pitter-patter of the rain, always reminds me of those dark spring mornings when Jane would be rustling around a good hour before I’d normally hop in the shower. I’d keep my eyes closed, faking sleep, as she roamed the bedroom. First to her side of the closet, picking out the day’s housedress, then to mine, deciding which suit she thought my patients would like best. That light gray bird’s eye was her favorite.

*

            I’d woken up to my mom’s 4:00 AM text message. It was a picture of her and Derek standing halfway up the Spanish Steps, with the caption, “Rome is beautiful! How is everything at home? How are you handling Gramps?”

Since she’d left on her honeymoon, the week with Gramps had been going great, even if some nights were like rooming with a werewolf under routine full moon. He wouldn’t lose it like wolf’s takeover of Lon Chaney, the original “Wolf Man”, and there were never any clothes ripping, fang growing or howling at the moon. He’d just aggressively insist that he was back in his childhood neighborhood or on his way to the dental practice that he’d retired from nearly ten years ago. Just last night, I walked in on him tearing apart his closet drawers worried that he’d lost the St. Christopher medal his godfather had given him for his First Holy Communion. The same St. Christopher medal he’d passed onto me for my First Communion.

After the text had woken me up, I rolled around for about an hour but the pounding rain against my window and a growling stomach took me out of bed and into the kitchen.

*

What time is? Where’s that damn watch? I always take it off right here. It’s a routine I do every night: watch off, shirt hung, trousers folded, teeth brushed. That damn watch was here last night! I can even feel its invisible presence on my wrist. I know I had it yesterday.

Goddammit, what the hell am I tripping over?

What the hell happened to my room? All the drawers are pulled out! I think somebody robbed me!

*

When I was kid, I’d only ever get up this early on Christmas and sometimes, on Wednesdays. I always used to fake sick on Wednesdays. Not wanting to act without an audience, I’d get up as soon as I heard my mom wake-up and head into the bathroom. Kneeling over the toilet as my mom put in her curlers, staring and spitting at my toilet bowl reflection, my fake dry-heaves echoing out from the porcelain rim.

“Can I just go to Gramps’s house today,” I’d ask, knowing that Gramps always took his day-off on Wednesday.

I’d be dropped off for my grandparents’ early-bird breakfast and join Gramps already sitting on the couch. We’d watch the early-morning monster-movie on Turner Classic Movies, TCM, as my grandma served up breakfast. We watched “Frankenstein” over bacon and eggs, “The Creature of the Black Lagoon” with doughnuts and sausage, “Dracula” while sipping orange-juice and scarfing down chocolate-chip pancakes, and the rest of Universal Studios’ monster kingdom while making our way through the remaining blocks of the breakfast pyramid.

Setting my cup of instant coffee on the cover of a month-old Smithsonian magazine, I put my feet up on the glass coffee table, rested my English Muffins on my lap and flipped the TV to TCM.

*

I hear something downstairs. Maybe the guy that robbed this place is still in the house. Where’s that bat?

            Damn nerves, got to keep these hands from shaking if I’m gonna’ get a good whack at this bum.

            I don’t believe it. This guy’s got my television on! I can see the light from the top of the stairs. What’s he trying to do, rob and occupy my house at the same time? Unbelievable. 

*

            “Alright, don’t move,” Gramps yelled, the white light of the TV screen plastering the shadowed silhouette of a bat-wielding man behind me. “I know you robbed my room up there punk. I tripped over the drawers. Now, just give me back the stuff and get the hell out of here.”

            I knew he couldn’t make out my face. I’d kept the lights off, and with the TV at my back I must have looked like nothing more than a black figure to him. He had the bat on his shoulder, shaking in his grip, and although it was technically the early morning I knew he hadn’t fully come out of his sundowner’s syndrome from the night before.

            “Gramps,” I said, holding my hands up as I slowly slid toward the light switch. “Gramps, it’s me Colin.”

            “Don’t move,” Gramps said, moving at me closer with the bat. “I want you out of here! I’ll take a swing at you!”

            “I’m just going to turn on the light,” I said, reaching for the switch.

            The light came on and disoriented us both. My eyes hadn’t fully adjusted and I could tell Gramps was having the same struggles by the way he was squinting back at me.

            “Jesus, Colin,” Gramps said, dropping the bat. “What’re you doing here? You come in through the back door or something? Your mom didn’t tell me you were coming by.”

            “Gramps, I’m staying with you this week remember?” I said, grabbing him by the elbow and walking him over to the couch. “Mom’s on her honeymoon with Derek. Remember?”

            I could tell that he believed what I was telling him, but I think he wanted to hear it from his own mind. I helped him take a seat and turned the volume up on the TV. Coincidentally, they were showing “The Wolf Man.” Passing Gramps my steaming coffee, the film’s black and white moon rising with the day’s sunlight, I made my way back to the kitchen.

Dropping a slice of butter into an already hot pan, I began scrambling a couple eggs for us. I waited until the outside of each scrambled mound was brown, my grandma’s way of making sure there weren’t any hidden pools of milky yoke, before returning to the living room with two steaming plates.  As I walked in, Lon Chaney, already having transformed back into his human form, was waking up from a night of out-of-body murderous werewolf mischief.

Before I could set the plates down, a tickle made its way into my throat. Putting the plates as far away as possible, I buried my mouth into my shoulder and let out deep, phlegm-filled cough.

*

            “Don’t tell me you faked sick again just so you could have a movie day with your old grandpa, bubs?” I said to him.

            Colin just gave me that same mischievous smile he used to flash when he’d  play hooky in grade school. I looked out the window, and as the sun illuminated the wet dew on the lawn, I realized how much I’d missed having Colin around.

Kept in a Box (4)

As I removed my faded Grateful Dead t-shirt from the duct-taped moving box labeled, Colin’s Shit, an intense feeling of nostalgia came over me. The shirt’s dancing bears came from a time when my biggest worry was whether or not the “Stop ‘N Go” would finally get wise to my fake I.D. and my weekends were spent beer-drunk and twisted, arguing over movies and bands in my buddy’s garage with my girlfriend Lex—things like which version of “The Fly” was better, Vincent Price or Jeff Goldblum. I’d always argue that Lex’s opinion didn’t really count because she’d have never seen any movies if I hadn’t made her watch them, while her rebuttal always used the logic that I could never be right about anything that sprung from decades I’d never existed in.

I placed the t-shirt on top of my chest, but the image of a stuffed human-sausage in a tie-dye t-shirt casing prompted me to throw it back in the box with all my other “shit.” I’d have gotten mad about the box’s label but I was the one who’d scribbled it on the side—packaged up an entire four years of high school in the midst of that stage when a guy gets it in his head that a regular dose of “shit,” “fuck,” and “crap” makes him sound older or tougher or just closer to that stock bad-boy character that girls seem to like. My mom used to say it was like a toddler’s terrible two’s only seventeen-years later.

            “Colin!” Gramps yelled from the top of the stairs. “Did you find that sausage grinder down there?”

            “Yeah, got it right here!” I yelled back up, unscrewing the meat grinder’s rusted clamp from the tabletop of Gramps’s old workbench.

The kitchen used to always be grandma’s territory, unless there was sausage. That’s when Gramps would invade. It’d be Christmas Eve, Wigilia, and despite the old custom against it, Gramps would be grinding out the meat for the ones who couldn’t stomach the fish. The first time I saw the grinder, its coarse steel still un-scathed by lack of use, Gramps was showing it off to me. Attempting to quiet my cries for a chicken-nugget Christmas Eve dinner. “Chicken nuggets haven’t got a fighting chance against this, bubs,” he’d said, before grinding out and frying up some links. Retrieving it from the cellar, I knew that he wanted to show me that he had remembered me as that special exception to the Wigilia tradition. That even though his mind was going, the memories we shared were also a special exception.

            “Jesus,” gramps said, peeking his eye through the grinder’s steel nozzle, fighting with its rusted crank-handle. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get this thing going. Damn shame, my dad used to make the best sausage with this thing.”

            “You weren’t too bad with it either,” I said. “But if we can’t have polish sausage we might as well go get the next best thing.”

            Gramps looked at the clock, and gave me a smile.

            “Let’s go see Bo,” he said.

            As we drove south on Woodward, the rain being the only reason we didn’t walk the four blocks, I imagined that the storefronts along the road were moving past us on a giant conveyor belt. I thought of the sidewalk as being from one of those perfect Utopian-style tomorrow-lands, like “Logan’s Run” before your palm-sized life-clock expires and you’re put to death. My lapse back into twelve-year-old imaginations was broken by the sound of my phone vibrating inside a cup holder full of loose change. It was Brian, the film booker for my near-dead movie theater back in Dayton, Ohio.

“Brian, what’s up?” I said, and switched the phone to speaker.

“Nothing, you free for a beer in a little bit?”

“Really, what’s up?” I said, taken back by Brian’s unprecedented request to hangout.

Rustling papers came through the receiver, followed by a couple of muttered curse words.

 “Ah, yeah, right, right…Okay here it is, ‘Dear Mr. Jozwiak, we’d like to inform you in regards to your request for the following films…” Brian said, and his voice trailed off into a scrambled murmur before taking shape again. “We feel as though it’s not in this studio’s best interest to…”

I took the phone off speaker and quickly pressed it back up to my ear.

“Well, if you ask me, I’d have to say that they don’t want to sell you the distribution rights,” Brian, said.

“Which ones?” I said, hoping Gramps hadn’t caught the blurb about my theater being rejected.

“All four,” Brain said, as the sound of shuffling papers was replaced with a drinking, slurping sound and a refreshing sigh. “This is good coffee, but, ah, they don’t think the extra distribution is worth the risk of pissing off the big boys. Unlike you, those Cineplex joints have been doing business with these studios for a while and they’re not holding ten empty screenings a day. The big boys get first dibs on the block-busters, that’s the way it is.”

“Alright, alright I hear ya,” I said.

“Like I’ve been telling you. Think about selling it,” he said. “I might know a couple guys who’d buy it from you.”

I took the phone away from my ear as Brian continued to ramble on about some guy he knew, who knows some guy who’d be willing to pay just a few thousand less than what I paid for it. Trying to get a few new mainstream films was a last ditch effort for my theater. I knew that selling the theater would be the best option money-wise but listening to Brian force the idea on me with the sincerity of a door-to-door salesman, I got the feeling that the guy Brian had lined-up, also had a nice kick-back lined up for Brian.

“…So, you know, you’re losing money on the deal, but you’re losing money now anyways.”  Brian said, as I returned the phone to my ear. “I’m trying to help you out here, Colin.”

“Yeah okay,” I said, ready to throw the phone against the dashboard. “Hey, you know what, I changed my mind, that beer sounds good! I’ll meet ya’ at Bendy’s around five.”

Brian hadn’t picked up on my lie, despite the heavy sarcasm in my voice.

“Perfect, and how’s about you get the first round? Call it a finders fee for the buyers I’ve already got lined up.”

“Even better, see you down there!” I said.

“Heading out tonight?” Gramps said, revealing his inside-man-status with a quick laugh.

“Yeah right, all the way back to Dayton,” I said. “Guy’s a fucking jerk, let him sit there and wait at the bar all night.”

 “Colin, do what you love.” Gramps said, calmly. “It’ll work out.”

I just nodded and turned down Nine Mile.

“Well, right now I’d love some Chinese.” I said.

“Me too.”

*

We parked outside a costume shop with a banner-sized rainbow “PRIDE” flag hanging in the window where Macalum’s Food and Drug used to hang the stars and stripes.

            “At least there’s one familiar site,” Gramps said, pointing across the street to the China Ruby storefront. “Let’s go, I’m starving. Could use a drink too.”

            I was surprised to see that the place wasn’t empty. Two pudgy men in matching business suits—glen-plaid and double-breasted—with greased-back thinning hair and black ties were sitting at the counter. Each one had a tiger-eye ring on that would, no doubt, have to be cut off if they ever wanted to see the skin underneath their gold bands again. The one closest to the register had a head of gray and was eating his egg roll like a cannoli while the guy next to him, with the Just for Men jet-black slick-back, was wearing his napkin like a bib. They were talking between bites but weren’t looking at each other. Just kept staring ahead at the mirror-tiles that paneled the wall behind the counter.

            “Bo,” Gramps called out; the two wise guys at the counter stayed deadpan, probably muttering “Salud” or “Manga” to one another for the twentieth time.

            “Who’s there?” Bo asked, from behind the fryer.

            “It’s me, the good doctor,” Gramps said, pulling a chair out from the table closest to the front window.

            “What’re you gonna sit all the way up there for?” Bo asked, wiping his hands on his apron, before shaking Gramps’s. “Don’t you want to keep me company back there?”

            “I’ll eat your cats, but I don’t want to see them before you throw ‘em in the fryer. You don’t want me taking the stand when the Health Department takes you down, do you?”

            Just then the two Mafioso-types cracked their knuckles and made their way toward our table. The shorter, graying one led the way, and behind him, I could see that Mr. Just for Men was reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. Gramps and Bo were still shooting the shit, but all I could think about were the thoughts running through Just for Men’s mind, “leave the gun, and take the egg roll?”

He was right behind Bo, and as he brought his hand out I saw that he was armed with a black leather-bound book and a couple of glossy pamphlets. 

            “Ah, ‘scuse me, I don’t wanna interrupt you’s guys here, but ah, are you all good and well with your current religious experience?” Just for Men said.

            From there, the gray-haired wise guy laid-out the Jehovah’s Witness sales pitch while Gramps and Bo finished wiping away their laughing tears. At the end of the pitch, Gramps and Bo were silent, and as Just for Men chimed back in, trying to talk about what he thought was the best part about being a witness, Gramps interrupted.

            “Really?” Gramps said, before turning to Bo. “Bo, a couple egg rolls and the usual please.”

Bo nodded and headed for the fryer.

 “What’re you guys below your quota for the month?” Gramps asked. “Approaching a nice old Polish-Catholic in a Chinese restaurant with—what do those say? The Watchtower?” Gramps said, leaning on the chair’s back legs and resting his hands on his stomach. “Well if it’s a matter of meeting a quota, fine, I’ll take your pamphlets and your book. But I’m not interested in the religion. I’m only interested in enjoying my orange chicken.”

            “If we leave the book, then we gotta’ hear you say you’ll at least think about it. Those are the rules and that’s the deal.”

            “That’s a bad deal. What happened to the days of making me an offer I can’t refuse?” Gramps said, jutting out his lower jaw. I knew he was trying to do Brando, but he’d have been better off with just sticking an orange-slice in his mouth. “How ‘bout I get Bo back there to bring out a bottle of whiskey and you two take a shot with me?  Then I’ll tell you that I’ll think about converting. Hell—wait, do you guys believe in hell?”

The two goodfella-prophets just answered with a blank stare.

 “Anyways, hell, I’ll even read that pamphlet right in front of you if you take a shot.” Gramps said, waving to Bo and tipping his hand in a drinking motion.

            “Not supposed to drink when on public ministry. Leviticus 10:9,” Just for Men said, already collecting the reading material from the table.

            “Good, more for me,” Gramps answered as the two walked out.

            Bo placed a couple of egg rolls on the table, along with a bottle of whiskey. Gramps looked to the bottles edge where the label wasn’t covering up the glass and checked the bottle’s contents against a hand-drawn black-sharpie-line. The date 03/15/12 was scribbled above it.

            “What gives, Bo?” Gramps said. “I bought this bottle and told you to keep it only for me. I can’t trust the only place that I’m able to have a drink in peace? It’s bad enough I gotta’ sneak around the liquor cabinet at home like some high-school freshman.”

            “Easy, doc,” Bo said, bringing over two half-full glasses of coke. “An old friend of Colin’s was in here a few nights back and looked like she needed a drink. Lex, I think her name was?”

            “I don’t know any Lex,” Gramps said, filling the other half of his glass with the Jack Daniels. “Probably scammed you Bo, or scammed me I should say. Scammed me right out of a shot.”

            “Said she was an old-friend of yours,” Bo said, now looking only to me. “Came in here from down the street, said she owns a dance studio on the other side of Woodward on nine-mile? Had her daughter with her too—“

            “A kid?” I said, interrupting Bo.

            “Yeah, cute kid. Loved those fried won-tons.” Bo said, pushing the nut-bowl of won tons toward me. “Ringing any bells, amigo?”

*

            Figuring he’d be occupied for at least an hour, I left Gramps at the table with Bo, a plate of orange chicken and a fresh ‘Jack & Coke.’ Bo gave me the name of Lex’s dance studio and I headed down the street to check it out. As I saw the studio’s hanging sign reading, “Alexandra Coulter’s Dance Academy for the Young and Young at Heart,” I wondered if Alexandra Coulter was my Lex David.

The studio was on the second floor of the building and as I opened the door to the stairwell, I was bombarded by at least eight ten-year-old girls in leg warmers. The words Ice Breakers were printed in silver sparkles on the backs of all their swishy-black nylon windbreakers. A woman who looked to be around thirty-five shot me a disconcerting look, before pushing her bug-eyed-black-shades up the ridge of her nose.

            When I reached the top, I saw a girl, younger than the Ice Breakers by at least five years, counting off steps in front of the studio’s twenty-foot wall mirror.

            “Hurry mommy!” The girl shouted, before straightening her shoulders, lowering her head and touching her heels together.

            Just then, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blasted through the speakers, and the little girl, who was before at a stand-still, was now twirling, splitting and rolling over the floor using a variation of gymnastic and snow-angel dance-moves.

            “Get it lady,” a female voice said through a microphone. “Shake it! Woo!”

            I nearly lost myself in the poetry of Cyndi Lauper, before realizing that standing there—watching this five-year-old girl shake it—I probably looked like the perfect candidate for Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”. The lady on the microphone must’ve thought the same thing because the music stopped abruptly.

            “Can I help you sir?” The woman asked, emerging from the back.

            It was Lex.

            “I’m looking for Lex David,” I said. “I’m an old friend.”

            “Joz? Colin Jozwiak, is that you?” she said, squinting at me from across the room.

By the time I’d made my way over to Lex, the little girl was standing at Lex’s knees, seemingly protecting Lex from me. As I went in for the hug, the girl shot her hand up in my direction.

“Hi-yee,” the girl said. “I’m Jackie.”

“Hi, Jackie. I’m Colin,” I said before looking back up at Lex. “Your mom and I are old friends.”

“How old are you? Mommy won’t tell me how old she is,” Jackie said, tugging my pant leg and getting my attention back down below her four-foot eye-line.

“I’m twenty-six ma’am,” I said, watching Jackie count her little piggies through her silk dance-slippers. “How old are you?”

“This many,” Jackie answered, holding up four fingers while hiding, showing and re-hiding her thumb. “Four-and-a-half.”

“Wow! That’s great, and I saw you dancing. You might be better than your mom was!” I said.

Lex punched me in the shoulder and I just laughed as Jackie sprinted back into the darkness of the backroom. A giggling voice, “Check-one. Check-one-two,” told me that Jackie had stationed herself at the microphone. As the electric tones of a 1980’s keyboard played over a studio drum machine, I realized that Jackie was about to give us another dance number. As the lyrics “…she’s got Bette Davis Eyes…” came through the speakers, I felt the seat of a chair gently press against the back of my legs.

“Have a seat,” Lex said. “I’ll put some coffee on, Kim Carnes is way better with coffee.”

*

“So, he looked at the bottle and asked who drank his whiskey?” Lex asked. “That’s how you found me?”

“That’s it,” I said. “Although I never thought that Chinese food would be the thing sparking our reunion.”

“Well, I faced my fear. I’ve been listening to these motivational CD’s that Mark gave me and, well, I figured if I was going to beat my Chinese-food-phobia I might as well do it on familiar territory. Then, I remembered how you always used to talk about going there with your grandpa.”

“So, you went and beat it.” I said.

“I did.” Lex said. “I’ve eaten it three times since too. I owe it all to you and Mark.”

“Mark’s your husband?” I said.

“He is. He’s also the one that helped me get this studio going,” she said. “But enough of that, what’re you doing? Did you end-up fulfilling the yearbook prophecy, most likely to invent something totally useless?”

 “Almost, but after a near fatal run-in with a bagel-guillotine I decided that it wasn’t for me,” I said, laughing at my own sarcasm. “I own a movie theater in Dayton, Ohio.” 

“That’s awesome,” Lex said, as Jackie had begun clapping to the chorus of Hall &Oates’ “Private Eyes.” “I totally called it by the way, knew you’d own a movie theater.”

            “No way, you called that.” I said, laughing at her statement. “What’d you put money on a game of M.A.S.H. or something? Five-hundred on Colin in the job category, movie-theater-owner.”

            “Okay, okay,” Lex said, nearly spitting out her coffee through her giggles. “I guess I meant, I knew you’d do something cool like that.”

            “Well, I think the idea is cooler than the actual job,” I said. “It’s more of a burden right now…God, I hate money.”

            Lex smiled softly, and as I turned back towards Jackie I could still feel Lex’s eyes on me.

            “I’m just in town watching my grandpa,” I said, looking into my coffee’s blackness. “My mom’s out-of-town on her honeymoon and Gramps needed someone around.”

            “Well, he was always pretty capable when I knew him,” Lex said. “I’m sure he’d be alright if you told him you needed to head back or something.”

            “Nah, can’t do it. He’s got dementia, sundowner’s syndrome actually,” I said.

            “Sundowner’s?” Lex asked. “That’s the one where you forget at night, right?”

            “Yep, he’s been okay, but he flipped pretty bad a couple nights ago. My first night in town.”

            “Well, where is he now?” Lex said.

            “I left him at China Ruby, he’s having an early lunch,” I said. “I should probably get back over there though. He was already starting a second drink when I left.”

            “Alright well, why don’t you come by the house this week? I mean, if you can,” Lex said. “Come over for lunch or coffee if dinner is too late. Bring your grandpa, I’d love to see him. Wait here a second though.”

            With that, Lex hopped up from her seat and sped back into her office. Jackie was now skipping along the length of the floor, but stopped once the music was cut-off. Lex re-emerged and grabbed Jackie by the hand, whispering something into her ear before assisting her in a pirouette towards me.

            “Are you going to come visit us?” Jackie asked, bobbing up and down on her tiptoes. “Please?”

            “I put my cell and my home address on the back,” Lex said, handing me her business card. “If you’re not too busy, I close the studio on Thursdays so I’ll be home.”

            “I’ll give you a call,” I said. “Catching up more would be nice, maybe meet Mark too.”

            “Absolutely,” Lex said. “See you Thursday, babe.”

            “Bye babe!” Jackie shouted as I headed back down the stairs.

*

            As I walked back to Bo’s, I began thinking about the foolish thoughts and aspirations I once held for Lex and myself, and how my reasoning behind those desires partly stemmed from the odd-source of early-morning television. While the working-world would scan the front pages and flip through channels 2,4 and 7 for their morning news-flashes, I’d tune into sitcom re-runs where Zack Morris would take me through the halls of Bayside, making me envious that my classes had no AC Slater, no Mr. Belding and especially no Screech. Back then, when my Grateful Dead t-shirt still fit, I’d watch as “Saved by the Bell” laid-out for me the recipe for one of the greatest love stories ever told—Zack and Kelly Kapowski.

Crossing Woodward, I thought about how Zack and Kelly had dated in high school, like Lex and I had, about how the two of them had attended the same college, like Lex and I had, and how they had ended up engaged and married, like I once thought Lex and I eventually would. I didn’t want Lex now, and didn’t think of our run-in as some kind of divine symbol for me to steal her away or ‘win’ her back. Those types of thoughts belonged back at Bayside. Tucked away with the rest of Colin’s Shit.

Kitchen Genres (5)

The front door was wide open, and scatterings of mud-stamped footprints were traveling across the lawn, to-and-from the house. A pink-plastic big wheel tricycle was overturned on the cement walkway, and there was a large spider-web crack on the glass storm door. My stomach dropped as I imagined my ex-girlfriend Lex and her four-and-a-half-year-old daughter being held up in their own kitchen by some guy with pantyhose pulled over his face.

“Hang here a minute, Gramps,” I said, leaving my grandfather in the car. “Let me go in first.”

The foyer was dark, and the only light was coming from the black and white movie playing on the living room TV. A recliner was spun towards the white-light of the flat screen TV, and the chair’s high leather back was concealing the figure that was rocking it back-and-forth. Approaching the chair, I could hear the soft, inquiring voice of Vera Miles over the tense violins coming through the speakers. “Mrs. Bates?” Vera asked.

“Lex?” I asked.

As I grabbed the back of the chair, gingerly turning the seat around, the terrified squeal of a little girl filled the room. Jackie, Lex’s daughter, had her face covered and was screaming at the site of Mrs. Bates’s old decomposed corpse.

“Jackie, what’s wrong?” Lex yelled, as the ceiling’s track lighting suddenly illuminated the living room.

“Colin,” Lex said, now standing in the living room doorway. “I didn’t hear the bell. Did Jackie let you in?”

“Sorry about barging in. When I pulled up I saw the wide open door and the cracked glass on the storm door,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Well, it kind of looked like someone had maybe broken in.”

“Don’t worry about it. My husband had his hands full this morning and tried to push the door open with his foot,” Lex said. “I’m just glad you could fit in a visit while you’re home for the week.”

Lex looked over at the TV, and quickly scooped up the remote control.

“There Jackie,” she said, flipping the channel to some cartoons. “Watch this. That other show was for big girls only.”

 “Hey, I am a big girl,” Jackie pouted, crossing her arms.

“A big scardy-cat girl,” Lex said brushing Jackie’s blonde hair, before returning to me.

“Personally, I think she’s got great taste in movies,” I said. “Thanks for having us.”

“Us?” Lex said, giving me a quick hug. “What’d you bring Harvey the invisible rabbit with you?”

“Oh, sorry. Gramps is in the car still.” I said. “I’ll go grab him.”

“No, no,” Lex said, already brushing past me. “I’ll go invite him in, you just take a seat.”

As Lex walked out the door, I took a seat on the recliner’s matching leather couch. Jackie had her eyes glued to the set and let out a giggle as Wile E. Coyote launched himself off a cliff on his ACME brand roller-skis.

            “Who do you like better?” I asked Jackie, walking towards the TV. “The road-runner or the coyote?”

            “Meep-meep,” Jackie said, nodding her head yes while still staring at the screen.

            A picture of Lex in a white-gown caught my eye and took me over to the mantle on the other side of the room. It was a wedding picture. Capturing one of those spontaneous, one-of-a-kind moments that happen at everybody’s wedding. She’d never been one for cliché’, but in it, Lex had frosting all over her face and was shoving a piece of cake back into her husband Mark’s mouth.

            “I found him,” Lex said, following Gramps into the living room.

            “If I knew such a lovely lady was looking for me I would’ve sprinted out of that car,” Gramps said as he took a seat on the couch. “Who’s this little one?”

            “That’s Jackie, Dr. Jozwiak,” Lex said, moving over and sitting on the arm of Jackie’s recliner. “And actually, Jackie’s really excited to see you Dr. Jozwiak, because Jackie’s got her first loose baby tooth.”

            “That so,” Gramps said, taking out his reading glasses from the pocket of his shirt. “Well, why don’t you let me take a look at it little miss?”

            Jackie tightly closed her lips, re-crossed her arms and simply nodded no.

            “I think she’s a little scared,” Lex said, giving me a wink.

            “Well, I don’t know what there is to be scared about,” Gramps said, leaning toward Jackie from his seat on the couch. “I’m not going to touch it, I just wanted to take a look at it. Whaddya’ say little miss, can I just take a look at it?”  

            The dialogue that had helped remove at least eight of my loose baby teeth hadn’t changed a bit. Kindly asking to ‘take a look,’ promising not to touch the tooth, Gramps’s kind, reassuring voice would keep your mouth wide-open as he continued to just ‘take a look.’ Retired from dentistry for nearly ten-years, the heart medications, hand tremors and sundowner’s syndrome had turned Gramps into more of a patient, but watching him carry-out the old routine, one that relied so heavily on his healthy wit and charm, made me forget all about the things he no longer could do.

            “How about it Jackie?” Lex said, putting her arm around the little girl. “I’ll sit right here with you. Dr. Jozwiak is just going to look at it.”

            Again, Jackie tightened her lips and shook her head no.

            “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll forget about it,” Gramps said, smiling back at Lex. “Darling, I was told there’d be a little coffee this morning.”

            “Sure thing,” Lex said. “Colin, you want to give me a hand in the kitchen?”

            Lex’s question had that wife-tone to it. Like in movies when the wife asks the husband to have a ‘small-chat’ in the kitchen, a chat that always seems to turn into a screaming match or food fight in comedies and always remains serious in dramas.  Kitchens don’t have genres, but with the mixture of southwest décor and her Italian hanging plates, I’d say that Lex’s kitchen was a “spaghetti western.”

            “I like the marble counter-tops,” I said, flipping through a stack of Mexican blanket placemats—I decided to keep the corny Fozzie Bear jokes to myself.

            “It’s only Formica,” She said, pouring the half & half into a miniature serving pitcher. “But a girl can dream, I guess.”

             “So, I thought I was going to get to meet Mark,” I said.

            “Yeah, too bad you guys couldn’t have met,” Lex said, handing me a steaming mug. “But like I said, he was out the door with a handful. Had a big meeting today.” 

            “Mark is a…?” I said, trailing off before taking a sip of coffee.

            “He’s in advertising,” she said. “His family owns the whole agency actually, one of the big ones too.”

            “Ah, a trust-fund baby,” I said, with a light-hearted air to my voice. “So, how much did young Daddy Warbucks put in for that dance studio you own?”

            “Shut-up,” Lex said, pushing me with a joking, tomboy attitude. “Mark takes care of our family okay? He’s a great father.”

            “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out at what point the girl who ‘occupied Main Street’ in college, who was the only girl I knew to wake-and-bake five times a week, and who barged into a Board of Regents meeting screaming for “equal-rights” in nothing more than a hemp skirt and poncho, started caring about things like being taken care of?”

            Just then a squeal, similar to the one I’d heard when entering the house, came from the living room. The alarm in Lex was instant, and before I could even set my mug down she was more than halfway down the hall.

            Lex was leaning in the doorway when I’d caught up. As I looked in the room, the squealing had revealed itself as giggling coming from Jackie’s leather recliner. I looked at Gramps who was contorting the wrinkles on his face, providing Jackie with a non-stop funny-face laugh-reel. With a smile of relief Lex pointed to her own front tooth before pointing at Jackie. As Gramps stuck out his tongue, making Bullwinkle moose horns with his hands, I noticed a fresh gap in Jackie’s smile.

            “Thank you,” Lex mouthed, catching Gramps’s eye.

            Gramps winked and handed Jackie’s baby tooth to Lex.

            “Remember mommy,” Jackie said, standing up on the seat of the chair. “Dr. Jozwiak said that I need to put that under my pillow so the tooth fairy can take care of it.”

            “Okay honey,” Lex said. “I won’t forget.”

Even Superman Falls On His Face (6)

I’d bought the old movie theater in Dayton, Ohio on ‘found money’—a last will and testimony type of inheritance. Reparations for having a rich Godfather uncle too busy to even show up at my baptism. Somewhere in the two-years since I’d purchased my now struggling theater, I got it in my head that I’d achieved this dream of mine through my own doing. I felt invincible.

            I didn’t care that the customers wanted blockbusters because it was my theater and I wanted to watch the ‘classics.’ The Multiplex would be raking in the dollars showing Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise while I’d stubbornly hold an event called The Raging-Goodfella Weekend. Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro for 48 hours, a weekend where nothing but “Goodfellas” and “Raging Bull” played and like a bitter old man I’d curse the masses that left my theater empty day-after-day. Shaking my fist in the air as I ate canned beans heated off of a hot plate, each thought and opinion running through my mind with the long-winded, no-holds-bar nature of Al Pacino’s “Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade” character. It was exhausting and I needed a break.

*

“Hey bubs,” Gramps said, walking into the living room, my vibrating phone in his hand. “This thing keeps going off in the kitchen, you gonna’ take any of these calls.”

I pried my sunken body from the couch, and reached for my cell with the enthusiasm of a zombie. There were nearly five missed calls from Brian, my booker, and I decided to let the sixth one go to voicemail as well.

“None of my business bubs, but I think that guy’s trying to get you some important information,” Gramps said, sitting down next to the cushion impression that I’d left on the couch.

“I know,” I said, sitting back down. “It’s about the theater.”

I let out a deep sigh, and Gramps turned his eyes toward the TV, seemingly picking up on my silent request to let it go.

“What’re we watching?” Gramps asked, shakily reaching for a handful of cashews from the jar on the coffee table.

“Superman II,” I answered. “Found it on one of the movie channels.”

We watched as Clark Kent, already having exposed himself to the de-powering nature of the red Kryptonian sunlight, was getting pounded on by some hillbilly truck driver in a roadside diner. I’d seen “Superman II” at least seven times, but the reassuring calmness I was getting from watching Superman writhing in pain was as fresh as the Man of Steel’s first-ever bloody nose.

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t stay down the whole movie,” Gramps said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “He gets his powers back.”

“Yeah, I know he will,” I said, laughing at Gramps’s spoiler alert.

My phone beeped again, this time my film booker had sent a text message:  Bad news, not new news. Like I told you earlier, the big boys get first dibs on the blockbusters, so ur out. But I still got that buyer for ur theater if you’re interested. It’s less than what we’d talked about as far as a potential offer, but still, it’s an offer. Call me back.

“Ah, damn,” I said, dropping my phone back onto the coffee table.

“Ok what’s up?” Gramps bluntly said. “You’ve been sighing, and swearing all week. Anytime you get any news about that theater of yours all you do is groan. I know I’ve got sundowner’s syndrome, but last time I looked out the window we’ve got a good six hours before I start-up so spill it.”

I looked at him with a blank stare, assuming the perplexed stare that he normally wore around midnight.

“That’s right, I’m aware I have it,” Gramps said, lightening the mood with a laugh. “Now why don’t you let me try to help, before your mom gets home and you leave?”

The entire week back home in Detroit, Gramps and I had never actually brought-up his dementia. We’d just danced around it, abiding by the taboo rules of all family illnesses—if you don’t talk about it, maybe it’ll go away. I loved visiting Gramps, but we both knew I was there so someone could keep an eye on him while my mother and her new husband were on their weeklong honeymoon.

“Okay, well, my booker thinks I maybe should sell the theater,” I said.

“Well, that’s what he thinks. What do you think?” Gramps said, folding his hands in a Yoda-esque manner.

“I think I’m putting money in and not getting much out,” I said. “I’m thinking that I’ve squandered my money on a pipe dream, on something that I got into on whim with the mindset of a twelve-year-old kid.”

Gramps just stayed silent, gesturing for me to proceed.

“I mean, when I bought the place,” I said, furrowing my brow. “All I was thinking about was how owning a movie theater was one of those things I’d always wanted to with my life. I saw my dream right there. Right out of the gate. I liked the idea of owning it and controlling it. I think it’s been that idea that’s put me here. I just kept telling myself that I was doing all right because I was doing it the way I wanted to do it.”

How does one earn the label of pathological liar? If you verbalize your lies regularly, if you compulsively feel the need to tell people that you’re uncle was a member of the Justice League or that you know where the Fortress of Solitude is just so people will think highly of you, then you’re most likely going to get called out and maybe even diagnosed. But if you only lie to yourself, keeping your created familial ties to the Justice League within the realm of your own mind, you won’t be seen as a head-case. If you lie to yourself, even the worst situation can be masked or sugar coated. Talking with Gramps, each one of my revelations coming out with increasing ease, I knew I didn’t have any more lies left in me.  

“Look, if you sell,” Gramps started, muting the already quiet TV. “Don’t think about it as losing out on your dream for good. People get booted from their dreams all the time. Hell, my dream was to become a dentist, raise a family and retire with my wife. Simple enough. My wife’s been dead for four years, my son, your uncle, is gone and I’m losing my mind. When you’ve lost that pre-set idea of happiness, all you can do is try to get back up. Even if it means only getting little part of your dream back. What do you think I’ve been doing with you this whole week?”

I huffed out a laugh, letting Gramps take a breath.

“The best dreams won’t present themselves the same way your whole life. If that were how this whole thing worked then we’d all be wearing sparkling tuxedos and singing “Christmas in Heaven” with the big guy upstairs. But if you do get another crack at your dream, you’ll know how to hold onto it longer. Maybe even hold onto it for good. You’re only twenty-eight, bubs.”

“I’m twenty-six,” I said smiling.

“Even better,” Gramps said, slapping me on the back. “And don’t blame that on the dementia, that’s just the old age.”

With that, we both turned back to  “Superman II”—just in time to see the still mortal Clark Kent confessing his failure and pleading for the help of Marlon Brando’s floating ghostly head in a destroyed Fortress of Solitude.

“Turn it up,” Gramps said, pointing to the floating head of Jor-El. “I don’t want to miss the best part.”

            “Look at me Kal-El. The Kryptonian Prophecy will be at last fulfilled. The son becomes the father, the father becomes the son.”

Watching Marlon Brando’s transparent head passing through Christopher Reeves, I knew that there’d be a time when I wouldn’t be able to turn to Gramps for help. A time when he’d be there in body but not in mind, and a time when he’d be gone for good, leaving me to look within myself for any guidance I might need. Although I was sure his dementia would continue to distort his memory, possibly even wiping-away the one we’d just shared, I knew that he’d never leave. He’d be in my thoughts, his voice guiding me in the memories I’d always keep of him. 

            

THE END