by Mark Foss
Why he wanted the photo is something else again. It’s more proof — if ever I needed it — that Joseph has never forgotten his daughter. But this is not the Ponderosa foreman saddling up a horse from our Sunday evenings in front of the Predicta. No, it’s a promotional photo of the silver-haired actor from his long career on All My Children, the soap opera. Had Joseph’s obsession with Candy surpassed my own?
From the bookshelf in the corner of the living room, I bring down musty binders, refuse from a long-ago auction. They are marked alphabetically, although W for will and F for funeral are both empty. Inside the thick C binder, I discover clippings on David Canary, recent research on throat cancer, yellowed news reports on my missing sister, and a contract for cremation with other legal documents clipped to the inside.
How many months did I beg Joseph to plan ahead? Not only has he named Hoss as power of attorney, my brother is also executor of the estate. I am six feet even and Hoss is two inches’ taller. Nothing ever changes.
HOSS ALWAYS GOT THE NEW jobs first. Whether it was numbering bid cards with a black magic marker, handing them out to patrons as they arrived, writing down bids on foolscap or taking in money, each task took on a special quality while under Hoss’s care and then, once discarded, was dismissed as childish. I could never catch up to a coveted position because Hoss rubbed the shininess right off. The worst of it: I knew he was always wrong.
When he reached the age of ascension at thirteen, Hoss became truly insufferable. He devoted himself to new chores, just like Disciple Caine in the Shaolin temple on Kung Fu. Before school and then again upon his return home, he swept the auction stage to keep it pristine. On auction days, he mopped the stage down and climbed on a stepladder to brush off leaves and sticks that fell onto the canopy. He set up the microphone on the top tier of the stage, positioned the speakers, and recommended placement of items. Heavy appliances were on the lowest level. Medium-sized items — Admiral’s Lamps, antique scythes and armchairs — were typically positioned on the second level, leaving the highest level for the smallest and lightest items — dishes, books, odds and ends, framed landscapes, conversation pieces. Yet there could be variants, depending on Joseph’s mood and intuition, so Hoss needed to back up his suggestions with sound reasoning. Sometimes he miscalculated on purpose, putting the Hollywood pinball machine on the second tier, just high enough that latecomers could not see the faces of Laurel and Hardy under the glass. Sure enough it didn’t sell, and Hoss made room for it in the barn. During winter auctions, he draped it lovingly with a blanket so no one thought it was up for grabs.
The voice had to be carefully tended, Joseph told us. I watched as Hoss prepared a honey mixture for Joseph every evening, bringing it to him in front of the television. Candy, who had taken over the beanbag chair, ignored the handoff. Her gender left her on the sidelines of the apprenticeship process, and she betrayed no interest in arcane father-son rituals. Hoss could not imagine that Candy was to blame for the loose spout on the honey dispenser. He made me clean up the huge dollops of honey that gushed into Joseph’s glass. Only Candy and I knew the truth, and it stayed with us, her act of derision unacknowledged.
Hoss was under strict instructions not to attempt the chant himself until his voice broke. Was it youthful impatience, an adolescent urge to rebel, or a desire to prove himself to the Master on his own terms that made him forge ahead, practising the chant in the barn when he thought no one was around. I spied on him through a knothole, admiring his diction as he sped through the nonsense words. Faster and better than I could ever have done, if I ever got the chance. By the time my apprenticeship began, Hoss had secured his place in Joseph’s affections. I was relegated to a lifetime of unloading dirty ringer-washers and beat-up goalie pads, waiting for Hoss to be sick so I could take over.
I whipped around in time to detect a blur of motion from Candy’s bedroom window. And then another. Rox was over. Again. They had been inseparable since she moved into one of the few houses on our desolate road. At the age of eight, Rox shared Candy’s olive skin and dark complexion, but her long black hair was straight and she stood two heads taller. Her voice was not fully mature, yet its depth already shook the teacups if she spoke too loudly in the kitchen. She treaded carefully, cautious about the impact of her words. Once in Candy’s bedroom, however, in the midst of their tv commercial reenactments, she unleashed staccato, windowrattling laughter. No doubt Rox enjoyed how Candy gave the male narrator his comeuppance. Without bursting into their room, it was impossible to know whether Candy was amused beyond the usual uptick of her lips or raised eyebrow. Holding up a glass to the wall, I heard the mock serious voice of Rox intoning “Is she or isn’t she? Only she knows for sure.” She transformed a world where the hairdresser knew best into a declaration of women’s empowerment with Shakespearean and Decartian overtones. Candy would refuse to scour the oven or spray it with Mr. Muscle, and Rox played an affronted male narrator. The vibrations from Rox’s laughter shook the glass from my ear, so I never heard whether Candy responded in kind. All I knew for sure was that Rox had become Candy’s favourite, in the same way that Hoss had privileged status with my father. I didn’t know which irked me more.
Hoss was the one who opened the door to Joseph’s bedroom to find the two girls in front of the mirror with a bottle of Chanel No. 5 in Candy’s hand. I heard the shout, the shriek from Rox, the slamming of doors. Instead of gluing my ear to our common wall, I ran my nose up and down her door, risking slivers in my desperation for a trace of our mother, telling myself it was a game, but not being able to turn away.
For Hoss, Candy’s act was sacrilegious, a desecration of the holy shrine left on Mary’s dresser. I was more circumspect at this sign of interest in our mother. Perhaps Candy would come to me next, and I could share what I remembered. It would have brought us closer.
MY MEMORIES REPLAY with no script changes allowed. I am mired in the same feelings of ridiculousness for wanting to be my sister’s best friend. The only addition permitted is a sense of dread, a helpless desire to know where we all veer off course and to get everyone back on track.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
The underbelly of eroticism
Posted by LJ
Following the fiasco at the Bleecker Street Cinema, Nailand abandons LES for West Saugerties, famous for its link to Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. He makes four more films with Molly O before dying of heart failure at the age of 38. He is buried in his hometown of Shepardsville, New York.
Molly O, too, disappears, leaving many unanswered questions.
The scripts bear such a feminist sensibility it’s difficult to imagine Molly O has no input. Yet she is given no credit. Does she prefer anonymity or is the sexual tension in their art informed by creative tension in their lives? The nature of the films demands trust and intimacy, but does this extend off the set?
Asked about her relationship with Nailand, his death, and her decision to leave the film industry, Molly O apparently hands the reporter a note that reads: “I have the right to remain silent.”
The arrival of “talkies” ends the careers of so many giants of the silent screen, but they only have a few years left before a younger generation takes over. Women who take their clothes off, even in experimental films that blur body parts beyond recognition, can expect an even shorter shelf life. At Nailand’s death, Molly O is in her twenties. She could seize her flash of fame to work with other experimental filmmakers or take a stab at mainstream Hollywood. Instead, the lady vanishes. She is far too young to have ended up a recluse like Greta Garbo. Is she preparing a comeback, like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard? Is her silence compulsive habit, conscious choice, or genetic inheritance? Perhaps the time has come for her to step backwards into the past, and break her extended silence.
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9
I STOCK UP ON JOS. Louis cakes for Hoss, in the event he keeps his
promise to visit the Wasteland after the retreat. He has sworn off junk food and weed, but the news of Joseph’s passing may send him over the deep end.
In the dead space between aisles, a cart poking its cage tentatively around the corner stops me in my tracks. Seconds later, the back of a short, curly headed teenage girl makes me do a double take. Never mind Candy never liked this store, and that she’s in her forties by now. This is how my mind works, and I can’t turn it off.
SERIOUS BIDDERS MAPPED out what they wanted during the preview, but Joseph felt the theatrics added drama. So Hoss walked up and down the stage, holding items or standing beside them as Mary once did. Hoss looked good up there and he knew it. All business — discreet, respectful, efficient — the perfect complement to Joseph’s chant until a growth spurt rendered him gangly and uncoordinated.
One night he picked up a wrench, and dropped it immediately, narrowly missing his foot. Once retrieved, he kept tossing the tool between his hands as if too hot to handle. He did the same with the rasps, the plane, and the crowbar. He came across as a clumsy goof who couldn’t hit a nail straight or read the bubbles in a level, exactly the opposite image that Joseph was trying to evoke with the gruff, masculine, handyman edge of his chant. Hoss peered down at me in the pit with my foolscap, and I read fear on his face.
Joseph, too, sensed something was wrong. He switched in mid-chant to pitch hand tools with rubber or plastic handles; Hoss had a better time of it. Even so, when a bidding war erupted over a Royal Doulton figurine, Hoss was hard-pressed to hold the piece for more than a few minutes. For the rest of the evening, Hoss pointed to small items rather than picking them up, which made him look ridiculous.
His hands emanated heat for no apparent reason. Touching metal was the worst, but even wood product burned him. In the kitchen, while Hoss ran his hands under cold water, Joseph told him that premature chanting has been known to produce exactly this effect on the metabolism. His Great Uncle Harold was left with stigmata on his wrists after lifting a bandsaw; he had to wear gloves and long-sleeved shirts thereafter.
Hoss professed innocence. Candy and I pretended we were none the wiser. Did she hold her tongue because she knew what would happen, and how it would propel her to stardom? Did she secretly hold a soft spot for Hoss and want to protect him? Or was she above the petty concerns of her brothers and the rest of the Grants?
Hoss started smoking weed to relieve the stress. A mild buzz cooled his outer extremities long enough to hold the same object for up to ten minutes; it calmed his limbs so he could walk without tripping. I wasn’t sure if it was the weed, the premature chanting, or a mixture of both, but Hoss’s fourteen-year-old voice was trapped in an upper octave a notch beyond Jon Anderson, the singer for Yes and, for all I know, the voice of Great Uncle Harold. Joseph said nothing, but neither did he begin Hoss’s voice training.
Even as the weed helped relieve Hoss’s physical symptoms, it instilled a profound sense of detachment. The narcotic effect enhanced the dreamlike elements of Joseph’s delivery, putting Hoss into a trance. He held up a set of used wrenches, a rake, or javelin darts long after the bids closed and I’d noted the winner’s card number. When bids opened for a washer and dryer, and Hoss pointed to a lawnmower, he became a liability. He knew it, too. I thought that was why he smoked more than usual the night he fell off the stage. It provided an honourable exit.
The failure of an apprentice was unprecedented in Grant auctioneer history, and created a dilemma for Joseph. I was still a year away from ascension, and Joseph could not bear to promote me prematurely — not after what happened to Hoss. Candy was too young to take in money. He didn’t trust Hoss around the cash or anything else. As Joseph pondered his next move, I swept the stage before and after school, thinking this mix of humility and ambition would turn the tide in my favour.
Except that Candy and Rox emerged from their long, private apprenticeship of play-acting for the bright lights of the auction stage. With Rox egging her on, Candy dressed like a tv hostess and displayed an afghan covered in cat hair as if it were a coveted prize on The Price Is Right.
It’s only for a year, Joseph reassured me. Until Candy turned eleven and I turned thirteen.
10
I WAS PROMOTED TO HANDLE sales behind the card table. Rox took over my job, writing down winning bid numbers, a tacit acknowledgement that she was nearly family. More than Hoss, who was excommunicated for falling to the ground from the second tier of the stage, stoned. He responded by upping his weed intake, feigning disinterest in his change of fortunes and heightening his commitment to interpreting the lyrics of Yes and Genesis. I was caught between my siblings. I wanted everyone to get what they wanted, with no trade-offs. Or so I told myself. Behind my earnest and helpful gaze, I scanned Rox’s list of winning bids eager to find a mistake. All her columns were perfect. She drew little images beside the numbers. Who could compete with such artistry?
There were no extravagant, Cher-like costumes for Candy’s debut, just a simple pair of slacks and a flowered top, taken in to fit her tiny frame. I recognized them. Everyone did. In the midst of a chant to sell a cb-radio, the Tone emerged, unbidden and uncontrollable. Joseph’s steady stream of words snagged on hidden shoals, breaking into syllables, deconstructing into constituent parts. His voice tapped into every crevice of craving in those men’s hearts. Some upped their bids, desperate to conquer and possess. Others felt a sudden rush of desire, and then a flush of shame as they saw the ten-year-old on the stage.
As Candy twirled the knobs, I heard Mary’s name wrapped in longing, pouring forth on all channels. I did not want it to stop, and when the bids closed out at three hundred and twenty-five dollars, I was shaking with grief and loss at the emptiness that followed. Staring up at this spectre of Mary on the stage, I waved madly to get her attention. Here I am! Over here! Sweat splashed into my face with each movement of my arm, making my eyes sting and water.
Joseph, too, was spent, rushing through the rest of the items lest he break down in public. It was the best take in years, which he attributed directly to Candy’s stage presence. Even so, he packed up Mary’s clothes from the bedroom to prevent any further reincarnations — as if this could excise her from our lives.
CANDY'S ESSENCE REMAINED hidden from all of us through her silence, and her stage presence became an extension of this mystery. Hiding in plain sight, she disappeared into an endless parade of characters, each amplified by Joseph’s delivery. For her game-show-host look, his chant sounded like the off-screen pitchman who describes what a lucky contestant has just won. Amid the flow of nonsense words between the rising bids, I was sure I could make out “A trip to Hawaii!” and “A brand new car!” The chant wrested men out of their comfort zone, teased another one-last-bid out of them so they could see what was behind Door Number Two.
When Candy took on the androgynous look of Twiggy on the catwalk, Joseph’s rhythm and Cockney accent captured the swinging sixties, and the men overpaid for mouldy fur coats, mismatched suits, and stained Bermuda shorts. Joseph’s languid tone managed to evoke a psychedelic experience when Candy emerged in bell-bottoms, tie-dyed T-shirt, and a daisy in her hair. The farmers forgave the worst excesses of the sixties and casually raised their bid cards towards marmalade skies. Candy was careful to sprinkle more down-home characters into her repertoire. The junk dealers were particularly enamoured of her rendition of the dumb blond country girl from Hee Haw, even if the cleavage was fake, while the more genteel appreciated the big-haired, Champagne Lady from The Lawrence Welk Show. All Candy’s characters wore gloves, an effect that ranged from sublime to absurd.
I kept my distance, pretending I had a choice.
Her wardrobe for the evening performance was a closely guarded secret between Candy and Rox. In this old farmhouse on the third concession, these pre-teen girls developed a mocking, postmodern sensibility — delivering an evolving commentary on the social construction of women totally out of keeping with their surroundings, age, and experience.
Was it intuitive, inspired by the contempt of the men in those ring-around-the-collar commercials? Maybe an extraterrestrial landed on the pods in the backyard and beamed this knowledge through Candy’s bedroom window.
ON THE MORNING after yet another school-night sleepover, the girls walked back to Rox’s house down the road. Even in fine weather, they waited out of sight in the bus shelter, deflecting my attempts to spy on them. Hoss was in tenth grade and was picked up by older high school friends who drove. I was tall enough to scribble profound sayings on the ceiling of our shelter, but would gladly have fought over creative rights rather than face the solitude of the daily wait for the bus. Thinking about what Candy would do next filled the empty space.
I wondered if our counterparts — Isaac, Lewis, and Phebe — learned their letters in a one-room school house, walking the miles hand-in-hand, humming the tunes of the day in three-part harmony.
The bus picked me up after the girls, who sat directly in the middle rows, the better to invoke the hate of all the other eleven-year-old girls in front and behind them. Those country hicks took Candy’s silence for superiority rather than indifference, and resented that she communicated in a coded pantomime which only Rox could understand. The boys teased Rox for her early breasts, which she tried unsuccessfully to hide in oversized sweaters and behind her school books. The girls focussed on her voice, which had developed into a powerful instrument. If not entirely silent, Rox spoke sparingly. Her words built up inside before they gushed out, a deeply masculine rumble that swept homework off laps and into the aisle three rows away. They taunted her, trying anything to make her speak so they could laugh at the tsunami effect. I felt every kick and punch against the backs of their seats. They didn’t know I was silently fighting for them, and surely wouldn’t have cared if they did.