by Mark Foss
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16
THE FIRST TIME I SAW Candy walk backwards was in her bedroom. She enlisted me — through a series of hand gestures — to help rearrange her furniture. This was about six months before Hoss fell off the stage, stoned, so she must have been almost ten years old. In the north corner, newly uncovered, we put her desk. These were the original floors — hardwood, full of knots, warping and protruding with age. We pushed and pulled at it to make it flat, and a board came loose. We sat quite still, staring at the hole in the floor we uncovered. I was taken with a heavy sense of guilt. To make things right, I put the wood back in place. It fell through the hole. Quickly, I reached into the dark space to pull it out again, and my fingers brushed against something. Candy stood up, shaking, and walked backwards — desperately trying to distance herself from the discovery, but unable to take her eyes off it. With her room in disarray, she bumped into her bed and fell backwards on the mattress. She was near tears — not from physical hurt, but out of fear.
A lock of brown hair, a thin, unframed daguerreotype, and a note. The strands of hair in Candy’s palm were funnel-shaped, like a cartoon tornado. She poked at them cautiously with her index finger. When they didn’t bite, she stroked them gently, with affection. I was the one who opened the folded paper, and tried to read the faint markings in pencil. They were too faded to decipher. The image in the picture, however, was clear: a young girl — curly dark hair, serious, possibly sad. In ink, etched on the metal, a single name: Phebe.
Candy overcame all her fears. She held the image — it is perhaps two inches square — between two fingers, and studied the girl closely. Her lips moved as if she could make out the words in the note, and I was torn between eyeing the paper and lip-reading to understand what she saw. I only knew she wrapped it all up again, stuck it in the hole, and had me reinstall the dislodged board. She pointed to me, then her, and then brought a finger to her lips. It warmed me inside, this half-secret that we shared.
It was Hoss who put the idea in my head that Isaac, Lewis, and Phebe were watching us. He said Lewis would smite me in my bed, cut off my toes to stunt my growth. I wore socks that night, and stayed awake to see if they had been sliced open. I believed Hoss until I saw him carving his height with a knife in the barn, so frustrated that at age ten I have grown taller. Never mind he will spurt past me again in four months, or that his blue eyes are 20/20. I was wearing glasses by sixth grade. I don’t know about Candy’s green eyes. Maybe she was blind and never told us.
WHEN CANDY DISAPPEARED, I went straight to the hiding place, sure she’d left a note. I pulled out Phebe’s time capsule, and studied it anew for clues. Because of their shared birthday, and this secret message from the past, Candy had every reason to identify with Phebe — much more so than Hoss and I had with Isaac and Lewis. If Candy were somehow re-enacting Phebe’s disappearance, it made sense she, too, would have left a cache for the future hidden behind another loose board. I spent many weeks in the house and the barn, pulling, pushing, tapping, and prying everything in sight. I told no one since this would mean coming clean about Phebe’s time capsule. I could not betray Candy’s trust. My knuckles were raw, my spirit dampened.
I held Phebe’s note close to the lamp in case she wrote it in lemon juice. I studied the lines with a magnifying glass, trying to see what Candy saw. I read Candy’s school notebooks, searching for clues in the margins — secret messages passed between her and Rox during class. Nothing.
Maybe there weren’t any words on Phebe’s note. Not any more. Time had erased them. It was this absence that frightened Candy, the knowledge that Phebe’s life was reduced to a single photograph and a few strands of hair. Whatever thoughts and feelings she wanted to share with the future have vanished. It was a leap of faith, this time capsule, and it failed. Perhaps Candy learned from Phebe. No reliance on words, written or spoken. Only her work with Mickey Nailand would be her legacy. An audacious bet with fate that her genius would one day be discovered and appreciated. She became a recluse like Greta Garbo to preserve and foment the mystery, freezing the allure in place. When the time comes the world will know, and not know, Molly O. All she needs is one person to bring her back to life. Such a diabolical plan. Who is crazier? Candy for dreaming it up or me for making it come true? I am so cool with the programmers at Anthology Film Archives. When someone jokes that a Nailand retrospective may draw Molly O out of the woodwork, I turn my eyes from the webcam lest they reveal my true agenda.
The only hint that Phebe has left any mark at all on Candy: a history essay called “A Stitch in Time” in which she argued that alphabet samplers not only allowed pioneer girls to overcome the drudgery of their lives through arts and crafts, they also permitted the creation of a feminine space that was both public and private. Within the constraints of the form, girls developed distinct styles, and yet colluded in the stitching of fanciful capital letters to mock the virtuous messages they were required to reproduce. Their signatures — imposed by proud parents to show off their daughters — were seen by the girls as a way to become part of history. The survival of the samplers showed the girls were right. In giving her a D+, her male teacher wrote simply: How do you know this?
THE HUM OF the microwave provides the soundtrack as I check my blog for comments. I take my Hungry Man Dinner onto the back stoop, the better to sense old vibrations from Candy and Rox. The tray grows cold on my lap as I listen to the crickets, feel the cool breeze, gaze at the stars hovering over the dead field. In a Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown sits on his front step, waiting for friends to call instead of calling on them. Night falls. A wasted day.
On the desk, beside the laptop, lie Joseph’s draft memoirs. All my offers to help him organize his thoughts, and all his objections and reassurances amount to this: a handwritten page with a single line at the top: Backwards Walking — Reminiscences of a Country Auctioneer. No table of contents, no outline, not a single hint of the trajectory. I hold the page up to the lamp in case heat will reveal any hidden letters.
Of course the title strikes me as less about Joseph looking back at his life than about Candy’s signature move. Walking freely between the three tiers of the stage in her various costumes, holding, and pointing at objects of desire, Candy learned quickly not to turn her back to the crowd. Instead of showcasing her behind, she walked backwards with astonishing ease, always in character, always sensing the edge, never tripping. She sashayed, targeting any man watching her. Caught in the act, even the most self-confident men dropped their eyes to the ground. At no time did she give up control. Even Joseph — the only one behind her — delayed the start of the next round of bidding until Candy was in position. She toyed with him some evenings, adjusting buttons in her Dietrich tails or tucking in loose threads for her Garbo dress. He tolerated these antics, knowing she was the star but never imagining she could soon be a star for someone else.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
A Stitch in Time
Posted by LJ
Mickey Nailand had a congenital heart condition that, combined with his artistic temperament, was enough to close the books on his death. It also helped explain his intense working rhythm. He knew time was short.
The romantics speculate that Nailand’s death shook Molly O so much that she took her own life. How else could she have so thoroughly vanished from the public eye? I think Molly O is shrewd, disappearing to cultivate mystery through her absence. And I also believe the time has come for Molly O to step forward and take credit for her unsung role as an equal creative partner in Nailand’s artistic project. Indeed, I argue the films, as a whole, can be understood as a documentary on the personal and creative relationship between Mickey Nailand and Molly O.
In the original eleven-minute version of The Slave (1909), for example, Pickford plays the wife of a struggling artist who sells herself to help the family make ends meet. In an early draft of the new s
cript, clearly influenced by Sirk and Fassbinder, Nailand amplifies the melodrama to comment on the wife’s noble sacrifice and depicts a conventional parade of lovers. Nailand typed out four more scripts, each giving the wife more and more power. In the final filmed version, the Greek sculptor, played by Nailand, becomes an Italian silent-era filmmaker who insists his wife, Molly O, pose for lucrative naughty films. Under the camera’s glare, the mousy wife transforms into a tigress. Not only does the experience liberate her sexually, it turns her into a cunning businesswoman who makes them fabulously wealthy.
The formal construction of the scenes is telling. In the fictional story, the wife appears increasingly in control, toying with the belt to show her husband just who is wearing the pants in the family. Yet she is still the object of the camera’s gaze. To challenge that gaze, she moves in and out of the frame; she approaches the lens until her bare skin blurs into nothingness; she drops to her knees or turns her back. In other words, the wife determines what we see.
The camera tries to match and even anticipate her moves, as far as the tripod will allow, until the wife seizes the camera and films her husband running out the door. The closed door is shot for five minutes, this time with a sometimes jerky handheld camera. But since there are no edits in this long sequence, we can never lose sight of the fact that, behind the camera, stands a naked woman. A naked woman who, despite everything that’s happened, we still hope to see emerge.
This sequence creates a new language of erotica. Throughout the struggle between the husband and wife, her bare skin flashes for a few seconds at a time. With no conventional titillation, the film nevertheless instills a sense of longing in the viewer. The use of the handheld also creates a sense of anticipation: never has the shot of a door been so erotically charged.
Here is the question: how much of this struggle is between the characters in the story, and how much between Nailand and Molly O? Was Molly O forcing changes to the script? Were the two struggling in the editing room as well?
This was only their third film together, and it foreshadows the creative tensions ahead. In the last scenes of the film, the wife challenges her husband’s artistic decisions, which brings about their downfall. Perhaps Nailand thought Molly O would either make them wealthy or cause their financial ruin. Certainly, no one got rich from their films, which have languished, undistributed, and generally unscreened, at the Co-op since his death. Yet there are also scripts, production notes, still photos. Molly O knew enough to protect their legacy. Instead of hiding a time capsule under floorboards, she made sure the work would be found, lest it fade away.
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17
I WONDER IF MY BLOG should be less directed to film aficionados and more targeted to the only reader I care about. All I want is to connect the dots. But I don’t think an open-hearted pitch would appeal to Candy. I have to stay oblique, and give her the pleasure of decoding my references.
What would happen if I did stumble across Candy at a red light? Would I jump out in the middle of the street, abandon my car, and slide in beside her? No, it would feel too forced. An unwelcome triumph of my will. Despite my hopes and dreams of running into Candy around the next corner, I want her to find me. At times I must sound like a crazed ex-lover, not a sibling. This worries me. In Pierrot le Fou, Marianne’s boyfriend turns out to be her brother. But I fear turning into Pierrot — someone who paints his face blue and then accidentally blows himself up.
No scanning images, videos, and text links. No searches of dating sites, archives, or court records. No payment to private investigators. Only a blog that drops hints of our childhood, that flatters her artistic ego and mine, enticing her to overcome decades of silence and mystery. Even with no comments registered, I have to believe she has discovered it. Rather than announce her return with cheap talk on a screen, she will make a grand entrance on her own terms. There is no reason to think this. It’s my leap of faith.
I have less confidence that Hoss will check his voicemail after his island retreat. His recharged energetic antennae may not pick up on Joseph’s passing or maybe the battery in his mobile is drained. Never has the Wasteland seemed so vacant. If I could find an old Tareyton cigarette, I would watch smoke rise in familiar shapes to the ceiling, and feel less alone. A pathetic reverie, but I know I’m right.
JOSEPH'S SIXTY VHS tapes of All My Children are neatly labelled with the airdate and a few key words about plots involving the identical twins portrayed by David Canary. I watch back-to-back episodes until two in the morning, totally taken by the tactics of ruthless businessman Adam and his brother Stuart, the nice-guy artist, in the suburb of Pine Valley, Pennsylvania.
Hoss is the bad son, the ingrate first-born who refuses to carry on the family tradition, the one hooked on demon weed who abandons us after Candy disappears. Joseph never fails to criticize Hoss’s flaky profession, and I defend my brother, although in my secret self I’m more critical than Joseph. Part of me is still twelve years old, wanting everyone to get along.
I am the good lad, loved by default since I take up so little space and ruffle so few feathers. I am the dunce with the foolscap proudly writing down high bids, the desperate apprentice whose heart breaks along with his voice from being ignored, the willing accomplice on Joseph’s excursions to manipulate the hearts of widows. If I strayed from the roles I willingly took on, his love would have slipped away, swallowed by quicksand. And I would jump in right after, or so I promise myself. The perfect accomplice to everyone who needs me, including me.
I watch infomercials until three, mourning the loss of the four-channel universe and the sheer unpredictability of the Predicta’s basic functions. It stands in the corner, unused but still taking up space. An object from the past Joseph is unable to cast aside. I miss Hoss picking the shows, Candy studying the fashions in black and white, and me taking it all in.
THE DAISY SHEETS Candy likes so much are limp and stale after decades in the closet, nothing like the everlasting freshness we brag about in our make-believe commercials. I give them a shot of Febreze before making up the bed.
All traces of chocolate from Jos. Louis cakes in my bed are long gone. Hoss would return late with the munchies from a weed-n-feed night in Shep, his serenity replaced with an itch to share tales of laid-back sex in the car. I leave the sheets in a crumpled heap directly underneath the black stain of smoke in the ceiling. No point in making up the bed. I believe less and less he will show.
This is the brother who would sit stoned on the bed, look at me profoundly, and say, “I think it’s time for ‘Supper’s Ready.’” I would close our bedroom door so Hoss could crank up the volume and I could hide from Candy. All right for her to wear dainty lace wrist warmers on the auction stage, but I feared her ridicule at the sight of me in white latex gloves, complicit in our brother’s solemn rituals. Hoss would remove the LP from the plastic sleeve of Foxtrot with great ceremony, and place it on the turntable. I would squeeze a few drops of special cleanser into his state-ofthe-art Discwasher system, and brush invisible particles from the vinyl for two revolutions. He couldn’t trust his own hands so I was tasked to blow any remaining dust from the stylus, and lower it in the right groove. Then I would try to hear the deep truths he could hear, tolerating his habitual lament that without Peter Gabriel the band had lost its progressive edge. Hoss would still be sailing among the gutterflies and flutterbyes as I carefully and quietly re-inserted the record into its slip and cover. I would return the album to its designated spot in the Genesis section with the attention of an archivist handling an illuminated manuscript.
All these years his prog records have been sitting here in milk crates, souring. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the hours wasted serving Hoss on a platter. Not to mention the time spent spying on Candy, and teaching Rox to edit in the barn. Where were my dreams in all this? It’s only now I have them, and they still don’t feel mine.
I HAVE KEPT all Hoss’s cards, letters, and emails, and all his gifts of books wit
h words like soul, essence, and unity in the titles. I haven’t read them, just as he probably hasn’t watched the Stephen Dwoskin films I’ve sent him. Mostly we stick to safe territory like the release of old shows on DVD and his saudade for mediocre movies-of-the-week from the 1970s that could have made interesting TV series like Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York and Girl in the Empty Grave. He envisions intricate storylines for the first seasons of these stillborn dramas. All these girls who aren’t quite dead can’t be a coincidence. On some unconscious level that his therapies have not yet excavated, Hoss believes Candy is out there, waiting for the right script. At least I hope so, since this will make him more receptive to my discovery of Molly O.
I have my own what-if scenarios. If Mary had survived labour, she and Candy would have grown together, experiencing all the usual envy, distrust, and rage of normal mothers and adolescent daughters. Or they would have fed each other’s unique brand of silence. Mary, after all, was only quiet and reserved, not mute. A daughter like Candy might have pushed her over the edge. Equally plausible, she would have prevented Joseph from using her as bait for auction-goers. Then again, Candy would have rebelled against our mother’s protection, made things worse that much sooner. And me? What if I had not been so pathologically determined for Candy to fill up the space left by our mother? My sister was a sensitive creature who could easily have picked up on these projections. What if I had never kept the Steenbeck or manipulated Candy into joining the cinema club? What if my desire to be close is what drove her away? What if this is more grandiosity, a fantasy that whatever I do makes a difference?
I like to think that Candy rebelled against Mickey Nailand, his insistence they move from New York City upstate to West Saugerties. Did he really think to soak up the vibes of Dylan and The Band after all this time? Smalltown living is maybe why Candy fled us, after all — the endless fields, the boredom, the lack of culture. Maybe she just threatened to leave, which pushed Nailand over the edge. I know it would have done me in; but the truth is, the move may have been Candy’s idea. She may well be there now, selling wild flowers in the village square, printing poems on a handmade press, holding a pose for a life drawing class. I can write a thousand storylines, each richer and more detailed than the last, all filtered through my own dreams, desires, and hang-ups. This endless mental masturbation is what keeps me going. An agonizing pleasure, this never being sure, this never being released.