by Mark Foss
37
THE WHITE CHALK MARKS HAVE lost some of their substance over three decades. Specks of black have appeared in the middle of the letters. One time Joseph lost his balance and rubbed the fine definition off the “r.” It might have been worse, but he steered himself to the floor rather than wipe out the words. Despite all odds, the message has survived. On visits home, my eyes invariably stray to “Rx. Later” and it comforts me.
But our father is dead, the blackboard and felt brush are part of his effects and Hoss has the power to execute. He waves the brush at me, gesticulating like a mad scientist about to wipe out a mathematical formula that will save the world.
Do I detect a slight East European accent by way of southern Ontario emerging from Hoss’s mouth? Ashok has pumped up Hoss with a seductive speech about letting go of the past and now my brother has launched a jihad against Candy.
I leap towards him, but he’s already moved a step closer. The brush hovers perilously close to the words.
— One more step and these words are history.
— History is never over. It gets reinterpreted and it changes. You could never see that.
Swann starts moving towards Hoss. With my brother distracted, I take another giant leap to pull his arm away. I don’t have enough leverage to dislodge the brush from his hand. All I can do now is keep him from using it, and lock up his other hand with mine. The fibres of the brush are breathing on the board and then I pull us away again. Heat from Hoss’s hand starts to tingle my palm. It won’t be long before I get third-degree burns. We’re stuck in this dance with no way out.
— You can’t even say her name.
— Candy! Candy!
The sound of Hoss’s excited voice makes me think our sister is right behind me. I let up my grip for a second to check over my shoulder and we both go down, dislodging the blackboard. Anthea helps Hoss to his feet, while Swann helps me gather the broken pieces.
— Saying her name like that. You’ve taken another step forward on the path.
Ashok is not worried about setting Caine and Abel at their throats, only at leading his disciple down the garden path. If Candy is blocking his way, push her into the sea. Is allowing Candy the right to exist so much to ask?
WHILE I LIE on Candy’s bed, Swann assembles shards of slate on the floor. Some of them are tiny slivers, while others resemble a slice of pizza. He looks for white amid the black, without asking why the words are worth fighting for.
— Rx like prescription?
— It’s short for Rox, her best friend.
— It also stands for chemical reaction.
All these years of assuming I understand what Rx means only to discover I’m missing the obvious. By “chemical reaction” is she predicting a fiery connection with Mickey Nailand or simply telling us about the love flowing through her system? Either way, it changes the meaning of “later.” It’s no longer merely a promise to return home, but rather a prescient recognition of the ephemeral nature of passion. Or maybe my brain cells are addled, too, and it just means “Rox” like it always did. It’s all good. New possibilities feed my hopes.
— I’ve never been to a funeral before. Is there singing?
— You’ll need to ask my brother. He’s in charge.
— Is Ashok going to say something?
— Over my dead body.
Swann rolls towards the bed, exhausted, coming to rest about where Rox would sleep with Candy. I don’t know if it’s the room, that I’m lying on my back, or that I can’t see Swann’s face, but words start pouring out. I tell him all about Candy before she disappeared. I leave out my discovery and theories of Molly O. Plan A is still in force.
Growing shadows block out the peeling paint on the walls. Which is fine. I prefer to remember the room pristine, as it once was. Distant thunder. The heavens are saying I was wrong to disturb the silence.
— Keep looking for her, man.
We lie without speaking, undisturbed until a tiny rap on the door signals the arrival of two plates of tofu-vegetable stir-fry on a bed of kasha. Neither of us eats or moves.
— Can I look at Phebe’s things?
— They’re gone.
Spirited away or taken by Rox before she left. He looks anyway, shining Candy’s desk lamp into the corner. Prying up the loose board, he reaches into empty space.
— I feel something.
I turn my head to face the wall.
— Check this out! There’s an old photo, a lock of hair …
I roll over so quickly that I tumble onto the floor. Avoiding the slate pieces so precisely arranged, I crawl towards Swann on all fours. It is Phebe’s cache, restored to its proper place. Was it there the whole time? Far away, so close. My hands tremble holding these treasures. I scan the blank pages for a sign of black letters, convinced that maybe even her words have reappeared. If not, there’s always tomorrow.
From the window, I see Hoss set up a bed for Ashok on the stage. If Candy does make it back before dawn, she will stumble first upon the Hungarian from Hamilton. She may depart without a word or do him an injury for invading her space. I need to be a countervailing force in the field. This time I will make sure the flashlight batteries work, and my beacon will guide her home.
I gaze at the hundreds of pieces from the broken message board Swann has grouped into slate black and chalk white. No skywriting, only clouds and smoke. My hand moves a few white pieces around and then a few more, as if guided by a Ouija board. The shapes hint at letters and I switch pieces feverishly until I uncover an unmistakable sign from Candy.
“late.”
My fever doesn’t let up. My head hurts. Because I can also see “tale.”
The sign is mistakable, after all, and I’m not sure which of my narratives about Candy to believe anymore.
38
I SPREAD NOTES FOR CANDY all over the house, urging her to meet us at the funeral home by eight. The others have gone ahead. I drive slowly along the concession road, checking behind for a figure waving at me madly to stop. Candy. Joseph. Mary. Anyone would do. But no one’s on this desolate road but me. Not even Rox has come back in time.
I can’t tear my eyes off the rear-view mirror. So much so that I narrowly miss a large rock dead ahead. The past is more compelling than the present. Has it come to this? No, it’s been like this a while.
Garish armchairs tucked into every nook and cranny, dark coffee tables empty of mugs or cups, insipid paintings of birds in flight or flowers on sedate walls. A solemn young man in a poorly cut suit motions with his arm to follow him down the corridor.
— Are you expecting anyone else?
— Possibly.
— We can wait a few more minutes. After, you can stay as long as you like.
— Until the last credit rolls and the curtain falls.
He’s never thought of the viewing room as a film theatre, but smiles blankly, accustomed to mourners and their strange ways. He doesn’t know the half of it.
Hoss, Anthea, and Ashok are sitting cross-legged under a shuttered picture window, eyes closed, bodies rocking as they chant the same indecipherable words over and over. Swann has saved me a seat, needlessly since the others aren’t going anywhere, but I appreciate the gesture nevertheless. Then I see the plastic baggie of jujubes that safeguards the third seat. Nice touch. He has understood even without me saying. In the Candy wars, he is my aide-de-camp.
HOSS SCRAMBLES TO his feet, bends over, and hugs me awkwardly. The sight of Ashok’s smug face observing our brotherly reconciliation keeps me firmly planted in the chair. They’re all on their feet now, standing in front of the window and blocking our view. This isn’t a cinema for them, it’s a rock concert, and they’re obnoxious fans. Any moment now Hoss will flick his lighter and Anthea will start a ritual clap to bring out the main attraction. I’ve got one ear cocked to the door behind us, attuned to a delicate turn of the handle.
The blinds rise, revealing what looks like a large furnace duct connected to rollers t
hat stand at waist level. A particle-board box sits on the rollers, a little off kilter. The rest of the room seems empty and sterile. It’s hard to tell since we have no peripheral vision through the window. Ashok would say that all we can see is what’s ahead of us. Candy, please hurry. Please.
The flickering green light and the horrendous racket coming from this machine don’t inspire much confidence. Joseph’s modest container will pass through an open flap, not the curtain I’ve seen in countless films. I only hope the green light doesn’t go off halfway through, leaving him stuck in there.
The kid in the bad suit walks into the frame to adjust the machine. Without a glance at his audience, he positions the box and rolls it through the flap. It takes all of three seconds. He employs all the poise and poetry of a bagboy rolling groceries out the store to idling cars. My eyes are closed and I can see it all clearly: while we wait for our order to appear through the trap door, Joseph practises chants to the spin of the rollers and the thud of the plastic containers bumping into each other. Of course, the cars are never lined up in the same order as the groceries. I feel for the pimply kid outside in the cold, running up and down the row of cars, suffocating on fumes, getting honked at and pointed to, catching his own fingers between the plastic containers. He has a dignity the inside bagboy could never understand. My eyes well up with tears, overcome with nostalgia for car-pickup. Why must things change?
The three of them resume their positions on the floor and the two of us, not knowing what else to do, return to our chairs. I try to quench the hollowness in my gut with a handful of cherry jujubes.
— We are here to witness the last journey of Joseph Grant, Senior. His suffering on this earthly plane is now over.
— What the fuck does he know about Joseph’s suffering and how the fuck does he know it’s over? It’s a two-part question.
— I thought you had discussed this with your brother. Perhaps I should leave.
— I’m making the decisions. I want you to stay.
Hoss pulls a lighter out of his pocket, and a ziplock bag with some mean-looking weed. He lights a clump, which emits a puff of smoke that smells illegal.
— Sage breeds purity.
He passes the herbs in front of Ashok and Anthea, waving the smoke into their faces and up and down the length of their bodies. She starts choking and reaches for her puffer. With an aggressive thrust, Hoss shoves the sage in our direction. I wave it away, but thick smoke now envelops the room, obscuring my brother from view. His defiant voice reaches me through an impenetrable haze.
— Ashok is buying the Wasteland.
From the ceiling, a smoke alarm emits a piercing beep. Hoss dumps the sage into a pitcher of water; Swann looks instinctively for a broom to clear the air; and Ashok closes his eyes calmly. On the other side of the window, the kid in the suit jumps into the frame to survey the oven. He throws us a dirty look, reaches for his cellphone, and lowers the blinds on our pagan smoke.
39
WE DIDN'T OWN HORSES OR cattle, not like the real family on Bonanza, but Joseph planted sagebrush every spring, out front near the archway and around the boulders. Artemisia californica. We lived in a kind of desert, so why not? It never took. The cactus died too. The ground was not fallow, just fucked-up. But I never stopped believing. Joseph was the wise patriarch. We were the loyal sons. The ones supposed to take over. It’s not enough that he lost his wife and daughter, that we abandoned the family calling, that we haven’t provided offspring. Now his firstborn wants to jettison our field of dreams to a guru with a big-screen TV. Ashok has never seen the Bonanza men burst through the burning map of the Ponderosa ranch on their horses in the opening of the show. But he wants to write our epilogue, removing us from the final credits. He’s been salivating over the deed to our land. Spittle has rolled off his beard onto the page, his paw prints have smudged the wet spot and the name of Joseph Grant is barely legible.
He will purify the Wasteland of our family with his smart-ass sage, encircling that infernal weed over all our sacred places. His smoke will blacken the growth charts on the kitchen wall, make the All My Children tapes self-destruct in five seconds, cancel out Candy’s scent from the bedroom. Never mind Joseph did not want sage tracked in the house.
He will take the house down altogether. No mercy. The driver will remove his hard hat. He’ll breathe deeply with the rest of them before ramming the stones with his bulldozer. Rafters will tumble from the barn. Joists and two-by-fours will pummel the ancient Steenbeck. No moment of silence for Going, going, gone. He will keep the three-tiered stage for group meditations or mass marriages. The field will have to go. Drain the poison, fill up the quicksand, re-drill the well, bury the final resting places of Joseph and Mary. Don’t forget the Wi-Fi for easy bank transfers. Plant your quinoa. I hope you choke on it.
I’ve been waiting so long. I don’t have a right to be impatient? I suspect Candy has already arrived. She is devastated to hear news of Joseph’s death, full of self-loathing for having missed the funeral by an hour. Even now, despite my many written reassurances, she debates whether she has the right to stay. But no, the concession road is calm, dust-free. No one has passed within the last hour. Not Rox, not Candy. Not even the others. Has my sister walked in from the highway? A whiff of doubt hovers on the passenger side. I lower the window before it can take hold.
They arrive, the four of them, after me. No Candy, but at least Hoss and Ashok have not waylaid her and forced her to sign off her third of the estate. The time has come to end this talk of death in absentia and selling the Wasteland, to show them that Candy is not just alive, but coming home. I only wish Rox were here for the show.
— Any talk of selling the Wasteland is premature. Everyone please sit. I have a short film to show you. It’s silent so I will narrate. No questions until it’s over.
A documentary film should respect the intelligence of its audience. It should raise questions, not provide answers. It should take the form of a meditative essay. No patronizing voice-overs to guide and direct the viewer. No commentary from the director before the actual screening. Better to allow people to experience the work on their own terms. Let them ask questions afterwards. Include an interview with the director in the special features of a dvd instead of a commentary plastered over the film.
But there is so little time and so much at stake. I can’t afford for them to puzzle over my montage of auction film clips and classic Molly O scenes, to fill the gaps of silence with meaningless chatter. And so I stand next to the screen, professorially, about to sacrifice my beliefs for the higher good.
— There are good sightlines from the sofa. All right, on the floor if you must. Turn off your cellphones, please. Hit the lights, Swann. Candy gets her start in show business in our own backyard. She is a game show hostess here. Now she’s Misty Rowe from Hee Haw. You see the bare feet? We did these commercials when we were kids. In high school there was a film club. Mr. Beecroft. He taught me how to develop 16 millimetre. The chemicals are slimy, hard to wash off. Here’s Candy as Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express. As Theda Bara in Cleopatra. As Mary Pickford in The Foundling. The girl character is called Molly O. That’s how I found her. Mary, Mickey, and Molly are the holy trinity. One Hundred Percent American. Look at the auctioneer’s helper. Yes, exactly, an auctioneer. See how she moves backwards. Never looks behind, just like Candy on stage here. Mickey Nailand got into trouble with M’liss. You can hardly see her breasts. This is Nailand par excellence. Everything obscured, in shadow. See this guy in the front row without a bid card. That pork pie hat, it’s the same one in this photo. The Buster Keaton look. Mickey Nailand. He was a mix of Dwoskin and early Fassbinder. But don’t think Molly O was all his doing. Candy was the true genius. She invented Molly O. Of course she had to make silent films. What would you expect? The blackboards. Late. You can see the word on the floor upstairs. It’s in Mrs. Jones Entertains, too. See the rubbed-off slate here? She said “later.” She meant “late.” You think Molly O is nak
ed here, but look at the gloves. And here, and here. See the gloves? Mickey Nailand is the man who was bad. Sex. It’s all through the films. But there is no porn. They are barely erotic. So much hidden. Like Candy, burying herself in Molly O. What you see is the depiction of absence. The inter-titles, the music, the shadows, they all conspire to keep us from Molly O. She remains elusive. Unable to be captured. A muse. I’ve started a blog and have printed off all my posts for you. I’ve sent her a coded message about Joseph. She didn’t make it in time for the funeral. But she’s on her way. I’m pretty sure. In any case, we can’t sell the Wasteland until she signs off her third of the estate.
It took all of fifteen minutes. If I had shown it days ago, when they first arrived, I could have avoided this unpleasantness with Hoss and Ashok. They would have understood the inappropriateness of real estate transactions. But I was waiting for the propitious moment. I’ve been off on Candy’s arrival all week. What made me think I could get the time right with anyone else?
Hoss gets up abruptly from the sofa, tears streaming down his face as he disappears out the back door. Stay in the moment, damn you, even if it hurts. Ashok, rising effortlessly out of his cross-legged position, follows Hoss. Everything happens for a reason. You are where you need to be. It’s all good. All the usual platitudes. Hoss is inconsolable, no doubt torn between wanting to sell the Wasteland to please his guru and moved to know what happened to his sister. Ask her forgiveness for the fog you’ve been in since she left, for doubting she would ever return.
Anthea and even Swann look uncomfortable, wishing they could have snuck out. Yet they seem perfectly in tune with their discomfort, sitting miserably together, a minor chord mother-and-child-reunion on the couch. A strange vantage point, standing here like this, in front of the screen. I can see what was once behind my back, or could if it were really there. Mary lighting her Tareyton. She never smoked upstairs. A quaint notion from the days of smoking sections in airplanes. It permeated, unfiltered, up the staircase and under the bedroom door, through the walls. I can still smell it, sometimes. Here, though, where it should be strongest, I sense nothing. No lethal scent, no ghostly presence. Now Swann and Anthea, too, have vanished. They were here only a moment ago.