Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  The bad locations and the meddling by other writers, as well as by Pacific executives, was not what caused Emery the most trouble. No, the larger problem came about because of the subject matter, which was a thing the Pacific writers had not changed, at the basest element. The premise was that man was a primate, related to apes, and that perhaps his warlike nature and destructive tendencies were things evolution could not breed out of him, and in view of this, man did not deserve the world he had inherited from his ancestors. That particular moral was Emery’s initial drive to write the script, and it had somehow made it through all the rewrites and alterations, all the way to the screen.

  A man had recently approached him in a Howard Johnson’s while he sat and ate with his family:

  “Hey, Asher: Saw your ape movie. You just don’t have any shame, do you? Come on, apes? Are you kidding me? From men? It’s insulting.”

  “Listen friend, I’m just having lunch with my family and-”

  “Don’t call me friend. I got better friends. Go back to the other side, jackass.”

  “Mister, you’re gonna walk out of here right now, or I’m gonna throw you out.”

  “Go to Hell, Asher. Say hello to Darwin while you’re there.”

  Even the neighborhood’s mailman had begun giving him grimy looks. Emery’s script had been misrepresented heavily, but the ideas at the story’s heart had remained somewhat intact. It didn’t help that the constant action placed into the final script made the movie more of a silly romp through fantasy than an expository, moral tale. Had the studio handled it the way Emery had planned, much of the lashing he was now getting could have been alleviated. When a thinking piece posed an interesting question or conceit, it was for thought, a bit of discussion, and was supposed to get the attention of those who discovered it. A mind-twister. When an action-horror piece, badly done, posed an interesting question or conceit, it was no longer of interest, but just conceited and in the way of the action. It made the movie preachy and did not propose thought on those who viewed it, but explained its premise with ham-fisted drunkenness, and became a laugh.

  If a wizened hermit on the mount said man lived in but infancy throughout the whole of life, there was an entirely different meaning to be gained than if the village idiot said, “People are big babies.” The reputation of a statement, and its connotations, were invested in the speaker and presentation of the idea.

  There was a surge of religious groups that had seen the film as an affront to their beliefs, as the first arrow shot in a particular sort of battle against faith. Why they had not argued over evolution in films in previous decades seemed mysterious. Something about the new times had caused everyone to feel a little fire, he supposed. These riled-up religious groups were answering what they thought to be his initial assault with their own volley, throwing stones at him in the newspapers and all over the radio, nodding to one another with a feigned aplomb. They charged that he hated God. They used his name as proof against Unitarianism, and later, after some scrutiny of several of his Other Side episodes, as a cant against atheism. The more radical of these organizations and individuals began trying to connect him with other things they despised, openly suspecting he was in league with communists due to his support of evolution (a word they often used as code for godlessness), and alleging he was a homosexual. When they grew angry over the course of an interview or letter-to-the-editor, they resorted to the ugly words: Fraud. Apostate. Three-letter man. Pinko.

  With these skirmishes against him, there was no battle, to Emery. He had simply written a movie that was, for the most part, a prolonged Other Side tale, one that had been desiccated by the studio, several work-for-hire writers, and then flung up shortly on a screen with the popular, giddy utilization of an action plot and a chesty star. It was only a movie, and a flop, at that. Somehow, it had caused outrage among those most bristly in their religions. The words they used could hurt him far more than sticks and stones. Emery was unemployed and trying to convince the powers on high that his dozens of awards for writing and his two popular shows meant he could, in fact, write well. As for controversy over The Passing of the Hand, that sort of attention usually bred greater celebrity, did it not? The networks were unconvinced.

  All the doors seemed to have been locked. When he had first started down the ski-jump into television, he had possessed the fortune of being unknown, which meant he could have contained some hidden spark of ability just waiting to be discovered. Now, he had been discovered and his tricks had been watched and his presence had been digested. Emery Asher’s score was in, and he had inadvertently upset a few judges, and many more viewers. The individuals and groups approached quietly, when he wasn’t looking, but then blared loudly to all who would listen. The conundrum was that these drumbeaters judged him inconsequent and yet were still unwilling to leave him alone.

  Emery was trying to stay involved, to be sequent, to keep a damn job, but he was constantly harangued by those passing crabs that sought to pick at his skin. They scuttled about him with claws and heads raised, thinking in some way that there was a sort of game afoot. There was not. His respect for the organization of America’s various religions was sound. He thought faith in the supreme was a beautiful and monumental thing that had nurtured civilization like nothing else could.

  “God’s watching you, queer.”

  Emery had now been pushed away from a special in which he was to narrate the biography of Philo Farnsworth, disputed inventor of the television. An hour long, this would have also served quite well as a special on the rise of television, a subject for which Emery held a strong interest and professional affiliation, and meeting the aged Mr. Farnsworth would have been a wondrous perk to taking the job. This was no longer being offered to Emery, but to another voice actor, though Emery had been paid somewhat handsomely for the contract’s dissolution.

  The money was needed and taken, but the affront was manifest: Television, his mode of operation for the past decade, now seemed to think him too much of a contention to be seen in connection with its history. He had been given more of its writing awards than almost anyone, yet was now locked in the cellar so as not to embarrass the network when company came over.

  It was while reading another lecture request that the phone rang and he rushed to answer. This expedience was not in anticipation of work. The year had been a macabre descent into horror for Larry. He was as if ninety years in age, utterly senile and unable to format a straight thought, or recognize anyone, including himself. The dreaded thing was so close.

  Emery and Beth had spent many nights with the Belmonts over the course of the year, and at first, these were nearly medicinal, a great boost to Larry’s cheer, and there had been much fun, if awkward in its nature. Even the stopping-by of Orson Banry at Larry’s home several months back had been made with no ill-will or problem. Emery had stood beside the novelist and they had discussed the changes in doctor synopsis. There had been a new hope in a changed diagnosis, and two doctors had collaborated on series of procedures and medications they felt would keep Larry from debilitating further. This fell apart quickly, however. After this, Larry changed fast. The final diagnosis was again about time-frame, not disorder, and contained no hope.

  The degeneration of Larry’s mind had caused Emery’s visits to become tragic affairs, and it was with much regret that Emery and Beth decided to cease their visits with him. It was simply too much to bear. Beth could not cry anymore and Emery was so horrified by the physical twisting and annihilation of his young friend that he had begun having recurring nightmares of this same ailment coming for him, for Beth, William, or the girls. They were worse than even those awful dreams of the war. The war dreams nearly seemed a sort of companion anymore, but the few nightmares he had conjured regarding Larry were almost debilitating.

  Beth walked into the living room and watched as Emery lifted the receiver. An update that morning had given them the news that today would likely be the end of Larry’s suffering. Such a thing would be a magnanim
ous gift, most felt. Emery was devastated by the notion that young Larry Belmont, the fiery young man with all the ideas who Emery had worked closely with but four years back, was now the withered husk of a thirty-eight year old codger. Larry had become an angry, addled spewer of nonsense and hatred, a twisted soul that wracked his back against the bed and shouted obscenities in his confusion and pain. He shouted about his mother and called her a whore. He repeated things like “Don’t touch the little girl! She fucks like a boy!” with a disturbed smile. He no longer spoke about sailing and he no longer thought about writing. He said terrible things during brief outbursts of anguish. The doctors had been wrong about Larry dying without pain. Quite wrong.

  “Hello?” Emery inquired. He gave a nod at Beth then, after hearing a short response, indicating the call was from who they had expected.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll get her,” he said, turning to Beth, “She wants to talk to you.”

  Beth took the receiver.

  “Helen?”

  There was a moment of closed eyes and Emery sighed, glanced out the window into the street before his house.

  “All right... I see. I- Helen, if there’s anything you need, you let us know. It’s- I mean that. Anything. Don’t hesitate at all.”

  Rebecca was showing Vivian a few of her cheers on the front lawn. She was not yet a cheerleader, but hoped to be. Vivian saw her father through the window and waved. He gave his best impersonation of a smiling dad and drifted back into the world within the house.

  “I am so sorry. I am truly sorry,” Beth muttered, her voice containing the ache of something near to surfacing. She had covered her mouth with her hand, an automatic reaction. There was a pause as she listened. Emery heard a brief trill from the phone, across the room, and knew it was Helen weeping on the other end. She would be standing in their bedroom, beside sweet Larry, her husband who was now dead after several years of nature’s most sinister side. It had changed the both of them in nearly every way, and the Helen that now lived in the Belmont house was not the person Emery had once met over daiquiris and Monopoly. That woman, like her husband, had ceased to exist. Beth lifted her head and blinked her eyes slowly.

  “Oh, a much better place,” she quietly said.

  The call ended and Beth set the phone in its cradle. Emery’s eyes reached over to his wife like a child’s arms from a bassinet.

  “Okay,” he said, walking over and putting his arms around her. She hugged him and clenched her jaw, head thick and knees weak. They had known this moment would come, for almost a year, and both felt that Larry Belmont, the actual man, had been lost months ago. The news of this passing, however, something that had begun to feel like an almost scheduled event, had somehow crept into this hour and, despite their present dread, found them somehow unguarded. The couple had been well-prepared and yet not prepared at all for what struck them, quietly through the heart, a sharp nail through velvet. Beth’s hair fell against his cheek and he caught his breath.

  “…damn it…” he mumbled.

  “There’s finally some mercy for him,” she said, throat constricted.

  “Oh, Larry... thank god.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The man had a brother. He had an uncle. This was news. In the eight years for which Emery had known Larry Belmont, the deceased had never once mentioned an extended family. The young writer’s family had been his wife, Helen. His family had been Moffat, Asher, Collery, and even Banry, writers and friends in the industry by which he worked. That he had a family was assumed, as it was for anyone, but there had never been a word about it. Larry’s uncle said very little, though his brother, Jones, was quite talkative and had no trouble speaking candidly about Larry’s childhood, which participants of the funeral would soon find to be unsettling and abnormal.

  Helen had become approachable and kind to the Ashers, though she had always been a bit cantankerous when it came to gaining time with her husband, something that Emery found to be delightful and necessary. There had been a kinship between Helen and Beth, but this had surpassed the general notion of ‘the wives’, and both men had found themselves a part of this kinship. They had been four people that enjoyed one another’s company, not simply the two men and the two women. Now, this four had become three, and perhaps less, and the occasion was a somber one. The arrival of Larry’s family changed this in a shocking way, because these two individuals had not only debuted at a funeral, but were speaking about Larry, telling stories from his childhood. Helen was quite surprised by the intrusion of Larry’s family into the funeral. It was only through a brief discussion with Helen that Emery would come to understand the peculiarity of their presence; Helen had known about Larry’s family but had never met them, and Larry had despised them.

  The oddity began when Jones Nutts, Larry’s brother, began relating stories on Larry’s childhood, which did not, it came out, contain a boy named Lawrence. Emery found this of friendly interest, but after a short while, the stories became horrid curiosities. One facet of Larry’s family is that they only had stories about his childhood, and nothing past puberty. Emery soon discovered this was due to Larry having escaped his family after high school, falsifying his way into the military at 16 and, when his three years of service were complete, moving to Los Angeles, with nary a look back. He had even changed his name to avoid his family, or anyone he grew up with, from ever finding him. Larry’s last name was not, in truth, Belmont, and his first name was not Lawrence. The man with whom Emery had associated and quickly bonded had a somewhat secret past, one that went beyond the ordinary and bespoke a stream of events that could rival any Other Side tale. Larry’s birth name had not been Belmont, but Nutts, and while his birth certificate specified Lawrence as a first name, his mother considered him having been born Evelyn.

  The struggle this child had undergone in his formative years went far beyond having an unfortunate last name. His mother, Letty, who Emery learned had passed away seven years prior, had considered her son a daughter at birth. She had then dressed Larry in girl clothing and had him attend school as a female, under the name Evelyn, until the fifth grade. The small, mountain town had no knowledge of Larry’s actual gender. To them, Evelyn Nutts was a bit precocious, but a well-meaning girl with boyish interests.

  Larry’s older brother, Jones, having moved out when Larry was quite young, told Emery a harrowing story about how Letty would threaten Larry. She often stated that she would to kill Larry’s dog if word ever got out that he was not a girl. Larry had lived his earliest social years as a female, masquerading in another gender and under a female name, in order to keep his own mother from cutting his beloved dog’s throat. The surname Nutts, however unfortunate it may have been for Larry, was quite fitting for his mother. Where was his father during this bizarre ruse of gender? Dead in an automobile collision. This had occurred three months before Larry’s birth. The man had left his young and disturbed wife with a five-year old son and a three-months-along surprise in a bit of genetic material that stubbornly would prove not to be the gender his mad wife preferred. Aside from these things, the man had left Letty with an unfortunate surname, a few love letters, and a Scottish terrier puppy named Yankee.

  Larry had been a bright young girl, good with history and English but bad at socializing, a bit of a swift thief in a few candy store heists, an ardent enthusiast of his terrier’s companionship, and somewhat of a tomboy who, at the age of ten, proved to be an actual boy. One afternoon, Larry found a box in the attic while trying to patch up a hole that had formed in the roof. The box contained some clothing from his older brother’s elementary school days. Larry had hidden an outfit of these boy clothes in the mailbox one night, and, after leaving the house for school in the morning, he fetched them, hiding these in a bag. Once at school, Larry entered the little girls’ room, changed, and when ready, exited the bathroom as a boy, forever ridding himself of being Evelyn. Yankee had died the week previous. Natural causes. Letty had become tyrannical in order to continue reigning Larry
in, to keep a daughter, which the mother thought was a manner of protecting the young girl from becoming a boy. Letty could not keep up the pressure, however, and Evelyn soon became Lawrence, as was printed on his birth certificate.

  The local newspaper had apparently run amok with the story, though due to the somewhat secluded nature of the small, Appalachian town, Letty was allowed to keep her young son. She punished him relentlessly, but not so much as his fellow schoolmates did. The beatings, according to Jones, were brutal in scope and happened often. This resulted in something else that Emery was surprised to hear: Larry had fake teeth, which he had been using since the eleventh grade, after a particularly bad fight got the better of him and some stomping had occurred.

  Larry had not only died in a mind-ingesting, grisly fashion, but it seemed now he had also been raised in a similar one. Helen had known about the fake teeth, of course, and about the childhood, it came out, and she detested the Nutts family for damaging her husband in such a way. Helen had been keeping it in her mind that if she were ever to meet Letty Nutts, she would likely run the woman down with a car, and even voiced this aloud to Beth near the end of the funeral. It was to Helen’s satisfaction when Jones explained that Letty had been dead for many years. Helen knew about the change from Evelyn to Larry, and the later, legal change in name from Lawrence Nutts to Lawrence Belmont. She knew the whole story and had kept all of it secret, as if the childhood were her own, and surely at her husband's behest. Emery tried to focus and keep his mind on remembering Larry, on performing the correct function of a funeral, but this sudden influx of bizarre news and revelation had given the funeral the feel of a grotesque carnival. They were all in one of Larry’s stories, it seemed, but one that sadly functioned as non-fiction.