This Book Is Not Yet Rated

by Peter Bognanni

“Don’t pretend that you’re attracted to me if you’re not! Because you’re not. I get it. That’s okay. That’s how things are. Just don’t pretend. Because it hurts. And it’s mean. And it’s not okay.”

  “I barely touched you,” she said quietly.

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “Just . . . don’t barely touch me.”

  I wondered suddenly if my mom was awake. I couldn’t hear anything outside the door. I stared toward the window where I could see a perimeter of sun around the pulled shade. I had no idea what time it was. I felt really sick now, like my stomach had shrunk to the size of a pea. All my muscles were tense. And the look on Raina’s face was awful. Like yet another person had disappointed her.

  “Look, I should probably go back to the couch,” I said. “You know, so my mom doesn’t think . . .”

  I started toward the door, but I didn’t make it far before she spoke again.

  “I talked to my agent yesterday,” she said.

  I stopped. But it took me a second to get on the same page.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “My replacement isn’t working.”

  “You mean they. . .”

  “Want me to come back. To finish the second film.”

  I felt a little short of breath.

  “I see,” I said.

  It was all I could say before a buzz came from my dresser. We both looked over. My phone.

  “But . . .” I said.

  And nothing else came out. The phone kept buzzing, stuttering closer to the edge. Raina said nothing. I wanted to walk out of the room, but I couldn’t do it. I also wanted to ask more questions. Couldn’t do that either. I jumped over and caught my phone right before it dropped.

  “Hello,” I said, after scooping it up to my ear. “Hello. Hi.”

  “Is this Ethan?” asked an upbeat voice.

  “I think so,” I said.

  I was still staring at Raina.

  “Well, this is the office of the president,” said the voice.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Dan Javitz, University of Minnesota president. This is his assistant.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I understand. Go on.”

  She cleared her throat. She probably wasn’t used to being interrupted.

  “The president would like to meet with you,” she said. “Can you be here in an hour?”

  32

  I tried to switch gears on my ride to the university. I was pretty sure that I had just ruined everything a few minutes ago, and all I really wanted to do was sit in the dark watching horror movies all day. Invade me. Zombify me. Snatch my body. Instead I was getting an audience with the president. He didn’t have much power in the wider world, but he ruled the kingdom of campus, and maybe he would be willing to hear me out about the theater and his ruthless employee.

  I didn’t know much about him except that he came from a business background and not an academic one. Also, he liked people to call him President Dan. The only beacon of hope I had came from the fact that he was a self-described “movie buff,” and he had even visited the Green Street years ago for a March Madness showing of Hoosiers. In the one photo I had seen of him he was making finger quotes in the air and wearing a bolo tie.

  His office waiting room was, unsurprisingly, very presidential. Lots of dark wood and gilded framed pictures of old whitey-haired deans from bygone eras. Alumni magazines were fanned out across a coffee table and the faces of successful recent graduates smiled up at me with airbrushed teeth. The administrative assistant took one look at me and said:

  “You must be Ethan.”

  How she knew this, I did not know. I’ve been told I look like an Ethan, but probably I was just the only thing on the calendar that morning.

  “Go ahead in,” she added. “They’re waiting for you.”

  “They?” I asked.

  She looked at her computer where she was scrolling through photos of someone else’s vacation, smiling and clicking away. Like. Like. Like.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I walked down the hallway past more portraits. Finally, I approached an open door, and it felt like I was finally seeing the Wizard of Oz. But instead of smoke and fire and holograms, the man behind the curtain was already in plain sight. President Dan sat behind a desk in a maroon suit and tie. His glasses were as round as his pink cheeks. He was somehow smiling and frowning at the same time. And when I stepped all the way inside the office, I saw why.

  On one side of the room was Ron Marsh, sitting in a leather chair, one foot resting on his knee. And on the other side was Griffin, slouching in a wooden folding chair with a member of campus security standing behind him. Griffin saw me come in, but he refused to make eye contact with me. The security officer looked a little bored. A walkie-talkie crackled from his enormous belt.

  “Good morning, Ethan,” said President Dan. “Thank you for joining us.”

  I was still standing about ten feet past the doorway.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Everyone waited to see if I had anything else to say. I did not.

  The unexpected gathering in the room had stifled any initial pleas I had hoped to make. It seemed I had walked into some kind of intervention. President Dan looked around the room then folded his hands amiably on his desk and said: “Ethan, can I tell you something I read recently?”

  At first I thought this was a rhetorical question. When I saw that it wasn’t, I said:

  “Sure.”

  “Did you know nostalgia comes from the Greek ‘nostos,’ meaning return and ‘algos’ which is suffering?”

  “No,” I said.

  I looked around the room. I wondered if he’d already shared this with everyone else. No one spoke.

  “Interesting, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “I think so too,” said President Dan. “And I was thinking about this in regard to the situation we have here, where on the one hand we love this old theater and on the other hand we have the present, which we cannot stop. The present is always coming no matter how much we might want to put the brakes on and . . . nostos.”

  “Can I ask a quick question?” I asked.

  “You just did!” said President Dan, grinning.

  I pointed to the right.

  “Why is Griffin here?”

  Ron, silent so far, suddenly spoke up from the corner.

  “I caught him in my office, going through my garbage like a raccoon,” he said. “I’m having him expelled.”

  I looked to President Dan.

  “I’m afraid breaking and entering is against the student code of conduct,” he said. “So that’s a likely possibility. Also, we have received some security footage that shows him riding on the elderly mobility device that crashed into the Applebee’s on Washington recently.”

  “I’m innocent!” yelled Griffin. “If you want a real story, ask your employee what he was doing at the karaoke joint! Go ahead, ask him!”

  I looked at Ron. He looked back at me. Then at President Dan.

  “The kid thinks I’m involved in some kind of scheme,” he said.

  “You’re a grifter! A con man! A fakealoo! I know one when I see one!”

  Griffin wasn’t even trying to make sense anymore. So, I tried to pull myself together. I looked at Ron.

  “What were you doing there?” I asked.

  The room went quiet for a moment. Then Ron sighed and rubbed his eyes. It was the first time I had ever seen his face turn red without being accompanied by a burst of anger.

  “I was meeting my ex-wife,” he said. “Okay? I like to sing with her. Is that such a crime? No one said divorce was going to be easy. I’m still figuring it out. We both are.”

  “Your ex-wife?” I said.

  “What was in the envelopes?” asked Gr
iffin.

  “What envelopes?” asked President Dan.

  Griffin stood up and pointed at Ron.

  “Kickbacks! I’ve got it all on tape!”

  “Griffin, stop yelling,” I said.

  “The papers,” said Ron.

  “What papers?” asked President Dan.

  “Divorce papers,” he said. “The divorce papers! I . . . uh . . . keep mailing them back. She wants them finalized. But I’m just not ready! We all have our own timelines for these things.”

  Ron looked on the verge of tears.

  “This is all getting very strange,” said the president.

  “We used to be business partners. I thought maybe if I showed her my vision for this project . . .”

  “I thought this rebuild was in the best interest of the college,” said President Dan.

  “How could that possibly be?” I said.

  I was in the middle of the room now, shifting my gaze from person to person. I walked over to a table near the president’s desk and picked up a college brochure.

  “This is supposed to be a place to encounter new ideas. Look at the world from new angles, right? That’s what my dad told me. To go to college so I can be exposed to things I’d never see or learn about anywhere else. Well, that doesn’t seem to be happening with this.”

  I was gesticulating wildly with my arms now.

  “My dad was the first person in his family to go to college and he came to this theater and saw a double feature of Casablanca and Citizen Kane. After that, he started coming at least three times a week. He saw all the great directors here. Bergman. Hitchcock. Spike Lee. Claire Denis. Tarkovsky. Kubrick and Wong Kar-wai. It was where he got his real education. And where he could be with his people, all sharing an experience. It’s not for everybody. Nothing is. But the people who love this place need it. They need a place to be. They need a community.”

  When I was done speaking, Griffin was applauding. But he was the only one. Ron was still rubbing his eyes.Who knows if he had even heard me. President Dan just blinked at me for a moment from behind his round glasses. He cleared his throat.

  “Thank you for that, Ethan. That was very . . . genuine.”

  He unfolded and folded his hands.

  “There is one problem, however,” he said.

  “A problem.”

  “Yes, we sent in some inspectors after the rat situation, and in addition to that, there were a few other hiccups.”

  “I know,” I said. “It needs some repairs . . .”

  “It has extensive structural damage.”

  “But nothing that can’t be fixed, right?”

  “We thought it was just from some ruptured pipes but there are also termites. A lot of them.”

  “Okay.”

  “And black mold.”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “And asbestos. And the ventilation system itself is an extreme fire hazard. It’s a miracle the place hasn’t burned down yet.”

  I was no longer interrupting.

  “There’s also a misplaced sewage line. Some of the support beams are apparently made of Styrofoam. Don’t get me started on the joists. The foundation is cracked. There’s bat guano in the attic, and . . .”

  “I get it,” I said. “It’s not doing so hot. It’s an old building. Just tell me what we can do about it? Where do we start?”

  President Dan blinked.

  “We’re going to start, right?” I asked.

  “I have recommended it for demolition,” said President Dan.

  ETHAN’S GLOSSARY OF FILM TERMS

  ENTRY #65

  OBLIQUE ANGLE

  A shot filmed at a tilted camera angle.

  When shown on a screen, the subject of the shot looks tilted too. It’s often used when the world of the film seems completely out of balance.

  Do I really need to explain the significance of this one?

  33

  The paparazzi were gone when I got back home, and so was the object of their obsession. I expected to find Raina in my bedroom, still holing up, waiting to continue our conversation, but when I opened the door I found my mom instead. She had made my bed and she sat against the headboard, reading Dad’s book. I guess she had seen it lying around and picked it up. She didn’t even hear the bedroom door open and it was only when I said her name that she looked up from the pages and met my eyes.

  “Good book?” I asked.

  She looked down at it, as if surprised to find herself actually reading it.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking around the room. “It’s been awhile. I guess I lost track of time.”

  She flipped through the pages carelessly and then landed on dad’s author photo at the back. I walked over and sat down next to her. The picture was in black-and-white and the glasses he wore were so outdated, they looked like the safety goggles we were forced to wear in shop class. His hair was frizzed nearly into an Afro, and he had only the hint of a closed mouth smile on his face.

  “I couldn’t get him to smile,” said Mom. “I mean really smile.”

  I looked at her.

  “You took this picture?”

  She pointed to the tiny type beneath the photo. The lettering was so small I had never noticed it before, but there it was: her name.

  “It took three rolls of film to get a decent shot. Your father isn’t very photogenic, which sounds bad, I guess. He was handsome, though. Just not photogenic. And he told me that authors aren’t supposed to smile in photos. Especially for nonfiction books. You’d never take them seriously if they were beaming like idiots. He wanted to look serious. Even though he wasn’t.”

  “He could pretend,” I said.

  “Yeah, he could,” she said.

  She set the book down and looked out the window to the empty street. All the paparazzi cars had abandoned their posts. There were only a few fast-food wrappers to prove they’d ever been there at all.

  “He almost gave it all up,” she said.

  “Gave what up?” I said.

  “Writing. Teaching. Film stuff. All of it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well, when you were born, he didn’t have a teaching job yet, and he wasn’t certain he would ever get one. He hadn’t published his book, and there were very few openings. But there was a job opening for a technical writer. It was writing manuals for farming equipment. But it was a good salary and benefits. It was a good job on paper, one a lot of people would have been happy to have, especially in a tough economy.

  “He went to the interview and they liked him. He was charming. He was a good writer. They offered him the job and he asked if he could have the weekend to think about it. I was home with you at the time, and I was still trying to find work. His graduate school stipend wasn’t enough to live on really, not with a baby. Things were getting tight. We didn’t talk much about the job at first. He holed up inside his office, working on the concluding chapter of his book. He came out to spend time with you. You had colic at the time. You wanted to be held constantly or you cried louder than any baby I had ever heard. So he took his turn, walking you around. Singing to you. And eventually, he started talking to you about his dilemma. He talked to you like you were already an adult. It didn’t matter that you didn’t reply.

  “I can still hear him having it out with you, walking circles around the tiny living room in our student housing complex. ‘Ethan,’ he said, ‘here’s the deal, little man. I want to give you everything I can. Every single thing. I don’t want your life to be bad or sad, you know? The thought of not having diaper money for you makes me want to cry. I have cried. Just like you. But, if I give up who I am for you, I don’t know what kind of dad I’m going to be. I might be one of those guys you see at the Little League game, staring off in the distance, trying to figure out who he’s become. But I don’t want to be that
dad. I want to be the dad that’s excited to get up in the morning, and wants to share everything I love with you. I don’t want to make short term decisions that take me away from that.’

  “You were quiet the whole time,” Mom said. “Just the sound of his voice was calming to you, but you also had this wide-eyed look on your face, like you were taking in the whole predicament and you wanted to help. And he started walking faster and bouncing you a little bit, and he said, ‘Just tell me what I should do? You want the easy money? You want the fancy baby food and the bouncy chair that costs as much as our couch? Should I write about the tractors? Get that easy tractor money? So people can clearly understand how to bale some hay? Is that what I should do?’

  “You looked at him,” Mom said. “And you squinted your eyes. He had stopped walking and you seemed calm for a moment. The house was the quietest it had been in weeks. And then you scrunched up your face, and your cheeks turned red and you started to scream as loud as I had ever heard. You wailed. We could hear the next-door neighbors complaining to each other. And your dad looked at me and smiled.

  “And the next week, he went back to his book and took a morning job cleaning parking garages so his evenings would be free to write. And eventually, his book came out and his old mentor called him back to teach where he’d gone to school. But if you hadn’t cried, he might have spent his life writing about combine attachments.”

  “So I saved his career, basically.”

  “Basically,” she said. “Though, he kind of stacked the deck since all you ever did was cry. But still, it was an especially loud one that time. A persuasive argument.”

  I rested my head against my mom’s shoulder. It was something I hadn’t done in a long time—I couldn’t remember the last time actually. I forgot how safe it made me feel. But with this sense of comfort came the tears I had been holding in since yesterday. They were for a lot of things, but first among them was that the madman in shop glasses was no longer in my life.

  “I feel like if he was still here, he would know exactly what to do,” I said. “He would know who to talk to and what to say to keep the Green Street going. Everything I’ve tried has failed. Like spectacularly failed. I’ve ruined his legacy.”