Crying at Movies

by John Manderino

  He started naming everything I’d eaten, ticking off each item on his fingers.

  I corrected him about having two bags of popcorn, and took a final spoonful of tapioca.

  “I hate you,” he said quietly.

  I looked at him.

  He was sitting there with his hands in his lap, staring at me hard. “Get out of my house,” he told me.

  I set my spoon in the bowl and got up from the table.

  He kept his eyes on me.

  Stepping backwards I told him, “No problem. I was leaving anyway. My brother needs help with his homework—history, Columbus, fourteen ninety-two, all that.”

  He continued sitting there staring at me.

  I turned around and got out of there.

  THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

  Near the very end of the movie the main character Miles shouts into the camera, wild-eyed, straight at me, They’re already here! You’re next!

  Afterwards, across the dark between our beds, I asked Mike for his thoughts.

  “I don’t know …” he said. “Those pods …”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Seemed pretty goofy.”

  “What’s goofy? The seeds came from outer space and grew into huge seed pods. How is that goofy?”

  “With aliens inside?”

  “Growing inside. They didn’t just happen.”

  “And they come out looking exactly like different people in the town? How does that work?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. Prob’ly had something to do with them being aliens.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “I mean, let’s face it,” I said.

  “Face what?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Who knows what?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “Well,” he said, turning over the other way, “g’night.”

  “Sure that’s a good idea?”

  Going to sleep, I meant. That was when your alien double absorbed your mind.

  He said if it happens it happens.

  “It wouldn’t bother you? Waking up as an alien?”

  “Not if I was one.”

  That was true. When Miles’ friend Jack comes back after turning into one, he’s very peaceful—it’s creepy—telling Miles and Becky in a smooth voice how silly it is to resist, how much better off they’ll be if they just give up and go to sleep.

  I asked Mike if he wanted to play some cards.

  “Right now?”

  “Some Old Maid. Nickel a hand. Whaddaya say.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Couple hands, c’mon.”

  “Lemme sleep.”

  Mike was two years younger than me, but wasn’t afraid of half the stuff I was. Sometimes it pissed me off.

  “Tell you something,” I said to him. “If you ever did turn into an alien, know what I would do?”

  “Gut me like a catfish.”

  “That’s right, pal.”

  We were quiet.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I told him.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You’re thinking, how would I know it wasn’t you? How would I know it was really an alien pretending to be you? That’s a real good question. And here’s the answer. I would start noticing things. Little slip-ups.”

  “Yeah?” he said, half interested. “Like what.”

  “I don’t know, you’d offer me a sip of your pop or something.”

  “Oh I don’t share stuff?”

  “Before I even asked.”

  We were quiet. I was losing him again. I went to the heart of the matter. “Or maybe you’d really slip up and start showing me a little respect.”

  He turned over this way again. “A little what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t show you enough respect?”

  “Not really.”

  “Like how? Saluting you?”

  “Make a joke.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “Skip it.”

  “I wanna hear.”

  “Drop it,” I told him.

  I didn’t really want him to, but he did, he dropped it, and was quiet again. So I came out with it: “You think I’m a chicken, right? Don’t you.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Tell the truth.”

  I waited.

  “I don’t think you’re a chicken,” he finally said. “Just because you’re afraid to go to sleep, that doesn’t make you a—”

  “Wait a minute, hold it, whoa. Just because I’m what?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “See, this is what I’m talking about. This is exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “What.”

  “Respect,” I said.

  “You’re not afraid to go to sleep?”

  “Oh, you mean because there’s an alien out there in a giant seed pod waiting to take over my mind? Is that what you mean?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “Oh, my God. Listen carefully. It’s a movie, Mike, okay? It’s not real. Do you know the difference? I hope so. Otherwise, you know what? I hate to say it but you’re insane.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one afraid of going to sleep. I wanna go to sleep.”

  “So go to sleep,” I told him. “Who the hell’s stoppin’ ya?”

  We were quiet. He turned over the other way again. He was going to sleep.

  “Tell you the part of the movie I liked,” I said. “Wanna hear?”

  I waited.

  “Mike?”

  “What.”

  “Wanna hear the part I liked?”

  “Go ’head.”

  “Becky,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The guy’s girlfriend. She gave me a boner.”

  “I don’t wanna hear.”

  “Thing was huge.”

  “G’night.”

  “Like a billy club.”

  We were quiet again.

  I turned onto my back and lay staring up at the dark. After a minute I could feel him already asleep over there, part of the darkness now. I continued staring up at it, my heart beating hard. You wouldn’t even know you were gone. That was the horrible thing about it. You wouldn’t even know.

  I turned onto my side again, towards Mike. I wanted to tell him I agreed with him about the pods. The pods were goofy. Ridiculous. Funny in fact, and I laughed out loud.

  No response.

  I laughed louder.

  WEST SIDE STORY

  I didn’t know very much about my older sisters Cheryl and Linda, what made them tick. They were both good in school, I knew that, and were generally very nice to me. Sometimes they jitterbugged together, not smiling, barefoot on the kitchen floor, Ricky Nelson or Fats Domino on their little suitcase-looking record player.

  Cheryl had a boyfriend, Bob, who was tall and a little too handsome, played no baseball, and drove a car. I didn’t like him. Linda had a colored picture of the singer Fabian taped to the wall above her bed. He had the kind of face you’d love to slap.

  Sometimes one of them would send me to the drugstore with a little folded-up note for the cashier, which read, simply: kotex.

  And I knew they liked the movie West Side Story because they took a train downtown to see it three times, and afterwards went around singing:

  Tonight, tonight won’t be just any night …

  When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way …

  Maria, I just met a girl named Maria …

  They had a big glossy book from the movie, full of colored stills, and I remember looking through it carefully, trying to get a fix on these two. There were pictures of hoody-looking teenagers in tight clothes dancing hard. The guys all looked like they had jack-knives on them and the girls all looked impure.

  There were also pictures of a clean-looking couple, Tony and Maria, singing together, gazing into each other’s eyes, apparently in love. The
book said the movie was based on Romeo and Juliet, which I knew was a love story.

  Love, love.

  I studied one of the stills of Maria to see if I could imagine falling in love with her. She was in a white dress sitting on a fire escape singing down to me and I was down there singing up to her. We did that for a while. Then she sang for me to take my pants off, which I did, and she started singing like mad, and I went up there, singing.

  But I knew that couldn’t be what Cheryl and Linda had in mind when they sang, Tonight, tonight won’t be just any night …

  THE BIRDS

  The summer it came to the Dolton Theater we had an actual outbreak of starling attacks in the neighborhood, nothing major at first, just now and then a starling or two swooping low over somebody’s head on his way to the park. But from there it grew worse.

  Skippy Whalen claimed a starling had actually lifted and carried away his ball cap.

  Father Rowley was pointing in Brian Baumgartner’s face outside the church, telling him what a lousy altar boy he was, when a starling dropped a load of milky poop on his finger and flew away laughing in that ugly voice of theirs.

  According to the twins Jimmy and Joey, their feisty little dog Tuffy had fought off nine of them, killing one. For a nickel they would bring it out from their garage in a cardboard box and let you look. For a quarter you could have it.

  There was also a story going around that a pack of them in Harvey, one town over, had actually carried off a little screaming baby right out of its stroller, right in front of the mother, who fainted dead away.

  Kids were going around wearing football helmets in the middle of baseball season.

  Nothing like this had ever happened before. No one could explain. It was like the starlings were inspired by the movie. But that seemed unlikely. This kid Andy Zahara had a theory. He said the movie had everyone afraid of birds, the starlings had somehow picked up on it, then counted how many of us versus them.

  “They can count?”

  “Sure they can.”

  “But what do they want?”

  “To take over.”

  “Take over what?”

  “Everything. They wanna run the place.”

  “Oh … my … God.”

  So far the sparrows were staying out of it, so were the robins, it was just the starlings—black, freckled, oily-looking things, tiny black buttons for eyes. I remember one evening in our alley I counted ten of them along a telephone wire squawking to each other:

  —There he is.

  —Look at him.

  —Little creep.

  —Little coward.

  —Let’s crap in his hair.

  —Let’s pluck out his eyes.

  —Ready?

  —No, let’s wait.

  —Surprise him.

  They laughed and flew off together.

  I blamed Alfred Hitchcock. Near the beginning of the movie I spotted him stepping out of a pet shop with two little dogs on a leash, heading down the sidewalk like he’s got nothing to do with any of this. Snobby, coldblooded fatman—he probably enjoyed having golden-haired Tippy Hedron trapped in the attic with seagulls pecking her to shreds. That was how he got his kicks.

  In the movie the people finally give up. Very carefully they get in the car and very slowly drive away from the farmhouse, letting the birds win. But we fought back. Anyway, some older kids did.

  They put together a posse. A couple of them had BB-guns, others had rocks, bottles, baseball bats. I heard it got pretty ugly. Someone hit someone with a rock, the two of them started going at it, others joined in, and pretty soon everyone was shouting and punching and clubbing, the starlings watching from the trees, hugely amused.

  This was the way we were spending our summer vacation. This was the way we were spending our three months of freedom.

  By the time September came around, I didn’t even mind that much.

  Then sure enough, just like that, the starlings quit attacking people. In fact, they were hardly around anymore. They had ruined our summer and apparently that was all they’d had in mind.

  Sitting at my desk in Sister Veronica Lawrence’s class, staring out the window, I wondered what Alfred Hitchcock would come up with next. Maybe squirrels. I always felt like squirrels were just waiting for the chance.

  SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN

  Dear Miss Reynolds,

  I am writing to you in my pajamas on the front room couch with a lot of blankets and pillows because I have mono, which is called the kissing disease so I don’t know how I got it, I have never kissed anyone, but I would like to kiss you. Guess what I just watched on The Early Show? Singing in the Rain. And I have to say, it was pretty sickening, especially your grinning boyfriend Gene Kelly, and that other guy, the little one who sang about making them laugh, he made me want to hit him with something. But I think you are very cute and spunky. May I call you Deb? I think I have a fever, Deb. I think I might be sicker than they think. In case you’re wondering, I am thirteen, eighth grade, Sister Marie Alice’s class, Queen of Apostles, Riverdale, suburb of Chicago, Illinois, United States, North America, planet Earth, the Universe. Sister Marie Alice is the smallest nun in the school but she can slap you so hard you see stars, like in a cartoon. Are you Catholic, Deb? Every time I think about you naked, do you know what I am doing? Driving the nails in deeper into His tender hands and feet. That’s what Sister calls them, His tender hands and feet. I have the chills really bad, but I’m sweating like a pig—how can that be, Deb? Maybe I’m dying. If I died right now I would go straight to Hell and lay there twisting and screaming in pain, without any let-up, forever. Ever think about forever? It’s hard to, then all of a sudden you get it and you think No! No! Right now though, all I’m thinking about is you, in a pair of yellow rain boots, and that’s all, just the rain boots. Hope you don’t mind. I’m trying to say I like you, Deb, a lot. I like the way you sing and the way you dance and I like that chubby face of yours. But I have to say, a couple of times during the movie I was sort of hating you. Know why? Because I could tell you knew what a cutie you were, singing and dancing away, laughing inside, knowing the way you were making me get.

  Pray for me, Deb.

  Sincerely,

  Your number one fan

  IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

  It was on TV a few nights before Christmas, and although she didn’t come out and say it, I think Mom wanted this to be a “family event,” all of us watching it together, including Uncle Doug from the basement. She’d even made popcorn.

  But Uncle Doug said he was going to stay down there and read. He was halfway through this huge book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He came up and took a bowl of popcorn, though.

  So there was Mom and Dad and Nancy on the couch, Cheryl in one chair, Linda in the other, Mike and me on the floor. You could tell from the opening credits—the fancy handwriting trimmed with holly, the sleigh bells and jaunty violins—this was going to be long and corny and boring.

  Cheryl lucked out, her boyfriend Bob coming to the back door just after the thing got started. She promised Mom and Dad she’d be back early.

  “Tell him to come in and watch the movie,” Dad suggested.

  Cheryl said quietly, “He seems upset.”

  “Oh, for Christ sake,” Mom said.

  Bob was a big handsome guy in collegiate-looking clothes but very sensitive and frequently upset.

  So Cheryl got out of it. And then, while George in the movie was still a boy working at the town drugstore, the phone in the kitchen rang and Linda jumped up—“I got it!”—and ran out.

  I heard her out there: “Hello?”

  I waited.

  “Oh my God,” she said, “you’re kidding. Hang on.” She closed the kitchen door. It was her friend Mary Jo Foster, undoubtedly. “The Mouth,” as Dad called her. Linda wouldn’t be back.

  Jimmy Stewart pretty soon took over in the movie as George the adult. He was talking to a pretty girl, Mary— Donna Reed from The Donna Reed Sh
ow—at a crowded dance. Then Dad started snoring, loud.

  Mom woke him up. “We can’t hear the movie.”

  “Just resting my eyes,” he told her.

  But by the time George and Mary were dancing the Charleston together he was snoring again.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Mom said, and got him to his feet.

  He walked off, holding up a large gnarly hand: “Goodnight.”

  “’Night, Dad,” Mike and Nan and I told him.

  After the dance George walked Mary home, telling her if she wanted the moon just say the word and he would throw a lasso around it. “I’d pull ’er down for ya, Mary.”

  Nancy said she was going to throw up and ran to the bathroom. I felt the same way, but she meant from eating too much buttered popcorn for a seven-year-old. Mom went to help her out—we were all bad at vomiting.

  Which left me and Mike, lying on the floor, chins in our fists.

  George and Mary went on talking together in the moonlight about their hopes and dreams and such.

  Mike turned his head to the side, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  I could hear Mom in the bathroom coaching Nan, telling her to relax, just let it come up. Then Nan began making enormous sounds for a little kid. “That’s it,” Mom told her, “there you go, that’s it …”

  I turned the volume louder.

  Mike woke up and went to bed.

  I continued watching because no matter how bad a movie is, after I’ve stayed beyond a certain point I’m stuck with it.

  By the time Mom got Nancy into bed and returned to the living room, George and Mary were ducking rice outside the church. Mom stood there looking around the room, shaking her head, muttering something.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.” She went around collecting popcorn bowls.

  “Aren’t you gonna watch?”

  “I’ve seen it.” She told me to turn the volume down and went to bed.

  I felt bad for her. She’d had this nice idea.

  About half an hour later George suddenly flipped out, right in front of the wife and kids on Christmas Eve, shouting and breaking things, like he couldn’t stand being in this stupid sickening movie a minute longer, and ended up drunk on a bridge in the falling snow, about to jump.