Crying at Movies

by John Manderino

  This was more like it.

  But then this little old sweet-faced angel named Clarence appears and shows George what a wonderful life he’s actually had, and still has, and George goes running back to it, screaming Merry Christmas to everyone on the street, and at home he hugs his wife and children— Oh, kids! Oh, Mary!—then all the townspeople come over with an actual basket full of cash to save the building-and-loan company, and someone proposes a toast—To George, the richest man in town—meaning of course rich with family and friends who love him very much, and they all start singing, Should auld acquaintance be forgot …

  Linda, finally off the phone, came in and stood there. “How is it?”

  “Stinks to high heaven.”

  “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “I’m not crying.”

  She gave a little snort and walked out.

  “I’m not.”

  ZORBA THE GREEK

  I watched it with Nan. Afterwards I lay in bed staring up at the dark. Across the room Mike was asleep with the flu, now and then muttering stuff:

  “That your bat?”

  I wondered what Zorba would think of me.

  He told Alan Bates, “A man needs madness,” meaning you’re too careful and scared to really live, live. Alan Bates knew Zorba was right. “Teach me to dance,” he said, and Zorba got up from the log: “Dance? Did you say … dance?” Then that wonderful music, starting slow, as they danced together side by side on the white beach, an arm across each other’s shoulder, Zorba chuckling deeply: “Boss, I have so much to tell you.” And as the music grew faster they separated and danced backwards facing each other, arms wide, smiling in the sun, Alan Bates fully into it now, fully understanding, the camera receding until they were two tiny figures dancing like mad on the vast white beach, the music continuing faster, wilder, happier, the top of my head coming off. Then the credits.

  Lying there now, staring up at the dark, I felt certain that if Zorba ever met me he would sadly shake his head. Take tonight, for example. What had I done with this precious gift of Life I’d been given? I watched a movie with my nine-year-old sister, both of us in our seersucker pajamas and house slippers.

  “Throw it ’ere,” Mike muttered.

  I turned onto my side, facing the wall. “Books,” Zorba said to Alan Bates, with scorn, “you only know books.” I only knew movies.

  There was a tap at the door.

  “Yeah?”

  Nan came in. “You awake?” she whispered.

  I sat up and turned on the lamp. She was fully dressed. “What’re you doing?” I said.

  “Shhh.” Our parents were asleep in the next room.

  “Don’t be shushing me, Nan.”

  “Some grounders now,” Mike said.

  She looked over at him.

  “He’s asleep,” I explained.

  “That’s creepy.” She looked at me. “Wanna go out?”

  I didn’t understand. “Out where?”

  “To the park.”

  “What for?”

  “Just … I don’t know, go out there.”

  “Nan, it’s eleven-thirty.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding, meaning that was the idea.

  I asked her point-blank, “This got something to do with the movie?”

  She shrugged, embarrassed.

  But she was right. A man needs madness.

  I got up and pulled on my pants, right over my pajama bottoms—something Zorba would probably do in his haste to get out there and live, live.

  “Bunt,” Mike said.

  We tiptoed into the living room, went out the front door and headed down the sidewalk towards the park a block away. It was a warm summer night with swarms of wet-looking stars, like in Greece. We walked without speaking past the silent houses to the end of the block, then crossed the street, entered the deeper darkness of the park and walked out into the middle of it.

  Then we both just kind of stood there.

  “So,” I said. “Now what?”

  She wasn’t sure. “Feel like dancing around?”

  “Not really. But go ahead,” I told her.

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  We stood there looking around at the darkness, looking up at all those stars.

  “Think there’s anybody really like that?” she asked.

  “Like Zorba, you mean?”

  “Y’think?”

  I was beginning to wonder. “I don’t know, Nan. Maybe in Greece, somewhere like that.”

  “I liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, he was great.”

  “What if he was here right now,” she said.

  “That would be something,” I agreed.

  “What would we say to him?”

  “We’d say, ‘Hey, loved your movie.’”

  “No, really.”

  “We’d say, ‘Zorba? Will you teach us to dance?’”

  “Right, and he’d say, ‘Dance? Did you say … dance?’”

  I began doing the Zorba theme, “Dah-duh, dah-dah,” and so on, starting slow, Nan quietly joining in, both of us gradually speeding it up, louder and faster, louder and faster, neither of us dancing however, and after a minute we quit.

  We stood there.

  “Anyway …” I said.

  “Great movie,” she said.

  “Wasn’t it?” I said.

  We headed back.

  KING OF KINGS

  It’s on TV for the first time, on Good Friday, another Television Event, but there’s only me on the floor and Mom and Dad on the couch behind me. Dad begins snoring by the first commercial, after the birth in the stable. Mom helps him up and they both say goodnight. I’m glad they’re leaving. I can tell this movie is going to get to me.

  Mary gets to me, with her sweet, Italian-looking face, and the way she gazes at her baby. The baby grows up to be Jeffrey Hunter, with a faraway look in his milky-blue eyes. And when he kneels in the water for John the Baptist he’s got this tiny smile meaning Yes, John, it’s me, with the Jesus theme music going.

  Whenever they play it my eyes immediately fill with tears.

  They spill over in the scene with the crippled kid curled up in bed, his limbs all twisted, the shadow of Jesus’ outstretched hand on the wall, the kid sitting up, then standing precariously, amazement on his face, then stepping stiffly out of the room and into the light, the music rising while I lie there crying as quietly as I can.

  By the time Jesus begins gathering His disciples I want to be gathered, too. I know the only thing that will ever make me truly happy is to follow Him, to live for Him alone, with that music playing. And when He teaches the multitude to pray, I whisper along:

  “… And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen.”

  Then there’s a scene in Herod’s hall, with his stepdaughter Salome. She looks a little older than me, maybe seventeen, milk-skinned, raven-haired, wearing heavy black eyeliner and a strange little smile.

  “Dance for me,” fat greasy Herod begs her. “Dance for me and I will give you anything you wish.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “By my life, by my crown.”

  Slow snake-charmer music begins, with a hissing tambourine, and she rises from the cushions, barefooted, wearing a jewel in her bellybutton, a gold cobra headband, a gold bikini top and a skirt made of flimsy scarves. She stretches her long white arms, arching her back. Her stomach is so beautiful I want to cry out. Then, her head a little sadly to one side, she begins moving slowly, in a manner that makes me swallow repeatedly.

  She gradually dances herself into a frenzy, the music keeping up as she whirls in front of Herod sitting on the floor, twirling her scarves in his woeful face.

  That’s how he looks. He looks woeful.

  She finishes by sprawling on his throne, then slithering to the floor, where she tells him, out of breath: “I want … the head … of John … the Baptist.”

  He stares at her. “Have you gone mad? What can you wa
nt with the head of a man?”

  She smiles that little smile of hers. “I want to look at it,” she tells him.

  Then a commercial.

  I lie on my back staring up at the ceiling.

  I feel sunk. I feel doomed. I would give anything, I realize. I would sell my soul without a moment’s hesitation. I would follow her down to Hell. I don’t care. She’s all I want. She’s all. I cover my eyes with my forearm and lie there quietly moaning.

  “Are you all right?”

  It’s my mother.

  I sit up. “I’m fine. Little stomach trouble. Too much Jello. Anyway, well, goodnight.”

  “I don’t think Jello would—”

  “Or something. I’m better now.”

  “There’s some Pepto Bismal—”

  “I might try that.”

  “—in the medicine cabinet.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  She goes back to bed.

  The movie returns. John the Baptist kneels in his cell, head hung, weeping with joy as the blade is raised above his neck. I’m hoping for a scene with Salome receiving her reward, but the story moves on.

  I don’t give a shit about Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, or about the Last Supper, Judas leaving early, or the torch-lit arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, or His perfect silence before Pilate.

  But then Pilate sends Him to Herod. And there she is again.

  While Herod tries to make Him do tricks—cause thunder, turn a clay vase into gold—she’s sitting on the floor in a corner of the screen dangling a little cage in front of her face, staring at a tiny bird in there. She looks so bored and unhappy. I want to crawl through the screen and up to her feet, along the cool marble floor, that strange little smile of hers on my face.

  Herod sends Jesus back to Pilate and they finally crucify Him. Hanging there, He whispers, “It … is … finished.”

  I poke the Off button with my toe.

  WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY?

  I was sitting alone at the kitchen table over my open geometry book, staring at the lines, the arcs, the angles, and that odd little thing called pi, when the phone on the counter-top began ringing. It was never for me, so I let it.

  Mom called out from Hawaii Five-O in the front room, “Will someone get that?”

  Dad was in bed already, Nancy in her room with an art project, Mike still at his basketball game, Cheryl and Linda both married, Uncle Doug in his own apartment now, so I got it. “Hello?” I sat on the stool.

  Someone seemed to be crying, hard. It sounded like Linda.

  I stood up. “Lin? What’s the matter? Hey, Ma!” I told Linda to hold on, I was getting Mom. But she wasn’t crying, she was laughing. “Turn on channel five!” she said, and got off. I hung up and hurried towards the front room, passing Mom on the way.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she said, following me back in. “What’re you doing? Who was it?”

  “Lin. She said turn on five.”

  “I’m in the middle of—”

  “She said it’s important.”

  “A storm?”

  “Could be.” I turned to channel five.

  Nan came in, holding a magic marker, and the three of us stood there watching a Japanese-looking man in a necktie driving a car with a very pretty Japanese-looking woman beside him.

  —You want egg salad? I’ll give you egg salad, he said, the words unrelated to the movements of his mouth. Did you bring the mayonnaise?

  —Mayonnaise? the woman said.

  —I told you to take a jar!

  “Is this the right channel?” Mom asked.

  “She said five, this is five.”

  —Oh, never mind, said the man. We can always use Miracle Whip.

  Nan was chuckling. “What is this?”

  I shook my head. “Lin said turn it on.”

  Mom sighed. “She’s losing it.”

  We watched some more. Evidently someone had taken a Japanese James Bond-type movie and dubbed in their own goofy story, about the search for a secret recipe for the world’s greatest egg salad. Some of it was pretty funny and Nan and I were laughing, but Mom kept shaking her head and clicking her tongue at the silliness of it and finally with a large sigh said she was going to bed.

  We told her goodnight.

  After a while the humor got pretty lame:

  —Wong’s desperate for that recipe.

  —Why?

  —He’s an egg salad addict.

  —You mean he’s hooked on it?

  —He’s got a chicken on his back.

  Nan eventually returned to her scissors and paste and construction paper, but I sat on the couch and watched the rest of it, the alternative being geometry.

  It ended with a Pan Am jet taking off while we hear the voice of the hero, who’s decided he’s a Pan Am jet: I’m almost to the end of the runway, rum-rum-rum, here I go, up into the air …

  I was settling back down at the kitchen table, when the phone rang again. It was Linda, apologizing. She said the movie was so funny before she called.

  I forgave her.

  “The guy who talked like Peter Lorre was funny,” she said. “Didn’t you think?”

  “He was all right.”

  “Did you see him with the chicken?”

  “That wasn’t bad.”

  “I nearly peed.”

  “Listen, how do you get the circumference of a circle?”

  “Oh, God. Let me think …”

  “I hate this stuff.”

  “Pi times the radius squared,” she said.

  “Okay, what is that thing.”

  “What thing.”

  “Pi. What is that.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know what it looks like.”

  She laughed.

  “I got a test tomorrow, Lin.”

  “All right, don’t have a conniption.” She tried explaining pi to me, carefully. “Okay?” she said when she was finally through.

  “Got it,” I told her. “Thanks.”

  I was back at the table staring at that same page, thinking about Japanese women, their long black hair, their long white arms. Then Mike walked in, carrying his duffel bag, looking sad and tired.

  “You lose?”

  He nodded, on his way to the refrigerator. “Big time.”

  I asked him how he did.

  “Shitty.” He stood leaning against the open refrigerator door, staring in.

  “You missed a really funny movie,” I told him.

  “Yeah?” He took a hit from a carton of orange juice.

  “Wanna hear about it?”

  “Nah.” He took another hit.

  “C’mon, it’s really funny. Cheer you up.”

  He put the carton back. “That’s okay,” he said, and swung the door shut.

  “It was Japanese,” I said, “but get this, someone dubbed in a totally different movie, a totally different story. What a riot.”

  He leaned his back against the refrigerator. “How do you know it was different?”

  “How do I … well, for one thing, it was all about egg salad, okay? I don’t think the original was about egg salad.”

  “How do you know?”

  I nodded. “Okay, you’re being like this because you lost your game, which is fine, I understand, but I’ve got a test tomorrow, Mike, okay? So, if you don’t mind …”

  “Tell me the movie.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  He sighed, and headed for bed.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about pi, would you?”

  He turned. “How do you mean?”

  “In geometry,” I explained. “You haven’t had it, I know. I just thought …”

  “Call Linda. She’ll know.”

  “Good idea.”

  He went to bed.

  I sat there. I looked down at that same page. I got up and called Cheryl.

  She tri
ed hard to remember pi but she couldn’t, not in a way that helped. “Lin would know,” she said.

  “I already talked to her. She explained it very carefully and I still didn’t get it. I’m too dumb. I should just drop out of school, you know?”

  “John …”

  “Just drop out of life,” I added. This was a weakness I sometimes had when talking to Cheryl—saying things like that, getting her to mother me. “Let’s face it,” I said, “I’m a loser.”

  Cheryl came through with a wonderful, motherly pep talk, calling me “hon,” bringing tears to my eyes, and afterwards I sat back down at the table feeling appreciated, worthy and loved, though still in the dark regarding pi.

  I decided what I needed was a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Then we’d get to the bottom of this pi business.

  But we were all out. The box was there, but it was empty. Someone had eaten the last of it and then, instead of throwing out the box, had put it back in the cupboard to make a fool out of me.

  I went to Nan’s room. Her light was still on. I opened the door and stood there holding the box. “Who did this? Do you know?”

  She was kneeling on the floor over a poster board, surrounded by scraps of colored construction paper. “Did what.”

  “This,” I said, shaking the empty box.

  “Who finished it, you mean?”

  “Finished it and then …”

  She waited.

  I shook my head. “Never mind.” I didn’t really care. I nodded at her project. “What’s this for?”

  “Sister Michael Denise.”

  Pasted to the board were plump white clouds, assorted birds, trees, mossy rocks, tall grass, wildflowers, very large mushrooms, and these intensely happy-looking little bug-like people, or people-like bugs, some of them playing musical instruments, one of them waving to the viewer.

  I laughed.

  “Pretty dumb?” she asked.

  I came in and sat on the edge of her bed and looked at it some more. “I like it,” I told her, nodding. I wanted to live there, sitting on a mushroom, playing the banjo.

  “How’d the movie end?” she asked.

  “He thinks he’s an airplane.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, sounding like Gram.

  I watched her carefully paste a tiny yellow bird to the lower branch of a tree. Then she sat back on her heels and considered the whole scene.