Crying at Movies

by John Manderino

  “I’m gonna go see a movie,” I told him. “Wanna come?”

  “Nah, go ahead. I gotta take care of this sink.”

  He never had much use for movies, for sitting down that long watching make-believe life, when there was already real life. The only actor’s name he knew was Bette Davis. If you were watching a movie on TV, he might stand there in the doorway for a moment and ask if that was Bette Davis.

  “No, that’s Joanne Woodward.”

  “Looks like Bette Davis,” he would say, and go back to whatever he was working on: a stopped-up sink, a faulty door latch, a shorted lamp, a leaky shower head …

  But here was a movie about a boxer, a real one, an Italian one, from the days when he and Mike and I would sit together on the couch watching the Friday Night Fights, brought to you by Gillette Razor Blades: “How’re ya fixed for blades?” The bell would ring and a guy in white trunks and a guy in black trunks would come out and start circling each another, peeking over their gloves, Dad telling them, “C’mon, throw a punch, for Christ sake,” Mike and I saying, “Hit ’im, hit ’im.” And once they finally started hitting each another we’d be quiet and still.

  My mother disapproved of boxing: “Watching two idiots beat the shit out of each other.”

  “It’s a skill,” Dad would explain to her.

  He always told us, “Keep moving in and keep your hands up, hit him and cover up, hit him and cover up, like that, see?”

  Back then, I was always getting into fights and losing because I never actually punched the other guy, preferring to wrestle him down, but the other guy was never squeamish about punching me, and when I’d been punched enough times to justify going down I would do so, and stay there.

  “It’s a movie about Jake LaMotta, Dad,” I told him now.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s supposed to be pretty good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Pretty true-to-life.”

  “All right, let’s go see.” He put his tools away.

  Driving there, I told him, “This guy Robert DeNiro who plays him, he’s a pretty good movie actor.”

  “So it’s not really him.”

  “LaMotta? No, it’s about him, but there’s an actor who’s … you know …”

  “Pretending.”

  “Right. But he’s good.”

  “The actor.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “So you already seen this.”

  “No, I’m just saying, he’s a good actor, from other movies.”

  “You like him, huh?”

  “I don’t like him, I’m just saying.”

  “Good actor.”

  “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Hey, whoa, it’s thirty-five along here.”

  I slowed down.

  He paid for the tickets, amazed at the price. “Holy Christ,” he told the girl, who shrugged.

  We went in and found seats. And I must say, it felt very peculiar sitting in a movie theater next to Dad. He sat straight, his big crooked fingers on his knees, waiting politely for the screen to come to life. I hoped and prayed there wouldn’t be any nudity.

  The lights went down.

  I liked the opening a lot, during the credits: DeNiro alone in the ring, from a smoky distance, shadow boxing in slow motion, this beautiful, sad operatic music playing.

  But once the movie started I could sense my father stiffen up, resistant, having never heard the word “fuck” in a movie before:

  —Joey, you gotta talk to your fuckin’ brother.

  —You talk to him.

  —I can’t talk to him, he don’t like me.

  —Nobody fuckin’ likes you.

  —Talk to him, will ya?

  —Hey, Sal?

  —What.

  —Go fuck yourself.

  But just when I was thinking what a huge mistake this was, Dad very quietly chuckled. Someone had called someone a gumbadi, Italian for pal, a word from the old neighborhood: southside Chicago, tomato gardens, Freddy Nudo’s Tap, cigar smoke, boxing, the horses, bookies, his bowling team. We had an eight-by-eleven of the team, in their Nudo’s Tap shirts: Joe Chiapetti, Eddie Munno, Lou Paparelli, Jimmy Rossi, my dad and Uncle Gene: gumbadis.

  But then LaMotta meets the beautiful Vickie and I got worried. Then sure enough, pretty soon they’re in bed and she’s slowly kissing him all down his stomach.

  I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to get out of there, pretend I had to use the bathroom, but that wouldn’t look good, like I had to go beat off, so I sat there very still, but I didn’t want to be sitting there too still, like I was mesmerized, and yet at the same time I didn’t want to fidget, like I was getting worked up, although I certainly didn’t want to convey indifference, give a big yawn or something. Meanwhile, I had no idea what was going on with Dad, if he was wondering what the hell kind of dirty movie I’d brought him to, or was he embarrassed like me, or morally outraged, or possibly—who knows?—thoroughly enjoying this, or even possibly feeling rather sad, like he’d missed the boat. I had no idea.

  Vickie, meanwhile, keeps slowly working her way down, with an occasional shot of DeNiro’s complicated expression, and then at the last moment he stops her: “I gotta fight Robinson tomorrow. I can’t fool around.”

  And what a huge relief the immediate next scene was, back in the ring, LaMotta versus Sugar Ray Robinson, the familiar voice of radio announcer Don Dunphy, and the clean, hard steady passionate blows, Dad and I both sitting up straighter, fresh air filling our lungs.

  In most fight movies you’re pulling for the main character, and that’s how this one worked for a while. But then LaMotta starts beating up on people outside the ring, including Vickie, including his loyal brother Joey, and, by the end of the movie, he’s a fat slob beating his own head against a wall.

  Alone, I probably would have considered the movie some kind of grim masterpiece, a profound study of violence, something like that. But being with Dad I found myself wondering what’s the point of paying good money to see a movie if it doesn’t have a happy ending.

  Walking to the car, I asked him what he thought.

  “I don’t like that kinda language. That shouldn’t be allowed.”

  I asked him what he thought of the movie otherwise.

  He shook his head. “Dumb dago.”

  But on the way home he said nice things about LaMotta in the ring: “He didn’t do a lotta dancing around. He came to fight, he came after you.”

  I said I thought Robert DeNiro did a pretty good job in the fight scenes.

  “You like that guy, huh?”

  “I don’t like him, Dad. I’m just saying.”

  “Hey, thirty-five along here.”

  I slowed down.

  COMING HOME

  I didn’t want to talk about the movie, but she was limp from it. That was how she put it. “I’m actually, literally limp,” she said, going limp all over to show me.

  “I know what you mean,” I told her.

  “Do you?”

  “Limp, yeah.”

  We were sitting in a booth in Alf’s, me with a beer, her with a bloody mary, our first time out together, both of us trying hard. But I didn’t want to talk about the movie—Jon Voight coming back from Vietnam paralyzed in a wheelchair, Bruce Dern returning so disillusioned he ends up drowning himself, and all I ever got was some teargas in my eyes once at a campus peace rally.

  I told her if she wanted to see a really good Jon Voight movie, she ought to see Midnight Cowboy. “Ever see that?”

  “No, as a matter of fact I never have. I’ve heard it’s very excellent.”

  “Talk about limp, you’d be a wet noodle.”

  She laughed, a little too loud.

  Her name was Jill. She worked in Payroll at the city college where I’d found a tutoring spot. I thought my first check was a misprint and when I came to complain, she was quite nice about it, showing me there was no mistake, the decimal point was where it belonged. She had a very pleasant f
reckled face and she wasn’t all that fat, not really, so I went ahead and asked her out. And here we were. She looked very nice in her shiny green dress.

  “I thought Jane Fonda was awfully good,” she said, “didn’t you?”

  “Very much so,” I told her, “yes. But I’ll tell you something, did you ever see her in Klute?”

  “Is that with Donald Sutherland?”

  “There you go.”

  “I saw that, yes, you’re right, she was good in that. Excellent, in fact.”

  “Terrific actress,” I said. “Top notch.”

  “And so pretty,” she added.

  “You kidding? She’s beautiful. Just a … remarkably beautiful woman. Breathtaking, in fact.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “I get it. Point taken.”

  “No, I was just, you know, agreeing.”

  “I’ll say.” She began vigorously stirring her drink with the little plastic straw. “Sounds to me like somebody’s in love.”

  I laughed it off. “Right,” I said, “me and Jane,” and sipped my beer.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said, still stirring her drink. “She is beautiful. Very slender, very—”

  “Her father was a damn good actor,” I said.

  “‘Breathtaking,’ as you put it.”

  “Henry Fonda?”

  She looked up from her drink. “Jane.” She was definitely angry, you could see.

  I asked about her drink. “How is that, by the way.”

  “I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She cocked her head, smiling, blinking. “So why did you ask?”

  “Just, you know, trying to encourage you.”

  “To get drunk?”

  “No. God.”

  She started poking at the ice now, looking down at it. “She was a big peace activist, you know.”

  Still on Jane.

  “That’s true,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Quite the radical,” she added.

  “Very political,” I agreed. “By the way, want to know a really good political movie? I saw it the other night on TV. It’s pretty old, with Broderick Crawford—”

  “If I was a guy?” she said. “Over there? During Vietnam? And I heard about this woman, this … actress? Siding with the enemy?”

  “Oh, I don’t think she actually—”

  “I would hate her. I don’t care how slender and breathtaking she is, I would hate … her … guts.”

  I was wishing I hadn’t used the word “breathtaking.”

  Then she asked me, point blank, “Were you over there?”

  I was afraid of this. “Vietnam, you mean?”

  “Did you serve?”

  “Well … actually, Jill? To be perfectly honest?”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said.

  Which pissed me off. “What I was going to say …”

  She waited.

  “I was going to say, I don’t feel very much like talking about it, all right? If you don’t mind?”

  She was studying me.

  “I mean, you saw the movie,” I added, letting her take that any way she wanted.

  She nodded, sympathetically it seemed.

  I sipped my beer. Then, trying to move us along, I held up the glass, studying it. “This is very good, by the way. It’s German, you know. Has a nice bite to it, a nice bitterness. Which I like. I like that in a beer.”

  “Bitterness?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said, and took another drink: “Ahhh.”

  “Is that because you’re a bitter person?” she asked.

  “Must be,” I said, just kidding.

  She looked down at her drink, stirring it slowly. “Did you lose a lot of buddies over there?”

  Aw, Jesus, I thought.

  But then right away she said, “I’m sorry. You don’t want to talk about it.”

  I thanked her.

  We sat there. I was looking down into my glass trying to think of something non-Vietnam to talk about. Then she suddenly leaned forward, reached across the table and laid her hand over mine. “Please let me help?” she said, looking into my eyes. “I want to, very much. Will you let me? Please?”

  Carefully I slid my hand out from under hers and placed it in my lap along with the other one. Then I drew a long, truth-telling breath. “Jill, listen to me.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, sitting back. “You don’t have to explain. We don’t even know each other and here I am, trying to … heal you. Blame it on the movie. I was trying to be like—what was her name? The Jane Fonda character?”

  “Sally, I think.”

  “I was trying to be like Sally, an overweight Sally. Fat Sal.”

  “Hey, cut it out,” I said. “You’re not that fat.”

  She laughed. “‘Not that fat.’ I like that. Thank you very much.” She started poking at the ice in her drink again.

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Did you have a girlfriend over there?” she asked. “One of those cute little brown little tiny petite little—”

  “Listen to me, Jill. Will you? Please?”

  “I’ll stop now,” she promised. There were tears in her eyes. She looked in her purse for a tissue but couldn’t find one. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

  “Actually …”

  “Never mind.” She used a napkin.

  While she was blowing her nose I told her I wasn’t over there.

  She stopped.

  “I wasn’t even in the military,” I said. “I wasn’t drafted and I didn’t enlist.”

  She was staring at me, still holding the napkin to her nose.

  “I was a hippie, Jill. A longhaired, potsmoking hippie, hollering out with all the other hippies, ‘Hell no, we won’t go.’”

  She nodded, slowly.

  I told her, “I’m very sorry I misled you. It was a disgusting thing to do and I apologize.”

  Still nodding, she said quietly, “I’ve heard about this. I’ve heard about guys doing this.”

  “Pretending they were in Vietnam?”

  “Pretending they weren’t.”

  Oh, Lord.

  “And not just to others,” she added, leaning forward, “but to themselves.”

  “Jill, I wasn’t there.”

  “Total, complete denial.” She started reaching for my hand again.

  I put it back in my lap. “Look in my file,” I told her. “Payroll has my resume, right? My job history?”

  “They should.”

  “Monday morning take a look, see what it says. See if there’s anything about Vietnam, or the military, ever.”

  That gave her pause, you could see.

  “I wasn’t a soldier, Jill.”

  She cocked her head, studying me.

  “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t,” I said, and sipped my beer.

  She gave a sad little smile. “Actually? Now that I think about it? It’s kind of hard to imagine you in a helmet, holding a rifle. No offense, but it’s kind of difficult to picture.”

  “Is that right.”

  “No offense.”

  “None taken,” I assured her. “You think I’m ashamed?”

  “Probably not.”

  “But you think I should be.”

  She shrugged.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Just curious, okay?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you ever been gassed?”

  “Like at the dentist, you mean?”

  “I’m talking about teargas. Have you ever been tear-gassed, Jill?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Yeah well, you would know, trust me. I thought I was blinded. I actually thought I was never going to see again. Do you know what that’s like? To think you’re never going to see again?”

  “Were you crying?”

  “No, I was not. I had tears, but that was from the gas.”

  “So where was this?”

  “Northern Illinois Univers
ity, fall of seventy-one.”

  “What, a sit-in or something?”

  “Whatever. I’m just saying, okay? I was out there.”

  She gave that little smile again. “In the trenches?”

  “So to speak.”

  “You and Jane?”

  “Go ahead and laugh. But you know what? We stopped the war, Jill. We stopped the carnage. ‘Enough,’ we said.” I leaned forward and poked the table with each word: “‘This, will, not, do.’”

  She spoke quietly. “Could you sit back please?”

  “Sorry.” I sat back.

  I drank from my beer. And she, finally, drank from her bloody mary, taking a brief pull on the little straw—and made a face.

  “No good?” I said.

  “Too much black pepper.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I kid?”

  “You want me to complain? I will, believe me.” I felt like making a huge stink. “I don’t mean to scare you, Jill, but I don’t put up with this kind of bullshit.”

  “Black pepper?”

  “Whatever. I don’t put up with it.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “No, Jill, It’s not,” I told her, and stood up. “I’m sorry but this will … not … do.”

  “John …” That was the first time all evening she’d said my name. She said it rather sadly, looking up at me. “Sit down, okay? Will you? Please?”

  I sat down.

  She thanked me.

  We sat there.

  I asked her—calmly, quietly—if she would like me to order another bloody mary, one with less black pepper in it.

  She didn’t think so.

  We sat there some more.

  I made a final effort to somehow get the evening back on track: “Mark my words,” I told her, tapping the table: “Best actor: Jon Voight, Coming Home. You heard it here.”

  She nodded. “I’ll remember,” she promised, then looked at her watch: “Oh, my.”

  ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

  Elizabeth M. Callahan

  English 101

  Room 318

  Mr. Manderino

  “The Combine” as the Novel’s Central Metaphor

  Mr. Manderino, I am very sorry but I do not know what you are even talking about. The Combine? What is that? You say Chief Broom mentions it a lot? Excuse me, but Chief Broom doesn’t even speak. In fact everyone thinks he is totally deaf and dumb until late in the movie when Jack Nicholson gives him a stick of gum and he says, “Mmm, Juicy Fruit,” and Jack Nicholson practically falls right out of his chair!