Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee

by Jeff Zentner

  “I, um…” His voice quavers. “I wanted to be someone else. Very badly. I hated myself. I had to change my name because I couldn’t stand to say my old name.”

  “So it wasn’t to keep me from finding you?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve thought about you so much in the last ten years. Had dreams where we did this very thing. Talked about our lives. I tried to imagine what you were like. Who you’d become. But every day that passed, I was more scared to seek you out.”

  And then I steel my heart and I ask him. I ask him why.

  “Pie?”

  “No, why. Why did you leave?”

  “Sorry, I thought you said ‘pie.’ The waves were too loud.”

  “Why?”

  He takes a deep breath and holds it for a while before exhaling. And another. “Because your mom got sick and wasn’t getting well, and I was scared. I was afraid to have to take care of two people. All that responsibility terrified me. I felt like in the cartoons when a character runs out over water and does fine until he notices he’s over water, and then starts sinking. I kept thinking how much I wished my life was simpler and someone could take care of me, or at least that I only had myself to worry about. I hung in there as long as I could with your mom, but I was sick too. I was depressed and drinking a lot because of it. I couldn’t be strong enough for all three of us. I started thinking nonstop about how great it would be to be dead. It was leave or die. So I chose leave. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to be a good father to you. Or at least a present father. But I was a coward. I wasn’t up to the hard task. And in my frame of mind then, it was better to leave you than to stick around and be a terrible father and have you remember me that way. So that’s it.”

  I take it in along with the sound of the waves. You thought wrong, I want to say. But my tongue is paralyzed.

  Dad continues. “I’ve pondered a lot since, and I’ve realized there was more to it than I thought at first. I never told you this, but my dad—your grandpa—left our family when I was young. And he was my example. I wanted so badly to be better than him. More than anything. I have a half brother and a half sister I’ve never even met. But I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was made out of the same weak stuff he was made of. I convinced myself that it was unavoidable. Wilkes men leave and start over. It’s what we do. It wasn’t even in my plan to become a dad because of that fear. Then it happened. So I guess that’s why. Maybe I could have come up with a better explanation if I’d known I’d be giving it tonight.”

  That’s it. That’s why. It’s so anticlimactic. This is the question I drove fifteen hours to have answered. The question I wanted answered for more of the time I’ve been alive than not. The question that made me put myself on TV week after week. The question that tortured me, the ghost that haunted the margins of my self-identity. And the answer was basically It’s not you; it’s me.

  Maybe I wanted him to say it was me. Maybe, for some reason, I needed to hear it was some fault in who I was that made me unable to keep him. Maybe I wanted his answer to do more to heal a decade-old wound. I don’t know what answer I was expecting or hoping for. I didn’t armor my heart for any of this. If I even could have.

  “DeeDee?” he says.

  “Sorry, I’m processing. It’s been a long—” I crumble, weeping, my hands over my face. Dad comes over and hugs me. He’s so much smaller, weaker, and less substantial than I remember him. We’re almost the same height. It’s like time has worn him away. Made him less. He smells completely different now. This is not the same man who held me in his arms under an October sky alive with the moon and stars.

  I wonder if I unearthed more things than I’ve buried by making this trip, by stripping away the mythology I created. You want closure, but there are things you can’t repair. Hearing him tell me why didn’t fix the ten years of hurt. Not even when the reason was different from the assumption that had caused me so much anguish.

  All at once, the immense, empty ocean makes me feel too puny and lonely. The shifting sand under my feet makes me feel too unmoored, like I could be swept away at any second and lost forever. I’ve spent enough of my life feeling small and alone, and like everything I have could be taken from me in an instant.

  “Thanks for showing me the ocean, but I think I’m ready to go now,” I say between sobs.

  I’m turning over in my mind what a calamity this night has been and my ever-deepening guilt about having prodded Delia to go see her dad. I hope that has been a success, at least. I somehow doubt it was. But…

  “Well, that was a close one,” Divine says, even more jittery than before, blotting sweat from his brow with his silk hankie. “Let’s circle around for a while and maybe we can drop back in on old Wald when Hurricane Ulrike has passed. I’ll tell you, this reminds of the time when Scott Baio, an alpaca, and I—”

  I cut him off. “Mr. Divine, I’m grateful for your time, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to work together. I’m sorry.”

  He dismisses me with a scornful wave. “Now, see, that’s quitters’ talk, is what that is. If you throw in the towel when the going gets tough, you won’t get anywhere in this business. Believe you me.”

  “I never said I was quitting. Just that I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. So if you guys would please take us to our hotel, that’d be great.”

  Yuri turns sharply into a parking lot, almost making Lawson and me bonk heads. “Not yet. Make money first,” Yuri grunts.

  This is bad. My palms start sweating. I’m not a fan of the idea of even temporary hostagedom.

  Yuri throws the SUV into park near a clothing donation bin, gets out, pulls a blanket and a box of DVDs from the back, spreads the blanket on the ground, and starts arranging SkeleTonya DVDs on the blanket. He clearly has a system; he’s almost done before Lawson and I even manage to get out.

  Divine looks on sheepishly, scratching his head.

  “Here’s the deal,” I say to him. “We need to get back to our hotel. Please take us. I have no idea where we are.”

  “Even though I disapprove, on principle, of quitting, far be it from me to compel anyone to do anything. So if it were up to me, we’d go. But Yuri seems hell-bent on making a little scratch tonight, and he’s rather stubborn. ‘Like hippo,’ he would say. Come to think of it”—Divine nods at Yuri, who’s walking around slowly, scanning the donation bin—“Yuri uses the hippo a lot as a point of comparison. Strong like hippo. Stubborn like hippo. Hungry like hippo. Thirsty like hippo. Peed like—”

  “Are you listening to me? I don’t care what Yuri wants. We’re not your prisoners or employees. I want you to take us back immediately.” I wasn’t having fun before, but now I’m really not having fun.

  Yuri walks over, shaking out a garment he picked up by the bin, holding it aloft to study it by the orange parking-lot lights, pressing it to his nose to take a deep whiff. “Good shirt. No holes. You sell.”

  “Oh, heavens, Yuri. How do I sell that?”

  He shrugs. “Say is from famous movie star. Maybe Tom Cruise.”

  Divine rolls his eyes and snatches the shirt. “I’m supposed to tell people that Tom Cruise owned this”—he squints at the tag—“women’s blouse from Ann Taylor Loft that you got out of the garbage?”

  Yuri shrugs. “Maybe Johnny Depp.”

  I try to keep my voice calm and even but commanding, in spite of my now being very afraid. “Yuri, we would like to go back to our hotel now. If you and Mr. Divine want to stay out until three a.m. and hawk DVDs and discarded shirts from a blanket in a parking lot after that, please, go nuts.”

  Yuri looks at me impassively with hooded, bleary eyes. “You help sell.”

  Lawson starts to say something, but I cut him off. “Yeah, me helping you sell DVDs and used clothes? That will not happen. I promise.” I look to Divine for assistance, but he’s over at the donation bi
n, craning, reaching his arm in.

  “Um,” I say.

  “This isn’t stealing,” Divine says. “You can’t steal something people have willingly thrown away.”

  “Kinda you can. Also, this is not stealing is never the way you want to start a phrase.”

  “If I have to sell clothing on the street like some sort of Dickensian ragamuffin, I want to see what my options are,” Divine says, jerking at his arm. “I seem to be…stuck here. Caught up on something. Can one of you—”

  “Good luck,” I say. “We’re leaving. Come on, Lawson.” I pick a direction and start walking, Lawson at my side.

  “Wait a minute!” Divine calls after us. “What about my honorarium?”

  “Hono-what-ium?”

  “My honorarium. My fee. You don’t think I go around dispensing show business advice and knowledge for free, do you? I have to make a living.”

  “If you’re legitimately asking me for more money, you can blow your honorarium out of your assholararium. As if I even have any money left after your little dinner.”

  “You owe me!”

  “For what?!”

  “Imparting showbiz knowledge. Connecting you with an executive producer. That warrants a finder’s fee.”

  “You told weird stories about making fried eggs on a hotel room iron with Stevie Nicks and doing cocaine in a hot-air balloon with Nicolas Cage and took us to talk to some loser in the human-hornet wars. We’re good here.”

  “You ingrate! Typical millennial!”

  “I’m not a millennial, and also that’s a dumb thing old people say. Anyway, this has been as fun as holding in a fart, but we really must go.”

  “Should not hold in poots. Is bad for liver,” Yuri says.

  I clench the sides of my head and say through gritted teeth: “THE BODY’S FART TUBES ARE NOT CONNECTED TO—”

  “Is my opinion,” Yuri says.

  “You know what? I’m not doing this. I refuse.” I turn and keep walking. Lawson puts his hand on my back protectively.

  “Yuri! Collect my honorarium!” Divine hollers.

  Yuri starts toward us. I turn and point at him. “Do. Not. Touch me. I will call the cops on you so fast.”

  Yuri only moves more swiftly.

  Lawson gets between Yuri and me, holding out his arm. “Bro, not one more step, or I will straight-up knock you out.”

  I have my phone in hand, ready to dial 911. Yuri reaches past Lawson and swats my phone. It sails away, flipping end over end.

  I’m not even able to register vocal disapproval before Lawson strikes, punching Yuri in the face with a meaty thwack. He assumes a fighting stance. Yuri stops, momentarily dazed, puts his fingertips to his lips, and pulls them away, checking for blood. His face hardens, and he raises his fists. I would feel a lot better if Lawson’s punch had done more damage.

  “Get him, Yuri!” Divine hollers. “Fisticuffs time!”

  Yuri moves with shocking nimbleness. He throws a punch; Lawson ducks. I almost feel the wind from it.

  “Stop!” I shout, but to no avail. And this doesn’t look like the sort of neighborhood where shouts of “stop” are uncommon.

  Yuri throws a vicious uppercut that Lawson dodges. But Lawson catches his heel on the ground and falls onto his back.

  Yuri is on him in an instant.

  We sit in Dad’s driveway. Not a word passed between us on the ride back.

  “So,” I say.

  “So,” Dad says.

  “I guess I don’t really know where we go from here.”

  “Me neither.”

  I struggle to say it. “Do you…want to stay in touch?”

  He folds in on himself, looking away from me, out into the darkness filled with chirping frogs and buzzing insects. He rests his elbow on the windowsill and bows his head into his palm, covering his eyes. Seconds tick by. He looks up, exhausted and hammered down, suddenly a decade older. “DeeDee.”

  Anything but “yes” is “no,” and “DeeDee” isn’t “yes.” Still, I ask, “Is that a no?”

  “I…can’t. It hurts too much.”

  Fresh tears, spiked with anger, replace the ones that have dried to salt on my cheeks. “You don’t know the first thing about hurt.”

  “I do,” he says softly. “I even know what it’s like to lose your dad.”

  “And yet you did it to me.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “So you said.”

  “I’m trying to start a new life. I—I can’t live with a constant reminder of what a failure I was to you.”

  “Won’t live. Are scared to live.”

  “That too.”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  He absorbs it like a punch to the chin. He stares at the floor and doesn’t speak. It’s fine. I didn’t want him to try to argue.

  I open the car door. “I have something for you. Hang on.” I walk to Josie’s car and get my last Midnite Matinee DVD. I go back and sit in Dad’s Jeep. “Here.” I hand him the DVD.

  “Is this—this your show?”

  “Yeah. I want you to watch it.”

  He holds it in both hands. “DeeDee, I don’t think I—”

  “Are you about to tell me you don’t think you can?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it hurts too much?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you would prefer to forget?”

  “DeeDee—”

  “Because you want to move on.” I spit the last two words with contempt.

  He opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t wait. I summon all the fury I have. Ten years’ worth, saved up in every cell of my body. It made me a creature of sadness to carry that around. “Well, guess what? You will. I built this castle for you. Do you get it? I made this show so you would see me. So you would hurt for leaving me. And you’re going to. You don’t have to ever talk to me again. You don’t have to ever remember me or think of me again. But on some Saturday night when Marisol is out with friends or if you’ve ditched her too, you’re going to put on this DVD and pretend like you discovered this show while you were channel surfing. And you’re going to watch your daughter on TV, acting out what you left her, with one of the VHS tapes you left her, trying with all her heart to connect with you in the only way she knew how. Maybe it was stupid and desperate to hope that you would happen to watch my show, but I’m having the last laugh because now you’re going to. I win.”

  He looks down at the DVD, defeated, and nods.

  “Remember my seventh birthday? When I fell asleep and you took me outside to look at the stars and the moon?” I don’t know where I’m going with this. My heart is no longer communicating with my brain.

  His face is blank. “Seventh birthday…”

  “Remember?”

  “Vaguely?”

  “Never mind.” I open the door again.

  “What, DeeDee? What was it?”

  I make sure I have his eyes before I speak. “That was the most perfect day of my life. That’s all. Thought I’d tell you.”

  “I’m glad,” he says softly, and looks away.

  I look for some evidence of loss. There is not enough. “When did I stop feeling like a part of you? When did I start feeling like a fingernail clipping you could throw away?”

  He says nothing.

  “Because you’ve never stopped feeling like a part of me.”

  He looks back at me with reddening eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  I’ve rehearsed this moment in my mind so many times. The moment my dad sees me on TV and calls me and asks me to forgive him. And none of that rehearsal prepared me for this. Because I never imagined I’d be looking him in the face. Sitting in his new car, in his new driveway, in front of his new house, with his new pregnant fiancée asleep inside.
And with all that newness, I think he probably doesn’t need the forgiveness that would cost me so much to give him.

  “No,” I say. “I can’t. Bye, Dad. Have a good life. Take better care of your new daughter. Too bad I’ll never meet her.” I get out and start walking away without closing the door. But I turn and go back. “One more thing: I’m really awesome. I’m a good person and a loving daughter, and I worked hard and made a show I thought you would love. You shouldn’t have abandoned me. I didn’t deserve that.” I manage to get the words out, but as soon as I start stumbling back to Josie’s car, the wall inside me falls. It’s hard to say things out loud that you haven’t even convinced yourself are true. He calls after me, but I keep walking.

  This may be the least perfect day of my life. Less even than the day I woke up and discovered he was gone. But I know I’ll keep it stored inside whether I want to or not.

  I drive off, leaving my dad standing in the street behind me. I look in the rearview mirror and see him—probably for the last time—lit up red in the taillights like something from an old horror movie.

  It’s exactly like one of those dreams where you’re seeing something horrible and you want to scream, but your vocal cords are frozen and all that comes out is an impotent dry squeak.

  Yuri crouches over Lawson and throws another powerful punch. Lawson deflects it into the ground with a sickening thud. Yuri roars in agony and curses (probably) in Russian. Lawson has a momentary opening. He could jump to his feet while Yuri shakes it off. He doesn’t. What are you doing? Yuri reaches behind himself, for something at the small of his back. I stop breathing.

  Lawson kicks Yuri’s leg out from under him. He loses his balance and pitches forward on top of Lawson, throwing another punch as he’s falling. Lawson dodges it and entangles Yuri’s arms. Suddenly, Lawson scissors his legs into the air and clenches them around Yuri’s head and neck, pinning one of Yuri’s outstretched arms like he’s raising his hand to ask a question. Lawson loops one thigh around the back of Yuri’s neck and hooks his other knee over the shin of the leg wrapped around Yuri’s neck. It doesn’t look like Lawson is improvising. His motions are purposeful and precise.