The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  “So, I don’t know,” GamGam concluded. “How many people was that I just named? Maybe forty?”

  Janine continued to zone out for a couple seconds before realizing her grandmother had stopped talking. “Yeah, forty sounds right,” she said, having no clue. “Wow. Since kidney stones aren’t, like, contagious, why do you think so many people here get them?”

  “I don’t know, Nee—I mean: I don’t know, ma’am.” She winked again. “Guess it’s just something in the water! Dr. Bob says perfectly healthy people can get kidney stones. He’s had a bunch.”

  “What does this Dr. Bob say about people passing more than thirty a year?”

  “That it’s painful as all get-out!” GamGam laughed. “Woo, boy, kidney stones are not a good time. Did I tell you yesterday what they feel like?”

  “You did, yes. In great detail.”

  “But did I mention what it’s like as they’re comin’ out of you?”

  “Uh—” Janine heard a click on her camera. She’d reached the end of another tape. An act of mercy, really. “We’ll have to get it next time, GamGam.”

  “Aw, nelly, I was just gettin’ started!” She’d been speaking for ninety minutes.

  As if struck by an epiphany, but the bad kind, Janine suddenly knew:

  She’d made a terrible mistake.

  Why she had thought talking to older women about their kidney stones would make for a cinematic masterpiece was beyond her. Clearly, it wouldn’t. Even Nosy Rosy, who Janine felt confident would be the linchpin of the whole movie, came up short in her interview last night, clamming up when the camera was aimed at her, offering limp gossip that would barely sustain a public access television show, let alone a critically acclaimed documentary. (“Harriet Logan doesn’t actually have kidney stones,” she’d said, her eyes wide. “It’s just gas.”)

  As Janine’s mom had said: You’re making it sound way more dramatic than it is. That was always what Janine did, and she felt incredibly stupid that she was twenty-six years old and still hadn’t learned to listen to her frigging mother. It was a bunch of old people with a lot of kidney stones. Big deal.

  “Well, I gotta say, makin’ movies is a whole lot of fun, Neenie,” GamGam said, rising gingerly from her chair and hobbling over to the kitchen. “And I think people are gonna love this one. Especially Dr. Bob.”

  “Yeah,” Janine said, taking the camera off the tripod and placing it on the kitchen table. “I guess we’ll see.” Dr. Bob wasn’t exactly her target audience.

  “Hey, I keep meanin’ to ask,” GamGam said. “How’s that boyfriend of yours?”

  Janine froze.

  GamGam had uncorked the painful truth Janine had been trying to avoid. The real reason she’d jumped at the chance to leave New York and ended up in this godforsaken town.

  Dennis.

  “Oh, uh…we broke up,” Janine said, blinking her eyes repeatedly in an effort to not cry in front of her grandmother.

  “Oh no,” GamGam said. “Did that just happen?”

  Janine nodded as she let the tears flow. She’d been dumped almost three months ago, which probably no longer qualified as “just happening,” but it was too embarrassing to admit she was still this sad after so much time.

  “I’m sorry, Neenie,” GamGam said, walking toward her, even though it was obviously a strain to do so.

  “No, no, don’t overexert yourself, GamGam,” Janine said. “Please, I’m fine. I’m really fine.”

  She wasn’t fine.

  The night before Janine’s big idea had come to her, she’d run into Dennis at a mutual friend’s party. He wasn’t alone. He was with Lola Cavendish, the actress who had starred in his grad thesis film. To say it stung was an understatement.

  Janine was crushed. Devastated. Furious.

  When she’d met Dennis almost three years earlier, during their first year at NYU’s grad film program, she’d instantly dismissed him (along with his leather jacket and purposely ripped jeans) as a pretentious, insecure wannabe, even as she’d objectively recognized that he was gorgeous. As the year progressed, she was exasperated to see Dennis become the crown jewel of their class, because Janine saw through him. She knew his films were just a hodgepodge of stolen references with no actual heart: a pinch of Godard here, a dash of Kubrick here, and a small sprinkle of Kurosawa for good measure. She’d diplomatically expressed this during a class critique, and the professor, the TA, and several classmates had practically bitten her head off.

  Meanwhile, Janine’s odd, original film projects—like her riff on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which a woman woke up one day to find she was a kangaroo—were met with lukewarm smiles and head-scratching. It was maddening. By the end of her first year, Janine was seriously considering dropping out.

  But then something strange happened: Dennis asked her out on a date.

  She’d scoffed at first, assuming she was about to be the butt of one of his attention-grabbing jokes. But then Dennis had continued: “I really like your films. They’re unique. And I like what you said about my work that day. It really got me thinking.” Janine was skeptical, and conflicted. No good Riot Grrrl needed validation from a boy. But she couldn’t help but be strangely flattered.

  Dennis’s charms eventually wore her down. Before long, they were inseparable. They became the class power couple, and Janine loved it. Soon she was ripping her own perfectly good jeans.

  By the time their third year of school rolled around, Janine was deeply intertwined with Dennis, both producing and running camera for his thesis film, The Boy Who Became a Man, and already planning the production company the two of them would start after graduation. They would call it Dennine. Janine cringed just thinking about it now.

  Their hard work had paid off, though, as the entire faculty thought Dennis’s film was genius, the head of the department going so far as to pass it along to some hotshot agent friend, who loved it and wanted to meet with Dennis in L.A. immediately. Janine and Dennis had done it. They were on their way.

  Or at least Dennis was. The week after they graduated, he’d flown to California alone, explaining to Janine that he thought it would make more sense to meet with this agent one-on-one first and fold her into the mix later. “Okay, that’s fine,” Janine had said, “but I can still come with you to L.A. and just not go to the meeting.” “I don’t know,” Dennis had said, grimacing. “It just seems easier for me to do the trip alone.” He’d been uncommunicative his entire week away, and the day he came back, he dumped Janine over the phone.

  “What? Why?” Janine asked, completely blindsided.

  “I just had so many good meetings this past week,” Dennis said. “I don’t really have time for a relationship right now.”

  “We can make this work,” Janine said.

  “I don’t think we can,” Dennis said. “Best of luck with whatever else you make, though.”

  “What about Dennine!”

  He’d hung up.

  Best of luck with whatever else you make, though. Almost two years together had gone up in smoke with that hideous sentence.

  Janine fell into a deep depression. She couldn’t write. She couldn’t think. She could barely eat. She moved into a Chinatown apartment with one of her grad school friends and cycled through a series of mind-numbing temp jobs, simultaneously searching out and avoiding any and all gossip about what Dennis was up to. The more time went by, the more she realized that she actually hated his ostentatious films, and also that in dating him, she’d all but abandoned her own passion, her own creativity, her own voice.

  She would have to get it back.

  And that is exactly what she thought she was doing when she’d, at long last, had a new idea all her own and flown down to North Carolina to make it happen. A decision that, coincidentally or not, would also get her far away from a certain leather-jacketed asshole and the not-al
l-that-talented new girlfriend he seemed to have plenty of time for.

  And a decision, just like her entire relationship, that was a mistake.

  She would call Continental and figure out the next flight she could book home. “You were too smart for that boy anyway,” GamGam said, pulling Janine out of her own head. “Plus, at your graduation I heard him say he didn’t like Smokey and the Bandit.”

  Janine smiled in spite of herself. GamGam had no patience for anyone who didn’t recognize the genius of Burt Reynolds.

  “You’re better off without him,” she said as she opened the fridge and slowly took out a plate of fried chicken.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” agreed Janine, ashamed that she was still having trouble convincing herself of that.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh,” GamGam said as she walked the chicken over to the table. “Would you mind getting that? It’s your cousin.”

  “Donna?” Janine asked, seized by the sudden urge to go hide in the guest room.

  “You got other cousins livin’ in this town I don’t know about?”

  “Oh yeah, thousands,” Janine deadpanned. “Aunt Roberta’s poppin’ ’em out all the time. But I just— You could have told me she was coming.”

  “Well,” GamGam whispered, “guess I didn’t wanna give you time to find a way out of it.” She gave one of her trademark mouth clicks as the doorbell rang again. “Coming, Donna dear!” she shouted before returning to a whisper. “Neenie. Go get the door, please.”

  As GamGam well knew, Janine had been hoping to postpone any interactions with Donna for as long as possible. She could imagine few things more awkward and uncomfortable than spending time with her cousin.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” GamGam said. “Donna can’t even stay long. She’s just sayin’ hey real quick ’cause you’re in town.”

  Janine sighed. She was being kind of ridiculous. She stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, weaving her way past the floral chair and the plastic-covered couch toward the front door.

  It hadn’t always been this way.

  When Janine and her family had made yearly visits while she was growing up, Donna—who was two years older—had been Janine’s best friend, her role model, the funniest, weirdest, most creative person she knew. It was Donna who had sparked Janine’s interest in film in the first place, ringleading their operation to slink into the now-shuttered drive-in movie theater to see movies definitely not intended for preadolescents. She remembered lying on the grass in the dark next to cars that were leaking the most sound (convertibles were a gold mine), staring wide-eyed as a teenage prom queen was doused in pig’s blood in Carrie, and gritting her teeth as she saw Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now utter “the horror…the horror” before succumbing to machete wounds. Those images were seared in her young mind, planting in her a desire to tell her own stories on screen one day.

  Soon after, the two of them started making their own movies with Donna’s Super 8 camera, a series of silent shorts called The Gnome Girls. Donna would make huge dialogue title cards on posterboard, regularly slipping in witty surprise messages just to crack Janine up. She also taught Janine how to sew costumes, how to authentically walk like a gnome, how to craft elaborate dioramas out of grass and random objects that when shot from the right angle looked like a vast, fantastical forest. She was amazing.

  But when Janine visited town the summer after ninth grade, that all changed. Donna was notably quiet and withdrawn. Moody, even. She wanted nothing to do with Janine, and Janine had no idea why. They’d always sent each other hilarious letters during the year; maybe one of Donna’s had gotten lost in the mail, leaving her waiting in frustration for a response from Janine that had never come?

  When Janine worked up the nerve to ask Donna if this was the case, or if she’d offended her in some other way, Donna had just said, “No,” before retreating into her room and closing the door. Janine was relieved, then instantly wrecked. Because if she hadn’t done anything wrong, it meant she was simply not cool enough for her older cousin anymore. Maybe she’d never been. The feeling of rejection was new and all-consuming. And painful.

  It only got worse the following year, when Janine received the awful news that Donna’s dad, Uncle Jim, had died in a car accident. At the funeral, Donna was understandably as closed off as ever, and though Janine had made a few fumbling attempts at reaching out in the months and years that followed, she’d long since accepted the truth: She and Donna would always be cousins, but they would never again be friends.

  And now she found herself looking at the door, her once-close cousin standing on the other side. No part of her wanted to open it, but she took a breath and did it anyway.

  “Hey, Donna,” Janine said.

  “Hey.”

  It was hard for Janine to connect the person in front of her to the radiant human she’d once idolized. Donna had what seemed to be permanent dark circles under her eyes, and her deep brown hair—once lustrous and so long that it reached her waist—was unwashed, choppy, possibly self-cut. It was parted in the middle and hung down the sides of her face to her chin, giving the constant impression that Donna was hiding from something. Her loose-fitting flannel shirt and baggy jeans only added to that effect. She did not look well.

  “It’s great to see you,” Janine said.

  “Yeah,” Donna said, staring at the ground. “You too.”

  For the first time in twelve years, Janine didn’t feel angered or hurt by her cousin. She just felt bad for her. She wanted to give her a hug but wasn’t sure how that would go over. “Come on in,” she said instead.

  Donna nodded and shuffled past her. “Hi, GamGam,” she said as their grandmother met her in the middle of the room.

  “Hi, Donna dear,” GamGam said, kissing her on the cheek and wrapping her up in a big hug that made Janine regret not following her own impulse. “Oh, my two little granddaughters, all grown up and standin’ in my livin’ room together. Y’all have no idea how happy this makes me.”

  Janine felt an unexpected wave of emotion. They’d shot one of their Gnome Girls shorts in this very room, GamGam making a brief but memorable cameo as the Gnome Queen. Janine wanted to bring it up, but much like the hug, she didn’t know how.

  “Take a seat, girls,” GamGam said. “I’ll bring the chicken over.”

  “I’ll get it,” Janine said, concerned for her grandmother but also not wanting to have any alone time with Donna, who had already deposited herself onto the couch.

  “Nonsense.” GamGam slowly hobbled toward the kitchen table. “I need the exercise. I’ve been sittin’ for my close-up all mornin’.”

  The plastic covering on the couch crinkled as Janine took a seat next to Donna, who was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular.

  “So,” Janine said. “Been a while.”

  “Yeah,” Donna said. She seemed to be biting her nails, though Janine didn’t know for sure since Donna’s hands were concealed in her sleeves.

  “What’s…Uh, what have you been up to?”

  Donna thought for a long moment before answering. “Not much. Work.”

  “Oh, cool. GamGam said you’re still at Li’l Dino’s, right?”

  “Yeah.” It seemed to be the main word in Donna’s vocabulary.

  “Great, great,” Janine said. “Has their pizza gotten any better?” When they were kids, they’d joked constantly about how horrible it was.

  Donna looked at her for the first time since she arrived. “Better than what?” she asked, completely serious.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Janine said. This conversation was somehow even more excruciating than she’d anticipated. “Better than it used to be.”

  “I don’t really eat the pizza much,” Donna said, turning away.

  “Excellent,” Janine said, nodding to herself. “Glad we’
ve got that all sorted out.”

  “It’s chicken time!” GamGam said as she placed the plate of cold leftovers on the small table near them. “Eat up, my little chickadees.”

  Janine wanted to point out how gruesome it was to imagine little birds feasting on a chicken, but, once again, she didn’t think it was the right audience. She grabbed a drumstick.

  “You like dark meat. Just like me,” GamGam said proudly.

  “Twins,” Janine said as she took a bite.

  Donna took the smallest wing.

  “See? Puttin’ that plastic to good use!” GamGam said, pointing at the couch they were dropping crumbs on before grabbing a drumstick and lowering herself into the floral chair.

  The room was quiet except for their chewing.

  “So I went to film school,” Janine said. “Did you know that, Donna?”

  “GamGam said that, yeah.” Janine had been hoping to see a flicker of something in Donna, but it was as if Janine had referenced a trip to the dentist. She was at a loss for what else to say. She was very ready to be back in New York.

  “It’s been wonderful havin’ Neenie in town again,” GamGam said. “She’s makin’ a movie, just like you girls used to do. You remember those, Donna?”

  Donna shrugged.

  “Oh, you must, dearie,” GamGam said. “You two were always runnin’ around here with cameras on your shoulders, causin’ a ruckus. Just like those kids at the pig pickin’ yesterday. That was a real mess!”

  “What happened?” Janine asked, eager to talk about anything other than The Gnome Girls.

  “Oh! Most excitin’ thing all summer! Yes sir, poor Mr. Whitewood ended up at the ER…”

  “I need to get to work,” Donna said, jumping to her feet like the couch had shocked her. Janine felt a palpable sense of relief. She didn’t care what Li’l Dino’s pizza tasted like these days; in that moment, she felt immense gratitude for its existence.

  “It was great to see you,” Janine said, rising from the couch to say goodbye.