Chuckerman Makes a Movie

by Francie Arenson Dickman

  Anyhow, I easily digested the events of that night in Florida. Yes, they were more exciting than a typical lobby night, but I didn’t think they warranted anything like study in a sociology seminar—which Laurel said they plainly did.

  Aspects I wouldn’t consider twice struck Laurel, like the familiar small talk and platters of food that were disseminated among the crowd. (Several of the neighbors, upon sensing the length of the evening, had run into their kitchens for refreshments. Plates of rugelach and cookies circulated. So did a black forest cake.)

  But mainly, Laurel pointed with jealousy to my mother, declaring that her mother was not the type to be caught dead having company with her hair wrapped in a towel.

  To my mother, this crowd did not qualify as company. So she did not care how she presented herself, if she presented herself at all. When the people began to pile into the apartment, she hid herself in the bathroom, so when Marcy and I finally burst through the crowds, we couldn’t find her. Instead I caught the reflection of my Grandma Estelle in the dining room mirrors. She was tall, especially among that crowd, and standing next to the chair that held Slip. I couldn’t see his face or his legs, but every so often a piece of his salmon-colored sweater poked through gaps between bodies.

  My father stood next to my grandmother. In the movie, he’ll stand over Slip with his hand on Slip’s shoulder, pressing him into his seat. His face will be red with anger, and he will be hollering.

  At the time, I assumed he was angry with my grandfather. However, I couldn’t see Eileen and Gladys Greenberg powwowing in the front corner of the dining room, and I couldn’t hear my father’s words, since most everyone was hard of hearing and therefore hollering as well. The audience will not be able to make sense of my father’s words, either.

  Marcy and I shouted back and forth to each other, negotiating our way under elbows and over kitchenette chairs, fighting for air and access to my father. In the movie, cameras will pan the dining room to capture the scene as I recall it: the giant bosoms on the women; my father’s dental pick waving in his hand; Ida from 27 sitting in the dental chair, the dental bib still hanging around her neck; my grandmother’s solitaire cards frozen mid-game on the dining room table; and her pewter tray, now empty, resting next to it.

  The air that night was filled with smoke. And where there was smoke, there was my mother.

  “Your grandfather got himself into trouble again,” she said, grabbing hold of us from behind and pushing us into the hallway that separated our sleeping area from the kitchen.

  “We already know! Davy saw the whole thing,” Marcy informed her. “He was in the Men’s Card Room the entire time.”

  My mother wasn’t as impressed with this information as I’d anticipated, and it dawned on me that my nightly trips to the card room were not as secret as I’d thought.

  I looked up at my mother. “It wasn’t Papa’s fault. I saw the fight. Big Sid started it. He said bad things about Papa. He asked for it.” I felt confident that as an eyewitness, I’d have more credibility than usual. I was wrong.

  “Is that so?” My mother raised her brows. The towel lifted slightly too.

  “Yes, I swear. I am telling the truth.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t doubt your account of whatever nonsense went down in that card room.” She paused and set both hands on her hips in typical mother fashion. “Although, Davy, you had no business being there in the first place.”

  “Papa says it’s fine.”

  “I’m not interested in what Papa says. I see no reason for you to spend your evenings watching grown men behave like animals. A fine example they set.”

  Now Marcy’s hand went to the spot where she assumed her own hip would one day be. “But since he did witness it, shouldn’t he tell everyone what happened? I mean, they’ll believe him because he’s just a kid.”

  “Oh, really? Why is that?”

  “Kids don’t lie.”

  “I didn’t realize.” My mother tugged at one of Marcy’s ponytails. Marcy had a reputation for bending the truth like no one’s business.

  “At least Davy doesn’t lie,” Marcy qualified. “Not about serious stuff like this.”

  My mother looked at me. “I appreciate you wanting to save the day. But before you take the stand, let me ask you this: Who threw the first punch?”

  I looked towards the carpet, not willing to incriminate my grandfather.

  She lifted my chin toward her. I murmured my answer so softly that in the movie, the audience will only be able to read my lips when I say, “Papa.”

  “He shouldn’t have hit Sidney,” my mother said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Marcy chimed in.

  “Basic playground rules. We don’t hit.”

  “There should be an exception to the rule,” I whined.

  “Go tell that to Gladys Greenberg,” my mother said.

  “Papa’s not going to get in trouble, is he?” I asked. “It’s not fair.” I leaned into her robe.

  “Davy, I wouldn’t worry.” She pulled me closer. “This isn’t prison. Well, in a way it is”—she paused to laugh at her comment—“but your papa’s already been to a real one. What kind of punishment can be worse than that?”

  In the movie, at these words, the shot should probably cut straight to Gladys Greenberg and Eileen at the dining room table, preparing to hand down Slip’s sentence. In real life, however, the conversation continued with my mother running her hands through my hair. “Why don’t the two of you put on your pajamas and get in bed?”

  “Bed?” Marcy protested. “Everyone will be able to see us lying there.”

  “And it’s so noisy,” I added.

  My mother reached behind her into the bathroom, where her cigarette had been resting in an ashtray on the countertop. She took a puff and glanced around the apartment.

  “I can’t argue with that. Watch TV as late as you want, as long as you keep the partition closed.”

  We did as we were told. We were good kids, amazingly good kids, something my mother never appreciated until Rachel had kids. Marcy and I changed our clothes and yanked on the TV, which was temperamental and showed a picture only when the antenna was tilted just so.

  The movie will pick up here with the voice of Eileen, again on her megaphone, screeching through the rooms, reeking with self-imposed power, “Order in the apartment. May I have it quiet, please?”

  As Eileen whistles through her fingers, and the crowd draws toward the dining room table, the narrator will explain that vacation seasons were glory days for Eileen, rife with guests and therefore limitless opportunities to impose the limitless rules of Imperial Towers 100, rules that hung on the doorways to every recreational potential, rules that were created largely by her.

  “I said, order in the apartment. This is not a cocktail party, it’s a Board meeting.” Eileen will nod at Gladys Greenberg, standing at her side with a posse of three other board members. “An impromptu Board meeting.”

  With a vigorous pushback of her poncho, Gladys Greenberg will say, “A majority of the Board happens to be present, which is enough to proceed.” She’ll glance around the room and clear her throat. “Violent behavior like this cannot go unpunished. Use of physical force for any reason on the premises of Imperial Towers 100 is a violation of the Condo Association Code, not to mention a blemish on the good name of all our residents. Property values will plummet if such antics continue unfettered. So, after considering the evidence, including the statements of witnesses”—here Gladys Greenberg will pause and gesture to the key witness, my Grandma B—“the Board finds Slip Melman guilty of assault and battery in the Men’s Card Room.”

  “You haven’t even seen the assaulted party,” Jack Glassman will call out. “Don’t you think you should go check on him? He is your brother, after all.”

  Gladys Greenberg will tell Jack to mind his own business and then give Eileen the floor.

  “Punishment for such an act is expulsion from the Men’s Card
Room for the duration of the seventy-seven season,” Eileen will say. “The sentence will begin immediately. The Board will not hear appeals, as we are acting in the best interests of all.” She’ll turn and raise her hefty brow at Slip.

  Slip’s expulsion did not occur without protest, a sit-in of seniors. The movie cameras will capture the outrage in full. Above the flying profanity and pounding fists, the audience will hear my Grandma B call Gladys Greenberg a dirty double-crosser and apologize to Slip, promising that she was just telling it like she’d heard it and that she’d meant no harm. They’ll hear booing from Ida from 27, who, still stuck in the dental chair, will be capable of nothing more. They’ll hear Mickey Leonard, a former lawyer, posit that Slip should not be punished for what amounted to self-defense, and that Grandma B’s statement should not have been used against Slip, as it amounted to hearsay. They’ll see my eyes, and Marcy’s, peering through the partition that separates us from the adults, and they’ll see my Grandma Estelle’s tears—tears brought on by humiliation and also fear, I see now, at the prospect of Slip without his card room to occupy his days.

  Finally, they’ll hear the threats of my father, who, unlike my grandfather, has always been soft and measured with his words.

  “If I may offer my opinion,” he began.

  Probably because she needed dental work done, Gladys Greenberg gave him a nod, the okay to proceed.

  “This business of sentencing is absurd. Residents cannot be banned from areas of the building for entire seasons.”

  Eileen and Gladys Greenberg shook their heads, indicating my father was wrong. Crumbs exploded from Gladys Greenberg’s mouth as she said, “There’s really nothing you can do about it. It’s Code.”

  My father raised his voice. “Is that so? Because I already have an idea about what to do about it.” We’ll do a close-up here of his eyes (narrowed) and pick (pointed at Gladys’s face).

  I’d never seen my father in action this way before. To see a little of my grandfather in him made me smile.

  “If you even attempt to go through with this,” he said, “you can kiss goodbye my days of providing free dental services to your residents.”

  As the masses flew into a rage at this notion, Slip stood up and shook a fist under Gladys Greenberg’s chin. “You wanna know what I’m going to do about it? Why don’t you go have a look at your baby brother? That’ll give you some idea.”

  “Slip, enough. Let’s put this day to bed. We’ll figure out the rest in the morning.”

  This was my grandmother. Her voice was calm, but she was blotting her eyes with Kleenex, and her long legs wobbled in her heels. “Let’s not ask for any more trouble.”

  Gladys Greenberg laughed. “Isn’t that what Slip does best? You ought to know better than any of us, Estelle. I don’t know how you put up with it all. The bookmaking . . . the gambling . . . the wandering eye. . . .”

  At the mention of the eye, all of the women gasped.

  I gasped, too. Then I looked at Marcy. “What’s a wandering eye?”

  “It’s when one eyeball rolls into the other.” She crossed her eyes to demonstrate. I watched and accepted this definition for about three more years, until I was old enough to have a wandering eye of my own.

  “How dare you,” I heard my father say. “How low are you going to sink in order to justify what you are trying to do here?”

  I saw my grandfather move his bruised hand open and closed like a mouth. “Let her blah, blah, blah, blah, blah all she wants,” he said.

  I can hear Slip’s voice now as I write, clear as a bell, and since Laurel said to think in terms of dialogue, I think I’ll end this scene with him.

  “I know what is and what ain’t. And I ain’t no goddamn cheater.”

  CHAPTER 6:

  The Outing

  I strolled into the bakery a few days later, my homework in hand, though no idea in my mind as to what Laurel and I would do on a Sunday morning. I hadn’t spoken to her since the 3 Woos. I still didn’t understand what had possessed me to ask her out. I figured I’d show up, we’d meet up, and I’d wing it. Nothing big. Nothing anyone else needed to know about. A walk. A bite to eat. As I’d never spent a Sunday morning in the city with a Mormon, I’d see what she wanted to do.

  Marcy interrupted my mental planning. “Can we please have a word?” Before the door chimes quieted, she grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd of women—women who, surprisingly, remembered me from my reading the previous week. As I passed, they asked me about my movie, if the papers I carried were this week’s scene. Who knew I’d become somewhat of a celebrity at the bakery? Nothing to warrant my own perfume, sure, but I’ll be honest, as I got yanked by Marcy into the back room, I was sorry to recede from view.

  Estie and Ryan followed us, and a few seconds later, the Mormon Rodeo surfaced. She hung back, resting her shoulder against the doorframe, crossing her ankles. Her legs were bare above her boots. Her lips wrapped around a straw that reached into a to-go cup of coffee. The largest-size cup.

  Clearly we will not be going for coffee on our date, I thought as I waved to her and held up my papers. “What would you like to do today?”

  “I thought we were going to the Saturday Night Fever bridge,” Ryan said as the Mormon Rodeo executed a series of gestures—a head tip, a brow raise, and a small wave—all while sipping coffee through the straw.

  The Saturday Night Fever bridge is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the massive suspension bridge that connects Brooklyn to Staten Island, the upper section of the Narrows to the lower, the bridge that Bobby C falls from in Saturday Night Fever. The bridge is one of our regular Sunday destinations because Saturday Night Fever plays a role in the story of the Cadillac. Visits to the bridge are like field trips: they help give life to my story.

  “It seems you double-booked,” Marcy said, resting her gloved hands on her stringy hips and pointing her netted head in the direction of the injured parties.

  She didn’t need to explain. The minute Ryan mentioned the bridge, I registered my mistake. The previous Sunday, the Sunday of my reading at the bakery, I had promised Ryan a trip to the bridge because, due to my debut, I hadn’t had time to take him out. At the time I made the deal with Laurel outside her apartment, I’d forgotten my promise; in fact, I’d forgotten until right now. Ryan, of course, had not.

  Everyone stared at me. The females, Estie included, smirked. Already, without even leaving the bakery, my Sunday morning had become an outing—not the literal but the figurative kind, the kind that means you’ve been exposed, that family members now know that you’ve been carrying on in some way, no matter how innocent, with someone no one would ever have suspected you’d carry on with, like a member of your same sex or of a different religion or, in this case, your sister’s friend from yoga, your Mormon teacher from Utah, the one moving to Los Angeles, the one with whom you have nothing in common and no future and who, as a favor to your sister, gave you a seat in her class in effort to help you grow up, settle down, and get serious.

  “You promised,” Ryan said. Then he added that too many girls were in the bakery, he needed to get out. “They’re making me dizzy.”

  “Let’s all relax,” I said, palming my nephew’s head with my free hand. I shook Marcy’s hand from the wrist of my other and motioned for the Mormon Rodeo to come on over. “How does everyone feel about going together?” I asked. Like the best ideas do, this one came to me off the cuff, the way Share ’N Share Alike, Share’s fragrance, had come to me while listening to Marcy discipline her kids.

  As I made the suggestion, I realized that I felt great about the idea. Not only did it give us a destination, it gave me a buffer, in the same way that when I was a kid I preferred to have my sisters with me when I was in the company of Grandma B.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Marcy now asked. “You’ll take the kids to the bridge next week. Today, you’ll take Laurel on your date.”

  “Did you say ‘date’?” I asked. “I think you are mistak
en.” I looked at the Mormon Rodeo. “This is not a date, it’s a meeting. Isn’t that right, Laurel?”

  She uncrossed her legs and then recrossed them the opposite way. “Yes, by prior agreement, it is only a meeting.”

  “Well if it’s only a meeting,” Estie said with finger quotes around meeting, “we can go, too.”

  Ryan agreed, and Laurel said she didn’t mind going to the bridge. With that, the figurative outing became a literal one. A family one.

  “Not so fast,” Marcy said, grabbing my wrist again. With the other hand, she motioned for the others to go on without me. “Go with Laurel to the car,” she told the kids. “David will be there in a minute.”

  During that minute, Marcy made clear that I was not to start up any sort of romantic relationship with her friend Laurel.

  “Then why were you encouraging our date?”

  She let go of my wrist and stuck her head in an oven. She removed her head and a tray of muffins simultaneously. “Because I thought a date with a mature woman would be good for you. That doesn’t mean I think a date with an immature man would be good for Laurel.”

  “For your information, I hadn’t planned on starting up any sort of relationship with the Mormon Rodeo. Especially with your children in the car. I’m only looking to get through the day.”

  “You actually call her the Mormon Rodeo?”

  “Not to her face.”

  Marcy rolled her eyes. “Well that just proves my point.”

  “Which is?”

  Our conversation paused as the teenage helpers came into the back room to get both more pastries and Marcy. Her friends, they said, were looking for her. They made no mention of my fans missing me. Apparently my fifteen minutes were up. Marcy, however, still had one more minute left. She told the girls she’d be out in sixty seconds and continued.

  “You couldn’t possibly have any genuine interest in her, and she’s in a delicate place right now, so stay away.”