Chuckerman Makes a Movie

by Francie Arenson Dickman

  “You know Slip wasn’t walking on the beach today,” Gloria from 14 will say. “He was taking bets on those paddle games that go on there. He lost thousands.” She’ll mimic Estelle’s quick kick-ball change and again say, “Thousands,” using jazz hands for emphasis.

  “He didn’t mention anything at dinner about losing money,” my Grandma Estelle will counter as she dances.

  “Of course he didn’t,” Gloria from 14 will say. “He’s not an idiot.”

  “He’s a menace,” Florence from 9 will say.

  Grandma B will add, as she presses her cigarette into the ashtray on the top of the piano, “He’s a bag of trouble.”

  Without pausing his music, Morry will say, “You’re wrong, he’s a saint.”

  “Oh, please,” Viv from the Lobby Level will say. “He’s a loose cannon, and Estelle should either walk out or set up some ground rules.”

  Marcy overheard this conversation in real life. She sat in the corner of the stage in her yellow satin disco jacket studying both the dance moves and the talk so that the next morning, as she, Rachel, and I rode the elevator into the lobby, she was able to repeat both verbatim.

  “He didn’t seem like he’d lost thousands last night at dinner,” Rachel countered. “He was in a good mood.”

  “Yeah,” I added, understanding little of what I’d heard and liking none of it. “And he had sea glass, so he had to have walked on the beach.”

  “What did Grandma say?” Rachel asked.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” Marcy said, rolling her eyes just like Grandma Estelle did whenever she used any of the “heavens” expressions. “She said, ‘He is who he is, and his bark’s worse than his bite.’” Marcy studied herself in the mirror as she performed some of the previous night’s dance routine. Whoever plays Marcy—Estie would be perfect—will have to execute a few high kicks and pivots at this point and then belt out at the top of her lungs, “I’ve got my man, who could ask for anything more.”

  “Shut up,” Rachel will yell.

  “Yeah,” I’ll add. Taking Rachel’s side was and still is a reflex for me.

  “Okay, fine,” Marcy will say. She’ll do exaggerated jazz hands in Rachel’s face and pull the lip-shaped sunglasses off of her head.

  As silence falls over the elevator, the narrator will explain that we were on our way to the Rascal House for breakfast in the company of my grandfather only.

  That morning, my mother, father, and grandma had headed off early, as planned, to the Publix parking lot for driving lessons. This scenario—me, Marcy, Rachel, and Slip on the road alone—was a first. Not only had we never driven with Slip, we’d never ridden in the Cadillac. Ours was a maiden voyage in many respects, and the excitement was palpable.

  Marcy will continue, “Then let’s discuss what went down after grandma’s rehearsal.”

  “What happened?” I’ll ask.

  “You shouldn’t spread rumors,” Rachel will warn.

  “But you already know,” Marcy will announce. “I’m not spreading anything.”

  “Davy doesn’t know,” Rachel will answer, pulling her glasses away from Marcy.

  “Davy doesn’t count,” Marcy will respond, and without pause she’ll announce that at some time during the previous day—probably when I was walking around the deck with Estelle—my father and his dental patients had appealed separately to the Board of Directors to pardon Slip. They felt hopeful they’d succeed, but at the end of the evening’s rehearsal, Gladys Greenberg came into the room and announced to Gloria from 14 that both pleas had been rejected. When Gloria from 14 asked Gladys if they could do anything to change her mind about the pardon, Gladys nodded in the direction of the stage and said, “Estelle knows what she can do.”

  “Grandma ignored her,” Marcy will say as the numbers above the elevator light up one by one, marking our descent. “Instead she just ordered the dancers to take it from the top.”

  “Why did they reject the pleas?” I will ask in my worried voice.

  “’Cause Gladys Greenberg said to reject them,” Marcy will explain.

  “Probably because she hates Grandma for not giving her a spot in the kick-line. Either way, Dad’s never giving free dental services again,” Rachel will inform me. “Not even to Ida from 27. There are going to be a lot of people mad at Dad.” Not even her lip-shaped glasses will detract from Rachel’s credibility in this moment.

  “Yeah,” Marcy will say. “And it’s all Papa’s fault. He’s a loose cannon.”

  At this, the elevator door will open and the audience will see Slip waiting on the other side of it.

  As we head through the heavy doors to the parking garage, background music will kick in again. This selection will have to be stirring, with a chord of anticipation and a note of tension—something like “Chariots of Fire”—as we head, perhaps in slow motion, toward the Cadillac, which will gradually come into focus. And what a shot this will be.

  Flawless, shining with polish. Yellow exterior with white leather seats. A beacon compared to the cars around it. A symbol of status. The ultimate object of affection. The American Dream. The fanciest thing Slip had ever owned.

  Somehow, whether with a slow pan over the car or over our enthralled faces, the camera will give the Caddy its due.

  “Wait a while, wait a while,” Slip will holler as we tear toward the car. We’ll gather at the door as Slip, dressed in a pale blue sweater and matching cap, moves toward us at a mile a minute, keys in hand. We’ll watch as the silver key, the same one I have on my key ring today, slips into the slot. With an authoritative click, the door will unlock. Then it will open.

  “Whatcha waiting for?” Slip will say, motioning with his hand. “Go on. Get in. I ain’t got all day.”

  We’ll climb in and sit down three in a row, no fighting for position. I will finger the power window control and feel the soft leather seats. I remember the air inside already smelled strong and smoky like my grandpa who, in the movie, will slam the back door shut and tuck himself behind the wheel. “You ever see anything as pretty as this, ladies and gentleman?”

  “No,” we’ll say, as if there was any other answer.

  “It’s high time those folks of yours handed you over to me. You’re in for a real ride.”

  “Hang on,” Rachel will whisper to me, grabbing my arm.

  She didn’t need to offer me this instruction. My Superman T-shirt belied my true nature. I’d been fearing the worst since my father had announced the morning’s plan.

  Slip had a reputation as a reckless, practically blind driver. A reputation bestowed by my mother and grandmother, who until that day had not allowed Slip to drive when we were along for the ride. A reputation that was rightly deserved, we knew, the minute the Cadillac screeched off, reaching sixty in five seconds and going back down to zero in two more as Slip slammed on the brakes and skidded past the stop sign at the garage’s exit.

  No one wore seat belts back then, I explain to my niece and nephew, so the three of us flew toward the front seat and screamed stuff like, “We’re going to die!”

  In the movie, I’ll bang into Rachel, and Rachel will bang into Marcy so that Marcy, with her hood over her eyes, will get shoved onto the floor.

  There’ll be a moment of silence while we climb back onto our seats and come to the realization that we survived. Then we’ll start to laugh. And here’s what I remember: I remember looking up into the rearview mirror and seeing Slip looking back at us. He was laughing, too. Not out loud—he couldn’t or else his cigar might have dropped out of his mouth. But he smiled, and his blue eyes danced. In the movie, the camera will have to be placed in the back seat (a POINT-OF-VIEW shot, according to the poster over the classroom clock) so the audience can see Slip just as I did.

  Immediately, my worries went away. Mine had stemmed in part from being a passenger in Slip’s Caddy, but more so from being alone in the company of a loose cannon. I didn’t know what a loose cannon was, but, like a wandering eye or a coma, it didn’t soun
d good. However, as soon as I saw the dancing eyes in the mirror, I felt certain that Estelle had been right. At least as far as we were concerned, I decided, Slip’s bark was worse than his bite.

  Today, as the reliable narrator, I’ll tell you that I’m not sure what to make of this whole scenario. Back then, explanation seemed easy. We were a family. A unit. A tight and tiny one-bedroom convertible. We fought. We forgave and forgot. It never crossed my mind that the adults had ended up in Apartment 1812 by choice, or that Estelle might have reacted to Slip’s behavior in any other way than with acceptance.

  But now I wonder, what makes some people stay and others go? Did Estelle, like Laurel’s mother, crave an escape from her loose cannon but lack the means? Did the Depression-era mentality that caused her to keep every doggy bag prevent her from getting rid of her husband? Was walking out what the driving lessons were all about? And what about ground rules? Did Laurel’s mother set ground rules in the beginning? Did Estelle? Did her rules erode over time as she got tired of spinning her wheels, or is it possible that rules were never needed, that Estelle didn’t mind the gambling or whatever else Slip did as much as she enjoyed being married to him? I don’t know. The sun can rise a million times over Riverside while I sit and wonder, and I’ll never have answers. But I can choose to believe that Estelle just loved him, plain and simple, spots and all.

  CHAPTER 9:

  Parallel Journeys

  As I’ve said, I’m not a kiss-and-tell kind of guy, but I had to talk to someone. If I was going to confess or brag about our night together, my confidant had to be Broc. After all, he’d named her.

  “Davy, she’s from Utah and she wears boots. It isn’t rocket science. The name wasn’t about sex,” Broc said, laughing, when we met for lunch at the health club. “I was never attracted to her.”

  “She’s not my type either. I think that’s the whole appeal,” I explained to him, because he was now looking at me cock-eyed. “We’re two ships passing in Union Square, one headed to Los Angeles, the other back home to the Upper West Side,” I said. “We have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common.”

  “Marcy and I had nothing in common when I started sleeping with her.” Broc explained, not for the first time, that he’d been the big-shot editor, she’d been the idiot freshman posing topless for a women’s studies’ art expo he’d covered. Marcy was supposed to be a distraction until he got his degree and headed back to Raleigh, where he would dabble in local politics while living off the fat of the family business, Meester Foods. Broc, né Louis Meester, gestured toward his bald head, his belly. He took his billfold out of his pocket and tossed down its contents. “And now look.”

  We stared at his stock exchange badge and three dollar bills. Now it was my turn to laugh. Broc laughed too. One of the girls seated next to us handed him a napkin with her phone number written on it. We laughed harder. Then Broc said he had to get back to work.

  On the escalator down to the lobby, I asked him if he was sorry about the road not taken.

  “I ended up on the Melman road,” he said. “How could I be sorry?”

  I nodded in agreement. “Life on the Melman road is a good one. Especially for me, right now. My career is about to skyrocket; I’ve got a regular girl, not a starlet, who eats normal food and has no expectations of life, let alone me; and pretty soon I may even have a screenplay.”

  Broc told me that he was happy for me and didn’t mean to take the wind out of my sails. “My only point is that at some point, if you’re not careful, the road you think you’re not taking can become the road you’re actually on. So eyes wide open, brother.”

  I took the advice to heart, and made a concerted effort to pay close attention to all that transpired between Laurel and me over the next few days to make sure we stayed on the right road. By the time I walked into her class on July 23, I was fully aware that exactly twelve nights, eleven days, five movies (four rentals, one in the theater), two dinners, and a trip to Macy’s had passed, and I was feeling only slightly less free and easy in the new shoes I’d bought at Macy’s, where we’d had the first real talk of our relationship and where we’d bought Laurel a coffee maker for my apartment.

  Might one consider a jointly owned coffee maker—a gargantuan contraption, it turned out, that now sat on my kitchen counter, looming over me every time I ate—something to throw a man off his intended road? Yes, I suppose. But, I’d rationalized, the machine was not so much a gift for Laurel as for myself, so she would be willing to spend the night at my place—so we could both have our cake and eat it too, so to speak. For the time being, everything was under control.

  Good thing, too, that I wore the new shoes to class, because they had soft soles, and I was late. When I arrived to the classroom, I gently set the bottoms of my new shoes—moccasins to match her boots, as I’d told her in Macy’s—on the vinyl floor and slipped through the door.

  Given the events of the past twelve days, I was not as concerned about being tardy as I previously might have been. I’d missed the last class entirely. Although, truth be told, I would have missed that class regardless of my status with the teacher. I’d been in the thick of dealing with Ezmerelda, who wouldn’t budge from her position on Omnipotence without an advance fee. The sum was a substantial one, too much for me to articulate without triggering the heart attack that is eventually headed my way, but I didn’t want to rock the boat with my still-to-be-locked-down, signed-on-the-dotted-line client—not this client—so I paid Ezmerelda what she asked, out of my own pocket.

  Laurel, in a brown mini-skirt and the same I HEART LA T-shirt that had done me in a couple of weeks ago, was standing next to the blackboard, where she’d written in giant chicken scratch: WHAT’S YOUR TYPE?

  The sentence, apparently, had set off a sixth-grade response. Judd was winking and pointing at her. The guy near the window hollered out that his type was Angela, this tall brunette who sits next to Rhonda. Rhonda said Angela was her type too. I thought of my pronouncement to Broc that Laurel was not my type, and chuckled as I slipped into my seat. Did her decision to wear the T-shirt, I wondered, have something to do with me? Or was it simply the only shirt she could find in the clutter?

  “That’s not what I mean,” Laurel said. She added that she was glad she’d grabbed our attention and clarified that she was talking about story type. “Good film writers know what type of story they want to write when they begin to work.” She threw on the board examples of what I assumed were story types—Spiritual Quest, Mystery, Romance. “Different types of stories have different types of arcs. You need to know what type yours is so you know how to tell it.”

  Moving into the center of the room in her mini-skirt, she announced that we were to go around and say our story type so she could make sure we each had a handle on the concept.

  As I listened, I was shocked by the level of thought my peers had put into this. Revenge, War Romance, Unexpected Visitor, Loss of Love, and, of course, Candy’s Parallel Journey. Whatever that was.

  One by one we circled the room, much like we had on the first day of class. How far I’d come since that day, I thought. As the class members pigeonholed their scripts, I laundry-listed the actions I’d taken toward personal growth in the past six weeks. I’d committed to a class. I’d written seven scenes. I’d changed up my footwear. I’d casually slept with the teacher, and to boot, I’d had a public reading of my work—a success, even if it did take place in a bakery. In fact, at dinner this past Sunday night, just after Broc (in person) and Rachel (by phone) berated me for buying the coffee maker, Marcy had said that the Sunday bakery crowd had been asking for an encore, and Estie had said that she was eager to do one. In fact, she said she’d like to stage this one more formally, with different people reading different characters’ parts. “A table read,” she said.

  “Where’d you pick up that lingo?” I asked.

  “Duh,” she said. “Laurel.”

  I didn’t share with my niece that she wasn’t the only Melman who had Lau
rel to credit for enlightenment. Thanks to the Mormon Rodeo, I now wrote, drank coffee, and slept around. I was practically a Renaissance man.

  Laurel tapped on my desk. “Mr. Melman, what would you call your story?”

  I shrugged. I had no idea what kind of story I was telling. I hadn’t written a word since the morning after the drop-in. Not that I didn’t intend to continue, but between working and flinging, I hadn’t had time. “I’d call it entertaining.”

  The class chuckled—except for Candy, who turned up her tiny nose.

  To my surprise, Laurel did not. “Actually, that’s a great point. Any movie, no matter the type, must entertain,” she said. “After all, there are only so many story types. In the end, what will set yours apart is the way you tell it. It’s your voice and your vision that really count.” She thanked me for my contribution.

  I sat back in my chair, gloating at Candy.

  Laurel looked at me. “That said, can you be more specific about yours?”

  “Sure,” I offered. “Mine is a Parallel Journey story too.” I smiled at Candy.

  “Oh, please,” Candy mumbled.

  Laurel crossed her arms. “Is that so? I haven’t picked up on that from what I’ve read.” She was annoyed. I could tell by the way she smacked her lips together. I studied her for signs that she and the woman I’d been spending my nights with, the owner of my coffee maker, were one and the same. I came up empty-handed. “I see it as more of a Coming of Age,” she said.

  I proceeded with more deference. “I like it,” I said. “The designation adds a certain credibility. But I’m not sure how a story about two old folks can be a Coming of Age.”