Chuckerman Makes a Movie

by Francie Arenson Dickman

  “Oh please,” my mother will say, laughing. “When have you ever been motivated by principle?”

  “Whether you realize it or not, Paula Pie, I’m a man of great principle and conviction.” Slip will smile and wink at my mother.

  “It’s just that some of the methods he uses to defend his principles lack principle,” Grandma Estelle will chime in. “Which,” she’ll add, “have led to his convictions.” She, my mother, and my Grandma B will laugh at her joke.

  “I don’t know what kind of devil you made a deal with, but I don’t do business with the devil,” Slip will say, shoving his napkin into his shirt collar. “Take it from me, that can only come back to bite you in the ass.”

  “I don’t think now is the time to start standing on ceremony,” my dad will answer as he leans over the table to wind his fork around some of my spaghetti. “You like to play cards, now you can play.”

  “Seems like it’s Allen here who has no principles.” This will be Slip.

  My father will drop his noodle-filled fork onto his plate and shake his head. “I can’t afford principles, Dad. I’ve got you. I’m not leaving town without you safely back in that card room.”

  “But you’ve got no trouble heading back north with her racing around the streets of Miami. Not only don’t you have principles, but you don’t have brains, neither.” Chicken juice will spray from the corners of Slip’s mouth as he adds, “Let her drive all she wants. As long as she doesn’t get near my Cadillac.”

  “Leave my driving out of this,” Estelle will order. She’ll pause to swallow her portion of the chicken and then say to Slip, as pleasant as if she were suggesting a Sunday drive, “How about if I mind my business and you mind yours?” She’ll look at us all. “Truthfully, I don’t care about Slip’s car, I don’t care whether Slip returns to the card room, and I don’t care who the devil is, either.” She’ll dab the corners of her mouth and eyes with her napkin. “I don’t care what happens, as long as I get to keep driving.”

  With these words, we won’t just CUT from the scene, we’ll SMASH CUT. We’ll jolt the audience from the familiar Rascal House to the foreign bedroom of Gladys Greenberg—specifically, to the image of her, ideally in 3D, standing before her mirror, stuffed into a jungle print leotard and matching bunny ears and cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West. From this, the terms of the dirty deal my father and his patients struck will begin to sink in with the audience. They will slowly come to understand that in exchange for Slip’s return to the card room, Gladys Greenberg has been given a spot in my grandma’s chorus line. They will realize why the terms of the deal were kept secret and will either laugh at the sight of Gladys Greenberg bulging and kicking in the suit or grimace as they anticipate Estelle’s reaction to the news that my father, her son, sold her interests out for Slip’s. No words will be spoken, no music will play. We’ll just watch and squirm and finally FADE, leaving my poor grandma in the dark.

  As much as I hate the actual dark, I’m a fan of the figurative kind. I believe that ignorance is as blissful as it’s billed to be. I’m the kind of guy who’d just rather not know. I was the kid who hid the envelope when the report card came in the mail. I am the grown-up who wore long sleeve shirts all last summer to cover a suspicious-looking growth on my arm. When my sister finally dragged me to a doctor, he confirmed what I’d suspected: it was skin cancer, or at least the beginnings of a carcinoma, obviously a result of my endless hours in the Miami sun. It was also, fortunately, curable since, thanks to Marcy, I caught it early.

  I am also the man who didn’t ask a single question throughout an entire week as Laurel deposited various acquisitions onto my kitchen counter. On Monday, she unloaded a bunch of to-go coffee cups she’d bought at Duane Reade. On Tuesday, she went to the GreenFlea Market on Columbus, where she “scored,” as she said, some oversized brown and blue mugs. On Wednesday, she came over with coffee and bananas from Zabar’s. Not until that Friday evening, as I sat on a stool exhausted from a grueling but miraculously successful week at work and finally took in the entire scene, did I realize that she’d converted my kitchen, a room which had never seen more than a single person and a bowl of cereal at a time, into a local hangout. Chuckerbucks, I was now calling it.

  As I stared, Laurel stacked the cups and mugs next to the machine. Also on deck was a container of low-fat milk. “In case,” Laurel had explained, “anyone wants a misto.”

  Whatever a misto was, the Krups Caffe Centro apparently made it.

  I nodded as she set a bottle of cinnamon powder next to the cups, along with packets of Sugar in the Raw that she’d lifted from the Grey Dog Cafe. Also in the mix was Chloe, who was uncomfortable as me with her change of locale. She slumped at Laurel’s feet.

  This activity went down a few weeks after the machine first took root on my countertop, a few days after I missed the class on Transitions.

  “Marcy is set to bring scones and jelly donuts,” Laurel informed me as she worked. “Yummy.”

  “When?” I looked at my watch. “It’s already nine thirty.”

  Laurel clarified that Marcy and the kids were coming over in the morning. “For the machine’s big debut.”

  “Like a christening,” I said for the sake of conversation.

  “More like a coming out,” Laurel replied as she organized supplies and pushed buttons to grind the coffee. The machine does that too, did I mention? It grinds.

  “Who’s coming out?” I asked. I walked over to the machine and studied it. “Is there something the machine wants to tell me?”

  Laurel told me, above the grinding, that I didn’t need to be so literal. She just liked the ring of coming out better than christening. “This is not meant to be a religious event. It’s just a coffee maker. Let’s not bring God into it.”

  “Well, first I would argue that it’s more than just a coffee maker. And second,” I added as I grabbed some milk from the fridge and returned to my stool, “I would say that at least the Mormon God is involved, since he doesn’t believe in coffee and you bought a machine the size of Yankee Stadium. If anything, I’d call this a cry for help.”

  Laurel sighed and grabbed the machine’s instruction manual. “Chuckerman, please. I don’t understand your need to draw these sweeping conclusions from every little thing. The coffee maker is just a machine, and your family is just coming over to see it, as well as to celebrate your new client, whoever she is. God has nothing to do with this.”

  I said okay. But as I sat at my no-longer-recognizable countertop in my no-longer-recognizable kitchen, I felt certain that the coffee maker, the Chuckerbuck, wasn’t just a machine, and the alteration of my kitchen, for better or worse, had something to do with God. How else could this have happened? To me, the developments at home were as incomprehensible as my new client—whose name I could finally announce, since the deal was signed—choosing to go with me instead of a big-name shop to brand her line of fragrance and body products.

  We’d presented Omnipotence on Wednesday and gotten the word Thursday. It was a go. As I’ve mentioned, I’d been working on this deal for months. I’d pulled countless all-nighters along the way, including one the day before the pitch, which had caused me to miss Tuesday night’s class—Transitions, Getting Gracefully from A to B, the syllabus called it. And by golly (as my Grandma Estelle would have said), what a rotten class for me to miss, I thought as I hopped off my stool and moved toward Laurel, because I had no idea how I’d gotten from A to B. Less than three months earlier I’d been a one-man shop, successful in my arena but by no means the go-to guy for A-Listers. Now here I was, about to hit the big time with a world-famous star while a Mormon and her cat redecorated my kitchen.

  From David Melman, the Bachelor to Chuckerman, Manager of the Chuckerbuck machine and the Schnoz behind Bailey Pierce’s—yes, that’s right, Bailey Pierce—Omnipotence campaign. In the words of the great prophet Grandma Estelle, life is a crapshoot. She never believed that people had a hand in how one moment morphs into the
next. So, I wondered as I stared around my kitchen, what kind of lesson on transitions had Laurel been teaching?

  I told Laurel that okay, we could call the next day’s gathering a coming out, because the more I studied the Chuckerbuck, the more I got the vibe that it was probably gay. “The name alone,” I said.

  Laurel laughed. She said she’d ask Marcy to weigh in on the machine’s orientation in the morning when she came for the unveiling. “Let’s call it an unveiling.”

  I asked her to halt her preparations for a minute so I could ask her out on a date. I explained that my new client, whom I could now reveal, as well as her stylist, her agent, Ezmerelda, and I were going to a celebratory dinner next Saturday night, and I wanted Laurel to join me. “I’ve never taken a date to a kick-off dinner,” I said, casually leaning into the counter next to the machine and Laurel. “Well, that’s not true. Once, right after Share finished recording her album, Estie accompanied me, but that was only because Share dueted with Nick Carter for ‘I Got You Dave,’ and Estie has a thing for Nick Carter. But Estie is my niece and you are”—I squeezed her butt—“not.” I grabbed two Styrofoam cups from the stack. “Also, I’ve never worked or dined with a star as big as . . .” I began to do a drum roll on the counter with the cups. “You ready for it?”

  She nodded yes as she began to bang the bottle of cinnamon against the side of the sink. Apparently, the bottle was clogged.

  “It’s big,” I said, still drum-rolling.

  She nodded again. “Let’s have it.”

  “Bailey Pierce.” I stopped drumming to allow her the appropriate time to react to the magnitude of the news.

  She looked up at me from the clogged bottle of cinnamon, though she didn’t stop banging it against the sink.

  “Yes, you heard right. Bailey Pierce, Bailey Jane Pierce, Bailey—‘Baby Two More Times,’ Best New Artist of 2000—Pierce.”

  “I know who Bailey Pierce is,” she said. She stopped banging the bottle and began shaking it downward over the counter with the same crazy force Slip had used with the saltshaker, though she was looking at me.

  “And you know who I am. So your attitude is a little laissez-faire for someone who was just invited out with both Bailey Pierce and David Melman.”

  The top of the bottle dropped off and cinnamon spilled all over the counter. Laurel swore at the pile. To me, she said, “I’m sorry.” She put down the bottle and put her arms around me. Obviously, she was going to say yes, I’d love to go. A kiss would follow. In my head, I went as far as calculating whether the kitchen floor provided enough space to have sex, as the countertop, cluttered up with the coffee maker and now the cinnamon, was no longer an option. “That’s incredible. I’m so excited for you, and I appreciate the invitation. I’m honored.” She gave me a kiss. “But I can’t go.”

  I moved out of our hug. “What do you mean, you can’t go? This is the biggest night of my career. Not to mention, it’s Bailey.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she began to mumble about how quickly time passes, how much she had going on between now and her move to LA. She fumbled for her messenger bag, which was on my kitchen table. She extricated her date book, flipped through the pages, confirmed with me that next Saturday night was August third, ran her finger down the page, and then nodded to herself. “I had a feeling.” She clenched her teeth like one does before they drop bad news. “I’m going to be in the Hamptons.”

  I came over to study her schedule for myself, but she closed the book and jammed it back into her bag.

  “Since when are you a Hamptons girl?” I asked.

  “I’m not,” she said, turning her attention back to the spilled cinnamon. She explained that the rabbi was going to be a guest lecturer at a yoga retreat. He’d be leading a special session on connecting to God through downward dog, and she had to attend since she’d recruited him.

  I grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and told her to move out of the way. “Isn’t that a lot of time to spend with the rabbi?” I said as I wiped up the mess. “You know, for someone who isn’t really interested in converting.” I was bothered, but too unenlightened to discern the exact cause of my bother. Was I upset that Laurel couldn’t go with me on my big night, or was I jealous of the rabbi? I hadn’t given much thought to him over the past weeks, opting for the dark instead, pretending that if I didn’t hear or think about him, he didn’t exist.

  Clearly, however, he was alive and well. “Well, if you must know, I’ve been talking to the rabbi a lot lately. I’m toying with the idea of actually converting.” Laurel rinsed her hands while she spoke. She told me that her connection to Judaism had recently intensified. “Did you know that Mormons believe they are descendants of the tribes of Israel, and that in some ways, Mormons are more closely related to Jews than to Christians? We study the Old Testament. The Star of David is a part of our symbol.”

  I shook my head. I had no idea. “So what’s holding you back from converting?” I asked, holding my breath, the Vera Wang conversation and Rachel’s marked words ringing in my head. Could this be where Laurel begins her transformation from cowgirl to New Yorker? I hoped not. As much as I wanted Laurel at the dinner, I was not ready for our Venn diagrams to begin to overlap. I was still telling myself that we had nothing in common. I still believed that having nothing in common was the key to our relationship’s success.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m in limbo, I guess, waiting for a sign to point me in the right direction.” She smiled.

  I held my breath. “A sign from who?”

  “From the guy who usually gives them out, God.”

  Relieved to hear she was waiting for a sign from God and not me, I moved on—or, more accurately, back—to the rabbi. “So you think the sign might come in the Hamptons? Maybe while you’re downward-dogging with the rabbi?”

  “It’s Amagansett, actually, but possibly. You never know.” She reeled me toward her with my tie. “You can come with me.”

  “You already know I can’t,” I told her. I backed away and grabbed a bag of Doritos. Nothing beats a Dorito when you think the woman you’re sleeping with just might also be sleeping with the clergy. “Not to mention,” I added, “I hate the Hamptons.”

  She apologized again for missing the dinner. She seemed genuine; she said we’d celebrate another time. But I couldn’t let it go. I was as troubled as I’d been that Christmas Eve at the Rascal House. Here, too, the catalyst was a concoction of things: jealousy over the rabbi, concern that Laurel was using me for my religion, embarrassment that Laurel had turned down my dinner invitation, disappointment that she didn’t seem to care, and, at the crux of everything, the worry that I did. Even hours later, as I wrote my scene and Laurel slept peacefully, I stewed and blamed myself for taking her film writing class in the first place.

  Before she went to bed, I’d pummeled her with a series of questions designed to subtly shed light on whether or not she was two-timing with the rabbi. “I imagine it’s hard for the rabbi to do yoga with his long coat and big black hat,” I’d suggested. If the guy looked like Moses, I figured, I had nothing to worry about. But Laurel said he was a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. I asked if he wore a yarmulke. Laurel said, “Sometimes.” I questioned further and she continued answering patiently, until I pieced together the following: the rabbi, whose name was Eric Lynch, had founded his own congregation, Mahot Adonai, four years earlier; not long after the establishment of Mahot Adonai—which apparently means Essence of God (and so is begging for its own fragrance, I told Laurel)—he enrolled in Laurel’s class because he believed in the sanctuary as theater and services as performance art; his congregation now had over 150 members, and he had groupies; among those groupies was Susan’s single daughter; through Susan, the couples club had found Laurel’s writing class; through Laurel, the rabbi had discovered Marcy’s yoga class; and now Laurel and ten others, including Susan’s daughter and possibly Marcy, if she could get away from the bakery, were heading to the Hamptons. Th
ey were staying in a house that once belonged to Kris Kristofferson. “So we’ll both be with musicians,” Laurel said. “Spiritually, if not physically.”

  “You’re all staying there? Even the guest lecturers? Everyone connecting to God together?” I winced as I spoke. Witnessing oneself come undone isn’t easy.

  She told me she didn’t know. She also said that if she didn’t know better, she would think I was starting to have feelings for her. She came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “And I know you wouldn’t want to seem like you have feelings.”

  “I don’t,” I told her, hiding behind my glass of milk whatever emotions may have slipped out. “This is a fling,” I said. “You should do what you want.” I offered her the bag of Doritos and pulled myself together. She took a chip. I took a sip of milk. As Laurel commented on my repulsive combination of food and drink, I channeled what I could remember of my former detached, indifferent self and changed my line of questioning. “But I am curious. Why do you need a retreat to connect with God?”

  She said she didn’t need a retreat, per se, but she was better able to get in touch with herself and with God when she was on her yoga mat and surrounded by nature.

  There was a pause while we chomped on Doritos and stared at one another.

  I broke the silence. “You know, I connect with God right here in my kitchen.”

  “Is that so?” Laurel said, taking the bag from me.

  “It is, and he’s telling me that you should stay here the weekend of August third because if you don’t, it will really piss off Bailey Pierce, and not even God wants to piss off Bailey. He’s also whispering to me that you are obviously hungry since you are eating Doritos, which you don’t like, and I should get up and make you something, since the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach.”

  For my own credibility, as well as for God’s, I felt compelled to follow through with the command. So I pulled out of my junk drawer a Three Musketeers that I’d meant to give to Ryan months ago. “I’m going to make you a David Melman banana boat.” I grabbed a banana, slit it open, stuffed the candy bar inside, wrapped the whole shebang in tinfoil, and stuffed it into the toaster oven.