Chuckerman Makes a Movie
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“Unsettling? You don’t know from unsettling,” Slip will say. “Didn’t none of you see what was going on at the dinner table in the movie?” Slip will demonstrate by slapping his cheeks back and forth a few times. “Throwing a meatball is minor league compared to what went on with those Italians.” He’ll give a few almost reverential shakes of his head. “You want indigestion, go to Brooklyn.”
“It was the movie,” Estelle will say. “That movie company ought to be ashamed of themselves. All you had to do to get a part in that film was swear like Slip and shake your hips.” She’ll shake her head back and forth. “And they have the nerve to call that dancing.”
“They’re calling it disco,” Grandma B will explain as my father directs Estelle to sip water and stop talking. He doesn’t want her to work herself up.
“Disco Shmisco.” Estelle will stick out her tongue in disdain.
“Dancing’s dancing,” Slip will say as he again mimics some of John Travolta’s moves. Whoever plays Slip will have to be smooth on his feet. He’ll step his feet side to side. He’ll throw in a spin, clap his hands, and ask Estelle how she’s feeling.
She will sigh, tired and exasperated, and say she’s as good as new.
“Good,” Slip will say, nodding to the door. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Aunt BoBo will shush him, waving her cigarette in my direction.
“Don’t worry,” I’ll say. “We already know those words from the movie.”
Then Rachel: “Go piss on it.”
“Watch this, assholes,” Marcy, in her yellow satin jacket, will yell as she sends her arm up and down across her body, the classic disco move.
“Fuck you,” I’ll say.
“Knock it off,” my mother will say before reminding my father that next year she will choose the movie.
CHAPTER 16:
Words We‘d Never Dare to Say
Laurel and I ended up having our conversation after class at the 3 Woos. The idea to talk there was Laurel’s. First, she was hungry. Second, she thought I’d be interested to see what Janet had done with the place, and I was.
When Janet had come to my office a few weeks back, we’d made a list of possible changes ranked according to biggest return for least amount of buck. She should start, I’d told her, by replacing the bulbs in the 3 Woos’ sign or else change the name to the 3 oos, which I actually didn’t think was a terrible idea. It had a cachet. Janet agreed, but her parents did not. The name would remain.
The 3 Woos was lit like a Las Vegas casino and crowded like one, too, when Laurel and I walked in. Standing room only. They’d tripled the seating, going from three to nine stools, and changed the walls from pasty grey to dark red. Little white lights framed the windows. Chinese lanterns resembling red beach balls hung from the ceiling, and customers lined the counters. The clientele were kids from NYU, a market sector willing to stand or do almost anything for free food, which the 3 Woos now offered. I’d passed on the Melman secret for creating brand loyalty in the form of the Woo-You Special. Order two entrees off their new Pan-Asian menu, and get an order of egg rolls for free.
“Let’s do that,” Laurel said as we waited in line. “I’m starved.”
“I’m nauseated,” I told her.
She suggested the nausea was residual from the previous night, but I knew better. The nausea was anticipatory, brought on by the speech—if you could call it that—I was now going to have to deliver. I’d tried to spit it out on the walk to the 3 Woos. I figured I needed five seconds of floor time. Laurel could reply with “Regrettably, I’m not interested,” in another five, and in a total of ten seconds, I could be on my merry way. Instead, Laurel kept hushing me up every time I opened my mouth, asking me to wait until she had the ability to focus. I didn’t see, as I stood in line and got shoved back and forth like a tetherball, how the 3 Woos was the destination for focus. It was not unlike the Rascal House in its unruliness. People standing. Kids screaming. Janet hollering and ringing a bell every time an order was up.
“Just call out ‘Chuckerman’ when our order is ready,” I told Janet when we reached the front of the line. “Don’t ring the bell.”
“For you, Chuckerman, I do anything.”
I smiled, more pleased to hear my name again then with anything else. If things didn’t work out with Laurel, I decided, I’d continue to come to the 3 Woos.
Janet told Laurel, “I give him free egg roll for life for everything he’s done for us.”
I smiled at Laurel hopefully. On the off chance that she was at least on the fence about forgiving me, perhaps the promise of never-ending egg rolls would tip the scales.
But all she said was, “That’s a real feather in his cap. He did a nice thing.”
“He’s much better at the branding business than movie writing,” Janet joked. “Don’t quit the day job, Chuckerman.”
“Actually, his movie isn’t terrible,” Laurel told her.
I was shocked by the praise.
“That is good to hear,” Janet said. “If it ever makes it into theaters, let me know.” In the meantime, she told me, her parents wanted to thank me personally for the help I’d given. “Too bad you’re dressed so sloppy today.”
We stuffed our tray in between two groups of kids, and as Laurel began to divide our egg roll order into our traditional one and a half each, I took a deep breath and readied myself to exhale my sentence.
“Don’t,” Laurel said without looking up from the sweet sauce container she was having sent down from one end of the counter to ours. I made a note to tell Janet to up the number of condiment stations.
“Don’t what?” I stuck my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, a demonstrative showing of my lack of intent to eat.
“Say anything.” Now she was pouring sauce and dipping her roll. I waited until she finished and was free to look at me.
“How do you know what I’m about to say?”
Laurel’s mouth was full of food. She spoke anyway. “Marcy told me.”
I moved my hands from my pockets to across my chest. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other as, in my mind, I connected the dots.
“When she called to tell me you were coming to class, she told me what you planned to say.” Laurel must have seen the image of me strangling Marcy in my head because she then tried to couch Marcy’s behavior as altruistic. “She just wanted to get a feel for how I was going to react to make sure Rachel wasn’t sending you into the lion’s den.”
“That’s so great, looking out for me in that way,” I said.
But Laurel didn’t seem to notice my sarcasm. “You’ve got a really nice family.”
I grumbled that they felt the same way about her, and added, “If that’s all there is to say, I’m good to go.” I thanked her for saving me the trouble of embarrassing myself with my speech, and added that it was just as well, the restaurant was too crowded for me.
“Stay,” she said. “I’m not finished.” She then asked the girls on the stools around us if they could scooch down a few inches, which they did.
I gripped the side of the freed-up counter space and said, “I think I have to get out of here, I’m feeling claustrophobic.” I added for authenticity that the lanterns were dangling too close to my head. “They need to hang them higher.”
“Then I’ll leave with you,” Laurel told me.
“That’s not necessary,” I said. “Finish your food.”
“Fine,” she said, finally bothering to wipe her face with a napkin. “But before you go, I have something to say.” She took my hands in hers in just the same way that my father had suggested I take hers. “I’m so sorry. I regret my behavior, and I love you too,” she said.
“You stole my line.”
She kissed my forehead. “It was given to me.”
The minutes after this were a blur, with the hugging and kissing that usually accompanies the receipt of unexpected good news.
Janet’s parents seized the moment to parade out from t
he kitchen and, in their best and most likely only English, thank me for my services. Janet offered drinks on the house, which, in the wake of Yom Kippur, I declined. She also promised free egg roll for life to Laurel too. She raised a plastic glass, and the college kids followed suit. “A toast to the Chuckermans.”
I toasted too. Chuckerman was back in business.
But then Laurel yanked her schoolteacher skirt, which had ridden up on her waist during the celebration, back into place, signaling with one swift gesture an end to the festivities. At least, an end to ours. The college kids kept going, so the rest of our conversation seemed to take place in a frat party. “David, I love you. I do,” she hollered over the noise. “And I want to give our relationship a serious try, which is why I’ve quit the rabbi. I promise you, it’s done.” She brushed her hands together to reflect her doneness.
“Fantastic,” I told her. I told her she wouldn’t be sorry. Then I kissed her. The college kids whistled at us and I whispered to her, “I knew I had to be better in bed than he was. I imagine you must be somewhat inhibited when you are always so close to God.”
She told me that was a point she’d never considered, and she, in turn, had something for me to consider.
I thought she was going to suggest moving in together. Or getting married. I tightened up. Yes, I’d set out to win her back, but I hadn’t prepared for any sort of permanency. What a difference a day made, I thought as she took a step closer, put her hands on my shoulders, and smiled.
She had egg roll in her teeth, a piece of sprout or something green, that on any other night I would have pointed out. But because I was on the verge of engagement, I kept quiet and let her do the talking.
“I think you should get rid of your car.”
My stomach went sour. “What?” The older I get, the more I understand my Grandma Estelle’s stomach troubles. “I thought we were putting the past behind us. Movin’ up and on. Starting fresh. Clean slates. Hatchets buried.”
“We are,” she said. “Or, I’d like to, but I’m not sure how starting fresh is possible if you are going to bring along the Cadillac. I don’t think I can take on that car.”
Now I put a hand on her shoulder. “Say no more,” I told her, not wholly understanding the situation but hoping that with a quick fix, full understanding would not be necessary. “I should never have made you drive to the bridge. You’ll never have to drive it again.”
“Thank you, but it’s more than that.” She pretended to brush crumbs from her blouse while she took another breath. “I’ve thought about this a lot. Your grandfather’s car . . . I think it’s holding you back. You might not have gained any insights about yourself by writing your movie, but I have, and David, that Cadillac is an anchor. It keeps you tied to the past, tied to your childhood, to your family. In movie lingo, your life is like one big, unedited scene. Your past, your present, your future are all rolled into one blob of time. Which is why I think that as long as you are hanging on to the Cadillac and everything it represents, you can’t start a new act with me.” She paused. “Or with anyone else, for that matter.”
“I’m not hanging on to anything except the counter,” I said as I renewed my grip on it. “Yes, I love my car, but I love you too. As much as I love the car.” Hardly the most romantic line. It was a Hail Mary intended to save me from losing the Cadillac—or maybe from losing Laurel, I wasn’t sure. The uncertainty only added to my panic.
“Exactly my point. I know this sounds silly, but I need you to love me more than the car.”
“I get it,” I told her. “That didn’t come out quite right. You caught me off guard.”
“Listen.” She squeezed my hand. “It’s great to know you love me and I love you too. But words are easy.”
“Not for me.” I crossed my arms and studied her. “Besides, I thought you loved my family. There was a time when I thought my family was the reason you were with me. You know, as a backup, in case you converted to Judaism and your family abandoned you. The Cadillac is part of the family.”
“I do love your family. But I can’t compete with them. You are an able, competent man. You were able to wrangle Bailey Pierce into your business. And yet when it comes to your personal life, you still play the role of the child. You can’t make a move without everyone else weighing in. You need to separate.”
“I don’t ask them to weigh in. They just do.”
At this point, Janet came around with pitchers, giving refills of the wine. Laurel held out her glass. So did all the other people in our area. Cups and bodies, including mine, collided in the struggle for a free top-off.
“I need to get out of here,” I announced, and I headed to the trash with my uneaten egg roll.
Laurel followed, taking one last bite before she begrudgingly parted from her food. “My intention is not to punish you. I truly believe that getting rid of your car is for your own good, regardless of what happens between you and me.”
“You know what I think? I think you’re jealous of the Cadillac. I think my grandma was jealous of it, too.”
“She wasn’t jealous of the car, she was aggravated that she had no control over her life. Her life was Slip’s, and Slip didn’t always seem to treat her that well. Why should we carry the Cadillac, which to me symbolizes your grandmother’s struggle, into our relationship?” she said as she followed me out the door.
“Because I disagree with you. To me, it represents”—I paused to take her bag for her and to think of what the car represented—“it represents my memories, and getting rid of it seems like a drastic measure. I don’t think you can compare getting rid of the rabbi to getting rid of the Cadillac. Not unless the rabbi was left to you in your grandfather’s will.”
“You can compare them in terms of proving our commitment to our relationship. They were both holding us back.”
“My car is more akin to your robe. And I would never ask you to get rid of your robe, however hideous it is.” I zipped my sweatshirt.
Laurel said the analogy was not the same. “I separated from my family a long time ago. The robe is simply a token. Though if you wanted me to lose it, I would . . . And, I wouldn’t ask if you didn’t have your movie.” She went on to explain that because I’d brought the car to life in my movie, I no longer needed to possess the actual car in order to own it. “I’ve seen enough characters brought to life in my bathrobe that its essence is with me, with or without the robe itself.”
“How can you compare an entire car to a few pages of an amateur script? If they were actually going to make my movie and bring the Cadillac to life, then it might be a different story.” I surmised that in that case, they could use the actual car in the film.
Laurel pulled a scarf from her messenger bag and mumbled, “I imagine they could.” After the scarf was sufficiently wound around her neck, she told me that producing my script was irrelevant. “The writing is the important thing. It’s the process of writing that brings people and things to life. That’s the beauty of it. The more you write about an object, the more real it becomes. To write is to revive. To write is to immortalize.”
I rolled my eyes and headed toward the street to catch a cab.
She followed me to the curb, where she pulled me toward her and set her hands on my shoulders, as if to steady me. Then she pushed my hair from my forehead and gave me a kiss. The college kids gave us a thumbs-up through the window of the 3 Woos. “Relax, Chuckerman,” she said. “I do not expect you to go cold turkey or do it alone. I just think we owe it to ourselves to give us a fresh start.” She said she would give me a little time to come to terms with the separation. She would help me through the process.
“How do you plan to do that?” To me, this question was rhetorical, unanswerable.
But for Laurel, the answer was concrete. She had a three-pronged approach to getting me comfortable with the idea of getting rid of my car, which she spelled out in baby steps, not unlike the manner in which Rachel had set forth her strategy for my grand apology.
In exchange for me hearing her out, Laurel agreed to come home with me. I took her willingness as a sign that her three steps would be simple, possibly even involving sex. But then I heard about the yoga prong. Laurel wasn’t giving in, she was buttering me up.
“I’m not much of a stretcher and bender,” I said, hunching my torso toward the floor of the cab. My outstretched arms barely reached past the seat. “See?”
“Yoga isn’t about flexibility. It’s a nice side benefit, yes. But yoga is as much a mental thing as it is physical. It teaches you to stay calm and in the moment. It trains you to not react to all of the everyday thoughts and anxieties that float through your head.”
“That sounds like being brain dead, which does not appeal to me,” I told her as our cab darted down 14th.
“No, it means going with the flow. Trusting yourself. Learning to step outside your comfort zone. I’d still be a practicing Mormon if it weren’t for yoga.”
“I’m confused. I thought you were giving credit for your liberation to Judaism.”
“Well, yes,” she said as she rummaged through her bag for a piece of gum, which she eventually found and began to chew before she continued talking. “But I was only open to discovering Judaism because of yoga. Don’t you see? We hang on to habits out of fear. When we realize that we’ll be okay without them, we can let go. Yoga teaches us to let go.”