In the kitchen, Rhea greets her without disguising her annoyance at Maggie’s lateness. There’s a handful of people drinking and chatting around the table, but apparently as far as Rhea is concerned their idleness is sacrosanct and only Maggie’s work is necessary. All week Maggie hasn’t spoken with the Centaurs. Dimitri has stopped making an issue of George Ray, so she has decided to leave things be, not wanting to play Dimitri’s chaperone. Lately he and Rhea always seem to be ill-tempered, though, and yesterday at dinner they just smiled coldly when Fletcher called tonight’s party a farewell bash for them. Now, as Maggie works alongside her, Rhea stays silent except to order her around. After fifteen minutes of it Maggie excuses herself to change the reels.
During her absence from the playroom, a number of people have discovered the film, some sitting on chairs, some leaning against the wall. Onscreen, there’s a row of neon signs she shot in Niagara Falls, which means only a few more seconds remain before the reel ends. When it does, she replaces it quickly to keep the audience from losing interest. Nobody speaks or moves, as if they’ve gone blank with the screen and will be reanimated when the projector starts again.
By the time she arrives downstairs, people are lining the hall, smoking and talking with one another. Usually by this time in the day the place smells of sweat and dirt, but tonight the air’s scented with perfume, beards have been trimmed and faces scrubbed. The living room shades are drawn, leaving the space patched with a darkness that would be hell to film. In the corner, the television sits unplugged, looking sad that no one’s watching it. Somebody has turned on the record player, and she can hear Joni Mitchell above the layers of conversation, singing about pieces of paper from the city hall. It seems just what Fletcher has envisioned, yet as Maggie pours herself a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the coffee table, the fragments of speech she overhears make it doubtful the night will produce new residents as he hopes. They all seem to be talking about the election, going over the day’s Olympics results, or speculating about an amnesty for draft dodgers. From the dining room comes a high-pitched voice appealing for a ride across the border.
Passing through the kitchen to the mud room and onto the lawn, she finds the sun vanished. September has brought cooler weather, and most of the people outside are dressed in sweaters or jackets, seeming more adult, less profligate than before. Fletcher, overseeing the barbecue pit with Karl and Lambchop next to him, is the only one with bare arms. He grimaces in response to something Lambchop says, and when serving a hot dog to a little boy, he doesn’t even smile. It’s a shame for him to be unhappy, especially when the party was his idea. It must be Karl and Lambchop’s fault, whatever they’re laying on him. When Karl sees her heading their way, she could swear he elbows Lambchop and whispers something. Promptly the two of them sidle into darkness.
“Shouldn’t you be filming?” Fletcher asks as she draws near. The question grates on her. Why should he assume shooting movies is always what she wants to do? She doesn’t like his wilful innocence either, as if there isn’t a history between them with the camera now.
“What were you talking about with those two?” she asks.
“Nothing much.” The way he says it makes her worry, and she waits for more. “They just wanted to know how long we’re staying here.” He seems embarrassed by her puzzlement. “They’ve been talking to my father,” he adds with some reluctance. It takes a moment before it clicks.
“He sent them to talk you into coming home, didn’t he?”
Fletcher says of course not, but she’s having none of it. Then she remembers the film and checks her watch. Already another twenty minutes have elapsed. Telling Fletcher they’ll talk more about it, she hurries back inside. Upstairs, people are filing from the playroom.
“Wait, there’s more!” she exclaims, rushing to the projector and fumbling with the reels. Most of the chairs are still occupied, the audience content to chat during the intermission. A few more people whom she caught at the door return to positions along the wall.
The next reel begins with footage from her time-lapse experiments. The audience seems enthralled, and Maggie can’t help but be glad. She’d love to film their faces now, their preoccupation with the screen. She should go back to Fletcher, but she stays to watch a little longer, worried he’ll only impart bad news: that they’ve run out of money for good, or that his father has made a final decision to sell the farm. If he told her that, she’s not sure what she’d do. All she knows is she couldn’t leave now. It isn’t because of the people or the work they’ve done on the house. It isn’t because of some political principle. Foolishly and simply, she realizes, it’s because of the film. After all the energy and time she’s put into capturing the place, framing and editing it into shape, she can’t imagine bidding it farewell.
The room continues to fill, people entering loudly but growing quiet as they’re arrested by the images on the wall. They doff hats, stifle coughs, settle into seats. Rhea’s there in the front row with her boys, waiting for the ritual glimpse of their lost cat. George Ray is there too, his orange toque for once left behind, and she’s pleased that finally he’s watching something she has filmed.
Then Maggie sees the girl from next door, Lydia, standing by herself at the back. She seems bony and prepubescent in her slip of a dress. Dimitri can’t have invited her; he wouldn’t be so stupid. Is she here to cause trouble? Their eyes lock briefly, and Lydia’s expression reveals nothing. Maggie wonders if the girl knows that Dimitri’s wife and children are sitting a few feet from her. She seems less sure of herself than the other times Maggie has encountered her, slouching and straightening against the wall by turns, tugging her dress down over her knees.
Maggie considers confronting her, but then she notices the woman near the projector. Her features are so pale as to be ghostly; only a dark mole on her chin anchors her to the world. Something about her is familiar, and Maggie stares at her until she realizes who it is: the woman from the church. The priest’s sister, Lenka. Her beehive has been let down so that her hair flows over her shoulders, but it’s her.
The priest could be here too, then, maybe in this room. Wale must have invited him at the grocery store. When the reel comes to an end, Maggie sets to work changing it, conscious of her proximity to the woman. The beam from the projector cuts through the smoky air like a solid thing Maggie could reach out and touch.
“Margaret Dunne,” says a voice, the accent unmistakable. A jolt goes through her. How does Lenka know her name?
“Actually, it’s Maggie,” she replies without looking up.
“Maggie.” Lenka pronounces the name awkwardly but with a hint of enjoyment at its intimacy.
“Did your brother come too?” Maggie asks, and Lenka nods. “I didn’t think this would be his kind of scene.”
“Josef is here because he wants me to come,” says Lenka. “We are still new to country, and is quiet in rectory all day. Priest’s sister, she meet people easy, but is hard to make friends. You go to house for dinner and people are—what is expression?” Maggie shrugs, but Lenka finds it. “On best behaviour!” She lifts the wineglass in her hand, whether to toast her own vocabulary or the hospitality of local parishioners, it isn’t clear. With stern, drunken eyes she looks at Maggie. “Josef says you do not like talking of father. Fine, relax, I do not talk of him.” Maggie flicks the switch on the projector while Lenka takes a mouthful from her glass, then tips down the dregs. “Come to Mass, do not come. It doesn’t matter to me. But church is trustworthy, Maggie, in way you cannot trust people.” She pauses, frowning. “I do not speak properly for making friends. Pardon me, please. I drink too much tonight.”
Maggie says it’s all right and excuses herself, not knowing where she’s headed. The house has grown hot with bodies and makes her dizzy; for a moment, going down the stairs, she worries she’ll be sick. On the ground floor a current of cool air steals along the hall, carrying Fletcher’s voice from the porch as he holds forth about Sargent Shriver. Tonight she has
no stomach for Sargent Shriver.
In the kitchen, she glimpses Wale just about to slip through the back door. When she calls out to him, people at the table look up, hearing the edge in her voice. He turns and she sees his beard is gone. She has always thought that men who shave their beards regain a measure of their youth, but Wale seems older than before.
“You invited the priest, didn’t you?” she says as she crosses the room, speaking loudly enough that conversation around the table halts. Wale doesn’t become defensive, though. Instead, he gazes at her with something like fondness.
“Maggie, where’s your camera?” He’s wild-eyed, but she doesn’t think he’s drunk; maybe some other drug. “My kingdom for a camera! United States of a Camera. Ha!” He begins to sing out of tune. “O Camera, we stand on guard for thee …” Abruptly he breaks off and speaks in a stage whisper. “You should see the way you look now. The light on your face. Really lovely.” Without warning, he leans in as if to kiss her, and she ducks away. There’s a titter from someone at the table. “You know, I didn’t come up here for Brid,” he tells her.
“Don’t say that.”
“I wanted to spend time with you. You must have figured out that much.”
“You’re stoned.”
“You don’t even realize, you make me—” He hesitates, and she scrambles to say something so he’ll stop, but he gets there first. “You make me want to be better.”
“I don’t believe you.” She’s sure that all the eyes in the room are on them now.
“I swear, whatever kind of guy I am, I never meant for anything to happen, okay?”
The words create a feeling of vertigo in her. “What are you talking about? Have you heard something about my dad?”
“Just remember what I’m telling you. I promise you, I’m going to look after things.” Before she can respond, he steps out the door to the mud room, and she sees there’s a rucksack in his hand.
A few seconds later, a shriek comes from upstairs, followed by peals of laughter. Her first thought is that word is already spreading about his attempted kiss. Then someone calls down, “You’ve got to see this.” The people at the table start out of the room and Maggie finds herself abandoned, her mind still on Wale’s rucksack.
It isn’t long before more partygoers come in from the backyard to investigate the ruckus, and she’s swept along with them toward the second floor, trying to imagine what has happened. Maybe Lydia’s making a scene with Rhea. Or maybe Brid is watching the film and has viewed the dead bird in Pauline’s hand. Maggie’s legs grow heavy, but there are more bodies in motion behind her and she’s compelled upward.
Everyone is ascending the stairs except a lone pair making their way down. It’s Frank Dodd dragging Lydia by the hand. His bald head is beet red, his eyes angry slits, while Lydia’s skin is bloodless. Frank sees Maggie ahead of him and looks as if he might strike her.
“You people,” he seethes. “You people are sick.”
A second later they have passed by her and Lydia turns to flash her a helpless, desperate look.
Whatever has happened, it isn’t over, because upstairs the hallway is packed tightly with people pressing toward the playroom door, straining to look in. Maggie has to push past them to get inside. When she finally enters the room, everyone is staring at the wall and what’s projected there, and with horror she realizes why.
Beyond the backs of heads and wisps of smoke is a shot of her and Fletcher’s bedroom. The camera’s steady, as if mounted on its tripod. Sunlight pools on the floor, revealing a castaway pair of men’s underwear and a single brown sock. The comforter on the bed has been pulled down. Fletcher lies there on his back, not quite centred, his body sprawled across the sheets, naked, the light falling across him such that his ribs are individuated, countable. His legs are straight out, one foot hidden beneath a corner of the comforter, the other cut off by the frame. He faces the camera with a contented demeanour, head propped on a pillow, one arm flopped across the bed as though forgotten. With the other hand, he strokes his penis.
Fingertips run down the shaft, then squeeze and push up over the foreskin. Testicles hang one a little lower than the other, each disturbed by the hand’s motion, the skin that encloses them bright pink in contrast with the baked brown of the torso and the bleached thighs, the genitals so brightly coloured they’re almost not part of the body but an alien thing tugged at in a lazy effort to remove it. The fist works its way up and down. His hips lift from the bed to reveal the cleft of buttocks and a momentary wedge of darkness beneath them that collapses and vanishes as they compress upon the sheets. The camera’s focus is there at the root of him. His face is slightly blurred, subtleties of expression lost to the low resolution of the film stock, which registers only a kind of growing studiousness and flickers of pleasure that come and go with the flash of teeth. Maggie waits for a cutaway shot, a pan, a dissolve. Briefly a bird’s shadow flits through the square of light on the floor. The camera doesn’t flinch.
The soundtrack is whispers and guffaws. She dares not look around. Why does no one act? It’s as if they’re waiting for something. The comments grow louder, the laughter more raucous. Are Rhea and the boys still here? The priest’s sister? Someone says it’s disgusting and they should shut it off already, but Maggie seems to have lost a connection to her limbs. The image of Fletcher on the wall wavers. Squiggles of light dance in front of her. He tugs with more energy now, over and over, as though the film’s being rewound and replayed. She can’t get herself to move.
“Lucky Maggie!” says someone in the crowd. “He’s hung like a horse.”
Somebody else says, “If he doesn’t come soon, I’m going to.”
On the wall, he’s smiling and talking to the camera. What could he be saying? She fears that soon she’s going to see herself step into the frame, her pasty backside moving to straddle him, but they never did such things with the camera there. His expression is awful, so blithe and unaware of his audience. She looks around the room in a panic, wondering where he could be.
“Oh, Maggie, hi,” someone says, noticing her for the first time. Others turn toward her.
“The director!” someone else calls out. “Nice flick.”
Stumbling into the person beside her, she realizes it’s Dimitri. The scene on the wall has been happening forever. Pushing off him, she lurches toward the projector. Before she gets there, though, all sound drops away. It’s no longer her they’re watching. She knows what has happened, and she wants to call out for him to leave. A moment later someone greets him with a friendly, mocking cheer.
He hasn’t even realized what it is. In the doorway, he grins like it’s a surprise party. He’s about to make some remark when he notices what’s on the wall. Maggie watches as his face dies.
He takes a step back as if pushed in the chest. A few people snicker. When Maggie recovers herself enough to start for the projector again, the image on the wall has changed: a group is playing baseball in the backyard. Clouds graze blue sky, and the long grass bristles in the wind.
“When does the next show start?” says Dimitri.
Fletcher seems not to recognize him. “Get out,” he says. No one moves.
“Hey, relax—” Dimitri begins.
“Get out!” Fletcher cries. With arms extended, he rushes at the other man, grabs him by the shirt, and tries to drag him toward the door. Dimitri’s beer bottle flies from his hands, spraying its contents across the carpet. People on all sides step back as the two men clutch each other, the tendons in Fletcher’s neck taut, his jaw clenched in effort. Dimitri is heavier and more powerful; it isn’t long before he has Fletcher pinned to the floor. “Get out!” Fletcher screams. When he finally stops struggling, Dimitri releases his grip, stands, and adjusts his wrenched shirt, while Fletcher remains on the floor, panting and shouting for them all to go.
After Dimitri leaves, others follow, a few nodding at Maggie with the sympathy of downcast eyes.
“I don’t see what the pro
blem is,” she hears one of them whisper to another. “Everybody jerks off.”
Once Fletcher and Maggie are the only people left in the room, he’s the one who speaks.
“I want them gone,” he declares, then shoots her a savage look, as if it’s she who has betrayed him. A moment later he’s in the hall shouting at people, ordering them off the property. Gradually his voice diminishes; she hears automobile engines starting up. From below there’s the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, glass breaking, and more shouted threats. On the projection wall the baseball game comes to an end, and the film of Pauline and the birds begins to play.
Maggie watches until the screen is white. Afterward, she goes about putting away reels in their canisters, moving the projector to the corner, and folding up chairs. The air stinks of smoke, though the window is open as far as it will go. The carpet is wet with beer and wine. She heads to the bathroom for paper towels and finds the door open but the room occupied.
It’s the priest and his sister. He sits on the radiator by the toilet in a turtleneck and corduroys, looking not much older than Maggie. Next to him, Lenka kneels over the toilet. Her mascara has run down her cheeks. He’s holding her hair gently in one hand, while with the other he rubs the small of her back.
“Sorry,” he says to Maggie when he notices her. “Something she ate, maybe.” The words are spoken without conviction or any need to be believed. Maggie nods and closes the door to grant them some privacy.
The porch and front lawn are deserted. Most of the cars are gone, including the camper van. Where could he have driven? Bottles, potato chips, and paper cups lie scattered across the hallway floor. In the living room, candles and incense still burn, while the coffee table has been tipped on end, its glass top smashed. Carefully, she begins to gather the shards. It feels urgent to clean everything up without delay. Then, as she snuffs candles, a long, anguished cry from the kitchen prickles her neck. She moves toward it without wanting to know its source.
Once We Had a Country Page 15