In the movie, which is set during the Great Depression, Cecilia is the abused wife of a deadbeat husband. Her only happiness, and her only coping mechanism, is watching escapist films to forget her troubles. Jeff Daniels plays Tom Baxter (and the actor who plays Tom Baxter, Gil Shepherd) in the movie-within-a-movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo, which Cecilia goes to see alone in the theatre again and again. The character Tom Baxter, noticing the same woman in the audience night after night, finally addresses Cecilia from inside the screen and then physically leaves the film reel, stepping into “the real world” where he desires to live and be free to make my own choices. Of course, he soon discovers how few choices actually exist in the real world, and how ill-equipped he is to fend for himself, even with the adoring Cecilia on his side. For Cecilia, escorting Tom Baxter about her city and then joining him for a night on the town in the fictional black-and-white screen world constitutes a dream-come-true welcome escape from her dreary life with an ungrateful, freeloading, boorish husband in an impoverished society. My favourite line in the film is delivered by Cecilia: I just met a wonderful new man. He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything. No, you can’t have everything. But even Cecilia, faced with the choice of living inside the screen with the character Tom Baxter or in the physical reality of 1930s United States, eventually chooses her home (admittedly, she is tricked by Gil Shepherd into believing he will whisk her away to Hollywood). No matter how tempted I am, she explains, I have to choose the real world. Why won’t my mother choose the real world? Does she suspect I am tricking her?
One of the paradoxes of art is how we can turn to it for solutions to our problems. We believe we can learn from the mistakes the characters make. We can recognize the parallels between the fictional plot and the arcs of our own lives. We can even explore our own relationships, test our emotional limits within a safe environment, draw conclusions, and return again at a later date for further discovery. A book can be reread countless times. A movie can be paused, rewound, reviewed again. And yet, art is not life, and it is sometimes painfully ill-equipped to prepare us for actual life. We can watch a character make the same wrong decision we’re about to make, we can understand the terrible repercussions of that decision, we can identify the exact cause-and-effect relationship and chart out the line from beginning to end, but how is it we so rarely as a species put that learning into practice? Is art actually useful, or just a sophisticated distraction? Why are we so desperate to make our own mistakes? And why, after a couple of hours, don’t they fade to black?
Today as we drive about the city—the Dream City of Juscelino Kubitschek, the Cidade de Fe or city of faith, which he hoped would gloriously reflect God’s city—I think of two things: one, the famous photograph of him weeping inside the cathedral during the city’s inauguration, overwhelmed by his dream transformed into reality; and two, how when I was researching the history of Brasilia, I came across a professor who talked about how the poor workers whose hands and sweat actually built the dream—thousands of workers in three and a half years, who wanted to remain in the city they had just built—were told to get on buses in the middle of the night. Those who refused were shot on the spot. Those who did were driven to the middle of nowhere and told never to return. This city of faith, like all cities, betrayed its people. Its soil, like all earthly soil, is not magical, but steeped in blood.
We make a quick stop at a shopping mall—I suppose this family does possess a shopping gene—as my mother assumes I’d like to purchase some final souvenirs. I stroll about aimlessly, my barely conscious mother following diligently behind me like an exhausted security guard, fondling a scarf here and stacks of postcards there. I buy Chris a T-shirt of Brasilia with cartoon sketches of the city’s architectural highlights. My mother doesn’t offer to pay, and I’m relieved. Briefly, I toy with buying my father a gift, but experience has taught me he doesn’t want gifts. What he wants is for me to visit him more often. What he wants is for me to forgive him for those awful teenage years that drove me out of our house. What I want is for him to say he’s proud of me. What I want is for him to read one of my books. Not this one—I would never put him through such torture—but one of them. As I unload the last of my Brazilian currency, my mother paces outside the souvenir shop, fists limp at her sides like a washed-up boxer. Uncle Fernando says she likes to fight, but I don’t quite believe him. She fights because she doesn’t know how else to get attention. And she wants attention. Because attention might lead to love. My mother is sick for love. Like Cecilia, she might even be dying for lack of love.
Back at the condominium, my mother orders me to pack. Take your time, she says in the same tone of voice my uncle used when instructing me on how to go crazy. She obviously wants some time to herself. Fair enough. While she retreats to her bedroom, I take the opportunity to snap photographs of her apartment—evidence or research, I’m not entirely sure which—from her clothes drying in the kitchen to her pyramids of paper to her pitiful prayer table. Several of the hideous painting. I feel guilty for this subterfuge—I know my mother wouldn’t approve—but I justify the betrayal this way: no one will believe me otherwise. Even with detailed journal notes. Some things need to be seen for full effect. This is the power of a genre like film.
I pack. Taking my time. Folding each shirt. Rolling each dress. Isolating my damp swimsuit in a plastic bag. Wrapping my jewellery box inside a sweater. (I have not asked her about the ballerina as I’m wary to unleash further sadness.)
But after twenty years apart and barely two weeks together, there is still too much time. I risk typing my journal notes of the last few days—I’ve been neglecting my journal due to all the family activities—but before I do, I decide to make another one of my lists, this time about what I think has been passed down to me from my direct ancestors, as I want to be clear on who we are.
Ten Things I Have
Inherited From the Campos Clan
Wild hand gestures
The artistic gene
The shopping gene
The gene responsible for my grandmother and me wearing nylons under skirts and pants no matter how hot it is outside and even if we are wearing sandals
A very healthy appetite
Terrible driving skills
Lots of hair
The competitive gene
A love of movies
The crazy gene?
And I wonder how many of these are related. For instance, is No. 1 related to No. 6? I’ve always known I’d be a terrible driver—I spend too much time in my own head, I rarely register street names or routes—so I’ve never learned. Are erratic hand gestures an indication of poor motor skills? Is No. 5 related to No. 8? Could a healthy appetite be the physical manifestation of the emotional desire for reaching one’s full potential? Most importantly, do No. 2 and/or No. 9 lead directly to No. 10? Does an overreliance on art as a coping mechanism for life inevitably result in madness? Does such a person always end up living more and more in a fantasy land with which the real world can no longer compete?
We are both repelled and attracted by such a condition, as the continued popularity of the novel Don Quixote makes clear, hailed by many, including myself, as the greatest novel ever written. I’ve taught an entire course on the novel and at first the students laugh at the wiry old man, a virgin no less, who sports a barber’s basin for a helmet and ventures out into the countryside spouting romantic gibberish learned from tales of knights rescuing princesses and fighting giants and dispensing justice, which results, in the real world, in Don Quixote’s constant humiliation in the form of ridicule and physical punishments. But once the students get past the initial comedy of the situation and the slapstick humour, the tragedy begins to take root. And ambiguity rises. Is Don Quixote’s madness the classical character flaw that instigates his downfall, or is it an honourable strategy for dealing with a cruel, uncompassionate world? At which point is indulging in imaginative fancy no longer an opportunity for transformation—of self or world—or e
ven a satisfying coping mechanism, but a destructive force harming everyone in its path?
Time to go! my mother calls, waving her hands in front of me like a giant windmill. Instinctively, I shut the laptop lid. No need—she has her own narrative and hasn’t the slightest interest in the characters on my screen.
I don’t know what will become of my mother. Or me. I fear we might both be grotesque parodies of Don Quixote, locked in our individual cages after our failed adventures and forced to endure the long, humiliating ride home.
The last supper: Like every family I’ve ever met we take several photographs for no better reason than everyone is in the same place at the same time. Uncle Fernando insists on taking them so that he will not appear in any. We should take photos of our cars. In Brasilia, there are more cars than people, he informs me. My uncle has a way of eliciting real smiles from me, giving me reasons to remember.
Things I Want to Remember
My grandmother squeezing my arm over the metal tables at the airport. Her twinkling blue eyes.
Sneaking into the Oscar Niemeyer cathedral, my grandmother weaving between pews like a tired pilgrim.
The car ride from a Dirty Harry movie with my Uncle Fernando/Doctor Garbage.
Doctor Garbage stealing all those bananas and placing beer can tabs in my hand.
Elizabeth’s quiet French offerings of friendship over Easter buffet breakfast.
My grandmother telling me all about the poets, musicians, and artists in the family—her carefully wrapping me a package of scores because yes, I am interested in these things.
The Capuchin monkeys swinging in Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria’s luxurious backyard.
Uncle Garbage waxing poetically on the beauties of communing with garbage.
The warmth of my grandmother’s hand in mine at Easter mass.
This last outing as a family. A family. An almost clear night—except for one heavy, black cloud.
It’s because of the rest of the family that I will be able to look back on this trip with some fond memories. Although I’m under no illusion that my grandmother and Uncle Fernando are perfect people, free of blame in terms of how they’ve conducted their lives or even how they also chose to ignore our needs as children, they have offered me something my mother has not: an emotional connection to the Brazilian side of my family. When my mother, standing outside the movie marquee, reiterates, Fantasies are good things. Magical things. It’s better to go to the movies than to have bad memories, I am actually sympathetic to her point of view. She would have made a perfect Cecilia. I’m sure she’s fantasized about living on the other side of the black-and-white projections of many of her favourite films: running off with Harrison Ford through the wasteland of a deteriorating society or bravely diving without breathing apparatus into the dark depths of the ocean. Unlike Mia Farrow, however, my mother is not mousy and, notwithstanding her cancer treatments, she does not exude physical weakness. Faced with my mother, I’m not sure Tom Baxter or Gil Shepherd would have been able to get a word in edgewise. Likely, he would have begged to jump back into his cardboard sets and neon Copacabana lights. Another difference between the world of film and the real world: a woman who lives her emotional life through projection is not the kind of woman who will make you fall in love.
While my mother and I walk over to the salad buffet, she reveals that after my father’s accident there was a plan afoot to build a house in Recife to accommodate them, a bungalow with low counters and shelves. We would all have had a better life here.
This is pure fantasy, of course, so I must tread carefully. That’s very nice of the family, I offer, though I note my mother has brought this up while the rest of the family is out of earshot. Just unrealistic.
How, unrealistic?
Brazil is not a disability-friendly country. My father has no friends or family here of his own. He doesn’t speak Portuguese. There were more opportunities for us in Canada. Lots of social services. Lots of rewards for scholastics. I’ve been able to fund my entire education with my brain.
My mother proudly presents me with a bowl. You’re so smart, Priscila. You see, you were better off in Canada without me, so you should not be upset by what I did. I am not to blame for anything.
I should have known: my mother only invited me into this conversation as a trap. Nothing on this trip has transpired the way she expected it would. The entire family is aware of this; the grief is palpable, her disappointment like a black-lace widow’s shawl. She wrote a full-length feature script and on the page mother and daughter were to shop themselves silly, taste culinary delicacies, between long and warm embraces. Every last resource at her disposal was funnelled into this production. I’m sure she’s already watched this film over a hundred times.
There is comfort in predictability, scripted lines and actions, and happy endings. Woody Allen knows this intimately. In perhaps the most brilliant line from The Purple Rose of Cairo, an angry customer, faced with the unpredictability of the new circumstances of the film now that Tom Baxter has literally excised himself from the plot, yells at the abandoned characters on the screen: I want what happened in the movie last week to happen this week. Otherwise, what’s life all about anyway?
As we rejoin the rest of the family at the table, my mother whispers: I can’t wait to return to my peaceful life, Priscila. You will have no effect on me. I will wipe you from my memory.
This movie is not to her liking: too sad, too messy, too unpredictable; she will wait for the next movie to begin. I am a character who can disappear as easily as turning off the projector. I will wipe you from my memory. The standard coping mechanism in our family. As if our brains are computers and we can delete this or that file, this or that person, this decade or this failed marriage, with a single click. Has her life been peaceful? After this trip, and what I know about my past, my mother, my DNA, will I ever be? It’s a strange thing to realize you don’t exist for someone; you are an image in a mind, and when she cuts you, you don’t bleed, when she washes you away, you don’t drown, when she hugs you, you don’t feel an ounce of love. Priscila is Theresa’s daughter, who lives in Canada; that’s it, that’s all. No wonder she doesn’t need additional information. At the close of the film, that’s my credit line: Theresa’s daughter, played by Priscila Uppal. A Brazil-Canada production with subtitles.
But there are bonus features. As my mother wanders off to the buffet line for a second time to feed her insatiable hunger, the others swarm me with urgent confessions.
Split-Screen in Four Parts
Uncle Fernando: My daughter in Rio, the one who likes to try to kill herself, twice she took so many pills she ended up in comas. Her doctor told her next time you better hope to die because you will have serious brain damage. The doctors say she wanted attention. These were not serious attempts because her suicide notes speak of the future—“I would like to be a better person”—when actual suicides know it is over and write “I have been a horrible person.” I gave up on her long ago, but how to tell her that so she doesn’t cry for a father who will not be in her future, I don’t know.
Aunt Victoria and Uncle Wilhelm: We can’t wait to retire and travel for pleasure, not business. Just not to exotic countries. Only North America, western Europe, and other places in Brazil.
Uncle Fernando: My wife, Rosana, is one of eleven siblings. Her father tans fish skin—he is the last living person in Brazil to know this technique. He knows all kinds of old medicines from the plants and berries in the Amazon, but nobody cares. Only Rosana. But he doesn’t trust her either. Knows our daughter isn’t interested and so Rosana would be the last to know the secrets and he’d rather be the last of the line. This tanned fish is a present from Rosana to you: this tanned fish. Don’t tell customs.
Elizabeth: Everyone knows your mother is difficult, but she’s very good to me. She loves me. I just don’t argue with her. I don’t argue with anyone.
Uncle Fernando: The garbage in Toronto is famous. You have all kinds of plans
to deal with garbage. Do you think you could ask the mayor of Toronto if I could study their garbage? Ask the mayor to invite me.
Aunt Victoria and Uncle Wilhelm: We will always take care of your grandmother. Do not worry about her. We used to think your mother might take care of her, since she has no children of her own—you understand, no children here—but she is not fit to take care of anyone.
Uncle Fernando: I am curious to see how much luggage you have. I bet a lot. Your grandmother’s luggage was famous in the Air Force. You don’t have to justify all your luggage. It’s genetic.
Elizabeth: I have a nervous stomach. So does Grandmother. Nervous stomachs run in the family. Et vous?
Grandmother Therezinha: I always think of you, Priscila. And Amerjit too. I never forget to mark his birthday. It’s a long time you did not look for your mother. Do you think she’s unwell? . . . Yes, I too think she’s unwell . . . Yes, it’s hard to blame a sick person for being sick. There’s nothing we can do. She can’t be cured now. I’m so sorry. Do you think I will ever see Amerjit?
Uncle Fernando: The sun in Brazil is a liar. You don’t mess with the Brazilian sun. It will kill you while you try to kiss it.
Back to full screen
Have you been drinking? my grandmother suddenly asks her son. You don’t usually talk so much.
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