Lights, Camera, Amalee

by Dar Williams

  “Thank you so much!” I shouted as he drove away.

  Joyce said, “What a nice boy.”

  Kyle had pulled into his driveway and run back out to the curb to pick up the empty garbage cans.

  Even though Joyce had always told me she wanted to know what I was feeling, I knew I couldn’t tell her that I was head over heels for a sixteen-year-old. But I did ask her what she’d meant when she’d said, “That explains it.”

  “Oh,” she said breezily, “when people first get their licenses, they want to drive everywhere. So that explained why he would be driving a twelve-year-old into town.”

  “Couldn’t he just be nice?” I asked.

  “Maybe, but probably not,” she answered without considering it. So that’s where she stood: Kyle liked driving, not me.

  Suddenly I felt two hundred years younger than he was. The only kind of older guy who would be interested in me would have to have something wrong with him. Where had I gotten the idea that he could see me as some cool girl shooting her own film?

  “Where’s my dad?” I asked. Now I wasn’t sure I would even mention the idea of making a movie. Twelve felt so young.

  “He and Phyllis are over at the restaurant.” The restaurant was John & Friends, John being the chef and the rest of us being the friends who had helped him open it. Phyllis, for example, did the accounting. She loved to make order out of chaos. (I think her favorite words are “I have a plan.”) In exchange for free food, she kept track of money going in and out of the restaurant, using a small laptop computer John had bought her. I once asked if she thought she was getting a raw deal doing so much work for no pay except free dinner.

  “It’s not just any dinner. It’s John’s dinner,” she pointed out.

  Phyllis ate at John’s restaurant almost every night and brought a doggie bag to work the next day. She was the principal’s assistant at my middle school.

  I always loved hanging out at the restaurant. I felt like an insider.

  Joyce told me to jump in her car and we’d head over. She and Dad and I all got free food, too. Joyce had pitched in when John was setting up his restaurant by giving him the money to get “his heart’s desire” (as she put it) when it came to buying kitchen equipment. The agreement was that he’d pay her back sometime if the restaurant was a success, but when the restaurant succeeded beyond all expectations, Joyce said she didn’t want her money back. Instead of repayment, John had framed one of his menus beside a certificate he’d made himself that read THIS ENTITLES JOYCE KUTSLOW AND DR. ROBERT NURSTROM TO FREE MEALS FOR ALL ETERNITY. John liked to be ceremonial. Dr. Nurstrom was Joyce’s new husband — which still made me shudder a bit … invisibly, I hoped. Dr. Nurstrom had treated my dad.

  We were heading off to the restaurant all the time, even on school nights. This evening, Joyce cleared off the passenger seat and then assembled herself in the driver’s seat, making sure she didn’t shut her pink flowered scarf or purple skirt in the car door. As she put on her purple-rimmed sunglasses with rhinestones, I wondered if there was a receipt in her pocket that said Purple Sparkle Sunglasses. Even though I felt the big gap between a little piece of paper and a whole person, I thought maybe receipts could paint a picture of someone like Joyce, with her big flowery clothes, pink purse, and bow-shaped rhinestone clips on her pink shoes.

  “I have a surprise,” Joyce announced as we started to drive.

  “You do?” I asked. “So do I.” Uh-oh, now I’d said it. Well, maybe I would go ahead and mention to Dad and his friends that I was maybe thinking of making a movie.

  “You have a surprise, too!” she gushed. “Good, good, good. A beautiful late spring night, a happening restaurant, and two swinging chicks with secrets to tell!”

  I watched the sky turn as pink as Joyce’s shirt.

  Phyllis and Dad were at their table in the corner. John’s restaurant was so popular that his friends always took the least popular table as early as possible, to avoid the rush, or “mush,” as we called it.

  Phyllis had a pad of paper and a calculator along with her computer. Her legs stretched out from beneath the table, ankles crossed.

  Dad jumped up and gave us a hug. Phyllis waved with a pencil in her hand and then kept punching in numbers.

  Soon John came bursting through the swinging doors of the kitchen.

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!” he cried.

  And sure enough, I looked over and saw the last member of this gang, Carolyn, picking dead leaves off the potted plants that lined the walls and hung from the ceiling. I had mistaken her short, spiky red hair for another plant.

  “Hey,” she said in her low voice, raising a freckly, muscled arm. Carolyn worked at a gardening store where they allowed her to grow all the plants for John’s restaurant. She tended the plants and had painted flowers and vines around the walls. For this, she, too, had earned the eternal free food certificate.

  “Joyce, look at you! You match the evening sky!” John observed happily.

  “And you match your kitchen!” Joyce squealed, pointing to his flour- and grease-smudged apron. I didn’t know what made her so cheerful, her big secret or seeing John look so happy.

  “Well, you are obviously busting out all over with this surprise of yours, Joyce,” John said. “Carolyn, get your skinny behind over here so we can hear it. I gotta get back in the kitchen.”

  Carolyn came over in her own time, to show that no one could rush her.

  Soon we were all seated and staring at Joyce. She looked nervous, which made me feel better that I was so nervous.

  “Well, you know I’m married to a doctor,” she began, “and so I have access to foolproof test results sooner than others….”

  “Oh my goodness! You were only married a few months ago!” John exclaimed.

  “Joyce!” Phyllis cried. “I’m so happy!”

  “You’ll be great,” Dad said quietly.

  “She’s pregnant,” Carolyn explained to me in her flat voice. “I mean, that’s what you mean, right?” I could tell she was very happy for Joyce, in her own unexcitable way.

  After Joyce announced that, yes, she was ten weeks pregnant, she launched into the details of her wonderful doctor, who was not her husband since he wasn’t the right kind of doctor. The ob-gyn was a woman Joyce really liked. Then she told us that she was planning to keep working almost all the way up to the birth and how she was only having a little morning sickness.

  Phyllis calculated the baby’s birth date — end of January — and John said he would make a celebration menu when she was ready to tell the world, since we were sworn to secrecy until she was three months pregnant. The menu would include baby peas, baby corn, baby carrots, and angel food cake.

  “But right now, Mommy,” John said, “I’ve got to get back in the furnace.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to finish up and go,” Carolyn said.

  All for the best, I thought. I felt sad that I didn’t have an opportunity to tell them about the movie, but I told myself that I was more relieved than anything else.

  “Oh, wait a minute,” Joyce called out as John and Carolyn started to leave. “Amalee’s got a surprise, too. Don’t you, Amalee?”

  John turned, and Carolyn sat back down.

  “Honey, do you have a surprise?” Dad asked.

  “That’s okay. Everyone’s busy.”

  “Spit it out, Ama, honey,” John encouraged. “I love surprises.”

  I tried to speak quickly.

  “Thanks,” I started, and then I did spit it out, starting with the two thousand eight hundred eighty-one dollars in the champagne bottle from my grandmother. There was a group gasp.

  “She left all that to you in a bottle of coins?” Carolyn asked. “What a weirdo. Sorry — I know she was your grandmother. That’s a ton of money.”

  Dad looked stunned. “It was a huge bottle,” he murmured. “You haven’t seen it. Wow. The coin bottle.”

  Phyllis’s hand was still clapped over her mouth. I plowed on
, including the idea I’d just had. “I’m going to make a film about endangered species and extinction. It will be short. It will be like one of those documentaries that Carolyn always takes us to at the movie place.”

  “Ha! I told you she wasn’t asleep!” Carolyn said to Phyllis, who shrugged. I had caught Phyllis sleeping a few times when we went to see documentaries.

  “And so,” I continued, “I’ll make a film that shows my … way of looking at things.”

  “Perspective,” Phyllis broke in. “You want to make a short film from your own perspective about endangered species. Somewhat scientific, but more personal. Right?”

  “Yes,” I said, exhaling. I’d spoken my mind without anyone telling me to stop. “I thought I’d get a digital movie camera — we had one we could use in my English class — and spend the summer doing this. I think this is the kind of thing I was supposed to do with the money,” I added quickly, but I realized I didn’t want to mention the note. “I mean, I guess.”

  How was everyone going to react? Twelve was feeling younger and younger.

  “That makes sense. I can set you up with some film professors from my school,” Dad said thoughtfully.

  “If you don’t mind restaurant leftovers, I can do your catering,” John offered.

  “Do you need a set designer, or do you want a natural setting?” Carolyn asked. “The owner of my nursery knows about endangered plants. Would that be helpful, or do you just want to focus on animals?”

  I started to say that plants would be great, but Phyllis held up her hand. “Hold it, hold it,” she ordered. And then she said the magic words: “Let’s make a plan.”

  Dad was in shock about my so-called inheritance. We were still at the restaurant, now eating dessert.

  “How did you count all that money?” he asked finally. And before I could answer, he added, “I remember that bottle. I remember I joked that it was a lot like Sally’s mom, larger than life and full of money.”

  Phyllis, Joyce, and Dad were at the table with me. Phyllis had put everything away and pulled a small calendar out of her purse. She’d also torn a few pages from her pad of paper.

  “She went to the bank with that boy on your street,” Joyce said.

  Don’t blush. Don’t blush, I commanded myself. My face burned. “Kyle,” I said, then quickly added, “and the woman at the bank, Ms. Hazlett, and Leslie Scott’s mother helped me count it, too. We had those coin-counting machines.”

  “Almost three thousand dollars,” Dad wondered out loud.

  “You sure you don’t want to save the money?” Joyce suggested.

  “Sure, she’s sure,” Phyllis said, and Dad nodded. “Okay, let’s go here. Budget. How much do you want to spend on it? I recommend spending less than the entire amount so you have a cushion if something unexpected happens.”

  An emerjunsee, I thought. Suddenly I thought I knew more about Sally than anyone at the table.

  Phyllis looked at me. “Amalee?”

  “Oh! Uh, two thousand dollars for the movie. That should leave plenty for any kind of emergency,” I answered. Phyllis made a note.

  “Timetable,” she went on. “You want to wrap this up by the end of the summer, before school starts?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s say … August seventh, so that gives me some time to run over, right?” Phyllis nodded and made another note.

  Joyce broke in. “How are you feeling about all this? Do you want it to be about all plants and animals? One species? One plant? What are your feelings here?”

  “You mean, what are my emotions?” I teased. She couldn’t be asking me that.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” she answered. “You have to have a passion about something in order to tell a story about it. What do you feel passionate about?”

  I thought of Kyle. That would not be mentioned.

  “Joyce is right,” Phyllis said without looking up. She was making a list of things I’d need to get the project on its feet.

  Phyllis was not a therapist, so maybe Joyce had more of a point than I’d thought. She looked up. Both women were staring at me now.

  “Take your time, Amalee,” Joyce said.

  There was just the sound of clinking forks and glasses from the other tables. “It doesn’t have to be in context. It can be anything you want to say,” Joyce urged.

  “She means it doesn’t have to fit in with an overall picture,” Phyllis explained. “You can just say an image.”

  “I’m thinking of some funny-looking little plant from a rain forest that can cure a disease, but we might never find it if we clear-cut the rain forests,” I began.

  “That’s terrific,” said Joyce. I didn’t know why, though. “What else?”

  “Well, then there’s this other thing,” I went on, trying not to think too hard.

  Joyce had once given me a trick to help me survive seventh grade. Whenever I had to write a paper or give a report, she would say, “Just relax and speak.” I would take a breath and say the assignment out loud and then give some idea of what I wanted to do with it. I always had to take a breath and let the idea out without getting too hung up on what I thought I should say.

  So I relaxed and spoke.

  “Who’s to say we need a plant to cure a disease in order for it to …”

  Silence.

  “To what?” Joyce asked.

  “To count? Why does it need to do something for us in order to count?”

  Joyce’s eyes welled up with tears. What had I said? She shook her head apologetically and explained, “It’s the pregnancy. It makes me more emotional.”

  “Ah, so it’s the pregnancy that does it,” Phyllis said, winking at me. Joyce cried early and often, John always said, even when she wasn’t pregnant.

  “All right, all right,” Joyce grumbled, dabbing her eyes. “Here’s what I see. One point of your perspective is that we need to preserve species, because we need them for … medicine and …”

  I thought about it for a second, then finished her sentence. “For information, and for their beauty, and for that thing where everything eats something else and if we lose one thing, we lose many things … food chains!”

  “Ah, yes, food chains,” Phyllis said.

  “But,” I added, “that’s not the whole thing, because even if a species is unimportant to us, it should survive. Because it just should!”

  “Exactly. Those are the two halves,” Joyce said. “On the one hand, we need them for our own survival. On the other, they have the right to be preserved from extinction even if we don’t need them. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, those are the two halves. Is that a movie?”

  Dad, who had been silent, leaned forward and added his voice to Phyllis and Joyce’s. “That’s a movie,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Phyllis agreed.

  And Joyce said, “Absolutely!”

  Dad made a phone call when we got home from John & Friends. I started making the lists that Phyllis and Joyce had recommended. I wrote, What We Need Animals For: Medicine, Food, Friendship, Clothes. What else? Do we need them for beauty? I added Beauty. I went down the hall to ask my dad what he thought.

  It turned out he was coming to find me. He held out the phone and said, “Here, honey, talk to Phil Novick.”

  “Who’s Phil Novick?” I whispered.

  “He’s a film professor at NYU. He was one of my philosophy students.”

  “Dad!”

  “Just talk with him. I told him you’re looking for a camera, that’s all.”

  “Hello?” I knew it was really nice of Dad to call a film professor, but I still felt nervous.

  “Hey,” Phil said loudly. “Making a film? What kind — fiction, documentary, animated, feature, short?”

  “It’s a short documentary about endangered species,” I said. Where had I come up with this idea? Had my father taken me too seriously?

  “Huh. Okay, what kind of effects are you looking at?”

&
nbsp; “Effects?” I asked slowly.

  “Yeah, yeah, special effects. For starters, do you need really clear sound or would you dub it later, adding sound to a big montage or something?” he reeled off.

  “A montage …” I repeated, wishing I could run and look up montage before I answered.

  “Yeah. Hey, how old are you?”

  “Twelve.” I stiffened. Would this end the phone call?

  But Phil didn’t sound angry. “Ohhh, okay.” He slowed down. “A montage is a series of images strung together to say something in pictures. Like in a movie when a couple is first dating, they play some rock song and show them sharing an ice-cream soda, then walking on the beach, then sitting by a roaring fire…. That’s a montage.”

  “Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen that movie,” I said.

  “There are about a million movies like that,” he said, laughing.

  “You forgot the scene with them walking a dog in the park,” I pointed out.

  “Hey, you’re right! And also the newspapers over their heads in a rainstorm. Sounds like you’re pretty savvy about these things. So, you got a piece of paper to write something down?”

  I ran over to Dad’s desk. “Yes.” A film professor had called me savvy! I told him I wanted sound in the movie and also added to the movie, and that I wanted to put different bits of film side by side. He gave me the names of a few brands of cameras he’d recommend, what to ask for, and how much I should pay. He said I’d need a good computer to edit the film on (so cool! I heard this was how you edited movies now), and when the time came, he’d give me a short crash course.

  “Good luck,” he told me when we were done.

  I brought the phone back to the cradle, but when I went in to thank Dad, I found him just sitting on the couch in the living room, staring straight ahead.

  When I sat next to him without speaking, he said, “I feel … I feel …” Poor Dad. Ever since he’d been sick, Joyce had forced him to describe his feelings. He’d had to confess how afraid he was of dying and letting me down and of being a bad friend. But really he just wasn’t that kind of guy, so on a regular basis she’d ask him how he was feeling, and if he said, “Fine,” he had to pay her a dollar, because she said that was too easy.