Lights, Camera, Amalee

by Dar Williams

  “Let’s get out of this office and find a prettier place.”

  We found a big display case that showed a grassy desert. She called it a savannah, or a wide grassy field, and said there were places like that in the Western Ghats. To tell the truth, what I liked was that it just went really well with Gail’s sweater. The light was perfect, too.

  “Food chains can be very basic,” she began. “Nutrients in the soil feed the plants, and animals eat the plants. Those animals are herbivores, plant eaters. They do two important things. First, they poop, and second, they eventually die. Both functions put nutrients back in the soil. Or these animals are eaten by other animals who poop and die. Either way, these animals are putting nutrients back in the soil that feeds the plants. And then the plants feed the animals, and the cycle is complete. Now, some food chains go way beyond the basics. There are areas that teem with life, which allows for an incredible diversity of species, meaning very specific plants are eaten by very specific animals, so if one very specific plant or animal disappears, a whole, unique chain disappears. If that chain is somehow connected to another chain — and most of them are — that second chain gets out of whack, too. And so on, and so on.

  “Plus,” she continued, “if you take away the specific habitat of a plant or animal, you also destroy a delicate balance. You can break the chain by removing the place where the chain exists.”

  I spoke up. “Like if there are too many sea urchins and they eat all the sea kelp, then all the things that live in the kelp have no place to live.”

  “Someone has been to the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History!” Gail said approvingly. “But also, if you turned parts of the Nilgiri Reserve, say the rain forest, into farmland, you may compromise a habitat beyond recovery and lose a beautiful little pocket of unique flora and fauna.”

  “Is that what you study?” I asked. “Do you study the beautiful little pockets?”

  “Yes, that’s what I do. Every day. It’s an infinite pursuit, and I love it.” And without waiting for another question, Gail looked right into the camera and said, “I think my favorite part of all this is that we can get deeper and deeper into understanding the way things are, but we’ll never have a perfect understanding. There is so much complex diversity. We’ll never perfectly replicate the intricacy of interrelationships that actually exist in a natural system. And yet every level of understanding we reach is really wonderful in and of itself. It’s like we keep on painting a picture of what we see, but it’s not the thing itself. Nature is a wonderful, exciting, endless mystery.”

  I looked down at my questions and didn’t like them anymore.

  I started winging it, as Phyllis would say. “Why don’t you just tell us the name of the area you’re studying in India and repeat some of the information you told us in your office.”

  Gail did this, explaining that her area of expertise was the Nilgiri Reserve in India and all the different parks and sanctuaries within it. She spoke with a straightforward friendliness that looked great on film. On a whim I asked her to imitate the slender loris, as she had unconsciously done when she’d described it to us in her office. She imitated it peering around in the dark.

  When we were done and Gail was signing her permission paper, she asked, “Will you show this film someplace where I could see it?”

  “I’ll let you know. I hope so. But even if it’s just at my house, we’ll invite you over,” I said.

  As Phyllis and I walked out, Phyllis said, “I am amazed at how much she looked like a slender loris when she imitated it!”

  We both laughed with joy and relief. We’d gotten what we wanted and then some. Now my heart was beating with excitement. I didn’t feel out of control. I didn’t want to be biking away from my life. I wanted to be here with Phyllis and all the footage of Gail in my camera.

  “I don’t think I’m out of control,” I said as we walked to the restaurant.

  “It’s not a crime if you are, every now and then,” Phyllis replied.

  “Really?” I asked. Phyllis nodded. Still, I couldn’t tell her about Kyle and what had happened last night. Instead, I went back to Lenore. “You know,” I said, “I really did push Lenore by mistake last year. But wouldn’t you say that a person who does something like that is … out of control?”

  “If that’s the definition of out of control, then everybody has a problem. We all do things in the heat of the moment, especially when we’re young.”

  We walked in silence. For lunch, we went to a beautiful Japanese restaurant. We sat at a table next to a screen painted with a graceful flock of cranes. The waitress said I could film them. “They’re good luck,” she pointed out. Good luck to some, energy to the tai chi people, beautiful to me.

  I wondered: If there were no such thing as cranes, would we miss them in some deep part of ourselves that we didn’t know about?

  Phyllis and I both ordered big bowls of noodles. “You know how I said you remind me of myself a little?” she asked. “Well, if I were you, I’d probably have a crush on that boy Kyle who lives down the street from you.”

  I forced my mouthful of noodles down and murmured, “He’s got a girlfriend.”

  “He does? How do you know?”

  “He lives down the street, remember? I saw them kissing in front of his house last night.” I thought of all the times I’d looked over at his house and then remembered what a smart bunch of people Dad’s friends were. Obviously, they’d seen me watching.

  “Hm. When did you find that out? Before or after you fell off your bike?” Phyllis asked, not making eye contact.

  “Before,” I confessed quietly.

  “So you wiped out after you saw them kissing?” Phyllis guessed.

  “I wiped out because I was going too fast,” I almost whispered.

  “And you went fast because you saw them kissing?” Phyllis guessed again, this time correctly.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “And now you’re wondering if you’re out of control somehow, especially after learning what you’ve learned about your mother.” I didn’t say anything, so she went on. “Well, speaking for myself, if I had a thing for Kyle and I saw him kissing someone, I might have peeled out on my bike, too. And I do not consider myself to be out of control. I don’t think anyone would describe me that way.”

  We both laughed a little. I thought of her alphabetizing my dad’s medicine cabinet after he was sick and giving him a pill case that marked the days of the week for all the medications he still had to take. She was definitely in control.

  “How’s your shoulder?” she asked, easing us off the topic.

  Gratefully I said, “Better.” I did feel much better, and not just in my shoulder.

  We got home in the early evening, along with the tired commuters.

  Dad was home, so we all sat and watched my new footage on the television. It would be a nice contrast with Henry at the aquarium as he stood next to the light rippling through the water. Where Gail stood, it was all very still, in a museum way.

  “She’s a kicker,” Dad said.

  “You can’t tell until she starts talking about plants and animals,” Phyllis said. “Amalee had to draw her out.”

  “Good for you,” Dad murmured, still listening to Gail. “Wow, she really makes you care about this stuff.”

  I asked, “What do we do to preserve the web of life — in this house, I mean?”

  Dad groaned, and Phyllis laughed. “Probably not enough,” Dad said. “But I drive a fuel-efficient car, we recycle, we compost … uh.” He looked nervous. “Oh, and we use recycled paper whenever we can, and I give money to environmental organizations, and, and … I don’t water the lawn. I’m not a vegetarian, but thanks to John, most of our food comes from a local source.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I’m not sure if that’s enough, David.”

  Dad said, “I planted trees to shade the house in the summer so we don’t have to use air conditioning as much, and we use e
nergy-efficient appliances and lightbulbs.”

  Phyllis said, “I don’t know….”

  “I try to salvage things instead of throwing them away,” Dad went on.

  “Stop torturing Dad!” I yelled, laughing with Phyllis.

  “I should get a solar panel,” Dad said to himself.

  “You should,” Phyllis teased him. “Oh, you forgot to mention growing native plants that attract birds and butterflies.” She turned to me and said, “Your dad has always been into the environment.”

  “Was my … was Sally?” I asked. Phyllis and I had been through so much today, I felt like I could ask.

  Dad smiled sadly. “That’s a good question. Yes, she would have been if she hadn’t had all those problems. She loved animals.”

  “Yes,” Phyllis agreed, “she could have been very happy taking care of animals. In fact, I could see her in a place like southern Argentina, very far away from her mother, looking after seals and penguins.”

  That night I dreamed that I was standing in the desert, and a woman who was Gail or Betsy or Phyllis or my mother was telling me to look again. I saw penguins on an ice shelf and saw that I was really on the South Pole. Then suddenly I was in a tropical jungle surrounded by huge trees with monkeys.

  “Don’t think small,” the woman told me. “Everything is connected.”

  I realized the next morning that I was ready to start writing the script for the movie. It started with John, who would be the head frog. He would say that, as a frog living on the banks of a pond, he was grateful that people were doing so much to protect both the land and the water, because if either the land or the water were polluted, he’d be in trouble. By protecting plants and animals, we were protecting ourselves, because we were all part of the web of life.

  Then Curt would say that plants and animals give us medicine, food, clothes, and even ideas for everything from bandages to airplanes.

  Next, Sarah would step forward and say that the things that endanger frogs can warn us about what may be endangering us. She would mention the mussels that I learned about at the museum and say that if their numbers declined, it could be a sign that the water was extremely polluted.

  After that, Marin would come in and say that plants and animals are beautiful and inspiring to us.

  Finally Frog X would step up and say … what? I wasn’t sure about that part yet.

  I read what I’d written. It all seemed so obvious. Despite myself, I looked out the window to see if Kyle’s truck was in the driveway. It wasn’t. I grabbed my camera and went down the street to the little bit of swamp to try to find the mugwort that Betsy had told me about. It should be in bloom. She said that people swore by mugwort’s ability to make them dream more at night. I wasn’t sure where I’d put this information, but I had to do something. Sarah was supposed to come over in a little while, and I’d ask her what she thought.

  Not only did I catch the mugwort in bloom, it was also in a very nice little patch of sun. It had simple, white flowers, but they looked almost magical on camera. I admired all the other plants around it.

  I saw Kyle’s truck coming down the street as I emerged from the woods. I sped up and hoped I could pass his driveway before he parked. I wasn’t going to make it. I looked over my shoulder and noticed that he wasn’t alone. He was with his girlfriend!

  “Hey, Amalee,” he called out as I passed. “Hey, this is Amalee,” he said to his girlfriend. “She’s making a film about environmental science, right?”

  “About endangered species,” I corrected him, smiling and terrified. His girlfriend had long and very shiny hair, big red lips, and beautiful brown eyes. Two girls can be pretty, I thought … but it wasn’t working.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Not meanly, but not nicely, either.

  “I’m making a film about why it’s important to preserve endangered species,” I said.

  “No duh,” she said. “So why are you making a film? Hasn’t it already been done?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, trying to be nice, and also being honest. Somehow being honest didn’t seem like the right thing to be right now. I saw a shadow coming up behind me and I looked. It was Sarah. I didn’t want her to see this, but it was too late.

  “This is Erica,” Kyle said, still pretending the conversation was going okay.

  “This is Sarah,” I said.

  “Every time I’m flipping past the nature channel or whatever it is on TV, they’re talking about endangered species,” Erica said to Kyle, as if I wasn’t even there anymore.

  “Amalee’s film is more interesting than that. It’s funnier,” Sarah said. She was finding the words I wanted to say.

  “Funny?” Erica couldn’t seem to believe it. “A funny movie about endangered species? Ha-ha.”

  “Well, it does require some imagination and intelligence to picture it,” Sarah said with a smile. “We should get back to work,” she added, and we started to walk away. While we were still close enough for Erica and Kyle to hear, she said, “I can’t wait to see your new footage from the Museum of Natural History.”

  I started to say I didn’t know if I was ready to show it, but she shook her head and looked back. “I was just trying to sound serious,” she explained quietly. Kyle and Erica were already in his house. “I take it back! You’re not too young for him, and you should try to steal him away from Dumbo over there.”

  “She had a point,” I said.

  “No, she had no point. You can argue that Fiddler on the Roof has been done before, so why do it again? Why do anything? She’s just jealous.”

  “Okay, that’s really nice of you to say, but you can’t make me believe that she’s jealous!” I protested.

  “She is!” Sarah cried. “She knows that Kyle likes you.”

  I remembered when Kyle had said, Girls who like science are cool. Had he said that to her?

  “I started the script,” I said to Sarah. “And it seems kind of dumb….”

  “Not as dumb as her,” Sarah muttered, and we both chuckled as I pulled the script out.

  Sarah mouthed some of the words as she read it. “This is good,” she said. “It makes sense when I say it out loud.”

  “I just want to make it simple at first, but it seems too simple.”

  “No, not too simple. Think about it. When you’re on a stage, there’s so much to see and hear, especially at first. No, you did this right. You’re going to have these five giant frogs introducing themselves. That’s a lot for the audience to take in. It’s going to be really theatrical. You don’t want really complicated language to overwhelm them at first.” I didn’t care that she was acting like an expert. I was willing to believe she was one!

  “Who do you think should play this Frog X?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “I do, but you might not like it. Did you know that Ellen Shapiro moved away?”

  This was the Ellen.

  “No way,” I gasped. I couldn’t believe that Ellen would be in my head even after she was actually gone.

  “So, how about Hallie?” Sarah asked quietly.

  “Hallie? No,” I answered. I had told Sarah about how mean Ellen and Hallie had been, and how mean I had felt when I was around them.

  “Her little sister is in my sister Julie’s dance class. She’s totally different now. I think she’s a little scared.”

  “Scared of what?” I asked.

  “She has no friends,” Sarah said, and I immediately knew she was right. I hadn’t had any other friends when I’d been friends with Ellen and Hallie, either. They were too snobby.

  “She actually started talking with me at the dance class, and I told her what you were doing. She looked sad and said it sounded really great.”

  “She did?” Really??

  “And I told her that Ms. Farraday was making a special set of dances for the movie. I guess I was rubbing it in at that point,” Sarah admitted. “But then I felt bad, because as I was leaving, she said to let her
know if she could help. Um, and I felt so bad that I said I knew you’d really like that. And she looked happy.”

  “No! No! No way! No!” I yelled. “You think she’s nice, and then she gets you with something that is completely awful. I’d rather have Lenore.” That wasn’t true, I realized. Even though I felt bad that I’d pushed Lenore down the stairs, and I was glad she’d forgiven me, I didn’t want to be Lenore’s friend again. She couldn’t help trying to make me feel bad. I realized that I believed Hallie could help it. She did know better. Especially when Ellen wasn’t around.

  “Lenore …” Sarah said. “It’s funny you should mention Lenore. I saw her mom at the bank.”

  I looked at Sarah and projected a very specific message through my eyeballs: You are not going to tell me to put Lenore in my movie.

  Sarah looked back at me with a message coming through her eyeballs: Um … yes, I am.

  “Lenore wants to be involved, too. Her mom told me.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. I knew I could tell Sarah that she had no business bothering me with all this. But she wasn’t insisting, and I noticed what she had done: She had made my movie sound interesting to Hallie so Hallie would regret being mean to me. Maybe she had done the same thing with Lenore’s mom. She’d just done too good a job.

  “C’mon, couldn’t they help us with our costumes or something? Just come to one of my sister’s dance classes. Hallie picks up her sister at class. We just missed her last time.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to her, and maybe — maybe — I can ask her to do something like hold a microphone. But she’s not Frog X. Frog X is the most helpless. She should be the smallest, and she shouldn’t have a — a history of being a bully.”

  “Who do we know who’s little?” Sarah asked out loud.

  “Your sister,” I said, just as she was about to say it.

  “My sister,” she echoed, and we felt as if we’d just found the one and only answer.