Lights, Camera, Amalee

by Dar Williams

  “I think I could have, but my dad says that it’s a blessing and a curse the way I blurt things out sometimes. When I was eight, I asked my great uncle when he’d started wearing a wig. And my father jerked his head around, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I mean, when did you start wearing a toupee?’ It was awful.”

  I slipped the tape out of the tape player and put it on my desk. I decided to listen to the whole thing in the next few days. Sarah and I went back to the kitchen to get the toast, and Dad came home a few minutes later.

  “Hiya, girls,” he called out. He squatted next to Marin to see how her painting was going. “That’s excellent,” he observed. “I’m really impressed with your work.” That was my dad. He encouraged everyone. I felt like my house was a safe harbor for Marin, and I loved my dad for that.

  “You girls want to stay for dinner?” he asked. Sarah and Marin both called home and got permission to stay. It was Friday, the most crowded night at John’s restaurant, so we always ate at home. Friday was becoming easy pasta night at my house. “The more famous John becomes as a chef, the less I remember how to cook!” Dad once complained.

  We all laughed when Phyllis showed up about fifteen minutes later, followed by Carolyn. They’d forgotten how to cook, too. Carolyn brought her own homegrown lettuce and snow peas, and Phyllis brought tomatoes, as well as wine for the adults and soda for us.

  We all spent the next half hour chopping and stirring, and when we all sat down, Phyllis raised her glass and surprised me by saying, “To Amalee and her friends and their big movie!” I had forgotten about the movie. I was thinking about my grandmother. It was dawning on me that she’d said some pretty important things. I’d definitely have to listen to the tape again.

  The Fourth of July was a blast. We all ended up walking about a mile in the dark to get to a hill where we watched a big fireworks display. Sarah insisted that I film the fireworks. They looked like flowers to me. I wondered how they’d come out. When we drove home, I saw Kyle’s car in the driveway and felt a little excited. Sarah had given me the idea that if he liked girls who liked science, maybe he could overlook my age. It was a long shot, but I couldn’t just look at his car and give up hope.

  When I got home, I plugged the camera cable into the television set to see if the fireworks had come out. The white ones had. I was sure I could use them somewhere in the movie. Everything was about the movie these days. Everything felt like it was connected to everything else, just like the woman in my dream had said.

  I asked John if he thought about preserving ecosystems when he bought all the food for his restaurant. He shook his head and laughed, “Stop thinking so much or your head will be as big as a basketball!” But then he said, “I don’t have to think about ecosystems, Ama, honey, ’cause I grew up in the South. They teach you to be proud of your food there, and how foods from the same land belong together, so I’m always getting stuff that comes from where we live. There’s a great mushroom farm and world-renowned apple orchards nearby, and during hunting season, I get deer for venison. In May, I put fiddlehead ferns in the salads that I pick in the woods myself. The more your food is local, the better, I think. The more it tastes like home. The ingredients fit together because they’ve grown next to each other. Except for wine. Our local wine really stinks. I get most of ours from France, but it’s from a river valley not unlike our own river valley. And I try to buy wine from families who have been in business for centuries.”

  He went on and explained, “Some family businesses are like endangered species. They pass ancient knowledge along through the family line, and if the family business ends, the knowledge becomes extinct. But if you keep the business alive, it survives, and you can taste all that history and knowledge in whatever they create.”

  John was adding on a whole new layer of everything being related to everything. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a basketball of space in my head to take it all in.

  “Oh,” he said, “and here are the flippers. Next Wednesday is fine for the big shoot. I can’t wait.”

  “How’s Frederick?” I asked.

  “Oh, you should ask him … or his boyfriend.” John groaned quietly. “I had no idea he was already spoken for, as they say.”

  Hoping to make John feel better, I said, “That happened to me, too.”

  “Oh, no — already it begins?” he sympathized, giving me a hug. “I’ll tell you, heartbreak is one creature you can’t kill with a stick or a silver bullet. It’ll never be extinct.” He sighed and released me. “Well, see you on Wednesday, flippers and all.”

  On Monday night, I dropped the script off at Curt’s house. He answered the door himself. He was more handsome than I remembered. He looked like he’d been running around outside. “You’re the last one to get it, but no one’s told me what they think of it yet,” I said. “I hope you don’t think it’s totally awful.”

  “I’m sure it’s okay,” he said shyly. I wished that we’d gotten around to the script reading that Sarah had suggested. I had no idea if it was any good, and here was this kind of popular kid who was better-looking than I’d thought, which shouldn’t have made me feel more anxious, but it did.

  “It’s not this Wednesday, but the one after that, right?” he asked.

  “Two o’clock,” I said.

  “I’ll be there, with my brown pants and yellow shirt,” he said, smiling. “Why couldn’t I have been the one with the two heads?” he asked.

  “Sarah got first dibs,” I said. “I know what you’re going to say: She always gets to be the pretty one.”

  Curt laughed. “Remember when she walked around school with that gray dye in her hair? That was cool.”

  Good for him. I’d think most boys would say another word besides cool — like uncool, for instance. I felt better about leaving my script with him as I biked away. I came home to a message from Sarah saying she probably couldn’t memorize all the lines, but she was trying, and she was working hard with her sister, who couldn’t really read. The next message was also from her, almost shouting.

  “By the way — this script is fabulous! Did Curt like it?” Then she hung up, and my heart lifted. I felt both embarrassed and proud. I called to see if she wanted to go on a bike ride, but she said she was going to flatten boxes at Green Pastures to make a little money.

  “I had a question while I was going through my lines, though,” Sarah said. “How are you going to hear our voices through those masks? Won’t they be muffled? And if you put mikes up inside the masks, won’t that sound funny, too?”

  There were Ellen and Hallie, shaking their heads in my mind. “Welllllll?” they asked.

  Sarah said, “Uh-oh. Did I just open a can of worms? Look, I’ll ask my dad, and you ask your dad.”

  “You’re not going to ask Lydia?”

  “If you really needed a barrel of organic brown rice, Lydia would be helpful,” Sarah said in explanation. “Sound systems and electronics are the stuff of Ed Smythe.”

  Dad had a “semi-emergency” rule about calling him at work. He said it didn’t have to be an emergency, just important. I called and told him I had a perfect semi-emergency. He called back in a few minutes.

  “There’s no way I can get the right sound for everyone’s voices if they’re in those masks,” I explained.

  “Whoops! Hadn’t thought of that,” Dad answered cheerfully. I calmed down a little.

  “Do we need some kind of expert to get the microphones positioned?” I asked, thinking of thousands of dollars.

  Dad said, “No, no. Wait, I have an idea. Let me make a phone call.”

  He called back a few minutes later and said, “There’s a new guy in the audiovisual department. He said, for a hundred dollars, he would sit everyone down in front of microphones in a studio here and they could say their lines. Then you could have the frogs act along with their lines at the shoot. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  I thought of the frogs gesturing along with lines, like a cartoon. It’s not like you could see t
heir mouths moving in the masks, anyway. “That would work,” I agreed.

  “Ned’s a great guy. I wouldn’t mind having an excuse to hang out with him.” Ned was the audio guy. “He actually said he’d do this for free. I insisted on paying him.”

  “That’s fine. We have the money,” I said.

  “Excellent. Ned believes this is a better way to go with the film, anyway, if you’re going to be editing in and out the frogs but still using their voices as you cut to pictures and stuff. He said it would be much cleaner.”

  I called the frogs and found out that everyone could record their lines in a couple of days. We’d just have to go early in the morning so John could get to the restaurant.

  At eight thirty on Thursday morning, we were all a little groggy. Sarah’s dad drove Sarah, Marin, and Curt, while John drove with me and Dad. All the men nodded to each other in the parking lot, and they all had large cups of coffee. Dad had a travel mug, which he’d been using religiously ever since I’d asked him about what he’d done for endangered species. Ned came out of the building and shook everyone’s hand. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  Sarah came right over to me and said, “We have a little problem. Julie chickened out. She says she can do the movie, but she was too nervous to say all the words. She hasn’t been reading very long.”

  “Oh, boy,” I answered. I looked at our other choices. Dad and Ed Smythe and me. “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry. Julie said she was sorry, too. I could do it, but I was thinking it would be better if you did it.”

  I looked at Sarah. “No, it would be better if you did it,” I said. “You don’t have to sound like a different person, but you should do it.” I felt silly for forgetting that these were voices, and that Sarah could do two of them and no one would know. “I think you’re a great actress, and you already said you went over the lines with your sister.”

  “I almost memorized them myself,” she admitted.

  “I’ve got you all set up,” Ned announced, springing along through the parking lot and leading us into the studio, which was nice and cool.

  Sarah’s dad said he’d be back in a couple of hours.

  Everyone sat in solid, squeak-proof chairs. Ned took everyone’s vocal level. I’d placed the scripts on music stands, opened to each actor’s lines.

  The recording began. John was very casual and didn’t get every word right, which was perfect for everyone’s mood. Sarah, Marin, and Curt loosened up when they saw they could fudge a little. And whenever they made a big mistake, they simply started their sentences again, just like John had done.

  I nodded to Dad when we got to the end of each script sheet I was holding, and he silently took them from me. About halfway through, when John was starting a sentence again, Dad offered to take over for me, and we switched roles.

  At the end of the round, Ned’s voice came out of the control room and said, “Since it’s only about thirteen minutes of script, why don’t you do it all again?”

  “A little more coffee, and I’m game,” John called out to the invisible voice.

  “Dude! You don’t have to shout into the mike!” Ned told him from the control room.

  “Sorry, bullfrogs are known for their resonant, boomy voices,” John said at room level, “and for their cinnamon biscuits.” He went to his knapsack and pulled out a big bag. “Amalee, you’ll have to excuse the cinnamon. It is not from the Hudson Valley.”

  “I’ll eat hers if she has a problem with that!” Sarah offered. Sarah was John’s biggest fan.

  After biscuits and trips to the water fountain and to the bathroom, we started again. The whole thing took about sixteen minutes with hardly any mistakes. And everyone sounded better, too. Curt and Marin had improved, and Sarah, who had been fine on the first round, had a little more feeling in her voice without over-doing it. What was really amazing was how she did Frog X the second time. Maybe she was bringing in some of her grandmother’s voice. Or even my grandmother’s voice. It sounded very steady, but also papery — not sand-papery, just dry. It was as if Frog X knew the ways of us humans and decided long ago not to beg for anything. Frog X just wanted to state her case. I felt the tightening in my throat again, and felt protective of Frog X and sorry for a world that didn’t know how to save its own creatures.

  When it was all over, Curt told Sarah, “I like the way you made those two frogs sound different.” Sarah said she liked the way he didn’t sound like he was boasting when he talked about how poisonous he was. We all laughed at that.

  Ned came out and started taking down the microphones. “Very interesting stuff, Amalee. My sister is totally into all of this. She’s going to love this.” I thanked him and asked, looking at my dad first to see if I was going too far, how he would recommend I edit the voices.

  “I edited as we went along,” he said. “The second performance is clean. I took out all the mistakes. And I’ll give you a digital file of the first performance. If you want to edit any of that stuff in, call me, and I’ll help you out. In fact, I’d be happy to help you when you do the filming. This is all my bag, you know. It’s what I do.”

  I looked at my dad again and then at Ned. “I’ll pay you another hundred dollars for your help,” I offered. “I would love it if you were there.”

  Ned laughed. I thought I knew that laugh. “How about you pay me in biscuits?”

  “How about I pay you with dinner at my restaurant?” John asked. “Plus biscuits.”

  It was settled. Ned would join us next Wednesday for the big shoot. I told all the frogs how happy I was with what they’d done. As we drove home, John and Dad both said they were proud of me.

  The next week I spent deciding exactly what I wanted to pull out of each person’s interview. I reviewed what I’d already decided and added and subtracted some lines. I also made a lot of cookies, popcorn, and cinnamon toast and took some bike rides. This was definitely the most boring part of making a movie.

  On Tuesday morning, I ran around calling everyone to confirm the time for Wednesday. Lenore was going to paste the big script paper onto the paper boards I’d gotten for her. Mrs. Nielson would come by and pick everything up. We decided we should still have a script for the frogs to play along with. They would come to the dance building at noon the next day. Lydia would bring Sarah and Julie a little early to get Julie used to us. They said she was feeling nervous, which made me nervous! Curt, Sarah, and Marin said they were all set.

  John would be coming at around ten in the morning with coffee, scones, and a tray of whatever was left from the night before at the restaurant.

  “And my hair and makeup people are arriving at the same time,” he joked. “They do all my movies.”

  “And do we need to bring anything special for Phyllis and Carolyn?” I asked.

  “Actually, their names are Phyllis and Joyce,” he said drily. “Carolyn is the celebrity hairdresser of plants, not humans.”

  Joyce was also bringing brownies and said that she and my dad would hold lights and help set anything up if I needed it. The room had a little skylight, and the walls were white, so I thought we’d probably use the lightbulbs in the room and be fine. I’d filmed a little when I first checked out the room, and now I was happy to have gotten that professional responsibility out of the way.

  I read through the script again in the afternoon. I planned out what I’d do with the camera for each of the lines.

  Then I set aside a big pile of camera stuff to bring to the shoot, plus the painted gloves, extra green shirts, tights, pants, and a couple of Dad’s big green shirts, just in case. I left the things for Lenore in the front hall before Lydia picked me up to go watch the rehearsal for Ms. Farraday’s dance class.

  Ms. Farraday led me around the stage before the rehearsal began and showed me places from which she’d recommend shooting. “For the butterflies, I’d say you should be right in the front. I’ll set aside a seat for you. And for the ocelots, I put a little stepladder r
ight here on stage left so you can be slightly above them, and then for swamp panther, I’d recommend off to the side on the floor. It’s very short, and it’s just three girls. Do you have a friend named Hallie?” Without looking at me, or the shocked look on my face, she continued, “Her sister Anna is one of the panthers. In fact, she’s coming early to practice her part. The whole thing about these black panthers is that they’re hard to see, so they’ll be weaving in and out of big plants. So I’d kneel down just below the edge of the stage there, so you can catch them at a diagonal.” This was very exciting. Ms. Farraday was speaking to me as if I was a professional filmmaker.

  “Hello? Is this the stage?” a familiar voice called into the room. In walked Hallie, holding her sister Anna’s hand. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and then she looked down at the floor for an instant.

  “Hi, Amalee,” she said finally.

  “Hi, Hallie,” I answered.

  “You know each other, right?” Ms. Farraday asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, and I hear you’re making a film,” Hallie offered in a friendly voice. “Do you need any help?” She looked like she was holding her breath.

  I couldn’t say no. How bad could it be for one day? And I couldn’t deny that she seemed different when she was helping her sister get to dance class instead of standing silently next to Ellen as she pointed to girls who didn’t brush their hair correctly.

  “We might need some help,” I said. Ms. Farraday looked confused that we weren’t more comfortable with each other. “We’re filming the narrators of the film tomorrow, and — they’re frogs — and it should be pretty busy. I’m sure we’ll need help with costumes and … things like that. It’s right in this building, in Room One-fourteen.”

  Hallie said she would come in the late morning. I figured everyone else would be there in the late morning, too, and they’d protect me if Hallie made one of her zinger comments.

  The other young girls had arrived. “All right, then,” Ms. Farraday said, “shall we get a rare glimpse of the graceful swamp panther?” The three girls pulled out black tights and sweatshirts with panther ears on the hoods.