‘My father,’ Spencer announces to Tanya and Drussilla, ‘taught me how to fold up a T-shirt.’
‘Is that right?’ Drussilla says, scratching her naked thigh, which is smeared in make-up that colours it brown. Spencer wonders whether there are bruises hidden there. For the first time in this encounter, he experiences a small pang of erotic feeling.
‘Yes,’ Spencer says. ‘And how to roll up a rope. And a hose. Hosepipe. That’s it, I think. That’s what I learned from my father.’
‘Your son is angry at you,’ Drussilla says.
‘Angry, I don’t know. Resentful maybe. Other fathers teach their sons stuff. Constellations, the names of stars. How to fix a motorbike or pick up stewardesses at Kennedy Airport. I can fold up a T-shirt. Oh. And a towel. He also showed me how to fold a towel. It’s the same sort of principle, you do it in sections, thirds. I think he learnt it in the army.’
‘I won’t tell you what my father taught me,’ Tanya says, and she and Drussilla laugh hard and heartily.
The bar they are sitting in has no windows. Its walls are beige and cream, with prints of Venetian canals and posters advertising ice cream and sunglasses. A barman stands, looking as bored as Drussilla and Tanya, polishing glasses. Three men play video slot machines embedded into the bar counter. A woman, dressed similarly to Drussilla and Tanya, teeters on a stool.
And Spencer’s father sits with his glass of water in front of him in which the ice slowly melts. Is he enjoying this? Does he have any capacity left for sexual desire or feeling? Do these women signify erotic possibility to him?
‘How are you doing?’ Spencer says to him.
‘A million bucks,’ says Spencer’s father, who reaches an unsteady hand towards Tanya’s hair. ‘What is this?’
‘Dad!’ Spencer says. ‘I’m sorry. He’s a little old and rickety.’
‘What is rickety?’ Drussilla says.
‘I don’t know. Sort of ramshackle and falling apart.’
‘Ramshack?’
‘Yes. I know. I’m sorry. It’s amazing how many words we use that have all sorts of metaphorical meanings. Ramshackle. I suppose it means about to fall down. But I guess rickety must come from rickets. It’s a disease. Poor children used to get it. I think it’s a vitamin deficiency of some kind.’
‘Your father has disease?’
‘Many. But not like that.’
‘Like what?’
Spencer’s father continues to stroke Tanya’s hair in a marvelling kind of way.
‘He’s a live one,’ Tanya says.
‘What is this?’ he repeats.
‘I’m sorry,’ Spencer says again.
‘It’s OK, I like it,’ Tanya says. She raises her voice to answer Spencer’s father. ‘It’s hair. Human hair.’
‘But not yours,’ Spencer’s father says.
‘Well it is mine. I paid top dollar for it.’
‘Exactly,’ Spencer’s father says.
‘I’m sorry,’ Spencer says. ‘With age he’s becoming a little, disinhibited.’
‘What about your teeth? Are they yours?’ Tanya says.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Did you grow them yourself?’
‘Touché,’ Spencer’s father says and, rather rakishly, tips the glass of iced water to his bloodless lips in the same way that, Spencer decides, he would have sipped a vodka gimlet in a long-ago JFK bar in the company of his stepsons and two or three stewardesses fresh in the glamour of the golden age of jet travel.
Spencer is drunk. He is also, he realises, smiling. He hugs his father, whose bones are cold and dry beneath his touch, and his father hugs back, and his strength, or some of it, is still there.
‘I’ve got to call Mary,’ Spencer says.
‘Who’s Mary?’ someone says.
‘Got to call my daughter.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Ten. She’s ten. Got to call her.’
‘That’s a great age, a terrific age. I used to be ten,’ the barman says.
‘Shall I dance for you?’ Jimmy Ludwig says. He pushes up from the wheelchair and totters, like a toddler taking tentative balance, or a retired boxer finding his feet on returning to the ring.
Spencer’s father had performed this routine when Spencer was young. ‘Shall I dance for you?’ he would say, and step into the moves he must have learned from the cinema, Sammy Davis Jr, maybe, a Sinatra rat-pack film, shoulders hunched, arms tight to the sides, small jive steps, eyes downcast, mouth a little open, hands gently rubbing the air in front of his chest. And Spencer would always say, Yes, yes, go on, but his father would always stop, the ironic gesture of promise would be over (the things we could do, if only we believed in them!) and, slightly more relaxed than before, he would resume whatever his interrupted occupation had been.
‘No, it’s OK, I think we ought to be getting on,’ Spencer says. ‘What time is it?’
‘Look at your subpoena.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s a pretty watch,’ Drussilla says, leaning closer to him.
‘Patek Philippe,’ his father says.
‘No, it’s Piaget,’ Drussilla says.
‘That’s right,’ Jimmy Ludwig says.
‘Maybe we ought to be getting ready—the gala,’ Spencer says.
Spencer’s father gets to his feet. Spencer, slightly surprised, thinks this is in dutiful response, but then realises by the panicky look in his father’s eyes that he needs the bathroom.
‘Can we come?’ Tanya says.
These girls don’t know the workings of Jimmy Ludwig’s bladder the way his son does.
‘He’s just going to the men’s room,’ Spencer says.
Spencer gets up too, to offer his arm and support, but his father shakes him off and makes his dangerous journey across the barroom on his own, tugging his oxygen tank on the wheels that Dwight thoughtfully has provided.
‘To the gala,’ Tanya says.
‘Oh.’
If this were an independent film, then that is exactly what should happen, the drunk film-maker and his decaying father in the company of two bewigged prostitutes who smell of hair-spray and perfume and champagne tottering into the gala dinner, adding some death and sin to the room, lifting the inevitable boredom of film professionals, the local dignitaries, the critics for the Paterson Bugle, the Summit Times, the Ventnor Gazette, and all the hangers-on and apparatchiks who make a living out of the creativity and self-doubt of others.
‘He’s a very sweet man,’ Drussilla says.
‘Who is?’ Spencer says.
‘Your father.’
‘Is he? No. Not really. Sweet I don’t think really describes him.’
In the car, Spencer had asked his father whether there were any compensations of old age. His father had said there was none, but here was one at least, albeit of indeterminate value, the sweet impression made upon the perceptions of Latvian hookers.
‘I’ve never heard anyone describe him as sweet before,’ Spencer says. ‘When I was a child he had this thing he used to say, Nobody’s perfect. Except for me, of course!
‘You say you’re perfect?’ Drussilla says with some surprise.
‘No. Not me. Nobody is. It’s not possible. He just used to say that he was. It was a joke but I think he really sort of meant it.’
‘You shouldn’t pick on him,’ Tanya says. ‘I’m not picking on him.’ ‘He’s an old man.’ ‘I know he is.’ ‘He’s sick.’
‘Tell me about it. I have a list up in our room of all his conditions and all his medications.’
‘You’re a good son,’ Drussilla says, abruptly changing tack. Maybe a look had slipped between the women encouraging each other to go easy on Spencer, in the interests of future profit, or maybe some virtue of his was finally shining out.
‘Thank you,’ Spencer says. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder, you know, why.’
‘Why what?’ Drussilla says.
‘Why I do this. I live in London. I have a life there, o
f some sort, and my father was a terrible father to me, when I was a child.’ ‘So why are you here?’
‘Well this time, it’s clear. I was invited. The festival, the gala. I’m a film-maker.’
‘That’s cool,’ Drussilla says.
‘But I mean in general. Spending time in the States, sacrificing my time and so forth.’
‘Is your father rich?’ Tanya says. ‘Maybe he’s going to leave you a lot of his money in his will.’
‘I’ve thought about that. I mean, no,’ (and hurriedly he rolls his jacket sleeve down over the watch) ‘he isn’t rich. But yes, he probably will leave me something, he’s got some money. But I’ve wondered about my motivation. I wonder if there’s a part of me that’s just bent on guarding my inheritance.’
‘You’re a good person,’ Drussilla says, leaning in closer and stroking his arm in a way that he can’t quite decide is pleasurable or in fact rather irritating.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly good person. But there’s something that feels good about doing the right thing, you know what I’m saying? Doing your duty, performing loving acts. Maybe that’s why nurses can put up with all the things they have to put up with. I’m sure the good ones have a vocation.’
‘I used to be a nurse. I hated it,’ Tanya says.
‘I’m sure I would too. But life is complicated, most of the time we don’t know what the right thing to do is, and then occasionally, very occasionally, it’s clear. You do know what it is, and then it isn’t so hard to do it. I think I want another drink. Does anyone want another drink? But there’s another thing. When I was young, my father frightened me more than anyone. A harsh word from him would make me cry, instantly. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that. He was the smartest and toughest man I had ever met and he had no idea or even interest, I suppose, in what went on inside my head, and he exerted this unreasonable power over me.’
‘I don’t know if I understand what you are saying but for sure I think you’re a good son and a good person,’ Drussilla says.
‘Thank you,’ Spencer says. ‘I don’t think you’re right but I appreciate you saying that.’
‘Maybe you’ve forgiven him. Or maybe you’re trying to forgive him,’ Tanya says.
‘I don’t think so. We’re not Christians.’
Spencer wonders if that is the point of this enterprise, and all his others, to work against sickly notions of redemption and Christian love.
‘I think what I might be doing now is just following things through to the end,’ Spencer says.
‘Where is your father?’ Tanya says.
‘Oh. He’s been a while, hasn’t he? I’d better check.’
Spencer walks through the dismal bar. The door to the men’s room does not properly open. He tries it two, three times, but blocking it is some impediment, an obstacle, soft yet unyielding, that Spencer thuds the door against, and which, Spencer realises, when he gets cumbersomely down to his knees and cranes his neck around the part-opened door, is his father’s head.
Tanya, with dampened wads of toilet paper, dabs the blood away from Spencer’s father’s forehead and scalp.
‘I’m sorry,’ Spencer says.
His father just stares at him.
If this were a Hollywood film, or the sort of independent film that captures an international audience, it would turn into heartbreak now, decorous hospital decline, the truths made manifest, we are all children destined to be orphaned, how do we choose to meet our deaths, how can we bear to be bystanders to anyone else’s?—Or else it would abruptly lift into a caper now, Spencer and his father against the casino, father’s wisdom, son’s audacity, fanciful music swirling around them, the percussion of chips, the crowd of tourists huddling in, clapping hands in delight, his father with bandaged head breaking the bank, consternation on the faces of the pit bosses, who look up in bafflement at the ceiling cameras and whisper to croupiers to change the cards, the dice, as the long-buried plan that his father had cooked up years ago is disinterred and magically flourishes. The thrilled crowd gets larger, and nothing can stop them, high-fives behind Spencer and his father, who wear their Playboy mansion tuxedos, bottles of champagne, casino lights, the towers of chips build and scatter around them, and all the slot machines release their load in a singing siren of jangly bells and electronic mating calls.
But this is not a Hollywood film or an independent that calculates its way into the box-office top ten, or even one of Spencer’s that he can exert some slow control over. He is in a hotel room in Atlantic City and his damaged father lies bleeding on the bed and one prostitute cleans up his wounds and the other is on the phone ordering room service.
‘He must have fallen,’ Tanya says.
‘Yes, I worked that one out,’ Spencer says.
‘You do not have to be rude.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Spencer says.
‘What dressing does everybody want on their salad?’ Drussilla says.
‘Gala,’ says Spencer.
‘They have ranch dressing, blue cheese, French, Russian, oil and vinegar.’
‘Party. It’s time for the party.’
‘We can look after him, you go to your gala. Can we order room service, please?’
‘There’ll be food there.’
‘I didn’t think you wanted us to come.’
‘Please. Be my guests.’
And Spencer is suddenly worried. Not at what his hosts from the festival, Mike and Cheryl Baumbach and their people, might say or think, the gesture of arriving at a film festival gala in the company of two hookers, but he has, he realises, been thinking of this all as the film he is making, and he is worried. The mise-en-scene is fine. In fact, as some of his more formalist critics like to point out, the look of his films is hardly their strongest point. A splash of colour to register an emotion is as strenuous as he will usually go—Spencer has always approved of accidental beauty, the chanceful moment, the way the unexpected light captures an actor’s eyes, a crumpled drinks carton forgotten in a corner of the set becomes a perfect object, poignant with meaning. It’s going to look right, the casino is perfect, the Boardwalk a place of irony and charm, where the seen merges with the previously unimagined, where the already apprehended twists in on itself and casts everything into a new light; but the project is beginning to open itself up to some unsavoury interpretations. This prostitution storyline is not one he would have chosen.
‘What will the feminists think? What will the critics say?’ Spencer says.
‘Since when has that bothered you?’ his father says quite succinctly.
‘Everything bothers me,’ Spencer says. ‘Every unkind word. The fall of every bird in God’s creation.’
‘Fancy talk to impress the ladies,’ his father says.
Spencer struggles out of his jeans. Drussilla raises an eyebrow.
‘Not sure if that’s appropriate right now, honey. But hey,’ Tanya says.
‘No. Let’s get going.’
He manages, in drunkenness, in grandeur, to climb into his tuxedo, which is somewhat tighter in the waist than it used to be.
Nurse Tanya is not convinced that Jimmy Ludwig should go to a party. She thinks he should rest. ‘For what?’ Spencer says.
He had anticipated difficulty in smuggling in his extra guests, but the ballroom is barely two-thirds full. Spencer is placed at the table of New Jersey film-makers. Drussilla and Tanya are banished to a far corner of the room, while his father sits with film-makers’ husbands, wives and partners. This is the sort of thing his father detests above all, to be in public, with people he does not know, swimming hopelessly in the cross-currents of words that sound like a foreign language to him. He never liked social occasions at the best of times, of which this is not one. On Spencer’s left is Ron, a director of wildlife documentaries; on his right is Suzie, who makes lesbian horror films.
Spencer keeps looking around to check on his father, who, nonetheless, is making a brave stab at acting t
he part of a party guest who is enjoying himself. Spencer’s father has always had a beautiful smile, which Spencer suspects is a trick of facial muscles rather than a revelation of the soul.
‘Don’t you?’
Something is being asked of Spencer, who has been hardly paying attention to the conversation at the table.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ he says.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said, Absolutely!
He is being discourteous to a group of people whom, he supposes, he could loosely call colleagues. Politely, he throws himself back into the life of the table. Suzie is being quizzed by the man on her right about some of the more technical aspects of her craft, which is presumably code for the questioner’s interest in lesbian sex. Spencer turns to Ron.
‘Wildlife, eh?’
‘That’s right,’ Ron says.
‘Bears?’
‘Yes. I have done bears.’
‘Aren’t you frightened of them?’
‘Why should I be?’
‘Because they might kill you.’
‘Bears are very much misunderstood.’
‘Really?’
‘They’re beautiful creatures.’
‘How can they be?’
Spencer mistrusts any manifestation of beauty that is not the human body or man-made. He thinks it sentimental to consider nature beautiful. Spencer believes in the beauty of the nape of a woman’s neck, the shape she makes when she lifts her arms to fix her hair, the curve of her thigh. He thinks athletes are beautiful, and tall buildings. Skyscrapers are beautiful in a way that mountains can never be. But Spencer does not want to get into an argument about aesthetics, the beautiful and the sublime.
‘Tell me, if I meet a bear, what should I do?’
‘Depends what kind of bear.’
‘OK. A grizzly. What should I do if a grizzly bear attacks me?’
‘Where do you live? Australia? It’s not going to happen.’
A Film by Spencer Ludwig Page 14