by Terry Reed
“Right.” Sometimes, I swear, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
So we went back over to Woolworth’s, opened the side door, took a few steps in and dumped everything, then turned and high-tailed it for the second time out of the store.
Don’t ask me why, but when we finally stopped running, and laughing, to me, personally, the whole thing started to make a whole lot of sense. Maybe crime’s not the best way to build up your confidence, win friends, and influence people, but it worked for me, because then I knew Mary Parker was my friend, and once I knew that, I really didn’t even mind going to jail.
We walked several blocks toward the theater, past the Union Club, a noble old, grimy building, where Grandfather used to take us on winter Saturdays so we could roll white cue balls around the billiards tables and drink fake cocktails at the bar. When Mary Parker stopped to look at the building, I just stood there looking along with her. This time I didn’t say things like I’d been inside, that we belonged.
“Don’t look now,” she said as we walked on, “but there’s a psychopath behind us.”
Mary Parker turned to look, though. She took her sweet time, too. “Sorry. He’s not a psychopath,” she said, turning back around. “I think he’s a sociopath.”
“We’re going pretty slow.”
“Don’t freak out. See if he follows us to the movie.”
At the ticket window, I finally turned around. But there was only a nice-looking businessman in a hat. “Where?”
“Uh, the only guy there?”
It was the nice-looking businessman in the hat. He was standing beside a poster showing the werewolf of the movie as a monster-in-progress, as he was making the transformation from man to beast. The man, the real man, lit a cigarette and threw the matchbook into the street. “He’s not all that scary, Mary. He looks like somebody’s father.” Personally, I thought the poster was scarier.
“Maybe he is somebody’s father. But I assure you he’s also nuts.”
When we handed the usher our tickets, the man in the hat approached the cashier. “Sit in the back row,” Mary Parker whispered. And she sat beside me, on the aisle.
The man in the hat came in and sat in the row ahead of us, even though there were only three other people in the theater and there were plenty of empty seats to choose from. Once the lights went down, he sat kind of sideways, so he was half looking at us, half looking at the werewolf. “What’s he doing?” I whispered.
Mary Parker turned to assess me in the dark. But all she said was, “Never mind.”
The man in the hat stayed for only the first half of the double feature. Before Shadow of the Cat, he stood up and went by, leaning and whispering to Mary Parker as he passed. Up close, he didn’t look so nice after all. “What did he say?” I whispered, turning to watch him amble toward the exit sign.
“He hissed.”
“He hissed?”
She shrugged. “He hissed.” And just then, the werewolf appeared again at the end of the credits and did the same thing on the screen. It lasted like an hour. It sent shivers down your spine.
We still watched Shadow of the Cat, though. Then we watched the entire double feature one more time. Then the usher told us that as far as young girls were concerned, the theater was closed.
It was dark outside. There were only a few people on the streets of downtown Cleveland, and they were either sitting or lying on them. “I wish I were old and rich,” I said. “Then I’d give these people houses.”
Mary Parker kind of laughed. “When you’re old and rich, you won’t, though.”
I still thought I would. I just didn’t say so.
As we walked, I kept looking over my shoulder, checking dark doorways, hoping not to find the werewolf from the movie clinging to the bars of a window, sprouting hair and fangs, howling in his transformational agony at the full moon. Then I looked straight ahead, and, crossing ahead of us, his long shadow cast in the light of a streetlamp—was the man in the hat. “Look,” I said, stopping Mary Parker by the arm.
“Whoa. It’s the wolf.”
We ran twelve blocks to Terminal Tower, where we were the only people tearing down the platform to the train. Mary Parker got off at her stop, and I went on alone. But I thought how fear was the opposite of love the whole way home.
One of the garage doors was open, which was good because that meant Mother and Dad were already out. Saturday nights they often went to a cocktail party or an open house. When I once asked Mother what an “open house” was, she said it meant dinner would not be served. When I asked her then what was served, she said cocktails. But then I forgot to ask her what was the difference between a cocktail party and an open house.
She dressed the same for either one. And she always came to show Cabot and me before she left the house. We loved her party dresses. When we were younger, they had been flowing and full-skirted, now they were chic and short. But almost always when she was ready for the cocktail party or the open house, we said how she looked like a picture in a magazine. Cabot especially always said it. I figured that’s why Cabot could only draw pictures of pictures of real people. I’d have to ask Mary Parker about that.
“Where’ve you been?” Clarine asked when she caught me trying to be clever by circling around after checking the garage and coming in the front door. You almost never got caught coming in the front door, because Clarine hardly ever hung out around there.
“With my friend.”
“Then where’s your friend been?”
I tried to slip past her. She snatched me by the arm.
“We kept trying to come home, but we were followed.”
“By what?”
“A man in a hat.”
Clarine’s eyes widened into southern sunflower position, which they would do on special occasions. Then I told her about the double feature, and about watching it twice, just to make sure a certain man in a hat was gone. But I didn’t tell her we saw him later in the light of a streetlamp, and I sure didn’t tell her it all happened downtown.
Matt smelled trouble and came out of the library. He was seventeen now, and I suppose tall, dark, and handsome, because all the girls liked him. It was a nuisance, because they so often wanted to brainstorm with me about it. From the way he was all cleaned up and everything, you had to guess he was on his way out to break a few more hearts.
Clarine said, “No more picture shows for you, miss,” and “Wait until your ma hears about this,” but I suspected these were idle threats. She closed down her eyes and marched in full displeasure toward the back.
“Hey, who’s your sexy friend?” Matt asked me. “I saw you guys downtown.”
“Then how come you didn’t say hello?”
“Because you were running.”
“Oh.”
“Why were you running?”
“Because we’d just robbed a store.”
Matt just stood there. He had dark eyebrows, and he knew how to use them. But now they remained intentionally flat and unimpressed. He said, “Yeah, right.”
Well, so what if he didn’t believe me. We had robbed a store. Just as he had, actually: stealing the stuff and then putting it back. He didn’t own the patent on it. “So you thought my friend was sexy?”
“She looks like a cute little revolutionary.”
“A cute little revolutionary?” I looked up. Cabot’s long blond hair hung in loose curtains over the banister, making me regret the bobby pin girl. “Matt, seriously. Time to tell us what planet you are from.”
I hesitated, for sure, but I asked them anyway. “So am I sexy?”
Luke sped through the hall, a football cradled in his arm, as if walking, but fast, toward a goalpost, because he wasn’t allowed to run for touchdowns in the house. He said, “Too close to call.” And was gone as fast as he came.
“I think you are.” It was six-year-old Lucy in pajamas, joining Cabot on the landing.
“Thanks, Luce.”
“That’s okay.”
&nb
sp; “What’s this nasty talk? Don’t you know a baby when you see one?” Clarine appeared, scooped up Lucy and carried her back toward her room.
We all looked at one another. A baby? Let go, already, Clarine.
“Who’d you go with?” Cabot asked. “What revolutionary?”
“Mary Parker.”
“You went with Mary Parker?” She was impressed. You could tell. “How did that happen?”
I said pointedly, “Because she heard you call me Zuzu at school.”
Which Cabot was strictly not supposed to do, though now I was pretty glad she had. But no point in letting her know that.
“I did? Sorry.”
But then it reminded me, and since I had them together, I thought I’d better tell them the bad news about It’s a Wonderful Life. “Did you guys know that the man in the movie Dad nicknamed me after is named George?”
Cabot said, “And?”
“Well, that’s Dad’s name.”
Matt said, “George?”
Cabot said, “Yeah, Matt. You didn’t know that?”
Luke cruised back in with his football and stopped. “I did.”
Cabot said, “Good. Good, everybody. We all know Dad’s name.”
I said, “We’re in big trouble, because this other George, you won’t believe what he does.”
Cabot said, “Well, he is the other George.”
I said, “But there are already two people named after this movie in the family. How do we know there aren’t more?”
Luke said, “What movie?”
Cabot said, “What’s their last name in the movie?”
“Bailey.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But how do we know the whole family’s not named after it? And Dad’s trying to, like, copy it?”
Luke said, “What movie?”
Cabot said, “Because she named the boys. Dad only named us. If we had been boys, we would have been named Mark and John, so she could have the four guys who wrote the Bible. She was totally praying we would be boys.”
Matt said, “She wasn’t the only one.”
Luke said, “What about Lucy?”
Cabot said instantly, “Peter, Paul, or Jude.”
As per usual, they had an enormous knack for missing the point. “I’m just warning you, Dad thinks he’s living in some movie where a guy named George loses everybody’s money and tries to kill himself.”
“Chill,” Matt said. “It has a happy ending.”
Cabot sighed. “I wish he’d talk about it.”
“I’m just warning you….”
“See you,” Matt said, and started jingling the keys to a Buick.
Luke said, “What movie?” But I guess nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.
Monday morning at Assembly, she didn’t even look at me. I figured she didn’t want to make too big a deal over the fact that we’d done something together over the weekend. So I played it rather cool myself. Except in afternoon Assembly, when I broke down and wrote her a note: My brother Matt saw us robbing Woolworth’s and he thinks you’re sexy.
This is what Mary Parker wrote back: Would you rather be, 1. As smart as Einstein, 2. As good as Gandhi, or 3. As beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara?
I thought about it. After Saint Theresa and Mickey Knight, I’d already given up on beautiful. And after Mary Parker, I wasn’t going for smart. So I finally circled “Good as Gandhi” and passed the note back up.
She passed it back. Try again.
That wasn’t the right answer? I was surprised. But I wouldn’t mind “Smart as Einstein,” if she insisted, so I circled that and passed it back.
She wrote, And again.
I had no choice but to circle Scarlett O’Hara. I wrote beside it: She’s some old movie star, right?
She wrote: Meet me on the Rapid Transit at nine tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow was a school day.
She turned around. “You’ll be with me. I’ll fake you a note.”
So the next morning I lurked around, then left the house late and met Mary Parker on the Rapid Transit. She was wearing the same black outfit she had worn on Saturday, and her hair was back up in its ponytail. She had the movie we were going to see circled in red in the Plain Dealer. It was Gone With the Wind. “We had to see it today,” she said. “It’s a revival, and it’s leaving Wednesday.”
Silently, I began to account for the many days Mary Parker wasn’t in school.
We watched the movie twice, but I still left the theater near tears. “She loses Rhett Butler, after all that,” I sniffed, dabbing my eyes. “That’s a terrible way to end a story.”
“Nah, he’ll come back to her in the sequel.”
“He will?” He didn’t seem like he would, with the way it ended, with the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.” But as far as I knew so far, Mary Parker had never been wrong.
We were waiting for the Rapid Transit at Terminal Tower when Mary Parker suddenly asked me that same strange question again. Would I like to be as smart as Einstein, as good as Gandhi, or as beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara?
“As beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara.”
Mary Parker smiled. “Even if she loses Rhett Butler in the end?”
“He’s coming back to her in the sequel.”
“Well, I can’t guarantee that.”
“You can’t?”
Mary watched the Rapid approach through the dark tunnel and said, “There’s only one guarantee. All stories end in death or marriage.”
But I wasn’t really listening because I was thinking ahead to the sequel. “All stories end in death or marriage,” I repeated mindlessly.
“Some end in death and marriage.”
“But there’s still a sequel, right?” She didn’t answer because the Rapid arrived.
• • •
On the train, I was staring out the window watching a cement wall fly by, thinking that Melanie died, and that was sad, though not as sad as what Rhett said to Scarlett, but it did make it a story that more or less ended in death or marriage, when Mary Parker turned to me and said, “So? Should I make you as beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara?”
I sort of smiled at Mary Parker.
“No joke. This is serious.”
This was true. Nothing was more serious than the beauty of Scarlett O’Hara. I looked in Mary’s cool brown eyes, wondering if what she had in mind was one of Mickey Knight’s emotionally damaging Before and Afters. I didn’t feel like telling her that despite the best beauty products money could buy, I just wasn’t makeover material.
“Look, I’m not talking about a miracle here. You simply have to grow to understand your beauty comes from the inside out.”
Oh. She was talking about that kind of beauty. She was talking modest, loving, and pure. The kind of beauty you find in the eyes. I had been quite clear from day one, I wanted the kind you found on your face.
“And what’s inside?” Mary Parker continued. “Inside, you’ve got a heart and a mind. And, importantly”—here she pointed to a place somewhere below my neck, under my collarbone, to the right of my left arm—“a will. That’s how you become beautiful. You will it. You can will yourself into anything. You can will yourself into the United States presidency if that’s what you want. A lot of undeserving crackpots have.”
I thought of my brother Matt.
Then Mary Parker told me she had been experimenting with will. She said she had developed a theory that a person could be, have, or accomplish anything she wanted if the person could just convince herself that she could be, have, or accomplish anything she wanted. She said the hard part was not doing the thing, but convincing yourself you could. She said the hard part was will.
“Sure. But what do you do about that?”
“Good. I’m glad you understand so far.”
Then Mary Parker said she had invented a system of what she called “Parallel Actions,” just “Parallels,” for short. She explained that a Parallel was a tricky thing
, but for the sake of argument, a thing not unlike a metaphor, in this case an action, through which you got the sense of accomplishing your objective by accomplishing a like objective, a similar objective, or a totally unlike objective to which you could still liken the feeling and emotional equivalent of your objective. She said these Parallels trained your will, taught it to get used to getting what it wanted, so it knew it could.
“I see,” I said, because I sort of did. I told her about my own theory, how I wanted to stop poverty by making the thought of it unthinkable. “Could you do something like that?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, getting pretty excited, for her. “Yes and no. It’s the same principle. But I don’t have much confidence in getting you to the point where you could stop poverty. For that I’d have to make you as good as Gandhi, as smart as Einstein, and probably as rich as Rockefeller. I’m not attempting the impossible here. You’ll have to settle for being as beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara.”
“Gee, I don’t know …”
“Don’t take me too literally, Boyce. What I am offering you, what I’m fairly sure I can give you, is a parallel persona to Scarlett O’Hara’s. The total package. Brains, beauty, and a way with men.”
I wanted to think about it, I guess.
While I did that, we rode along on the Rapid Transit and I stared at a strange hole in its floor. It wasn’t a complete hole, you couldn’t see the ground screeching by or anything, but you sure could hear it, and it did give you the feeling if you stepped a little too hard on that thin path, you might fall through a deep, dangerous hole. I thought, even if Mary Parker could do as she claims, it should be rather obvious why I cannot be part of the experiment. The key ingredient of Scarlett O’Hara’s infamous “persona” was her beauty. And beauty was kind of out of the question for me. People didn’t seem able to decide if I were pretty, or pretty unappealing. The consensus was, I looked like a choirboy.
“Well, okay, then,” Mary Parker said, a little impatient. “You just let me know.”
We rode along for quite a while. I didn’t realize until later that Mary Parker had missed her stop, and now would have to get out and cross the tracks and take a Rapid Transit going back toward downtown. I guess I should have realized it, but I was quite absorbed with the thin patch on the Rapid floor, and the screeching sound of the metal wheels on the rusty old Transit tracks.