“That’s right,” her grandfather said.
Celia was certain they both meant it—a generous conclusion, even though they could never hope to explain the way Dad Shawn behaved during their son’s final days. Their happy conclusion was a leap of faith, and they’d made it based on love. They were comfortable making such leaps, which meant they were good people.
“Thanks for telling me what you know about my fathers,” Celia said.
It wasn’t the whole truth—it couldn’t be—but they’d done their best with limited information. She would learn more from Dad Shawn . . . once she figured out how to ask him.
He might not be happy about the idea at first, but maybe she could also reconcile Dad Shawn to his partner’s parents. That would mean a lot—once Dad Shawn got over feeling hurt or betrayed by Celia’s secret meeting with them.
#
The last part of the drive went quickly, with Celia doing most of the talking. She told them about school, gave more details about this week at camp. She talked a lot about Dad Shawn, too.
She grew a little anxious when Pop Pop said Almost there. Soon she’d be in their house. The place where her other father grew up.
Where he died.
They were off the highway, in a quiet suburban neighborhood. The car made several quick turns.
They’re trying to confuse me. I should memorize these street names, in case I’m being kidnapped.
No. This wasn’t a thriller. This wasn’t a child-in-jeopardy story.
A few more turns.
She cupped her hands to the window and stared out. There were no sidewalks in front of the yards—grass came all the way to the curbless road. The homes had trees between, instead of fences.
The car slowed, pulled into a driveway.
They unbuckled and stepped out of the car, her grandparents stretching and saying, “We’re home,” and then Pop Pop retrieved Celia’s overnight bag from the trunk. Celia stretched, too, and balanced her heavy backpack against her shoulder.
The porch light was on. This wasn’t like her grandmother’s story—entering a house where someone was dying, where something even more terrible might await them. This was a safe home in the suburbs. Ordinary and nice, like her grandparents.
Pop Pop unlocked the door and held it open for his wife, and for Celia. He carried her bag over the threshold and set the wheeled end down on the hardwood floor.
The house was clean and bright.
“I’m going to freshen up,” her grandmother said. She headed upstairs, but called down: “Edward, see if Celia wants a soda.”
“Water is fine,” she said.
“Wait right there,” Pop Pop said, and he headed deeper into the house. She heard a cabinet open and shut, the slide of a drawer, then the clink of ice cubes in a glass. He let the faucet run for a bit.
Her other father grew up here. He wiped muddy shoes on this doormat, then walked up those steps to his bedroom. He sometimes slid down the metal banister when his parents weren’t looking. He watched TV in the room on the left. He lay on the carpet with his math book and finished homework problems. He drank water from the same kitchen faucet, or got a glass bottle of Coke from the refrigerator.
Her grandparents would have pictures to show her, from his early life and from the later years with Dad Shawn. Postcards, too, and other souvenirs.
Pop Pop returned with a full glass. “Here you go. If you set it down, use a coaster.” He arched his eyebrows toward the stairs and added in a conspiratorial whisper: “She’s a stickler for stuff like that.”
Celia laughed. “Don’t worry. I always use a coaster.”
“Let’s wait for Charlotte before you take the full tour. How about I show you the office, though, where the computer is. Maybe you can figure out how the scanner works.”
“Okay.” She took a long drink first, since her mouth had grown dry during the drive. The water was cold and refreshing, with a faint aftertaste—probably from the ice cubes.
Pop Pop stepped in front of her, and she followed. They passed metal sliding doors on the right—a hall closet, no doubt, then a small room with curio cabinets, wingback chairs and a window seat along the back wall.
Celia stopped for a second, afraid she would lose her balance. The pattern of the hallway carpet seemed to move under her feet, as if some animal crawled beneath it.
She blinked. Her mouth felt dry again, which didn’t make sense. She took another drink.
Pop Pop was farther down the hall and had paused outside an open room. It was the office, she guessed. The place he was taking her. He noticed she’d stopped, so he called back to her. “Something catch your eye?”
“No, I—” She wanted to set the glass down, but didn’t see a coaster. She moved it to her other hand.
“Hey, are you all right?”
She tasted something metallic, and her throat felt tight. Celia put out her hand against the wall, to steady herself.
A design in the wallpaper pulsed, like it had a heartbeat.
Celia looked down the hallway again, but this time, it looked like a deep tunnel. Her breaths grew strained, almost like her tongue was choking her. Maybe this was what asthma felt like. Or perhaps it was a panic attack. Sweat began to roll down her forehead.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Her grandfather called out from the tunnel, and designs on the walls seemed to fly toward him like lightning bolts.
She dropped the glass and it thumped and rolled on the carpet, spilling the remaining water.
Why did her grandfather stand still? Why didn’t he help her?
When he finally began to move, the motion was sinister. Without lifting his legs from the floor, he leaned forward. His body began to stretch, his legs lengthening, his arms straining toward her, getting closer as the fingers elongated into thin, menacing talons. Somehow, he looked more powerful—an energy conveyed from the lightning-bolt patterns along the walls. Her grandfather’s head stretched into a wide oval, a hideous grin splitting his face. “Do you want some more water?” he said.
No. The water was the problem. He’d put something in it, or she was having an allergic reaction. Something was making her hallucinate.
The shape stretched closer, smiled wider, and Celia was certain it wasn’t her grandfather.
She felt herself falling forward, losing consciousness . . .
THE MANIKIN’S REVENGE
An Odd Adventure with Your Other Father
“Celia, I’m sorry if I’ve given the impression that we never visited anyplace familiar during our year of travels after college. It’s true that your other father frequently steered us off any meticulous course I’d plotted in advance. No tourist traps was Jack’s rule, which often led us into traps of another kind, in places you’ve never heard of.
“Once in a while, though, I got my way and our VW puttered to Graceland, or we saw Lovecraft’s grave in Providence, or we toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Such visits tended to unfold without incident. The strange stuff, the adventures worth telling about, usually happened in a hidden village or some other out of the way spot instead of, as you say, ‘somewhere famous.’ But not always.
“Would the middle of Times Square be famous enough for you?”
#
I’d always wanted to visit the Statue of Liberty, ride the elevator to the top of Kong’s Empire State Building, maybe see a Broadway musical. Jack said our Beetle wouldn’t navigate city streets so well, and parking would cost nearly as much as the hotel room.
Jack’s car and Jack’s MasterCharge, so I couldn’t really argue—though after our ghostly encounter in Teaneck, New Jersey, we were so close to Manhattan that it seemed a crime not to visit.
A small item in the “Happenings” section of the Star-Ledger changed his mind. The Times Square Rialto had scheduled a premiere of the latest Grant Sullivan film. The actor himself would attend the Friday night screening.
It didn’t hurt that The Manikin’s Revenge was a h
orror movie. Jack liked horror movies, and I kind of did, too—when I wasn’t in one, speaking figuratively. Even more important, though, was that we both liked Grant Sullivan.
Sullivan was in his late forties at the time, and appeared in one of those TV detective shows that rescued former matinee idols from early retirement. In his younger days, Sullivan starred in a handful of action and adventure flicks that aired regularly on local TV stations while we were growing up: Tarzan knockoffs, precursors to Raiders of the Lost Ark, that kind of thing. Not the best films, but they cycled so frequently in the rerun schedule that they became classics by default. I learned a lot of the dialogue, each pause and inflection, until the words became as inevitable as notes in an operatic score.
(Sounds a bit overblown, I’m sure, but movies got a different emphasis in that era before nine hundred cable channels, tapes and DVDs and instant downloads. We had about a dozen TV stations, and only a few of those bothered with kids’ programming. Factor in that I was a confused young boy, still figuring out who I was, what I found attractive . . .
In those movies, Grant Sullivan was attractive. He had an undeniable masculine charm, almost a glow that raised him above the film’s low budget or cliché script. Was he a great actor? No, but he always had that movie-star presence, was always utterly convincing in his roles.
I hadn’t simply memorized the dialogue. In Secret Treasure of the Amazon, for example, I could tell you he kisses Catherine Wilson in the second half-hour, knew exactly how many commercial breaks would occur before he strips off his unbuttoned shirt to rescue her from the river. Sullivan could actually make you believe the rubber alligator was real—not that I was looking at the gator.
Celia, you’ve asked me when I first realized I was gay, and that’s a hard thing to pinpoint. For me, there was so much confusion and denial and fear on that issue, and it wasn’t anything I discussed with my family or friends. But one good answer could be: I figured out I was gay while watching Grant Sullivan movies.)
#
Jack’s childhood viewing experiences were similar to my own, so it was an easy step to “sure, why not?”—then parking the Beetle-bug in a discount lot in Newark, stuffing a few day’s worth of essential clothing into a backpack and duffel bag, and catching the NJ Transit train to Penn Station.
We walked eight or so city blocks to Times Square. I was doing the tourist thing, head tilted back and occasionally stopping in the middle of the crowd, pointing up at tall buildings, towering neon advertisements and billboards, marquees for Broadway shows. Jack kept dropping back to pull me forward, practically dragging us to the Rialto at the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street.
The Rialto had seen better days. In the ’50s, it was a showcase theater for horror movies—lots of black-and-white double bills with Karloff and Lugosi and Chaney, Jr. creature features. In the ’60s, it slipped into pornography and exploitation films. Once in a while, the Rialto hoped to revive its past glory, as was the case with the theater’s premiere of The Manikin’s Revenge.
Already a huge success, if the ticket line down the block was any indication. The box office wouldn’t open for another six hours, but people were camped out in lawn chairs or sitting cross-legged on the hot summer pavement. The ones at the front, mostly guys, had clearly waited overnight. No surprise, they were about the same age as me and Jack.
“Glad we stopped here first,” Jack said. He walked immediately to the end and dropped his backpack to claim a spot in line.
“We should book a hotel room.” The ticket line wasn’t going anywhere, and we needed someplace to store our stuff. Even though I was traveling light—I left my giant box of maps in the back seat of our VW—my sports duffel hung heavy on my shoulder after the long hike through sidewalk crowds.
“Good idea.” Jack reached for his wallet, slid out his credit card. “I’ll keep our place in line.”
I wasn’t particularly in love with that plan, and told him so. We needed to choose the place together, so we’d both be happy with it.
“Find somewhere close and not too expensive.” He shook the card, as if that would tempt me to take it. “C’mon, Shawn. If we don’t get tickets, we won’t have any need for the hotel. We’ll head right back to Jersey.”
He knew I wouldn’t relish that thought, after what happened there . . . I took the card.
“Maybe pick us up some lunch while you’re at it. Bring some water, too. About six hours’ worth.”
“All day, Jack? Really?” Busiest city in the world, and he’d have us spend all our time in a ticket line.
“It’s why we’re here,” he said. “But listen, if you wanna take one of those tours—you know, the sightseeing bus things—that might be a good idea for this afternoon. I’ll get our movie tickets.”
Well, that was a pretty thoughtful compromise. I’d get to check off a few sights on my lifetime To-Do List. “Thanks, Jack.”
“One more thing, before you go. Can you hold my place a few minutes? There’s a display up front I wanna take a look at.”
#
He was gone much longer than a few minutes, but the giddy excitement on his face when he came back was worth the inconvenience.
“There’s another cast member attending the premiere,” he said. The guy who’d joined the line behind me had spent the past fifteen minutes praising the latest scream starlet—Lori-Ann Something-Or-Other—describing her to me, with that typical “we’re both guys” assumption, saying things about her body and the pictures he’d seen in Playboy, even doing that mime thing about her breasts, his hands cupping the air in front of him. Well, that guy’s ears totally perked up, until Jack clarified: “The manikin. It’s on display next to the ticket booth. You gotta see it.”
My line-buddy’s face sank with disappointment. “Oh. That thing’s fake,” he said.
(I wanted to tell him the same about Lori-Ann’s breasts—especially if they were “out to here.”)
Jack ignored line-guy’s comment and continued. “It’s cool. The actual movie prop is in a cage on top of a pedestal. A big crowd’s gathered around it, and it’s wired so the little thing moves in its cage. There’s a hidden speaker, too, so it does this creepy growl and high-pitched squeak.”
“I hope it looks better in the actual movie,” line-guy said.
#
As much as I wanted to find us a hotel, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look at the prop manikin. When I got near the box office and the publicity display, I realized why Jack had taken so long. People pushed dense around the platform, similar to those awful crowds at busy Times Square crosswalks. I stood on tiptoes a couple of times, tried to stare over everyone’s heads, but I couldn’t make myself tall enough. It was nearly impossible to get close.
I had my duffel, which wasn’t helping. Then I figured out I could lift it vertically in front of me and kind of wedge my way into the crowd. As I made steady progress, I heard that noise Jack mentioned—the growl and squeal—followed by laughter from the spectators. A teenage girl and two of her friends emerged in front of me. “Get me out of here,” she said, giggling, pulling her friends along with her. They left a gap I could squeeze into, bringing me right next to the display.
The pedestal reached the height of my waist. A metal cage was mounted on top, about two feet wide and half that in depth and height. The bars were thin, but looked sturdy. To keep kids from sticking a finger between them, a plexiglass box was inverted over the cage and padlocked to the base with metal clips on each side—a publicist’s approximation of museum-level security.
The prop in the cage lay motionless. You know how, when a cat curls up in a ball to rest, its head tucked beneath a paw and the tail curled around the body, and it’s hard to tell which end is which? That was the same impression I got looking at this prop. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.
It was covered in brown and gray fur—probably rabbit or squirrel fur pasted to latex, though Jack would be a better judge of the materials. He knew a lo
t about special effects in movies, but I enjoyed them more when I didn’t know how things were done. Same with magic tricks.
The floor of the cage was pegboard, and a few thin puppet rods stuck up from beneath, attached to the dormant ball of fur. Wire stretched to tiny pulleys at each corner of the cage, another means to control the puppet’s movement. I noticed a few bumps in the fur, possibly the poke of an elbow or knee; a cluster of small ridges near the pegboard might have been knuckles or curled toes. The rods and wires should be attached to different limbs, and I tried to figure out which one went with the head.
Film stills covered the wooden pedestal, mostly Grant Sullivan or Lori-Ann Cleavage reacting to an offscreen danger. No pictures of the monster. The film’s title appeared at the top in the same style as the poster: slanted green letters, each with a jittery electric-shock outline. The side facing me had a hand-lettered, nonsensical cardboard sign: “Please Do Not Feed The Manikin.”
A sign on another side at least fit the logic of the illusion: “Please Do Not Tap On the Glass.” Some kid or smartass adult would read this as an invitation.
I was tempted, myself.
“It moved,” someone said. But it hadn’t.
“Maybe he’s tired,” a woman to my left explained to her disappointed son. His hands were on the pedestal, eyes peering overtop the rim at the motionless lump of fur and rubber. “It’s such a hot day. Even hotter inside that cage, poor thing.” I liked how the mom kept the illusion going.
“Damn thing’s broken,” the boy’s dad said, lifting him off the ground to give him a better view. “What do we do when the TV reception goes bad? We bang on the set.”
The kid could read the sign, he knew he wasn’t supposed to. But his father gave him permission. The boy slapped an open palm against the top of the plexiglass box.
Odd Adventures with your Other Father Page 13