This is the 2nd instalment of the story. I still don’t know how long it will be. I doubt if it will go past 15-18,000 words, though. At the moment, I have a little over 10,000. We’ll see how it goes, as well as where it goes. The thing about free-wheeling when you’re writing is that sometimes the story just goes where it needs to go before it find its way back to you. That’s the part I like about it. I think it’s the moment of self-discovery we all look for when we write — well, I know it is for me. So let’s see where this takes us, shall we?
If you remember in the opening of last week’s story, the boy’s father has just died…
The Greek Chorus
as a brief interlude
In hindsight, I’d have to say my father’s funeral was a sad affair. He was only forty-six when he died. That’s far too young for any man to have to die as far as I’m concerned. I found out later in life that what he called the Jungle Fever he’d suffered from, was in fact malaria. It was something he’d picked up in the South Pacific, during the War. A few of his friends from the VA showed up for the service, and some of the ones he’d worked with at the Reservoir. They all said the same thing: “If there’s anything you need, or anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to call.” They knew my mother would never ask for help, and besides, not one of them left a forwarding number where we could reach them.
When I was younger — at the time of this story — I used to think that one of the hardest things in life was losing a parent. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s not; losing a parent is something no child should ever have to go through at an early age. But the reality of life is that as we get older and we leave the family dynamic of childhood behind to become parents ourselves, only then do we learn, or understand, what true loss is about. I’ve come to the conclusion that losing a child is more difficult.
The idea of comforting a child through the loss of a parent is something that most adults don’t seem to understand. I think their reason for not understanding a child’s loss is because they themselves are trying to come to terms with their own loss, or at least I hope that’s what it is. I’d hate to think it’s apathy, that a child’s feelings mean nothing in face of what they’re going through themselves. My mother tried to comfort to us as much as she could. My sister Elizabeth tried to comfort my mother, having lost her own husband just three years before. It was a shared commonality, Mrs. Naramova explained to me — as if I would understand what that meant.
I understand, now, how life can sneak up on you and do things to you when you least expect it; life and death are just as much a part of living as falling in and out of love are. It blindsides you. I never wanted to be the kid about whom others said: “I had a friend once, who lost his father when he was fourteen.” No one wants to become someone else’s anecdote, but sometimes, that’s all we leave behind, isn’t it? My own father became an anecdote with everything he’d done, and everything he’d said, somehow becoming the apocryphal history of his own life. Does that make any sense, or am I reading too much into it? I don’t have the answers, except to say that now that I’m the same age Mrs. Naramova was when I was fourteen, I still haven’t figured it out.
She’s gone now, but I still think about her at times, just like I think about my father, or my mother, and my sister Janice, who was three years older than me, and gone at thirty-five in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Life gives, and life takes, and all we can do is learn to accept the consequences. People say that time heals all wounds, and as much as we dismiss it as cliché, it’s also true. The memory is always there, and the acceptance is somehow easier to acknowledge as the months slip away. There will always be those days when it’s harder to hide from your feelings — like birthdays and anniversaries — but as the months fade, and as the years slip by, the pain lessens and is eventually replaced by happy memories of past birthdays. It’s the natural progression, I suppose.
Act One; scene three
Six months after Dad died, I turned fifteen. It was my first birthday without him; it was the first birthday for all of us. It was March. It had been hard enough getting through Christmas. Mom had wept silent tears then, fought against them as much as she could, but there were times when I’d see her looking out of the window at the Christmas lights dancing in the distance, and I’d see the tears in her eyes reflected in the window. I wanted to put my arms around her and hug her — the way Dad used to do whenever she was down — but I was afraid I’d only make things worse.
She tried to make everything perfect, though. She even baked a cake. She let little Ricky lick the batter out of the bowl, and laughed when he stuck his finger into the icing. She kissed the top of his head and touched a button of icing on his nose before kissing it off. He laughed and his laughter seemed to brighten her mood. She hugged him to herself, and I could see her gazing off into the distance, her eyes watering briefly before she wiped them and forced a laugh, asking Ricky if he could count out the candles.
“Someone finally moved into the MacPherson apartment,” Mom said after dinner.
“Let’s hope it’s someone young, and maybe voluptuous,” Rodger said, laughing and punching me in the arm.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with something like that,” Bradley mocked him.
“That’s what you think.”
“Says the boy who’s never even had a girlfriend.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“Do you even know about girls?” Bradley asked.
“I know enough,” Rodger said.
Elizabeth shut them both up. “Do they have children? Maybe we can find a playmate for Ricky?”
Mom shook her head slowly. “She’s about as old as Mrs. Naramova. I heard she’s a writer. A poet.”
“That’s not writing,” Rodger laughed. “No one reads poetry these days, let alone writes it.”
“Oh, Mr. College Boy knows all about it, does he?”
“I know more about it than you do,” Rodger countered. “Do you know her name? Maybe she’s famous?”
“Whitcombe,” Mom said. “I think that’s what she said. I met her coming back from the store.”
“Oh great, another old codger moving in. What is this, a retirement home now?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Janice asked.
“If she’s old, there ain’t gonna be any kids and you won’t be ale to make an babysitting money,” Bradley said.
“I’m going to be getting a job at the market,” she said. “I already put my name in. Maybe I can put in a good word for you with Bobby? Or is it Roberta, now that she’s out of school? I heard that’s what she’s calling herself now.”
“I don’t need your help with finding girls,” Bradley laughed. “All I have to do is go into the city, and they’re all roarin’ and ready to go.”
“Oh, just like that are they?” Rodger laughed.
“They can’t wait to give it away, now that they got the pill.”
“What kind of poetry does she write?” Elizabeth asked.
“I wouldn’t know that,” Mom laughed, and getting up from the table picked the cake up off the counter. “And Bradley, there’ll be no more talk like that at the table.”
“Oh Mom, it’s the Sexual Revolution. Have you seen the dresses they’re wearing? When they bend over you can see all the way to forever.”
“That will be enough of that kind of talk at my table,” Mom said, putting the cake down.
“Can I put the candles on it, Gram?”
“Can you even count that high?” Bradley teased.
“I can count all the way up to twenty.”
“What comes after that?”
“I don’t know. I just start all over again.”
“Do you need help?” Janice asked.
“Hey, that new woman?” I asked. “Was that her I saw the other day? She was on the sidewalk, dressed like a man. She had a pair of dungarees on, a man’s shirt with a tie and a suit jacket. I thought she was a man because her hair was so short.”
“Sounds like one of those bohemian types,” Elizabeth said.
“And who are those?” Bradley asked.
“Try to keep up, Bradley. Haven’t you ever heard of the Beatniks?” Rodger laughed. “How about the Beat Poets? Does the name Ginsburg ring a bell? How about Burroughs?”
“Isn’t he the guy that wrote Tarzan?”
Mom bent over with Dad’s old Zippo in her hand, looking at it for a moment too long, because we all noticed. She looked up to see us all staring at her, and forced a light laugh.
“I’m alright,” she said, and sparked the lighter. “Happy birthday, Danny,” she said.
Act One; scene four
I usually went to see Mrs. Naramova after I got home from school. Once a week, I’d take whatever money she gave me to pick up her medicine, as well as the five packs of smokes that were supposed to last her for the week. (She only smoked Dunhills, from England.) She always let me keep the change, which sometimes amounted to quite a bit, and I’d usually stop off at the soda counter on my way out and buy myself a Coke. Most of the time though, I kept the change in a jar hidden in the room I shared with my two brothers. I’d have the room all to myself soon enough; Rodger had won a scholarship at some Mid-West University, and Bradley was counting the days until he set off for basic training.
Mrs. Naramova had one of those old fashioned gramophones — you know, the kind the dog on the RCA album is sitting in front of, listening to His Master’s Voice. She had it because it was the only thing that still played the old 78’s she owned. She sometimes asked me to put a record on for her once she came out of the bathroom, after having taken her medicine and settling down into her chair. She’d smile, lighting up a cigarette and listening to the music as she drifted off. I didn’t mind the music too much. A lot of it reminded me of the music they played on Bugs Bunny when I was younger. She told me it’s what they used to dance to when she was in the ballet.
I always made sure to take the cigarette out of her hand before I left. It shames me to say I’d gotten into the habit of finishing it off for her. I didn’t want to leave it in the ashtray, in case she accidentally bumped the end table and knocked it over; I also didn’t want to put it out because it seemed like such a waste.
My life with Mrs. Naramova was based on a routine. In fact, going down the street to the drugstore and picking up her prescription was something we’d all done at one time or another. I think my mother may have even done it before she married Dad. I know Elizabeth did, as well as Bradley. I was the last one though, the youngest of us, and I wondered who’d look after her once I finished school and started working. I supposed it would be Ricky.
I remember how she came out of the bathroom and looked out of the window. The new Freeway blocked most of the view now, and what was left was more or less all asphalt and concrete, rather than the scrub brush, hills, and stunted trees I remembered from when I was younger. The open fields had been taken over by urban sprawl; neighbourhoods growing and clinging to the sides of the hills. The large houses that were once owned by old time movie stars, had for the most part fallen into ruin and were now housing large families trying to escape the city. The problem was that the city had caught up to the old neighbourhood.
“I want to go for a walk,” she said slowly.
She turned around and looked at me, smiling. She’d put her make-up on while she was in the bathroom. Her thin white hair tied back into a bun was more wisp than volume, and she’d penciled her eyebrows giving herself a surprised look that always made me smile. The mascara was a little too heavy, I thought — the eyes looking black around the edges — and she’d put rouge on, but it didn’t do much to hide the wrinkles as it did melt into them. The lipstick she wore was dark, and she’d outlined her lips so that they looked like a Cupid’s Bow — the kind of look they used to have back in the day, I suppose.
“Is it cold outside?”
I shook my head slowly.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? Is that something you young folks still say? Cat got your tongue? I can’t keep up with today’s talk. It reminds me of when we first arrived in North America, back in 1912. None of us could speak English well enough to hold a conversation.”
“I’ll bet you the promoter did,” I smiled at her. “But no, it’s not cold. I’ll grab you your wrap if you think it’ll be too cold for you outside.”
“I sometimes get the chills after I take my medication. It usually means the dosage is too small. By that time, it’s too late to say anything.”
“Why do you have to take it?” I asked.
“Why? Because I’ll die if I don’t,” she said quickly. “I’ve been taking it since 1927.”
“Why? I mean, it’s morphine.”
“I know what it is,” she said, walking over to the end table and picking up her cigarette pack. She took a cigarette out and then searched her purse for her lighter. I walked to the gramophone and picked the lighter up.
She looked at me as I struck the wheel and held the flame for her. She smiled and bent down, looking at me from under one of her arched brows. I closed the lighter and held it out for her.
“It was an automobile accident, and they thought I was going to die,” she said. “I was all busted up inside. My left leg was broken in five places; my hip, too. I’d even broken my back. That’s why they gave me the morphine. It took the pain away. By the time I recovered, talkies were all the rage, that’s how long my recovery took. I had to learn to walk all over again. But I couldn’t walk without pain, and they suggested I start using a cane. That’s why I have a limp,” she smiled “But things had changed. The moving pictures they used to turn out in a week, now took a month to make, some even longer.
“I was still in pain, though. They discovered that my hip hadn’t set properly and so they had to operate again. That took another year, and I had to learn to walk all over again. And then the stock market crashed and whatever money any of us had, well, that was pretty well gone. I was lucky though, because the studio was paying for my hospital stay. That’s because I was with one of the studio heads when we had the accident. He was married, but I wasn’t. It would have been a big scandal if people found out — not that I wasn’t used to scandal in my life.
“It’s funny, I haven’t spoken about this to anyone else before,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
She levelled her gaze at me, shrugged slightly and smiled.
“No one’s ever asked. No one cared then, either. The studio certainly didn’t. But they ended up going bust. They’d put all their money into one last movie. Instead of investing in sound, they chose not to. They thought sound was a fad.”
“So why didn’t you go somewhere else?”
“Where could I go? Things were different back then. The studio owned my contract. I was making a lot of money back then,” she laughed. “A lot! But nobody would buy my contract. They said they couldn’t afford to pay me that much because of the market, and the studio that had the contract, said they couldn’t pay me that much, either. I think they made it so no one would buy my contract. The studio head I was with the night of the accident probably had something to do with that. I think his wife found out what really happened that night.”
“And the studio? What happened?” I asked.
“It closed. Sold everything they had for ten cents on the dollar — except for my contract, of course. They refused to sell that. Then they said I didn’t have the right voice, because of my accent. It was the same for John Gilbert. I suppose it would’ve been the same for Valentino if he’d lived. When I argued, they threatened me, said they’d tell everyone I couldn’t be counted on because I was addicted to morphine — I was still using it because of the pain — and that was the end of that.”
“You could have stopped,” I said.
“And what do you know about that?” she said quickly. “Do you know what pain is? Of course you don’t. Imagine someone stabs a knife into your back and twists it,” she said. “No. I had money still, so I bought this place from your grandfather — well, half of it — and retired. That was in 1932.”