Life Goes to the Movies (29 page)

Hudson
Priory,
1987

B
y the time the train pulled into Barnum it was pouring. Lightning cracked the silver dome of the sky. My father wore his tattered Inverness cape with
drooping deerstalker cap. Over his head he held an umbrella that had seen better days. He looked like a soggy, down-on-his-luck Sherlock Holmes. He
smiled, or half of his face smiled, the muscles of the other half having been paralyzed by his latest stroke. The whole left side of his face drooped
like a pair of wet drawers on a clothesline. Since the fire he’d put aside inventing things to focus on his painting, doing landscapes of the
flower garden behind our house. Seeing me watching him through the smutty green window, he waved in that funny way of his, his right hand miming a
chatterbox over his head, the smile holding up the right side of his face. The same stroke that sundered his smile also impaired his speech, making him
sound like an English Elmer Fudd.

“Wewh wewh wewh, Niyel, mabwah. Ow gowzit? Zow guddah zee yhew,” he said, helping me wrestle Dwaine’s trunk into the back of his car,
the yellow 1960 Morris Minor, its paint faded to clotted cream, its rocker panels mostly rusted through. For a change I got the feeling that he
actually meant it, that he was genuinely happy to see me. I admit I was happy to see him, too. “Are you sure you should be lifting things?”
I asked.

“Zhur, why nod? Ze hew wi zhe bwuddy dogdurz.”

The Morris’ engine turned over and over and finally caught and sputtered, filling the rainy station parking lot with blue fumes. By mistake my
father put the transmission in the wrong gear and nearly drove us into a telephone booth in which a horrified commuter stood making a call. With the
Morris sagging under the trunk’s weight and my father gripping the wheel (his face evenly divided between concern and pleasure), we rode to town.
My father had been told by his doctor not to drive, but drove he did, in full Magoo fashion, beeping his horn, cutting curbs, splashing pedestrians who
stood unwittingly by puddles.

At the local diner my father and I ate breakfast, with him foregoing his two customary soft-boiled eggs in favor of a cholesterol-free bowl of oatmeal.
We sat in a booth next to the window through which we had a clear view of Barnum’s Florentine clock tower (with its ever-inaccurate clock), a
slice of the flood-prone river, and the Chamber of Commerce building, on the lee stucco wall of which the town’s mascot had been recreated in
paint: a white circus elephant rearing up on its hind legs. The elephant is, of course, in honor of the town’s namesake, Phineas Taylor Barnum,
the famous showman born there in 1810, and whose patinated bronze likeness—seated in a throne-like armchair—lorded over the village green.
It suddenly struck me that Mr. Barnum and Dwaine had more than a little in common, that they were both hucksters, selling hoaxes to a gullible public,
as I, too, had been a huckster; as all Americans worthy of the name were and are and always will be hucksters. Through the rain-pocked window I noted
the generous pile of dung painted under the elephant’s legs by local delinquents of artistic bent. However often the town fathers ordered it
painted over, that dung-heap always endured, adding tribute to tribute.

“Za elephan nevah stobs zhitting, duzzy?” my father, as if having read my mind, observed while slurping away at what he called
“porridge.”

“He is prolific,” I had to agree.

After breakfast we stopped at the bridal boutique, where I found my mother secreted behind a curtain in the back workroom, wedged among boxes of
sequins and rhinestones and mostly fake pearls, rolls of white taffeta, crinoline and frilly lace. She failed to look up at me from her worktable.

“Finalemente!” she said. “De probable son!”

“Prodigal,” I corrected her, and bent to kiss her wrinkled, soft cheek. The high intensity lamp under which she labored hardened the lines
in her face, making her look every one of her fifty-four years. That I’d just quit my job didn’t soften her looks any, though by then she
must have been used to these sudden curves, slaloms, and dips in her only son’s reprobate life: anyway, she was resigned to them. She licked the
end of a white thread and, while passing it through the eye of a needle, asked me—with the usual strong whiff of irony and disdain—how was
my friend, what his name, Dwaine?

“Frankly, mom,” I answered, “I really have no idea. And I don’t give a damn.”

“Pffff,” she replied.

I then did the one thing guaranteed to win an Italian boy back into his mother’s good graces, bent and kissed her again. saying I loved her very
much, which was true, and that she was the very best mother a son could possibly ask for, which may not have been true, exactly, but it was true
enough, and to which she reiterated her “Pffff ,”but could not hide a smile.

2

After leaving mom’s store we got on the interstate. I’d promised my mother that, before we got on the highway, I’d take over the
driving, but when the time came my father insisted on remaining behind the wheel. I was just as glad; I needed to get some sleep. Within a dozen miles,
with raindrops sliding down the passenger window like children on toboggans and sleds, I let my head drop and drifted off. When I woke my father was
humming to On the Beautiful Blue Danube on public radio. The sun had broken through the clouds. We crossed over the Newburgh—or was it the
Bear Mountain?—Bridge. My neck felt loose as if stretched by the miles. I hummed along with my father.

When The Blue Danube ended the news came on. The Dow Jones industrial average had fallen 508 points, the largest single-day point drop since the
Great Depression, a record 22.6 percent decline. Analysts pointed to rising interest rates, computer-driven selling, and the threat of war in the
Persian Gulf. In the blink of an eye my life savings were gone, evaporated. I could picture Dwaine laughing at the news, throwing his shaven tattooed
skull back and howling up at the falling sky.

I fell asleep again, a deep sleep crowded with vivid, stupid dreams in kitschy Technicolor. While I slept, with Dwaine’s belongings rattling away
in the battered aluminum trunk behind me, my father drove me here.

3

Sat., October 31 (Halloween).
I write this in a room perched high above the eastern edge of a lava sheet thrust five hundred feet straight up from below sea level at the close of
the Triassic period, after the dinosaurs bit the dust and the first mammals started crawling out of their caves. They call this line of steep, lonely
cliffs the Palisades, a word derived from the French word for a fence of pales forming a defensive structure usually around a stronghold.

Which I guess makes this monastery a stronghold of sorts.

A fog has rolled in, wrapping everything in a gray blanket. I can’t see the sky, the trees, the river, or the barge that’s doubtlessly
passing by at this very moment, being pushed or pulled up or downstream by an equally invisible tugboat. Nor do I see the cluster of red brick
buildings clinging to the opposite shore, though I know they are there.

All I see is fog: gray, dull, silvery fog, the same color as the aluminum trunk squatting on the floor here next to me.

My room holds a small bed, a child’s wooden desk, a stiff-backed cane chair, a lamp, floorboards of thick, knotted pine, and a window shaped like
a star. Not a patriotic five-pointed star, or the Star of David, but an enigmatic polygon with four sharp extrusions pointing North, South, East, and
West—like a compass rose. The room is right under the bell tower. When the bell tolls the walls quiver and shake. It tolls thirty-six times at
six-thirty every morning. Why thirty-six I have no idea, but it’s the only dramatic thing that happens here all day long.

There it goes now. Dwaine, Dwaine, Dwaine. … (that’s D for Death, W for War, A for Anarchy, I for Insane, N for
Nightmare, and E for the End of the World.)

Finally, the tolling stops. The last iron waves fade, leaving a silence so severe the flushing of a toilet somewhere down the hall seems like an act of
insurrection. I can hear my brain cells humming, whispering to each other.

The silence gives way to chanting. A dozen voices, all male, waft up through the thick floorboards.

I burn a stick of incense, gaze out my star-shaped window. As voices chant below me, with the befogged view as bright and pale and colorless as an
empty screen, I pretend that I’m in a movie theater. The room darkens around me, the fog brightens and starts to sparkle and flicker. The smell
of incense morphs into that of hot buttered popcorn. Soon I’m watching a movie, one starring Dwaine and me. And all I’ve had to do to tell
our story is sit here and keep watching and write down what I see. It’s been that simple.

Now, at this hour, that’s when I do my best writing. When the fog clears the spell breaks. With a fluttering sound the film trips out of the
projector gate. The sprocket holes swing into view; the celluloid shrivels and combusts, the vermilion bloom gives way to the brightness of a limpid,
sunny day.

4

Tuesday, November 3.
That’s what I remember, Brother Joseph. How much is real and how much I’ve invented—as my father invented machines for measuring the
consistency of Whip ‘n’ Chill and peanut butter—I can’t say for sure. But then don’t we all invent, or re-invent, the
things we love?

Which makes me Dwaine’s father, in a way, doesn’t it?

And a father’s greatest fear is that he can’t live up to fatherhood, that he won’t be able to protect his child. In the end neither
Venus nor I could protect Dwaine from himself, any more than we could protect ourselves from him. A Holy Trinity, we were: me, Dwaine, and Venus:The
Father, the Son, and Casper the Friendly Ghost.

5

Sat., Nov. 7
^th
, 8 a.m.
The fall colors have peaked here. I’d forgotten how much I love the seasons, especially autumn’s last blazing hurrah, with every maple tree
a clipper ship in flames, heralding winter’s smoke and ash (wheras the city has only three seasons: too hot, too cold, and neither too hot nor
too cold).

A gang of brothers performs chores below, repairing a broken drain spout on the tool shed on the far side of the driveway, alongside a small pumpkin
patch. Under the sun’s glare the river looks like a valley of broken bottles. Beyond the dazzle I see the buildings on the opposite shore, their
red bricks burnished with sunlight. If I look long enough I see—or I imagine that I can see—patients being escorted across the grounds by
angelic figures in white.

Strange, isn’t it, how Dwaine and I wound up with almost identical views, me here among monks, him there with his fellow lunatics. Mirror images,
we reflect and reverse each other.

How to distinguish between the reflection and the mirror?

The face that looks in the mirror is real, the one that looks out isn’t.

If that doesn’t clear things up, try scratching both.

When all else fails, smash the mirror.

6

Thursday, November 12
^th
.
For the past three days you’ve been teaching me, or trying to teach me, the peaceful and practical art of meditation. Evenings, just before
vespers, I find you sitting lotus-style in front of a burning candle in the otherwise dark, deserted meditation hall, a rope of incense smoke curling
up to the spackled ceiling. No one else is there; no one else meditates. Of the twelve brothers here, you are apparently alone in your enthusiasm for
passive self-annihilation.

“Just sit,” are your two gentle words of instruction. “Just sit.” And so, hands folded in my lap, gazing into the candle flame,
I sit, just sit.

Meditating is a lot like going to the movies. You sit in the dark doing nothing, letting the movie of your thoughts wash over you. The meditation hall
is the theater, the flickering candle flame the projector bulb. Eyes closed, you sit and watch as the heavy velvet curtain parts. The barrage of coming
attraction trailers (as inane and frenetic as a pillow fight) finally ends, and the feature begins, a movie with a simple yet surprisingly gripping
plot in which nothing, absolutely nothing, happens.

The trick is to realize that the movie isn’t about you. It’s not about anything but a single point in time called here and now.

Two nights ago in the meditation hall as I sat watching the movie of my life unwind, it struck me that it wasn’t my life at all that I had been
living, it was Dwaine’s. He was the star, the hero, the villain. He stole every scene. I was just a sidekick—not even, just an audience
member, a spectator among spectators slouched in padded seats. I sat there watching the candle flame flicker, wondering: what happened to me, tomy life? Where was it? Where had it gone? Plummeting back to earth, wings singed off, crashed into the ocean: that’s what happens when you
fly too close to the sun. Whether the sun is a black dwarf or white giant makes no difference. It’ll still melt wax off your wings.

I started crying then, gasping, body-jerking sobs. I couldn’t stop. The tears rose up from somewhere so deep down inside of me I thought they
would tear my intestines out.

And though you obviously saw and heard me crying, you didn’t do anything. You sat there—just sat—until the meditation hour ended.
Then, with a gentle hand upon my shoulder, you said,

“I think we’re done here.”

7

Saturday, November 14.
That same night, following dinner and Compline, when the Great Silence descended on the monastery, I stayed up late packing all of Dwaine’s
things, sealing them in layers of plastic bags, the squawk of packing tape stretching off the dispenser echoing off of my room’s stucco walls. I
packed away black books, screenplays, rubber bullet, all of the movies Dwaine and I had made. With everything packed I sealed the trunk with duct tape
from the tool shed, and went to bed.

The mountains were still black against a star-pocked sky when your knocking woke me. Grasping one of the trunk’s handles each we made our way up
the trail to the clearing. The river lay huddled in fog. For a man of seventy-four you’re in excellent shape. Still we both had to stop every
fifty feet or so to catch our breaths. For some strange reason, as we walked I pictured my father, not you, carrying Dwaine’s trunk behind me.