No Time to Wave Goodbye (11 page)

“This is the surprise tonight. It’s a new era. Tonight, the people who don’t get Oscars will be getting Ellens.” She gestured to the pillars. “They’ll be chocolate. At least, once they’re in the car, they can bite my head off!”

Soon, the names of five identical young men that Beth only dimly recognized were introduced, in snippets of roles as cavalrymen in World War I and the saviors of twelve-year-old girls sold into sexual slavery. Morgan Freeman was nominated for his role in a film about a young basketball star drafted into the NBA out of high school. He played the hero grandfather who helped steer the boy back to some semblance of his lost innocence.

One of the identical young men won.

“Always a bridesmaid, huh Morgan?” Ellen asked. “Except when you aren’t? What, do they just put your name down first and then fill in everyone else’s? It’s like people at the Grammys used to thank Stevie Wonder for not making an album that year.”

Then Sissy Spacek took the stage with an actor Beth remembered as a child actor in a series of sci-fi movies—who had grown up to look something like an elongated elf.

“You’re young enough to be my son,” Sissy Spacek said. “They promised me a hunk.”

“You’re little enough to be my daughter,” he replied. “They promised me a curvy Brazilian.”

“Movies are supposed to be make-believe,” said Sissy Spacek. She laughed. “Don’t you bother to put those cards up there because I can’t see ’em anyway! I’m too vain to wear my glasses when I’m dressed up! We count on movies to give shape to our dreams and our nightmares and to alter our consciences and always, we hope, make us laugh. But only one of the four nominated documentary films is a laughing matter, and that one is
Scream Queen,
the story of a young woman whose face you’ve never seen, but whose voice you’ve heard a dozen times, in some of the hottest horror movies of the past decade. You try it sometime. Just go out in your car and give a good scream. You’re not going to sound like Paul McCartney. Screaming is a gift, as you’ll see …”

It was funny. The girl, Brenda Gelfman, who had a whole repertoire of screams, from little shrieks to death wails, was a chubby brunette from Brooklyn with a mop of black curls.

“Our next nominee,” said the elfin actor, “is a story within a story.
Twenty-two years ago, a little boy was kidnapped in a hotel lobby. Nine years later, Ben Cappadora returned to his family unhurt. But ever since then, his family, and especially his older brother, has struggled to come to grips with what this particular loss of a child means to a family and to a community, and, I suppose, to all of us. These families still wait and hope. Let’s watch a few moments of
No Time to Wave Goodbye,
a film by Rob Brent and Vincent Cappadora.” They watched the excruciating, unsparing minute when the camera never wavered as Al Cafferty explained how they had told Alana to wave to them, even if she was with her coach, and of the surveillance cameras at the door that saw nothing, until they recorded a tiny shining thing, Alana’s good-luck bear.

As the presenters introduced
One Shot,
the journey of a shot of heroin from its grower to the middlemen to the nude women who stood at long tables and cut the product surrounded by thugs with guns to the Princeton-educated junkie whose own husband didn’t know of her addiction, Vincent leaned over to whisper to Beth, “This one is the winner.”

Beth tensed muscles in every part of her body.

Then they heard the words “unprecedented access” and “never-before-seen footage.” Vincent said, “There aren’t very many surprises in this town. It’s all over the street.
One Shot
will win. This guy will be the next Spike Lee or something.”

The final nominee was
Buffalo Gal,
a raucous and vivid film about young girls who rode the rodeo. A chasm of silent anticipation opened after the last moments of the twangy soundtrack died away.

Pat reached over Beth to cover Vincent’s hand with his own. He said, “At Christmas you would have given your front tooth to even be sitting here. We all think you already won. Right? Am I right?”

Vincent nodded. He gazed down at Pat’s high-school ring, which he wore for luck.

Beth wanted to jump up and run out of the room when Sissy Spacek picked up the cream-colored envelope.

Ben wished he were back in the hotel room, singing to Stella.

Candy whispered something under her breath that could have been a string of expletives or a prayer.

Sissy Spacek looked up at her moony counterpart and smiled as if to split her face. Then she turned to face the audience. “The winner is
No Time to Wave Goodbye,
by Rob Brent and Vincent Cappadora.”

At first, no one moved. The audience broke into the kind of accolade saved for the dark horse. Michael Moore’s beautiful wife, Kathleen, stood and made the victory gesture. Vincent sat blinking, as though he’d just been awakened from a sound sleep.

Finally, Candy, with tears streaming from her impeccable Nars front-row eyes, said, “I think that was your name, Spanky. Hey, Vincent. You won?”

Rob bounded away through the crowd. By the time Vincent got up there, Rob had said, “I thought my esteemed partner was crazy to make this picture at all. Especially for our first big one. But Mom, Pop, Rita, I got that thing you were looking for to put on the bookshelf next to the graduation pictures!”

Vincent stared down at the podium. Pat knew he hadn’t prepared a single line he could use as an acceptance speech. A second passed, then another.

Finally Vincent said, “Obviously, I want to thank the Academy and question your sanity.” Appreciative laughter. “My brother, Sam, and my sister, Kerry, should be standing here. This would be nothing without you. And I would be nothing without these people, my grandfather Angelo, who taught me to love art in all its forms, my mother for teaching me which form of art was mine, and Candy Bliss and my pop, who suggested that filmmaking might be a good alternative to prison.” More laughter. “And I have to thank Marco Ruffalo for seeing people and places as I never could.” Both the Charleys, Two and Seven, sobbed openly—huge men with bulging red child’s faces. Markey himself sat with his face pillowed in his rough, stubby hands. “But mostly, I want to take this moment to remember five people. They are DuPre Dicksen, Jacqueline Whittier, Luis Rogelio, Alana Cafferty, and Laurel Hutcheson. If this statue is really magic, it will bring you home.”

The audience applauded wildly. Sissy Spacek hugged Vincent with a mother’s sweetness.

“Dude won the Oscar,” Cole Dicksen said to his little sister, Toni Lynn. But she was already asleep. Unexpectedly, Janice had been called to work. All her friends had insisted on turning the TV in the break room on. Janice’s work friends surrounded and hugged her.

“Good for him,” Eileen Cafferty said, smiling past eyes bright with tears. Al hugged his wife. Their son, Adam, asked, “Can we get his autograph?”

In Washington State, Walter Hutcheson said, “Well, God bless him.”

“God bless Laurel,” said his wife.

As they watched Vincent make his way back, stopping for a quick photo with Sissy Spacek, Charley Seven shrugged off the urgent tap on his shoulder. “I put it out,” he said, without looking back, referring to his single panicked puff on his cigar. There was a roped-off corner for the smokers at the theater but he hadn’t dared leave during the most amazing moments.

“Sir, there’s an urgent message for you outside,” said one of the ushers. “I believe the man is a police officer.”

“What the hell?” Charley Seven suddenly felt his beeper buzzing like a trapped hornet under his belly. Hauling himself to his feet, he told Beth and Pat he would be right back. When he dialed the unfamiliar number, he found himself on the phone with a young woman whose voice was so drowned in hysteria that at first he couldn’t understand a syllable. “Calm down,” he told her. “What are you saying? Nothing can happen if I can’t hear you.”

“I saw Eliza sitting right there on TV!” the voice keened. It was his niece. It was Adriana.
What the hell?
Charley thought.

“Yeah, and so? Is the baby sick? Are you okay?” Blinking in the sunlight, Charley Seven nodded to the police officer and held up one finger.

“She called me, Uncle Charley. Eliza called before and said Beth’s brother and his wife were coming to pick up the baby and Liza would meet them outside the theater as soon as they found out who won so that the baby could nurse before they went to the party…. And she said I could go home because Beth’s brother and his wife would take care of Stella for the rest of the night.”

“Adriana! Slow down! Who would meet Beth’s brother and his wife?”

“Eliza and Sam! Eliza said she was going to come out and get the baby.”

“Eliza is inside.”

“I know! I just saw her! But on the phone, she said that Beth’s brother would come for Stella. As soon as they made the announcement. And they did come. Eliza said she would come out to get Stella the minute they found out. Or else Sam would. But they were right there. I saw them! I waited awhile and they did this little feature story about the family and stuff and they were still there …”

“Sam? Who’s Sam?” Charley Seven asked.

“It’s Ben! It’s Vincent’s brother. He uses that name.”

“Jesus Christ, Adriana! I can’t make heads or tails of any of this. Okay, okay. Now, this was Beth’s brother … Bick?” Bick could have arrived late; Beth’s father, Bill, had been too ill to come with the rest of them, so Bick and his wife had stayed behind to be with him. Maybe they had all come ahead. Of course.

“No, Uncle Charley! It was her brother
Paul
and his wife. Sandy. Not Bick. I know Bick. Her name was Sheila. Or something. But then I remembered that Paul brought his daughter Annie, not his wife. Annie’s my age! I met her the first day, Annie Kerry. And this lady wasn’t her. I was so excited that I forgot! This lady was older, like Beth’s age!”

And Paul and Annie are sitting inside there clapping their heads off.

Only a few other times in his life, Charley Seven had encountered a situation beyond his power to salvage.

Once there had been a meeting under the bridge, out by O’Hare
Airport, for which three guys scheduled to show up did not and he and his older brother Tory found themselves alone in the dusk, surrounded by Anthony Taliaferro and five of his eight large and jubilantly psychotic brothers, who even as teenagers never bothered with fists or even bats but opted for vehicular mayhem of all kinds. He could feel the way it had been, surrounded in the parking lot of the bindery on Mannheim Road by the wolf-eyed Taliaferros, as they sat on the hoods of their old, long, ruined Pontiacs, with their arms folded over their chests. Back then, Charley, who was a slow but thorough thinker, had overcome his agitation and found escape not through fleeing but through backing off—assessing his plight from a bird’s-eye view. He’d surveyed the area and seen two black-and-whites parked adjacent, next to Alexander’s Diner, cops chatting through their windows over coffee. Sliding his hand through the window of Tory’s vehicle, Charley laid on the horn until one of the police got annoyed and came to see what was up. The Taliaferro brothers scattered like roaches under a kitchen light.

Now, there surely was a logical explanation for what Adriana was saying; he knew that. But when Charley drew back, to scan for the explanation and the key to the lock, he saw only a broken landscape. He scanned the lines of gawkers leaning over the velvet ropes and the long lines of identical, idling black cars that stretched away for blocks.

Information was the best thing. Charley Seven needed more.

“So Adriana, honey, how long ago was this?”

“It really was Eliza who called, Uncle Charley! I recognized her voice!” she screamed.

“How long ago was this, Adriana?” Charley asked in the voice that could make men forget that they had learned to control their bowels when they were four.

“It was maybe half an hour ago, Uncle Charley? I didn’t know when they would give the award for those kinds of movies. Documentaries. I thought they might be way near the end. I forgot they sprinkle those kind in with the big ones. I changed Stella and then the phone call came and I turned on the TV and Beth’s brother shows up. He kind of
looked like Beth. But afterward, I thought, why wouldn’t Eliza have told me before if she was going to send her uncle for the baby?”

Slowly, Charley Seven said, “A half hour ago? Half an hour ago you gave Patrick Cappadora’s grandchild to a stranger?”

Adriana began to sob. “Uncle Charley! It was Eliza who called me! She said to give Paul the milk she pumped. Who else would know that but Liza?”

Anyone who knew what most six-month-olds lived on, Charley thought.

He told Adriana to sit and wait, not to move. Perhaps a mistake but an innocent one. Jesus, Holy Mother, please let it have been Beth’s younger brother, Bick. Charley swiveled his eyes, concealed by his dark D&G sunglasses, back toward the entrance and saw no delighted Eliza, opening her arms to receive her baby.

Charley nodded to the officer. “We are going to need your help,” he said.

The officer asked a guard to bring Vincent Cappadora and his family out.

Vincent and Rob had just finished posing for photos with their statuettes while a CNN reporter asked them questions. But when Vincent saw Charley Seven coming toward Ben and Eliza, Charley’s face gray as cement, looking as though he’d walked a hundred miles on hot sand beside the tall police officer, Vincent consciously smiled for what he believed, simply from the sense in the air, like burning, would be the last smile for a long time to come.

Vincent could not imagine what could go so wrong it could cause a police officer to walk into the Academy Awards. Was someone ill? Hurt? The officer kept on walking toward them. Then, like a house of cards on fire, he flashed onto the only member of his family who had come to California but not to the awards.

Vincent began to run toward the doors and was close enough that it was he who caught Eliza when her knees buckled under her and her eyes rolled back.

S
till clutching his statue, Vincent stalked the lobby, from reporter to reporter, from microphone to microphone, giving interview after interview.