Once again I'm working the
screenplay for a film version of my first novel, HELLO, UGLY. This
first pass at a new draft has been fruitful---I've gotten the damn
thing's length down to somewhere in the “Star Wars” ballpark. As
the drafting continues, I'm sure it'll get tighter, me being the
chronic revisionist that I am.
One bit that won't make the
cut is this nugget of dialogue between Jack and his Mom. And I love
this scene, but for the screenplay, it's going 'bye-bye.
Serving me a tuna melt, my Mother
says, “you look awful, Jack.” It's just the two of us for supper
tonight. The old man's taking care of his own business. Dad's running
away from his dead son. Daddy's little dead boy.
I mumble thanks to my Mother for
the sandwich, Mrs. Congeniality who yelled at me from the window of a
strange house and I start hating myself. Jesus Christ, I think, it
was a dream, a dream, just a dream, but I'm scared and I don't feel
too guilty for thinking that because deep down I know it really went
down.
“What happened to you?” She
asks. It's the tenth time she's asked me. She's asking again because
I didn't say anything the other nine times. “How did your clothes
get so dirty?”
“Fell,” I mutter. It's a lie,
but hopefully it'll shut her up.
“Where did you fall?”
“School.”
“When?”
“On my way out. I was going
to the, uh, the student parking lot.” I can't think. What do I want
to say? Words are all jammed up in my throat.
“And...?”
“Uh....I don't know. I slipped
on the wet grass and I fell down a slope. I landed in the mud.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess lots of
people saw me.”
“Well, did they help you?”
She asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Shrugging my shoulders and
reaching for the Pepsi bottle, “why should they? None of their
business.”
“Well, Jack, I find it hard to
believe that all those people saw you fall and none of them helped
you.”
“Why?”
“I know if I saw anyone fall
down the way you did, I'd help them,” she offers and I smile but I
think she's lying. I mean, she's told me before that she was a member
of the Varsity Club when she was in school and I know none of those
people would ever pick me up if I fell. And then there's the whole
dream thing where she shouted at me. Anyone who would do that
wouldn't help me if I fell in a mud puddle. But I know it was just a
dream. No, it wasn't. Yes, it was.
“Not everyone's like you,
Mom,” I reassure her.
“Oh, well, Jack, come on! I
don't think that everyone's that bad, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“You can ignore it if you
want,” I tell her, “but people prove it to me every day.”
“Oh, Jack.”
Oh, Jack, oh, Jack. “Oh,
Mom.”
“Pass the chips,” and I
fork her over the bag of Ruffles.
“You know what Anne Frank
said,” she informs me as she digs into the bag, “in the middle of
the Holocaust, hiding from the Nazis, she said that she still
believed people were basically good inside.”
“Anne Frank is a lampshade.”
“My God, Jack!”
“S'true!”
She pauses for a minute to
rethink her strategy. “Zoe would have helped you,” she finally
says.
“Yeah, well,” I deadpan and
don't look at her. She's quiet for a minute and I think she's gotten
the hint not to go there.
We sit in hair-trigger silence.
Eating our sandwiches. Crunching our chips. Drinking our drinks.
Thinking our fear.
She breaks the ice with a new
subject. “Jack,” she says, “do you know a boy at your school
named Billy Arsenault?”
I stop, mid-munch. “Who?”
“Billy Arsenault.”
Punch in the face, notebook over
the head, oh, Jackie, Jackie, suck my left nut just once, “yeah, I
know him.”
“Do you know his mother's in
the hospital?”
Raising my eyebrows, “that
right?”
“Yes,” she says with some
kind of childlike concern eclipsing her face.
“What happened?”
“I guess she suffered a
stroke. She was tending to the flowers in her garden and it started
to rain. She was gathering up her gardening tools and then she
clutched her head and fell down. She's in the hospital, now, and I
hear she's in serious condition. They say she might not live through
the night.”
“How did you find this out?"
“I was talking on the phone
earlier with Shirley Eagen. You remember Shirley. She lives next door
to the Arsenaults.”
“Huh.”
“Isn't that awful? Imagine
how Billy must feel.”
I munch on
my sandwich and I mull it over for a minute. The first thing I think
of is my childhood. Going to the beach with Mom. Collecting
seashells and getting a sunburn. Her rubbing ointment on my sore, red
arms and back. Mom telling me stories, reading me books. Mom and
Grandma taking me to movies. I wonder if Arsenault has a lot of
memories like these. I bet he does. I bet this situation's rough on
him. I try to imagine what it must be like, going through this kind
of shit with his mother. I think and I think and I stare at the
neglected bread crust on my plate.
“Good,” I
say.
Copyright 1990 C.F.
Roberts/2016 Molotov Editions
*****
I was contemplating the irony
of this scene today---the story is about at its tipping point and the
cheese is really sliding off Jack's cracker. He doesn't trust his
mother, mostly due to delusional notions, but he enters into this
debate with her about the ethics of helping people who've fallen into
mud puddles and the fact is, this did not happen. He's lying through
his teeth about the entire story. So who, here, is untrustworthy?
Sadly, Jack himself isn't even sure what the truth is.
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
THE TUBES-Now
THE TUBES-Love Bomb
THE SCORPIONS-Fly to the Rainbow
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