Cookies and Hearts
It's a movie. Or someone is making a movie and
I'm in it. I'm backstage, in a den (Danny Fiscus's
house had a den), sitting with Brent Nielsen.
We're eating cookies (Italian wafer cookies, circa
Christmas, 1978). It's Really a Wonderful Life is on
(my father's voice here) the idiot box but not the movie
just the scene where George has just come back to
Life (I never played that game. Risk, once or twice.
Often Hearts, but only the way my mother taught
me) come back to Life running down the white-falling
street ranting Merry Christmas, Mister Jackson! because
that scene is on every idiot box tonight and of course
here (bless us). Brent Nielsen laughs and kicks
his foot, spilling the plastic pitcher of Kool-Aid. We go
to work tapping and patting Danny Fiscus's wall-to-
wall deep-shag carpet with the crumby red square
napkins that had fluttered through our thighs when we
were laughing. I hear the call (Jackson!) so I enter,
stage-den, a fabulous studio (if only mother could see
me in all the pretty lights!) to shoot the climactic
scene with some large boy whose name might be
Nik Christopher but he's older than I and I know
he is tough because (even though he's older) he
still dresses like he knows what the kids
knew who left school early to smoke (cigarettes
were disgusting in my family. Danny and I snuck
cigarettes, the year before his father got sick). Because
Nik knows, I feel less nervous about being in the movie.
We act and the scene is Brent Nielsen and I watching Life
on the idiot box except Brent is Nik and the cookies
are Chips Ahoy (like after school when your mother
wasn't home yet and you and I would eat cookies and
drink Pepsi and watch your favorite cartoons for hours).
Suddenly, we are not able to finish the scene (scenery
melodramatics) but the entire audience (in pearls) stands
anyway. After these ovations, over at the cast-party milk
and cookie table (Graham Crackers, Animal Crackers, and
Vanilla Wafers) someone grabs my hips from behind. I
turn and sigh Oh, my love handles! because Kristen Boling
is perfect (perfect as a hand full of diamonds, playing
with the Jack), in her blue-and-gold cheerleading uniform
with her straight-A books tucked under her bare and
confectionery arm. Of course her muscles are perfect! I
know she would pour over me as warm milk if we would go
do it in Danny Fiscus's older sister's bedroom like
we should have done almost nine years ago. Kristen
Boling's eyes are flag blue (the audience stands and
applauds again) and she's all Close-Up teeth and high
cheekbones, telling me about her Czechoslovakian
fiancé, a professional lawyer and international tennis
partner (after we smoked Danny Fiscus and I played
No-Rules No-Score Ping-Pong). They're flying tomorrow
to Fort Worth for a Something Championship and
then to Geneva for a conference on International
Something. But her muscles are perfect! And now she's
as devoted to his game as Mary is to George's (we're
almost to the line about the angel's wings) and I know
I'll have to wait another nine years for their divorce. I
drop my cup of milk on the table (maybe I spill it). There's
something that doesn't seem right about any of this. I want
to call mother to tell her something doesn't seem right
but there's no telephone in Danny Fiscus's kitchen (where
the party is) and Kristen is talking to Nik (whose name might
be Brent), so I leave the cookies, Kristen Boling, and the audience
through a pantry, descending linoleum stairs to the rec
room where Danny Fiscus in jade pajama bottoms
sits on an olive couch (Danny Fiscus's family had a tan
couch). He offers me a cookie that is shaped like a dog
biscuit but I don't take it (and I might not ever again).
I sit down. He lights a cigarette. We laugh and (as if
I am with mother again) Danny and I watch A Wonderful
Life on the television, but I am no longer in it.
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