Moving Pictures

By Paul Root

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781477173237

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Copyright © 2009 by Paul Root.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

OPENING CREDITS

The Affair

FEATURES

Little Elton And The Kings

March Mayhem

The Professor’s Son

Meet Me In Austin

Funny Not Funny

Moon Nine

CLOSING CREDITS

Why Carney Hates The Movies

For

My Co-Producer, Ginny

My Stars, Harlowe and Bridget

What about all these pictures? says one mover to the other, looking at a stack of framed artwork leaning against a wall in the steamy attic. Same as everything else, sighs the other mover. Move ’em.

The elderly man gets to the end of the worn photo album. A tear slides down his cheek. He’s surprised to feel the moisture against his chapped skin. So much of getting old is ossification, hardening, drying out. He’s glad the pictures have moved him. He oftentimes believes he is beyond being moved. He turns back to the beginning.

Edison, Eastman, and the Lumiere brothers are together in a dream, standing before a crowd of people.

Edison says, Lights!

Eastman says, Camera!

The Lumieres say, Action!

The people turn into pictures.

The pictures begin to move.

The people have become moving pictures.

I wake up.

But, damn, I love this dream.

THE AFFAIR

I met her in my childhood and I suppose it was love at first sight on some subconscious level. I mean, I didn’t run around and announce my affection, didn’t even internally acknowledge it. Don’t think I talked about her to anyone in my family very much, although they all knew her, too. She was a friend of the family.

It is the deep-rooted aspect of our relationship—the fact that it’s simply existed since childhood—that surely contributes greatly to what it is: exuberant, dependable, fierce, passionate. Clingy, jealous, greedy, possessive.

Things started to spark between us during my teenage years. There were always a lot of people around, and it didn’t get very intense too quickly, but we saw a good deal of each other through these years. The earlier teens—thirteen fourteen, fifteen—were better, I think, as the later ones were clouded by a lot of pot-smoking and boozing, some acid-dropping and coke-sniffing. Mindless adolescent posturing, me trying to find an identity, lurching sloppily between macho fatalism and affected introspection and sometimes insulting cruelty toward others to deflect any eye that might land too searchingly upon me.

But the early teen years were good—a bunch of us going together to see Marx Brothers festivals, and seventies classics: Freebie and The Bean (James Caan and Alan Arkin as bungling detectives) and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (Peter Fonda with a psychotic smile and ungodly speeds in a suped-up muscle car) and Mother, Jugs and Speed (Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, and Harvey Keitel as ambulance drivers caught in comedic hi-jinks that also had ungodly speeds in the emergency vehicles.)

The theater where we’d go together during these early years—the dozen or so of the friends in my circle—was called The Coronet. As I aged and became more worldly or more corrupt, however you want to categorize it, so too did The Coronet. It had a nice midnight run during the original Rocky Horror Picture Show craze; I went to it a couple of times but was too repressed or too slow or too something to actually get it. And I wasn’t crazy about getting hit with hard, uncooked rice during the movie.

Soon thereafter, The Coronet changed ownership, always bleeding money I’d heard. They tried to make it a venue for rock bands as it had a stage in front of the screen that the alleged musicians would perform on. But there were fights and trouble with drunken and drugged-disorderliness and eventually The Coronet found its niche as an X-rated theater.

I never went to these skin flicks—seriously!—but friends and I would sometimes smoke and drink in front of the place and see some of the older men from our neighborhood trying to inconspicuously get in the door, and one of my friends would invariably call out a loud greeting to embarrass the guy: Hi, Mr. Lawson! or whoever it was. In return, this would draw a sharp glare, a visual Go screw yourself you delinquent wiseass! which I suppose is ironic since Mr. Lawson or whoever probably was going into the theater to do exactly that, go screw himself.

She and I stayed in touch after high school, friends, supportive of one another, encouraging, but nothing to light the world on fire. I bumped around community college and various jobs that I’d kid myself might turn into careers. During one of these stretches of mindless but gainful employment, when I was twenty-one, I met my future bride. Married at twenty-four.

But once I was officially obligated—married—commitment and responsibility and all that ensues, I began to realize just how much I appreciated my time with my old friend. Maybe it was the psychological equivalent of an optical illusion: I craved her much more now that my availability was restricted. Whatever it was, after I married, I began to realize more and more how much I wanted her. How much I needed my time with her, just the two of us. How much I loved her.

My wife knew my mistress; we’d even gone out together on numerous occasions. My wife wasn’t threatened by her—even considered her a friend, a minor friend. She never pictured her as an adversary, I’m sure, because she never saw in her what I did. Didn’t understand why I would be so compelled by her because she didn’t find her very compelling.

I think that any relationship that has lasted as long as ours—over forty years now—attains a spiritual quality. It’s also my belief that any human bond that begins in early childhood, pre-pubescent, is rooted in the mystical not the sensual: the melding of open minds, the fusing of potent imaginations. So ours is a spiritual union by both of these measures. Of course it moved into the physical realm and remains there to some degree to this day. But I know that it is the ritual of the act that I am more in love with now, more than the physical substance of our partnership. Don’t get me wrong—there are still times when she drives me to heights of fevered passion that exceed anything I’ve known even when I was twenty years younger. She can still make me feel more alive in a raw and visceral sense than anything I’ve ever experienced. But… it is the ceremony that I love now. The dinner beforehand, usually light fare. Anticipation of what’s on the way—a few stolen hours. The choosing of the evening’s entertainment, trying to decide how to spend those hard earned hours, how not to squander them. Gauging the mood—that is an art form unto itself.

The foreplay has become longer and longer over the years—but it serves its purpose, whets our appetites, provides us previews of our own coming attractions. Then, finally, unwinding and letting the day’s tension, the accumulated stress of the years, dissipate. And darkness. Our love is always consummated in the dark after all these long years. Not out of shame or trepidation or awkwardness. It is her rule that it begins in the dark, as totally dark as possible. What light comes into the room, into my mind, she provides.

Sometimes it is bright and blinding. Other times she is subdued and plays with shadow and contrasts. At the end… more darkness: a reflective period to think about what we just had. She doesn’t shy away from evaluation—in fact she thrives upon it. Wants feedback on her performance. Her ever-changing themes. And, yes, her looks. She aims to please and finds no shame in this, like some do.

I suppose if you want a word to describe our relationship, it would be cathartic. We have laughed together and cried. At times we have allowed ourselves shallow, craven, cheap thrills. Role-played. Experimented with foreign flavors. Peered into recesses of the mind that are assiduously avoided or ignored by most. Indulged filthy and bizarre fantasies. Relived our favorite childhood fables. Discussed the scariest things we might ever face—sudden death, losing loved ones, aging, disaster, psycho killers. I have spent my most frivolous hours with her, but also the most intellectually rigorous, emotionally searing of my life.

As with any affair, any long-term affair at least, questions beg answers: Did the spouse know? If so, why—how—was it tolerated? And, of course: Why not leave to be with the lover all the time?

I’ll answer each of these as honestly as I can. Yes, my wife knew. But it was a gradual revelation, a piecing together of the clues rather than a volcanic eruption. To why and how she accepted it, I simply deduce that by the time she fully realized the existence of the affair, she was beyond the inflammatory phase of her life. I realize that some people never get beyond this stage—for some it intensifies with the passing of time, and we hear about these conflagrations on the news: the mother of four who pours sizzling cooking oil on her sleeping husband’s genitals, the middle-aged man who crushes the skulls of his wife and her boyfriend. (My lover and I actually have spent many nights together exploring crimes of passion and their ramifications—a favorite topic of ours.) But by the time my wife knew—figured out that it had been going on for years, many years—she had no retroactive loathing. She just drew more silently away from me, and I responded by going deeper into the loving black velvet embrace of my mistress’s arms. And who can say where my marriage is going? We’re certainly not ancient; our relationship is a work-in-progress as they say (though a work-in-regress may be more accurate.) Perhaps the day will come when she has had enough and is no longer interested in going through the motions, and we will simply fade to black—or go on to a sequel. I don’t know what happens when it finally and completely dissipates.

The other question: Why haven’t I left to be with my lover full-time? Well, I suppose that’s the flip side of the same coin as to why she doesn’t leave me. Yes, there is a child involved. That’s the easy answer, the excuse we can both cling to. But our child is twelve and about as sharp-edged and independent and sardonic as a twelve-year old can be. Her main concern if her mother and I were to split would be to carve herself out the most lucrative settlement package available. No, our child is not the primary reason we stay together. In fact, my daughter knows my girlfriend and has taken a real shine to her (of course she isn’t aware of the intimacy between us.) If I did leave my wife for my mistress, our daughter, I’m embarrassed to say, would probably love it.

The reason my wife and I stay together comes back to routine. Knowing the known and not knowing the not known is probably what keeps us plodding along. If I left my wife for my mistress, the former would cease to be my wife and the latter would take on some new role. While that prospect doesn’t fill me with dread, neither does it thrill me. And I suppose my wife feels the same way to some degree.

I’m not proud of my unfaithfulness, or the way my wife learned of it over the years: finding bits of popcorn in my shirt collars and pockets (has there ever been anything so insidious as popcorn to leave a trail!) The occasional stray ticket stub found in pants that were about to be thrown in the wash. Only so many denials can be accepted, so many implausible excuses swallowed down. Incrementally, my wife learned of the affair. She has never given me an ultimatum, never asked me to choose between her and Cinema. I don’t allow my mind to dwell on what choice I would make if the issue were forced. So long as she doesn’t ask, I won’t tell.

Ever since our first meeting (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, New Year’s Day 1968) I have always chosen to call my lover by her formal name: Cinema. Maybe it is the exotic appeal of it. Maybe it is because it’s close to Cinnamon and I have always been a fan of all things cinnamon: Cinnamon French Toast, Cinnamon Apple Sauce; Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. To her other partners—yes, she has many, I don’t delude myself with the notion that I have sole proprietorship—she is just the Movies (the favorite name of her working-class affairs.) A lot of her upper-crust amours refer to her as Film. And then there are the ones who think they’re cute by using a jaunty nickname like Flicks. At least these aren’t as bad as her floozy sisters known by their teeny-bopper initial nicknames: TV and DVD.

How long will the affair last? I wonder sometimes. The cost of it certainly only goes up and up and up. We slum together at times—matinees and discount theaters (there’s a proletariat energy in these places—the babies crying, the people talking back at the screen)—but we can’t do these all the time. A lady needs to be dressed up and treated to a night on the town occasionally—premiere screenings, drinks, popcorn, candy, the whole nine yards—and this costs.

But it’s not the finances that will end it. It’s just that—like B.B. King has sung for so long—the thrill is gone. It’s not always missing, but often enough to give me serious pause. Too many times when I’m with my Cinema today, I know I’m faking it. Maybe because I catch her faking it herself, way too often. Too frequently these days I find myself wrapped up with her, knowing that I’m indulging not to enjoy or savor or expand myself in any meaningful way but to simply fill a void—trying to achieve nothing more than a dulling sense of physical satiety.

And this bothers me. Greatly. We’ve shared so much together… so many thrills, tears, laughs, screams, epiphanies… But sometimes when we’re done now… as the credits roll… I feel enough is enough… I honestly don’t know if I ever want to see her again… .

But then I return to the world… and reality kicks in. Job. Bills. Commutes. Family. Strangers. Politicians. Pundits. Bloated TV. Slutty DVD. I begin to long for her… for her darkness… for her light…

And I know that my Cinema and I will be together… until death do us part…

LITTLE ELTON and THE KINGS

I.

1966

Ray Lachman and Morrie Moore have spent the night jamming clean R and B and straight-ahead rock-n-roll—Elvis, Chuck Berry, Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Spencer Davis. They played Enid’s from seven to nine, a crisp session for the college kids who know their stuff. Then ten-thirty to midnight at Alex Brothers’ Coffee House for more of a mix of working-class teens and twenty-somethings, some black, most white, a sprinkle of the collegians either doping their way out of school or trying to gain their street credentials by hanging out with the blue-collar kids—proletariat through osmosis. And finally they’d played Randolph’s for the midnight show. Randolph’s: the club for the never-left-town-crowd and those who never would leave town, whether or not they yet knew it.

After the graveyard shift at Randolph’s, Ray and Morrie have ended up here: the after-hours party in Sheila Bromwell’s basement. Sheila is queen of the sundowners, fifty-six years old, divorced two times and widowed once. She provides a crash pad, a respite for the other veterans who come to Randolph’s faithfully to add some music to the slow screech of their decelerating lives.

Now, even among a roomful of sundowners, the sun is beginning to rise, a touch of garish orange seeping through the bars of the cellar windows. Ray Lachman and Morrie Moore are the only two fully conscious now, the only two with any kind of communication passing between them other than a weary grope between a pair of debauched lovers or the sluggish contemplation of another drink that a grizzled mope at Sheila’s makeshift bar is having.

Ray sits at a piano quietly keying snippets of pieces that pop in and out of his mind. He is thin, too thin, but handsome in a feral, lupine way. His green eyes burn brightly, always have, but these days their incandescence that has always drawn people to him now only serves to make people notice that the rest of him doesn’t seem to be burning so brightly. His complexion is going gray, washed out, the musician’s midnight-hour electric suntan settling in permanently. The crow’s feet are beginning to splay even when he’s not laughing or squinting.

If Ray is a thin and hungry wolf, Morrie is a lumbering bear, literally a hundred pounds heavier than Ray’s buck-and-a-half, albeit nearly half a foot taller at six foot four. He has long dark hair striping white down the middle like a skunk’s hide. A bear in skunk’s clothing, Ray likes to say. In an age when freaks are trying to outdo each other for attention, Morrie’s hair is unique. People know when ‘Ray Keys’ and Morrie Moore are in the room. And if they sometimes forgot, they might be given a friendly reminder.

Ray gives Morrie a nod and a wink. Time for a triumphant exit. Morrie notches up the amplifier that the house electric guitar is plugged into. As Ray suddenly pounces upon the old Steinway’s ivory like Jerry Lee Lewis with his great balls on fire, Morrie lets loose a couple of searing notes that rip the quiet like a dream-vaporizing drill.

The dazed and the dozing, the drunk and the drugged are all jolted out of their current drift into the netherworld, brought abruptly back to consciousness by the electric prod of noise Ray and Morrie have applied.

Edmund at the bar knocks over a whiskey glass that shatters. Big Lilly falls off of the couch that she’s managed to squeeze the hefty roll of her body upon. Jersey Dukes, who’s stretched out royally on the Barclay lounger, awakens with such a start that he releases at least a shot-glassful or two of piss in his pants before he gains control of his senses and functions.

Stunts like this, living by old credos of former days, rules like you snooze you lose, help Ray and Morrie maintain the illusion that they are still young, not a pair of thirty-three year old musicians destined to play Randolph’s and Sheila Bromwell’s basement from here to eternity.

Amidst unspecified grumblings and a few direct insults by those with the wherewithal to realize who the culprits of this sound-ambush are—Big Lilly manages to wing a shoe across the room that grazes the large target of Morrie’s backside—the pianist and the guitarist ride a wave of their own laughter out of the door, up the stairs, and onto the city streets that are lightly stained with the summer day’s first coat of sunshine.

Ten blocks later, the rising sun draining their vampire energy, the pair nears the side-by-side double Ray rents on a semi-gritty section of a five-mile long avenue that runs from downtown where it’s fully gritty to an inner-ring suburb where it is beginning to thrive. A few doors away from the house, Morrie breaks into song: What do you do with a drunken sailor, what do you do with a drunken sailor, what do you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?

Ray had grown up two blocks from this house. His thirty-three years have managed to propel him two whole blocks from where he’d been reared. Sixteen and a half years per block. His father, eighteen years dead, used to say one measure of a man’s success is the number of miles he ends up away from the place of his birth. The old man had been born in some cowpie town a hundred miles from Paris. Died drunk and broke—debts to high heaven—but prideful of the fact that he’d made it thousands of miles, an ocean, a continent away from the place he was born.

Ray and Morrie enter the house. The living room empty, Ray quickly decides on a preemptive strike: a rousing entry that will rev the boys up and help to deflect Cheryl’s guaranteed gloom and glare. He walks to the stack of his records—everything from classical to bluegrass to Motown. Knowing Motown gives him his best shot at a pardon, he puts the 45 RPM Tighten Up on the console and notches up the volume. The magical scratch of needle on vinyl resonates for a glorious anticipatory moment, and then the patented Motown sound fills the room. It’s only seconds—less than a standing eight count—before Sammy, a sturdy, steady, and sandy haired ten-year-old, charges in the room followed by Louie, six-years old, a curly towhead whose bones are too perpetually-charged with electric excitement to gain an ounce of weight beyond bare-minimum necessity.

Ray has not chosen Tighten Up randomly. The song progresses through a series of solo instrumental pieces that are perfect for an ensemble air band. Ray, of course, plays conductor. Okay, here we go, he coaches the boys although they’ve been through the drill before. Mr. Guuuiiitar… . Sammy Lachman, he points at the older boy and on cue Sammy steps into the middle of the room, still just young enough to get a charge out of his father’s foolish antics, and runs his fingers over imaginary guitar strings, his eyes screwed in intense concentration, contemplating each note as if his life is dependent on its perfect execution. Excellent, excellent. Sweet pickin’ indeed, Ray encourages.

The guitar solo fades away and Sammy, still air plucking, recedes to the edge of the room. Ohhhh, says Ray with a longing moan, a hand cupped to his ear, I think I hear me a horn fittin’ to blow! Louis Cray Lachman, give this to me, sir! Louie springs to center stage, ready and raring. He puffs his cheeks out as Dizzy Gillepsie-bullfroggish as he can manage and blows into his invisible horn. Louie is a piano man just like his father, already resigned to the fact as if it were an inescapable fate, and because of this reality he loves any flirtation with another instrument—even a make-believe one such as this—like a forever-married man enjoys a little harmless chitchat with a friendly salesgirl or the office va-va-voom. So, although there is a piano sitting ten feet away, today Louie is the horn man in the fantasy band. The piano is such a big part of their lives—a symbol of joy and expression, but also a concrete, constant reminder of Ray’s absences and much of the strife between Ray and Cheryl—that sometimes it is better to let the piano be.

Morrie takes the drum solo from his seat on the couch, slapping out the beat flawlessly on the coffee table with a pencil and a rolled up magazine. It’s during this beat that Cheryl walks into the room, wearing her nurse’s aide uniform. She’s an attractive wisp of a woman but at the moment she wears a grim expression and Ray knows there will be no quick pardon coming. She walks directly to the console and turns the music all the way down. Great, Ray. I’ve got ten minutes to catch a bus, she says.

I’m sorry, baby, Ray says, and the ‘baby’ rings so totally false, pure clunker, he wonders why he’s made such a poor choice. We got held up and then they offered us to play an after-hours gig. If nothing else, he knows the word ‘gig’ will turn the talk to money, and although he has no great news on that front, it may turn the conversation away from the hours he keeps.

"Did Rudy pay you for the six before-hours gigs he owes you?" she says.

Mission accomplished.

He gave me a little.

What’s a little, Ray?

Considerably less than a lot. He pulls out a twenty-spot and hands it to her.

She shakes her head in exasperation but takes the bill from him. Ya know, maybe you should forget the juke joints and hit the comedy circuit, she says. Everything’s a joke and you’re a clown. Get the boys breakfast.

Without another word, she walks out of the front door. Ray drops onto the couch.

You didn’t say she had to work today, Morrie says after Cheryl accentuates her exit with a slam of the door.

I forgot it’s her Saturday on.

Messed up again, huh, Dad? Louie says, turning the music back up.

Fellas, let me tell you something about women, Ray says.

But Morrie pops up from his chair. Okay, guys, before he says something that will damage your future relationships for years to come, let me take you out to breakfast.

Alright, Uncle Morrie! Louis says. Silver half-dollar flapjacks?

With enough syrup to choke a horse. Get your jackets on and we’ll go.

As the boys retrieve their coats, Morrie says, Why don’t you grab a couple of hours shut-eye and then you can take ’em to the park or something?

Thanks, partner. No more after-hours, Ray says.

Naw.

Least until tonight, Ray says, throwing his feet up on the couch.

Sam and Louie reappear with their jackets. They give Ray hugs as he lies on the sofa. All right, fellas. We’ll go to the park later, Ray says through a yawn, his last reserves of energy fading quickly. Through bloodshot eyes, he nods his thanks to Morrie.

Get some sleep, Morrie says. You look like you need it.

Be good as new in a couple of hours, Ray says.

Feeling so exhausted, Ray imagines that he’ll drop off quickly, but he can’t get comfortable on the couch. He fidgets, shifts, positions himself and repositions himself. Heartburn comes up on him. Feels like a quarter century of hot sludge shifting around in his rib cage.

He gets to his feet to pull down the shades to darken the room. Catches himself in the mirror next to the piano, and concludes that Morrie is right. He looks like pureed dogshit. He heads for the bathroom as a wave of nausea creeps up his throat.

Halfway down the hallway, it comes. A pain shooting from somewhere—up his arm, down his arm, he isn’t sure—he just knows it ends up in his shoulder, as if someone has driven the stiletto heel of a boot into his shoulder and upper back.

The pain is so intense that—surprisingly gracefully under the circumstances—Ray genuflects onto one knee. And then a second stabbing symphony travels up and down his arm like a virtuoso playing the scales of pain.

He thinks for a moment of getting to a phone, calling for help, but then a third wave comes on him and this one is so deep, so individually custom-made for Raymond Marcel Lachman, that it cleanly disconnects his mind from any logical progression of steps like crawl to kitchen, get phone, call ambulance. No, the third blast reaches deep inside whatever distributor-box of tissue and muscle and nerve wires that comprise the human engine and snips them cleanly.

Music comes to Ray as he curls up into a babylike-ball on the floor of this house, this house two blocks away from where he has grown up. Music and lyrics. And though they are composed in a swirl of panicked thought, played in waves of erratic electrical and chemical pulses that are indecipherable, if they could be captured and cleaned up by a master producer, they would maybe say something like this, maybe in a voice like Van Morrison’s, elegiac: This can’t be happening to me. Don’t you understand? I’m just thirty-three. I’m aware Christ was just thirty-three when they nailed him to a tree. But He had miracles galore. I’ve got two sons, a wife, and little more. I know I’ve been less than a saint. Show me a piano player who ain’t! But please, let me make a deal! I’ll go back to church! I’ll floss after every meal! Don’t you understand? I’m just thirty-three. Who’ll take care of Cheryl and the boys? Who’ll put together the Christmas toys? Who’ll teach Sammy and Louie the difference between good music and loud noise?

Thirty-three. Jesus Christ. And now me.

Maybe something like that.

* * *

Ray is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, a sprawling graveyard less than two miles from the house he grew up in, less than two miles from the house he died in. An assortment of characters comprise the mourners: players from all over town who had jammed with Ray; some of the older crew from Randolph’s and Sheila Bromwell’s place; even some of the club owners who had employed Ray and Morrie over the years. Many of the people attend out of respect for Morrie as much as anything. They don’t know Cheryl; to many of them, Morrie is the grieving spouse.

And this isn’t far from the truth. Not including Cheryl, who stands in the center of the crowd, instantly-aged by her widowhood, an uncertain, jumpy look in her red-flecked eyes, Morrie is the most devastated person in the city as they lower Ray Keys into a hole in the ground. Morrie has lost his musical partner and his best friend, but even more than that; in losing Ray, Morrie has lost the illusion he’s held for so long, the one that said he is going to break out of this town and into the big time. Although he knows with every passing year that the odds of making it big in the music world are longer and longer, Ray had kept Morrie believing that both of them would bust it wide open one day. And though it hadn’t happened, Ray possessed a genuine talent in a large enough quantity to make it a possibility. Ray had been Morrie’s living lottery ticket: almost guaranteed to let him down, but giving him reason to hope, to dream. Now that he is gone, Morrie is dealing with the dual grief of losing Ray and losing the dream that has fueled him on for so many years. He wants to be there for Cheryl and the boys, but he is nearly whittled into paralysis by his sorrow. He would gladly give them all he has—unfortunately, all he has is nothing.

There is the period of condolence calls, neighbor-made meals, co-workers’ offers of help for Cheryl, but it is an abbreviated stretch, evaporating to nearly nothing two weeks after Ray has died. Cheryl has little-to-no support network, and what little she does have she has effectively convinced that she is holding it together. People that know her, know that her life with Ray was not easy. No one thinks being married to a musician and club player is ideal, and privately many of them believe a burden has been lifted from Cheryl’s shoulders.

But people underestimate the need for burdens; the sense of purpose, the grounding, the large part of personal identity invested in burdens.

Here in her house, half a house—half a home now—Cheryl does not have to expend the little energy she possesses putting on a façade for anyone. She lets herself float, increasingly zombified, curled up on the couch. Morrie has held it together enough to get the funeral expenses taken care of, arranging benefits at Randolph’s, Alex Brothers’ and another club they played often, Crosskeys, with half the door receipts covering the burial and a little more for Cheryl and the boys. It isn’t a lot, a couple hundred bucks in an envelope on the kitchen counter. No insurance, of course. A club player carrying insurance? About as likely as a Teamster with season theatre tickets. The nursing home is doing what it can, holding Cheryl’s job, her boss telling her to take as much time as she needs to get back on her feet. In reality, this means probably a month tops and Cheryl is into her third week and hasn’t even thought about getting back on her feet. If anything, she is digressing.

Morrie has been on a three-week bender himself, managing to get thrown in jail last week for drunk and disorderly. He made bail and has stopped to check on Cheryl once, but one eye was closed, half his face was a bruise, and his left arm a nearly continuous scab from above the elbow to the wrist. His physical wounds have left him half-blind—literally—to accurately assess Cheryl’s psychological wounds.

It being summertime is a mixed blessing: Cheryl doesn’t have to do much of anything for the boys, get them ready for school, stay on any real schedule, keep track of homework or any of the other September to June tasks. But this lack of structure has allowed her to drift, unchecked, slipping deeper into inertia.

Sam has taken over daily routines. He keeps Louie, Cheryl, and himself in morning cereal, afternoon and dinner sandwiches, with an occasional can of soup in the evening even though it is too hot outside for soup. He has once tried a tossed salad, but was discouraged by the irregular chunks of lettuce, carrots, and celery he ended up with, and by the tomatoes’ stubborn refusal not to squish while he attempted to slice them. Ice cream sundaes have become his specialty; he makes them at least twice a day for Louie and himself.

Daily, Sam is more aware of Cheryl’s artful dodging of any encounters with anybody or anything outside of the house. The last four or five days the dodging has become increasingly less artful. She has gone from bedroom to couch, couch to bedroom; sometimes, like yesterday and today, it’s been only the couch without even making it back to the bedroom to segment the continuity of her daze.

Feeling compelled to take action, Sam enters the living room now, stepping directly in Cheryl’s line of unfocused vision. May I have your attention, please, he says in his best ringmaster’s voice. For a special performance, I present Mr. Louis Lachman.

Louie enters the room dressed up in a corduroy suit jacket and tie—as close as he and Sam could get to a tuxedo in this impression of a concert pianist. He takes a short, articulate bow in front of his mother, and then takes his seat at the piano. Gently, he begins to play Moonlight Sonata. His playing is precise, hitting each note nearly flawlessly. But it is a detached rendition, generating no warmth. Cheryl nods slightly, but the vacant expression does not leave her eyes.

Halfway through the song, Sam gives Louie a little nod, and a mischievous spark springs into Louie’s eyes. The song picks up tempo, faster, faster, faster, and with a true performer’s panache Louie transforms the song into a raucous version of Splish Splash I was Taking A Bath, complete with lyrics. He gets to his feet, pushes the seat away with a flex of his skinny butt, and pounces on the keys as his father had taught him "when it was time to light a fire under the audience’s ass."

"Splish Splash I was Taking A Bath!" Louie belts out in a powerful voice that belies his forty-five pound frame. His vocals are strong enough to break through his mother’s haze, at least momentarily. How was I to know there was a party going on!? He pounds out a finish on the keys, and ends with a flourishing slide on his knees, coming to a stop right in front of Cheryl’s spot on the couch.

Sam contributes a nice round of applause, additional audio-stimulation to spring Cheryl from her funk. She joins Sam in clapping. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Sam booms in a voice as if he has to raise it above a rowdy reveling crowd, trying to extend the moment, drain every ounce of whatever curative effect it may hold for his mother, That was Mr. Louie Lachman! King of the Classics, Prince of the Pops!

Louie puts his head—seemingly twenty pounds of his forty-five total weight—into his mother’s lap, clinging to her sides, trying with every fiber to charge her with the love and the energy she needs to get off of this couch and lead them out of the thorny thicket his father’s death has left them in.

But instead of being charged, all Cheryl feels is the drain of a boy who desperately needs what she doesn’t have to give him at the moment, and perhaps never will again. The absolute of this thought—never will again—seizes her and sends her mind spiraling as it has day after day since her husband’s death. Never see Ray again. NEVER. The boys always depending on me. ALWAYS. Every time Cheryl feels she is making some small progress toward control, toward strength, toward life, one of these absolutes would drill through her brain and shred it into granules.

Louie’s face remains in her lap. She strokes his thick curls, and looks at Sam. Her face is like a thin film of red paraffin that could ignite and disintegrate at any moment. Sam sees that the performance has stirred her, but it has only stirred the pain closer to the surface. He understands that he and his brother are close, very close, to being alone in this world. He doesn’t know what to do, and this realization makes him feel suddenly ill. He runs upstairs and puts his head over the toilet, and as he empties his stomach of the remains of two Mexican sundaes, that thought swells in his head until he is left dry heaving: I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

* * *

Ray Lachman, for all his undependability and unpredictability, had been dependable and predictable in one thing: his devotion to his older sister, Lisa. And, Lisa, who had watched over him so closely as a child, came through for him once more now, indirectly and without her knowledge.

Ray had visited Lisa every other Wednesday at the Monroe County Psych Center for the past fourteen years. Diagnosed with severe depression, she had responded to nothing over the years—drug therapy, electric-shock therapy, talk therapy—and her condition had steadily deteriorated.

For the past five years she has slid into near catatonia. One of the only pleasures in her life—now abruptly ceased—was being spoon-fed by her baby brother, seven years younger than her and eternally grateful for the protection Lisa provided him from a viciously frustrated father and chronically diffident mother. It was Lisa who had encouraged Ray’s musical abilities, had paid for lessons with babysitting earnings early on, had faced down her father when he would take aim at the boy. In addition to his gratitude to Lisa, Ray was also driven by a degree of guilt. He had come to believe that the energy she had used in her teen years, affording him some sense of structure and normalcy, had left her somehow depleted, had made her susceptible to the malaise that had begun to hit her severely when she was only in her mid-twenties.

Mary Edwards is one of the rotating social workers in the hospital, a woman who seems to have been born an adult, fully efficient, a dash stern, a dash merciful. Mary knows the names of the nameless in the gloomy walls of MCPC, knows of any existing connections these world-class sufferers have to the world outside.

And she knows that Lisa Lachman’s brother, Ray, comes every other Wednesday to feed Lisa ice cream. Wednesday is the day Mary makes her rounds, and every other Wednesday is a little better than the previous because she sees a man who remembers that these living-dead, these dead-living, however one prefers to categorize them, are still, indeed, alive.

She had never gotten to know Ray well. He always came alone, and Mary never asked about family. She knew that many of the visitors of the mentally ill guarded their privacy. They often came alone, and did not disclose this chapter of their lives to others, even those very close to them. She understood that people did not desire their own mental stability be put under suspicion by association with a mentally sick individual.

She did learn Ray was a musician—Lisa had fleeting moments of clarity and had once blurted this out to Mary while Ray fed her. When Ray had hit the road for out-of-town music engagements as he had occasion to do over the years, he had developed a habit of quietly informing Mary if he wasn’t going to be in to see Lisa for any length of time.

Mary noticed when Ray wasn’t there a couple of Wednesdays back, but it never dawned on her to look in the obits—the man was young, after all.

But when he’s absent again two weeks later, Mary finds herself fretting. A little flipping through Lisa’s records and one phone call answered by a young boy who says in a heartbreakingly open voice, almost apologetically, that his father has died, confirms her fear. Lost Lisa Lachman’s only tie to the world has been summarily severed.

Something about the boy’s voice spurs Mary to action. It isn’t that the boy had sounded despondent or lost, it’s that he had sounded too responsible, too businesslike in tone to match the timbre of his young voice.

When she arrives at the house on Thursday afternoon, it takes Mary all of about five minutes to determine that the remnants of this family are in dire straits. Cheryl is wrapped in her lethargic cocoon so thick that she barely registers Mary’s presence. Mary asks her questions, tries to obtain the details of Ray’s death and what Cheryl plans to do from this point on, but Cheryl merely nods blankly or gives sudden effusive thanks for Mary coming to check on her, isn’t that nice of her, as if Mary is a neighbor or old relative who has decided to drop in. The boys aren’t home during the initial part of the visit, and watching the exertion on Cheryl’s face as she tries to recall where they are is painful for Mary. (They’ve pulled a wagon to the neighborhood grocery store to restock on deli meat, bread, cereal, milk and ice cream.)

Mary has heard enough that within thirty minutes of ringing Cheryl’s doorbell, she has called in a few favors from associates. She arranges a convalescent stay for Cheryl at St. Cecilia’s psych ward. The patients at St. Cecilia’s range from mildly to severely psychologically disturbed, and at the moment, Mary fears Cheryl is leaning more toward the latter than the former. The good news is that there is a space available; the bad news, as Mary knows from her years in the business, is that if she doesn’t move on the space almost immediately, some other poor soul will occupy it in a day, two at the most.

So where to put two young boys. Another couple of phone calls and another couple of favors called in, and by the time Sam and Louie come home from the store they learn that their shaken lives have now been stirred for good measure. Mary Edwards skips the details of knowing the boys’ Aunt Lisa. She suspects that the boys may not be aware of Lisa’s existence. Maybe some day she will make them aware. For now, Mary simply informs the boys that she is a social worker for the county—the truth—who has been assigned their case to lend a helpful hand—a fabrication unless you concede the point that she has self-assigned their case.

She sits Sam and Louie down in the living room with their mother. She wants them to have an eyeful of Cheryl’s unresponsive condition as she explains the steps she’s taken. We’ve found a nice place for you boys to stay while your Mom gets a well-deserved rest.

Louie sends a nervous, darting look toward Sam. But I don’t want to go anywhere without my mom.

But don’t you want your mom to get nice and rested up? Just for a little while. Isn’t that right, Cheryl? Mary rubs one of Cheryl’s hands. Just like we talked about.

That’s right, Cheryl says, facing the boys but her eyes barely focused. Just for a little while.

Sam sees the panic in his brother’s eyes; but he must weigh it against the emptiness he sees in his mother’s. He feels his stomach lurch—but this time he fights down the wave of ‘I don’t know what to do’ nausea that rises up inside of him. It’ll just be for a little while, Louie, he says firmly. Just for a little while.

The very next afternoon Sam and Louie pack for their new destination. Sam uses an old, zipper-broken, plaid suitcase, while Louie stuffs items in a long military duffel bag Ray had used for his road trips. After shoving some clothes in the bag, Louie pulls it off of the bed, but it drops to the floor with a thud, too heavy. He struggles to pull the bag up and handle its weight. Sam grabs the duffel bag, lifts it with genuine effort. What do you have in here, Louie? he grunts. A rock collection?

He opens the bag and begins pulling out Louie’s clothes: tee-shirts, a couple pairs of jeans and corduroys, socks and underwear. Beneath the garments, Sam hits pay dirt: vinyl records—45 singles as well as albums—and then the anchor of the bag, a portable record player! Sam shakes his head at his young brother’s folly. What do you think you’re doing?

A smile creeps over Louie’s face. Sam, you’re right! It is a rock collection. And some soul, rhythm and blues, and bluegrass, too! Louie winks like a master con-man who has just duped the world.

Sam dumps the clothes out of his suitcase, and puts the record player and vinyls snugly inside it. Tosses his clothes into Louie’s duffel bag. Okay, try it, he says, sliding the duffel to Louie.

Louie lifts it successfully. I can carry it. He notices that Sam is standing with the suitcase looking around the room with a good-bye look, as if trying to absorb and memorize every detail of this room, the room they have shared their entire lives. We ever going to be back here, Sam? he asks evenly.

Sam gives his little brother an expression that is neutral, as if he’s in the midst of calculating this equation. And then the expression changes from neutrality to certainty, as if the calculations are complete, double checked, added up precisely. Yeah, we’ll be back, Sam answers.

Louie knows that his brother has no way of knowing this, no right to say this with such certainty. But he loves Sam’s unwarranted confidence. And he believes him.

* * *

Sam and Louie sit on each side of a dining room table at whose head is fixed Edwin Ross, a fifty-two-year old in a short-sleeved white shirt, a thin dark tie, black frame glasses, and a crew cut. He has no healthy glow to his skin, but he is big in a bulky kind of way and he exudes strength. Strength with no flexibility. His expression is not bitter, but it’s so sober it seems capable of neutralizing any humor that flies too close like an electric bug-zapper destroys insects. If he could package and sell his look, he could market it as the ultimate weapon for frustrated teachers and parents around the globe who could use it to make good on their threat to "wipe that smile off of your face." His wife, Marion, is fifty, a pious woman with the flair and originality of the meatloaf and baked potatoes in the center of the table.

Louie reaches for the potatoes. We say grace before meals here, young men, Mr. Ross says, freezing Louie’s arm in mid-motion. If you’re not familiar, look, listen, and remember. That, in fact, is advice that will serve you well in this household. Look, listen, and remember.

Mr. and Mrs. Ross bless themselves and begin their grace. Neither of the boys knows the words, but Sam has the wherewithal to put his hands together as the elders have, and he shoots Louie a look to follow suit. A small smile flickers on Louie’s mouth as he tries to contain himself from laughing at this foreign practice. But one glance at Mr. Ross wipes out the bud of laughter bubbling in his throat.

Mary Edwards is nothing if not efficient. She has Cheryl placed and the boys inserted in this foster home in less than forty-hours. But although the Rosses live only twelve blocks from the Lachmans, it is a different neighborhood school. Moving the boys to a new school seemed like a minor inconvenience to Mary’s mind. They’d lost their father and were on the verge of losing their mother, possibly forever, if action were not taken. A school transfer should be the least of their worries, she surmised.

And so a week after being dropped into a new house, the boys find themselves on the first day of school in another unfamiliar environment. As they make their way down the bustling hallway, the buzz of voices like a power tool that could drill through metal, Sam keeps his eyes on the room numbers while Louie takes in the mass of anonymous faces that swarms around him. After a couple of minutes of the bump and shuffle, Sam puts a hand on Louie’s shoulder and guides him to the side of the corridor. This is it, he tells Louie. Room 106. Think you’ll be able to find it on your own?

Sure, Sam, Louie answers with a smirk. I’ll just look, listen, and remember.

I’ll see you at lunch, Sam says. He gives Louie a pat of encouragement between the boy’s razor-thin shoulder blades, watches with a twinge of nostalgia as the younger boy walks into the friendly confines of a first-grade classroom. Sam is left to search for his fourth-grade class, a wilder, fiercer beast to battle, he has no doubt.

Sam’s teacher, Mrs. Crandall, a woman of at least sixty and closer to ninety in her students’ eyes, round and hunched and colorless, drones on from one thing to another, how she expects desks to be organized and other opening-day logistical nonsense. The class is totally detached already—fifteen minutes into Day One. Only six hours and forty-five minutes left today, Sam thinks, and then 179 more days to go from here.

A small cadre of kids who are already asphalt-hard after one decade on the planet sits in the back of class, laughing, conversing in conspiratorial manner. Their leader is Billy Barelli, eleven-years old to the other kids’ nine or ten, held back after second grade, force-fed through third grade because he was outgrowing in body and vulgarity the other kids at too quick of a pace.

Sam has figured out the classroom hierarchy intuitively, correctly, in the first five minutes. He knows that his sacrament by fire will be administered by these brutal young baptizers sitting in the rear of the congregation, knows that he has been the object of their machinations for the past ten minutes.

One of their number, a pudge named Franco, a lost boy who has paid his membership dues into the gang by his willingness to perform any antic, sling any insult, play any clown the others request no matter what adult is present, no matter what the consequences, strolls down the aisle toward Sam’s desk. As Billy and the rest of the gifted delinquents observe, he stops next to Sam’s desk. Sam tries to remain focused on Mrs. Crandall’s three-decade old monologue about what she expects from ‘serious young scholars.’ He senses the heavy boy beside him more than he actually sees him, but then Franco announces his presence loudly and clearly by ripping a fart not six inches from Sam’s face.

Laughter streams through the room, but it is loudest and most obnoxious from Barelli and the bleacher bums in the back. Sam’s face twitches, repulsed and embarrassed. He is paralyzed; although he was aware that some kind of test was coming his way, he didn’t foresee this humiliation. His stunned inability to react only deepens his paralysis. He sits staring straight-ahead, feeling the blood rushing to his face, covering it like a warm washcloth of shame.

Franco tops his performance with a contented, Ahhh. Damn that felt good, for all to hear before he continues up the aisle. Mizzuz Crandall, I gotta go to the labratory, he says at the front of the aisle. Think I crapped my drawers. More laughter from the gallery. His inflection when he speaks to the veteran teacher makes it abundantly clear that his statement—in addition to being riotous—is declarative, not interrogative. Franco, Barelli and their like aren’t going to ask her permission for anything; they will inform her what they are going to do and when they are going to do it.

Billy watches Sam sitting as stiffly as petrified wood at his desk. Sam hasn’t moved a muscle in his own defense, even to move away from Franco’s stink like a couple of others in the near vicinity have. Barelli passes verdict on Sam