This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 10, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Ten





Looking back on it I can see how it was funny. Anyway, it proved to be the string of events that led me five weeks later to my first movie set, an old abandoned farmhouse a couple miles down the frontage road from the Chicken Coop. And you could say I owe it all to my father, the person I least expected to help me, and his strange relationship with Brittany, no longer a whore in my eyes as I discovered with a (bitter) glee to my heart (since he and she were now involved) that her career-decision had fallen to that of a waitress--she was in fact Lilith, her twin sister who did not even exist. Brittany, it turns out, had never been a prostitute. I was relieved for my dad's sake. (An ex-whore for a stepmother twelve years my junior? I don't think so.)
That first night, you know, before the morning I woke up in my car parked at Al's, and I woke up to Brittany for the first time primping herself in the rearview mirror, and I had that cough syrup hangover, remember? And she'd told me I owed her fifty bucks for sex and if I didn't trust her I could just stick my hands down my pants to confirm her service? She explained--in front of my dad who thought it was just hilarious--that she'd poured tuna juice down my pants to set the con. My dad said, slapping his knee in a fit of laughter, "You believe this girl? Gosh, it just makes me wanna give her a big ole smooch. Now, that's enterprising, I tell you. Your mother could never come up with something like that. Not on her life!"
Of course, at first, I didn't want to believe it.
I said, "Brittany, don't lie. I saw you. You used to make those rounds, you went from truck to truck on that silver scooter of yours."
She said, smiling mischievously, "I could see you from the cafe. I used to watch you across the interstate at the Chicken Coop. When you got into your car, I knew you'd be going to Al's. So, I'd go out and wait for you on the scooter."
My dad looked at her and shook his head in awe. I didn't get it. Why was he proud of that?
"What the fuck, Dad? This girl owes me like three thousand dollars. Because of her me and Nicole had to hitchhike."
"Oh, come on. We'll pay you back. Don't worry about it, Emmett."
"I don't expect you to. She was the one that ripped me off."
"Well," he said. "What's hers is mine and mine hers. I can take the good with the bad."
"Don't be a fool, Dad. Shit, she's probably conning you, too."
They turned and looked at each other and exchanged knowing smiles.
"I don't think so," he said.
The two lovebirds had met at the supermarket three weeks before out in the parking lot. Brittany had come out of the store, carrying a bag of groceries. Dad had been reading a newspaper in the shade sitting in his wheelchair and he noticed her as she stepped up onto her silver scooter. They exchanged remarks about their modes of transportation and eventually my dad offered to tow her--"it's just like waterskiing," he said--to her place of residence, which as it turned out was his as well.
Dad was a new man. He was literally born-again. I can't remember ever seeing him like this. It was like he'd been released from prison (or extracted from a hole in the ground). All those years with my troubled mother. Forty odd years and I can't remember one happy moment they shared. I guess anything was better in comparison, even Brittany the pathological liar.
As much as I thought initially that my dad and Brittany would make a bad couple, in the month that followed before we started shooting the movie, they would prove me wrong. They really cared for each other. Strange as it was, the love seemed genuine. This fact made my mother act even crazier. It really ate her up.
"You know she's just using him," my mom said. We were in the kitchen at my parent's house, drinking a beer, waiting for Dorothy to come pick her up. It was Wednesday, their night to go bar hopping.
"Using him for what?" I asked.
"Well, she drives all around Cucumber in his expensive wheelchair. That thing cost us a fortune. She's just going to ruin it. I can tell you one thing, I'm not getting him another one. Why can't he let her use his stupid van?"
"That thing? It's a piece of shit, that's why?"
"Piece of shit deserves a piece of shit."
"Ma, listen, I don't blame you for being upset...I don't even like Brittany. She's a liar."
"She's a lying whore, is what she is. All women are."
"What?"
"Think about it."
"That's your attitude about women?"
"Yep, they're nothing but lying whores."
"Jesus, Mom."
"Well, they are. They can't help it. It's human nature. You can't blame them. Just look at Dorothy."
OK, as much as I've been dreading this moment, I'm going to have to tell you. I mean, what took place that night, what happens next. I'll warn you. It's about Dorothy. My back was up against the wall. And something had happened between me and Nicole. I just got away from me I guess. Another point in my life where looking back on it I can see that I blew it big time. That night Nicole and I had gotten into an argument over the fact that she wanted to go see Dr. Zhivago with Howser and I threatened leaving her if she went.
"Well, I zaid I wanted you to go, too," she said. "You're the one zaying ‘e can't go."
"I've got to work on the shooting script!" I said defensively.
"Well, I want to go zee the movie. I don't zee what the big deal iz."
"You are not seeing Dr. Zhivago with Howser! It's the most romantic movie ever made! You think I'm crazy!?" I said. "He's got a thing for you anyway."
It was true, I knew he did. I understood Howser, we'd been friends for more than twenty years, and the guy was a suffering romantic. He just couldn't help it. This man simply adored women, which I'm guessing is what made him become a photographer in the end. I saw it coming...Well, that's not true. I imagined it coming; I could easily see Howser falling for her. He never talked around her, he acted all bashful like he'd never seen a woman before. I knew given the chance he'd want to get involved with Nicole in a serious way. Why I had better luck with pretty women than he did was a complete mystery. He was better looking, he was more patient, he had more money, he had better taste, plus--and most importantly--he was normal-sized.
I repeated myself, "Over my dead body! You are not seeing Dr. Zhivago with Howser!"
"You don't control my life, mizter," she said. (She must've picked up "mister" from my mother.)
She went to the movie anyway and I flipped her and Howser both off as they backed out of the driveway. I knew I was losing her. Our relationship had really changed after that one horrible night on the highway and who could blame her?
I tried to keep busy in my room working on the shooting script where you break down the script into shots for the camera as Moonshine snoozed away at my feet under the desk. Every time I heard a car approach I'd go to the window, thinking it was her. And maybe if she and Howser hadn't gone out to get chocolate shakes at 31 Flavors, she and I would still be together to this day because at ten thirty it was Mom and Dorothy who came home first.
Mom shouted as she entered, "Emmett, we got your favorite beer! Let's party!"
Push came to shove and there I was an hour later with Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven" booming on the living room hi-fi at exactly 11:39--I'll never forget that time on the clock--slipping it in, my pudgy hands clutching the blue-white alabaster hips of a soon-to-be senior citizen, mounting (there's no other word for it) my mom's best friend as she gripped the sides of my desk from childhood under which my trusty mongrel continued to snooze. Why on earth would I be doing such a thing? This is what I was thinking as my wee one made Dorothy blow out the webs, cry out and cackle like a barnyard atrocity. Why on earth? I loved Nicole. I was head over heels in love with her. Of course, it had to come first from my mother's lips following the heels of the offer she would broker on Dorothy's behalf: that if I agreed to become her temporary boyfriend, Dorothy would finance the movie up to twenty thousand dollars.
"Mom, come on. I'm in love with Nicole. I can't do that. I can't believe you're even asking. That's sick, Mom."
"Yeah, well, the woman you're so in love with is banging Howser as we speak."
"Oh, God, Mom. Why do you say such things? That's totally fucked up."
"It's true. We saw them in the parking lot at 31 Flavors. The only car there. You can ask Dorothy. Take her car if you don't believe me."
I raced out to Dorothy's car and drove to 31 Flavors. The parking lot was empty. I started to feel relieved, thinking it was just another cruel joke until I decided to swing by Howser's bungalow. I don't know what to tell you, but standing in front of the window watching Nicole and Howser on the couch together, arm in arm, the nice soft mood-lighting combined with Howser's
tasteful touch in furniture and decor, I once again forced myself to see the good in bad and as my heart broke in two I realized she was much better off with him than she was with me, anyway. It made sense. Howser could take care of her, he had a job where he made good money. He had the lifestyle and more importantly he had the decency and the patience to make it work between the two of them.
I turned and walked away. I drove back to my parents, accepted the offer, nailed Dorothy perfunctorily, then crawled into bed and stayed there for one week. I just stared off into space and waited for it to come to an end. I didn't want to do the movie anymore. I was all done with that. And I hoped I'd never write another word as long as I lived. My new fantasy was to find work at a factory somewhere and live in a rat-infested tenement building where couples lashed away at each other in foreign tongues. I'd lose myself in misery and settle for a permanent thousand-yard stare. No one would recognize me; I'd be born again. My closest friends would be a band of rats, I'd find no luxury in dreams, I was real at last. In the end a stray bullet would take my life on the streets, but I'd live another thirty years on the tips of tongues. "Whatever happened to what's-his-name? You know who I'm talking about, that fat guy?"
During the week I laid in bed, Dorothy was with me, too. She made me sandwiches and tried to lighten my mood. But she never said much. She hardly spoke. I understood now. It was clear as day. Dorothy was rock-stupid, but she had a heart and she was taking a chance on her best-friend's son. Not many people would be willing to take such a risk. My mom had to hand it to her. She gave me this warning, "If you break her heart, Emmett, so help me."
You might want to quit reading the rest of this story, because what remains is just a variety of positions as I lay in bed for the week. Go on, thumb through the remaining one hundred or so pages. I never get out of bed, not until the very end, until the last page, which goes something like this: And one morning the sun rose. And as the bird chirped on the windowsill, the fat fuck lifted his head and saw the good in life again. With trepidation he felt for the floor with his feet and bit by bit slowly shifted his weight so that soon he was standing. He turned his head. He made a decision, lifted a leg, and put one foot forward, again and again so that soon he was walking...through the door and out into the world with his arms tucked tightly at his side.
The End
But it wasn't a bird that came to my window at the end of the week. It was my father. I heard the whirr of his electric wheelchair as he pushed his way through the rhododendrons.
"Hey, Emmett? You awake?"
"Dad?"
"Crawl through the window. I don't want your mom to know."
I crawled out through the window and we moved away from the house to keep from being heard. He pivoted the wheelchair around to face me. He had a smile on his face as he handed me a box.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Go on. Open it."
I opened the box.
He said, "It's from me and Brittany. Payback for the money she took."
It was a brand new digital video camera, a Sony TRV 900.
"It's what they call a 'prosumer model,'" he said. "You like it?"
"Dad, I can't believe it! I never expected this!"
"See, now you can do your movie. The guy said since it's digital you just hook it up to your computer and you can do everything you need to on your computer. Pretty neat, huh?"
It was the nicest thing he'd ever done for me. I started crying and then soon so did he. We were hanging on to each other, blubbering. He said, "I believe in you, boy. You're gonna be a great success. I just know it."
All I kept saying was, "Jesus, Dad, Jesus Christ..."
"You and me, we're just a couple of softies, ain't we?"
"I don't know what to say, Dad."
"You don't have to say anything, just promise me you won't ever give up. Whatever the obstacles. I don't want you ending up like me."
He wheeled around and started driving away down the lawn to the sidewalk. On the sidewalk he pivoted around and said he'd call me later. Then he started driving away down the sidewalk.
I looked at the digital video camera in my hand with all its fancy stickers. I just shook my head in awe. I still couldn't believe it. I ran down the lawn, calling after him.
"Dad! Hey, Dad!"
But the wind was blowing and he couldn't hear me. I watched him disappear in a maelstrom of blown debris. I turned and walked back to my bedroom window, thinking I'd drive out to Cucumber in Dorothy's car sometime later today and thank him again. I was back on track thanks to my dad. I felt so much better. My period of depression was over now replaced by a clear vision of purpose. I could do it. I'd make this movie come hell or high water and I'd dedicate the endeavor to my father, a changed man.
I crawled through the window with a smile on my face, holding onto my precious camera. When I looked up, she was standing there on the other side of the bed.
"Nicole..."
"Emmett..." She looked extremely worried.
During the past week as I’d lain in bed she had come by to try and talk to me, but I wouldn't respond. I'd heard her voice, but it was like in a dream. And Dorothy was there jealously guarding her new...well, whatever you want to call me. I was too far-gone to feel embarrassed as Dorothy pranced around the room proudly, lifting her tail like an arched feline. I can only imagine Dorothy's focus, as predator with prey, as she studied Nicole. I would see its results by the end of that week: a new piercing in her navel to match Nicole’s and a new shirt, a midi with which to show it off. (Oh, my Lord, do I have to describe it to you? She was old as Abraham. What was I getting myself into? What had my mother concocted?) Nicole had gathered her things and had moved in with Howser. Today she’d come by to say goodbye, stressing that there should be no hard feelings toward Howser. It was she who had pressured him into accepting her advances. As for us, why, we'd met under difficult circumstances, didn't we? Subsequently, no relationship would fare well. I recognized this as an obvious act of survival on her part, like stepping up out of a sinking boat into the arms of her rescuer. I wanted to be the brave one, the big man, and go down with the ship. And holding the new video camera helped me find the strength to explain that it wasn't her fault. I didn't blame her at all. Howser was the better man. I was happy for her.
"I saw you guys in the window at his house, you know. That night you saw Dr. Zhivago. You guys were sitting on the couch together. I just know it's the right thing for you, Nicole. Especially after all you've been through in your life."
She ran up to me and threw her arms around me and gave me the biggest hug. She whispered into my ear, "I'll always love you, Emmett."
Yeah, by golly, I thought. That's what they all say.