Viola in Reel Life

by Adriana Trigiani

  Mom always says that relationships between girls and boys are complicated, and I never believed her. Now I’m beginning to see that she’s right.

  Romy, Marisol, and Suzanne gather around my computer to watch the final cut of The May McGlynn Story. I pace behind them as the opening credits roll.

  Romy will see her budget and schedule come to life on the screen, Marisol will see her costumes and set design (including the nose of the plane, which was actually an air-conditioning vent we borrowed from maintenance and jammed into the ground for wreckage) on-screen, and Suzanne, well, she’s the star of the movie, and she will see herself as May McGlynn for the first time.

  I was very firm about not showing them any of the movie in bits and pieces, no matter how much they begged. I wanted their pure reaction to the finished product. And now, I don’t think I can take it as they watch. I stand by the windows, as far from the computer screen as I can be as they watch the movie.

  The girls lean back and laugh heartily when Mrs. Zidar appears as the doctor on the scene of the crash. Mrs. Carleton gives an understated performance as Mavis the fortune-teller who warns May it’s not in her cards to have safe travel that day, while Trish gives a scenery chewing performance in her lone scene as Hedda Hopper in Hollywood as she reports on the radio that May McGlynn has died. Trish would have ended up on the cutting room floor, but unfortunately, she carried an important story point and I couldn’t lose her. (Won’t make that mistake again.)

  Grand’s and George’s scenes are cut into the body of the action. And I even did this weird flashback thing when Mrs. Carleton looks at a deck of cards on her table: the black and white of the cards is smash cut to the black-and-white footage, and then I used this creepy music from The Fly (we’re allowed to use it because we’re not going to profit from making the movies for competition). Anyhow, it totally worked.

  “Wow.” Marisol looks at me as The End jumps into frame.

  My roommates applaud wildly.

  “You guys really like it?”

  “I think it’s great,” Marisol says.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” Romy marvels.

  “I’m crappy,” Suzanne says. “I hope I don’t tank it for you.”

  “Are you kidding? You were amazing,” I tell her.

  “You’re my friend. The real May McGlynn was more sparkly than me.”

  “No way. You’re good,” Romy says to Suzanne.

  “I love it,” Marisol says supportively. “It’s compelling and original. You pack a lot into a short movie. And you did so much great work with the camera. I think you could win.”

  “Trish says you guys can come with me to Toledo. I hope you will.”

  “She’ll make us sing camp songs all the way,” Romy grouses. “But I can handle her.”

  “It’s for a good cause. We have to support our sister,” Marisol says.

  Marisol just says that word sister lightly, like right off the top of her head without thinking. But all my life, I have wished for a sister. I had hoped my parents would have a baby when I was small, and then when I got to be twelve I wanted them to go to China and adopt. But Mom would always smile and say, “We have our hands full with you.” And maybe she was right. But what Mom never told me is that along the way, you find sisters, and they find you. Girls are very cool that way.

  I could not have made the movie without my roommates. I couldn’t have stayed beyond the first week without them either. We hang out, we help one another, we tell one another our worst fears and biggest secrets, and then, just like real sisters, we listen and don’t judge. And then, time and time again, in small ways and ginormous ways, they are there for me. They represent. Romy had never done a budget, Marisol had never designed costumes and sets, and Suzanne had never acted, but when I asked them to help, they didn’t hesitate. They came through—like sisters. Yes, we get annoyed, and sometimes we fuss, but for the most part, we have figured out a very cool way to be family to one another. And that realization has been the best part of life at the Prefect Academy. I found Suzanne, Romy, and Marisol, and they found me.

  THIRTEEN

  MRS. ZIDAR PARKS THE VAN IN THE GUEST LOT AT THE University of Toledo, which is so large and rambling, with building upon building connected by swirls of sidewalks, that I’d bet the campus is as big as the city itself. Trish, who came along as a co-chaperone, wasn’t annoying at all on the trip. She listened to an audiobook on the way here, and hardly said a word.

  As we follow the Xeroxed flyers that say WELCOME MIDWEST SECONDARY SCHOOL FILM COMPETITION to the entrance lobby of the auditorium, I feel a little sick. It’s one thing to show a movie on your computer in Curley Kerner, but it’s another entirely for a bunch of strangers to watch it in a theater, blown up from a DVD. I’m sure the quality will suck, but so will everyone else’s. As the rules said, video/hi-def only. We weren’t allowed to use 16mm film, which would have been pretty wondrous. Next time.

  Jared and I decided not to show each other our films beforehand. Well, really, it was his choice. I would have liked his feedback, but he felt it would be inappropriate because we are in competition, and shouldn’t seek each other’s opinions in advance. There was nothing in the rule book that said we couldn’t show our films to other contestants, but I just went with Jared’s decision because he seemed so definite about it. I didn’t want to force him to watch my movie.

  We haven’t had time to text or email much, as we were both working up to the final moments before the submission deadline. I have missed him, but it’s a funny thing, when you have a movie due, everything else, including cute boyfriends, takes a backseat.

  I stand on line in the A-Gs contemplating worst-case scenarios, like people walking out or booing my film or both, when I hear, “Hey, Viola!”

  I turn. Jared stands with a group from GSA. He looks like he grew about five inches since Christmas, and he looks older in his tie and jacket. He comes right over and gives me a big hug. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Nervous. How about you?”

  “What’s gonna happen is gonna happen.” He smiles. But it’s not Jared’s usual, sweet smile. This one is tense.

  “I guess.” How lame, but I don’t know what to say. This is the first time I haven’t known what to say to Jared Spencer, and it’s off-putting to say the least.

  He lowers his voice. “Sorry I’ve been so busy.”

  “That’s okay. It’s been nuts for me too.”

  “Yeah. Lot going on,” he says and looks off in the distance.

  “Um, there’s a lecture at Saint Mary’s in a couple of weeks. Susie Essman is touring with a one-woman show about comedy.”

  “Cool.”

  “The tickets are going real fast,” I tell him. “I’ll email you the information.”

  “Great. I’ll see you later.”

  Jared goes back on the M-Z line and talks with his advisor. I have a funny feeling. He wasn’t boyfriend warm; he was sort of distant. Maybe he’s even more nervous than me.

  “He’s feeling the pressure,” Marisol whispers, reading my mind. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t realized my girls had come up to me.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Suzanne says. “This is where men and women are different. We can put aside petty competition for relationships—they can’t. It interferes.”

  “That’s crazy,” Romy argues. “Can’t he have a girlfriend and be in a film competition at the same time?”

  “No. Look. It’s not as if I like delivering bad news about boys, but it happens to be true. Both my brothers are this way. They focus on something—like winning in track or passing an exam or saving up to buy a wreck—and it’s like they have a nuclear beam on the goal until they get it done. It’s just the way boys are. Jared has that look like he wants to win. In this moment, it’s more important than his feelings for Viola. He’s focused on a trophy.”

  “Well…,” I say quietly. “So am I.” I stand up straight as I pin my plastic name tag on my sweater. “I came here
to win.”

  We follow the line into the auditorium. I look around. In a theater that seats five hundred, it looks like there’s about seventy-five of us. This is a disappointment. I imagined the auditorium overflowing with an audience for the premiere of The May McGlynn Story. I mean, this is a university—don’t they care about watching student projects?

  The films are fifteen minutes (tops) in length. So, we will watch the fourteen submissions in alphabetical order with one intermission in between. Then we get to vote on the Audience Award, while a panel of judges goes off to figure out who wins. At this point we get a box lunch, and then there’s the awards ceremony.

  Romy, Marisol, Suzanne, and I are transfixed as the movies begin. At first, the selection of entries seems amateurish, single ideas delivered without a camera move. Romy leans over and squeezes my hand. She figures we’re a shoo-in.

  That is until the movie My Grandmother’s Last Day, which tells the story of a dying grandmother narrated by her granddaughter, who interviews her about her life. The filming style was simple, but the content, an African American grandmother reflecting on her life before civil rights legislation, is brilliant. The movie manages to be emotional without being sentimental. I write a note to Romy that we should vote in a block for it on the Audience Award. “We have to watch all of them first,” she whispers. Romy is very fair that way.

  I almost have to leave the theater when the opening credits for The May McGlynn Story jump onto the screen. In a second and a half, I decide that this will be the absolute last time I make a movie. I picture myself selling my camera at the Martinelli Pawn Shop on Atlantic Avenue and then, years later, working in an office at a desk job. I can’t take this pressure.

  The audience seems very alert throughout the beginning, and then, when the scene with Trish jumps onto the screen, a giggle ripples through the house that turns into laughter. I didn’t think my movie was a comedy. Trish is laughing too, her face in her hands, and I find that mildly insulting. I took this seriously and when I went into editing I was stuck with her crap performance, and now I see that she did the whole thing—as everything—as a happy-go-lucky lark. Lesson learned.

  The laughter sort of dies down as the story cuts to the Hollywood set with George and Grand in grief. The audience barely breathes as a series of cuts lead to the wide shot of the two of them bereft on the stage. I held that shot for three seconds, a long time, and then I feel I have the audience back.

  In the final scene, where May (Suzanne) walks the field as a ghost, she delivers the point of the movie: that a life lived in the movies is forever, while a life lived on earth is not. Even May McGlynn, beautiful, energetic, and talented, cannot escape the ultimate fate in life—death waits for all of us. May says, “I was just a girl like you, from Indiana, who got a little lucky and then one day that good luck turned. Live in the moment, because that’s all you have for certain.”

  There’s a burst of applause when my movie ends. I use the last seconds of the darkened theater as the credits roll to run to the girls’ room. I get inside and throw water on my face. How do my parents do this? I wonder. Why do they do it? And why do they keep doing it over and over again? This is horrible.

  Romy pushes through the door, followed by Suzanne and Marisol. “Are you okay?” Marisol asks.

  “I should never have entered it in the competition. And to be up there after that perfect grandmother movie. I’m lucky they didn’t throw tomatoes.” I begin to cry.

  Marisol yanks hard, brown paper towel squares out of the silver dispenser. “Here.”

  The brown paper cannot soak up my tears. It’s like weeping into a brick. Suzanne, Marisol, and Romy gather around me as I sob. Soon, I’m embarrassed that I’m crying—after all, the girl in the grandmother movie lost her grandmother. I just embarrassed myself with a lousy short-subject movie. I don’t have a real problem. Not really.

  The girls don’t say much as I wash my face. The door pushes open and two professors around my mom’s age enter and go into the stalls.

  “The grandmother piece was a wonderment,” one of the ladies says.

  “God yes,” the other one says.

  I turn to go and Romy stops me, putting her finger to her lips.

  “And what did you think of May McGlynn?” one of the ladies asks.

  “It was ambitious.”

  “But it was really about something,” the other one says.

  “The black-and-white footage was amazing.”

  “It’s a contender for sure.”

  Suzanne quietly opens the door and we sneak back out into the hallway. “See, they liked it. Whoever they are!”

  “I know how hard this is,” Romy says. “But you have to believe in yourself, stand up for your hard work. You did a great job.”

  Out in the lobby the students gather at the doughnuts and cider table talking about the movies. I see Jared across the crowd, talking with a couple of film students from the university. He does not look my way.

  “You guys want doughnuts?” Suzanne asks.

  “Let’s go wait in the auditorium.” I’m not feeling like socializing. The last person I want to see is Jared, and yet, there was a part of me that hoped he would be waiting outside the girls’ bathroom. I even looked for him.

  We go back into the auditorium and take our seats, not saying much. Jared’s film is up after the intermission.

  Romy listens to her iPod while Suzanne checks her BlackBerry. Marisol fishes in her tote and rips into a jumbo-sized Kit Kat, snapping off a piece for each of us.

  Soon, people start to filter back in. The audience seems way smaller than it did before the intermission. I’m glad my movie was shown in the first half—at least I had the max that the U of T had to offer in terms of audience bodies.

  Jared comes down the far aisle, looking around. I wave to him. He gives me a thumbs-up, and I mouth Good luck to him. He goes back to his seat down front, joining his group from GSA.

  Jared’s opening credits roll. I can see he used the Avid update that I gave him. His titles are crisp and well placed. Then his story of organic farming unfolds. The shots are steady, but the movie comes across as one of those dry news b-rolls. There’s an interesting farmer in the movie, but there’s not enough of him. Romy squeezes my hand. Suzanne leans over. “This is boring,” she whispers.

  As the movie ends, at the fifteen-minute mark to the second, it feels as though three hours have passed. Serviceable and full of content, his film lacked a story, and the flat political point of view didn’t show a dramatic arc. There was no tension. Jared Spencer is not a compelling storyteller. And furthermore, he didn’t ask me to sit with him, and he didn’t make it his business to come over and tell me my movie was good (even if he thought it sucked), so I’m wondering now if the whole story of him and me is just a mirage. Before the theater went dark, he was my boyfriend. But now?

  We sit through the final films, the best of which is the story of a woman who built a bomb with things she found at a beauty salon, and my favorite, a funny short about a singing cat.

  The lights come up as they pass out the box lunches. I look down at Jared, who has gone over to speak with the judges. As seriously as I take this competition, Jared has taken it to a different level. He’s down there schmoozing for his film. I don’t think that’s fair.

  The box lunch was a blur. I couldn’t eat for nerves. I don’t want my name to be called and yet I’ll die if they don’t call my name. I think there was a lot of good stuff in my movie. I didn’t try to be slick—I just tried to be creative. I attempted to be true to May McGlynn, to tell her story.

  If my mother and father were here, they’d reassure me that it’s all about making art and letting it live—not snuffing the essence out with ego. But I have an ego! And I want more than anything to win a prize for my work!

  When the college girl with the basket comes by to collect our votes for the Audience Award, we vote in a block for the grandmother movie. I hope that girl wins first place, not that
it will make up for her grandmother being dead, but it would at least cheer her up a little.

  I look down at Jared, who is hunkered down in his seat with his fist clenched against his lips. I can’t believe this is the same boy who was so sweet to me, who found a ride in a blizzard to give me a Christmas present, and who told me about this very competition without an ounce of envy. The Jared Spencer I see now is self-involved and just a little mean. I needed his support today, and it was the last thing he was ready or willing to give.

  Mrs. Zidar and Trish slip into two open seats behind us, each of them giving me a squeeze on my shoulders. Mrs. Zidar, who I found annoying in her mom jeans at the freshman picnic, has actually become a mentor I can count on. And Trish, even though she’s a terrible actress and way too upbeat, at least tries. And, I must say, they are there for me. What more could I ask for?

  The judges begin to read the awards. Marisol, Romy, Suzanne, and I are holding hands. The technical award goes to the singing cat, and then they award the top four movies, beginning with the honorable mention. The girl who filmed a woman making bombs in the beauty salon wins it. She goes up to the stage and stands. Then, the judge, who looks like an exhausted teacher on the verge of retirement, reads third place: It goes to a guy who made a film about three generations of Miss Corn pageant winners from the Midwest County Fair. It was really funny.

  “No way we’re getting anything,” I promise them.

  “Second place—Viola Chesterton for The May McGlynn Story.”

  Romy, Marisol, and Suzanne jump up and start screaming. I just sort of freeze and think I might faint. I feel the wedge of Kit Kat chocolate at the top of my throat. I can’t breathe.

  “Go, go!” Trish pushes me.