View Finder

by Greg Jolley

  Jar

  To cause a short, tremulous motion of,

  to cause to tremble, as by a sudden

  shock or blow; to shake; to shock; as,

  to jar the earth; to jar one’s faith.

  Scene 11

  Ira picked me up at the train depot in his new convertible. I rode home in the back seat with my darling Pierce laughing and talking at my side. He had my old Tewe director’s lens in his hands. He asked for my goggles, put them on, and stuck his head out the window and into the wind. His eight-year-old glow was a complex plaid of orange and green.

  “BB…” Ira spoke to me over his shoulder. I admired the steady cream and gold that encircled the back of his head.

  “So you’re prepared, you have two new adopted children. Twins.”

  I SPENT my first season—winter—poolside with my three children, Hilda, and Ira. My two new children, the twins, were named Jared and Baby Ruth. They were two years younger than Pierce. I spent most of that winter watching the three of them play and converse. The twins lived in Mother’s tall and imposing mansion. Pierce and I continued in the guesthouse. Hilda told me she had asked Mother where Jared and Baby Ruth came from and was met with a wall of silence. One of Mother’s assistants brought me the final adoption documents to sign.

  During that period, I stopped taking the prescriptions for my “neurological injury,” and the glows went away. After the holidays, Ira got me shoehorned in at Lion Heart Pictures.

  The former Dashing Nash Movies had been resurrected and renamed. Businessmen and executives I rarely saw owned the studio. I was assigned a rewrite of a script titled Chuck’s Big Mistake. Another writer was doing the dialogue, and I was told to focus on settings, scenes, and situations. The memo I received ordered me to “add spice and explosive turns of fate.”

  Chuck’s Big Mistake was a hit, especially with the targeted teenage audience. Chuck’s sidekick in that film was elevated to costar in the follow-up, The Misadventures of Chuck & Coots.

  As before, I worked on the third installment while the second was produced. We were gifted by a visit to the writing office by the executives. As a team, we were thanked for helping the studio “find and strike the vein.”

  After what I had experienced in my short life, working in comedy was foreign to me. What I had a knack for was providing unexpected and dangerous twists to be overcome—like tossing lit dynamite into a dining room scene. I was constantly reminded by memo to add “surprises that throw audiences back in their seats.”

  Some of the misadventures were easy for me to come up with. Pierce and the twins provided what I thought were comical situations and material to expand on. Most of their poolside play centered on making adventure and rescue movies. I would write and sketch and take the pages to Lion Heart where the film’s trajectory was predetermined—another rescue story with many pratfalls as the incompetent and, I suppose, humorous Chuck and Coots pursued a lovely actress through a haunted mansion. Most of my odd and dangerous twists were included in the scripts. The fourth C&C film, Chuck & Coots at War, worked the same vein—rescue and slapstick. This time, the film was set in the Army with the primary location in a foreign, tropical war zone.

  While number four was in preproduction, the screenplay needing only minor rewrites, I began an independent story and screenplay. The working title was Pain Staking, and I was given the green light to work on it part-time because of the continued success of the C&C films. What I held back from my fellow writers and the executives was the intended return of 3D. I studied and adopted the once-failed camera-as-character approach based on my interest and delight in the film The Lady in the Lake. My script for Pain Staking was largely void of dialogue for the main character, an escaped felon. The script was green-lighted for Coots, whose star had eclipsed Chuck’s.

  The escaped felon first crosses wide-open country to an abandoned silver mine high up on a mountain. There’s a ghost town and a narrow row of buildings. The felon searches the buildings assembling clues to a mystery the audience doesn’t yet grasp. He is stressed and worried by the authorities hot on his trail. He can see them far down the mountain, their train of vehicles climbing the winding roads dragging up dust clouds. He devises ways to slow their approach including placing dynamite from the mine on the bridge with the plunger set under a board. The felon begins to search for the elderly, rogue US marshal who has hidden a kidnapped woman somewhere in the camp town. It’s the woman the felon is trying to rescue. The authorities are continuing up the mountain from the east and, as the clock ticks, he searches for the girl, finding clues. The felon attacks the marshal and is injured. He carries on, wounded and pressed for time.

  Alongside the incomplete script in my typewriter were the storyboards that showed the trolley paths for the cameras which would be the felon’s eyes through the story.

  During that year, three of us were assigned to writing a space-adventure script, C&C five rewrites, and segments of a madman-on-an-airplane film. Pain Staking languished at times. Other days, it was encouraged and supported, the difference in studio attitude being the company’s financial status and my link to the continued success of the C&C movies.

  The love for the Chuck and Coots movies turned sour with number five. We were told that the proceeds were disappointing, that the “vein has been played out.”

  Pain Staking went into preproduction. I was told that the script and camera format were risky and odd enough to make it either a surprise hit or an expensive crash and burn.

  WHEN WORK allowed, I spent my evenings poolside with Pierce, Jared, and Baby Ruth. The three of them were like little birds and had a way of play that kept me grinning. Pierce often directed their activities. Jared was attentive, smiling, and distant. Baby Ruth clearly adored her twin brother and was a constant beside him, the two head-to-head in their private and merry conversations. During the evening pool parties, Hilda would enjoy a respite with her magazines at the umbrella table when Ira wasn’t with her. It pleased me to see the affection that Hilda and Ira had developed. They, like Jared and Baby Ruth, appeared to have their own language and wavelength.

  The children’s play was mostly movie making—Pierce with his Tewe director’s lens and his siblings as his cast and crew. The three of them dreamed up plots in between swims, sitting on their beach towels, and crunching and sucking on popsicles. Pierce directed, speaking in his crisp voice under the black circle of the round Tewe lens. Other times, Pierce would wander off with the lens and film the garage, our guest house, or the clouds while the twins talked in soft voices in their smiling, private world. I enjoyed the contrast between Pierce’s red hair and freckles and the tan skin and black hair of Jared and Baby Ruth.

  Ira and Hilda and I were sitting on another warm, golden evening when I realized my brain had changed. I was studying Jared’s face. He was focused on what Baby Ruth was whispering, his steady, intelligent expression locked on her. The change had come suddenly.

  There were his delicate and lovely eyelashes. It had been years since I had been able to see this way—this completely, this deeply.

  There was a crack and splash—my water glass hitting the pool deck.

  The clean, white circles around chocolate colored windows revealed Jared’s fine intelligence and personality.

  I could see his eyes.

  “BB?” Ira tried to stir me.

  I waved him away and stared, fearful that my new son’s eyes would dissolve into the usual smooth skin I had seen for so long. I watched humor brighten in them as Baby Ruth rolled back laughing.

  Hilda scratched her chair back, standing to help clean up the glass. I didn’t move. Jared’s nose crinkled upward accenting the delight in his gaze, and he turned away from his sister. He looked across the lawn between us and aimed his beautiful, lively eyes to mine. His expression went neutral. Baby Ruth was giggling and pedaling her bare feet to the sky. Hilda was at my knees picking up pieces of glass. Jared and I continued to look deep into one another without so much as a blink
.

  “BB?” Ira said.

  Jared’s face relaxed, and his expression was peaceful and knowing. Baby Ruth bumped his shoulder, and his stare continued. That darling and handsome boy. He raised one of his hands and waved gently. I began to raise mine. Pierce yelled from the pool, and Jared let out a sideways smile. Then something wonderful happened—Jared winked at me.

  He turned to Pierce and yelled back as he took Baby Ruth’s chubby hand. Pierce slid the director’s lens aside to bark a direction, and there were his wide, sweet, amused eyes. I studied him while he yelled across the water to Baby Ruth telling her to sit up and scoot away from Jared. Pierce’s eyes were an amazing blue-gray. He stood chest deep in the warm pool water waiting patiently and watching his siblings from the side of his lens. There was relief in his eyes when Baby Ruth did as directed. I followed the aim of the raised lens to Baby Ruth’s lovely, tan face and saw that her eyes were sleepy and cocoa colored—and watching Jared closely.

  I heard Hilda say, “BB, please move so I can sweep.”

  Ira said, “We have a production meeting at 8:00 a.m.”

  I turned in my chair, carefully, and slid it back from Hilda’s broom and dustpan, giving all my focus to the three children, my three young ones.

  The sun set, and we all stayed poolside illuminated by the aqua lights from the water and candles glowing on the umbrella table. Ira and Hilda had taken each other’s hands and held on tenderly. The children sat in a triangle on their colorful beach towels sharing a bowl of saltines. Ira talked softly about the progress on Pain Staking.

  On a night of such surprise, grace, and wonder, we all stayed within our usual roles and patterns of conversation. Hilda nudged the three children into saying their good nights to one another before she gathered Pierce’s beach towel and his lens. I received a brushing good-night kiss from Pierce and told him I would be back to the guesthouse in a few. Gathering up Jared and Baby Ruth’s damp towels and the saltines bowl, I walked with them from the pool area and along the garden path to Mother’s mansion which was lit from all the second-story windows and balconies. Music and many voices carried from above the garden doors. I stopped at the edge of the brush brick patio. Jared and Baby Ruth headed to the door to the dark first story. Like the nights before, I waited until one of Mother’s assistants appeared from the shadows and took both of my children’s hands. She turned with them, silently. Jared let himself be led a few steps before he locked his knees and turned. Looking over his shoulder, he winked at me again under the falling wave of his jet-black hair.

  CASTING CHANGES for Pain Staking occurred as different opinions and money concerns were worked out. The director, Mr. Stephens, had his own ideas and passions. He’d had a string of successes before the big war and during the conflict with his newsreels. Mr. Stephens adjusted the script and storyboards, dialogue, and crew selection. Ira was thankfully kept on as the 3D cinematographer.

  When filming began, I wasn’t invited to the set. Those days were spent in the narrow writers’ office in the building across from Soundstage Four. From time to time, I was told to dash over to transcribe revisions, mostly changes to the visual design. I was allowed to stand in the back of the screening room during dailies but was seldom noticed or called upon. Pain Staking was no longer my film as it morphed into Mr. Stephens’s property. He had his own vision and thematic concerns. The movie’s story was lost on me by then, but I delighted in the main character’s movements within the subjective 3D world and view.

  With my involvement reduced, I was assigned to other projects and followed the progress of the Pain Staking production through conversations with Ira. My days became short, and my workload lightened, and the chatter among my fellow writers in our skinny office was that if the film hung, so would I.

  During those summer weeks, Los Angeles and the Hollywood enclave were encased in a heat wave, a row of days in a hundred-degree swelter under hazy, white skies. I was home one midweek afternoon waiting for Pierce to find his swimsuit, looking forward to another pool party with his brother and sister. I gazed out our guesthouse door to Mother’s mansion higher up on the hill and squinted from the sweat on my brow. Two days prior, I had noted that the pool water had turned and needed chemicals and a leaf net sweeping. Standing there, I saw that the lawn was fading to yellow and needed mowing. Pierce ran past me from the guesthouse dragging his beach towel and grasping his director’s lens close to his chest. The patio doors of Mother’s stately home opened and released Jared and Baby Ruth. The first floor was dark as usual. The balcony doors and windows of the second story were lit.

  I turned my attention to the antics of my three kids. Jared entered the pool area carrying his sailboat, a gift from me on the twins’ recent birthday. The three were going to continue their ocean adventure movie. He carried the foot-long wooden sailboat close to his chest, and when his thoughtful eyes looked at it, I saw sadness. The boat was missing its mast and had been nearly broken in half.

  “Mother came into my room while I was asleep,” he said, as though that was explanation enough.

  Hilda appeared from behind Jared and his sister, with one arm draped in colorful towels and a beach bag over her shoulder. She held a snack bowl in her free hand. Behind her, the patio doors remained open, and I got my first glimpse of the Doc and the Blonde, as Hilda described them, standing half in sunlight with their chests and faces in the shadows. Hilda had explained that the two had taken up residence in the mansion on the same day Jared and Baby Ruth arrived. This couple looked down at us until Hilda followed Jared and Baby Ruth onto the pool deck. When the double glass patio doors closed, I turned my attention to my three.

  On the Sunday morning three days later, I was summoned to Mother’s mansion. I answered the telephone in the kitchen in the guesthouse reaching over from the small table where Pierce and Ira were dismantling and studying a 16mm camera.

  The voice on the line was a man’s, and I decided it was the Doc, the only male member of the household that I knew of.

  “Your wife would like to speak to you,” he said.

  Hearing “wife,” I paused. There had never been a marriage. Before I could say anything, the call clicked off.

  The grounds were looking worse for wear, wilted from the current heat wave. Past the garden, the planters on the large patio held sun-fried, crisp, dead flowers. A lounge for sunbathing lay on its side and the outdoor dining tables and chairs were pushed this way and that. The brush bricks were littered with dead leaves, dust, and flotsam.

  Before me was the back entrance to Mother’s imposing and once well-kept palatial residence. That was no more—the mansion looked tired and neglected. Peeling paint and unwashed windows. An overflowing garbage can was next to a haphazard stack of storage boxes. There were two mounds of castaway clothing, broken sections of wallboard, and worn, abandoned furniture.

  I entered the big room for the first time in years. The floors, walls, and ceiling had been repainted, and the furniture had new fabric. The primary color was a green covered with fine, snakelike ribbons of salmon pink. Dirty glasses and plates of dried, wrinkled food lay everywhere. I wove through the couches and low tables of the first room and entered the second, which swept out to the right, to the southern draped windows on the far side of the dining area. The third large room to the left included the foyer and entry hall. There were at least two weeks of mail on the green tiles under the mailbox slot beside the front doors. I walked around to the base of the stairs. The steps were stained from spills and needed vacuuming. The air was stale and unpleasant, and it reeked of burned food and medicinal or, less likely, cleaning supplies.

  Halfway up the stairs, a door opened on the landing. I looked up through the banister posts. I stopped. An immense woman in an ill-fitting Hawaiian dress stepped to the rail. She wore a telephone headset, and the cloth cord trailed her very large, bare feet. She held a silver tray in her over-inflated hands and looked at me with mild surprise.

  “Who are you? No. What are you doing in
the house?” Her soft and playful voice contrasted with the scowl on her fat, creased face.

  Before I could reply, another door opened from the left side of the landing, and the blonde walked into view.

  “Go plug in and get back to work,” she told the large woman, who nodded her downcast head, her three chins bobbing.

  “I’m here to see Mother,” I said to the blonde. She was wearing a white cotton dress that resembled a nurse’s uniform. Her expression was hostile and stern.

  “She changed her mind,” she said firmly. She extended a thick, blue folder to me. I climbed the remaining steps between us.

  “I wrote out her instructions,” she said, handing me the packet. “Her needs.” She added.

  I scanned the other doors wondering which ones belonged to Jared and Baby Ruth. Something nudged my knuckles, and I looked down. The blonde was handing me a pen. All the doors looked the same except the ornate carved double doors at the end of the landing, painted a baby pink—it had to be the entrance to Mother’s room.

  The blonde cleared her throat.

  I was trying to imagine Jared and Baby Ruth living in this place of stale air, filth, and silence.

  “Leave.”

  I wanted to ask for a quick look inside the kid’s rooms, but I didn’t. Her tone and posture turned me around, and I went downstairs. I was about to leave the mansion when I was drawn to a side door with a brass kick plate.

  It was a large kitchen more like that of a restaurant than a house. There were two of everything—refrigerators, freezers, stoves, and ovens. There was a long worktable under hanging pots and pans and cutlery. Everywhere I looked, the surfaces were distraught with old food and unwashed dinnerware and clutter. Sitting on a tall chair before the left sink, I opened the latticed blinds and sprayed the blue folder in sunlight. I opened it and flipped through the many pages, signing my name beside every red underline. I gave the documents enough attention to see that I was authorizing the sale of the mansion which, like our prior homes, was in my name.