Liberating Paris

by Linda Bloodworth Thomason

  “You look like the wife of a southern governor. Is that all right?”

  Milan gave Mavis a look. “Just once you could say something encouraging.”

  Mavis followed her as she started toward the front door. “Hey, I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

  “Not today, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As the two women arrived at the front door, the dreaded reunion was already taking place. Elizabeth and her dad had just stepped off the front porch when Duff and Luke emerged from their battered Toyota. Elizabeth rushed past her dad, literally jumping into Luke’s arms. Wood stood for a moment, allowing Duff a chance to gather her things. He could see right away that her face, though still lovely, had begun to show the residue of a hard life. Her eyes looked dull and tired and there was no shine to her at all.

  He spoke first, warmly. “Hello.”

  Duff, anxious to establish her dignity, answered him without an ounce of flirtation.

  Milan and Mavis held their collective breath, just as they had when Bud and Deanie were reunited in Splendor in the Grass. Natalie Wood, fresh out of the mental hospital, had been radiant in a tightly fitted sheath and wide-brimmed hat. Warren Beatty, on the other hand, had stood around in some dirty overalls, digging his toe in the ground. And now, here Duff was, dressed in a modest JCPenney-type skirt and blouse, something Wood could not have known but Milan tabulated immediately. In her hands was a wilted bouquet of cheap flowers, the kind you buy at the grocery store. As far as Milan could tell, Duff was Bud. It wasn’t even noon yet on Thanksgiving day and already she felt grateful.

  Elizabeth grabbed her fiancé’s arm and pulled him toward Wood. “Daddy, this is Luke.”

  The boy extended his hand, “How are you, sir?”

  As Wood shook it, “Well, I’m fine, Luke. But I think a better question is, are you aware of what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

  “Well, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “And you showed up anyway? You are a brave fella.” Wood saw immediately that Luke was likable and endowed with his mother’s handsome, angular features. He put his arm around his future son-in-law. “Looking forward to having another doctor in the family.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And we can stop this ‘sir’ business? I’m Wood.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  Then, as Luke caught himself, everyone laughed.

  Duff turned to Wood. “Don’t I get a hug?”

  Wood hesitated, then opened his arms. Suddenly Milan was pulling Mavis with her down the driveway and shrieking, “You’re here!”

  A little later, everyone was gathered in the silky peach McIlmore dining room (Benjamin Moore #121, “Blithe Spirit”), hands held, heads bowed. A giant turkey sat in front of Wood, flanked by the two glazed ducks. The old cherrywood table was appointed with the McIlmore family silver, Limoges china, and flawlessly pressed linens. So as not to embarrass Duff, Milan had seen to it that her humble bouquet was discreetly dismantled among the two elaborate floral centerpieces. Seated around the table were Mavis and the McIlmores, Duff and Luke, Slim, Sidney Garfinkel, and Brundidge with his two little girls, who looked perfect in their eggplant-colored dresses and large white linen collars. Jeter was also there, in his wheelchair, next to the old schoolteachers, the unpredictable Miss Phipps, who was having an off day, and the ever-curious Miss Delaney, who was grilling Charlie McIlmore about rap music.

  Wood had agreed to say grace, but Milan had made so many suggestions regarding the content, he had told her to say it herself. Wood sat staring at her now as she finished. “…And we thank you for this food we are about to receive, for our beautiful home and acreage, for our wonderful son and daughter, and we pray that you will help us to be worthy of the important position you have given us in this community.”

  Mavis mumbled, without raising her head, “Lord help us.”

  Milan pressed on, “Also we thank you for this day that we are blessed to share with our family and friends, including Luke…and his mother.”

  Elizabeth said Amen as Milan raised her head in time to catch the smile that passed between her husband and Duff.

  Wood found himself suddenly touched by his wife’s childish attempt to paint an enviable face on their life together. Ironically, her assumption that others couldn’t see what she was up to, her complete lack of self-awareness, was what always made him, just when he had given up, start to love her a little again—coupled with the inexplicable feeling that it was up to him to protect her.

  Brundidge was giving Lily a nod. “Go ahead, honey. Say yours now. Unless the Lord is just exhausted from hearing how well we’re all doing.”

  Everyone rebowed their heads. Lily said, “Thank you for this turkey and for our new Bibles with our names on them.” Cake nudged her softly. After a pause, Lily added, “Amen.”

  Brundidge searched the faces of the other diners for compliments, as Rudy ladled the soup into serving bowls. Miss Delaney said good-naturedly, “Mr. Brundidge, may I say your children grow more impressive each year, a fact I could not have predicted from having attempted to teach literature to you in high school.”

  “Well, they take after their mother.”

  Cake spoke up, “Our mother and daddy are divorced.”

  Miss Phipps looked at her. “You’re lucky. My mother and daddy are dead.”

  There was an awkward pause until Duff said to Cake and Lily, “I like your dresses.”

  Cake said, “Thank you.” Then, gesturing toward Brundidge, “He had them made for us.”

  Duff smiled. “Is that so? Well, they’re very pretty.”

  Brundidge was beaming now. “I’ve got a lady who sews for me. But I designed the collars. I thought that’d be cute, you know, to have kind of a pilgrim deal.”

  Miss Phipps said, in between sips of the beef consommé with bacon dumplings, “When are we going to open presents?”

  Miss Delaney turned to her, “That’s Christmas, Lodi. This is Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I don’t know what gets into me.”

  Miss Delaney turned to Elizabeth and Luke. “Perhaps we should explain to your fiancé, Elizabeth, that Miss Phipps and I taught your dad and Mr. Brundidge and Mr. Jeter in school, an experience from which we have never fully recovered.” Elizabeth and Luke laughed.

  Jeter said, “Well, now, you taught Luke’s mother and Milan and Mavis, too.”

  Miss Delaney winked at Duff. “Yes, but they were angels.”

  Suddenly, Miss Phipps became riled. “They were wild, those boys! Wild!”

  Wood laughed. “Now come on, Miss Phipps, remember it’s Thanksgiving.”

  Brundidge said, “Yeah, this is the time for forgiveness and reconciliation.”

  Miss Phipps pressed on, pleased to have the floor. “I never let up on them, never! If they have any manners today, it’s because of me!” She lifted a spoon. “Let’s show them what I taught you boys. C’mon, now, pick up your spoons! You need to show the little ones.”

  Jeter rolled his eyes as Wood and Brundidge picked up their spoons.

  Miss Phipps continued, “Are you with me? One, two, three…”

  All three men spoke in unison as Wood and Brundidge demonstrated the appropriate way to use a soup spoon. “Little ships go out to sea, always sail away from me.”

  Miss Phipps was on fire now. “Again!”

  The men complied. “Little ships go out to sea, always sail away from me.”

  Luke and Elizabeth began to laugh. So did Duff and Wood and eventually everybody. Mavis and Milan got up and went into the kitchen where Rudy was working.

  Milan said, “She doesn’t look that good.”

  Mavis answered, “She’s a waitress at IHOP.”

  Milan moved closer to Mavis. “She told you that?”

  “Yes, she works the night shift.”

  Rudy was staring at Milan. “I’m sorry, but she is nothing compared to you.”

  Milan said, touched, “Thank you, Ru
dy, that is so sweet.”

  “Not at all. You are a goddess.”

  Rudy left. Then Milan turned to Mavis. “You tell him too much.”

  “I don’t tell him anything. Every year the man is you for Halloween.” She retrieved two multicolored chocolate turkeys, each in its own spun-sugar basket. “You know, she used to be so full of herself. Now she seems sort of…beaten down.” She looked at Milan. “I know that makes you happy. But it makes me kind of sad.”

  “I didn’t say I was happy.”

  Mavis headed toward the dining room. “You don’t have to. By the way, very classy not giving thanks that her ass is now bigger than yours.”

  Milan followed Mavis out whispering, “Hey, I’m just glad her son’s not as big a flake as she is.”

  The two women reentered the dining room, all smiles.

  Miss Phipps was speaking. “…And may I say I am thankful once again for Mr. Jeter, who each year never fails to remind me of the cutoff date for wearing white shoes.”

  Mavis set the two turkey baskets in front of Cake and Lily, who drew in their breath, excited. Lily showed Brundidge her chocolate turkey. “Look, Daddy!”

  He said, “That Mavis is somethin’ else, isn’t she?” Then, turning to Elizabeth, “Okay, Lillabet, you’re up.”

  Elizabeth said, “Sorry. Mine’s too personal.”

  “I don’t wanna hear that. This is your Thanksgiving. Let’s have it.”

  “Okay. But I’ll have to say it in French.” She turned to Luke. “Ce jour, mon amour pour toi est illimité. Tu et moi, nous sommes en feu.”

  Luke was flattered. Duff engaged Wood with her eyes. Milan was wishing she’d taken French.

  Elizabeth said, “All right, Daddy, your turn.”

  “Sorry. Mine’s personal, too.”

  Brundidge muttered, “Well, heck, if I’d known everybody’s was gonna be personal, I would’ve said mine in pig latin.”

  Sidney Garfinkel said, “You’re awfully quiet, Evangeline.”

  Slim answered him, warmly, “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just along for the ride this year.” Wood gave his mother a long, loving look and she returned it. Then Sidney picked up his wineglass and stood, clearing his throat. “Well, I remember a Thanksgiving that I spent on a road outside Paris, after the war. That’s France, not Arkansas. I must’ve weighed around eighty pounds and this American G.I. shared his rations with me—it was canned beef with gravy…and a Hershey’s chocolate bar for dessert. That was the finest Thanksgiving I ever had.” He paused, then lifted his glass. “Until today. Vive le Paris, Arkansas.”

  The old people had gone home. Cake and Lily had been delivered to their aunt’s. The rest of the holiday revelers were now at the old Criterion Palace on the corner of Main and Hyacinth. This was the last one-screen movie house in Paris. Brundidge had insisted they go there, because the Criterion was due to close its doors after Christmas, bowing finally to the sixteen-screen multiplex that had been put up next to the Fed-Mart. Most people agreed that the multiplex was a superior facility, but Brundidge had remained one of the last holdouts in support of the Criterion. He knew it was an important part of the history of Paris, with its ornate gilded doors and little rococo tower over the ticket booth. But more important, he felt sentimental about it, even though he also knew that sentimentality was now looked upon as the currency of morons.

  It was here that he and Wood and Jeter and Mavis and Milan and Duff and scores of other Parisians had fallen in love with forty-foot movie stars and held hands for the first time with people they would not under any circumstances hold hands with today—gum-cracking, teenage vixens and skinny, shit-kicking heroes in cheap cowboy boots who had once seemed like, with a little imagination, small-town versions of their big-screen counterparts—who back then, for approximately one hour and forty-two minutes, could provide more breathless adventure than a whole reel of diaphanous celluloid. That was the beauty of it all—the mystery and excitement that was up there on the big screen as well as down there in the seats—where anything could happen once the humongous blue velvet curtain with the fleur-de-lis had been pulled, and the massive twelve-foot lions, which flanked the screen, stood guard with their cavernous open jaws and sharp teeth that seem to warn against anyone interfering with what was being shown. (Much more impressive than the new method of intimidation—a cartoon of a tight-ass librarian type with a finger to her lips.) Now that their long reign was coming to an end, Brundidge was thinking that these lions looked more like ordinary cats waiting to be picked up by Animal Control.

  It was bad enough that Paris was losing its cinematic, as well as a good deal of its romantic, history. But now, the new multiplex would draw people from three counties. Now you could watch movies all day long and never even see anyone you knew. Brundidge hated that. For him, the best part of the entire moviegoing experience was that scores of people you knew and cared about were seeing what you were seeing. It expanded friendships and gave everyone a sense of community. Now, they might as well be living in a city.

  When they emerged from the movie, snow was coming down in sheets of blinding white confetti—the kind that becomes an event of its own, almost compelling you to put your arms around whoever you were with and whoop and holler and maybe even lie on the ground and not even care if your winter coat ever looks the same again. That was the mood everyone was in as Milan caught up with Wood and grabbed his arm because she knew how much he would like the snow, and she was hoping he would view her as some offshoot of it. But Duff had come along and taken his other arm and sort of groaned with ecstasy at how enchanting it all was and ruined Milan’s moment. It was astonishing. Duff had only been in their presence for less than five or six hours and she was already beginning to seem less like the tired, middle-aged woman who had emerged from a rickety old car, and more like her high-riding, putting-on-airs, girlish self. She wasn’t there yet, but Milan noticed that during the movie, Duff and Wood had laughed in all the same places, and once both clapped spontaneously when this happened: one of the main characters, actually, the one who didn’t like anybody, had made a joke about dogma—a little inside, ironic thing—where this man was criticizing dogma while using it himself. Ha ha ha, something like that. Milan supposed Duff and Wood thought it went right over her head, but they were wrong. Anyway, even if it had, she had figured out long ago that the most successful people were the ones who were best at hiding their own ignorance. Which is why she religiously took the Reader’s Digest vocabulary quiz in her bathtub every month and probably knew more big words than Duff and Wood put together. But she never flaunted it, because, she thought, why show off when a smaller word can get the job done? Anyway, she was not a person who was ever going to call the snow enchanting. She would leave that to waitresses from IHOP. That was Milan’s thinking on that.

  Suddenly Brundidge caught up with the rest of them. He had stayed behind to ask for a refund but, as usual, had been turned down. Now it would start, as it always did, when he didn’t like what he had just paid ten dollars to see.

  “What the hell was that all about? Did anybody else get that?”

  It was basically the same conversation that had been going on for years—just a different movie each time that started it. Like when a film that actually involved Thanksgiving had depicted young adults who hated to go home for the holidays, and Brundidge had left fuming.

  “Name me one person in this whole town who hates their parents.”

  “Ronnie Thorpe.”

  “All right. His dad tried to kill him with an ax. Gimme somebody else.”

  Silence.

  “Ah-ha! You can’t. Because there aren’t any. And isn’t it just a little strange that in every movie and TV show you see, nobody ever likes their parents or ever wants them to come visit? And you know why? Because the assholes who make this stuff are the ones who don’t like their parents!”

  And then there was this, another year.

  Mavis: “Boy, that was powerful, wasn’t it?”

 
Milan: “I don’t get it. Why were they all so mad at the mother? All she did was sell real estate and try to be supportive of her daughter’s cheerleading.”

  Mavis: “She was boring and artificial. She wasn’t real.”

  Brundidge: “Get outta here! You think a father who’s screwing his little girl’s best friend and doing drugs with the kid next door who sits around watching a damn plastic bag bounce off the ground is real?”

  Mavis: “Yeah, in this movie, I thought it was very real. They’re not saying that’s everybody.”

  Brundidge: “Yes, they are. If there’s a nice house and a picket fence, then the people inside have to be shallow and unhappy. Don’t you get it? We’re the fucked-up hicks out here in the boondocks, and they’re the hip, artistic people taking a searing Academy Award look at us.”

  Wood had tried hard not to look at Milan when he said this: “In case you haven’t noticed, buddy, some people are leading lives of quiet desperation.”

  Brundidge: “Bullshit. I’ll tell you who’s quietly desperate. People like me who want their damn money back!”

  And then this:

  Brundidge: “It’s sick.”

  Jeter: “It’s not sick. It’s dark humor. It’s camp.”

  Brundidge: “It’s not camp. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is camp. This is sick.”

  Mavis: “I would never serve a Chianti with liver and fava beans. I would’ve gone with a nice Merlot.”

  Brundidge: “You’re all a bunch of sick bastards and I’m never going to the movies with you again!”

  And later, this:

  Wood: “Why the hell did you come? You knew he had to do something worse than last time.”

  Brundidge: “Hey, he ate the brain of a living person. That’s it. I’m done.”

  Jeter: “Did you get your money back?”

  Brundidge: “Hell, no. I never get it back. All the brain-eating assholes in Hollywood have my money.”

  The trees were now coated with ice. Some of them had caught the light from the streetlamps and been turned into enormous chandeliers. The group was running down the main street of Paris, which looked suddenly beautiful, as though the snow had come to cover its sadness. Even Jeter, with a flick of his good finger, had increased the speed of his wheelchair, and Milan had impulsively jumped on the back panel and ridden a short distance with her arms around his neck. Jeter thought to himself how good it felt, how he wished she would stay there and they could just keep going. Just as they were passing his parents’ old store, something caught his eye and caused him to stop. The others were ahead of them now and he guided the chair closer until he and Milan could both see that several windows had been broken. He swore quietly under his breath. Milan pulled him closer and said softly, “Don’t look at it. It doesn’t matter.”