Film Studies

by Caroline Adderson

  Jerrilyn shot me a glance. (And they say I’m cold!) Mason smiled and pulled a chair up for me.

  We brainstormed our ideas. Mine was the story. “A little boy and girl live across from each other on a rooftop. They love each other like brother and sister. One day, during a snowstorm, the boy’s grandmother tells them about the Snow Queen. The next day the Queen appears to the little boy and steals him away.” We would have to do just a part of the story. Obviously. The film was only supposed to be two minutes long.

  “Where are we going to get a little boy?” asked Jerrilyn, sneerily.

  “We could steal one,” Mason said.

  I suggested the Snow Queen steal a baby instead. A doll. Jerrilyn said it was a dumb idea, but Mason liked it. He said that Georges Méliès made films of fairy tales.

  “Who’s Georges Méliès?” Jerrilyn asked.

  Now Aurora and her new conquest are stirring in the bedroom. I hear rustling as clothes, thrown off in a hurry last night, are picked up off the floor and put back on. More laughter. Quick, get out. I take my dishes to the sink and drop them in with a clatter. Turn the tap on high, squirt in way, way too much soap.

  We shot the film in Mason’s back yard last Saturday night because no one was home. Jerrilyn was in charge of costumes and props. A white nightie, snow spray. Two feather pillows. A baby carriage and a doll. I walked through the garden, barefoot in the nightie, like a sleepwalker. Frost settled on everything I passed. (Talcum powder.) When I reached the baby carriage and lifted out the child, snow began to fall. (Jerrilyn in a tree, letting go handfuls of feathers.)

  It hardly ever snows here, not more than once or twice a winter. Once, when it did, I ran out into the garden in my underwear just to feel the thousand tiny flakes touching down on my bare skin. They scorched and tingled as they melted. Cooling trickles running down my bare legs. I thought of that while Mason filmed me.

  “Cut!” he called.

  Then we went inside to watch it on his computer. It had seemed so hokey acting it out in the yard, but on the screen it wasn’t too bad, mostly because of how Mason had worked the camera and set up the lights. He had an editing program on his computer and would fix it up later by cutting in other footage, stuff like that.

  Jerrilyn had to go. “Can I get my nightie back?” she asked me.

  I changed back into my clothes. After Jerrilyn left, it was just the two of us, me and Mason. “Do you want a beer?” he asked. We drank it in his room and, while we were talking, Mason brought up Erlend again. “You’ve never even asked about his films?”

  I told him what Erlend said to me when I was little. “He said I wouldn’t like them. He said I was too young to understand them.”

  “But you’re not a kid anymore. You’re sixteen. You must be curious. You signed up for Film Studies.”

  That bothered me a lot—I felt he was accusing me of being immature. “I guess I’m not as much of a cinephile as you,” I said, snarky, not that Mason even noticed. He just smiled and said, “I bet it’s porn. They make a lot of porn in Scandinavia.”

  I wondered, had he looked Erlend up? And did I really want to know what kind of films my father makes?

  A snowdrift of bubbles is mounting in the sink. The pile grows and grows and some of the bubbles break free and become airborne. They float up, up, then slowly drift back down. It’s snowing in the kitchen, huge clumped flakes of soap. One clump keeps growing, gets bigger and bigger until it becomes a woman dressed in a gauzy gown woven out of millions of tiny, star-like flakes. She is beautiful and delicate, but she is made of ice—glaring, glittering ice.

  I am furious.

  I’ll confront Erlend, I decide as I wash my bowl. When he calls me, I’ll ask why he took so long. I’ll ask why I mean so little to him that he can ignore me. And I’ll ask to see one of his films. Why shouldn’t I, now that I’ve made one too?

  Mason and I talked about what we could cut into our version of “The Snow Queen.”

  “We’ll have to do more shooting,” he said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “How about right now?” Mason said and he kissed me with his hot, fruity mouth. I felt entranced, shivering and tingling all over, like in the garden. It scared me, that feeling, but I wanted it. I wanted to feel it and I wanted it to last and not just be a memory that would melt away.

  The soapy water pours out of the sink and sloshes over my bare feet. The lace camisole and panties that Erlend bought me, why else had I worn them? I knew something would happen. Mason didn’t trick me. In fact, it was partly my idea.

  And I drop the blue bowl on the floor, where it smashes. It smashes to pieces and Erlend hasn’t phoned in two weeks. Two weeks! Today I feel like Aurora—dumped, rejected, bereft. There has to be a pea under my futon, I’ve been sleeping so badly since that night at Mason’s. I can’t eat. Before I dropped the bowl and broke it, I threw half my cereal down the sink.

  Water is overflowing the sink now, pouring down the cupboard door, pooling around my bare feet. Pieces of the shattered bowl lie everywhere. Then the bedroom door opens and I swing around and there he is. Like in a fairy tale, I’ve conjured Erlend just by wishing so hard for him. He looks different unshaven, but the smile is the same. I rush to him but my feet hit the soapy water and fly out from under me and I crash down hard on the floor and the dangerous shards of the broken bowl. Then I’m wailing because it hurts. It hurts to have to wait and wait.

  Erlend comes over and kneels beside me and gathers me, wet and shaking, in his arms. I must be dreaming him, but he feels real.

  “Cassandra,” he murmurs. “Poor Cassandra.”

  “The tap!” says Aurora, coming out of the bedroom and hurrying to turn it off before the whole kitchen floods. “What’s going on?”

  And I freeze like the Little Match Girl, stiff in Erlend’s arms. They see my surprise and, exchanging a look, both of them laugh. In the middle of this mess, with me sobbing, they laugh? Aurora is only now doing up the sash of her robe. Obviously they thought I’d be delighted to find them together like this. My parents? Are they insane? Erlend left her. He already left her once.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?”Aurora asks as I push away from Erlend and scramble to my feet. “Stay. Sit with us while we have coffee,” she says. “You can be late.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? ” I scream at Erlend.

  “Turn around,” I said, and Mason did. Then I took off my white man’s shirt and my T-shirt and sat shivering in my camisole. “Okay,” I said.

  Mason turned back and, with the video camera to his eye, it was easier. I didn’t feel so shy. I’d been sitting on the edge of his bed, but now I stood.

  “What about your jeans?” he asked.

  I undid my belt and stepped out of them. Then I stood on the bed. I stood on the bed dressed in those lacy bits of silk and I felt very cold. Freezing. I began to turn and Mason started moving around me, getting down low with the camera. I am pale and lacy, twirling in the dark. Erlend once made a bra commercial. What kind of films does he make now, Erlend who is exempt from normal moral standards?

  I was acting in one. I was acting this part for Erlend.

  See? I can be anyone I want.

  And I get so dizzy that I fall. That, too, Mason films. Me falling on the bed and my hair flying out and my cold arms reaching for him.

  Aurora knocks on my bedroom door, but I tell her to go away. I shout, “I won’t help you this time! When he leaves? You’re on your own! Do you hear me?”

  “Cass?” she pleads through the door.

  I remember that phone call and take those same ugly words that shocked me so much and throw them at her. “You’re a slut! You’re just a slut! Leave me alone!”

  On my bed, I sob. Everything hurts where I went down—knees, elbows, the heels of my hands—it all throbs. It’s a miracle I’m not cut. I’m going to be covered in bruises tomorrow, but that’s the least of the pain I feel. Erlend and Aurora are whispering in the kitchen. I hear little whimpers
, too—I’ve made my mother cry again. Erlend’s soothing tone. He’s comforting her. But what about me? What about me?

  Another knock. “Cassandra?” he says, like a bird calling in a tree. “Ca-san-dra? May I come in?” And he doesn’t wait for my permission but comes in and shuts the door softly behind him. He sits on the edge of the bed. “I did call,” he finally says.

  “When?”

  “A few days later, like I said I would.”

  I sit up. “She never told me! She never gave me the message! I hate her! I hate her so much!”

  Erlend winces when I say this, like I’m talking about hating him. “Cassandra,” he says, “don’t say that. It’s not her fault. Truthfully? I may not have left a message for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I called for you, yes. But you weren’t in. Aurora and I started talking. The first real talk we’ve had in years. You told me those things she was going through. It’s been difficult for her. I haven’t been here for her. Not for you either. I did mean to call you again, but I got so busy with the shoot.”

  “You had time for Aurora!” I point out. He looks embarrassed. “Yes. I took her to dinner last night.”

  Oh, I see it all now. Erlend saying, “Aurora, tell me what is happening in your life,” and Aurora counting out on her painted fingertips all the princes who have failed her. Making herself pathetic to win his sympathy.

  Erlend smiles. “Should I have asked your permission?”

  “She could have told me!”

  “I’m sure she was going to,” he says. “She hasn’t had the chance.”

  And then my father says something that surprises me very much. He says,“Cassandra, I’m lonely.”

  He sounds like a child when he says it, and I feel childish, too, for the things I’ve said. But I’m not a child. I’m not a child anymore. Far from it. And Erlend? He’s just disgusting. It’s sick to make films like that. I blurt it out, “What kind of films are you making that you can’t show them to your own daughter?”

  He’s taken aback, wondering where this outburst came from. “What?” he asks.

  “Why haven’t you ever shown me your films?”

  I can see he feels caught. He starts looking everywhere but at me. “You wouldn’t be interested, Cassandra.”

  “I am! I’m very interested. So why can’t you show them to me?”

  “Why are you asking me now? Oh, it’s because of Film Studies. Is that it?”

  “Don’t put me off! You’re always putting me off! I’ve asked so many times!”

  “When?”

  “Before!” I shout, which, I realize, was probably eight or nine years ago.

  He smiles and takes me in his arms. I try to struggle free, but he won’t let me. He locks me in and tells me how much he loves me. “Who’s my little girl? Who’s my Cassie?” His embarrassing name for me once upon a time. “I have some demos. I might even have some in my bag. I’ll leave them for you. I worry what you’ll think, though, Cass. That you’ll think less of me. Nothing turned out the way I planned. With my career, I mean.”

  It’s so creepy and sick to think of watching those films. I can’t even speak, I’m so appalled, but then Erlend laughs and I’m his child again. The one he used to read fairy tales to.

  But I’m too old for fairy tales now. Much too old.

  When I finally come out of my room, I’ve already missed my first class. Erlend is gone. Only Aurora is there, on her hands and knees with a rag in her hand, sopping up the last of the puddle on the floor. I see all the broken pieces of my favorite bowl lined up on the counter. Does she actually plan on gluing them back together?

  Aurora gets up off the floor, wrings the rag out in the sink, offers me a timid smile. I toss my head.

  “You’re not jealous, are you?” she asks.

  I scoff—loudly.

  Then she says something really sad. She says, “There’s no reason to be, Cass. It won’t last.” I ignore her and go to get my backpack off the hook by the door. But as I’m reaching up for it, I glance back at her on her hands and knees again. I can see down her bathrobe to her shabby, discolored bra. It was awful what I said to her. And one of my eyes starts to tear up. It’s weird because I’ve just bawled my head off. You’d think anything stuck in my eye would already have washed out, but here I am, gushing on one side, the eye burning and stinging. I forget about the backpack and, blinking madly, hurry into the bathroom.

  The seat is up, the water yellow with pee. I turn away in disgust. In the mirror, I pull down my lower lid.

  Aurora stands in the doorway. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve got something in my eye.”

  “Let me see,” she says, and I tilt my head back and let her look. “Is it an eyelash?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  I’m starting to feel a bit hysterical, thinking it might be glass in my eye from the broken bowl. Aurora is so close to me I can see her pores and freckles through my tears, see how, without makeup, all her suffering shows. She turns on the tap, lets the water run cold. “Wash it,” she says, and I bend my head, scooping the water in my cupped palm, splashing the eye that hurts. While I’m doing this, Aurora keeps one hand on my back. I feel the warmth of it radiating across my shoulder blades and down my spine. I straighten with eyes squeezed shut and when I open them again, we are together, framed in the mirror, heads together, my blue eyes soothed and blinking, Aurora’s, the identical color, filled with concern.

  “Better?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Then she hugs me and I let her. I let her because the one thing I can’t do is tell her I’m sorry for what I said. The words won’t form in my mouth. After a minute, I pull back and say, “Look.”

  Aurora turns, sees the toilet seat up, laughs. “I told you! They’re all the same.”

  She starts walking me back to the door, but in the hall she remembers and says, “Oh, Cass. Erlend left something for you.”

  I said to Mason, “Shut the camera off.”

  “Okay,” he said and set it on his desk next to his computer. By then we had both drunk three beers. My head was spinning, the bed was spinning. I felt very cold. I’m always cold. But then Mason crawled onto the bed next to me and put his hot arms around me and I felt myself melting, melting into him.

  “Take your shirt off,” I said. I wanted to feel the heat from his skin.

  He tossed it on the floor.

  “What about your jeans?” I said.

  He looked a little afraid. Afraid and amazed, yet he got up and did exactly what I said. Then he was standing in front of me, the hottest boy in our school, naked and shivering. Who would ever guess that I would be the one to warm him up? Did I do it for Erlend or for Mason?

  I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  When we finished, I sat up and put my clothes on, sick about what I’d done. I didn’t bother with the pretty camisole, just stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans. I pulled on my T-shirt, my socks and boots. I felt hideous and wondered, is there a story like “The Ugly Duckling” but in reverse?

  Mason sat up and said, “Do you like me?”

  “Shh,” I said.

  “You’re beautiful. Don’t go all cold on me. You can’t ask me to do this and then just walk out.”

  “Do we have to talk?” I asked.

  “Cass? What about at school?”

  I turned and looked at him sitting on the bed. Then I looked at the computer on the desk and saw what I knew I would see, Mason on the screen, talking to me, asking me not to go.

  And I saw the green lights on either side of the web cam, glowing like a little pair of troll’s eyes. The video camera was off, but the computer had filmed everything.

  “Cass.”

  I didn’t answer because it was a silent movie. None of the sounds we made would ever be heard. And because the whole room had filled with snow. A blizzard was raging through the house. A white-out. I wrapped my gauze around me and vanis
hed into it.

  Aurora comes back with a couple of DVDs in her hand. “He’s coming on Saturday. Is that alright? Can we have dinner together? The three of us?” She hands me the disks. “I don’t know why he thinks you’d be interested in these.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Aurora shrugs. “Industrial films?”

  I don’t understand. She must see it on my face because she holds them up and reads the labels out to me. “Boiler Room Safety—It’s Easier Than You Think. New Procedures in Baggage Handling—”

  “He makes industrial films?” I interrupt.

  She blinks at me. “You knew that, Cass.”

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”

  She shakes her head, her voice full of pity. “Poor Erlend. He wanted to be an auteur, the next Lars von Trier or something, but there’s no money in that. I thought you knew the kind of films he made. I thought it would have come up during one of your romantic dinners. Are you disappointed?” She looks at me hard, like she wants me to be disappointed in Erlend instead of her, for once.

  I can’t tell her. I can’t explain that the only thing that comes close to the shame and embarrassment of finding out your father makes porn is finding out that he doesn’t.

  All week I’ve been avoiding Mason, but he keeps trying to talk to me. He keeps saying, “I won’t show it to anyone. I’ll erase it if you tell me to.”

  Second period. Film Studies. I slide into the desk next to his in the dark. Another black and white film. It has sound this time, but seems to be in a foreign language. Everyone else is asleep.

  I lean into Mason and finally, finally I speak.

  I say, “I want to see it.”

  © 2010 Caroline Adderson

  Annick Press Ltd.