by Wyborn Senna
While Irv Cass ate breakfast with family and friends, he mentioned that the Elvis contest, Images of Elvis, was the biggest Elvis impersonation contest in the world. Meanwhile, in Indiana, Quentin Flagg delivered newspapers on his bicycle.
Ryan leaned forward to see the screen better. “That guy is about our age. When was this movie made?”
Bea stuck the tips of her knitting needles into a ball of cornflower blue yarn and performed a Google search on the laptop. “2000. So, if that kid was a teenager then, he’s—”
“Too young to be my dad.”
As the documentary continued, Quentin’s dad said that, just as the Colonel told Elvis his talent was worth a million dollars and he was going to get Elvis a million dollars, he wanted to do that for his own son.
“Oh, my God.” Bea made a face, pulled her knitting needles out of the thick ball of yarn, and grabbed her sports bottle, three-quarters full of water. “Can you imagine having a stage mom or dad like that, managing your career as an Elvis impersonator?”
Ryan mimicked Gene. “I know we’ve got to get to Memphis, Ry. Just let me stop in Malibu and check on that beachfront property first.”
Bea nearly choked with laughter as she took a sip. “And what about your mom?”
Ryan cleared his throat and, in a higher pitch, said, “I know you’re a good Elvis impersonator, Ryan, but don’t you think your act would be better if you incorporated a few magic tricks?”
Bea recapped her bottle and slid out of bed. Stiffly, she moved to the bureau, where she kept her meds. She uncapped a few vials, slipped a few pills into her mouth, and minced back to bed as slowly as if she were eighty years old.
“Jeez, Bea, if you’re this creaky now, what’s going to happen when you get old?”
“I’m not going to get old,” she retorted. “I’m going to die young and beautiful.”
“What about our wedding? I thought we were gonna have an Elvis impersonator marry us in Vegas.”
Bea smiled. “That’s two years away. If I die in ten, I’ll still be young and beautiful.”
She slid back onto the bed and Ryan leaned over to kiss her on the lips, but she pulled back. He’d forgotten she’d put pills in her mouth. She held up an index finger, grabbed her water bottle, uncapped it, and took a swig. Then she kissed him, slowly, warmly. Ryan thought she tasted like honey. When Bea pulled away, she had a thoughtful look on her face. “Do you think we’re ever going to find your real father?”
“I hope so.”
She glanced back at the TV screen. “Think it’s one of these Elvis contestants?”
“One of them,” Ryan said, “or maybe someone who’s played Elvis in a movie. But to be an impersonator, you’ve got to have a voice.”
“Well, we know you didn’t get your singing talent from Zella or Gene, so you’re right. It’s probably one of these guys who can really belt out a song.”
Chapter 34
Bea was beneath her coverlet, her bony knees forming tents, while Ryan was on top, propped in a pile of pillows so he could see the TV. Twirling her blond curls in her fingers, Bea looked at Ryan, dreamy-eyed. “How many kids do you want to have?”
“Three,” Ryan said, without thinking.
“Three would be nice,” she murmured, snuggling close.
“Wait a minute. I thought you were going to die young.”
“Well, sure,” she laughed. “I’m going to pop the kids out, one a year, starting the year after we’re married. Then I’m going to die, and you’re going to be the best single parent on earth, win all kinds of awards, and all the moms in the PTA are going to have crushes on you.”
“Awards for what?” Ryan looked at the clocks of every shape and size filling Bea’s peach walls and realized how aware of time she was. He took off his Nikes and slid beneath the coverlet. It was four thirty. He had at least an hour before Zella would call him on his cell and make him come home for dinner. She was no longer “Mom,” and his dad had become simply “Gene.” The shift in how he saw them occurred the very moment his mother stood in their kitchen and wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Bea buried her face in his neck. “I had the weirdest dream last night. There was a turtle in a flat-bottomed dish filled with water, but it didn’t have a shell. It wanted other creatures to stick pins in it. I didn’t see what was doing the sticking, but the pins were stuck into the turtle. Then someone came and tried to take the pins out, but while the person was removing them, the turtle opened its craw, ran toward a sharp object protruding from the inside of its bowl, and impaled itself.”
“Have you ever had this dream before?”
Bea shook her head, and some of her hair got into Ryan’s mouth. He removed it from his lips and kissed her forehead before sitting back up, causing her to slip sideways.
They now faced each other. “What do you think it means?”
“I’ll think about it and let you know, but it sounds like the kind of crazy dream that doesn’t mean anything.”
Bea nodded, satisfied. “I was thinking more about Elvis: The Miniseries, and I went back after you left yesterday and watched every movie Jonathan Rhys Meyers made. You guys look the same, move the same, and sound the same. Do you think you could be brothers? He’s only eleven years older than you are.”
“Yeah, but he was born in Dublin. What are the odds a sperm bank sends its juice to Ireland?”
“Maybe his parents were here, then moved there, and then moved back.”
Ryan was dubious. “He has three younger brothers, all accounted for. It’s doubtful they wouldn’t know about me or need help from a fertility clinic to have me. Sounds like all four kids were regular births.”
“He spent time in an orphanage, though. Maybe we don’t have the whole story.”
Ryan sighed, giving up on that idea. “What are we going to watch today?”
They had been watching movies in her bed for months, had celebrated their seventeenth birthdays without fanfare, and were still no closer to finding out who Ryan’s real dad was.
Bea hit the remote and the next Elvis-themed movie began. This one was called Elvis Has Left The Building, and it had a roster of impressive stars.
“Read the intro,” Bea begged as words filled the screen. “I don’t want to get up and find my glasses.”
“Elvis Presley died in August 1977. At the time of his death, there were three known Elvis impersonators. Today, there are over fifty thousand. If that figure continues to grow at the present rate, by the year 2012, one out of every four people on the planet will be an Elvis impersonator. In the face of this potential threat to world security, a miracle occurred…and her name was Harmony Jones.”
Bea giggled, and they settled in to watch the show. It opened with actor Gil McKinney, driving his trademark pink Cadillac, giving a little blond girl a ride home. The year on the screen read “1950”, and he was singing “Down by the Riverside”. The girl asked Elvis how she could thank him for the ride, and he told her that maybe someday, she’d do something special for him. Flashing forward to the present day, Harmony was driving her own pink Caddy, selling Pink Lady Cosmetics, knowing Elvis would guide her wherever she went. In the course of the movie, Harmony found herself in the company of Elvis impersonators, all of whom died in freak accidents, culminating in the largest calamity of all, when a roof at a convention center collapsed from the weight of all the Elvis impersonators standing on it, watching the skies, looking for a sign from the King.
“So the favor Harmony did for Elvis was killing off all the Elvis impersonators,” Ryan surmised as Bea clicked the remote and the screen went dark. “I don’t think I liked that movie. Plus, no one in it could be my dad.”
“Are you sure? Go through it for me.”
“Real Elvis Gil McKinney was born in ‘79, so he could be my brother but not my dad. The director, Joel Zwick, who played Squashed Elvis, could be my dad, but he’s pretty famous, and we don’t know if he can sing. Mailbox Elvis was played by Tom Hanks, and the likelihood of Ha
nks donating sperm to a fertility clinic is remote. Plus, we don’t know if he can sing. Hole-in-the-head Elvis is David Leisure. He’s too much of an oddball to be a serious dad candidate. Then you’ve got Burning Elvis, played by Richard Kind, who’s just a sitcom guy.”————
Bea sighed. “So let’s go over the Elvises in the other movies.”
“We’ve been through them all. Jim Belushi as Elvis in Easy Six? No. Henry Herrera as Elvis in Rancho Cucamonga? No. Michael de la Force from Elvis & June: A Love Story? No. Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho-Tep? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Well, it was a funny movie.”
“Any one of the guys in 3000 Miles to Graceland? No. Shawn Wayne Klush from Shake, Rattle and Roll: An American Love Story? Nope. Harvey Keitel from Finding Graceland? Never. Pieter Kuijpers from Elvis Lives!? No. You can go all the way back to Kurt Russell, and my dad is not Colonel Jack O’Neil from Stargate.”
“OK, OK. So maybe we have to go about things differently.”
Ryan started to put his Nikes back on. “We’ve just about run out of Elvis movies anyway. Maybe…” He stopped, fixated on one of the many clocks over Bea’s white desk. “No, that would be crazy.”
“What?”
“When my grandparents came over for dinner, my dad mentioned my mom’s doctor in Vegas. He said his name was Wendall Johns.”
Chapter 35
Because their friend Noah was eighteen and had a car, Bea and Ryan convinced him to take a weekend road trip with them, using the cover story that they were off to visit a fellow senior who had to move in the middle of the school year because his dad was transferred at work. Since Zella liked to keep mementos, it had only taken Ryan a month of Saturdays to find the card with Dr. Wendall Johns’s business address and phone number on it, paper-clipped inside a tiny, 1988 calendar that was stapled on the fold.
In Vegas, a woman sat on the second-story porch of the condo she shared with her husband and two young daughters, as Ramona had done so long ago. She was thin, with a head of wispy angel hair, and her girls were sitting at her feet, playing a game of checkers, when Noah, Bea, and Ryan pulled up in Noah’s red Mustang. Noah parked at the curb, and they got out, confused by what they saw. The former fertility clinic had been turned into a tanning salon, plastered with posters of scantily clad men and women with ripped, tanned bodies.
Bea’s sweet but weary voice floated up to the woman on the porch. “Are you sure this is the right address?”
The dark-haired boy who looked like Elvis studied the business card he withdrew from his wallet. “This is it.”
The woman on the porch stood up, stepped over her daughters’ game in progress, and moved to the railing. “What are you looking for?”
The trio looked up, and the dark-haired boy spoke. “Las Vegas Fertility Associates.”
The woman’s angel hair floated around her face like gauze. “That place hasn’t been here for years.”
“What about Dr. Wendall Johns?”
“That’s the guy who ran the place. He retired. Moved to Rolling Hills Estates, over by the golf course. I think the ‘Rolling Hills’ part comes from the fact that to buy a place there, you’ve got to be rolling in hills of cash.”
The teenagers laughed politely and didn’t bother to get directions. Instead, they went back to the car, and the angel-haired lady watched as Ryan helped Bea get into the back seat. The woman wondered what was wrong with the girl and felt sorry for her.
“King me!” one of the girls on the porch shouted.
Ryan turned back and looked at the porch, then got in the front seat beside Noah. The sun was beginning to set amidst ribbons of lavender and blue as the trio located Rolling Hills and were given directions to Dr. Johns’s house.
Ryan punched the doorbell three times and then waited.
Inside, Logan debated whether or not to answer the door. His uncle had gone out for an early dinner with Nancy, so he was alone. He paced, holding Professor X, who finally meowed loudly. He looked down at him and smiled. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a peek.
The hinges on the door didn’t squeak, but the door opened so slowly, Bea felt a chill run down her spine. The four teenagers stared at each other for a moment before Ryan spoke up. “Hi, uh, does Dr. Johns live here?”
Logan stared at Ryan. Though he was dressed in jeans and a blue hoodie, he looked exactly like Elvis had back in the fifties. He nodded at them.
Ryan exhaled. “Oh, good. Is he here?”
Logan shook his head.
“What’s the matter?” Noah asked. “Did you lose your voice?”
Embarrassed, Logan flushed scarlet and shook his head.
Bea nudged him in the ribs. “Shut up, Noah. He’s probably mute.”
Logan shook his head at the pretty girl and then held up a finger. He went and got his tablet and typed a message. When he was done, he held it up to the screen door, but they couldn’t read it. Logan snapped on the porch light, but it didn’t help. Taking a chance, Logan unlatched the screen, stood back, and waved them in.
“Thanks, man,” Ryan said.
They were only a few feet into the foyer area. Logan handed Ryan the tablet as the Siamese cat circled their legs. Bea took her time and lowered her wracked frame into a crouch so she could see the cat better. She looked up at Logan. “What a beautiful cat. What’s his name?”
The dark-eyed boy nervously tucked a wave of chestnut hair behind his right ear and shook his head.
Bea clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I forgot.”
My uncle isn’t here right now, Ryan read aloud.
He typed a message and handed the tablet back to Logan.
Do you know if he kept records from when he ran the clinic? Logan read the note, shook his head, and passed the tablet back to Ryan. He knew about his uncle’s fertility clinic, and he had seen boxes of tapes and logs in his uncle’s study, but he’d never been interested in checking them out. He surmised Ryan wanted to know about his real father.
Noah was impatient. “Why don’t we go to the show at Bar Fifty-Six like you wanted and come back later?”
Logan perked up and stood taller. Bar Fifty-Six was a new lounge tucked a block off the strip, behind The Mirage. Every night, without fail—including holidays—they had a show featuring Elvis impersonators who specifically concentrated on 1956, the year Elvis made it big. The show ran an hour, and afterwards, they held an hour of Elvis karaoke, when audience members were invited to come up and sing Elvis songs for the crowd. Logan had wanted to go there ever since it opened.
Ryan noticed that Logan was interested, just as he himself was interested in securing an opportunity to meet the doctor. “You want to come with us, and then we’ll bring you back? Maybe your uncle will be home by then.”
Logan couldn’t help himself. He nodded vigorously, ran to grab a jacket, scribbled a hasty note he stuck to the fridge with a magnet, and rejoined them in the foyer. He had his own set of house keys that he’d never used, which were now in his pocket on a tiny, gold ring. These kids seemed to like him, and they didn’t seem to mind his silence. The idea of getting out of the house and going to a club was so intoxicating he was about to faint, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other and managed to make it out the door behind them.
Chapter 36
It was a night none of the teenagers would ever forget. Bar Fifty-Six, a circular stucco building the color and texture of oatmeal, had a simple blue neon sign over the front double-door entrance, but inside, the theatre was dressed in rich, sumptuous black velvet, from the cushy seats to the drapes onstage. The bar in the lobby was well stocked, and Noah had no trouble getting four Yuengling Traditional Lagers—no glasses, thanks—for the group, but Logan shook his head when he saw the bottles, so Noah drank two, and Ryan and Bea had the others. They took took seats in the third row, behind two blue-haired ladies and an octogenarian with a glammed-up blond half his age.
Seated on the left in an aisle seat, Noah leaned toward Ryan. “There was a
card in the lobby that said they showcase songs from 1956 through 1957, so I guess that gives you an extra year of material to work with.”
Ryan was surprised. “Who said I was going to sing?”
Seated on Ryan’s right, Bea laughed. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
On Bea’s right, Logan beamed. Including the year 1957 meant that Elvis’ Christmas Album would be part of the mix. He pulled out his tablet, typed a note for Ryan, and passed it to him.
Ryan squinted at the tablet in the dim light. Sing “White Christmas”.
He nodded in Logan’s direction and passed the tablet back to him just as the house lights went down. A Japanese Elvis impersonator stood at the microphone when the lights came back up, and the audience began to cheer and applaud.
Bea nudged Ryan. “Bet that’s your dad.”
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, we finally found him.”
Logan was glad the impersonator stayed true to what Elvis might have worn early on in his career. Japanese Elvis wore a red suit with a pink and red striped shirt and white shoes. He sang Aaron Schroder and Ben Weisman’s 1957 hit song, “Got A Lot O’ Livin’ To Do”, featured on Elvis’s Loving You LP. Closing his eyes as Japanese Elvis sang, Logan pictured his mom holding the album with its Easter egg blue background, Elvis’s face staring pensively at the camera, two slight wrinkles in his brow, his black hair impossibly thick and shiny with product.
Next up was chubby Elvis, a dark-haired man pushing forty, dressed in a brown suit, a pink shirt, and brown loafers. He sang Don Robertson’s ditty from 1956, “I’m Counting on You”, mopping his brow as he tried to swivel his hips. The album this song was on was still fresh in Logan’s mind. It seemed like just yesterday Ramona was sliding that slice of vinyl heaven out of its sleeve, the album cover featuring a black and white photo of Elvis playing guitar, his mouth wide open in song, “Elvis” in pink block letters along the left-hand side of the cover, “Presley” in green across the bottom.
