Someday Jennifer

by Risto Pakarinen

  Sara laughed so hard she had to wipe the tears off her cheeks. I wasn’t quite sure what was so funny.

  “A classic eighties flick. Of course. Listen, Peter, I would love to, but I can’t tonight. Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow it is.”

  I pulled out my calendar and wrote in Sara, trying not to see the big red circle around October 26 a few pages later.

  Sara shook her head as she watched me jot down the diary entry. Then she gave me a hug and walked away.

  Chapter 32

  Careless Whisper

  EVEN THOUGH WE parted as friends, Sara’s words had put a dent in my self-confidence. I told Dad I wasn’t feeling well and rode home.

  All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and watch TV all day. I didn’t need other people, and I especially didn’t need doubters. Sara had to have known that I was feeling down and that all I wanted was some sympathy. Instead, she’d grilled me like a cop in a cheap novel.

  Some sympathy. Was that too much to ask?

  I threw off my blanket, got up, dialled Tina’s number, and walked back to bed. I put my pillow behind my back and sat against the wall.

  “Hi, Tina.”

  “Hi, Peter, how’s it going?”

  “Could be better. Got a speeding ticket last night.”

  “That’s a bummer.”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I could hear Tina whisper something to another person.

  “Hey, Peter, if you wanted to talk you’d better talk. I’m in the middle of something here,” she said. She covered the mouthpiece again, and I heard something about Wikipedia.

  “It’s just that . . . a friend of mine pretty much called me an idiot today.”

  “Poor baby, are you being bullied in Kumpunotko?”

  “Please. I’m serious.”

  Again, I heard her speak to someone, and again, it had to do with Wikipedia.

  “I’m sorry. Okay, I think Sofie can work on her own for a minute. Tell me everything.”

  “Well, there’s been a bit of a disaster thanks to an idiot at the council—who was an idiot at school too, now that I think about it—who’s taken a dislike to me, and so the developers now have full planning permission and I only have two weeks to get the Atlas ready, and as things are now, I have a senior citizen working on the theatre’s plumbing on his own, I don’t have a film to show yet, and I haven’t even started with the advertising or anything like that.”

  “I see.”

  “And I had pizza with an old high-school friend today, and she told me that—”

  “She? Who is she?”

  “No, nothing like that, she’s just an old schoolmate. She was actually the cop who gave me the ticket, and I guess she felt bad about it.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “I’m sure you do; you knew everybody. It’s Sara—the girl I went to the school dance with.”

  “Small? Punk rocker, I think?”

  “New Wave, actually.”

  “Same, same.”

  “Actually, it’s not the same thing. Punk was far more—”

  “What did she say?”

  “What?”

  “What did she say that got you so upset?”

  “Well, basically she says I’m regressing, that my ideas are stupid. And she made fun of my clothes and my hair.”

  “Really? That sounds horrible!”

  “I know!”

  “Maybe she was trying to ‘neg’ you; you know, make you more interested by pretending she’s not? Maybe she’s playing hard to get. Girls can be horrible and manipulative creatures sometimes, trust me.”

  “She said my mullet was idiotic.”

  “Wait, what? You have a mullet?”

  “Not a good one, unfortunately. She said I wasn’t evolving. Like I was a case of arrested development or something.”

  Tina didn’t say anything. I heard her inhale and sigh. She was clicking her tongue in an effort to find the right words.

  “Well, you aren’t evolving, are you? Isn’t that what this whole thing is about? Going back in time and all that? Isn’t that, by definition, going backwards. Regressing?”

  “No!” I shouted. “Time travellers don’t just regress; they do things that change the future! Marty McFly’s life got better. He became cool and his parents started to play tennis!”

  “Take it easy, Peter, I’m on your side.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Tina said. “Finish what you started.”

  “Don’t worry.” I pouted. “I fully intend to. Anyway, the grand premiere is in two weeks. October 26. I hope you guys can make it here.”

  “We’ll see. It’s not that easy if you don’t feel welcome, but I’ll try . . .”

  I heard the front door open and some noises from the downstairs hallway. It was Mom, coming back from the church flea market.

  “Hello!” she shouted.

  Now it was my turn to put my hand over the receiver.

  “I’m on the phone, I’ll be down in a sec!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  “Listen, Tina, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later,” I said, and hung up.

  Mom was in the kitchen when I got downstairs. She’d put two tote bags on the kitchen table and was unpacking groceries from them.

  “Who was that?”

  “Tina.”

  “What did she want? Did she call because she knew I wasn’t at home?”

  “Actually, Mom, I called her, and not because you weren’t at home. I wanted to talk to her because I wanted to get her advice on something, and to see if they might want to come for a visit.”

  Mom said nothing, but closed a cupboard door slightly harder than necessary.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Mom, and neither does Tina! She’s doing her best.”

  When she was almost done putting vegetables into the fridge, she spoke to me from behind the refrigerator door.

  “Maybe Tina understands you and supports you, but she doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy or empathy for the rest of the family,” she said.

  “What do you mean? She’s always put the family first.”

  “Her family. But maybe not this family.”

  “You’ve lost me, Mom. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know, Peter, I may be provincial and a bit old-fashioned, but I pride myself on certain things, and my cooking is one of those things.” As if to demonstrate this, she brought out a homemade pie from the fridge and set it on the table. She turned and got down a couple of matching plates, and spoons, and a knife. Without asking, she began to serve.

  “I’m not following,” I said to break the silence.

  “It’s just because my father liked my cooking, and my little sisters did too, when I had to take over when your Mummi, God rest her soul, passed away. And your father has never turned away anything I’ve put on a plate in front of him. And you and Tina, growing up, always licked the plate clean. But . . .” Mom said.

  “But? Mom, what are we talking about?”

  “Tim, of course. He puts on a good show, but I know,” Mom said, and tapped her temple with her finger.

  “Look, Mom . . . Tim’s English. They eat boiled vegetables and kidney pies and ginger ale. He wouldn’t know a good blueberry pie if you slapped him in the face with one.”

  “I’ve a good mind to,” she said. I was shocked.

  “Mom?”

  She got up and turned away, apparently unable to look at the pie on her plate. Instinctively, she grabbed a dishcloth and began wiping away non-existent dirt.

  “It’s not about that. He told Tina . . .” She composed herself, took a deep breath. “He said to Tina, and I heard . . . he said I cooked like an old hag.” She began to wipe the kitchen counter with such ferocity that I half-expected the cloth to catch fire.

  I think I saw her wipe a tear from the corner of her eye, and that made me sad. And angry. I needed to take i
t out on something, and sandpapering and painting a wall seemed like just the thing to do. After giving her shoulder a comforting squeeze, I hopped on my Crescent and pedalled hard to the Atlas.

  Chapter 33

  When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going

  I WALKED IN through the side door—I still wanted to save the main entry for special occasions—and immediately, a smell hit me. Underneath the pervasive stink of the paint, something else. Not mould. Not sweat. Somewhere between mould and sweat. I made a mental note to talk to Dad about the toilets again. Or maybe the cleaning agent in the carpet machine had accidentally reawakened the long-forgotten stenches of days gone by. The guy in the shop had said it would be best to air the place out. I wedged the side door open with a garbage can.

  Looking around, I realized for the first time that Dad and I had really made progress. The carpet-cleaning machine had done wonders. The seats were bolted down again and in straight lines. The walls that I’d painted looked smart and new. Dad had even repanelled the ticket office booth and fitted a new counter.

  The film reels were supposed to arrive at any moment. I looked around the theatre, and where before I had seen only problems and obstacles, now I saw challenges, things I could deal with. In my estimation, we had more than a fighting chance of getting everything ready by October 26.

  I didn’t have a choice. I had ten days, and I had to make the best of those ten days.

  Renovating the place with Dad had been a lot of fun. It had definitely been good for Dad to have a project, and I think it had been great for us to work on it together (although I was, basically, his lackey). I probably hadn’t had a decent conversation with Dad since I’d left home. I thought again about Bob Gale, the writer of Back to the Future, and wondered if he would have gotten along with his teenaged father. And while Dad and I were both long past our youths, we did find a lot of common ground, shared jokes, had fun—even if he did have terrible, old-fashioned taste in music. I also hadn’t realized exactly how vast his Kumpunotko network was. He really did know everybody, and somehow had pull everywhere, even at the town hall. Having moved to the Big City, I’d often thought of his life as small. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  I hadn’t ever spoken to Sara about the public-event permit, but that was fine because the police chief’s son turned out to have been an intern at the ad agency where Dad had worked.

  “People will do anything if you’re nice to their children,” he told me when he handed me the envelope that held the permit with the correct stamps and seals.

  Dad had always been something of a renaissance man, having first dropped out of high school—or been kicked out; the story changed—and then gotten his diploma at night school after he met Mom. He then went on to get a college degree, all the while having different kinds of jobs. He had been a construction worker, a chef, a substitute math teacher, a football team mascot, a car salesman, a classified ad salesman at the local newspaper, and, finally, an account manager at an ad agency, where he stayed for the rest of his career.

  In the last few weeks he had been all that again (except for the football mascot, though he’d certainly been cheering me on in other ways). Dad must have cashed in a lifetime of favours. Every day somebody new showed up at the theatre with something.

  There was Antti, the giant from the lumberyard who delivered new things almost daily, and Marko, a small and smelly man who cleared all the drains in Kumpunotko—and the toilets at the Atlas. We had Anna from the dry cleaners (the daughter of the man who’d lent me the tuxedo that fateful night), who helped us clean the curtain, and Jenni, who did the fire and safety inspection the same day Dad called her, rather than after the four-to-six-week wait she’d quoted me.

  With the exception of Anna, they all were closer to Dad’s age than mine. And with the exception of Anna, who silently went about her work, they all stayed for a while, chatting with Dad and me, having a poke around.

  In fact, Marko took to hanging around the theatre even after he’d cleaned the pipes, and once you got used to the smell that lingered around him, he was great company. He was, surprisingly, also a big Frankie Goes to Hollywood fan, and had even seen them live in Brighton once.

  “I’ve never seen anyone as charismatic as Holly Johnson. He had the audience right there from beginning to end,” he said, gesturing to the palm of his hand.

  “George Michael?” I’d said.

  “Not even close. Maybe Princess Diana. Maybe.”

  “She wasn’t a singer.”

  “No,” he’d said. “But she had character.”

  I FINISHED MY INSPECTION, and as I made my way back toward the lobby, I heard Dad chatting with someone. Assuming the smell I’d noticed might have something to do with Marko, I popped in to say hello.

  But it wasn’t Marko. Dad and his buddy Erik were sitting on small stools in the lobby, just outside the bathrooms, chatting. Erik had come in to fix the mechanism behind the massive red curtain. Both sides now moved at the same speed and met in the middle, which meant I wouldn’t have to have somebody crank it open at the start of the film. The glide of the curtains; it’s just not something you think about, but it really is part of the magic.

  “You’ve got to get your masking right too,” he’d told us, pointing to the bits of curtain at the sides and the top and bottom of the screen. “It’s a nightmare. That stuff slips off all the time, and then your picture looks off-centre. And nobody wants to watch a wonky film. Makes you feel seasick.”

  He greeted me with a wave.

  “All done, boss! Functioning like clockwork!”

  “Thank you so much for your help, Erik,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. When your dad called me, I told him I’d do it right away.”

  I tapped my fingers against each other, nervous about taking the next step. But it had to be done.

  “Thanks again. Um, how much do I owe you?”

  I had asked Dad at one point how much his wheeling and dealing was going to cost me. I’d been prepared to clean the carpets by hand myself, but he had insisted on renting the machine. I’d imagined we were going to build a few new benches, but he had ordered a whole new suite of furniture for the lobby. When I asked him, he just grinned and started singing an old crooner about money burning a hole in his pocket.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Erik. “It was my pleasure. Your dad and I will figure things out somehow.” He winked at Dad.

  Dad just grinned back.

  “Maybe you can give Erik a couple of tickets to the show?” he said.

  That was another thing: he promised tickets to all his friends and acquaintances who had helped us, which was fine, but it reminded me that I didn’t yet have physical tickets to sell. Nor had I even begun to advertise.

  Whenever I thought I could see light at the end of the tunnel, it turned out to just be the headlight of an oncoming express train.

  “ANYBODY HERE?” I heard somebody yell at the door, but I didn’t do anything because I expected Dad would go out to meet yet another one of his friends.

  I went on with my painting until eventually Dad called for me.

  “Hey, Peter. You have to sign for something here,” he shouted.

  I knew perfectly well that he could have signed for it, so I went out to see what the fuss was about. A courier driver was waiting for me. After I’d signed his papers, he asked me where I wanted the delivery to be dropped off.

  “We deliver to the doorstep,” he added helpfully. “Not inside.”

  Apparently, his helpfulness had its limits.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder to where a wooden crate the size of a small refrigerator was standing up on a trolley.

  I asked him to walk around the corner so that we could take the crate in through the main lobby doors. When Dad and I opened the doors, he arrived pushing the trolley with one hand and holding the crate in place with the other.

  “This good?” he said, and
without waiting for my reply, he tilted the crate a little, pulled his trolley from underneath it, folded it up, and walked back to his van.

  “What’s inside?” asked Dad.

  “It looks like the crate in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The one that holds the Ark of the Covenant,” I said.

  “Let’s open it up, then.”

  Dad set to work with a screwdriver and a hammer. Inside the crate were six smaller containers, and inside each one of those was a film reel. We were going Back to the Future!

  We carried them, one by one, upstairs to the projection booth and stacked them in two piles on the round table inside.

  “Don’t you want to try it?” Dad asked me.

  I thought of Rexi, and how complicated he’d made it all sound.

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter? You chicken?”

  I scowled at him. Then I thought of Rexi again, and how arrogant he’d been. We’d managed so much, Dad and I—and really, how hard could it possibly be?

  I picked up one of the reels, walked closer to the projector, and had a look.

  I flicked a switch.

  Nothing happened.

  I pressed a button.

  Nothing happened.

  A third, a fourth, a fifth switch all gave the same result.

  Nothing.

  “Is it plugged in?” asked Dad.

  I started to laugh. I staggered over to the table and placed the film reel back into the container, and then continued to howl, leaning on my knees.

  “That’s . . . just . . . fantastic . . .” I said between bursts of hysterical laughter. “I have a movie theatre . . . I just don’t know how to show movies.”

  Dad chuckled a little. When I’d stopped laughing and wiped the tears off my face, he addressed me in his concerned-but-helpful voice.

  “I know he’s a bit of a character, but I think you’re really going to need to call Rexi.”

  “He made it pretty clear what he thinks about all this. I’m not going cap in hand to that maniac.”

  Dad sighed.

  “You know, the manager at the electronics store is a friend of mine. He showed me one of those digital projectors once. Just plug in your laptop, stick in a DVD. I’m sure he’d let you use one . . . if you gave him some tickets, maybe.”