Lights, Camera, Amalee

by Dar Williams

Phyllis seemed to relax. “True enough,” she said. She turned to me. “The night of your mother’s … accident, she shouldn’t have been driving, and she knew it.”

  Phyllis folded her hands and looked at my dad, speaking as much to him as to me. “You see, Amalee … she was really, really drunk.”

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Phyllis and Dad’s voices murmured at the kitchen table until at least eleven o’clock, while I lay in bed and felt the wild blood pumping in my body. I remembered how angry I’d felt when I’d pushed Lenore in sixth grade. And then I remembered how upset I’d been as I sped downhill on my bike. I couldn’t imagine my dad doing any of these things. That was my mom in me. What would happen when I drank alcohol? Would I be able to stop? Would I feel wilder? And who could answer questions about how much of this stuff you can actually inherit from a parent? Phyllis made it all clear: Now I understood my dad’s sadness when he talked about Sally, everyone’s uncomfortableness when they tried to come up with words to describe her, and, I realized, how much everyone avoided talking about her. What had Joyce said? That Sally was always late for work, and that Dad was always covering up for her. It all made sense now. But this was about me, too. If Sally, my own mother, was so out of control all the time, was I a ticking time bomb counting down to crazy?

  I woke up in the morning without knowing I’d fallen asleep. I told myself to get it together. You don’t know who you are or who you will become, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I breathed evenly and got ready to go to New York City. I remembered the light that had been so beautiful on the tai chi people. Plug the camera into the TV set and see if it came out as well as you’d hoped, I told myself. Stock up your camera bag and think of questions for Gail, if we find her. Then, as if I was doing tai chi, I tried to act like a bear, steadily plodding along into the living room, slow and easy, pulling out the cables to plug into the camera. Out of habit I looked out and saw Kyle’s truck in his driveway. I felt sick. I didn’t want to look at the film or do anything productive, and I didn’t want breakfast. I didn’t feel like a strong bear — more like a flock of cranes flying in all directions. Is this when my mother would start to drink?

  “Plug in the camera,” I commanded myself softly, and I put the cable in and turned on the TV. Beautiful! The sun was so bright at some angles that it looked like it had carved the tai chi people into little stick figures. But then there was more footage, later, where I was close enough to capture the looks of peaceful concentration on their golden faces.

  Maybe everyone had to make the effort to slow way down or else they’d go flying over their own handlebars. Maybe that’s why the tai chi people did tai chi.

  “Kyle has a skinny, tall, beautiful girlfriend, but two people can be beautiful, and everyone has their own style,” I told myself, out loud since Dad had already left for work.

  Phyllis arrived fifteen minutes later and we drove to the train station. She was silent for almost two minutes, which was a first for her.

  “So, are you angry with me?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. In fact, I was amazed Phyllis had been able to keep the secret about my mother for so long.

  “Your dad is not happy with me,” she said. “After you went to bed, he said he wished we’d waited a few years to tell you about your mom.”

  “He’s wrong.” I said. “You were right.”

  “I was thinking about it. I didn’t break it to you gently.”

  “I’m not angry,” I repeated. How she told me was not the problem. “So, does this mean my mother was an alcoholic?”

  “Yes,” she said. “With some people it’s a fine line. They just drink a lot. But the definition of alcoholism is that alcohol interferes with your work or your personal life, and alcohol interfered with everything your mother did. That’s just a fact. Even your dad knew it eventually.”

  “Was she born an alcoholic?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Nobody knows if you’re born with it or whether or not you inherit it.” She looked at me.

  “So I could have it,” I said.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Phyllis said.

  “Why not? How do you know?” I asked. I wasn’t angry. I hoped I didn’t sound angry.

  “You don’t remind me of your mother,” Phyllis explained. “You remind me of … well, you remind me a little of me.” She was silent for another record two minutes.

  When we got to the train station, I insisted on buying our tickets. “Okay,” she said, “but I’m getting lunch. I want to go to a nice restaurant.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said as we got on the train, but not loud enough for her to hear.

  I felt a little relieved that Phyllis, the practical planner, thought I was like her. She seemed embarrassed by what she’d said, however, so I let her change the subject and keep it changed.

  I told her that I was getting information, but I still didn’t have anything for Frog X, the not-useful species that we protect for the sake of protecting it.

  “Hm, I can understand your problem there. Maybe you should talk to your dad. If the reasons you save Frog X are not practical, they’re philosophical. He’s a philosopher.”

  “Practically stated,” I said, and thought about how practical Phyllis was, and again how she thought that I was like her. That made me stand a little taller and straighten the strap on my camera bag.

  We were now in Grand Central Station, admiring the constellations painted on the ceiling. Animals are everywhere, I thought, even in the sky. Phyllis scanned the subway map and got us on the shuttle heading west, then on the C train to get to the museum.

  Usually when I was in the city, I looked at things like noses or hairstyles or eyes, but today all I saw was animals and plants. Buttons were shaped like flowers; one woman had a toucan bird-shaped clasp on her purse; there were barrettes with elephants on them; there was a tote bag with a misty photo of a rain forest; and every school shirt had a mascot, like a tiger or a ram.

  Somehow I felt Frog X here, but I couldn’t tell why. Protecting it was important, and I felt like the reason was right here with us in this subway car. We reached the Museum of Natural History stop, with its tile mosaics of grand animals superimposed on their extinct ancestors and bronze imprints of their footprints. I thought about how on the subway, people kept their plants and animals almost hidden, as if they were saying, “I have an animal on my shirt, but don’t worry, I’m reading this paper. I’m a human who thinks about humans, and buildings, and money. Human things.” But here at the museum stop, all the animals were right out in the open, stamping around the walls, fur and teeth and tails, and people were flooding out of the subway cars with us to spend the day with them.

  “I’m so glad we’re here!” Phyllis said, echoing my excitement. Then she added, “I’m not going to say a word during the interview.” She took me by the shoulders and putting me squarely in front of her as we entered the museum. We went up the stairs. After looking at the long line, Phyllis decided to become a museum member so we could wing our way through the short line. That was nice of her.

  Soon we found the Hall of Biodiversity, glowing darkly like a forest with the sun barely shining through the branches. The forest turned out to be a copy of a nature reserve in the middle of the Central African Republic, and there were descriptions of all the things that were threatening the huge area of forest.

  Next to the replica of the forest, there were flat television panels with an ongoing stream of information flashing across them. Underneath was information written on clear plastic panels, and Phyllis pointed out that each of those panels related to a part of the planet that was particularly fragile, like islands, forests, and coral reefs. All the information was pointing to how quickly these places were disappearing.

  Across the way, there was a huge wall with fake (or so I hoped) animals pinned up in huge fountains of small to large animals, like fountains of life.

  “Are those food chains?” I asked Phyllis.

  “N
o, I think it shows animals that are related to each other,” Phyllis observed.

  There were sea turtles and frogs and insects of every color and strange shape, starting with things like beetles at the bottom and getting bigger and bigger. “Maybe they’re just trying to show the everythingness of everything,” I said, and Phyllis laughed.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking maybe all they’re doing is showing us how cool the world is by just lighting it well. I’m not sure how they’re all connected,” she said. “Hey, here’s a food chain.”

  There was a clear panel running like a long counter below the animals on the wall. Phyllis and I read about sea otters. Sea otters eat sea urchins. Sea urchins eat kelp. A huge number of sea creatures, including fish, of course, live in the kelp, and seabirds eat the fish. If there aren’t enough sea otters — and at one point they were more endangered than they are now — there are too many sea urchins, and they eat all the kelp, so the sea creatures who lived in the kelp have no place to live. Then the birds don’t have anything to eat. I started writing all this down.

  We also saw an example of an animal that warns us, like the mutated frogs, that we could be in danger ourselves. Mussels, which look like clams, filter water all the time, but since they filter about a gallon of water every two hours, they’re easily hurt by water pollution. When mussel populations go down, scientists get worried.

  We walked around for another ten minutes before I felt overwhelmed.

  “This shows the webs of life, shows their beauty, shows the warnings we get from the environment…. What do I have to add to this?” I was glad I’d said it out loud.

  “Well, why do you think you should make a film about this?” Phyllis asked.

  “That’s just it — I’m not sure I should!” I yelled in a whisper.

  “Argh, I’m such a bad therapist.” Phyllis sighed. “I was trying to get you to say for yourself what I want to say, which is that you, Amalee Everly, bright, unusual young woman that you are, will put your stamp on your film. You will make your film. Look at all of this stuff that is disappearing! They shouldn’t call this the Hall of Biodiversity — they should call it the Hall of Boy Are We in Trouble. We need many different voices to speak for the many different species, right?”

  “Thank you, Phyllis,” I said, turning away to read a panel about the dangers of clear-cutting forests. I felt embarrassed by such a big compliment, but also back on track.

  “I can see why this is too much, though,” she agreed. “Let’s talk to this Gail person if we can find her. Or let’s let you talk to her.”

  I went to the information desk and asked for Gail.

  “Gail who?” the volunteer asked a little suspiciously.

  “She’s doing work on a reserve for the Hall of Biodiversity,” I explained.

  “But what’s her name?” the woman interrupted.

  Phyllis surprised me, the way she sometimes did, with a little lie. “She said her name so fast, we don’t know what it is. I should have asked her to spell it. She said there were two of them here!” She laughed apologetically.

  “So she’s expecting you?” the woman asked.

  “We’re early,” I said.

  “She’s still at lunch,” the woman said. Then, out of the blue, she added, “You know, she goes to that fancy coffee place where she can plug in her computer and do the Internet.”

  “Oh, the one on Columbus?” Phyllis asked. “That’s funny, I thought that was her in the window.”

  “Yeah, that was her,” the woman said.

  Phyllis and I made a plan. First we had to tell each other what good liars we were. Then we agreed that we would find this woman and tell her what I was up to and ask if we could meet her back at the museum.

  In the café, we found a woman with long brown hair held back with two clips that had giraffes on them. She was the only woman there with a laptop computer. We stood and stared at her for a moment. She looked up nervously from her computer screen.

  “May I help you?” she asked politely.

  “Yes,” I said, pleased that my voice sounded clear. “Are you Gail?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  I dived in. “I’m making a film about endangered species, and I was wondering if I could talk to you about food chains or, um, the web of life. The people at the museum said you were the person to talk to.”

  The woman looked panicked. She bit her lip and then said, a bit impatiently, “You can go to the museum Web site and get lots of information. Have you done that?”

  “Yes, it’s just that I wanted to talk with a person,” I croaked. Phyllis cleared her throat. I was caught between two nervous women. One didn’t want to talk to me, and one wanted me to ask the other one to talk.

  “I guess I was wondering if there was …” Relax and speak, relax and speak. “I want to show that one reason to protect species is that they all fit in a food chain, and I was wondering if you could recommend a food chain that you think is interesting.” How stupid did that sound? Ellen and Hallie popped into my head to say it sounded plenty stupid. But then Sarah popped in and said that Ellen and Hallie were stupid, and Phyllis cleared her throat again.

  “Is this something you know about?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the woman said cautiously.

  “I’ve heard that you’re really interested in this stuff.”

  “I am. It’s just that …” she said, and suddenly, like Ms. Hazlett at the bank, she relaxed her shoulders, looked at Phyllis, and said, “What’s that word that means dread, when you have a sense of … a sense of — agh! What is that word?”

  “Foreboding,” Phyllis said without a pause.

  “That’s it!” Gail exclaimed happily. “I’m writing a letter to my future mother-in-law about the caterer she wanted me to use for my wedding. I didn’t want to say I dreaded using him.” She typed as she spoke. “I’ll just say I have a sense of foreboding about how busy he is. There. That won’t offend her, will it?”

  “Not at all. In fact, you’re implying that she’s chosen a caterer who is in demand and therefore a good choice,” Phyllis pointed out.

  “Phew!” Gail said, typing a few more words and pressing the SEND key.

  “It’s hard to disagree with your future mother-in-law,” Phyllis sympathized.

  “It sure is. She’s an Upper East Side society lady, too. Champagne tastes and easily offended,” Gail blurted out.

  Phyllis nodded. I had no idea what was being said, and I suspected Phyllis didn’t, either, but suddenly we both loved this quirky woman in an old cotton sweater with no makeup and a future mother-in-law who liked champagne.

  Gail clapped her hands and said, “That was a relief. Okay, you got me. I want to help you. I’m not sure that I can, but let’s see. Can you come back to my office?”

  Five minutes later, she’d waved us through the museum and into her office, which was filled with souvenirs from many adventures. There were pictures of friends next to each of them. There was a piece of stone that was cut into a thin slice that looked like the view of a tropical sea from an airplane. It must have had seventeen shades of green and blue. It was labeled AUSTRALIAN TURQUOISE. Next to it was a photograph of a smiling friend with a loose, messy ponytail standing next to a kangaroo. There was also a long feather labeled AMERICAN EAGLE next to a picture of a man standing with a majestic snowcapped mountain behind him. There was a bright red choker of beads hanging over a picture of a friend from Africa. Under the picture was a small label that just said, NAOMI, UGANDA 1999.

  Gail started to open some files on her computer. Then she turned to me and said, “Let’s go to Asia, shall we? That’s where I’ve spent the most time. India, to be exact.”

  She took us to a Web site that was all about the Western Ghats of India.

  “This is a Web site about a coastal region in western India. It’s a hodgepodge of different terrains, including rain forest and plains. What’s amazing is that you can’t get to some of the densest forest, because it grows up
so much during the rainy season. You know what I wish we could do? I wish we could get those little spaceships that they sent to Mars but drop them down with night-vision cameras into the middle of this forest. I would spend the rest of my life documenting the wildest of wildlife.”

  “Why don’t you do that?” I asked.

  “Hoo boy, where do I start? With money, I guess. It starts and ends with money. Come to think of it, it probably wouldn’t work. There are fewer tree branches to get stuck in on Mars.”

  Gail pulled up some images of animals. There were jackals, elephants, leopards, panthers, crocodiles, tigers, and some animals I’d never heard of, like the Nilgiri langur, which was a monkey, and Nilgiri tahr, which looked like a mountain goat.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a little creature whose head was mostly eyes, under which was a tiny pointed nose and nervous little mouth.

  “That’s a slender loris,” Gail said proudly. “They are awesome. They come out at night. It’s very rare to see one.”

  “Are they a good example for a food chain? If you took them away, would a whole lot of other animals I’ve never seen before disappear?”

  “Depending on your definitions, everything you see here is endangered, from the loris to the leopard, but it’s overall habitat threatened by human development and climate change, not one thing that’s taken away, leaving the whole food chain in jeopardy. Oh, dear, I guess this isn’t exactly what you asked for. There are animals that are listed as endangered….” Gail said.

  I still knew I could use this. “Can I get pictures of the ones on the endangered list?” I asked. “In fact, if I made a list, does this museum have pictures of a lot of different species that I could show in my movie?”

  “Sure. I could arrange that. Meanwhile, why don’t I tell you the basics of a food chain. Would that help? They show it close to the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest display in the Hall of Biodiversity. Here’s the deal —”

  “Would you mind if I filmed you while we did this?” I asked.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Just a minute.” She left, then reappeared as Phyllis and I were reading an article about a tiger reserve and looking at pictures. Gail had brushed her hair, and was wearing mascara and lipstick.