The Full Cleveland (11 page)

“Don't look now,” she said as we walked on, “but there's a psychopath behind us.”

Mary Parker turned to look, though. She took her sweet time, too. “Sorry. He's not a psychopath,” she said, turning back around. “I think he's a sociopath.”

“We're going pretty slow.”

“Don't freak out. See if he follows us to the movie.”

At the ticket window, I finally turned around. But there was only a nice-looking businessman in a hat. “Where?”

“Uh, the only guy there?”

It was the nice-looking businessman in the hat. He was standing beside a poster showing the werewolf of the movie as a monster-in-progress, as he was making the transformation from man to beast. The man, the real man, lit a cigarette and threw the matchbook into the street. “He's not all that scary, Mary. He looks like somebody's father.” Personally, I thought the poster was scarier.

“Maybe he is somebody's father. But I assure you he's also nuts.”

When we handed the usher our tickets, the man in the hat approached the cashier. “Sit in the back row,” Mary Parker whispered. And she sat beside me, on the aisle.

The man in the hat came in and sat in the row ahead of us, even though there were only three other people in the theater and there were plenty of empty seats to choose from. Once the lights went down, he sat kind of sideways, so he was half looking at us, half looking at the werewolf. “What's he doing?” I whispered.

Mary Parker turned to assess me in the dark. But all she said was, “Never mind.”

The man in the hat stayed for only the first half of the double feature. Before
Shadow of the Cat
, he stood up and went by, leaning and whispering to Mary Parker as he passed. Up close, he didn't look so nice after all. “What did he say?” I whispered, turning to watch him amble toward the exit sign.

“He hissed.”

“He hissed?”

She shrugged. “He hissed.” And just then, the werewolf appeared again at the end of the credits and did the same thing on the screen. It lasted like an hour. It sent shivers down your spine.

We still watched
Shadow of the Cat
, though. Then we watched the entire double feature one more time. Then the usher told us that as far as young girls were concerned, the theater was closed.

It was dark outside. There were only a few people on the streets of downtown Cleveland, and they were either sitting or lying on them. “I wish I were old and rich,” I said. “Then I'd give these people houses.”

Mary Parker kind of laughed. “When you're old and rich, you won't, though.”

I still thought I would. I just didn't say so.

As we walked, I kept looking over my shoulder, checking dark doorways, hoping not to find the werewolf from the movie clinging to the bars of a window, sprouting hair and fangs, howling in his transformational agony at the full moon. Then I looked straight ahead, and, crossing ahead of us, his long shadow cast in the light of a streetlamp—was the man in the hat. “Look,” I said, stopping Mary Parker by the arm.

“Whoa. It's the wolf.”

We ran twelve blocks to Terminal Tower, where we were the only people tearing down the platform to the train. Mary Parker got off at her stop, and I went on alone. But I thought how fear was the opposite of love the whole way home.

One of the garage doors was open, which was good because that meant Mother and Dad were already out. Saturday nights they often went to a cocktail party or an open house. When I once asked Mother what an “open house” was, she said it meant dinner would not be served. When I asked her then what was served, she said cocktails. But then I forgot to ask her what was the difference between a cocktail party and an open house.

She dressed the same for either one. And she always came to show Cabot and me before she left the house. We loved her party dresses. When we were younger, they had been flowing and full-skirted, now they were chic and short. But almost always when she was ready for the cocktail party or the open house, we said how she looked like a picture in a magazine. Cabot especially always said it. I figured that's why Cabot could only draw pictures of pictures of real people. I'd have to ask Mary Parker about that.

“Where've you been?” Clarine asked when she caught me trying to be clever by circling around after checking the garage and coming in the front door. You almost never got caught coming in the front door, because Clarine hardly ever hung out around there.

“With my friend.”

“Then where's your friend been?”

I tried to slip past her. She snatched me by the arm.

“We kept trying to come home, but we were followed.”

“By what?”

“A man in a hat.”

Clarine's eyes widened into southern sunflower position, which they would do on special occasions. Then I told her about the double feature, and about watching it twice, just to make sure a certain man in a hat was gone. But I didn't tell her we saw him later in the light of a streetlamp, and I sure didn't tell her it all happened downtown.

Matt smelled trouble and came out of the library. He was seventeen now, and I suppose tall, dark, and handsome, because all the girls liked him. It was a nuisance, because they so often wanted to brainstorm with me about it. From the way he was all cleaned up and everything, you had to guess he was on his way out to break a few more hearts.

Clarine said, “No more picture shows for you, miss,” and “Wait until your ma hears about this,” but I suspected these were idle threats. She closed down her eyes and marched in full displeasure toward the back.

“Hey, who's your sexy friend?” Matt asked me. “I saw you guys downtown.”

“Then how come you didn't say hello?”

“Because you were running.”

“Oh.”

“Why were you running?”

“Because we'd just robbed a store.”

Matt just stood there. He had dark eyebrows, and he knew how to use them. But now they remained intentionally flat and unimpressed. He said, “Yeah, right.”

Well, so what if he didn't believe me. We had robbed a store. Just as he had, actually: stealing the stuff and then putting it back. He didn't own the patent on it. “So you thought my friend was sexy?”

“She looks like a cute little revolutionary.”

“A cute little revolutionary?” I looked up. Cabot's long blond hair hung in loose curtains over the banister, making me regret the bobby pin girl. “Matt, seriously. Time to tell us what planet you are from.”

I hesitated, for sure, but I asked them anyway. “So am I sexy?”

Luke sped through the hall, a football cradled in his arm, as if walking, but fast, toward a goalpost, because he wasn't allowed to run for touchdowns in the house. He said, “Too close to call.” And was gone as fast as he came.

“I think you are.” It was six-year-old Lucy in pajamas, joining Cabot on the landing.

“Thanks, Luce.”

“That's okay.”

“What's this nasty talk? Don't you know a baby when you see one?” Clarine appeared, scooped up Lucy and carried her back toward her room.

We all looked at one another. A baby? Let go, already, Clarine.

“Who'd you go with?” Cabot asked. “What revolutionary?”

“Mary Parker.”

“You went with Mary Parker?” She was impressed. You could tell. “How did that happen?”

I said pointedly, “Because she heard you call me Zuzu at school.”

Which Cabot was strictly not supposed to do, though now I was pretty glad she had. But no point in letting her know that.

“I did? Sorry.”

But then it reminded me, and since I had them together, I thought I'd better tell them the bad news about
It's a Wonderful Life.
“Did you guys know that the man in the movie Dad nicknamed me after is named George?”

Cabot said, “And?”

“Well, that's Dad's name.”

Matt said, “George?”

Cabot said, “Yeah, Matt. You didn't know that?”

Luke cruised back in with his football and stopped. “I did.”

Cabot said, “Good. Good, everybody. We all know Dad's name.”

I said, “We're in big trouble, because this
other
George, you won't believe what he does.”

Cabot said, “Well, he is the other George.”

I said, “But there are already two people named after this movie in the family. How do we know there aren't more?”

Luke said, “What movie?”

Cabot said, “What's their last name in the movie?”

“Bailey.”

“Then I wouldn't worry about it.”

“But how do we know the whole
family's
not named after it? And Dad's trying to, like,
copy
it?”

Luke said, “What movie?”

Cabot said, “Because
she
named the boys. Dad only named us. If we had been boys, we would have been named Mark and John, so she could have the four guys who wrote the Bible. She was totally praying we would be boys.”

Matt said, “She wasn't the only one.”

Luke said, “What about Lucy?”

Cabot said instantly, “Peter, Paul, or Jude.”

As per usual, they had an enormous knack for missing the point. “I'm just warning you, Dad thinks he's living in some movie where a guy named George loses everybody's money and tries to kill himself.”

“Chill,” Matt said. “It has a happy ending.”

Cabot sighed. “I wish he'd talk about it.”

“I'm just warning you….”

“See you,” Matt said, and started jingling the keys to a Buick.

Luke said,
“What movie?”
But I guess nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.

Monday morning at Assembly, she didn't even look at me. I figured she didn't want to make too big a deal over the fact that we'd done something together over the weekend. So I played it rather cool myself. Except in afternoon Assembly, when I broke down and wrote her a note:
My brother Matt saw us robbing Woolworth's and he thinks you're sexy.

This is what Mary Parker wrote back:
Would you rather be, 1. As smart as Einstein, 2. As good as Gandhi, or 3. As beautiful as Scarlett O'Hara?

I thought about it. After Saint Theresa and Mickey Knight, I'd already given up on beautiful. And after Mary Parker, I wasn't going for smart. So I finally circled “Good as Gandhi” and passed the note back up.

She passed it back.
Try again.

That wasn't the right answer? I was surprised. But I wouldn't mind “Smart as Einstein,” if she insisted, so I circled that and passed it back.

She wrote,
And again.

I had no choice but to circle Scarlett O'Hara. I wrote beside it:
She's some old movie star, right?

She wrote:
Meet me on the Rapid Transit at nine tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow was a school day.

She turned around. “You'll be with me. I'll fake you a note.”

So the next morning I lurked around, then left the house late and met Mary Parker on the Rapid Transit. She was wearing the same black outfit she had worn on Saturday, and her hair was back up in its ponytail. She had the movie we were going to see circled in red in the
Plain Dealer.
It was
Gone With the Wind.
“We had to see it today,” she said. “It's a revival, and it's leaving Wednesday.”

Silently, I began to account for the many days Mary Parker wasn't in school.

We watched the movie twice, but I still left the theater near tears. “She loses Rhett Butler, after all that,” I sniffed, dabbing my eyes. “That's a terrible way to end a story.”

“Nah, he'll come back to her in the sequel.”

“He will?” He didn't seem like he would, with the way it ended, with the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.” But as far as I knew so far, Mary Parker had never been wrong.

We were waiting for the Rapid Transit at Terminal Tower when Mary Parker suddenly asked me that same strange question again. Would I like to be as smart as Einstein, as good as Gandhi, or as beautiful as Scarlett O'Hara?

“As beautiful as Scarlett O'Hara.”

Mary Parker smiled. “Even if she loses Rhett Butler in the end?”

“He's coming back to her in the sequel.”

“Well, I can't guarantee that.”

“You can't?”

Mary watched the Rapid approach through the dark tunnel and said, “There's only one guarantee. All stories end in death or marriage.”

But I wasn't really listening because I was thinking ahead to the sequel. “All stories end in death or marriage,” I repeated mindlessly.