Twilight Zone The Movie (10 page)

“Looks aren’t everything,” Mama used to say. “Maybe you’re not exactly beautiful, but you’ve got a good brain. Just use it and everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

So Vivian smiled and pouted her way through life, short on skills but relying on long eyelashes and girlish ways to win her permanent security—a loyal and loving husband, two adorable children, a good home, and a circle of admiring friends.

Helen took Mama’s advice to heart. She used her brains, studied hard. Vivian had been the Prom Queen but it was Helen who graduated at the head of the class and went on to a teaching career.

And here she was, ten years later; with any luck she could continue teaching right up until the day when she would join Mama forever in the family plot at Rose Hill Cemetery. So much for brains and Mama’s counsel.

For a moment Helen gazed down at her mother’s face, feeling the old anger rise within her. Then she sighed softly.

No sense resenting Mama’s advice; it was she herself who was to be blamed for taking it, and it was too late to change matters now. Vivian would continue to cry to be comforted, poor little thing; Helen would go on coping, facing each problem as it arose and solving all of them except her own.

Last week, when Mama died after the operation, Vivian had hysterics and took to her bed, surrounded by her family and comforted by their concern. It was Helen who had to come running to the rescue, go through the grim business of filling out the forms, making the funeral arrangements, handling details and down payments. After all, isn’t that what brains are for?

Helen sighed again. Mama couldn’t help her now, but neither could self-pity. No sense dwelling on the past; it was time to think of the future and she had already made up her mind.

Vivian glanced up, her sobs subsiding. “I suppose you’ll be leaving,” she said.

Helen nodded. “Right after the funeral. No reason to stay, now that Mama’s gone.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?” Vivian seemed perplexed, rather than concerned. “What about your job?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t even feel like a teacher anymore. I’ve got nothing left to give those kids that means anything.”

Helen answered without premeditation, but as she spoke she realized the truth of her words. “I’m running on empty, Viv. I’ve got to make the break now. I stayed in town as long as Mama needed me, but I can’t go on here in the same old rut forever. I feel all used up inside.”

“I know what you mean,” Vivian said. But from the way her mouth tightened, Helen knew she didn’t understand. “It’s just that you don’t seem to realize you’ll be leaving your whole life behind you.”

Helen nodded. “I do realize it.” She paused. “That’s exactly the reason I’m going.”

Vivian stared at her in concern. Self-concern, of course; it was the only kind she knew. “But if you go, what about me?”

“You have your own life—Jim and the kids. That’s not what I thought I wanted, remember?”

“I remember.” Vivian dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “So what is it you think you want now?”

“I wish I knew.”

Helen hesitated for a moment, listening to the soft strings of the piped-in organ music, the familiar melody that seemed to haunt the halls of every funeral parlor. She and Vivian had probably heard it a hundred times before and the way each of them identified it probably defined the difference between them. Vivian knew the melody simply as a song “Going Home.” Helen recognized it as the Largo from Dvorak’s
New World.
To be more precise, his Ninth Symphony in E, Opus Ninety-Five. Yes, that was the real difference between the two of them. All those years of learning left her a single legacy—a brain full of trivia, which nobody, including grubby students, cared about, while empty-headed Vivian ended up with everything she’d always wanted, everything she needed for the good life as it was lived in suburbia.

“Sorry, Viv,” she said. “I guess I’m not sure myself about what I really want. But I know it’s not here, not in Homewood. Not for me.”

“Well, if you’ve made up your mind—” Vivian shrugged, her voice softening. “I just thought maybe I could talk you out of it.”

Helen shook her head. “Not this time.”

“I only hope you know where you’re going.” Vivian sighed again, then brightened. “Listen to what they’re playing,” she said. “I always liked that piece. What did they call it?” She smiled. “Oh, I remember now—it’s ‘Going Home.’ ”

So that was that.

Once the funeral ended, everybody was going home; Vivian to her family, Mama to heaven, granted there was such a place to go. And now Helen was alone. Only she and Thomas Wolfe seemed to realize that you can’t go home again.

She drove along in the afternoon sunlight, music blaring from her car radio. Punk rock, of course; Dvorak was strictly for funeral parlors nowadays. “Slumber Room”—how she hated the hypocritical euphemism! But maybe that was the correct designation for one of the few places left in the world where one could take refuge in the soothing solace of sleep, undisturbed by the ceaseless clamor of savage sound. What kind of sacred music would they be playing when today’s children were laid to rest?

Helen leaned forward, switching off the music. Hearing it only evoked an unpleasant recollection of the life she fled from; memories of classrooms filled with rebellious youngsters moving to the beat of a different drum, the twang of guitars, the screech of voices raised in dissonant defiance.

They were all alike today, or so it seemed; underprivileged kids from broken families that gave them too little and overprivileged kids from broken families that gave them too much. But like herself, they seemed to have found no home to go to, and so they dropped out into an artificial existence, surrounding themselves with a protective barrier of stereophonic sound.

Helen shook her head ruefully. No sense going overboard; the least she could do was to own up to the truth. Not all youngsters were on drugs, not all of them flouted authority. But even the conformists seemed to be hooked on sound, ODing on decibels. They sought noise everywhere; injecting their eardrums with a daily dosage of rock, mainlining on the shrieks and groans of splatter-films, the cacophony of commercial commands from their television sets, the clatter of clamor of video-games. No wonder the voices of parents and teachers alike were lost in the din. Teaching was an art, and like all arts it depended upon communication. But how can you hope to communicate with anyone in the midst of all that noise?

Maybe that’s what she was really running from. Running from the noise that negated every effort to fulfill the life she’d chosen. What was the sense of trying to teach when nobody
listened?

Helen shook her head. Big deal! It was easy enough to see the problems; the hard part was to come up with the proper solutions. She knew the questions, all right, but not the answers. And when you don’t have any answers, what is there left for you to teach?

That was the bottom line. She wasn’t running away from noise, youthful protests, or social upheaval. She was running, and running scared, from the realization of her ignorance.

I don’t want to be a teacher anymore,
she told herself.
I want to be a learner.

Abruptly she glanced up at a roadside sign on the right, noting its message.
CLIFFORDSVILLE 5.

Cliffordsville? Helen glanced at her watch quickly. Almost five o’clock—she should have been in Willoughby at least half an hour ago at the rate she was traveling. What was she doing five miles away from a town she hadn’t even noticed on the roadmap? And why hadn’t she had the sense to bring the map along with her?

She shook her head. All this worrying about kids who don’t pay attention, and where does it get you? Lost, that’s where.
If I really want to be a learner, I’d better start right now.

Peering through the windshield against the slanting rays of midafternoon sun, Helen saw the outline of a small structure set back from the highway ahead and to her left.

As she neared it, she noted the lettered injunction of the sign mounted atop its flat roof—
Eat.

Helen had private reservations about the wisdom of obeying such a command; her past experience with roadside cafés in lonely rural areas like this had not been all that pleasant. Nevertheless, she swerved to the left and entered the parking area before the weatherbeaten structure. There were only two other cars parked beside the entrance and she pulled up a short distance away. Then she moved across the gravel to the door.

As she opened it, a wave of warm air fanned her face, carrying with it the all-too-familiar reek of fast-food at its greasiest—a stomach-churning composite of French fries, cheeseburgers, and frozen pizzas which had been subjected to ordeal by fire.

Thank goodness she’d had a late breakfast before taking off! As it was she could make do with a cup of coffee; it was probably the only thing she could order here that wasn’t fried. What she was really looking for, of course, was a roadmap.

Luck was with her. Seating herself on a counter stool, Helen confronted a multi-talented, middle-aged man serving as the maitre d’, chef, waiter, and busboy.

“What’ll it be, miss?” he asked.

Helen told him what it would be, and as he busied himself at the coffee urn, she glanced past the side of the counter toward the two men seated at a corner table. Both appeared to be in their mid-thirties, too old for playing but happily resigned to their role as full-time spectators and sports commentators.

Glancing over their beer, they stared raptly at the screen of the television set mounted above the counter at the far end.

Jocks tossed a football across the full length of the nineteen-inch tube, then tumbled in a writhing heap at its base, their minuscule movements accompanied by the excited outcries of an unseen sportscaster.

More noise.
Helen shrugged; no matter where you went, you couldn’t get away from it.

Then, glancing down the counter in the opposite direction, she discovered another source of sound—the electronic emanation from a video-game enthusiastically operated by a small boy. At first glance he didn’t appear to be any older than ten; if so, why wasn’t he in school at this hour?

Helen frowned at the thought.
There you go again, still playing teacher! I thought we were through with all that, remember?

Her frown vanished as the counterman set the coffee mug before her.

“Would that be all?” he asked. A pudgy thumb gestured toward the flyspecked glass container on the shelf directly behind him. “We got some nice pie, just came in today.”

Helen shook her head. “You know what I want for dessert?” she said. “A nice, fresh roadmap.”

The counterman’s forehead furrowed into a frown and Helen nodded quickly. “Really—if you have one, I’d be very much obliged if you’d let me take a look at it.”

The counterman’s face relaxed in an amiable grin. “Sure thing. Got one lying around someplace—think I stuck it under the register.”

Helen sipped her coffee as he moved away. In a moment he returned, brandishing the highway map triumphantly.

“Here you are.”

He placed his find on the countertop before her. Helen lifted it gingerly. It was a map, no doubt about that, but one could hardly call it fresh. The outer surface was wrinkled and creased; and when she unfolded it, she was confronted with smudges of grease, which streaked and stained most of this area and the surrounding counties. Whoever fried this map hadn’t done a very good job, Helen decided. But if she wanted to see what’s cooking—

Helen studied the map for a moment, eyes narrowing as she squinted through the stains, then halted with a sigh of exasperation. “Okay, I give up. Where am I?”

The counterman jabbed a greasy forefinger at a smudge in the center of the map. “Here. You want the main highway, right?”

Helen nodded. “I guess so.”

The counterman’s finger moved a trifle to the left. “Looks like you missed the turnoff at Cliffordsville.”

“Oh—I see.”

Mine host smiled knowingly; he was in his glory now. “Look—about two miles back, you come to a gas station. That’s Cayuga. You hang a left, go four blocks, and the highway cuts across. There you—”

He broke off as banging sounds rose from the far corner.

Helen turned and saw the source of the disturbance. The kid was pounding the side of the video-game, and each blow caused a blip of interference on the TV picture, much to the annoyance of the two customers watching the game.

Raising his voice over the noise of repeated banging, the counterman called out, “Hey, kid, easy on the machinery!”

The blows ceased abruptly as the boy glanced up. “It doesn’t work right,” he said.

The counterman shrugged. “Look, kid, I don’t build the games, I just keep the quarters. Put in another one. Maybe it’ll work better.”

He turned back to Helen and his finger moved down to the map again. “See, just outside Cayuga, the highway splits off—”

A sudden series of thumps echoed through the confines of the café and he broke off, frowning.

One of the men at the table called loudly. “Hey, Walter, the kid’s screwing up the TV!”

The counterman shrugged. “It’s his quarter. The TV’s free.”

The other customer shared his companion’s scowl. “Cut out that noise! I got twenty bucks riding on this game!”

The counterman nodded toward the youngster standing in front of the video-game. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s cool it, huh?”

The boy didn’t reply. Inserting another quarter, he resumed his play, this time without a pounding accompaniment.

Now the only counterpoint to the counterman’s conversation came from the continuing babble of the TV sportscaster.

As Helen watched, her informant began to fold the map as carefully as if the grease-spattered chart contained clues to the location of buried treasure. “You say you’re headed for Willoughby?”

“That’s right.” Helen nodded.

“Nice town. You got a job set up there, or what?”

“Not really. I thought I’d just take a look around.”

The counterman placed the folded map in his right-hand trouser pocket with tender loving care. “Where’re you from?” he asked.