A dead mosquito laid upside down on the lid to a particularly heavy storage bin. As I swiped it away, I recalled the time when Mara swatted a dozen flies around the playroom, then left the squished bodies as a warning to the other bugs that she was serious.
A Play-Dough sculpture sat at the bottom of the bin. I removed the colorful slab and admired Mara’s fingerprints preserved for ten years in the petrified clay. It had a flat bottom and round top; a model of a hill–Mara’s hill–with trees etched meticulously around the base and bluff like a crest of male-pattern baldness. A stout water tower had been whittled out of red clay and smushed on the plateau like a miniature Shriner hat. The hair on my neck stiffened as I studied the sculpture; a reminder that even Mara had her obsessions.
Her costume was bundled in the corner by the library exit. I unfolded the light-green fabric as if it was the Shroud of Turin. I examined the neat folds and perfect stitching where Mom demonstrated her sewing machine, then the lopsided gnarls of thread when I took over. The corset top was lashed with leather shoelaces, slack since the completion of her final scene. There was a blouse too, yellowed from years in hiding, flared sleeves, a hole on the left shoulder, and grass stains on each elbow.
Beneath the costume was a forgotten box–meant for a rock collection–that contained trinkets slipped into Mara’s pockets by the twins. There were crayons, a headless G.I. Joe, a tube of toothpaste, little green army men, and a slip of lined paper that read, “MARA” in big, crooked letters. One item was missing, and I recalled The Panty Incident when Bobby stole a pair of my mother’s underwear and slipped them under Mara’s pillow. Mara knew the culprit immediately and returned the undies to their owner. Mom and Bobby had a talk after the incident which put an end to the giving of secret gifts.
Hidden in a bin of Christmas ornaments was the reason for my visit; the complete “Fairytale” screenplay with twenty-six pages, golden brackets, the distinct spacing of my father’s word processor, and a title page:
FAIRYTALE
BY JAMES PARKER
WITH HELP FROM MARA LYNN
AND WHITNEY CONRAD THE 3RD
I scanned the text, marveled at our grade-school ambition, and made the decision to supplement “The Accidental Siren” with unmodified excerpts from several key scenes. I hope these descriptions set a humorous tone while providing a peek into the collective creativity of a boy and his pals.
* * *
06 INT. THE RED ROOM - NIGHT
THE GIRL WALKS IN A VERY INVITING ROOM WITH LOST OF RED IN THE DESIGN. A BIG BED IS IN THE ROOM. IT HAS RED AND WHITE PILLOWS. A TABLE IS IN THE MIDDLE AND COVERED WITH A MYSTERIOUS WHITE SHEET. WHITE CANDLES ARE LIT AND SIT ON OTHER SMALL TABLES.
TWO GIRLS STAND ALONG THE WALL IN SCARY POSES BUT THEY DON’T MOVE. A SCARY-SOUNDING LULLABY PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND. THE RIBBON ON THE GIRL’S FINGER LEADS HER TO A COOL LOOKING BOX WITH FRUIT IN IT. THE GIRL LOOKS AWFULLY HUNGRY. SHE REACHES FOR A STRAWBERRY BUT A SCARY VOICE MAKES HER STOP.
“Who goes there!” Dad said with a mischievous cackle.
Mara jerked her hand away from the fruit. “Who are you?” she stammered. “Where are you?”
Dad emerged from burgundy drapes. His body was wrapped in a crimson cloak, his face was plastered from hair to chin with white silicon, and his head was crowned with a tiara of black feathers. He wore pendants and chains around his neck and gloves like a butler. “I’m here,” he said in his most despicable voice.
Mom chuckled from the doorway and I shushed her immediately; the basement guest room was my set, and I wouldn’t tolerate unnecessary noise. She respected my authority and made a zipping gesture across her pinched lips. I put my eye back to the viewfinder and panned to Dad.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, little girl,” he continued. “Why don’t you come inside and relax? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Maybe just for a minute,” Mara said. She removed the ribbon from her finger, then plucked a strawberry from Mom’s fancy cigar box.
My elaborate production design included wrought-iron trinkets from around the castle, bottles from the beach, Mara’s candles (saints facing away), crystal glasses, and red curtains borrowed from Mrs. Greenfield’s antique booth in Grand Rapids. Above the bed hung a bowl of dry ice–frothing with bouts of heavy smoke–inspired by my alter boy friend.
“I’m very hungry,” Mara said.
Dad stepped forward. “Hungry, you sayyy?”
I signaled Jake with a frantic wave. He nodded, then pulled the string that raised a sheet that magically revealed a table of food.
“Whoa!” Mara said. “Is that for me?”
Dad rapped his gloved fingers together, lowered his head, and grinned. “Yes, child. It’s all for you.”
“Annnd cut!” I yelled.
Mom nearly lost it. She grabbed her knees, snorted once, but kept it in. Whit lowered the boom pole and laughed, then Mara and Jake joined in. Dad looked at me–his face like a confused hobo clown–and I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“I don’t know what’s so funny,” Livy said, dropping her arms to her side and shaking flour from her hair. “It’s the middle of July and there’s no AC down here. I get to put cute makeup on Mara, and I hafta make myself look like a dead Pinocchio.”
Mom covered her mouth to suppress the laughter. It wasn’t working.
Kimmy unhinged her pose and slapped flour from her gown. “What are we supposed to be, anyways?”
“Victims,” Whit said. “Victims of the evil monster...”
Dad raised his gloves like cat claws and snarled.
“This scene was my idea,” Whit said.
Livy sighed. “Haven’t heard that ten times in the last hour.”
Mara fanned her torso with her medieval blouse. “I think I need to pee.”
“And I need the bedazzler,” Dad said, running his fingers over the hem of his cloak. “These darned rhinestones keep falling off.”
Dad’s dry sense of humor ended Mom’s struggle for composure; she laughed until mascara drenched her face.
I shut off the camera, pulled off my headphones, and raised my hands. “Alright everybody, take five.”
* * *
14 EXT. BOAT SUNSET
THE CAPTAIN OF DEATH ROWS THE ROW BOAT ACROSS THE SEA. THE GIRL DOESN’T HAVE HER PIGTAILS ANYMORE AND HER MAKEUP IS ALMOST GONE. SHE’S WORRIED.
ALL OF A SUDDEN THE CASTLE APPEARS IN THE DISTANCE AND THE GIRL IS RELIEVED.
“There it is!” Mara shouted from the boat, pointing past the camera to the castle behind me.
Whit nodded and pulled the black cloak tightly around his skeleton face. He had dialogue, but the microphone cord didn’t reach from my camera to the actors in the boat. We would add his lines in post.
In last year’s zombie movie, I wrote too many characters that were required to walk. Whit–being my one and only friend–played every role, but his handicap posed some obvious problems. With a little movie magic, I kept the camera above his chest and chair and made him bounce his shoulders as he “walked.” The quick fix made him look more like a Muppet than a leading man, though he wasn’t exactly Harrison Ford to begin with.
This time around, I wrote more characters who remain seated; hence, the Captain of Death.
“Cut!” I shouted. “Bring it in!”
Mara waved.
Whit lowered his hood, pulled the mask to the top of his head, dipped the paddles in the water, and began rowing home.
Mom was on crowd-control duty and split her attention between the sporadic tourists on evening strolls, her twin boys digging a hole to China with plastic shovels, and the two kids in the dilapidated rowboat who never learned to swim. When a bystander tried to cross the frame, Mom caught them and quietly asked them to walk behind the camera.
It wasn’t until I began directing films that I realized how swiftly the sun sets. I had one last shot, but the shadowless glow of magic hour was quickly fading to black. I replaced the tape, set the camera to face
the castle, and beckoned my friends a second time.
They were talking. Lollygagging. And Mara was smiling.
“Hey guys!” I called. “Hurry it up!”
Mara looked and nodded. Whit was telling a story but I couldn’t hear.
I checked the castle in the viewfinder. The lighting was perfect. Squinting, I could just make out Dad’s murky form in the tower window. Apparently, his friend at the firm spotted the coveted eagles over the State Park last weekend. As I watched my father’s motionless shadow, I sensed his disappointment.
Mara’s laugh refocused my attention. The boat was beached. Mom and a stranger helped Whit transition from the boat to a lawn chair. He was laughing too.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
He shook his head in that “had-to-be-there” kinda way. His smile made me cringe.
I looked to Mara but she was busy admiring the twins’ hole.
I huffed, scratched furiously at the back of my head, and jogged to the boat. “Give me a hand, Ma?” I asked.
“Grumpy, grumpy,” she said and lifted the bow.
“I’m not grumpy but I’m losing light and I got sand in the tripod legs and I don’t know what they think is so funny.” I bent my knees and heaved the stern.
“Whit and Mara are allowed to talk, hon. You don’t need to be a part of every conversation.”
We carried the hunk of tin inland twenty feet and dropped it between the camera and castle. I brushed my hands on my swim trunks. “I need the castle in the background, but I can’t risk my camera in the lake. When I say ‘action,’ I need you to rock the boat like it’s on the water.” I crossed my arms. “Think you can handle that?”
“Don’t get snippy with me, sweetie, or your friend’ll go right back home.”
I grumbled, finalized the shot, then called for the actors.
As Mom and Mara eased Whit back into the boat, I noticed three figures a hundred yards down the shore. They were standing on the dune where the woods met the sand. They were boys... I was sure of it. And they were watching us.
A hand on my shoulder. A voice in my ear. “I’m proud of you.” With only four words, Mara nullified my jealousy over the inside joke, belittled the bullies on the hill, and made the sun stand still.
She squeezed my arm. “Just thought you should know.”
* * *
01 EXT. HAPPY WOODS - DAY
IT’S A PRETTY DAY. A YOUNG, ATTRACTIVE GIRL WALKS HAPPILY THROUGH THE FOREST CARRYING A BASKET FILLED TO THE RIM WITH FOOD AND A KITTEN. SHE PAUSES TO PLUCK A YELLOW DAISY FROM THE GROUND AND CONTINUES HER TRIP.
THE GIRL SITS BY HERSELF IN A PATCH OF FLOWERS AND TALKS TO HER LITTLE CAT.
“Good morning Dorothy! Isn’t it a beautiful day? Maybe the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen!”
I stopped Mara. She was perfect, but I asked her to stop and I gave her direction. “Try it like this,” I said, or, “Put your hand here.”
“Dorothy, you look so sad. Your fur is all messed up, your paws are all muddy, and you must be so hungry.”
Dorothy really was as ratty as my screenplay suggested; possibly the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen. The shelter had rescued the kitten after a skirmish with a pissed-off Pinscher. She had one and a half ears, three and a half paws, and her coat was a patchwork quilt of grey fur and flesh where hair would never grow. I called her “Franken-kitty” the day we got her; Mara scowled and named her Dorothy.
Luckily, the cat’s revolting appearance only added to the production value of our film... like the guy with no legs in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
“Pet her head,” I suggested. “Listen, as if the cat is actually talking. Here, let me push back your hair...”
Dad was there, standing atop The Great Divide with binoculars at his eye and the checklist in his pocket like a gun in a holster. We were safe.
“I’m sorry I was rude. You actually look nice. We’ve just been havin’ a bad week, haven’t we?” Mara laid in the grass and brushed the kitten’s crumpled whiskers against her nose.
I dismounted my camera, placed it on the ground, and aimed it at her face. A bushel of purple flowers framed her cheek. Flecks of forest dust hung like microscopic angels, grateful to inhabit the air that Mara breathed.
“I wonder how father is feeling. He’s been so worried lately.”
“Do it again,” I said. The kitten purred.
“I wonder how father is–”
“More intensity. Show real concern.”
“I wonder how father is... He’s been so... so worried lately.”
“Again,” I said. “Whisper it this time.”
“I wonder how father is... He’s been so worried lately...”
Every moment with Mara was a battle to suppress my desire in a thankless pursuit of “different”; different than Whit, different than Ms. Grisham, different than the ferrets and that priest and my father’s lingering gaze. With every urge resisted–every hair unhinged or temple un-kissed–the pressure beat more desperately against my limbs. My joints throbbed like metal pipes in winter and my body became a powder keg of pent-up pubescence.
I lost six pounds in the month of June; another three in the first week of July. Mom offered to take me to the Holland mall for new jeans, but I risked her feelings and asked to shop with Mara instead.
There were other changes that confirmed my father’s prophesy about birds and bees. Blonde fuzz began blossoming in patches like steel-wool, my voice was trapped in awkward no-man’s land, my balls began to drop, and the mounting pressure hammered my emotions until I accidentally stumbled upon the release valve in the shower. Mara had been bathing in the room between mine and theirs. As I listened to innocent patter of water against flesh, my beloved imagination worked its magic and swelled my pituitary from the size of a grape to an apple.
She finished. She unlocked both doors. A weaker mind would have barged in prematurely to “accidentally” catch a glimpse... but I was different. I waited. And when she left through the opposite door, I opened mine.
I stripped. I kneeled. I studied her sopping footprints and a smear of bubbles on the plastic curtain. I was an archeologist. Mara was my discovery. I ignored the washcloth folded neatly on the ledge of the sink and fished the medicine cabinet for a scent that could spur on the rising sensation. Watermelon lipgloss. I twirled the base. I held it to my nose. I was standing where she was standing. I was naked where she was naked.
I capped the Chapstick, grabbed the shower’s knob, and turned it on.
Instinct led my way through the thickening steam. Pleasure dictated the how and the where of certain pressure and rhythms. I followed the sensations and repeated those that seemed right, and when it was over, I collapsed to the tub and closed my eyes. I was standing tall on the precipice of manhood. I felt pure. Innocent. Renewed.
After the first, I did it again. Then again in the sink with the water on. And again with the uncomfortable chaffing of a toilet-paper tube. Some adolescents got it with magazines. Some got it with cars. I could get it only with her.
Sometimes Mara would cross herself during a silent prayer or while biking past a roadside cross. “Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch,” she taught me; a reminder of her blessed innocence and good intentions. It made me feel like a pig.
But I wasn’t gonna let her see me that way. I was gonna be different! I was gonna be different if my dick broke off in my hand. I held myself back with the belief that my diligent respect would pay off someday.
In a month and a half, Mara and I would start middle school together, and with my privileged insight into her gift, I could protect her from lesser beings. We would eat cheese and crackers for lunch. I would help her with English homework behind the curtains of the stage. She would hoist her backpack on her shoulders and peck my cheek before trudging to Algebra. In six years, we would graduate high school. Together.
This wasn’t my dream, it was our dream. In the cavern’s stillness we pillaged the remains of my sixth-grade yearbook. I
explained in detail the likeability and imbecility of every student. Together, we imagined the unknown possibilities of a new school–of junior high!–and shuddered at the promise of exams and piles upon piles of homework.
Mara stroked our kitten’s fur and sucked the gloss from her lower lip. “But Livy can show us the ropes... right?”
I nodded. “She’s pretty popular. That’ll help.”
“Sometimes she borrows my blush and shampoo, but I don’t mind.”
“What a weirdo.”
“Mmm.” Mara set Dorothy in her lap. She brushed her palm across my black-and-white classmates with their stiff haircuts and uniform smiles. There was something bleak in the way she touched the page; the same darkness I sensed the night in the tree when she used the word “gross” to describe boys.
The cat tipped on its back and pawed at a loose thread on Mara’s shirt.
“Is it weird sleeping in my sister’s room?” I asked to lighten the mood. “What do you guys talk about at night?”
She didn’t look up. “Boys and makeup, mostly.”
“Boys?”
She cradled the misshapen kitten in her pretzeled legs. “You know how you tell me what kids are cool and what kids are stuck-up?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s what your sister does, but just with the boys. Especially Ryan Brosh; says he was the Uncle Jesse of the eighth grade.”
“I think she likes him.”
Mara slugged my shoulder and grinned. “No duh, Einstein.”
I shot her a playful smile and stuck out my tongue.
She pushed the yearbook aside and spoke with exaggerated snaps of her hand and flips of her hair. “Ryan Brosh is the greatest thing to happen to the world since Saved By the Bell. Ryan Brosh doesn’t just act in musicals... he plays basketball! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a boy that likes art and sports? Oh my gosh, that almost never happens!”