Poe's Children (54 page)

A church bell rang somewhere, a long way off. Alec looked up. It was part of the film. The dead were fading away. The churlish and square-shouldered demon covered himself with his vast black wings, hiding his face from the coming of dawn. A line of robed men moved across the land below, carrying softly glowing torches. The music moved in gentle pulses. The sky was a cold, shimmering blue, light rising in it, the glow of sunrise spreading through the branches of birch trees and northern pine. Alec watched with a feeling in him like religious awe until it was over.

“I liked
Dumbo
better,” Harry said.

He flipped a switch on the wall, and a bare light bulb came on, filling the projection room with harsh white light. The last of the film squiggled through the
VITAPHONE
and came out at the other end, where it was being collected on one of the reels. The trailing end whirled around and around and went
slap, slap, slap.
Harry turned the projector off, looked at Alec over the top of the machine.

“You look better. You got your color back.”

“What did you want to talk about?” Alec remembered the vague look of warning Harry gave him when he told him not to go anywhere, and the thought occurred to him now that maybe Harry knew he had slipped in without buying a ticket, that maybe they were about to have a problem.

But Harry said, “I’m prepared to offer you a refund or two free passes to the show of your choice. Best I can do.”

Alec stared. It was a long time before he could reply.

“For what?”

“For what? To shut up about it. You know what it would do to this place if it got out about her? I got reasons to think people don’t want to pay money to sit in the dark with a chatty dead girl.”

Alec shook his head. It surprised him that Harry thought it would keep people away, if it got out that the Rosebud was haunted. Alec had an idea it would have the opposite effect. People were happy to pay for the opportunity to experience a little terror in the dark—if they weren’t there wouldn’t be any business in horror pictures. And then he remembered what Imogene Gilchrist had said to him about Harry Parcells:
he won’t run the place much longer.

“So what do you want?” Harry asked. “You want passes?”

Alec shook his head.

“Refund then.”

“No.”

Harry froze with his hand on his wallet, flashed Alec a surprised, hostile look. “What do you want then?”

“How about a job? You need someone to sell popcorn. I promise not to wear my paste-on nails to work.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment without any reply, then slowly removed his hand from his back pocket.

“Can you work weekends?” he asked.

In October, Alec hears that Steven Greenberg is back in New Hampshire, shooting exteriors for his new movie on the grounds of Phillips Exeter Academy—something with Tom Hanks and Haley Joel Osment, a misunderstood teacher inspiring troubled kid-geniuses. Alec doesn’t need to know any more than that to know it smells like Steven might be on his way to winning another Oscar. Alec, though, preferred the earlier work, Steven’s fantasies and suspense thrillers.

He considers driving down to have a look, wonders if he could talk his way onto the set
—Oh yes, I knew Steven when he was a boy—
wonders if he might even be allowed to speak with Steven himself. But he soon dismisses the idea. There must be hundreds of people in this part of New England who could claim to have known Steven back in the day, and it isn’t as if they were ever close. They only really had that one conversation, the day Steven saw her. Nothing before; nothing much after.

So it is a surprise when one Friday afternoon close to the end of the month Alec takes a call from Steven’s personal assistant, a cheerful, efficient-sounding woman named Marcia. She wants Alec to know that Steven was hoping to see him, and if he can drop in—is Sunday morning all right?—there will be a set pass waiting for him at Main Building, on the grounds of the Academy. They’ll expect to see him around 10:00
A.M.
, she says in her bright chirp of a voice, before ringing off. It is not until well after the conversation has ended, that Alec realizes he has received not an invitation, but a summons.

A goateed P.A. meets Alec at Main and walks him out to where they’re filming. Alec stands with thirty or so others, and watches from a distance, while Hanks and Osment stroll together across a green quad littered with fallen leaves, Hanks nodding pensively while Osment talks and gestures. In front of them is a dolly, with two men and their camera equipment sitting on it, and two men pulling it. Steven and a small group of others stand off to the side, Steven observing the shot on a video monitor. Alec has never been on a movie set before, and he watches the work of professional make-believe with great pleasure.

After he has what he wants, and has talked with Hanks for a few minutes about the shot, Steven starts over towards the crowd where Alec is standing. There is a shy, searching look on his face. Then he sees Alec and opens his mouth in a gap-toothed grin, lifts one hand in a wave, looks for a moment very much the lanky boy again. He asks Alec if he wants to walk to craft services with him, for a chili dog and a soda.

On the walk Steven seems anxious, jiggling the change in his pockets and shooting sideways looks at Alec. Alec knows he wants to talk about Imogene, but can’t figure how to broach the subject. When at last he begins to talk, it’s about his memories of the Rosebud. He talks about how he loved the place, talks about all the great pictures he saw for the first time there. Alec smiles and nods, but is secretly a little astounded at the depths of Steven’s self-deception. Steven never went back after
The Birds.
He didn’t see any of the movies he says he saw there.

At last, Steven stammers,
What’s going to happen to the place after you retire? Not that you should retire! I just mean—do you think you’ll run the place much longer?

Not much longer,
Alec replies—it’s the truth—but says no more. He is concerned not to degrade himself asking for a handout—although the thought is in him that this is in fact why he came. That ever since receiving Steven’s invitation to visit the set he had been fantasizing that they would talk about the Rosebud, and that Steven, who is so wealthy, and who loves movies so much, might be persuaded to throw Alec a life preserver.

The old movie houses are national treasures,
Steven says.
I own a couple, believe it or not. I run them as revival joints. I’d love to do something like that with the Rosebud someday. That’s a dream of mine, you know.

Here is his chance, the opportunity Alec was not willing to admit he was hoping for. But instead of telling him that the Rosebud is in desperate straits, sure to close, Alec changes the subject…ultimately lacks the stomach to do what must be done.

What’s your next project?
Alec asks.

After this? I was considering a remake,
Steven says, and gives him another of those shifty sideways looks from the corners of his eyes.
You’d never guess what.
Then, suddenly, he reaches out, touches Alec’s arm.
Being back in New Hampshire has really stirred some things up for me. I had a dream about our old friend, would you believe it?

Our old—
Alec starts, then realizes who he means.

I had a dream the place was closed. There was a chain on the front door, and boards in the windows. I dreamed I heard a girl crying inside,
Steven says, and grins nervously.
Isn’t that the funniest thing?

Alec drives home with a cool sweat on his face, ill at ease. He doesn’t know why he didn’t say anything, why he
couldn’t
say anything; Greenberg was practically begging to give him some money. Alec thinks bitterly that he has become a very foolish and useless old man.

At the theater there are nine messages on Alec’s machine. The first is from Lois Weisel, who Alec has not heard from in years. Her voice is brittle. She says,
Hi Alec, Lois Weisel at B.U.
As if he could have forgotten her. Lois saw Imogene in
Midnight Cowboy.
Now she teaches documentary filmmaking to graduate students. Alec knows these two things are not unconnected, just as it is no accident Steven Greenberg became what he became.
Will you give me a call? I wanted to talk to you about—I just—will you call me?
Then she laughs, a strange, frightened kind of laugh, and says,
This is crazy.
She exhales heavily.
I just wanted to find out if something was happening to the Rosebud. Something bad. So—call me.

The next message is from Dana Lewellyn who saw her in
The Wild Bunch.
The message after that is from Shane Leonard, who saw Imogene in
American Graffiti.
Darren Campbell, who saw her in
Reservoir Dogs.
Some of them talk about the dream, a dream identical to the one Steven Greenberg described, boarded-over windows, chain on the door, girl crying. Some only say they want to talk. By the time the answering machine tape has played its way to the end, Alec is sitting on the floor of his office, his hands balled into fists—an old man weeping helplessly.

Perhaps twenty people have seen Imogene in the last twenty-five years, and nearly half of them have left messages for Alec to call. The other half will get in touch with him over the next few days, to ask about the Rosebud, to talk about their dream. Alec will speak with almost everyone living who has ever seen her, all of those Imogene felt compelled to speak to: a drama professor, the manager of a video rental store, a retired financier who in his youth wrote angry, comical film reviews for
The Lansdowne Record,
and others. A whole congregation of people who flocked to the Rosebud instead of church on Sundays, those whose prayers were written by Paddy Chayefsky and whose hymnals were composed by John Williams and whose intensity of faith is a call Imogene is helpless to resist. Alec himself.

Steven’s accountant handles the fine details of the fund-raiser to save the Rosebud. The place is closed for three weeks to refurbish. New seats, state-of-the-art sound. A dozen artisans put up scaffolding and work with little paintbrushes to restore the crumbling plaster molding on the ceiling. Steven adds personnel to run the day-to-day operations. He has bought a controlling interest, and the place is really his now, although Alec has agreed to stay on to manage things for a little while.

Lois Weisel drives up three times a week to film a documentary about the renovation, using her grad students in various capacities, as electricians, sound people, grunts. Steven wants a gala reopening to celebrate the Rosebud’s past. When Alec hears what he wants to show first—a double feature of
The Wizard of Oz
and
The Birds—
his forearms prickle with gooseflesh; but he makes no argument.

On reopening night, the place is crowded like it hasn’t been since
Titanic.
The local news is there to film people walking inside in their best suits. Of course, Steven is there, which is why all the excitement…although Alec thinks he would have a sell-out even without Steven, that people would have come just to see the results of the renovation. Alec and Steven pose for photographs, the two of them standing under the marquee in their tuxedoes, shaking hands. Steven’s tuxedo is Armani, bought for the occasion. Alec got married in his.

Steven leans into him, pressing a shoulder against his chest.
What are you going to do with yourself?

Before Steven’s money, Alec would have sat behind the counter handing out tickets, and then gone up himself to start the projector. But Steven hired someone to sell tickets and run the projector. Alec says,
Guess I’m going to sit and watch the movie.

Save me a seat,
Steven says.
I might not get in until
The Birds,
though. I have some more press to do out here.

Lois Weisel has a camera set up at the front of the theater, turned to point at the audience, and loaded with high-speed film for shooting in the dark. She films the crowd at different times, recording their reactions to
The Wizard of Oz.
This was to be the conclusion of her documentary—a packed house enjoying a twentieth-century classic in this lovingly restored old movie palace—but her movie wasn’t going to end like she thought it would.

In the first shots on Lois’s reel it is possible to see Alec sitting in the back left of the theater, his face turned up towards the screen, his glasses flashing blue in the darkness. The seat to the left of him, on the aisle, is empty, the only empty seat in the house. Sometimes he can be seen eating popcorn. Other times he is just sitting there watching, his mouth open slightly, an almost worshipful look on his face.

Then in one shot he has turned sideways to face the seat to his left. He has been joined by a woman in blue. He is leaning over her. They are unmistakably kissing. No one around them pays them any mind.
The Wizard of Oz
is ending. We know this because we can hear Judy Garland, reciting the same five words over and over in a soft, yearning voice, saying—well, you know what she is saying. They are only the loveliest five words ever said in all of film.

In the shot immediately following this one, the house lights are up, and there is a crowd of people gathered around Alec’s body, slumped heavily in his seat. Steven Greenberg is in the aisle, yelping hysterically for someone to bring a doctor. A child is crying. The rest of the crowd generates a low rustling buzz of excited conversation. But never mind this shot. The footage that came just before it is much more interesting.

It is only a few seconds long, this shot of Alec and his unidentified companion—a few hundred frames of film—but it is the shot that will make Lois Weisel’s reputation, not to mention a large sum of money. It will appear on television shows about unexplained phenomena, it will be watched and re-watched at gatherings of those fascinated with the supernatural. It will be studied, written about, debunked, confirmed, and celebrated. Let’s see it again.