I’ve tried to speak with Wendy, or her curled-up blanket-covered body on the couch. At first I said I was sorry about what happened. I asked if we should report Adam to the police and offered to go with her, to hold her hand the whole time while she reported the violence her man had committed—I even told her how hard it was for me to be alone when I had to talk to the hospital people and social workers about the squid cancer that was eating Mom’s brain, how I wish I had had someone to hold my hand and stay by my side—but Wendy did not respond; she didn’t even make eye contact with me. Then I asked her if she wanted to counsel me about having a beer with a woman at the bar, thinking that maybe returning to our original roles would help her feel better and more normal. But Wendy didn’t even pick up her head. Next I tried to talk to her about the weather and current events, which I had read about on the Internet at the library, but she didn’t respond. She kept her head buried in the cushions of the couch. So I just listened to the tough (or lazy) birds outside the kitchen window, and I thought about how those little winged creatures sing on and on regardless of who dies or who gets beaten or who feels like a miserable failure.
The birds are steady as the sun.
Last night, I wanted to watch a movie, because I was feeling the need for some “movie magic,” as Mom used to say, because she and I always watched a movie when one of us was down or when something bad happened in the world. “Movie magic is just the thing,” Mom would say as she held up a VCR tape and shook it like a tambourine. So I picked out one of her favorite VCR tapes—An Officer and a Gentleman—shook it and said, “Movie magic!” as if those words and the shaking could heal Wendy, trying very hard to believe in the power of believing. Wendy was still stretched out with her head buried under throw pillows, her usual position, so I sat on the floor with my back up against the bottom of the couch, like I used to do when I was a teenager and Mom was lying down.
When Father McNamee heard the opening sequence of the movie, where you—as Zach Mayo—tell your drunk father that you want to join the navy and fly jets, my ex-priest began popping popcorn in the microwave, which surprised me, because he had been praying at the kitchen table for almost seven hours, so I thought he was deep in an effort to converse with Jesus.
Watching you on the TV screen after all of our many conversations was a bit surreal—especially because this was the first time I’d watched one of your movies since Mom died, and I had never watched any of your movies without her. I thought I would be sad, that I would miss her, but watching you this time around made me proud to know you, if that makes any sense. I had seen An Officer and a Gentleman a million times before, but this was the first time I watched it as your friend. It was an entirely different experience, which made me wonder if you, Richard Gere, can ever just watch a movie, as you probably know every actor in Hollywood by now, so every time you see a film, you aren’t seeing strangers pretending, but people with whom you’ve worked and therefore have had conversations with and probably even drinks at the bar.
Father McNamee sat down on the floor next to me and placed a large bowl of popcorn between us. He was drinking his whiskey from a coffee cup, and I said, “No, thank you,” when he offered me a swig, because I wanted to experience the movie fully conscious and whiskey sometimes makes me sleepy.
A few pieces of popcorn were perched in his beard.
We watched you train to become a pilot, Richard Gere, saw you make love, saw you make friends, saw you ride your motorcycle, saw you dance, saw you pretend to be a troubled, disturbed man. But when you were caught hiding extra shoes and belt buckles in the drop ceiling, and angry Louis Gossett Jr. tried to get you to quit the program—by making you do so many push-ups, squirting you in the face with a hose, and insulting you in numerous highly humiliating ways, while everyone else goes on leave—you’ll remember that Mr. Angry Gossett Jr. says this to you: “Deep down inside you know that all these boys and girls are better than you. Isn’t that right, Mayo?”
I sort of felt you and I were a lot alike at that point.
The little angry man in my stomach kicked and punched and yelled, Fool! You are nothing like movie star Richard Gere, nor are you like the character he is playing in the film, which is an entirely different (and fictional!) entity! And you are just a stupid man who pretends he is unable to tell the difference because he has done nothing with his life, nor will he ever, and therefore favors fiction over reality. Here is your reality: everyone is better than you! Everyone! You couldn’t even keep your mother alive, retard! and as the little tiny man in my stomach kicked and punched and yelled, I started to think of him as a miniature Louis Gossett Jr. of my own.
In the movie, you screamed, “No, sir! No, sir!” as you well remember, and I realized that I had screamed that right along with you in real life, in Mom’s living room, when Father McNamee looked at me and said, “You okay?”
I nodded. A few tears spilled down my cheek before I could wipe them away, and then we watched as angry Louis Gossett Jr. tried to get you to quit, made you do sit-ups, and finally got you to scream, “I got nowhere else to go! I got nothing else!”
I remember Mom always cried when you said those lines, and maybe it was because she’d had nothing but her house and me for so many years. She always wanted more. She wanted the fairy tale, but got brain cancer instead, even though she was a good woman who never did anything wrong, nor did she harm anyone, ever.
Father McNamee and I sat there until the film was over—only I just stared at the screen without allowing the pictures and sounds to enter into my mind.