Recover-eth

There is a certain glow that amply compliments old movie stars. When they are young, it comes from them, radiates from them, and follows them like the sidewalk silt that lingers around their name, embedded in stone in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater. When they are old, they borrow it, from the carefully selected lights in plastic surgeons offices, from the bulbs in VIP lounges, where, like the plastic dolls and vintage radios that are commonplace in Assisted Living facilities for the geriatric, all the furniture and decor has been carefully selected to be not to jarring, too uncomfortable for those like Region’s mother.

Yes, his name was Region.

Such lights complimented Barbara now, he noted, sitting in her multi-million dollar mansion. She seemed no older than she had when, confused and bewildered, he had been led by the hand up the granite steps flanked with tropical vegetation, that was both beautiful and concealing, to meet his new mother, the television star. Being only five, that was all he new. His own television experience was limited to the Scooby Doo episodes that he he watched for hours on Saturday morning, in his stained pajamas, shoveling Captain Crunch into his mouth, as Velma’s deliberate and reasoned monologues concealed the arguments coming from other parts of the house. His own mother and father were as mysterious to him as the ghosts that flitted through across the static-y screen. He remembered being taken to odd places at odd times, being yanked across parking lots at midnight to be escorted into the back of unfamiliar cars. In this sense he had a sense of unease, like Scooby being marched through the halls of some darkened Victorian residence, often hungry, always frightened.

And then one day, someone came to rip all the masks off.

One day he was at school, an unusual occurrence, and he was taken out of his class, and made to sit in the principal’s office. He thought he was in trouble, and he sorted through the remnants of the morning for some indicator of the problem. Nothing stood out. It had even been a good morning. He had enjoyed his breakfast, provided by the school for kids like him. His mother had dropped him off early, strangely efficient that morning, having some errand to run. He had tried to listen to the lesson, but found his mind drifting, and doodled in the margins of the handout the teacher had given him..a dog’s head, with ears like knife points.

He was not in trouble. His mother had been arrested, but he was not told this at the time. His father had left town. He was now in the State’s Custody.

That was how he came to be Barbara’s boy. He was very lucky, he was told. His mother had lots of money, and his problems were over. In the end, his problems were not over. There was a nicer backdrop, it was true. Fate had removed the bad carpeting, and the cracked, peeling walls, in one swoop of disgusted interior decorating. However, it was all at a price. Barbara, in this years, was working steadily. He took his meals with the nanny on a leather couch, and he watched Barbara on the television, as she pulled faces and cried a little, during the Sweeps Week episodes. She was as real to him as a white sheet rigged with heavy ropes, gliding silently up staircases, past french doors that opened to a pumpkin colored Harvest Moon.

Barbara was carrying the show, the nanny said. It was true. Then she was in a few movies, not major hits, but big enough. They were never friends, and he never blamed her for it. She was a single mother, and she had to work. This was all the more benevolent of her, because she was almost never at home, and worked almost entirely for his comfort. She left a little glitter on him, along with a strange Hollywood name, meant to distinguish him, mark him as one who would never wander he halls of some office building, exhausted and troubled with deadlines and bills. The name was supposed to spare him all that. However, he had drifted a while, and it hadn’t spared him much.

“I need money, Mom,” he told her now, leaning over to flick his cigarette into the ashtray.

“You never asked before.”

“I never needed it before,” he told her.

There was no special occasion for her to call. It was a Thursday. He had been sitting his apartment, poking his fork into his scrambled eggs, when the phone next to his plate starting buzzing and vibrating. He thought it was a caller. He worked from home as a tarot card reader and psychic, so he answered the call, mentally preparing himself for a visionary jaunt down mystic pathways, where the caller was told that he was soon to come into large sums of money, find love, and have a extra large pizza delivered by Yanni in a rainbow jumpsuit…if the caller could just hang in…hang in two weeks…a month…six months, max.

It was his mother, requesting a meeting. There was no explanation. There was a demand, an address.

“What is this about?” he asked, suspiciously.

“I have a plan for you,” she told him.

He thought she must be dying or something. The last time they spoke, he had made the decision to leave home for good. He had a desire to do something permanent, really dig into the world, really dig into himself. In a rootless, whispery existence, he desired a metaphysical slap across the face. Or something. He had never looked back…except every waking moment of his adult life since then, precisely since the moment he had a startled awareness of the “Insufficient Funds” message on the monitor of an ATM machine.

This meeting was an interesting development. He had a plan for himself. He made it up as he pulled a sweatshirt and some pants out of his the floor of his bedroom. It was a good one, he thought. His mind, long stretched imagining callers on the end of the lines, faces, bodies…imagining lives, consequences, results, wins and losses, easily, almost effortlessly chucked up a plan, like a woman tosses a lipstick into her favorite handbag.

Now they faced off, one against the other, in a room he did not recognize. It was not his childhood home. This one was new. They were all new. She never lived anywhere longer than three years.

“You don’t need to provide for me,” he told her. He made it a point to smoke, something he rarely did. He wanted to assert his independence against her cool, placid figure.

“I know that. But it just..” she waved her hand. “Came to me. I felt compelled to call. Of course, I had to call you. But, you know, I had to find you.”

“Had to find me,” he repeated, aimlessly, losing some of his momentum.

“Had to find you. Had to have my assistant find you.”

He nodded. He suddenly felt unwashed, in the wrong place, like leaving and blasting Kanye’s Through the Wire as he drove off in his battered blue Honda Civic.

“You know your high school friend, Trystan. Well. I was in the grocery store the other day, and I ran into an old friend. Since high school he’s done well in the vitamin business..also he owns three spas. He’s heading for Barbados on his yacht.”

“So he wants me to come on his yacht.”

“No, dear, of course not. I was thinking you might work the front desk at one of his health spas. I think he owns three or something. But you have to call him before he sails off. It might be as soon as today. I woke up this morning, and suddenly it came to me. Tell him, I said. Throw him a line.”

“So let me get this straight,” said Region. “We don’t talk for ten years, I’m…I’m working as hard as I can, I’m living hand to mouth in a scary apartment, I’m like…like some animal thinking about where it’s next meal is coming from, and you, one morning there’s a plan, and the plan is a minimum wage job that you haven’t even arranged, that I’m supposed to call and arrange, that I’m supposed to get for myself, driving 90 miles an hour to the Yacht club, making excuses to the security guard, talking my way in, racing across the concrete docks like…like I don’t know what…like someone anxious to redeem that third class ticket on the Titanic, and this is what you come up with.”

She paused, thinking.

“Now I have something better,” he told her. I need 100,000 dollars. I want to get into this blood testing business. Like Elizabeth Holmes. But with feces. I want them to look for blood in their shit and send it to someone. It’s a good market, blood in shit. It’s easy to do. Old people. They think about cancer a lot. They want answers. The doctor won’t let them in. All they want is someone to look at their shit under a microscope and tell them if their bleeding out.”

“You never were good at science, you know. Not at anything school related, except riding in Trystan’s Mercedes, if that counts. I could have helped you. You’re what…thirty? There’s still time.”

“Not for sitting in classes, with a bunch of eighteen year olds.” Unless I was a genius or something, he thought. Again, his facile mind, aware of hedges, aware of the mistake of being too emphatic, too specific, tossed up a rationalization.

“Well , have a baby or something. I don’t know.”

That threw him for a loop.

“The chances of that go up if I take that trip to Barbados with Trystan as my wingman, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

He thought nothing could startle him. He took her in. She had refused to sit. Now she stood, like Diana, in white shirt and pants, with platinum hair, under her favorite light.

“You want a grandbaby.”

“I want to start all over, do it right. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”

“I can do it myself. I just need a start. I’ll cut my hair. I can take the classes. 100,000. It’s nothing to you. I’m off your conscience. It’s that easy.”

She was agitated.

“Nothing’s that easy,” she shot back, advancing.

It was bad mistake, that old habit, that actress’s instinct of crossing stage right while delivering an angry rejoinder. Modern architecture insisted on light, sliding doors that led to gardens. She had followed the trend. She moved into the trendy light, the richness of that halo. It was not for her, that light. Every line on her face sprang out in relief, like a dramatic Roman frieze where Caesar battles it out in what is today Cannes, or Monte Carlo or something. It was every old war, every scene, every bad joke with a laugh track over it, every script that had been changed not for the better, every after-hours meeting with some producer where she adjusted her skirt in the bathroom before and after.

But what could you do.

“When does he leave, do you have a name for this Yacht Club?”

“Well, that’s not the way. I mean, you should text first.”

“No,” he told her. “I do it the way I said. It’s June. The AC is out on my car. I think I have about three dollars worth of gas. I’ll have to talk my way in. But I’m not asking for a job at the front desk. I’m asking for the 100,000. In front of his wife, his kids. On the gangway, the plank, whatever they call it.”

“Where-ever there’s a guy beating up on a guy,” she laughed.

He put his cigarette out. “What the hell,” he said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Find a good girl,” Barbara advised him. “ Have a baby. I’ll set up the nursery. Take the job at the front desk. Here, I’ve got his phone number written down. Take it.”

He took it.

He didn’t know what else to say. She walked him out. They were uncomfortable, a distance falling between them, the problem of his future which neither could solve. Suddenly he thought of the Tower, in the Tarot. People jumping out, flames, bricks falling…but you know, it could still be a nice house, if you put that fire out. Like this one. The walls were pretty thick. Good stone. You just needed a remodeler.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said. She nodded. She opened and closed her mouth several times, but produced nothing beside the effect of ambivalence and a vague hope, the old edges of a motherly concern. She went back in the house.

He got in the car, turned on the engine. Am I really doing this? He thought. The answer was nonspecific, but specific. It was no, and it was yes. It was a twentysomething beautiful blond in Barbados. It was a maybe.

You’re doing this, he told himself. He pulled out of the drive. He had no idea where he was going.