Carrie Jones

Dear Mr. Wayne,

 

My mother’s got a man coming to see her. She’s all excited, running around, getting ready, making me clean up the whole house. She thinks this man might be the one, you know, the big enchilada, her soul’s mate, her life’s light, and stuff. She’s always thinking that.

            She’s had men before, since my stepfather died. But this guy’s going to stay with us in our house, for a while. Not too long, she tells me. Just until he’s back on his feet. This one’s moving back east from Oregon and needs a place to sleep while he looks for work.

            I think, that’s what hotels are for, but she’s so happy, humming all the time, singing Celine Dion songs, that I don’t say anything that I’m thinking in my head.

            She’s made up the guest bedroom. I don’t think he’ll stay there. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. Not me.

He’s a tall man, Mr. Wayne, like you. She knew him a long time ago, back when she was married to my father. On the phone his voice sounds Western, or Texan like he has traces of sand and grit stuck in it that float out with his words when he talks. He sounds like he’s been in the desert a long, damn while and hasn’t had any water to drink and he has a mighty thirst.

            He doesn’t sound like he’s from Maine, but she says he was born and raised here.

            I didn’t know that people could move and have their accents change, that all their baby years and teenage years of talking could just get erased. 

            My mother sighs when I say this to her and she taps her fingernails on the kitchen counter, crosses her legs and gets out a cigarette.

            “People adapt, Liliana,” she says and the whole sentence is just one long exasperated sigh.

            It’s kind of cool in a way, the adapting thing. I mean depending on how bad high school goes; I might want to erase all of it and pretend I’m someone else when I go to college—if I get into college.            

            My mom thinks this man will be like you: a hero kind of man with a clean face and soul. She thinks that about every man she sees. But they never are. There’s only one you.

 ”I don’t guess people’s hearts got anything to do with a calendar.”
                                                    -John Wayne as Hondo Lane in Hondo
                                                                                                       

 

Dear Mr. Wayne,

 

So I don’t have to think about this man coming, I mosey over to the old Alamo Theater and catch a movie. Good ole American escapism at its best. Right?

             Nicole, my best friend, is meeting me. I amble in and pretend like it doesn’t bother me at all that I am alone and everyone is looking at me wondering why. Do I have the worst B.O. ever? Have I offed a teacher somewhere and just been sprung from juvie? Has my boyfriend dumped me? No. No. And no. I’m just waiting on a friend and wishing I was secure enough that I didn’t have to worry about things like this.

            I find a seat near the front and settle in. It’s got duct tape on the chair arm to hold it together and the red upholstery is ripped up some good. We don’t have a lot of Theaters in Merrimack, Maine. There’s just Hoyt’s where they play two new movies, almost always the latest slasher flick for the teenage boys and some new romantic comedy for the bored moms. Then there’s the Alamo. That’s where they play what my stepdad used to call the “oldies but goodies.” We used to come here a lot before he died.

            Pulling out my notebook, I put my feet against the chair backs in front of me because I’m too short to sling my legs over in a cool way. Once I’m settled in for a spell I start writing.

            I pause every now and then to take good deep breaths of old movie Theater air. There’s nothing better than the way a movie Theater smells before one of your shows. The air is cold and aching. There’re traces of popcorn and beer that’s been there before. It smells like wanting, like waiting.

            I smile real slow because soon you’ll be filling up that screen, a giant man with a mission, a gun on his hip and a swagger in his smile.

            Nicole comes in and yells my name. I wave. She yells it again. I wave bigger and she starts down the slanted aisle looking tipsy in her heels. She’s wearing a miniskirt, which is stupid, because her type of guys (jock guys) never come into the Alamo. It’s all arty-nerd types and me. So, there’s no one here for her to get all flirty with.

            “You’re so short. I didn’t see you.” She flops into the seat. “What’cha writing?”

            “Nothing.”

            I slam my notebook shut and sit up straight.

            She pulls her skirt over her lap with a quick snap and says all accusing, “You’re writing to John Wayne again.”

            I shrug. Sometimes there’s no point in denying things, you just have to cowboy up.

            She sighs a fake, overblown, exasperated mother-type sigh. “No one even knows who John Wayne is, you know. Like you could be writing fan letters to someone really cool, really hot, but no… John Wayne. Cowboy, gun-toting, man.”

            She tries to impersonate you and falls way short sounding more like a cartoon character than a Western star, “How-dy pard-ner. How-dy ma-am.”

            I put my notebook in my backpack and close my eyes. Nicole doesn’t take the hint and keeps yammering on. I swear she is the reincarnation of some dead French queen’s poodle, all yippy. I still love her though. We soldiered through eighth-grade camping trips together up at Baxter State Park. She let me cry when Stuart Silsby dumped me at a CCD dance. She let me hang out at her house 12 nights in a row after my stepfather died. You can forgive someone for being a poodle when they guard your back like that.

            “I mean,” Nicole starts yanking out popcorn pieces and stuffing them in her mouth as she talks, “He’s not even around anymore. You know that don’t you? You know that he’s not even alive.”

            “Yeah,” I say and shake my head when she offers me some popcorn. “I know that.”

            “He’s dead.”

            I sit up straight as I can and try to get her to stop talking by staring her down. “I know.”

            “You are writing to a dead movie star,” she accentuates every syllable. A piece of popcorn flies out of her mouth and into the empty aisle of seats in front of us. We start laughing.

            “I mean, really, Lily. We’re about to be freshman. Do you want everybody to think you’re a freak?”

            I don’t say anything and examine the watermarks on the ceiling. Sometimes I think friends are a necessary evil, say like McDonald’s burgers. You need to have them, you want to have them, but sometimes they make your stomach ache.

            Before I can think of a good line, from the back of the movie Theater a boy’s voice yells, “Liliana!”

            Nicole’s mouth opens, because, let’s face it: It’s not all that often boys yell for me. Fearing a shower of soda or a popcorn pummelling, I turn around real slow. It’s Paolo Mattias, this popular boy in our grade that I’ve never talked to much. He is the kind of boy I’d expect to see at Hoyt’s Cinemas with his arm around a girl’s shoulders and his tongue down her throat, not alone at the Alamo. 

            He does not throw popcorn. He does not spit soda. He smiles. I freeze, gun finger twitching, even though I don’t have a gun.

            “Wave to him!” Nicole commands in a loud whisper voice.

            I give a half-hearted wave.

            “Tell him to come down!” Nicole insists, poking me in the ribs.

            I look at the five or so other people scattered around the seats, mostly old people like Mrs. Samuel who is a big John Wayne fan, too and works in the fish section of Hannaford’s. I feel bad for yelling, but I do. “You want to come down?”

            He bangs up and strides down the aisle. He’s got popcorn too. He folds his long body in the seat next to me and smiles at me. Then he smiles at Nicole. He smells like that fake butter oil they put on popcorn and Old Spice deodorant, which is a weird combination.

            “Cool,” he says and nods.      

            I nod back. Nicole starts to giggle again. She hikes her miniskirt up an inch to reveal more thigh. I mouth the word, “Ho.”

            She wiggles her eyebrows and I turn away to take a side look at Paolo Mattias. He’s got a piece of popcorn on his shirt. I flick it off, in a super bold move and then blow it by blushing.

            “I saw you riding your bike,” he says. “You ride it a lot?”

            Nicole leans forward. “She rides it all the time. Whenever she’s upset, she rides her bike. The only place she doesn’t ride it is school.”

            I punch her in the arm. She giggles. Paolo just smiles and goes, “That’s cool. You must have strong legs.”

            Nicole giggles more. I sneak a peek at my legs.

            The old time projector makes this hiss noise and starts.  That cool old time music begins and there’s your name in big gold letters filling up the screen.

            “You like John Wayne?” Paolo asks slumping and slinging his own damn legs over the chair backs, cause he’s tall enough. He’s got his arm on the rest and we’re almost touching.

            “Yeah,” I say. “You?”

            “He’s great,” he says. “So cowboy hero, you know?”

            “I know!” I start to say, “He’s so fantastic, so solid and so – ”

            Nicole groans, leans over me and pulls the trigger. “Lily writes him letters.”

            Paolo stares at her. I imagine everyone has heard that gunshot.

            My skin burns. Everything in me plummets; all my internal organs are on the floor of the Alamo. There’s my heart flopping next to my liver, which is sliding past a piece of Hubba Bubba bubblegum. Paolo Mattias lifts his eyebrows at Nicole and then he says to me, “He’s dead.”

            “Yeah, I know…” I don’t know what to say. My hand flutters up and makes circles where words should be.  Paolo Mattias shakes his head and laughs. He touches my shoulder with his hand and all my organs hop back up into place.

            “You are some strange girl,” he says and I can’t tell if it’s an insult or a compliment. The lights go down, thanks to the gods of the Alamo projection room. I breathe in, because no matter what’s just happened, the waiting is over.

            North to Alaska begins for real. The guitar music plays and there you are bigger than life on the screen. John Wayne. For almost two hours, I don’t think about my mother’s man, or Nicole’s stupid miniskirt or Paolo Mattias knowing about the letters. For almost two hours, all I see is you, Mr. John Wayne, the DUKE, righting wrongs and riding into the sunset. For almost two hours, Paolo Mattias and Nicole fade into the background like extras no one can remember because they aren’t the stars. No, that’s not true. Paolo Mattias stays right there; a smell and an idea that’s trying to make itself known.

            Paolo laughs so hard he almost snarfs soda out his nose during the bar fight when the bartender’s hat flips up every time he’s hit.

            “You have a real snooty look, missy” you tell the whore in the dance hall. “And I don’t like dames that have snooty looks.”

            Paolo laughs, looks at me and points. He whispers, “You have a real snooty look, missy.”

            I blush. I feel like that bad guy in the bar fight, the one who’s slumped to the floor with an upside down cuckoo clock on his head. I don’t have a clue about what’s going on, but I’ve got a goofy smile on my face and I think I like it.