Truth in Advertising Page 0,110
Photography.”
“That’d be great.”
“Or maybe teaching,” she says.
“You have no plan, do you?”
“Not a clue.” She forces a small laugh. “I just know I don’t see myself in advertising.”
“I can understand that.”
Phoebe says, “Why is that? Why are there so few people who seem to enjoy working in advertising?”
“I don’t know. But it seems to be that way.”
More silence.
I say, “What are you up to today?”
“Going to see a movie.”
“What movie?”
“Grey Gardens.”
“Fun. Is that the one with Steven Seagal?”
“Yeah.” She fakes a laugh. “I actually should head out soon.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I won’t keep you.”
My breathing comes in short, uncomfortable breaths. It begins to rain very lightly and I slide back, against the front door, under an eave.
She says, “The Frenchman asked me to marry him.”
Dolly zoom. Vertigo. Hand to forehead involuntarily. Panic.
Why wasn’t there an episode where June Cleaver left the house to go to the market for milk and turned and looked at The Beav for an unusually long time and then got in her car and drove into a tree? That would have made for interesting TV.
I say, “Are you going to . . . what are you going . . .” I’m unable to form a full sentence.
Everything slows down. The sound goes away. I watch myself. Look at him, I think. Look at Fin. I do a quick flashback of his life, watch from overhead as he wanders through the maze, making wrong turns, wanting to turn back, sitting down, unable to go forward. Running in circles. I want to help him. From high up I can see it all so clearly. I want to steer him in the right direction. But I know he won’t listen. He doesn’t have the courage to listen. He just wants to keep moving. If he keeps moving he’s safe.
“No,” she says.
I’m not sure how much time passes. And maybe it’s all my imagination, my particular narrative and view of the world. But in that “no” I hear the greatest hope I’ve heard in a long time.
I say, “It’s raining here.”
“It’s snowing here. And windy. It’s snowing up outside my window.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. It’s really not,” I say. And then I say, without knowing I was going to, “I saw her.”
“Saw who?”
I’m reaching the point in life where a door is about to close.
“I saw her. I mean, I was there. My mother. I saw her . . . It’s not an excuse. I’m just. I’m so sorry.”
“What?”
The slow-motion film again. Long stretches in my life where it didn’t run. Then stretches where it ran all the time. And always I found a distance from it. The boy. The boy on the bike. I wrote a spot just like it once. Except it’s a girl and her father. Very clever change, I thought. It was for tampons and I had it as a flashback at the now grown girl’s wedding and it was complicated. In fact, it made no sense. The creative director said, “What does this have to do with tampons?”
I’ve never told anyone before. But now it tumbles out. I tell her the whole story. I tell it as if it happened to someone else. I tell it like a narrator, like I have always told it to myself.
“Fin.” Her voice low, intense, so pained.
I say, “That’s how I got the scar.”
It’s colder now, the rain steadier. How lovely it would be to walk into the Cleaver home right now, their clean, warm, loving home. June would have something in the oven, cookies or a cake, a roast for dinner. The boys would be doing their homework, reading a comic book. Maybe The Beav would be up to his usual wacky shenanigans; glueing the cat to the chimney, masturbating outside the window of a female neighbor, attaching a scope to a high-powered rifle and lying in wait for Eddie Haskell. Crazy kids.
I say, “I’m just so sorry. I’m not sure . . . I mean, I’m not sure you understand how much you mean to me.”
“Then tell me.”
• • •
Flonz turns to his first AD and says, “Call it.” The first AD says, “That’s a wrap. Thank you, everyone.” It’s a thing that happens at the end of every shoot. Everyone applauds.
Within thirty minutes the energy of the shoot has dissipated. Pizza and beer arrive for the crew, but they’re eager to break the set down and go home. Flonz hugs everyone and tells Ian he’s wasting his time as an art director and gives him his