Big question. Eliza and Peter had not given their children much of a religious education. Part of her, the reflexively honest part, wanted to say, “Yes, religion and magic are pretty much the same thing.” But she imagined Albie carrying that wisdom to school, the hell to pay later. Instead she said, “God is always seen as an all-powerful entity, whatever religion you believe.”
“That doesn’t really look like Scotland,” Iso complained. She spoke on some authority. The family had taken a driving trip through the Highlands the summer before last. “It doesn’t look real.”
It didn’t, and Eliza missed Gene Kelly’s usual archness, that slight smirk of ego he brought to most roles. Here, he was just a straight-up romantic, while Van Johnson got to be the dissolute wisecracker. Still the movie was marvelous and so romantic. Except, of course, for the character of Harry Beaton, who had to watch his true love marry someone else, knowing all the while that he must stay in Brigadoon or the village would perish. Brigadoon’s bargain with God was fine, if your true love happened to be there already. But what was a Harry Beaton to do? He really had drawn a tough hand.
Eliza’s sympathy for Harry vanished when he attacked his true love at her wedding, lashing out: “All I ever did was want you too much.”
Of course it ended happily-at least for Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. But what of the other Brigadooners-Brigadoonites?-who might not meet their true loves in the small village, or who might not love with a ferocity that awakens a town that otherwise would slumber for a century? What would happen over the years, as the town’s residents became more connected by blood?
A phone rang. A single phone, up in her bedroom.
“The security phone!” Albie sang out, thrilled to be here to witness the mysterious instrument in action. Her instinct had been to ignore it, but now she would have to go answer it, refuse Walter’s charges, and tell the children that it was just a test, like the test of the Emergency Broadcast System. In the case of a real emergency…
And as Eliza headed to the stairs, she was reminded that Iso was not the only liar in their family.
By the time she reached the phone, it had stopped. She glanced at her watch: 2 P.M., on a Sunday. She did not think Walter would have broken the rules, at least not so quickly. Over time, she could imagine him becoming careless, forgetting what he was supposed to do, or no longer caring. But not on this, his third call. A wrong number? How could one know unless the phone was answered? Why hang up?
“I thought it was going to be Homeland Security,” Albie said wistfully. “I thought we were going to be told to evacuate. That would be exciting at least.”
“I think,” Eliza said, “we can come up with something to do that might be almost as exciting.” They spent the afternoon making cupcakes, with much emphasis on decoration. Even Iso, denied the television, joined in, and eventually Peter. They ruined their appetites, filling up on cream cheese frosting and miniature cinnamon disks and squiggles of pressurized decorating icing, straight from the can. Their appetites destroyed, they ended up driving over to Five Guys for a late supper of hamburgers and fries, passing the very mall that had cost Iso her freedom. Eliza saw Iso cast it a wary glance, as if the mall itself was the source of her problems. In a sense, wasn’t it? Whether it was the apple in Eden, the Roy Rogers on Route 40, or Bonnie Jean, betrothed to another in a village where there was no chance of meeting someone new, and no chance that the love of one’s life might ever disappear-in the end, wasn’t it yearning that led one astray, the pining after something or someone that had been denied?
Iso’s punishment was to end the next day, and Eliza found herself wishing that she might commit a new infraction in the remaining hours, resulting in another week of forced companionship with her family. Hadn’t she noticed how much fun they’d had? Didn’t her sides ache from laughing at her father’s antics with the frosting, the froth of family jokes that had carried them through dinner and then to Rita’s, as if there had never been all those cupcakes? That night, as she tucked in Albie, he said: “Can we do that every Sunday? Cupcakes and Five Guys and Rita’s?” She understood. She felt the same way. But unlike Albie, she knew how hard it was to replicate a perfect day. Wasn’t that the story of yet another movie?
Back in her room, she took Iso’s phone from the nightstand. Tomorrow, at breakfast, she would have to give it back to her, and the wall would go up again, separating Iso from the family.
The phone rang-but not the phone in her hand, the one that sat by itself, dedicated to one caller and one caller only, a caller who had been told never to call on weekends or evenings. It rang once, twice, then fell silent, like someone poking her in the back and running away.
Part IV. WHO’S ZOOMIN’ WHO?
Released 1985
Reached no. 7 on Billboard Hot 100
Spent 23 weeks on R &B/Hip-Hop Charts
29
BARBARA LAFORTUNY SAT OUTSIDE the Baltimore train station, parked in the line reserved for those waiting, staring idly at the enormous man/woman statue with the glowing purple heart. Purple heart made her free-associate-from war, and the honors given for valor, to the old Baltimore thrift store by that name. When she first started teaching, Purple Heart was a terrible taunt used by the children in her class about wearing clothes from there.
But ultimately the statue made her think of her and Walter, the way they intersected. They were close enough now that they even squabbled like an old married couple. Certainly, Walter had the capacity to exasperate her like no one else on God’s green earth. He was secretive and a control freak to boot, an almost valiant temperament for a man on death row, who controlled nothing in his life. Every time they made a plan-every time-he changed it on her. First he said, Go slow, don’t rush, don’t worry. She’ll come see me and then I’ll bait that hook. Now he had decided just as arbitrarily to jump ahead several moves, just like that, no explanation.
Yet Barbara had already set Plan B in motion, at Walter’s insistence, and there was no calling it back. So here she was, parked outside Penn Station on a sunny October day, waiting for the Amtrak from Philadelphia. She frowned at a driver idling in the drop-off lane, which was clearly marked, ignoring the line of cars backing up behind her, the chain reaction of problems she was causing. She should be in the waiting lane, like Barbara, or parked on the traffic circle. Barbara hated people who didn’t follow the rules. She gave her horn a little tap, tried to get the driver’s attention, but the woman was clearly an expert at tuning out the world. Barbara got out of her car and walked over, rapped on the woman’s window, forcing her to roll it down and acknowledge Barbara’s presence.
“You’re in the wrong lane,” she said to the driver.
“I pulled in by accident and I’m only going to be a minute,” the woman said. “People can still get around me.”
“Not that easily, and traffic is backing up behind you clear to St. Paul Street. Just pull around the circle and you can get in the correct lane to wait.”
“Do you work here?”
Barbara wasn’t one to be derailed by irrelevant questions. A person didn’t have to work somewhere in order to insist on civility and order. “You really should pull around.”
“And you should mind your own business.”
Barbara took off her sunglasses, which not only allowed her to make eye contact, but also showcased her scar, that phantom smile. She wasn’t deluded enough to think it made her look tough or intimidating. But she believed that it announced that she had lived in this world, that she knew things others did not. “I’m sure you think you’re the special case, that you have all these rationalizations for behaving as you do. But you are one person inconveniencing many, and there’s ultimately no way to rationalize that. Is your presence in this line a matter of life and death? Will someone suffer if you do what everyone else is doing, without a fuss?” Even as Barbara was speaking, cars were pulling around, honking and squealing, the drivers making irked faces. They seemed to lump her in with this woman, think she was part of the problem. But now that they were in a standoff, pride was involved. Pride-someone else’s-had almost killed Barbara. Still, she couldn’t back down.