At home that night, I holed up in my room and watched a movie called The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci. While I watched, I stuffed envelopes full of flyers. Anjo had told me to watch the film for inspiration. It’s where she had gotten the documentary footage of the rioting teens. And sure enough, early in the movie our American hero meets an alluring French brother and sister at the Cinémathèque Française. They flee the protests together. From there, however, it pretty much turns into a High Art Pervert film, which I didn’t entirely mind (movie sex is, obviously, the only sex in my life). Except when my mom walked in in the middle of the most graphic scene.
I tried to hit stop, but instead I hit pause right as our hero’s butt cheeks were flexed in extreme close-up. My mother, however, did not look at the television when she came in. She looked at me and the envelopes scattered across my bed. I had been working from an outdated list of “Friends of the Green Street,” that I found in Randy’s office, and there were probably forty poorly folded flyers surrounding me like paper boats on an ocean of unwashed sheets.
“Ethan,” she said, “you’ve been in here for hours. Your dinner is beyond cold. What are you doing?”
I looked at the large buttocks on the television. Then I looked at the flyers and envelopes spilling over the edge of the bed and onto the floor.
“Well,” I said. “It’s simple, really.”
There had to be another sentence in my head somewhere. I looked at the doorway. Improbably, Mom still hadn’t glanced at the television. How was that possible?
“I’m doing some donor outreach.”
Her face did not change.
“You know, outreaching to various donors . . .”
Ordinarily, she would have eaten this silly lie alive, but she seemed distracted tonight. She nodded, and swept her blond bangs out of her eyes. She pointed to a corner of my room.
“Those study guides are gathering dust.”
Truthfully, I had forgotten all about the guides until she pointed them out. I hadn’t read them before I bombed the SATs and I hadn’t read them after I bombed the SATs. According to a pact I’d made, I was supposed to be retaking the tests sometime in the indeterminate future. Mom was right, though. The pile of guides was indeed covered in a thick film of particulate matter.
“What if I want to show movies for the rest of my life? Where’s the standardized test for that?”
“You’re barely being paid,” she said, which, unfortunately, was true. I hadn’t cut myself a check in weeks.
“Mom,” I said. “Do you know who Henri Langlois was?”
I butchered the French pronunciation, but I’m not sure it mattered. She sighed. I could smell the dinner she’d cooked through the door now. Something with a lot of cumin. Probably her Moroccan stew, which I had grown to love after I realized food could actually have spice and flavor. A tough sell in the Midwest.
“You wanted to be a lawyer,” she said out of nowhere.
“What?” I laughed. “No I didn’t.”
She shook her head.
“When you were ten, your father showed you Inherit the Wind, that movie about the Scopes trial, and you wanted to be a defense attorney just like Spencer Tracy’s character. You walked around the living room for weeks holding us in contempt of court.”
“I was just acting out the movie. I did that all the time. Remember my pirate phase? I wore your eyeliner every day for a month.”
She wasn’t really listening to me now.
“Your junior high science teacher, Mrs. Geyer, said you were the best student she ever had. She said your lab reports were immaculate. That’s the word she used. Immaculate.”
“Mom, that woman only liked me because I didn’t use the Bunsen burners for lighting joints like Aaron Jorgenson.”
“You can deny it all you want,” said Mom, “but ever since you were a kid, we always heard the same thing. Ethan is so bright. Ethan is so curious. Ethan is going places. And that doesn’t mean you need to be a Nobel winner, but I can’t believe it’s intellectually satisfying for you to shovel popcorn and watch the same movies over and over again in that sad place.”
“We’re showing art,” I said. “These films are major contributions to the human experience!”
“I see,” she said. “Could you tell me what exactly the giant ass on your television is contributing to the human experience?”
I felt myself blushing. I picked up the remote and hit stop, and the butt went away.
“Granted,” I said. “This isn’t Bertolucci’s finest film, but . . .”
“Look, Ethan,” she said, “you needed time. We both did. I gave you some time. And the truth is I can’t force you to do anything anymore. But I want you to think about why you’re really spending so much time in that place, and ask yourself if it’s really healthy.”
I felt the pulse of anger before I could control it.
“At least I’m not lying to myself,” I said.
My mom had been calm so far, but now I could see her cheeks getting red.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”
I sat up straighter on the bed.
“It’s great that you’ve managed to reinvent your life,” I said. “But it’s not the same as it was. You know it’s not. And you can’t cook and knit your way past it all. You think you’ve moved on, but you’ve just come up with a bunch of ways to ignore everything. Well, guess what? So have I. I do the things that make me happy, and I’m sorry they don’t meet your approval. But why don’t you ask yourself why me hanging around the Green Street makes you so uncomfortable. Is it really because I’m underachieving? Or is it because it makes you think about Dad?”
She just stood there for a moment, taking it all in. When she spoke again, it sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
“Well, this has been pleasant,” she said. “But I have to go now.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I have a date,” she said.
I stared at her. It had been a long time since she’d been on a date, at least that I knew about. I was starting to think she had given up on that part of her life.
“Who is he?” I asked.
My voice was soft, but I know she heard me. She looked up at the ceiling and then back down again.
“Internet guy,” she said.
I nodded.
“It’s still hard,” she said. “Of course it is, Ethan. Goddamnit. Do you really think he doesn’t cross my mind every day?”
I wanted to respond to this, but she started speaking again.
“But I knew your dad pretty well, and he wouldn’t want us to just stay frozen in time. He never stayed still a moment in his life. If he were here, he’d be the one telling us to get off our asses and do something.”
“What would he think of Internet guy?” I asked.
I regretted it the instant I said it, but I said it nonetheless.
“Really?” she said. “That’s the way it’s going to be?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I . . .”
She just looked at me for a moment then she shut the door and left me alone in my silent bedroom. I looked at all the flyers around me, some folded, some not. The envelopes were addressed to all the regulars I could find, some of whom I’m not sure were still living. I had no idea if any of them would care enough to join us in our march. It didn’t seem promising.
I knew Mom had a point about the Green Street. It wasn’t just my enthusiasm for movies that was keeping me there. It was a refuge. There was no secret about that. But safe havens were hard to find in life. You could search for years to find a place where your thoughts didn’t race. A place that just felt right to you. Why was it such a bad thing to cling to your port when you found it?
I got up from the bed, sending an avalanche of flyers spilling to the floor. I walked over to my closet and pulled out a box from beneath a heap of clothes that no longer fit me, now that I was almost six feet tall. The box was sealed with packing tape, and I used my key to the Green Street to slice through it. The fibers of the packing tape split apart and the flaps popped open. Right on top was one of Dad’s books. The cover had a picture of Robert De Niro from Raging Bull, shadowboxing in the fog. And above his head, was the title I remembered so clearly:
The Cinema of Revolt.