Chapter 25 ~ Family Rules – Part VII
July 5, 2010
When I was a little over four years old, my father built me a tree-house. Not just a little platform in a tree, this was a sixteen-by-sixteen deck, raised above the ground on stilts, the tree forming one corner; built on a hill, the lowest side only four feet off the ground, with the other at least eight feet high.
He worked weekend after weekend in the heat and humidity, sweating and cursing and sweating and cursing but all the time, building, building, building. When he added the fire-pole for me to slide down, he couldn’t have been more proud, shouting from the garden that I should come down and look, come down and play. All the time, behind his words the simplest of statements: look at me, look at what a great father I am.
I love you.
Smiling, laughing, waiting for my reaction.
At which point I turned to the camera, frowned and said, “Is that post straight?”
The audience melted.
His crestfallen expression was comedy condensed.
* * *
Season four, episode six.
Episode six.
The tree-house.
The first time the whole thing centred on me rather than Jamie.
The first time I stole the show.
* * *
The fire-pole was great – reaching out to it, stretching across a gap that felt like it was always going to be that bit too far, that my fingertips would barely touch cool metal before the chasm swallowed me; a moment’s panic then the plunge. But suddenly, contact! Two hands on the pole, cautionary words from a hyperventilating adult minder, and I was leaping, wrapping my legs around the metal.
Slide!
At the bottom, I stepped off, turning around to shout, “Do it again!”
My minder said no, that they had to rearrange the shot and get ready for Jamie’s entrance.
Escorted to the trailer across the lot that I shared with my co-stars; days spent gazing at half-empty bottles of gin and vodka, cigarette butts overflowing assembled ashtrays, a weird smell that felt a little like home.
I was four years old.
* * *
Season four, episode six.
Episode six.
The first time I got to speak on camera.
Sure, I’d gurgled and burbled and smiled my way through to now, learning just what they wanted me to do by responding to offered rewards.
Pavlov didn’t have anything on Joel and the rest of the Gestapo he employed to keep the talent in line.
“Is that post straight?”
My first spoken line ever.
It had been written down for me, my own typed page where it was underlined and emphasised in bold.
If only I’d been able to read.
I was four years old.
* * *
I sat on the bottom step of the trailer, the single type-written page clutched in my hand. I’d been sitting there alone for what felt like ages, just sitting, looking at the letters, looking at the letters, trying to make them make sense. Under my breath, a mantra, I spelled the words.
I…
S…
T…
Looked around myself, spotted my minder, over at the other end of the trailer, speaking with some guy I didn’t know. He had a t-shirt on, black, T… H… E… C…U… R… E… spelled out on it. I didn’t know what that meant but I knew the letters. I could read them all myself.
I looked back at the paper in my hand.
I…
S…
T…
H…
I was shaking. Shaking. Trying to work out what it said. Trying to work out what they wanted me to say. Ever since that guy, the other one, had stopped by the trailer and knocked at the door, ever since my minder had welcomed him in and taken the bit of paper, smiling at him and just… Smiling at him… I’d been trying to work it out.
There were no ringing bells for me to respond to this time.
What did they want me to say?
I…
S…
“Kenny? Are you all right?”
I looked up into the sunlight and Jamie was standing there, a shadow towering above me. My eyes snapped back to the crumpled page.
“I…”
Don’t know what to say.
Am sorry.
Am scared.
Am frightened.
Love you.
Don’t want to be here.
Am sad.
“I…”
She squatted down by my side until she could look me in the eye, reaching out, her fingers beneath my chin, tilting my head up. I stared at the page. Stared at it.
“What’s up, Kenny?”
“S…”
“Are you reading?”
“T…”
My eyes burned a hole through the paper.
“Kenny?”
“H…”
Now I began to cry. Blurting it out and shuddering with the force of it. Through watering eyes, I saw that my minder hadn’t even noticed. A tear dripped onto the page; in amongst the crumples and smudged ink it set up capillary action, blurring as it spread.
Jamie sat next to me on the step, pulled me close, held me tight, resting her chin on the top of my head, her voice soothing, calming me down.
“There, there, there, there…”
And I sobbed into the material of her shirt, sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and all the time, breaking through the sadness and the panic and the fear and the tears and the utter and complete screaming mess that was going on in my head, I was spelling.
I… S… T… H… A… T…
* * *
When I turned to the camera to speak the words, I heard Jamie’s voice in my head.
“It says Is that post straight? Kenny, nothing more than that. That’s all you have to say.”
I’d mumbled it into the material of her shirt, damp from my tears, warm from her body beneath; I could have dived into that softness, that beating heart, succour and comfort.
“You don’t need to be worried.”
I turned, remembering what Joel had told me.
“Don’t you dare smile, all right?”
I turned, remembering all the instructions and direction but most of all Jamie’s voice.
“You don’t need to be worried.”
I turned to the camera, stared right into it. For the first time, stared into its unblinking, cool, glimmering refraction; reflections of enhanced sunlight cast from studio lamps on metal stands. I stared into the bottomless, shining blackness of the lens. Stared.
Stared.
Raised one eyebrow, quizzical, heard Jamie’s words in my head. Delivered them in my own voice.
“Is that post straight?”
And Joel yelled CUT! But I kept looking deep into the heart of oblivion; safety.
I’d spoken to the camera.
Into the camera.
Deep into the nothing.
Finally I looked away.
Joel was watching me. Chris was watching me. Jamie was watching me.
It was Joel who broke the silence, with uncharacteristic rapture.
“Jesus fucking H Christ!” he shouted, staring at me, waving his hand at some minion over his left shoulder. “Did we get it? Did we get it?”
A mumble. Yup, we got it.
I stared at them. Seeing only the black centre of the camera’s lens, its depth, it’s absolution.
“Did I get it right?” I mumbled.
They were all smiling. I must have got it right. All of them, except Jamie. Her face was smiling but her eyes; there was something else in them. She knew something had just happened. Knew it.
She looked away.
