Earl accompanied by Derrick 3 page

“Yeah, that’s the hard part.”

“Yeah.”

“Uhhhh.”

“Like, we could make the David Lynch film that we was gonna make, and just give it to Rachel, and that’s her film. But I don’t think we want to do that.”

“No?”

“Hell no. That’d be weird as hell. We’d be like, Yo, Rachel, watch this crazy-ass film about lesbians running around and hallucinating and shit. We made this film especially for you.”

“Huh.”

“Like at the beginning, it’s like, ‘For Rachel.’ It’s like we’re saying: Rachel, you love David Lynch. You love freaky-ass lesbians getting they freak on. So here’s a film about that shit. Nah. That don’t make no sense. Now what the fuck is this.”

“No, no, don’t eat that. That’s dried cuttlefish. That’s like Dad’s favorite. He likes to wander around with part of it sticking out of his mouth.”

“I’ma take a little bite.”

“You can like nibble it once, but that’s it.”

“Mmm.”

“What do you think?”

“Man, this taste stupid. This taste like some kinda . . . undersea . . . urinal.”

“Huh.”

“It taste like dolphins and shit.”

“So, you don’t like it.”

“I did not say that.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s like seventy-five percent dolphin scrotum, twenty-five percent chemicals.”

“So you do like it.”

“This is a dumb-ass piece of food.”

I had to agree with Earl: We couldn’t just do any film. There had to be at least some kind of connection to Rachel’s life. But what connection could that be? We sat in the kitchen and we brainstormed a bunch of them. All of the ideas were stupid.

They were really stupid. You’re about to see exactly how stupid. I mean, my God.

“Are you done eating that?”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t finish that, Dad’s gonna want some.”

“The hell he will.”

“He will.”

“It’s so nasty. Son, it’s so nasty.”

“Then why are you finishing it?”

“Takin a bullet.”

I knew our first plan was a mistake when Jared “Crackhead” Krakievich waddled up to me in the hall and addressed me as “Spielberg.”

“Hah yih doin, Spillberg,” he shouted, grinning hideously.

“What?” I said.

“I seen yer maykin’ a mewvie.”

“Oh yeah.”

“I dinn know yih made mewvies.”

“Just this one,” I said, probably too hastily.

“I’m call yih Spillberg fruh now on.”

“Great.”

It was the first shot fired in a nightmarish barrage of attention that would continue all day.

Mrs. Green, Physics 1 I.S.: “I think what you are doing is so . . . touching and . . . remarkable, and just really touching.”

Kiya Arnold: “My cousin died of leukemia. I just want to say. I’m so sorry about your girlfriend. How long y’all been together?”

Will Carruthers: “Hey faggot! Lemme be in your gay movie.”

Plan A was: Get the well-wishes of everyone at school, synagogue, etc., and put them in a film, and have that be the film. A get-well film, basically. Simple, elegant, heartwarming. Sounds like a good idea, right? Of course it does. We were completely seduced by this idea. We were morons.

First Problem: We had to get the footage ourselves, meaning we had to reveal ourselves as filmmakers to a hostile world. Originally, I asked Madison if she would get the footage herself, i.e., if she would hang out in a classroom with a camera instead of me and Earl. This led to me saying that I sort of didn’t want people knowing I was making a film for Rachel, which made her upset. That led to me saying that I didn’t want people to know about my feelings for Rachel, which made her upset in a different way that I did not, frankly, understand. Anyway, she insisted that I get the footage, and said “Oh, Greg” about seventy times until I quietly freaked out and ran away.

So we made plans to film in Mr. McCarthy’s room after school, and reluctantly told a couple of teachers about it, and with disturbing speed all teachers had found out about it, and told their students, and also it made the morning announcements every day in a row for like a week.

So yeah. This was possibly the death blow to the invisibility I had been cultivating throughout high school, and then gradually losing since becoming friends with Rachel. I used to be just normal Greg Gaines. Then I was Greg Gaines, Rachel’s Friend and Possibly Boyfriend.

That was bad enough. But now I was Greg Gaines, Filmmaker. Greg Gaines, Guy with a Camera, Following People Around. Greg Gaines, Perhaps He Is Creepily Filming You Right Now Without Your Knowledge or Consent.

Fuckbiscuit.

Second Problem: The footage was not very good. The teachers all ran way too long, first of all. None of them said anything that could be edited down. A lot of them started talking about tragedies that had happened in their lives, which besides being unusable made things fairly awkward in the room after they were done recording.

As for the students, 92 percent said some combination of these things:

• “Get better.”

• “I have to say I don’t know you that well.”

• “I know we never hung out very much.”

• “You’re in my class, but we’ve never really talked.”

• “I actually don’t know anything about you.”

• “But I do know that you have the inner strength to get better.”

• “You have a beautiful smile.”

• “You have a beautiful laugh.”

• “You have really beautiful eyes.”

• “I think your hair is beautiful.”

• “I know you’re Jewish, but I’d like to just say something from the Bible.”

And then the other 8 percent tried to be funny or creative, and that was even worse.

• “In eighth period, I wrote a song that I want to sing you. Are we ready? Can I just sing it? OK. Rachel Kushner / Don’t you push her / She’s got leukemia / and she probably wants to scream-ia / But she’s everybody’s friend! / You know her life’s not gonna end!!!”

• “Even if you do die, I was thinking today, it’s really only on the arbitrary human scale that a human life seems short, or long, or whatever, and, like, from the perspective of eternal time, the human life is vanishingly small, like it’s really equivalent whether you live to be 17 or 94 or even 20,000 years old, which is obviously impossible, and then, on the other hand, from the perspective of an ultra-nanoinstant, which is the smallest measurable unit of time, a human life is almost infinite even if you die when you’re, like, a toddler. So either way it doesn’t even matter how long you live. So I don’t know if that makes you feel better, but it’s just something to think about.”

• “Greg’s a fag. I guess he’s in love with you, so that makes him bisexual or whatever. I hope you feel better.”

Third Problem: Madison had already made get-well cards for Rachel. So we weren’t really doing anything new, for one. We were just doing a get-well card in video form.

Also—this took a little longer to realize—there was nothing specifically Gaines/Jackson about the get-well video. It was something anyone could do. So was it really that great of a gesture? No.

We’d been making films for seven years. We needed to do something better.

Ken Burns has done a bunch of documentaries about things, like the Civil War. He wasn’t around for the Civil War, just like we weren’t really around for most of Rachel’s life. I mean, we were, but we weren’t paying attention. That sounds horrible, but you know what I mean. Or, maybe it’s just horrible. I don’t know.

Look: We haven’t been following Rachel around with a camera for her entire life in order to get footage for an eventual documentary. You can’t really get mad at me for that.

Anyway, the Ken Burns style is to show a bunch of photos and old footage taken by other people, along with voiceovers and interviews and stuff. It’s a very easy style to copy, so this was our designated Plan B after the get-well video idea failed. Unfortunately, we really only had one person to interview: Denise. And Denise was going through a rough time. Her only child had cancer, and Rachel’s father—I probably forgot to mention this earlier—was estranged from the family.

Interviewing this woman was a total nightmare.

INT. KUSHNER LIVING ROOM — DAY

GREG

offscreen

So, Denise. Can you tell me a bit about Rachel’s birth?

DENISE

distractedly

Oh, Rachel’s birth.

GREG

offscreen

Yes.

DENISE

Rachel’s birth. What an ordeal.

inexplicably loudly

She was never much of a fighter. She’s always been a quiet girl, just so sweet, never wanting to fight, and now I don’t know what to do. I can’t make her fight, Greg.

GREG

offscreen

Uh, right.

DENISE

I raised a girl who’s sweet, and . . . and lovely, but not tough.

GREG

offscreen

So what was she like as a baby? Did she have a favorite toy?

DENISE

distractedly

She used to read . . . books.

uncomfortable pause

Greg, I’m a good mother. But I don’t know how to get her through this. It’s like, God forbid, she doesn’t want to live anymore.

GREG

offscreen

So, as a baby, she liked to . . . read books.

DENISE

firmly, sort of robotically

I’m a good mother. I’ve been a good mother to her.

We made an attempt to interview Rachel’s grandparents over the phone, but that was possibly an even more depressing failure.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Lubov—this is Greg, a friend of Rachel’s.”

“Who?”

“A friend of your granddaughter, Rachel.”

“Whose friend?”

“Your granddaughter. Rachel.”

“Hang on. (Janice. It’s for you. I said it’s for you. The phone. No, I don’t know where it is. The phone, Janice.)”

“. . .”

“Who is this?”

“Hi, my name is Greg. I’m a friend of your granddaughter, Rachel.”

“Rachel lives . . . Rachel lives with her mother.”

“I know—I’m doing a documentary? About Rachel?”

“You’re doing a—oh.”

“I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?”

“What?”

“Can I ask you some questions about Rachel?”

“Ask her mother. Denise.”

“It’s for a film, to make her happy.”

“OK, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how to help you. But if you’re looking for Rachel, she lives with her mother, Denise.”

“Um . . . OK, thanks.”

I hung up because it sounded like Rachel’s grandma was about to cry. But sometimes grandmas just sound like that. Either way: excruciating.

There wasn’t much footage lying around for us to use, either. There was one vacation video that Denise let us look at, but we were really hesitant to use it.

EXT. BEACH, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND — DAY

The sky is gray. The sand is dark, as though it has just rained. It looks as though it may rain again. RACHEL is sitting heavily on a towel, doing nothing, facing the sea.

DENISE

offscreen

Hi honey!

Rachel turns to face the camera and says nothing. Her face is expressionless.

DENISE

offscreen

Here we are on beautiful Prince Edward Island. There’s little Rachel, and there’s Bill.

PAN to BILL, next to an umbrella. He is in an elaborate beach chair with TWO BEER HOLDERS, both containing beers.

BILL

too loudly

We’re having a GREAT TIME.

DENISE

offscreen, fake cheerful

Bill’s a little grumpy because of the weather!

BILL

Denise, can you just turn that thing off.

DENISE

offscreen

Can you at least try to enjoy yourself.

BILL

What does it LOOK LIKE I’M DOING.

Let’s put it this way: If I were Rachel, lying in bed feeling awful, this would not make the list of Scenes I Would Want to Be Watching in a Movie.

And actually, everything we put together via the Ken Burns method failed that test. In essence, we were trying to put together a biography of a girl who hadn’t lived very long and hadn’t really had that interesting of a life. I know that sounds horrible, but it’s true. None of it was interesting to watch. And a lot of it was sort of painful.

And then taken as a whole, the documentary-of-Rachel’s-life idea was really painful, because we never came out and said it, but basically the message was: Now that your life is over, we can summarize it. So here’s a summary of all of your life. There maybe isn’t a worse thing that we could have said.

So we needed a new method. And it needed to be much better. Otherwise, we were going to kill ourselves.

Meanwhile, things were going shitty with Rachel. I mean, it was usually just more of the same.

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM — EVENING

GREG

So I was thinking today: Strawberry is my favorite flavor of candy. But I don’t actually like strawberries that much. And then I realized, strawberry-flavored candy doesn’t actually taste like strawberries at all. So what does it taste like? That’s got to be the taste of something, right? Is there this delicious mystery fruit out there that I don’t know about? I want to eat that fruit, you know? I want to eat the hell out of it.

Or then I was thinking, does an animal maybe taste like that? Like maybe if you ate, I don’t know, a walrus, it would have that awesome taste, but the guys who make Airheads are afraid to say, walrus-flavored Airheads.

RACHEL

weakly

Yeah.

GREG

Yo, is that a new pillow? I think that’s a lady pillow over there. Hey . . .

whispering

Would you mind introducing me to her? Because she’s totally fine. You don’t have to if it’s awkward.

RACHEL

possibly trying to laugh

hhhhnnh

GREG

panicking

Holy shit, I forgot. What time is it? It’s after five? I have to do Pigeon Man. Sorry, it’s part of my new exercise regimen.

crossing eyes, bobbing head, strutting

PIGEON MAN. PIGEON MAN. WALKS LIKE A PIGEON. PIGEON MAN. POOPS ON YOU, FROM THE SKY. HE’S THE PIGEON-EST MAN.

RACHEL

Greg, you don’t have to—try to make me laugh.

GREG

What?

RACHEL

You don’t have to put on—a show.

GREG

feeling like shit

OK.

Plan C was sock puppets.

First of all, let me just say that sock puppets can be way more emotional and expressive than they get credit for. There are a lot of different ways to put your hand in a sock and make it look like a face. Also, if you draw eyebrows over the eyes, that’s really humanizing. You have to know what you’re doing with the mouth, but if you do, you can make magic happen.

All that said, Plan C was a cancer-themed movie starring sock puppets. So it was pretty much doomed from the get-go.

Once we decided to try sock puppets, our main problem was plot. If Rachel was the star, what did she do? Whose ass did she kick? Was she going to kick leukemia’s ass?

INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE — DAY

RACHEL

La di da di da

LUKE

wearing cape and mustache, speaking with a Southern accent

Howdy!

RACHEL

suspiciously

Hmmm. Who are you.

LUKE

Uh . . . my name is Luke.

RACHEL

What’s your full name.

LUKE

Luke mmmphlmmph.

RACHEL

I can’t hear you.

LUKE

Luke Emia.

RACHEL

TIME FOR A BEATDOWN.

How did this make us better than Justin Howell? The theater kid who wrote the song about how leukemia made Rachel want to scream-ia? We weren’t sure.

INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE — DAY

LUKE EMIA

addressing camera

What’s up, this is a public service announcement. I’m leukemia. I like to pick on kids and teenagers, because I’m extremely pathetic. Here’s a list of things I hate:

—delicious foods such as pizza
—adorable panda cubs
—if you were to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool with pleasant-smelling rubber balls such as would be fun to frolic around in, I would hate that as well.

Not a lot of people know this, but my favorite thing in the world is a poorly made car commercial with generic guitar music in the backGROUN GAARRGGHH

RACHEL, holding a baseball bat in her mouth, clubs LUKE while yodeling.

It was just all really childish and simplistic. It had nothing to do with anything. It looked like television for toddlers, and even worse, it was a big stupid lie. Rachel wasn’t fighting leukemia. She wasn’t interested in fighting. She seemed like she was giving up.

Plan D was stop-motion animation. In stop-motion animation, you shoot a single frame of something, move the characters slightly and maybe also the camera, shoot another frame, move things again, etc. It’s painstaking and time-consuming. On the plus side, it allows you to use LEGO Darth Vader.

We wanted Rachel to watch a bunch of evil people talking about how much they love leukemia, and get pissed off at them, and be inspired to fight back. This led to some terrible filmmaking.

INT. LEGO DEATH STAR — NIGHT, WHICH IT ALWAYS IS IN SPACE

Elevator music. LEGO stormtroopers are wandering around in the background.

DARTH VADER

singing to himself

La la la. I am a jackass. Doot di doo. Big, big jerk.

looking at camera

Oh! Hello! I didn’t see you there. My name is Darth Vader, and I’m the president of Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia, a.k.a. EVIL.

Appearing in the lower left-hand corner:

Evil

Villains

In favor of

Leukemia

DARTH VADER

We just think leukemia is the greatest. But don’t take my word for it! Here’s some testimony from some annoying pirates!

EXT. LEGO PIRATE SHIP — DAY

PIRATE KING

Arrrr! ’Twas a day the likes o’ no other, athwart the starboard bow upon the rottin’ maggoty beard o’ Davy Jones hisself!!! Upon the horizon did Two-Eyepatch Bill not espy the hideous sucker’d limbs o’ the mighty Kraken—fast amidships all cannons astern and swab the decks, ye filthy motherless bilge rat SWINE!!!!!

INT. DEATH STAR — NIGHT

DARTH VADER

Uh . . . sure.

INT. GREG’S DESK — DAY

PLASTIC FIGURINE OF SERPENTOR

with a snake accent

I am Serpentor, Cobra Emperor, of the evil Cobra Command! Leukemia is my favorite thing in the world! Now, because I love leukemia so much, I am going to go make out with my sister, the Baroness Anastasia DeCobray! You can tell she’s evil because her last name has the word “Cobra” in it!

BARONESS

I love making out with my nasty-ass brother! Because I’m disgusting as hell!!

SERPENTOR

How do we kiss again?

BARONESS

My goddamn mouth won’t open.

SERPENTOR

Neither will mine.

BARONESS

The hell we supposed a do now.

INT. DEATH STAR — NIGHT

DARTH VADER

We sure do love leukemia! Don’t believe me yet? Why don’t you ask this spinning tarantula paperweight?

INT. GREG’S DESK — DAY

The tarantula paperweight is a dead tarantula encased in glass. The magic of stop-motion animation is causing it to spin around in a circle.

SPINNING TARANTULA PAPERWEIGHT

with a German accent for some reason

Nothing makes me happier than leukemia.

Christ.

So this was Plan D. Maybe it would have been good. I don’t know. I doubt it. What I do know is, it took forever to do, and a few days before Thanksgiving break, Rachel and Denise decided that they were done with chemotherapy, and being in the hospital, and getting treatment. They were just going to let things run their course, they decided.

At that point I didn’t really know what to do.

So Rachel moved back to her room. Things were different, obviously. Actually, she was in a pretty good mood those first few days. The first day she came back was a Friday. It was late November but not cold yet.

“They’ve stopped shooting me up with chemicals,” she explained.

“So that’s over?”

“They just didn’t seem to be doing me any good.”

We silently contemplated this morbid utterance. For some reason, I said, “Certainly not in the hair department.” I was trying to make things less depressing, which of course had the effect of making things more depressing. But Rachel actually laughed. It was sort of a different kind of laugh, like she had to reengineer the shape of her mouth during laughter, because the old way was too painful. I did a surprisingly good job of not thinking about this.

Pretty soon I was just talking a lot and I wasn’t trying too hard to make her laugh and it felt a lot like before she went to the hospital and got all depressed. We were just sprawled out in her kind of dark poster-and-pillow-intensive room and I was going on at insane length about my life and she was just listening and absorbing it all and it felt like we were back on normal terms with each other. It was possible to forget that she had decided to die.

By the way, when someone stops cancer treatment and you point out that this is a decision to die, everyone freaks out at you. Mom, for example. I don’t even want to get into it.

But yeah.

“So Gretchen is just acting nuts.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh man. Girls at that age are just impossible. There’s just a lot of shrieking and stomping around. Some of it doesn’t even make any sense. Were you like that? At like age fourteen?”

“I fought with my mom sometimes.”

“Gretchen even gets pissed off at Cat Stevens. She’ll be petting him and then he’ll freak out and bite her, which he’s been doing for his entire life, and then suddenly she’s like, Oh my God, I fucking hate stupid Cat Stevens. She says he looks like a big garden slug. Which he does, obviously, but that’s sort of what’s so great about him.”

“That he looks like a slug?”

“Yeah, he’s just this ugly stripey slug color. He’s like the biting champion of the slug world.”

I guess it actually wasn’t possible to completely forget that she had decided to die. Because the whole time as we were talking, it was in the back of my mind and it was stressing me out a little bit, the idea that Rachel was close to the end of her life. Or not stressing me out, but just kind of weighing on me and making me feel a little short of breath.

Eventually, Rachel said, “How’s your latest film coming?”

“Oh, the latest one! Yeah. It’s pretty good.”

“I’m really excited to see it.”

Something about the way she said this made me realize that she knew about it. I mean, it was stupid to think she wouldn’t find out.

“Yeah, uh . . . Hey. You should probably know: It’s for you. Like, it’s sort of about you, and uh, yeah.”

“I know.”

I was trying to be cool about this.

“Oh, you knew that already?”

“Yeah, some people told me.”

“Oh, like who?” I was talking kind of loud and high-pitched. I actually sounded a little like Denise Kushner at that moment.

“I don’t know. Madison told me about it. Mom sort of mentioned it. Anna, Naomi. Earl. A few people.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh. That reminds me. I have to go talk to Earl about something.”

“OK,” she said.

Earl and I had never been in a fight. That was mostly because I am cowardly, and also partially because we had a pretty good working relationship with well-defined roles. The point is, I had never really gotten angry at him, and also I am terrified of conflict. Especially with Earl, because of the windmill kick to the head that he can do.

But I was pissed that he had told Rachel. So I went over to his house to yell at him.

Even just writing about this is giving me sharp stabbing armpit pains.

The whole time on the walk over I was kind of muttering to myself. Specifically, I was rehearsing the stuff that I was going to say.

“Earl,” I muttered to myself, “the foundation of any good working relationship is trust. And I can no longer trust you in any way. By telling Rachel about this film, which was supposed to be a surprise, you have betrayed my trust.”

I was lurching through the streets of Earl’s not-so-great part of Homewood, moving my lips, making semi-coherent noises, walking faster than is graceful for an overweight person to walk, and emitting maybe a quart of human sweat.

“I don’t know if I can work with you again. You will have to earn my trust back if you want to work with me. I don’t even know how you would go about doing that.”

I was on his block, and the sight of his ramshackle weird house jacked up my heart rate even worse than it had already been jacked up.

“You’re going to need to convince me that I can trust you.” That was another inane thing that I said.

I walked up the walk where I had broken my arm, and stood there, no longer muttering. Somehow I was terrified to ring the bell. Instead, I sent a text.

hey i’m in front of your house

But before Earl came out, Maxwell wandered out onto the porch.

“Fuck you want,” he said, although sort of casually and unthreateningly.

“I’m just waiting for Earl,” I said, in my new loud middle-aged-Jewish-woman voice.

Earl appeared in the doorway.

“Sup,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

We were sort of silent.

“You gonna come in?”

“No, I’m good,” I heard myself say. I had rejected a normal invitation to go into his house. This made it clear that we were about to have an argument.

“O-ho,” crowed Maxwell.

Earl went from Mega-Pissed to Genuinely Mega-Pissed and Not Just in Default Mode.

“The fuck’s your problem,” he spat.

“Uh, I was talking to Rachel, and she told me you told her about the, uh, the film.”

All Earl said to that was “Yeah.” Maybe he was just pretending that he didn’t know this was a big deal. Maybe he was so pissed that he wasn’t even registering it.

“It’s just,” I said, babbling, “you know, I mean, you told Rachel about the films in the first place, and then you brought them over to her, without asking me, and it’s just like, you’ll tell her anything, like, it doesn’t even matter what I want, I’m not saying she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t know, or get to see them, I’m just saying, I wish you had asked me, first, I wish—”

“You know what? Just shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.”

“I just—”

“I’m tired of this shit. I’m really fucking tired of it. You gotta quit with this shit, man. Because I’m about to lose my motherfucking shit with this.”

Briefly I contemplated lecturing Earl about trust. I decided pretty quickly, however, that that was not going to work, and might also bring about the apocalypse. Also, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to say words. Instead, I stood there and—there’s no good way to put this—attempted not to cry.

“Naw, shut the fuck up. You care so fucking much bout what other people think, you gotta be secretive as shit, gotta go round sucking errybody’s dick pretendin like you they friend cuz you care so much bout what they think, lemme fucking tell you: Nobody gives a shit about you. Nobody think shit about you. You ain’t got no friends. You ain’t got nobody who give a fucking shit about you.”

“Oka , kay.”

“Fuckin nobody. Errybody at school could give a shit about you, man. Errybody you all friendly with and shit could give a shit. You all worried bout what they think about you, man, they don’t give a fuck. They don’t give a fuck if you live or die, you pussy-ass bitch. They don’t give a fuck. Look at me. They don’t. Give. A fuck.”

“Oka ay. J Jesu , us.”

“Man, just shut the fuck up, because I can’t be hearing no more of this. Yeah, I fucking told Rachel about the films, I fucking gave her some of them dumb-ass films to watch, because she like the only person that do give a fuck. Yeah. She don’t have big-ass titties, so you don’t fucking care, but that other bitch don’t give a shit about you and, and fucking Rachel do, and you don’t fucking give a shit cuz you’re a dumb little bitch.”

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 691