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Points of Departure

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Dead Men on TV

I stay up late each night, watching my dead father on TV. Tonight, he's in Angels of the Deep, a World War II movie about the crew of a submarine. My father plays Vinny, a tough New York kid with a chip on his shoulder.

He was about twenty when the movie was made; he's darkly handsome, and an air of danger and desperation surrounds him.

I've seen the movie half-a-dozen times before, but I turn on the TV and curl up in my favorite easy chair with a glass of bourbon and a cigarette. The cream- colored velvet that covers the easy chair's broad arm is marked with cigarette burns and dark rings from other glasses of bourbon on other late nights. The maid told me that the stains won't come out, and I told her that I don't care. I don't mind the stains. The rings and burns give me a record of many late nights by the TV. They give me a feeling of continuity, a sense of history: I belong here. The television light flickers in the darkened room, warming me like a fire. My father's voice speaks to me from the set.

"Can't you feel it?" my father says to another sailor. His voice is hoarse; his shoulders are hunched forward, as if he were trying to make himself smaller. "It's all around us—dark water pushing down. Trying to get in." He shivers, wrapping his arms around his body, and for a moment his eyes meet mine. He speaks to me. "I've got to get out, Laura. I've got to."

On the TV screen, a man named Al shakes Vinny, telling him to snap out of it. Al dies later in the movie, but I know that the man who played Al is still alive. I saw his picture in the newspaper the other day: he was playing in a celebrity golf tournament. In the movie, he dies and my father lives. But out here, my father is dead and Al is alive. It seems strange to be watching Al shaking my dead father, knowing that Al is alive and my father is dead.

"I've got to get out," my father moans.

He can't get out. For the next hour and a half, he'll be stuck in the submarine with the water pressing in. I watch without sympathy as my father cowers in his bunk.

Late at night, I watch the movies, knowing that most of the men and women who move across the TV screen are dead. In my living room, they tell jokes and laugh, dance to big-band tunes played by dead musicians, lie and cheat and betray one another, argue and make love. And despite all that, they are dead. It seems strange to watch dead people on TV. Are they all being punished? What did the others do, who did they hurt, who must forgive them?

I never believed in heaven or hell or life after death until the day after my father's funeral. I was sitting alone in my father's house, and I turned on the television. My father's face stared out at me. He was surrounded by stone walls and darkness. It took me a moment to recognize the scene from The Pharaoh's Tomb. My father plays an archaeologist who is trapped in the tomb by a gang of criminals who want to steal the ancient artifacts.

"We're trapped in here," said a woman's voice. She was on the edge of hysteria.

"There's got to be an escape route," he said. "We'll find it. There's got to be a way out."

My father was right there on my TV screen, even though I knew he was dead. He spoke to me from the TV screen.

I figure it this way. The movie camera steals a person's soul. Just a little bit of the soul with each picture it takes.

But if a person is in a great many movies—well, then, his whole soul is sucked up into the camera and caught in the movies.

The way I figure it, I have my father's soul in a box.

The Grocery-on-Wheels truck delivers my supplies: TV Guide, bourbon, eggs for breakfast, cold cuts for lunch, steak to grill for dinner, a few canned soups, fresh vegetables for variety. I cook for myself these days. I don't eat much. The last cook disapproved of my drinking and pestered me to eat more, go out more. So I fired her and now I cook for myself, eating only when my body demands fuel.

As a child, I was overweight: a round-faced little girl who, in all the photos, wears a sullen expression. Now I am thin. My wristbones are enormous. I can count my ribs. My face is angular, and I can see the bones beneath the skin. I order my clothes from mail-order catalogs, and they are always too large for me, but I don't mind. I wear them anyway, belting the pants tightly to keep them from falling ...

After I put away the groceries, I don my bikini and lie by the pool, leafing through the TV Guide. My father left me this ranch house and the trust fund that supports me.

The gardener tends the yard and the pool. The maid cleans the house. I keep my father's soul alive by watching his old movies. He's all I have left.

I was five years old when my mother died. I remember she had soft hands and dark curly hair. I have pictures of her: a soft-bodied woman tending to fat, with a round face and dark eyes.

She came to California from Georgia, a soft-spoken country girl with a slight southern drawl. She was working as a secretary at MGM, and she met my father there. At the time, my father was still taking bit parts in cut-rate monster movies and westerns.

The year I was born, my father landed his first big role—Vinny in Angels of the Deep. That movie was a hit, and he went on from there with a few more war movies.

Then he played a hard-boiled detective in a series of movies and made a name for himself.

My mother started drinking heavily. Every afternoon she would sit by the pool, a glass of bourbon by her side.

Some nights, my father wouldn't come home. The next day, my mother would start drinking early in the morning, lying in a lounge chair in her black one-piece swimsuit, dark circles beneath her dark eyes. I remember sticky kisses that stank of bourbon. I remember her telling me, "Your father's a no-good louse."

Bourbon and sleeping pills killed her. The coroner called it accidental death: She left no suicide note. But I know better: She killed herself; my father drove her to it.

After that, my father was home even less. And when he was home, he seemed to look through me, as if I weren't real. I hated that I don't hate my father for the things he did to me. He didn't do anything much to me. I hate him for the things he didn't do. He didn't love me, he didn't want me, he didn't care about me—and that's what I can't forgive.

He sent me to private boarding schools, where I waited desperately for summer break. Then, during summer break, he sent me to camp. I lived in dormitories and cabins, cared for by teachers and counselors and housemothers.

And I saw more of my father on the movie screen than I ever did in life.

He married again—three more times. Each marriage ended in divorce. But he had no more children. One was enough. One was too much. I don't think he ever wanted a daughter.

It's one in the morning, and I'm watching a videotape of The Darkness Underground. My father plays an impoverished coal miner, working the mine in a company town.

The living room is illuminated by the light from the TV screen. I love the light the TV casts—it makes everything seem unreal, fantastic, as if the living room had no substance.

The couch and end table are dim outlines, barely visible. In this light, I'm not real. Only the world on the TV set is real.

The videotape is old: colored snow flickers on the screen. I watch the videotapes only when I have no choice; I'd much rather watch a broadcast and know that many people are watching my father. But the tapes have some advantages.

"I hate this life," my father says. He slams his fist down on the rough wooden table. "I hate it. I know why the fox gnaws off its leg to escape a trap."

"Don't," says the woman who plays his wife. I think her name is Mary. She dries her hands on her apron and hurries to his side.

I stop the tape, run it back, then play it again. "I hate this life," he says. Then he catches sight of me and stares at me from the television. "Laura, listen to me. Please."

His face fills the screen. His skin is mottled with red and yellow snow that dances across his cheeks like flames. He slams his fist into the table. This time, I stop the tape before the woman can rush to comfort him.

I play the scene over and over, watching him strike the table and cry out in anger and frustration, unable to escape. "I can't stand this life," he says. "Laura ..." His eyes watch me from the screen.

At last I let the movie run to the end. My father leads the miners in a strike. They triumph against the company, but my father dies. It's a good movie, especially the cave-in that kills my father. I play that over a few times.

At my mother's funeral, I walked beside my father, holding his hand. I've seen pictures of us standing at the grave. My father looks handsome in a black suit; I'm wearing a black dress, black gloves, and a broad-brimmed black hat. The only spot of white is my face: round, pale, and mournful, with black smudges for eyes. I remember that the dew from the grass in the graveyard beaded up on my new patent leather shoes. The droplets caught the sun and sparkled like diamonds. Newspaper reporters took pictures of us, but I would not look at the photographers; I was watching my shoes. When we left the photographers behind, my father stopped holding my hand.

We rode back home in a big black car that stank of dying flowers. I sat on one side of the big backseat, and he sat on the other. His eyes were rimmed with red and his breath smelled of whiskey.

I can't watch my mother on TV; she was never in the movies. I wonder what happened to her soul when she died. Is there a heaven for people who were never in the movies?

On Sunday afternoon, the two o'clock movie is Summer Heat. I've seen it before: my father plays a prisoner in San Quentin who was framed for a crime he did not commit.

At about one-thirty, I pull the drapes so that the room is dark and I switch on the TV. Instead of a picture, I get jagged lines, like lightning across the screen. I thump the side of the TV and the lightning jerks, but the picture does not return. The sound is a hash of white noise.

It's the maid's day off. I'm alone in the house and panic sets in quickly. I have to see the movie. I always watch my father's movies. I smack the set again and again, bruising my hand. I switch desperately from channel to channel. Nothing.

I look under "Television Repair" in the telephone book.

In shop after shop, the phone rings unanswered. Sunday afternoon and no one is at work.

Finally, at a place called Pete's Repair-It, a man answers the phone. "Pete's Repair-It. Pete speaking."

"Thank God you're there," I say quickly. "My television's broken and I have to have it fixed."

"Sure," says the man. "Drop it by on Monday and I'll have a look."

"You don't understand," I say shakily. "It has to be fixed this afternoon. My father will be on at two and"—I glance at the clock—"it's quarter to two now. I'll pay extra."

"Sorry, ma' am," he says politely. "The shop's closed today. I just stopped by to—"

Then I break down. "You have to help me," I plead. "You just have to. My father's going to be on TV at two and I have to see him." I start crying and I can barely speak.

"Hang on," he mutters. "Just calm down. What's the matter with the set?"

Between sniffles, I describe the TV's behavior. He gets my address and promises that he will come right away. I pace, watching the clock. At five to two, I hear a van in the driveway. I meet the man halfway down the walk. He's a broadly built man, middle-aged, with glasses and curly brown hair. Over the pocket of his red shirt, his name is embroidered: PETE. He carries a toolbox.

"Please hurry," I beg him.

I watch him work: removing the back of the TV and inspecting the tangle of wires inside. "Would you like something to drink?" I ask awkwardly.

"Sure. Have you got a beer?"

I shake my head. "How about bourbon and lemonade? That's what I'm drinking."

"All right," he says. "I'll try it."

He is whistling softly as I come out of the kitchen. "You could probably just get yourself a new TV for the price of this house call," he says.

I nod. "Maybe I'd better get another. So I'll have one as a spare."

He chats as he works, talking about what's wrong with the set, about how much a new set might cost me, but I pay little attention. I am watching the clock, waiting for the moment I can watch the movie. Finally, at two-thirty, he plugs in the set and the picture snaps into focus.

"Thank you," I say. "Oh, thank you."

I curl up happily on the couch. On the TV screen, my father paces to and fro in his little cell. "I don't belong here," he says.

His cellmate; a wiry man with a thin face and cold eyes, lies back on his bunk and laughs. "You and every other con in the joint."

"You don't understand." The screen shows a close-up of my father's face, his tortured eyes, his square chin rough with stubble. "I'm innocent."

"This is a great movie," I say to Pete.

"You've seen this before?" He picks up his drink and sits beside me on the couch.

"Of course," I say. "Five times before."

"Sure, you're innocent," my father's cellmate is saying.

"You and everyone else. We're all innocent." The wiry man takes a drag on his cigarette then blows the smoke at the ceiling. "But we're all stuck here together."

"If you've seen it before, then what was the big hurry to get the set fixed?" Pete growls. He is staring at me with puzzlement and frank curiosity. "You got me out here on a Sunday with a sob story about your father being on TV, and—"

"That's my father," I say quickly, pointing to the TV, where my father is lighting a cigarette.

"He's your dad?" Pete stares at the set. "I grew up watching his movies."

"So did I," I say. "I watch all his movies. All of them."

For a moment, Pete glances from the screen to my face and back again. "Yeah, I can see it," he says. "You look like his daughter."

I'm startled. "You think so?"

"Of course," he says. "Especially, the eyes. You got the same eyes. I should have recognized you,"

I notice that his glass is empty and I offer him another bourbon and lemonade. He accepts. I feel strangely comfortable watching the movie with him, "He died about a year ago," I say. "But I watch all his movies. That keeps him with me."

"What a great guy he must have been." Pete hesitates a moment, then says soberly, "You must miss him a lot." He puts one arm around my shoulders as if to comfort me. I lean against his shoulder.

"Not really," I say. "These days, I've got him right where I want him. He can't get away."

Pete frowns. "What do you mean?"

"He's right here," I say. "I watch him every night." I laugh and Pete smiles uncertainly. But he stays for another drink.

And another. We both get a little drunk.

I seduce the TV repairman by the light of the television, that flickering uncertain light where nothing is quite real.

My father watches from the screen.

The late movie is a musical. My father plays a gambler who falls in love with a society lady. Dead men and women sing songs about love, and Pete's snores blend with the music, a rumbling bass voice. A vigorous chorus startles Pete; he wakes and blinks at me myopically.

"You okay?" he mumbles. He scratches his head sleepily, waiting for my reply.

"I just can't sleep," I say. "It's okay." He struggles to a sitting position on the couch. "It's my snoring," he mutters gloomily. "I'm keeping you awake."

"No," I say. "Not at all. I just don't sleep much."

He sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. Half the curls stand on end. The curly hair on his chest matches the hair on his head. "My ex-wife always complained that I snored like a freight train."

I study him with new interest. Knowing that he has an ex-wife who complained about his snoring somehow makes him more real. He is naked and that suits him better than the shirt embroidered with PETE'S REPAIR-IT.

On the TV, three dead women in tight, sequined dresses sing about summer nights, moonlight, and love.

"What happened to your ex-wife?" I ask.

"She found someone who didn't snore and moved to Phoenix, Arizona."

"Do you hate her?"

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Excerpted from Points of Departure by Pat Murphy. Copyright © 1990 Pat Murphy. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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