all apologies - flatliners.
an excerpt from "all apologies: the beginning of the end in the 1990s"
Walking out of Mann’s Chinese with Marc and Cat Madigan after the movie lets out and I’m totally fucking disturbed. And it’s not the overwhelming smell of pee that wafts up at us as we turn the corner from Hollywood Boulevard into the cash lot we parked in.
“What IS it? You really do not look well.”
“I don’t know, it wasn’t THAT scary.”
“Totally. Thrilling, yes. But not scary.”
“Man…”
“What..?”
“Siobhan Kelly. Remember her?”
“Who’s Siobhan Kelly?”
“Sister Maria’s niece?”
“Sister Maria’s fucking niece.”
“What on earth does she have to do with Flatliners?”
“You have to remember how awful we were to her when she came to live in the convent and enrolled in our class.”
“Okay, but I honestly doubt that she’s dead and about to come after you…”
“We’ve all done those things when we were kids…”
“Oh, I know I fucking have.”
“Wait, though. Has she come after you?
“No, but. I was probably the worst out of everyone… Do you have a smoke?”
“Oh, my god. You need to chill out.”
“Gimme a smoke, then.”
Cat hands me a cigarette that Marc steps in to light.
“Since when have you started carrying a lighter?”
“Since, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago.”
Take a drag,
“I’ve thought about her, even before tonight. It was just such a shitty thing to do to someone. To her. Partly because I knew what it felt like. Because before Siobhan I was the one that got picked on, made fun of like that. You know, Sister Maria was the one who got me my first Cabbage Patch Doll.”
“You never told me this…”
“It was the first Christmas after my mom died, Harry couldn’t afford to get me one. You couldn’t find them anywhere, anyway. But there it was for me, Christmas morning. He told me all of this a couple of years ago, that the church had gotten a donation. So Sister Maria called him on Christmas Eve and asked if I’d like to have it.”
“What grade were you in, when Siobhan came to your class?”
“Fifth.”
“Oh, my god. You were all happy to be back from that dumb camping trip and now it’s gotten all heavy…”
“It’s not heavy, Cat, it’s just… I mean. Why did she come to St. Francis? She never talked about it and no one asked, but. Like, coming to America to live in a convent with her aunt?”
“My mom never talked about it. None of the staff did, I don’t think.”
“I was just so fucked-up to her…”
“You were a kid. And you could have used some help. You gotta give yourself a break, man.”
I’m on my second pass up and down Waring, trying my best to avoid having to parallel park. I just always make a mess of it, quite frankly. Science has always been a problem for me.
“Oh, my god, there’s one, HURRY!”
“Calm down, Cat Madigan. Like, screaming never really helps, you know?”
Find a spot just onto Orange Grove.
“You keep up with shit like the news.”
“You know this.”
“What’s going on in Iraq or whatever?”
“Mm, I don’t know the particulars, exactly. Something like the President or dictator of Iraq or whatever he is over there is, like, fucking around with Kuwait? And that aggression will not stand.”
“So, we’re, like, going to war, then?”
“I guess they’re working that out now. I don’t know how it all works, something with the U.N. or some shit.”
“Wild.”
“I’m pretty sure Stephen’s already over there on some base.”
“Your brother?”
“Half-brother. From my mom’s first marriage. He’s 82nd Airborne and I guess they’re pretty much always the first to go in.”
“The first real war of our lifetime.”
“We were alive for two years for Vietnam.”
“Real, as in we’re old enough to remember.”
“You don’t think we absorbed all that news footage as babies? Two years we were all in our playpens in front of the t.v. listening to Walter Cronkite every night before bedtime.”
“You would think the collective we would be over this shit by now.”
“Oh, don’t you lump me in with George Bush and them.”
Ed Rockitt’s diner. Looks like there’s not that much of a wait, yet. People are playing in the rotating doors, just going around and around, so we opt for the side door. I won’t call them teenagers. Cause it’s not like I’m some bastion of manners or some shit.
“Ooh, perfect. In the middle of a dance break…”
Look, the dancing is great and all the servers are talented. It just takes, like, way longer to get seated when you walk in in the middle of a number. Wanda makes a beeline.
“Remember, you don’t know anything about ‘Cop Rock.’”
“I remember, Wanda, jeez, how many times have you told me this, now?”
She shoves a stack of menus into my hands and beelines away.
“How come we call everyone else by their real names and Wanda is just always Wanda?”
“I don’t know. She wants it that way. I don’t ask questions.”
“Well, that’s obvious…”
“I mean, don’t you wear different masks for different parts of your life?”
“Of course, everyone does.”
“I wear a virgin mask in front of my mother now.”
It’s almost like the whole restaurant turns around and falls instantly silent, but really it’s just Marc and I. He looks uncomfortable and the energy feels very awkward all of a sudden.
“Excuse me, what? Come again, Cat Madigan.”
“You three. Pronto.”
Silence as Harvey the host kid seats us.
“Oh, my god, this is perfect, thank you so much.”
Cat waits until he’s well out of earshot,
“Wayne’s parents went out of town last weekend. It was a total spur of the moment thing.”
“It’s still hard to believe you’re dating someone named Wayne.”
“Batter up, buttercup.”
“Oh, my god, is it really the time for this?”
“Not really. But I’m enjoying how uncomfortable this discussion is making you.”
“Saved by the bell.”
Brooke catches us as she walks by. Slumps in our booth rather sulkingly.
“I’m sure you’ve heard by now.”
“Heard what?”
“You are such a terrible actor.”
“Whatever. It’s fine. I can say it…”
“Say what?”
“I… I didn’t…’Cop Rock.’ Did not return the outcome I had… expected.”
“Watch your next part just drop in your lap.”
“It is a rite of passage, I suppose.”
“Like losing one’s virginity, AMANDA.”
Brooke looks at me, a big smile spreading across her face. She really does look like she’s stepped out of an ad for Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger or something. Long, straight, brown hair, although I imagine she would probably want me to say chestnut. I can kind of understand why Wanda calls her Miss Priss of New England.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Don’t worry. You have time. I was twenty-one.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-four.”
“This conversation is starting to feel. Odd.”
“Only because you’re so uptight about it.”
Mason pulls up a chair at the end of the table, thank flip.
“It’s good to see you kids. How was your trip, honey?”
Mason’s hand on my chin as she asks me, that motherly air about her wrapping me up. I love being around her because of it, lack of nurturing when I was little, I suppose.
“I don’t know. The weather was nice. The trip, generally, a good exercise in patience?”
“Patience?”
“It got to be kind of trying, I guess. They’ve known me the longest, other than family, and yet they really don’t know me. Just misunderstood.”
“We’ve all been there, my dear.”
As she says this she touches my cheek in that motherly way of hers, that way that I love and that kills me.