Our Most Brazen Defeat by Evan Haine-Roberts

Late spring. Friday. 6 AM. The molten ocher of a North Florida sunrise spills out across the six sable lanes of I-75. The asphalt twinkles as if it has a layer of winter frost. A few early commuters creep down the road. Nondescript and unnoticed, they process. A tiny sports car enters the frame, immaculate and virgin white. Mindlessly, it drifts across the roadway stripes, gradually slipping towards the median. The camera follows, swooping downward, settling just before the windshield. Inside, an old woman with the charcoal eyes of a dame stares out in a rigid glare. On her left is the soul of a leading man in a character actor’s body.

“I am William Holden,” I announce to Grandma, gazing into the tiny mirror of the visor above me. I try to stretch my lips into a golden, boy next door smile. “And you are Barbara Stanwyck.”

“I haven’t got the eyes,” she says modestly. She used to be an actress and even as a grandma there is something in her manners which seems sequined and spot lit; the shortest phrases still come out like practiced monologues. She stretches her hands out across the glove compartment as if she is preparing for a manicure. “Don’t crash, Will.”

I try to look out the windshield but I am blind. The sun is volcanic. Like an unwitting actor stuck in a green screen I twist the entire wheel. I swerve the wrong way. Grandma sighs as if our lives are not in peril, as if I am being dramatic. She reaches across my chest and pulls us back into the lane.

“Kill me,” she says blithely. “Try harder.”

It is light and sarcastic, but for a moment I think about this really quite old woman next to me and the fact that this adventure, this Romantic conquest, might, in some cold, unfeeling circles, be construed as juvenile, or even irresponsible. I’ve accrued a number of offenses since leaving Durham; traffic violations aside, there is 1) the first wrong, reading my mother’s mail, 2) the initial theft, $200 from her purse, 3) the subsequent theft, the keys to her Audi, and finally 4) the great dishonesty, stealing my grandmother away from her home and installing her in the coupe on the pretense of a vague “family emergency.” But for her happiness! For both our happiness’! I tell myself. And it is true. The goal is mutual triumph, two quick successive victories for emotion and timeless love. For Grandpa! For Camilla!

“More happy love!” I cry. “More happy, happy love!”

Grandma does not join in. Instead, she produces a pack of slims and a souvenir book of matches from the folds of her nightie. With a few smooth movements of her willowy hands she lights one. Her mouth pulls on it and the end glows like hot copper. Her cheeks get big and goldfishy just before she releases a thin jet of smoke.

William: “You never inhale?”

Barbara: “I just want the flavor.”

William: “Flavor?”

Barbara: “The taste.”

William: (…)

I am lost. The morning light gives her dye job the bluish tone elderly women sometimes have, but otherwise she looks as if she has grown old professionally. Her face has no prominent lines and her legs have no prominent veins. Though youth has come and gone, the departure appears to have been amicable.

“I have a joke,” she says. “Tell me who I am.” A soft, plotting look creeps into her eyes. She runs her fingernails across the flint of the matchbook. With some bangs and a tight white sweater, she really could be Stanwyck, gliding her fingers over a highball glass, confiding to Fred MacMurray that, yes, she wishes her husband would have an accident. “When you sense me,” she begins, “you feel my weight on your chest. You feel my presence consuming your head, your thoughts, and your entire body.”

I am looking at the road, tracing the curve of the steering wheel with each finger, one by one. I think of Camilla. I try to imagine her under the Floridian sun, the shimmering wetness of her eyes, the freckles spanning out from her petite French nose. I try to picture her lips and imagine myself kissing them. I try to hear her apologize for the letter. J’ai été folle, she says. De rien, I say.

“I will make your body hot and your legs weak.” She lets a cloud of smoke seep from her mouth. “I will take you to bed and control you.”

I try to imagine all these perfect things but I can’t hold on to any of them. After a few seconds they all just fade to black and white, a foggy penumbra of nothing. Instead, I see the edge of her little belly peek out from underneath her shirt. I smell the faded sweetness of her breath like warm milk. I remember the first time we were naked, how I pulled back from kissing her and she placed her arms across her chest to cover her breasts. I recall the droll eccentricities, the little exposed patches of petite failures where my scarlet love, like rust, has grown.

“I will make you ache, shiver and sweat until you moan and groan. I will make you beg for mercy, but when I leave— and I always leave— you will be relieved.” With a grand, climactic spreading of her arms, she asks, “Who am I?”

Like a dancer waiting for the orchestra to wind down, she holds the pose.

“Phyllis.” I struggle. “Dietri-hu­-suh.”

“No,” she quips, ashing her cigarette. “The grippe.”

I give a slow, unsure hiss of a laugh through my teeth. It sounds a little violated, a little sniveling. It’s a greasy-hair-combed-back, twenties, noir, gangster giggle like that guy with the big eyes who’s in all those movies. But I am smiling, beaming because it is French, and that is my sad, clichéd weakness.

I admit this is very silly. But permit me a blockbuster montage so I can capture not only the sentimental verve and rationality of the characters, Grandma and me, but also to illustrate our honest, collective struggle as well:

The citrus honey of magnolias wafts through the air. Me, my nostrils, inhale it deeply. The camera follows as I turn up the walkway of crushed oyster shells and stride toward the four white pillars of my mother’s place. Grandma’s house: she is in her kitchen drinking iced tea from a pint glass, leaning over the sink, over the dirty dishes, and looking at the window in a banal gloom. She is good looking— we are both good looking— but she is old. The audience senses her lonesome sadness; they are sympathetic, some are teary. Now me: the camera swoops around to the front as my hand reaches into the mailbox. Bills, offers, a letter from St. Petersburg, from Camilla, sweet, lemony Camilla. Deep focus: a tight shot of my body and the exaggerated wisps of her script as the last gasps of a late spring sunset— toxic reds, unknown purples, a lively yet wilting pink— spill onto my back and her stationary. A strong gust of wind wrenches new blossoms and whole flowers from their trees. My face: it is eerie and expressionless.

A cheap postcard falls from my hands. On the front, two palm trees lean towards each other, framing a soft, creamy vermillion building. The body of the text, the signature, “Sincerely, Your Father.” The postmark: St. Petersburg. Grandma’s face now from the other side of the window, the audience is looking through it to her (windshield reference). There is longing and nostalgia resting in the corners of her eyes, forming two solemn tears which fall in tandem, in perfect synchronicity, down the slopes of her cheeks. Two estranged loves, one city, one trip. The plan is hatched, the money and keys stolen.

“Truck.” That is Grandma.

I brake and yield to the semi merging in front of us. Grandma stubs her dwindling cigarette into a cup holder. She ruffles her gown again and brings forth a small candy wrapped in golden foil.

“Caramel?” she asks. She is classic; the way she speaks is enchanting.

But I decline. I am starting to feel bad. It seems wrong that she’s living off of smoke and burnt sugar, that she really only swallows one. But there’s nothing melancholy about her tone. She just pops the sweet and I hear a tenuous grind as her molars go to work. I wonder why she is not worried about her teeth.

Forget the montage. It was some cinematographer’s perversion. It was neon lights and mushroom clouds. It was James Cameron, George Lucas, and all sorts of modern trash. This is a Billy Wilder film so let me do a voiceover where I can speak honestly— without any eccentricity— and express that which cannot be translated through images or even normal expression:

“Yes, this is I-75, northern Florida. It’s about 6 o’clock in the morning. Two letters were delivered on the same day. You’ll read all about it in the late editions, I’m sure. You’ll get it over your radio and see it on television— because an old-time star is involved, one of the biggest. But before you hear it all distorted and blown up and spun to epic proportions, maybe you’d like to hear the facts— the whole truth…

“I don’t know my grandfather. Never even knew he existed until yesterday when a fifty-cent postcard fell from my hands like a golden ticket. It probably wouldn’t have meant a damn thing to me neither, except for the letter I read before it. How was I supposed to handle that kind of “Dear John” bit— I wasn’t even at war. Besides, there was St. Peter staring back at me from pale red ink. Both of them in the same place? I probably would have let it slide, but I was in love with a woman. And being crazy about a woman like that is always the right thing to do.”

“Are you hungry?” That is me.

“No, but I could use a freshening,” Grandma says.

“Well,” I mumble, weaving to an exit, “We’ll need gas eventually.”

“Casuist,” she exclaims, and though I did already refill the tank and a big part of me would like to deprive her of her frashe-uh-ning, I peel off the highway and down the great cloverleaf curve. I park the car beneath the quick-receding shadow of a tree and disengage the child safety lock.

“I have a story,” Grandma says before she leaves. “A masochist and a sadist are walking down the street. The masochist says, ‘Hit me.’ The sadist says, ‘No.’”

I don’t know if I am not in the mood or if I don’t get it, so I just give my most believable chuckle. Collecting her nightgown around her legs and waist, she warns me to mind my gaze as she gets up. In an exaggerated gesture I raise a hand to my periphery and turn away. I trace the rubber molding along the window. I push my thumb against the glass, making two eyes and a nose. I make one long upturned smear but it still looks like a sad smudge. Eventually her door closes and I look forward. For a second, a cloud blocks the sun and everything is suffused with a quiet pigeon-gray darkness, Grandma too. Crossing over a clearing of grass to the bathrooms, her gown floats a little with the breeze and she takes on a gothic look. There is the purposeful gait of a governess, her back straight and chin high, but also a careful weight to the way she plants her feet. Each step seems like its own decision.

She could be Ingrid Bergman too; she has the lips, the right smile. Her frock clenched in one hand at her side, she could be strolling up to an abandoned manor like in The Turn of the Screw, just trying to save a few precocious children. I’d just as soon call her frustrated, tell her she’s delusional, that it’s all in her head. All she needs a man. But, in the end, I’m not sure. Really I could have dragged her from her house on an adventure she has no desire to be a part of.

My chest feels hollow, like it’s swallowing itself and is still hungry. I don’t know if it is morality or guilt or insecurity but whatever it picks and pangs and spasms inside of me until I run to a phone booth and my index finger punches out the telephone number for home.

Three rings and the machine gives an inviting beep.

“Hi Mom, I am here. In Florida, near the Gulf Coast of Florida, and I have Grandma. I took her from her house but she’s fine. She smokes and doesn’t inhale, and only eats sugar; but I still think she’s fine. I would put her on the phone and prove that she’s okay, that I’m not lying, or kidnapping her, or really making her do anything against her will— but she is frashe-uh-ning. I told her that someone in the family was hurt and she had to come. Which I will be the first to admit is a lie, but I think it absolves me of any criminal charges. I also have your car keys. And your car. I didn’t think this would be so bad because this is all for a good reason and it really is, because I’m taking Grandma to see Grandpa in St. Petersburg and I think it’s going to make them both very happy. I know— I mean… I assume they haven’t seen each other for a long time, but I know that at one point, albeit a very long time ago, that they had sex. And it may have been sixty years ago, but I’m pretty sure that if they did it once they will probably be willing to do it again. That’s been my experience anyway. Which is embarrassing and gross, well, really gross, but I bet they—” There is a click.

“Where are you?” That is Mom. I guess she sounds angry.

Me: “Hey Mom?”

Mom: “You are where?”

Me: “Down in Florida.”

Mom: “What you are doing is irrational and impulsive—”

Something about the challenge, her exclamation, gives me a need to assert myself. “It’s fated!” I interject.

I can see her at the other end of the line. Her cheeks are a flushed, light cherry. Her eyes are locked onto to some facet of the telephone, judging it in my stead. All I had wanted to say about Grandma, St. Petersburg, and the pigeon-gray darkness dissolves as she continues speaking.

“— and this cupid idea you have isn’t real and it is not going to help anyone. You are acting selfishly—”

William: “What matters in life is what you feel—” and for a second this seems undeniable, so I run with it— “You can only be happy if you are open, if you are intimate and vulnerable, and willing to steal cars and money. Because life is about trusting your emotions, hoping and praying that they are true, and knowing that they are enough to make you happy for—”

Mom: “Is there a soapbox in that phone booth?”

William: “Yes! Because, it’s about beating your chest and not worrying about the pain or consequences. Because our feelings are all we have and they may be subjective and useless, but they’re the only thing that drives us together, that keeps us together, and that is something we should cherish.”

My tongue is dry and my whole body prickles like it’s sun burnt. I think I am done.

Mom: “Are you done?”

I think of Camilla and whether I should say something about that. The last time I saw her she was making a wild left turn away from my house. I was standing under the buttermilk glow of a streetlamp, yelling adverbs at her car. Truly! Completely! Absolutely! Eventually I left the street, collapsing onto my bed, still naked, sprawled out like a starfish, and watching the Eiffel Tower sink towards ruin.

I suppose that could be a flashback.

The phone broadcasts a hushed crackle as Mom exhales.

“Yes,” I say.

“Put Grandma on the phone.”

I will not. I let the receiver dangle and make my way back to the car. She is already inside, grinding on another candy. We greet each other with a nod and go.

After a few miles I veer towards the west. The mileage on the signs continues to drop but the road seems endless. There is a constant mirage flashing like water tilted in a pan, tidal almost in the way it grows and recedes. I pull off the highway, see the two palm trees and the soft coral building. I move into a lot, park. Finally:

Grandma: “Where are you taking me?”

Me: “Here.”

Grandma: “And what is here?”

Me: “Grandpa.”

“Yours?” Her long fingers stretch their way towards me.

“Yes.”

“Yippee.” It is ironic, forced. She declares it like she is in a musical.

Slowly we walk towards the building. I think maybe I should pick her up. That I should hold her frail body, with all her little, graceful bones, and deliver her over the threshold to this man. But I’m not her husband or her father, so we just walk side by side.

Grandma puts a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and lights it just as we enter the building. The woman at the front desk barks from her rigid jaw and sunken cheeks, but Grandma keeps going. She follows a path of green construction paper arrows stuck to the floor. Her chin is still high, her back still straight, but she walks quicker, feet moving without thought or assurance. There is the clean smell of candle smoke and the tang of frosting. A cheap keyboard does its best to deliver a chirpy “Happy Birthday.” Reaching the doorway, she stops and watches me as I walk over to the bald man with porcelain skin hunched over a sheet cake. She sees me lean over his dandruff covered shoulder and say something. She is far away but can see my lips move. She sees that he does not recognize me, or her.

But now the lights are dimming and the candles are beginning to be lit. The old man huffs once and a few flames waft away. He goes again. The rest fan off into smoke.

I slink back to the doorway and stand next to Grandma. I try to tell her how this was supposed to work, how this was supposed to be two quick successive victories for emotion and timeless love, how I was going to reunite her and Grandpa, and then, propelled by destiny, vigor, and a premiere success, win back…

Grandma pushes a caramel into my hand. There is the crinkle of the wrapping being undone and the slick smack as it swirls around my mouth, slowly getting soft enough to chew. When the lights come up, there’s Grandma and I with the defeated look of crisis realigned to fortune. But we appear shameless and not unhappy.