Screening Room Read Free

theater, but he has no money, nor does Papa Joe, unable to collect payments from some derelict clients. “Why in God’s name do you want to own a movie theater?” says Papa Joe in his heavy Hungarian accent. “Do something useful. Aren’t you trained as an engineer? Build roads. Help me in the quarry.”
    “I want a movie theater,” says M.A.
    The next morning, M.A. packs two clean white shirts and a tie in his raggedy college suitcase and takes the train to New York, to visit Papa Joe’s older brother, Jacob. Uncle Jacob, childless, has money from his confectionary in the Lower East Side, but he has never shared fifty cents with the rest of the family, and his Gentile wife would rather convert to Judaism than set foot below the Mason-Dixon line.
    M.A. has never been to the North before. He has taken road trips in a borrowed Whiting Runabout to Knoxville and Jackson and Memphis, and even as far as Lexington, Kentucky. But New York City is an ocean that floods his mind—the tall buildingsthat punch holes in the sky, the rows upon rows of apartment windows, the scissoring crowds on the streets, the peddlers and shops, the automobiles, the shouts and the blares. He notices everything. He hears the wild thunder of time and the future. After dinner, M.A. outlines his business plan to his uncle and delicately asks for a loan. They sit in the little living room with photographs of railroad stations on the wall, the strong odor of Uncle Jacob’s cigar, the sounds of honking on the street. Nothing doing, says Jacob. M.A. pleads. He is wearing his white shirt and his tie, and he hates asking anybody for anything. Uncle Jacob offers him a glass of port, which M.A. politely declines. All he needs is $1,500, he says. He is certain that he will be able to pay back the money within two years, with interest. People want to see movies, says M.A., strong and eager and leaning forward in his chair. I’m sorry, says Jacob. I am not a charity. We have our own expenses, says Jacob’s wife. I am not asking for charity, says M.A. He is standing now, enormous. He fills up the room. He and his uncle exchange unpleasant remarks. You shouldn’t have come, says Jacob, fear in his voice.
    Without further words, M.A. takes the train back to Nashville. Two days later, Uncle Jacob is killed by a trolley car while crossing the street. His will leaves $3,000 to M.A.
    “M.A. always got what he wanted,” says Nate in a low voice.
    “M.A. never talked about that trip to New York,” says Uncle Harry.
    “There are strange powers at work in the world,” says Nate.
    I can never be sure what Nate knows to be absolutely true and what he embroiders. But my great-uncle Jacob was indeed killed by a trolley, at the time M.A. started his empire. And here we all are gathered in M.A.’s old house, sitting in the room where he sat, looking out at the grounds that he kept, living off the business he started, endowed with a slight thickening of our eyelids, like his.
    “The younger generations have gotten timid,” says Lennie, lifting her head from the couch to see exactly who’s in the room. “Your mother was a bombshell,” she says to me. “So was I. We had some times.” She looks over at Nate, to see if he’s paying attention. “Most of it can’t be discussed in mixed company.”

The Famille

    ( photo credit p2.1 )

Courtship in the Swamps
    During my mother’s third year at Sophie Newcomb, in New Orleans, she began receiving marriage proposals. Most of these came from young men in the armed services. While home on leave, her suitors took her to restaurants in the French Quarter and jazz clubs on Bourbon Street, then wrote her long, romantic, desperate letters from their ships or infantry units. She did not take any of these advances seriously. They were all just good fun. A cheerleader for the Tulane University football team with a full, pouting mouth made prominent by dark red lipstick, lush brown wavy hair, and a mischievous glint in her eye,