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Authors: Laura Lippman
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father, something that could equal Andrew Sarris’s auteur theory. She would run this past Lloyd, the film student, the Tess Monaghan theory of awfulness in movies, summed up by one line: Also, there was a monkey.
“Then she tries to change her luck by marrying a rich guy, Robert Mitchum—did you know he hit on your aunt Kitty, when she was all of fourteen, one summer at Ocean City?”
Wake up, Tess said in her head, experimentally. It was something she did when her dreams were disturbing, or simply too weird. Wake up! Apparently she was conscious.
“But he gets kicked in the head by a bull, when he tries to milk him—he’s drunk, you see—so she marries Gene Kelly and he gets, I think, literally torn apart by his fans, so that’s where she is when she goes to the psychiatrist and he walks in and, bam, she finds love at last.”
“With the psychiatrist?”
“Dean Martin. He’s the janitor.”
Tess phrased her next question carefully. “And you liked this movie?”
“Honey, it’s the movie I saw the night I met your mother. If it had been one of those Annette Funicello movies, or one of those gory movies by, you know, that guy—”
“Herschell Gordon Lewis?” she ventured.
“Or Mary Poppins , anything. It could have been a two-hour test pattern and I would think it was the greatest movie ever, because I was sitting in the backseat of a Dodge Rambler, stealing looks at this girl. She ate popcorn so dainty. She never dropped a piece. Everyone—I mean even the Queen of England—drops a kernel or two. My date that night dropped a lot, ended up with hulls in her teeth. Not your mother.”
“Marriages have been made on less,” Tess said, meaning it. Still, it bothered her that she had been walking around—back when she was allowed to walk—believing that she was formed in the crucible of local politics, a legacy of the Stonewall Club. What a Way to Go! at the Westview Drive-in was a bit of a comedown. “You did go to Stonewall, right? You pretended to be interested in politics to snag Mom, and the lie became true.”
“The lie became true,” her father agreed, “although we would have been meeting over on the East Side then. That was Donald’s turf, in the day. We worked on the primary. We didn’t have the heart to campaign after Sickes lost to that nut job Mahoney in the primary. And Maryland ended up sending Agnew to the State House.” Her father looked sadder than he did when he thought about the Colts leaving Baltimore, and Tess had always assumed that was the nadir of his adult life. “That was a bad year, ’sixty-six.”
“Because your candidate didn’t get the nomination?” Tess asked.
“Because we believed in something and we lost. We were young. Kennedy’s assassination had been hard on us, but we were teenagers, then. In ’sixty-six, we still thought if you worked for the right guy, you won. Then Mahoney, that kook, that every-home-a-castle guy, got the nomination, and it all fell apart. I didn’t vote in the general in ’sixty-six. Then in ’sixty-eight, Bobby Kennedy was killed. The fact is . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Dad?”
“I didn’t vote for almost forty years, not until 2004.”
Tess could not have been more scandalized if her father had confessed an addiction, or even an affair.
“You were an active member of the party. You did get-out-the-vote. For all I know, you distributed walk-around money.”
“There was no walk-around money,” her father said, the denial still automatic after all these years. “Besides, none of that stuff means I had to vote.”
“So in 2000, 2002—”
“It’s not like there’s a lot of suspense, electoral collegewise, with Maryland. I campaigned for KKT, in 2002.” Tess recognized the shorthand for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who had run unsuccessfully for governor. “She sang show tunes on the bus. Oklahoma! Let me tell you, that was a labor of love. And she lost. First Republican in the State House since
“Then she tries to change her luck by marrying a rich guy, Robert Mitchum—did you know he hit on your aunt Kitty, when she was all of fourteen, one summer at Ocean City?”
Wake up, Tess said in her head, experimentally. It was something she did when her dreams were disturbing, or simply too weird. Wake up! Apparently she was conscious.
“But he gets kicked in the head by a bull, when he tries to milk him—he’s drunk, you see—so she marries Gene Kelly and he gets, I think, literally torn apart by his fans, so that’s where she is when she goes to the psychiatrist and he walks in and, bam, she finds love at last.”
“With the psychiatrist?”
“Dean Martin. He’s the janitor.”
Tess phrased her next question carefully. “And you liked this movie?”
“Honey, it’s the movie I saw the night I met your mother. If it had been one of those Annette Funicello movies, or one of those gory movies by, you know, that guy—”
“Herschell Gordon Lewis?” she ventured.
“Or Mary Poppins , anything. It could have been a two-hour test pattern and I would think it was the greatest movie ever, because I was sitting in the backseat of a Dodge Rambler, stealing looks at this girl. She ate popcorn so dainty. She never dropped a piece. Everyone—I mean even the Queen of England—drops a kernel or two. My date that night dropped a lot, ended up with hulls in her teeth. Not your mother.”
“Marriages have been made on less,” Tess said, meaning it. Still, it bothered her that she had been walking around—back when she was allowed to walk—believing that she was formed in the crucible of local politics, a legacy of the Stonewall Club. What a Way to Go! at the Westview Drive-in was a bit of a comedown. “You did go to Stonewall, right? You pretended to be interested in politics to snag Mom, and the lie became true.”
“The lie became true,” her father agreed, “although we would have been meeting over on the East Side then. That was Donald’s turf, in the day. We worked on the primary. We didn’t have the heart to campaign after Sickes lost to that nut job Mahoney in the primary. And Maryland ended up sending Agnew to the State House.” Her father looked sadder than he did when he thought about the Colts leaving Baltimore, and Tess had always assumed that was the nadir of his adult life. “That was a bad year, ’sixty-six.”
“Because your candidate didn’t get the nomination?” Tess asked.
“Because we believed in something and we lost. We were young. Kennedy’s assassination had been hard on us, but we were teenagers, then. In ’sixty-six, we still thought if you worked for the right guy, you won. Then Mahoney, that kook, that every-home-a-castle guy, got the nomination, and it all fell apart. I didn’t vote in the general in ’sixty-six. Then in ’sixty-eight, Bobby Kennedy was killed. The fact is . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Dad?”
“I didn’t vote for almost forty years, not until 2004.”
Tess could not have been more scandalized if her father had confessed an addiction, or even an affair.
“You were an active member of the party. You did get-out-the-vote. For all I know, you distributed walk-around money.”
“There was no walk-around money,” her father said, the denial still automatic after all these years. “Besides, none of that stuff means I had to vote.”
“So in 2000, 2002—”
“It’s not like there’s a lot of suspense, electoral collegewise, with Maryland. I campaigned for KKT, in 2002.” Tess recognized the shorthand for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who had run unsuccessfully for governor. “She sang show tunes on the bus. Oklahoma! Let me tell you, that was a labor of love. And she lost. First Republican in the State House since
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