Free Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay Page A

“not even for ten minutes,” before making a move to wheedle more money out of her.
    Why had she written about him? Because she didn’t trust him. But in writing about him so transparently she had made herself untrustworthy. And now they were gathering like Iroquois at the gates, the people she had written about.
    Inside, she hung up his winter coat while he pulled off his boots and socks, a man who always made himself at home.He padded into the kitchen in bare feet, baggy pants, soft grey sweater, and Harriet introduced him as Leah’s stepson from Chicago.
    Dinah said, “You still haven’t told me who Leah is.”
    “A terror,” said Lew.
    “My father’s fifth wife,” said Jack, who had never taken to Lew, a man he found irritatingly thin. For his part, Lew thought Jack a grandstander, a peacock, a self-infatuated scribbler. Say no, he told Harriet when another manuscript arrived. Send it back. But he doesn’t include postage, she cried. Do you know how much it costs to mail a parcel these days? You could buy a mink coat!
    “And who’s your father?” Dinah asked him.
    “Lionel Frame?” Inviting her to recognize the name. “A friend of the Hollywood Ten. Blacklisted in the fifties, so he went from successful screenwriter to unpublished alcoholic.”
    Kenny, who was all ears, saw his opportunity. “So, what’s your favourite movie?” he asked.
    Jack replied as swiftly, “That’s an awful question.” By now they were at the kitchen table, except for Harriet, who was leaning against the counter, and Lew, who was in his study but within earshot, going through sheaves of music. “Endless movies run through my mind.”
    “All right. If so many movies are running through your mind, what are your three favourite movies?”
    Head back, staring at the ceiling. “Okay. To get you off my back, I’ll answer.” And he began to list movies.
    As far as Harriet could tell, Jack made no allowances for anyone. He sat in his bare feet, seemingly not feeling the cold, and rocked back on his kitchen chair – something she was alwaystelling Kenny not to do – and named one movie after another that curdled her blood.
    “Blue Velvet,”
he said.
“Leaving Las Vegas. Apocalypse Now. The Deer Hunter. The Godfather
movies.”
    “See!” Kenny swung on his mom. And to Jack: “She won’t let me watch
The Godfather!
Can you believe that? Is that fair?”
    “We watched
Jaws
a few months ago,” she said, to show she wasn’t a complete stick-in-the-mud. “We held hands,” and she twirled her hand to indicate the kids and Dinah and herself.
    “Now that’s a
terrific
movie,” said Jack, rocking forward in his chair and planting his elbows on the table. He said, “Allow me to be boring for a minute.”
    She looked for traces of Lionel in the son – the bushy eyebrows, charcoal black; the black, flashing eyes; the charismatic smile – but saw the big, crude, dominating person she had written about – Harry Juniper – and went cold at the thought. Had Jack read her book? He had never said so, but he must have. Must have read it. Unless he was completely uninterested in her, except as a reader of his own work, which was altogether possible.
    He was describing the “wipe shot” when Roy Scheider is on the beach and the crowd behind him is a blur, when his vision is blocked and so is yours, when the only way to see is to lean forward in your seat – and then Scheider sees something, and it’s the fin! which turns out to be a hoax, while the real shark is bearing down on Scheider’s son, who happens to be swimming in the safe side of the bay. Or the moment when Spielberg – “he’s a genius, there’s no way around it” – has all your attention focused on the lower left corner of the screen, and the decapitated head bobs into view in the upper screen, giving you the very shockthat Richard Dreyfuss gets. Or the parody of being macho when Dreyfuss crumples up the Styrofoam cup.
    Or the one-upmanship – now