Free Pure Spring by Brian Doyle Page A

four times. Some people.
    â€œThis bigger ribbon makes me look older, don’t you think?” Gerty says to me.
    I want to kiss the ribbon.
    Maybe I’ll tell her tonight during the movie. Tell her allabout stealing from her store. Tell her in the dark. Easier, maybe, that way. Won’t see my eyes. My shame.
    I’m wearing a white shirt and one of Grampa Rip’s ties.
    â€œDo you think this tie makes me look older?” “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.” Then she says, “Exciting, isn’t it?”
    When we’re about fourth from the front of the line I can tell by the look on the face of the lady in the box office that she’s too tired to be bothered asking about how old we are.
    When it’s our turn I speak right into the round hole in the window in a low, very serious voice, “Two adults, if you please,” and slap my dollar bill on the marble surface with what Grampa Rip would call Authority.
    She slides the two tickets over and the change — thirty cents — comes jingling out of the cash register down a slide and into the silver container.
    â€œWe’re all adults tonight, sonny,” she says. She sounds like she’s just about ready to drop dead from boredom.
    Gerty is imitating me as we float through the huge lobby leading to the stairs. “If you please...” she’s saying, trying to do a low voice.
    The lobby is decorated with carved frames and columns that look like marble and the ceiling is made of panels of gold and cream and rose red and the walls are decorated with flowers in plaster and brightly painted vases and cornices of fruits and foliage and animals and dancing figures in patterns and swirls and flowing lines and strange scenes like in a dream.
    Then the two royal curving staircases and the sweeping banisters with hundreds of little pillars fat at the bottom and the huge high domed ceiling. You look up, up, and don’t forget to breathe!
    Along the walls are arches and hiding places and pillars and caves over the doorways and tapestries and carvings heavy with grapes and buds and hanging apples and palm trees.
    There are naked fairies dancing in the woods, monsters peeking, creatures — half man half tree, half woman half fish — and bare-ass children playing horns and fiddles and throwing flowers and seashells at each other.
    And then the heavy drapes and stuffed sofas of rich cloth, velvet and velour and your feet sinking into the old, thick, soft, rose-red carpet.
    Then, in the theater where the seats are, the magnificent chandelier hanging down from the sunburst dome begins to dim and the hundreds of hidden lights glittering from everywhere begin to fade and now only the spotlights on the heavy curtain are left and now the curtain swooping open and all lights are out now and the music starts and the crowd of a thousand people hushes and the previews for the upcoming movies begin.
    A perfect magic palace. A perfect place to tell the beautiful, magical girl you are with that you are a liar and a thief.
    In
A Streetcar Named Desire
Marlon Brando plays Stanley. Stanley slaps his wife Stella and she runs away crying to the neighbor’s house but then they make up andStella loves him more than ever. Everybody’s poor and Stanley usually goes around in a torn, filthy T-shirt.
    Then Stella’s sister Blanche comes to stay and she insults Stanley, calling him a common pig which is what he is. But Stanley gets back at Blanche when he finds out that she has lied about her so-called fancy life in the past as a schoolteacher when all she really was was a sort of prostitute.
    Blanche goes crazy because Stanley is so cruel to her and in the end everybody hates everybody and they cart old Blanche off to the loony bin.
    Everybody in the Capitol Theatre is bawling like babies and Gerty is looking pretty sad, too, although she’s not crying.
    I hate this movie. It reminds me too much of my house