Three Plus One

Michael is going to have a brother.

Or a sister.

Well, in his mind it’s a brother, anyway. There’s no way to tell, of course, but he would like a brother to play with and talk and share secrets about mom and dad and the neighbours. But, think about it, how long would it take? Obviously he’ll first have to grow up a bit. At two or three you’re not really able to do anything interesting. It will take a while.

He looks at mom. He tries to look at her belly, he has seen pregnant women before. That’s how you recognize them. But he can’t really see anything strange, she looks normal as ever, and anyway with the coat and everything you can’t really tell, it’s meaningless.

-You are going to have a little brother or a little sister, Michael –mom and dad told him, just like that. They were smiling and looked at him with that expression they use when they have bought you something and they know you’ll like it. And then, as if nothing had just happened, they told him to get dressed so they could go and watch Laurel and Hardy together.

Wait a minute. Does Michael have a say in all of this?

They decided to have another baby. Right. Michael realizes that mom and dad do not necessarily have to ask him if he wants a little brother, too, before making plans. It would certainly be very nice, but they don’t have to. Maybe it’s just a question of protocol, parents are not supposed to talk about that with their children. He would like a brother, ok. But that’s just coincidence. How could they know it would have been a nice surprise for him?

-Hurry up young chap, we’ll be late! –dad puts his arm across Michael’s shoulders. He’s still smiling. They have definitely taken the good news as an opportunity to celebrate together. So let’s go to the cinema, just like that.

Michael likes Laurel and Hardy, though. He has seen them in a movie last year. It was funny. What was the title? He can’t remember.

It will take so long, anyway. Mom said the brother will not arrive before November. Six months. It’s a lot of time.

-This is a talkie, Mike. You’ll love it, won’t you?

-Yes, dad, I really think I will. –He likes dad. He always looks for the funny side of things. He’s never worried. That’s a good way to live your life, if you ask Michael.

-And I bet you want popcorn, as well –dad continues with a strange air of complicity, looking at him and half-smiling while averting mom’s gaze.

That’s a really safe bet, anyway. Michael always wants popcorn.

-Take this –dad gives a coin to Michael- and buy a ten pence bag. You’ve become old enough to queue and buy things alone, Mike.

A ten pence bag, all for him? Wow, they are happy tonight.

While he’s eating his popcorn sitting in his chair, Michael thinks that the movie is probably going to be good. Laurel and Hardy in a talkie. That’s fun. He wonders how will their voices sound like. Hardy is big and fat and Laurel is so thin and has that strange expression on his face when he talks. Hearing them talk to each other will probably be hilarious. It’s only a pity this is a short movie. Buster Keaton’s movie was longer.

He might talk about his little brother –he really hopes it will be a boy now– with Jimmy. Michael is not sure he is allowed to, he doesn’t know whether people should talk about this stuff. You know, new children and births and moms getting pregnant even though you can’t really tell yet. Is that bad manners? Michael has a feeling mom would get angry with him if he talked about this in public.

But Hardy sounds like Hardy and Laurel sounds exactly how Laurel should sound. That is great.

-Dad, have you heard them? Their voices are exactly how I imagined them to be! Aren’t you thinking the same?

-Shh, be quiet –dad says, but he doesn’t sound upset. –Yes Mike, I think you’re right. And it’s even funnier now that you can hear them talk!

Michael is about to ask mom the same thing, but he suddenly changes his mind. That might really cause too much noise, mom is one seat away from him. Michael observes her for one second. She is there looking at the screen, still and without saying a word. She’s smiling but she doesn’t seem to be particularly chatty tonight.

Everybody is laughing now. Darn, Michael missed the joke. He looks back at the screen and Hardy’s wife is yelling at both him and Laurel for some reason. She looks so upset. And she’s not beautiful, in addition to being a harpy. Mom is such a beautiful woman, Michael thinks. And she actually is, not like those children who say that their moms are so nice but then you look at them and they’re not nice at all, they are fat or short or have an ugly face. That’s a good thing. Michael’s mom is beautiful and he likes it. He feels lucky.

Unaccustomed as we are. What a bad title. What does that even mean? It sounds like it’s trying to be smart, to suggest something to the moviegoers so that they might get the joke or the reference and feel smart, too. It’s a comedy, people are supposed to laugh and have a good time. Michael does not like those pretentious, sophisticated titles. You have to keep it simple, so that people will know what they are going to watch.

Leave ‘em laughing. That was the title of the other Laurel and Hardy movie he saw. Much better title.

The police officer in the movie is so threatening. Boy, he is big. If he knew about his wife... and Hardy looks so frightened! That’s brilliant. Michael is laughing a lot now. That’s just about the funniest thing he has seen the whole year.

It’s not that he didn’t like Buster Keaton. The Cameraman was really good. You did laugh quite a lot in some scenes. But Laurel and Hardy are just funnier. Michael is holding his stomach laughing now. Mom asks him to control himself a bit, and even dad tells him not to disturb the other people in the room. He takes Michael by his waist and positions him back on the chair, his shoulders firmly against the seatback. What’s the point of this? Why taking him to see a really funny movie, and then asking him to restrain himself when the movie makes him laugh? Michael would have been angry with his parents hadn’t he been so amused by those two guys on the screen.

Laurel and Hardy. Maybe Michael and his brother will become like them, and have fun together. But no. Michael will never be that fat.

While Laurel falls down the stairs hitting every single step and everybody laughs vociferously (perhaps their mothers never told them to be quiet while watching movies), Michael thinks that if he can’t decide when and how mom will have a new baby, he should at least make his voice heard.

He keeps the ticket in his pocket while he’s leaving the theatre. He wants to collect them. He already has another one. If only they went to the movies more frequently! Once a week would be just perfect. Imagine all the tickets of all the best movies in the box under his bed.

-Mom –he calls, with a firm voice.

-What’s up, Mike? Didn’t you like the movie? –she asks smiling.

Yes, yes, of course he liked it. That’s not the point. Why can’t they never guess when Michael wants to be serious and solemn?

-I want to ask something.

Well, he doesn’t know whether this will sound stupid, but he has to ask. This baby thing will influence his life quite a lot. You can’t have a baby and pretends nothing changed!

-I mean, this thing you were telling me about… the fact that you will have a baby. –He says it quickly, lest something might hear them. He’s still not sure this is something that can be talked about in public.

-Yes. –She stops, dad is some steps away from them. –Tell me, Mike –and she lowers herself to Michael’s level.

-I know you and dad have already decided… but… can I ask you something? I want you to do something for me.

-What’s the problem, Mike? –mom seems a bit worried now, she is even more beautiful. Michael looks at her in the eyes.

-Promise me it will be a boy. Promise! I want a little brother. Sisters are such a drag!

Davide

Of Mice and Little Men

Jimmy likes Michael’s green marble. Probably the dark blue one, too. He will try everything to get them.

Michael doesn’t even like playing marbles that much. But the green one really is beautiful. He normally wouldn’t have risked it, he wouldn’t have shown it to his friends for fear of losing it. But Jimmy knows about it, he has already seen it before, Michael couldn’t lie to him. Jimmy knows all his secrets. Michael suddenly realizes how dangerous that can be.

-Do you want some lemonade, boys? –Mom enters the garden with a tray and two glasses. When Jimmy or some other friend comes to visit, she always lets Michael have lemonade in the garden. When he is alone, she always makes a fuss about everything. Last Tuesday she shouted at him for having picked up a couple of stupid flowers from the path that leads to the gate. But now he can play marbles in the garden and sit on the grass, and drink while he does it.

-Thanks, Mrs. Floyd. –Mom likes Jimmy because he is so polite, and always remembers to say Mrs. Floyd instead of just Joan. Michael is not so good at this, he often says Vivienne and Mark when he speaks with Jimmy’s parents. Once he even called Vivienne “mom”. Now, that was embarrassing.

-I went to the movies last night –Jimmy says while drinking his lemonade. He pauses for a couple of seconds and smiles. He knows Michael hasn’t been to the cinema in a while.

-Really? What did you see?

-Mickey Mouse! –Michael looks at him without saying a word. –It’s a cartoon. It’s wonderful. You should ask your parents to take you there.

Jimmy shoots the marble and hits one of Michael’s favourite ones. He is still holding the glass in his left hand. Gee, he is so good! Michael will lose all his marbles. He should participate to some sort of competition. A national championship. Do they do national championships?

In fact, he has already won the red and the light blue one, and it’s only about four o’ clock. He has all the time in the world to focus on the green one. Something needs to be done. Michael has to buy time.

-Say –Michael shouts all of a sudden- how was the cartoon yesterday?

He is in panic, Jimmy will notice this. He has to calm down and talk normally and let him think he just wants to chat.

-It was so nice! You know that it was a talkie?

That look again. Jimmy really likes to tell people about the things he has done, especially when nobody else has. He always changes his voice and starts to smile and pretends he is sorry that you haven’t had the occasion of doing it. But you can’t really believe him because he sneers all the time.

Once Michael was sick and had to stay at home and couldn’t go out even though there was a fair. One with all the carousels and the music and the cotton candy. It must have been one year ago. Jimmy went there with his mom and dad twice and both times went to visit him afterwards. He described everything to him, and judging from his words it had been great fun. Michael had to lie in the bed and listen to his stories with no possibilities of escape. It was dreadful. That pretty much ruined the fairs for him. Every time somebody talks about carousels –that doesn’t happen too often, he has to admit– he thinks about that boring afternoon in the bed and rushes to change the subject. Jimmy also told him that there were wild animals in a cage at the fair, but Michael suspects that that is not true. He has seen the posters and there was no mention of lions and elephants.

Of course, Jimmy had come home to visit poor Michael, so mom was even more proud of him. Mom is so easy to deceive, Michael thought with a snort.

-Yes Mike, it was a talkie all right! I couldn’t believe it!

Oh, couldn’t you?

-Really? –Michael’s look was suspicious. –I’ve never seen a talkie cartoon. Are you making fun of me?

-No, upon my word! –Jimmy drops the marble he was still holding in his hand. –Mickey Mouse sang and laughed and shouted, and you could hear the boat whistling and the music playing!

-Did he actually sing? –all of a sudden, Michael remembers Jackie’s performance in The Jazz Singer and his face lights up.

-Well, no, not in words… I’m not sure anyway. But it was so good, there was so much noise. And then… and then Mickey and his wife started to play with the animals! There was a duck and a cat and a goat, and Mickey Mouse played them as if they were musical instruments. It was so funny! You should have been there.

-Wait a minute, a mouse? Was Mickey a mouse?

Michael doesn’t leave Jimmy the time to reply: -What a horrible idea! Mice are ugly. Nobody likes mice. –That was his sentence, his final word. Now he doesn’t have to be jealous of anything. A mouse protagonist? That’s just silly.

-You say so only because you haven’t watched it. I bet you’d like to.

-And anyway, I don’t think we should be watching any more cartoon. We are growing up. Me, I’m more interested in films now.

Michael is not really sure of what he is saying, but it’s probably working. Jimmy stares at him with a strange look on his face. He doesn’t know how to reply. If he maintains that cartoons are only small children stuff, then Jimmy won’t have so much to brag about. But –talkie cartoon? Boy, that was probably fun.

-Which film did they show after the cartoon?

-I don’t know, it was called Gang War or something. I could only see the title because mom and dad told the nanny to take me back home after the cartoon ended.

-Oh yes, I’ve heard it. –Michael is lying, but one has to keep a straight face if he wants to win this kind of arguments.

-I bet that’s not true. It’s a gangster movie and mom and dad wouldn’t let me see it because it’s violent. All the children left after the cartoon.

Jimmy suddenly loses interest in the conversation and turns to flick his marble again. It’s his turn. Michael should have probably let him brag about Mickey Mouse and his nice night out. Now he will lose all his marbles, and he is not even sure he has won the argument. Do you win the argument if the other speaker abandons the conversation? Michael tries to imagine General Custer at the head of the cavalry, with his arms crossed and a proud expression on his face, looking ahead of him while the Southerners abandon the field without fighting. Michael is not sure the teachers at school would still love him so much.

-Look! –Jimmy shouts. –Have you seen how big it is?

A lizard crosses the path behind them, then turns its head, stares at them and stops. It is quite big.

-I can catch it –Michael seizes the opportunity. –I bet I can do it before it hides behind something.

Jimmy draws nearer. He managed to catch his attention. –I bet I can do it before you.

-Don’t come too close! You’ll scare it. Let me try first.

Yes, he definitely has Jimmy’s attention now. The lizard stays there, strangely calm, looking at them while basking in the sun. Its belly moves when it breathes. Michael comes a bit closer, very slowly. This is his garden, he knows every corner of it perfectly well. This is his advantage. Jimmy looks at him, waiting for him to make a stupid move and fail. Or at least that’s what Michael thinks. But that doesn’t matter: he won’t fail. There’s an old bucket just two steps to his side: he will use it to entrap it. He takes it. The lizard is still there, apparently unaware of everything.

You wonder what they think. Stupid Lizzie. You see something much bigger than you, coming your way with a bucket, you run. It’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it? Of the garden, anyway. Other two steps, possibly three, and Michael will capture it. He will manage to impress Jimmy and they will play with Lizzie and probably even try to feed it and see whether it will manage to break free.

-Michael!

The boys turn round and see Michael’s mom.

-Jimmy’s mother is here, come back in the house! –Michael is on all fours on the grass, with the old bucket in his hand. Jimmy is behind him, standing upright. The lizard stays there for the fraction of a second, but then finally decides the place has become too crowded and runs away.

-Michael, what are you doing? –she suddenly changes her tone. –Stop playing with those dirty animals! What were you thinking about? Come here and wash your hands immediately!

Mom takes him by his arm and accompany him inside the house. Jimmy follows them. Michael’s trousers are stained with soil and he has still the bucket in his right hand: there is really no point in trying to deny anything. Mom will complain about the dirty clothes and he probably won’t be allowed to play in the garden for some days. Jimmy stays there without saying a word, but Michael is sure that when his mother will talk to him, he will call her Mrs. Floyd. Mom, after all, is just so easy to deceive.

Davide