Eternity at the Drive-In
By Lisa L. Leibow
Judith, Amelia Schwartz’s sister, arrived for a special night out—just the two of them—but refused to tell Amelia where they were going.
As they started out Judith said, “You know, they closed down the drive-in theater over in Chelsea a few years ago.”
“Oh, I remember that place. Mom and Daddy used to put me in pajamas and let me sit on the roof of the car to watch the movie,” Amelia said as she looked in the sun visor’s mirror. Her hair was cut in a sophisticated bob, falling at her cheekbones, but a zit marked her chin.
As Amelia searched inside her purse for concealer, Judith said, “They charged by the car, not per person. So I would pile, I don’t know, twelve or so girlfriends into Mom and Daddy’s car. It was never just about watching the movie. We loved spying on the other cars—who was necking with whom, in whomever’s back seat. It made me so sad when I read it was closing. Do you remember how Mom and Daddy joked that the family plot had a view of the drive-in?”
Sitting next to each other in the front of Judith’s car, the two women looked nothing like sisters. They were far apart in age as well as appearance. Amelia, thirty-eight, had inherited copper hair from her father and an alabaster complexion from her mother, while 58-year-old Judith carried through life with fair, freckled skin and Mom’s sable hair.
“Oh, that’s right. That stinks. They can’t watch movies anymore.”
In a flood of memories, it came back to Amelia. Back when she was ten, years before she realized how lucky she was to be surrounded by family, alive and well, when her parents were healthy enough to feel immortal, they had decided to get their affairs in order. They sat around and jested. Perfect estate planning meant you spent every penny during your lifetime. The tricky part was synchronizing death with exhaustion of funds. Their planning included purchasing a family burial plot.
Judith had been visiting. Amelia was playing with her oldest niece. Her two nephews were out in the yard. Judith was feeding number-four baby, Summer, at a high chair in the kitchen. An open archway connected the kitchen directly to the living room, where eleven-year-old Amelia lay on her belly. Next to her eight-year-old Zoey sat with her legs splayed to either side. The two girls were working on a jigsaw of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy. Amelia’s brother, Walt, had given her the puzzle for Hanukkah. It matched Mom’s favorite framed print of the same work, which hung in the living room on the wall opposite the cuckoo clock.
Amelia had a clear view of her parents, Judith, and the baby sitting in harvest-gold, vinyl chairs around the Formica kitchen table. She could smell Mom’s chicken soup simmering on the stove. Nobody was ill but she always had homemade chicken soup ready just in case. On the wall behind that simmering pot hung a hand-painted tile. On it was a picture of the perfect 1950s housewife—a woman in a gingham circle skirt, topped with a poodle apron and a sweater set. Floating in the background in cross-stitch sampler-style was the adage Food Should Be Cooked with Butter and Love.
“I think that’s all the straight-edge pieces, Auntie Amelia,” said Zoey.
“Wow, that went fast! You find all the blue pieces for his britches, and I’ll look for the dark ones for the background, okay?” She sorted through the jigsaw pieces while eavesdropping on her parents’ conversation in the kitchen.
Mom had papers from the funeral home spread across the kitchen table. Looking at a map of the cemetery, which was color-coded to indicate available plots, Mom said, “This spot over here is close to the entrance. The kids’ll have an easy time finding us.”
Daddy answered, “The ground is too low there. We’ll be waterlogged from March through June at least. Forget it if we have a rainy autumn. And any spring bulbs planted will get root rot.”
“What will we care?” Mom asked.
“Listen, I want a chance to push up daisies, you know? If the ground is too wet… Hmmm, I like this area here, up on the hill, on the south side of the cemetery.”
“Let me see. Here?”
“Yes, my love; nice high ground, and as an added bonus, we’ll have a great view of the drive-in movie screen,” said Daddy, pointing to an area on the map just north of the cemetery.
Mom laughed. “Daisies and movies?”
“Sweetheart, I can’t think of a better way to spend eternity than watching double features with you: horror flicks to make you cling to me, love stories to put you in the mood, comedies to make us laugh our tushes off.”
Judith said, “Dad! How can you make a joke of that?”
Mom blushed and giggled. “I hope they play Mel Brooks—I love Mel Brooks! Eternity with you and Mel Brooks… That’s what I call heaven.” What Amelia remembered so well, even now, was looking up from the puzzle and noticing the happy tears in her mother’s eyes, laughing so easily at death.
Judith stopped the car. “Well, we’re here!”
They had arrived at the old drive-in site, now a vacant lot. The pavement was cracked and random clumps of crabgrass had sprung through gaps in the blacktop. Nature had commenced reclamation of land with which man had interfered. The evenly spaced posts still stood, however, though most of the speakers that used to hang from them were missing. Someone had scribbled graffiti across the old movie screen, a huge, abandoned wall that loomed before them like an enormous billboard.
“Do you know why I wanted to bring you here?” Judith asked as she shifted the car into park and turned off the engine.
“To see the ruins of a bygone era?” Amelia mused that this ruin was as significant as the Coliseum was to Rome or the Western Wall was to Jerusalem.
“Well, in a way,” Judith said.
She exited the car and removed from the trunk a bottle of Sambuca, a box from Mike’s Pastry in the North End, a laptop, and a projector. Amelia was amazed Judith could set up the projector. She had never been the most technologically savvy person. Her sister must have practiced in advance.
Judith announced, “I have DVDs of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and History of the World, Part I. I thought we could send you off with a few laughs while giving Mom and Daddy the first double feature they’ve had in years.” She flipped the power switches on the projector and DVD player. The old graffiti-covered screen lit up.
Amelia swallowed hard and asked, “Judith, how?”
“Sam helped me.” Judith’s eyes were moist but she was beaming.
Still choked up, Amelia said, “I can’t believe this. It’s incredible.”
The two sisters unfolded beach loungers over the grassy eruptions in the pavement and got comfortable. Judith opened the pastry box. It contained Amelia’s favorite cannoli.
After quietly watching the beginning of the first movie, Judith said, “You know, after Mom died, I would come see a movie here by myself every once in a while, feeling some comfort, thinking Mom and Daddy were watching it with me. When they closed the place, I felt so sad that their plan for eternity was foiled.”
As usual, when the subject of her parents came up, what Amelia felt most strongly was regret.
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Adolescent Amelia sat in her bedroom at a mahogany writing desk covered with lotions, lipsticks, nail polish, hair gels, and other concoctions. She was forever trying to make herself more desirable to boys at her junior high school. She had divided the bottles—tallest in the back and shortest in the front. The reflection of this sloping arrangement in the wall mirror looked like a miniature cityscape of waterfront skyscrapers.
Amelia applied hair spray, then carefully capped the can and returned it to its place. It was essential to maintain the proper balance of her tableau. She raised a Victorian, handheld mirror. She loved the silver-plated, twisted-rope design that circled the mirror’s edge. In the center, pearl-encrusted foliage adorned a cast design of forget-me-nots. Her mother once told her that the flowers symbolized remembrance and the pearls, tears. It didn’t matter much to Amelia what the Victorian symbols meant. She just liked the way it looked. Each time her fingers grasped the handle of the mirror, confidence in her own delicate, feminine allure increased. She used it, along with the wall mirror, to ensure the back of her big, feathered hairstyle was as perfect as the front.
Her mom called, “It’s time for dinner,” just as Amelia set down the mirror.
She didn’t realize that it was protruding over the edge of the desk until she stood and her hip caught the handle. The mirror fell as if in slow motion, floating to the ground as if it had been dropped in a pool of water. She reached out reflexively but too late. The mirror shattered into dozens of shards.
Sobbing, she tossed broken glass into the trash. She adored that mirror, but what felt worse than losing it was thinking of her mother’s superstitions. Seven years of bad luck—that would be her fate.
Amelia Schwartz broke that mirror the day before her fourteenth birthday, and yes, her seven years of bad luck followed, spilling throughout her family.
Within two weeks her father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died nine months later. Her mother had a heart attack a month to the day after Daddy’s death. She suffered thirteen more before the fourteenth did her in. Amelia’s brother’s depression came later. The blues nobody took seriously spiraled out of control until that fateful morning when Walt’s best friend telephoned, relaying the unthinkable: her brother, a veterinarian, had euthanized himself—ended his own torment using the same drugs he used to put aging dogs and cats out of their misery.
Amelia lived every day with the throbbing grief and extreme shame of knowing her clumsiness had been the source of all of this torment and tragedy.
It had not escaped her that her trilogy of sorrows followed another superstition: Bad things happen in threes. The seven-year cycle and rule of three completed years ago, Amelia sighed. “I am so lucky to have a sister like you.” Luck and superstition; her mother had taught her to believe in both.
“Remember our discussion about how Sam’s friend can’t hold down a job? How I told you that I’d never been fired from anything?” Amelia said abruptly now.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Judith asked.
“I forgot to knock on wood after I said it, and sure enough, three weeks later my job was gone,” Amelia answered.
“You put too much emphasis on those silly superstitions. How many times do I need to remind that your mirror had nothing to do with what happened to our family?” Judith said. Just like that, the mood of the discussion had soured. Mel Brooks’ actors and all their antics went ignored.
Amelia crossed her arms, instinctively feeling Judith’s disapproval. She said, “But the signs are so obvious. Did you know I found a penny on the sidewalk between my apartment building and Kelley’s Roast Beef, and the very next day I got the offer to work in San Francisco?”
“Who can argue with that?” Judith said. The sarcasm was clear. With their mother gone, sometimes Amelia relished Judith’s maternal advice and care, but this time her parental condescension hurt.
“If I end up taking this job, leaving you will be the hardest part,” Amelia said, unfolding her arms and taking her sister’s hand. With that touch Amelia felt a comforting change. It was more like a change in aura, marking an instant shift in Amelia’s fluid yearning for her sister’s love. Amelia felt like a child seeking assurance.
“I’m sure you’ll end up accepting the offer and moving away. I figure while you’re still living out here, the least we can do is give them an evening of Mel Brooks. Daddy will be laughing his tush off, and Mom will be in heaven. Just one night, you know, before I’m left alone,” Judith confided, pulled her hand away, and then was conspicuously silent.
“You’re mad I’m leaving?” Amelia asked.
“It’s just so far away. But you know, do what you want,” Judith answered.
“I have to go. I have no job here anymore. And Michael is going too. I still have hopes for Michael and me.” Amelia’s voice cracked when she said Michael’s name. Michael Philips had been her friend through four years of college, eight years of working together in Boston, and countless calamities. Leave it to him to turn this fiasco around! Amelia continued, “And you’re not alone. You have Sam and the kids.”
“Oh, the kids have lives of their own, and Sam isn’t ready to retire yet. And you’re leaving and Mom, Daddy, and Walt are up there on the hill. But you do what you want. You always do,” Judith said.
“You planned such a beautiful evening. Don’t ruin it. I have to go. I’ll visit. I promise,” Amelia said.
“Will you be alright all by yourself out there? What are you going to do? How will you manage?” Judith asked.
“I don’t know. I’m scared too. But I have to try. Why are you doing this to me?” Amelia answered.
They sat in silence until Amelia noticed Igor, Young Frankenstein’s assistant, up on the big screen. His hunchback had conspicuously switched sides, and he walked with a convoluted gait as he urged his followers to “Walk this way” in classic Mel Brooks fashion. She started to giggle. Judith, unable to control herself, released a loud snort through her nose as suppressed laughter escaped. Soon the two were guffawing—deep belly laughs, so hard they were crying.
Judith poured some Sambuca and threw three coffee beans into each glass. Amelia was happy Judith remembered the superstition that it was good luck to put three coffee beans into a glass of Sambuca. Amelia inhaled the fragrant mix of licorice and coffee and wished for her three beans to deliver love, marriage, and a baby. The sisters laughed through the rest of the double feature, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the hood of the car. Not another regret concerning the move to California was mentioned.
THE END