Only in the Movies (2 page)

He taught me some of the cabinetmaking part of his limitless fund of wood-knowledge, encouraging me to think differently, find alternate ways of doing things, learn the personality of each kind of wood. It always amazed me that someone built like him, with a square body, strong, thick arms and hands like baseball gloves, could produce such delicate work. Framing was done mostly with spruce, but cabinets could be pine, oak, walnut, cherry—whatever the customer wanted. I was in grade nine when I made my first cabinet from scratch—a simple corner unit with full-length doors, in cherry wood.

All this time, I kept my desire to work in movies to myself. I knew the day was coming when I’d have to tell my parents the truth, admit that I wanted to break out of the Blanchard business trust and make my career in, of all things, the arts. Then one day I came home from school and saw my father’s panel van parked in the driveway of our house on 11th Street, under the maple tree.

There was something different about it. I took a closer look.

“Oh, no,” I said.

A
LL RIGHT, IT WASN’T THAT BAD
, but that’s how I felt when I saw the new words painted on the side of the van. I slunk into the house, wondering why Dad was home so early, shrugged off my coat and hung it on the hall-closet door handle. I yelled an unfocused “I’m home” toward the kitchen and headed for my room, hoping to put off the inevitable as long as I could. I dropped my backpack on the floor by the unmade bed and collapsed into the chair by my desk—which my father had made for my graduation from elementary school. It was solid cherry with a glowing matte finish that seemed to glare at me accusingly.

I turned on the sound system that rested on shelves above the desk, selecting a rock radio station, and threw myself onto the bed. How, I wondered, was I going to get out of this mess? I had never shared my ambition to learn screenwriting, and if anyone asked me why, I couldn’t have
come up with an answer. I had always hoped my parents would figure it out without my saying anything directly. Mom and I still watched old flicks on
Sunday Night Cinema
together. I had a collection of DVDs running to almost a hundred titles. I hoped I’d be able to qualify for university and, if I did, to get into whatever program would take me toward my goal. Without really looking into it—I was only in grade ten—I had just assumed those kinds of courses existed. Lying on my bed, with the subwoofer exercising my eardrums, I realized I couldn’t put it off any longer.

So I trudged downstairs to dinner with a sense of dread hanging over me like a water bomb. I slouched at the kitchen table that my father had built, on a chair that my father had made, and looked at the plate of mushy pasta that my mother—not the best cook in the world, or in the country, or on our street, or, not to push the point too hard, in our house—had prepared, and said, “Hi, Dad.”

He was sitting across from me, beaming, struggling to hold back what he was itching to tell me. He wasn’t aware that I already knew. I twirled spaghetti onto my fork and started eating. Mom chatted about Mrs. Somebody-or-other, who had confided something-or-other that morning about her husband or brother. Dad murmured noncommittal responses like “Really?” or “You don’t say.”

I asked for another helping of pasta to prolong the meal. Mom’s eyes widened briefly at the spectacle of her son asking for seconds, then narrowed with suspicion. “What are you up to?” said the eyes. I tried an innocent look, but she didn’t buy it.

My father forced the issue. “So,” he said, putting down
his fork and spoon and dabbing tomato sauce from the corners of his mouth, using a paper napkin with pictures of squirrels on it, “I guess you didn’t notice the new inscription on the van.”

“The new—I don’t think so, Dad.”

He jumped to his feet, pushing back his chair. “Come on,” he enthused. “I’ll show you.”

I followed him outside. An icy wind shook the leafless lilac bushes bordering the lawn, and the bare branches of the maple clicked “Ungrateful son! Ungrateful son!” overhead. Standing beside me on the porch, Dad put his arm around my shoulders and pointed to the van and the new words “AND SON,” white against the blue background.

“I could have waited until you were older,” he bubbled, “but I thought, Why? I’m making you a partner in the business. Part owner, that means.”

My heart, as they say, sank—into a sticky pool of guilt.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “It’s freezing out here.”

Back at the kitchen table, Mom poured cups of weak coffee for herself and Dad. He was eyeing me expectantly, a broad smile on his open, friendly face, the way he did on Christmas mornings just before Janine and I tore the wrapping off our presents.

“So what do you think?” he said. “Partner.”

“That’s great,” I replied, pushing as much eagerness as I could into that insincere word. “Thanks, Dad. Wow, part owner. Is that allowed? At my age, I mean?”

“It’s my—our—company. We can do whatever we want with it.”

Mom had her eyes locked on me. She had an irritating way of knowing what I was thinking no matter what words
came out of my mouth. I stared into her eyes. “Help me,” I said telepathically.

She blinked, her eyes empty of sympathy. “More pasta, dear?” she said, meaning “You’re on your own this time.”

I sighed dramatically. I clinked my fork on the edge of my plate. I cleared my throat. “Dad, Mom, there’s something I have to tell you.”

And I did. I started off badly, messing up the explanation until my father interrupted, saying, “I still don’t get the point about the guy with the sword and the plumed hat.” So I began again. I loved working with Dad, I said, and I wanted to go on doing it. But guidance department teachers had been badgering us all year about our career goals, reminding us that we
had
to “choose a track” at the end of grade ten—only two months away. And ever since I happened on the movie company shooting a scene down by the lake, I had wanted to make movies. So my track had to be university—the arts, not business. I couldn’t quit school after grade twelve and join the company full time.

Once I had wound down, my father stopped asking questions. He just sat there looking dejected where an hour before he had been buzzing with plans for the future. I looked at my mother.

“I’m not surprised,” she finally said.

Dad ignored her remark. “I always hoped you’d continue the family tradition and be a carpenter and cabinetmaker like your father and his father before him and his fa—”

“Dad, your father owned a gift shop.”

“Well, true, but he was a builder before that. And—”

“He was lousy at it, though,” Mom put in diplomatically. “That’s why he bought the store. And he almost went bank—”

“Okay, okay,” Dad conceded. “So it’s not so much continuing a family tradition as starting one. It amounts to the same thing.”

I felt like we were ganging up on him. “Dad, remember, I still want to work with you. I just don’t want to make it my only career. If I ever do get into screenwriting and stuff, I’ll probably need a real job anyway.”

That seemed to reassure him a little. His face brightened. He asked for more coffee.

“Can you make a decent living at this film thing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“So, like you said, you can still be ‘and son.’”

“Exactly, Dad. That’s what I want, too.”

He forced a smile. “Well, I guess I’ll have to settle for that. In the meantime, I’ll leave the new inscription on the—our—van.”

Mom ceremoniously plunked some kind of fruit pie in the middle of the table. It had collapsed and now resembled a deflated basketball leaking blue juice.

“Who’s for dessert? Jake?”

I was so relieved I said yes.

“Y
OU’LL PROBABLY WANT TO
go to that arts school on York Avenue,” my father said as we drove to the building-supply store on The Queensway. It was the Saturday morning after I broke the news, and we were picking up lumber to repair a deck for a friend of one of Mom’s clients.

“I’ll never get in there.”

“Why not?”

“Instant told me you have to audition or something. I’m not qualified for anything artsy.”

Instant Grady had been my best friend at 7th Street School, but he had enrolled in the music program at the York School of the Arts right after grade eight. I went to Lakeshore Collegiate.

“Do they even
have
a film course?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we better find out.”

That night, at the urging of my overly organized parents, I visited York’s website to find that Instant had been accurate in describing the prerequisites to enrol. I was pretty sure I had the academic requirements covered, but my hopes took a nosedive when I read that I would be asked to attend an interview, where I would either “audition”—which I assumed meant blowing a horn, or acting, or pulling a rabbit out of a hat—or show somebody a portfolio. What a portfolio entailed I had no idea. I was certain, though, that I didn’t have one, and that my chances of acceptance were a notch below zero.

When I told my mother between appointments in her little hair salon, she was irritatingly chirpy. “Maybe they’ll ask you to sing or something,” she guessed as she swept grey hair into a dustpan. “You have a nice voice. Or you could dance. Or recite a poem. I know: pick a couple of poems and memorize them. Old poems. I’ll bet they like old poems.”

“A portfolio?” Dad asked at dinner. He forked a lump of watery mashed potatoes into his mouth and looked thoughtful. “Hmm.”

“I’m going to call the school and ask them,” Mom said. “How hard can it be?” Then, offering a plate of roundish, hockey-puck-like things, she added, “Porkchop, dear?”

Mom phoned the next day. She and my father conferred—which meant they argued good-naturedly—as they loaded the dishwasher. From my room I could hear their voices rising and falling like a budgie in a windstorm. “Don’t worry,” Mom said the next day over the top of Mrs. Burgess’s newly hennaed head. “Your dad and I have it all figured out.”

T
HE
Y
ORK
S
CHOOL OF THE
A
RTS
sat on a few acres of ground bordering the greenbelt that flanked the Humbolt River on its sinuous path through the city to the lake. The land had once been owned by the Carnaby family. The original Carnaby had emigrated from Europe back in the mists of time and made his millions in nuts and bolts. His son took his inheritance from Carnaby Fasteners and struck off on his own, piling up even more money manufacturing pet foods and confectionery, especially Carnaby Creams—artificially flavoured and coloured gooey stuff coated with milk chocolate made without milk or chocolate.

Mr. Creams built a stone mansion on twenty acres of land along the Humbolt River, retired from the cat-kibble and bonbon businesses and devoted his time and cash to culture. The Carnaby Wing of the city art gallery was built with his money, and just about anyone in town who painted, sculpted,
tootled on a clarinet or visited museums found themselves looking at the name Carnaby on a wall or exhibit. In his will he gifted most of his land to the city for a park, and the remainder of his money was stashed in a fund to establish an arts school. The stone mansion went to the school. Over the years the mansion was given over to administration, and an academic wing and a stand-alone theatre were added.