Chapter 6 She Comes from Dildo #2
Lying in bed that night, I had a distinct memory of Laura and me putting on a play for our mother as children.
It was one of those recollections that came back to me in pieces, jigsaw memories that didn’t quite fit into a whole picture.
I remembered that we wore costume dresses from a past Halloween that were way too small for us, and that we were acting a scene where we were princesses, and that our mother spilled her wine midway through, and we stopped whatever we were doing to help clean up the mess.
We were so happy to have the chance to help her.
It made us feel useful and important, and we pretended we were princesses scrubbing the floors, and she said, “Oh, thank you, princesses, your fairy godmother needed help,” and I remember feeling panicked that she was pretending to be my godmother instead my mother.
“You’re the Queen!” I said. “You’re the Queen!”
Then Laura took over the play and insisted on putting Mom to bed on the sofa with a blanket while our mother told us how pretty we looked.
“This is a high-class establishment,” our mother drawled as we pulled the cover up to her neck. “I’m getting the fancy treatment!”
“Because you’re the Queen!” I cried once again.
When our mother was asleep, I told Laura that I still wanted to do our play for nobody, and Laura flatly refused.
I was heartbroken, but I could see that the moment was gone for Laura.
I was young—maybe seven—but intuitively I realized that Laura had concocted this whole play as a gambit to win our mother’s attention, to be the center of the room for once, instead of all the attention being on our mother, and perhaps on me as the baby of the family.
Maybe that’s why Laura turned into a drinker during college: because in our house, the drinker always got to be the one everything revolved around.
It had been different for me. I hadn’t done the play for attention.
I had actually wanted to be a princess—safe, loved, well cared for.
I never wanted to be the person spilling my drink, the messy one who took attention away from others. Instead, I wanted to be the one in control, the one to make the rules. I stopped playing dress-up around that time.
Doing improv brought me back to the seven-year-old kid who liked to pretend things.
I hadn’t been—and wasn’t now—someone who wanted to bask in the heat of stage lights, absorbing the anonymous applause of a huge audience.
I just wanted to get back the part of me that knew how to play, the part that wasn’t already a responsible adult by the age of fourteen, spouting my bitter wisdom at the freshman lunch table.
That night I wrote silly nonsense in a journal—poems, daydreams, word associations—just to practice what it felt like. I was in such a good mood that I made a renewed effort to connect with Mrs. Mahoney downstairs as well, bringing her cookies that Lisette had given me as extras.
“I don’t eat stuff like that,” she said. “Sugary stuff.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything you’d like. Or if you need anything from the store.”
“I don’t need anything. Are you doing laundry again?”
I told her that I would have to do so eventually, and she gave me an encore lecture about intolerable sound levels, as if I was planning on practicing Rage Against the Machine guitar solos instead of running a dryer.
Then she sent me on my way. I hadn’t broken her icy facade yet, but I wasn’t giving up, either.
New Yorkers aren’t known for being nice, but we know how to break people down over time.
It’s not the theme of every Scorsese movie for nothing.
By the next day, when Lisette rang my doorbell to pick me up, I was feeling strangely elated, even before she greeted me with one of her massive hugs.
“Bell Island is gorgeous,” she said. “You’re giving us an excuse to go visit all the best spots. And the ferry is very steady.”
“If I feel ill, it’s okay to jump overboard, right?”
“You won’t. Much bigger boat. Almost Staten Island Ferry big.”
“How do you know about the Staten Island Ferry?”
“I watch rom-com movies. That’s the ferry where you all run toward each other just as it’s leaving the dock, announcing you’re in love, right?”
“It’s a standard part of the morning commute.”
She considered this. “I suppose there are fewer movies set on the Bell Island Ferry. We should make one up! We can do an improv called Love on the Bell Island Ferry.”
Paul smiled in greeting as I reached for the doorhandle of the back seat of his car, but Lisette slid by me and insisting on taking the back.
“You both have at least six inches on me. You should have the front. I’ll just pretend you’re my parents and demand that we go to McDonalds.”
“Only if you’re very, very good,” Paul replied.
“It’s not really a tall person car, is it,” I said to Lisette as I buckled the front seatbelt.
“No, not at all,” Lisette agreed.
Paul gave me an amused glance and muttered something under his breath that may have been “Michael Caine.”
Lisette talked through her romantic-comedy idea on the drive across the peninsula to the ferry, and we filled it in with little details that would make our hypothetical movie feel especially Newfoundland.
I learned a lot about the local culture from that conversation—the fishing traditions, the phrases, the nightlife.
“Newfoundlanders are really funny,” Paul said.
“But in a deadpan way. So for example we have a town named Dildo. And the claim is that it’s a reference to a part of a boat, but people know what it also refers to.
You’ll never get them to admit it, though.
That’s part of the joke. They’ll look you straight in the eye and claim they have no idea what you’re talking about while they sell you an ‘I Love Dildo’ t-shirt.
It’s island humor. Putting one over on the outsiders. ”
“Maybe our rom-com should be called She Comes from Dildo,” I suggested, and that’s what we stuck with. By the time Paul had pulled his car onto the Bell Island ferry, Lisette was insisting on filming some scenes on her cell phone.
“You two can be the leads in the movie,” she said. “We need clips where you’re falling in love on the ferry.” Paul and I looked at each other, then looked away.
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “I don’t have leading man potential. We need to send the script to Ryan Reynolds.”
“He would do a film called She Comes from Dildo,” I agreed, “as long as you pitch it as a Deadpool sequel.”
“This can be our trailer when we send the script to him,” Lisette began, waving her phone.
“Proof of concept?” I asked, remembering my days in advertising.
“Exactly,” Lisette said. “Whatever that is.”
We all knew that we weren’t going to write the script, but it was fun to speculate about it for the day, coming up with new ideas.
Eventually, Lisette left to wander the ferry and Paul and I ended up standing on the deck together, looking out at the waves.
The Bell Island dock was already approaching.
“I’ve told Lisette that she should actually write down some of her ideas, but she never follows through.”
“Maybe you two can write a screenplay together,” I said.
“No.” He looked down. “I don’t think I’d have the heart to write an actual screenplay. I might get my hopes up about getting it made. That’s the kind of thing I did when I was younger. I have a huge folder of broken dreams on my laptop.”
“Well, you could act in it yourself. Pull an Ed Burns or Mark Duplass and write your way to stardom.”
“That time has definitely passed.”
“Not entirely,” I said. “I saw your Tim Horton heist film, and there may have been some buzz in the audience about securing rights. By the way, Impro is fascinating. I finished it.”
Paul lit up, his eyes filled with enthusiasm, which didn’t feel entirely flattering.
He always seemed careful to stay calm with me, to put just a little distance between us, just enough so I wouldn’t think anything was going on.
We’re not dating. You do know that, right?
But on the topic of improv books, he was like an eager teenager.
“It is so cool, isn’t it? He’s a smart guy.
Very of his time. Of course, some of that stuff you could never get away with today. ”
“Thanks for lending it to me.”
He shrugged, looking away again. “Well, I wanted you to read it. You really do have a talent for it. So if—I mean when—you go home…”
“I don’t think it would be as much fun doing improv at home. In New York, the improv scene involves lots of acting school grads in competition with each other to launch their comedy writing jobs. It’s like an alt comedy fraternity rush system.”
“I’m glad Lisette brought you along to practice, at any rate.”
“She’s the best. I know she’s had a hard time, too.”
“You letting her stay at your place like that was really amazing.”
“It was nothing.”
“It was incredible.”
“I don’t feel incredible.” I considered the waves. The island was growing closer to us. “My sister thinks I’m selfish for not moving down to Atlanta with her. So I guess I’m not feeling like a good person right now.”
“This is the sister who had you babysit her child four days a week? For what, a year?”
“Two years.”
“And you were paid?” He raised his eyebrows, knowing the answer.
“No. But that’s not even…” I trailed off. It had been so long since I’d heard anyone defend me that I didn’t know how to react. “The thing is, Hannah misses me.”
“I’m sure she does, but you have a right to your own life.”
“It’s hard to set limits with people you love.”
“Yeah.” Paul grimaced and looked away.
“I like it here, you know,” I said. “Don’t start making your good-byes now. I’ve got a few more weeks to decide. I could stay, if I can get a work visa or something.”
He glanced at me. “It’s not much compared to New York City.”
“Well, Bell Island better impress me. I’m expecting at least a Disney Store and Hard Rock Café.”
He laughed.