A Film by Spencer Ludwig

Jacksie treats Spencer’s father as if he is an imbecile, which Jimmy Ludwig can hardly ever be bothered any more to resent.

Spencer’s father has a very nice smile. Sometimes it is even sincere, as it seems to be now, as he gets up from the table and walks over, stooped and frail, to greet his son. Spencer pulls away the trailing oxygen tube that has become wrapped around his left ankle, and they hug. Before Spencer receives his inevitable insult from his father about his appearance, he reflects that an ease that was entirely absent from their relationship is now present. They used to make each other physically uncomfortable. Spencer tries to remember when he stopped fearing his father.

Jimmy Ludwig used to be an attorney, specialising in corporate law, patents disputes, the breaking of international contracts. He came over to the US with his English wife after having spent an uncomfortable few years as a Polish immigrant in London after the War. He worked as an engineer in a factory while attending law classes at City College. Sometimes he joked that his first wife was cheaper than language classes.

After he became successful he developed a taste for Italian suits, the dapper effect spoiled only a little by the trousers always being cinched and belted to one side, his propensity to collect food stains on his shirt and tie. He carried on working until seven years ago, when he suffered a stroke that deprived him of some of his powers of expression and comprehension. In the past year, his body has started to disintegrate. Now he sits in a room and is rude to his wife and solves jigsaw puzzles and watches boxing on TV in between visits to doctors who give him sampler packs of speculative medications and tell him they can do nothing for him.

Neither he nor his second wife is capable of looking after themselves or each other. Despite Spencer’s history with his father, he has found himself, for motivations he doesn’t quite understand, being a dutiful and attentive son.

When Spencer is in New York, he ferries his father to doctors’ appointments and plays backgammon against him, remorseless competition for twenty-five cents a point, with breaks for meals, when Spencer’s father either quarrels with Spencer’s stepmother or eats in a morose efficient silence, while Spencer makes occasional attempts to heal his father’s marriage, and he is always relieved when the week is over.

‘Still best-dressed man,’ Spencer’s father says.

Spencer dresses badly out of a sort of principled vanity. Believing that a gentleman should either be a dandy or a schlump, he wears a uniform of black sneakers and baggy black jeans and loose fitting black T-shirts with a faded image or logo on them.

‘How are you doing?’ Spencer says.

‘I’m doing shit,’ Spencer’s father says. ‘Good to see you.’

‘And you.’

Spencer’s stepmother takes a moment to greet Spencer. He wonders, ever since he was a child he has wondered, why she always manages to leave lipstick smears on her front top teeth. He would have thought that she would have noticed this by now or that her husband would have pointed it out, but Spencer’s father no longer talks to his wife.

‘I fell over. Do you want to see the bruise?’ she says to Spencer.

Spencer, without meaning to, takes a step back in recoil.

‘Uh. No. It’s OK,’ he says.

‘There are some things a stepson shouldn’t see!’ Jacksie yells. His voice is always full-volume, as if he is accustomed to dealing with the nearly deaf.

‘We’re going to Gribitz,’ Spencer’s father says.

Spencer’s father has problems with his lungs, his blood pressure, the nerve endings of his hands and feet, he is in constant pain from stenosis of the spine; but he is most concerned about his inability to empty his bowels.

‘Pop’s got a lot of issues with his BMs,’ Jacksie says.

Jacksie always calls Spencer’s father Pop, even though he had his own father once and, apart from one excursion to Kennedy Airport when Jacksie was young, there has never been any aspect of their relationship that could be described as father-son.

‘Charlie,’ says Spencer’s father.

Charlie is his default name for any man. When Spencer was young, his father would sometimes consent to tell his son bedtime stories set in the War. There were three characters, Steve, Mike and their leader, Charlie. Charlie was the daring one, who would, with ingenuity and audacity, deliver the pals from evil and imminent death. Spencer had initially projected himself as Charlie but then accepted that he was as yet unworthy of the role and decided instead that it was his father’s name for himself.

‘I’ve got something to show you that you’re going to love,’ Jacksie says. ‘Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable.’

Spencer angles his father’s chair to face the television set and sits beside him. Waiting for their appreciation is a DVD of Jacksie’s home in southern California. Jacksie, after some struggles to comprehend the workings of the remote control which Spencer longs to tear out of his hand, manages to solve the problem of how to press the play button.

Jacksie sits on a smaller chair that is closer to the television.

‘This is my home,’ he says. ‘A friend of mine did this. I think you’ll find it’s very good.’

On the screen, Jacksie and his wife Ellie wave at the camera from a terrace. There are vines in large urns beside them. A verdant hillside behind them is dotted with similar houses, Spanish colonial style, white stucco walls, terracotta roofs.

‘On a clear day you can see all the way to Catalina,’ Jacksie says.

He sits forward avidly watching as if he were seeing it for the very first time.

‘What do you think of the camerawork?’ Jacksie asks. ‘I think it’s execrable,’ Spencer says. ‘Yeah, it’s good isn’t it?’

Spencer’s father has fallen asleep. Spencer surreptitiously photographs him with the camera on his mobile phone. There are new messages on it, from his daughter, which he wants to respond to, and from his producer, whom he is seeking to avoid.

‘Hey! Spence! I hope you’re paying attention!’

‘Yes. Oh. Sorry.’

Spencer returns his attention to the screen. An urn of grapes, a dying spaniel, a shot of Jacksie and Ellie on their veranda accompanied by a dreary plinkety-plonk of a faux jazz soundtrack.

‘Jerry, who filmed this, composed the music himself,’ Jacksie says.

‘Yes, well, I suppose he might have,’ Spencer says.

When the thing is finally over, Spencer feels compelled to say something nice.

‘Well, your house is very beautiful,’ he says.

‘It certainly is!’ Jacksie says. ‘My little piece of Eden. I bet you really want to visit us now.’

‘I do. Seeing this makes me want to see it in person.’

‘It would have exactly the same effect on me,’ Jacksie says.

And back in stumps Jacksie’s mother, Spencer’s stepmother, Spencer’s father’s second wife. When Spencer first met her, thirty-five years before, she was a tanned suburban beauty. He was six years old, she affected to adore him. Now her skin is heavily lined, her eyes are bitter and narrow, her limbs and back are bent and crooked, and her scalp can be seen through the sprayed dyed helmet of her hair, which she has tended to once a week at the ironically named beauty parlour. She is seventy-four, twelve years younger than her husband. They have been married for thirty-four years, far longer than either were with their first spouses.

‘I think we need a day bed,’ she says.

‘OK,’ Jacksie says.

‘We’re going to need help here. I can’t ask someone to sleep on the sofa. Don’t you think so, Spencer?’ ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

‘Jimmy!’ she yells, waking up her husband. ‘I’m talking about the day bed!’

Jimmy Ludwig slowly opens his eyes. He fixes a look of uttter pained hopelessness on to his wife that comes close to breaking his son’s heart, shakes his head, which produces a corresponding wince of pain, and stands up to inspect his jigsaw puzzle with his chin pressed uncomfortably to his chest.

‘Where’s your collar? Jimmy! I said, Where’s your collar?’

He does not risk a movement of the head this time. He lifts a jigsaw piece, which might be an azure tip of one of the flowers in a pot beside four ginger kittens, and inspects it by rolling his eyes up so he can just about see it from the painful angle that his vision is forced to examine the world from.

‘Dad,’ Spencer says. ‘You should probably put on your collar.’