A Film by Spencer Ludwig

‘Errol Flynn said that if he left behind any money after he died then his life would have been a failure.’

‘Who’s Errol Flynn?’

And Spencer’s stepmother continues to stamp around. Gribitz…Dad…appointment…Car! ‘A movie star, baby,’ Spencer says.

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ says Mary, dismissing Errol Flynn utterly and perhaps with him the entire Hollywood Golden Age.

When Mary was born, Spencer made the mistake of announcing that he had received his emotional pension plan, here was someone who would look after him when he was old and friendless. Sometimes he aroused the maternal instinct in her, often they had fun, usually they could make each other laugh. But at other times she was like a highly strung puppy made peevish and insecure by the ineffectualness of its owner.

‘I’ve got a stomach ache. Will you get me an iPod?’

Generously, she is giving him a final chance, and how he wants to say yes, a part of a father’s job is to protect a child’s innocence, and why shouldn’t he pretend along with her that buying luxury goods is a cure for most conditions?

‘Look. I—’

But his stepmother finally intervenes. She can bear this no longer. Her world is manageable only when she is charge of all of its details, and to her this is unbearable, that her nebbish of a stepson is enjoying himself on the telephone when the routine demands he now be making the call to the garage to release the car.

‘The doctor! The garage! Dad’s appointment! Gribitz!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Spencer says (and how he hates himself for making an apology, even such an unreflective one). ‘I’m talking to my daughter. She’s sick.’

His stepmother inhales and exhales rather dramatically before speaking. She looks magnificently triumphant.

‘Well we’re sicker!’

‘I’m sorry, honey, I’d better go. I’m taking Papa Jimmy to his doctor.’

‘I hate you! You’re rubbish!’

‘Oh,’ he says, but he is talking to air.

Jacksie is moving his hands ineffectually into and out of his pockets. Spencer’s stepmother is carrying small plastic bags containing a variety of small coloured objects. Spencer’s father is struggling into his jacket, refusing any assistance. And how Spencer wants to film this. Obtaining the release might be problematical but people are vain, and usually want to be on screen, regardless of the circumstances.

He hasn’t allowed himself any equipment. Usually Spencer carries a small camera with him. Recently, between jobs (Michelle, his sometimes producer, has been calling, but Spencer can’t talk to her), he has been gathering autobiographical footage to use in a speculative future film, in which he supposes that images ripped away from context (physical, emotional) will be montaged with stock footage, crowd scenes, moments of intimacy or war. But his most recent girlfriend, Abbie, had grown tired of this. She had been one of his students and he had failed her on the course just to prove that this was not some clichéd master-servant relationship. This had made her angry. You think it’s because you’re some kind of artist, and some others even think so too. But I’m not fooled any more. It’s because you’re frightened of real life, you need to put something between you and real life.

Expertly, rather cruelly, he had demolished her childish notions of real life. But all the same, as he packed to leave for the airport, he deliberately left his camera behind. He would show her that he had no need for filtering or mediating experience. And he would prove it so well that he would have no need to report his triumph back to Abbie.

Spencer has almost given up on his ambition to produce a single great film. If he were to be honest with himself, which sometimes he is, then he would have to admit that he has not entirely given up believing this might be possible, that the films of Ludwig could join the team, Ruttman, Vertov, Fassbinder, Reed, Lang, some Marker, Ray, Dreyer, Ford, Buñuel, Bresson, Hawks, Wilder. The list could go on; but even if his films were doomed never to join the A-list, he would want at least a shot or two to enter the minds of his audience and be installed there, a single glorious image, with all the vividness of lived experience or unforgettable dream.

Man without a movie camera went to New York. Images that have interested him along the way he has recorded with his telephone. He will allow himself this, he decided. Just as long as nothing is altered or arranged for the picture.

His father disentangles himself from his oxygen machine, and crumblingly attaches himself to one of his portable cylinders.

‘Let’s get out of this shithole,’ he says.

There is silence and then some confusion in the room.

‘What did he say?’ Spencer’s stepmother says.

Jacksie winks at Spencer’s father and then at Spencer.

‘Still the dude, Jimmy. You the man! High-five!’

Spencer’s father ignores him. He has the portable oxygen cylinder switched on and the breathing tube attached to at least one nostril.

‘Toaster-oven,’ Spencer says. ‘He says we’ll get the toaster-oven.’

‘Oh. Are you sure? He’s already been out once today. Jimmy?! YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN OUT TODAY. YOU MUST BE TIRED!’

Spencer’s father ignores her as he always does. He looks lavishly away and continues to fumble with the breathing tube. Spencer’s stepmother considers the situation. It does not make her unhappy for her husband to be away from her if he is in the care, and responsibility, of his son.

‘You’ll need something to eat.’

‘We won’t need anything to eat,’ Spencer says.

‘His blood-sugar levels shouldn’t get too low. A little and often is what Dr Kornblut says. At least take some fruit. JIMMY? WOULD YOU LIKE A PIECE OF FRUIT? I’VE PACKED YOU A PLUM AND A BANANA IN A BAGGIE.’

‘It’s the old Jimmy. Decisive, man of action. You see that, Mom?’ Jacksie says.

‘Here,’ says Spencer’s father, impotently holding out the dangling breathing tube.

Spencer fixes the tube while his stepmother stumps out of the living room, and then she comes in again and stumps out and back, bringing more items each time, until Spencer has the portable oxygen cylinder in a carry-bag, the spare cylinder in a rucksack along with one baggie that contains a banana and two plums (which Spencer resolves to take a photograph of as soon as they are out into the hallway), another baggie with Spencer’s father’s medications, a fold-up umbrella, a sweater, four Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, which she knows that Spencer likes and which prove that she is not entirely without a sense of care and fellow-feeling, and some sections of the New York Times.

‘Mom. They’re only going out to the doctor,’ Jacksie says.

‘You want to come with us? Maybe it’ll be fun,’ Spencer asks.

‘Sure. But no, I better stay here with Mom.’

‘Maybe you should take your two o’clock medicines now.’

Spencer’s father spectacularly ignores his wife.

‘Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Spencer? Honey? Spencer thinks it’s a good idea.’

Spencer’s father averts his head from whichever direction his wife approaches. She reaches to wipe his hair back into place and he bats her hand away.

‘ Your medicines,’ she says, and Spencer’s father ignores her.

‘Why don’t you take your medicine,’ Spencer says, and his father makes an all-things-are-meaningless gesture and grumpily holds out his hand for the pills.

He is on sertraline for his depression and prednisone for his breathing and proamatine to raise his blood pressure and rosuvastatin to lower his cholesterol and tramadol for back pain and fludrocortisone for his adrenal gland and alfuzosin to shrink his prostate and darifenacine to calm his bladder and aspirin to stave off another stroke. Spencer’s stepmother keeps all the medications, his and hers, in little white boxes that have separate compartments for the days of the week.

‘And the spare oxygen. Don’t forget the spare oxygen.’

Spencer says, I won’t, and checks the gauge reading on the portable oxygen tank.

‘Two,’ his father says.