Jack O'Connell: The Skin Palace

The Ballard Theatre. Night.

Enter the boy. Fifteen years old. He is an immigrant. He has been in the city for only a week. At times, he has difficulty breathing. He is dressed formally, in a dark, old-fashioned suit that is wet from the storm outside. He has only a tentative grasp of the native language. This does not matter, as the film he has come to see is a silent feature— the original Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney, Sr.

Enter the young woman. Twenty-two years old. She stands in the entrance to the theatre and removes her yellow rain slicker. She shakes her head, pushes her matted hair back from her face. She moves down the center aisle and takes a seat several rows in front of the boy.

They are the only individuals in the theatre. This may be due to the storm outside. Or possibly the fact that few people have an interest in seeing a silent movie in this day and age.

Several minutes pass. The silence of the theatre is broken occasionally by the wheezing of the boy’s lungs as they strive for a full, deep breath.

Then, finally, the curtains roll back and the wonderful sputter-sound of the projector issues and a beam of blue-white light shoots out above their heads and falls flat against the screen.

The boy and the young woman each watch the film in different ways, with different expectations and objectives.

The boy wishes to break every image down into its smallest components. He wants to analyze technique, to understand the mechanics of this display.

The young woman wants the entire experience of the film, the total package, the overall sensation of another world that she’s been allowed to spy on for the price of her ticket.

This is impossible, as the young woman cannot stop thinking about last Tuesday, when her mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. The fishhooks in Lon Chaney’s mouth cannot compete with the image of the doctor’s office, the whiteness of the doctor’s coat, the vague, grey hue of the X-ray sheets suspended against an illuminated background.

And within minutes the young woman is crying again, as quietly as she can manage, slouched down in the Ballard’s velvet seat, turned sideways, her knees brought up close to her chest.

The boy is more confused than annoyed. His vision is torn over and over between the actions on the screen and the silhouette of the young woman ten feet in front of him, the crown of her head just visible over her seat, her sobbing the new sound track for the movie, giving the film a meaning it previously didn’t have.

The boy would like to approach the young woman, ask her if she needs any assistance, if he can call someone for her, if there’s anything at all he could do. But he stays in his seat, as fascinated as he is sympathetic.

He’s never known a film to affect someone else this profoundly.

A woman’s face appears on the screen. The face is as large as a house, as big as any three-decker in the city. Because of this enlargement, each wrinkle and fold in the skin becomes a dry riverbed, a crevice of incalculable depth. The woman’s eyes are red and sunken, as if she’s spent a lifetime weeping. After a time, her mouth opens and she looks out over the gravel parking lot and says, in the most wounded voice imaginable,

On October first, my daughter, Jennifer Ellis, disappeared while walking home from the Ste. Jeanne d’Arc elementary school on Duffault Avenue. Jennifer is ten years old. She is four and a half feet tall. She was dressed in her school uniform, a green plaid jumper and a white blouse. I implore you, if you have any information at all about what happened to my baby, please call the number on this screen. Please help me find my daughter. I beg you.

“God,” Perry says, “I wish they’d stop showing that clip. It’s on TV every night. I hear her voice on the radio driving to work every morning.”

Sylvia takes a sip of wine and says, “Do you think they’ll find her?”

“They’ve got to find her,” Perry says. He takes a breath, uncomfortable with the conversation, looks across the parking lot and asks, “You think the line’ll be bad at the snack bar?”

“No drive-in food,” Sylvia says. “We’ll both regret it in the morning.”

Perry smiles, nods his agreement, lets his head fall back against the seat.

Sylvia would love to shoot his face this way. To frame it in exactly this light, exactly this expression. But she’s learned. It makes Perry tense when she takes the camera out at moments like this. He smiles, but you’d have to hear the tone of his voice when he says, “Is it necessary to record everything?”

The answer is no, of course not. Most of life is more or less insignificant. But Sylvia’s argument, her defense, would be that what she does with the camera has nothing to do with recording. Her intention isn’t to nail down the image for some kind of documentation. She’s not all that interested in that kind of history. She doesn’t see things that way. And she’d have thought Perry would know that by now.

Anyway, Sylvia doesn’t want an argument tonight. So she leaves the camera in the trunk of the car. But it’s loaded with a fresh roll of Fuji. Just in case.

Perry had called her from the office around three. She was in the cellar, developing yesterday’s shots from the Canal Zone. She was working on a print of Mojo Bettman, the guy without the legs who sits on his skateboard selling newspapers and magazines all day. Perry must have let the phone ring twenty times. Sylvia ran up the three flights of stairs and grabbed the receiver, pulling a little for air. Perry said, “The Cansino. Eight o’clock. Big News.”

And then he hung up. He hates the phone. And he knew if he stayed on Sylvia would press for details.

She’s not sure why he feels the need to be so dramatic. They’ve both been waiting for the big news for months. Perry’s been aching for it. And Sylvia has been fearful of it. She doesn’t like acknowledging that. It makes her feel vindictive and kind of spoiled, maybe mean-spirited. This news is what Perry wants. This is why he puts in all the hours. After she hung the receiver back into the cradle on the wall, Sylvia stood there for a second and tried to picture Perry as he heard the words. She’s sure it was Ratzinger that took him to lunch. Probably at the top of the bank building, that restaurant that used to revolve. The firm has an open account there. Perry says Ratzinger eats there every day of the week.

She pictured them both holding club sandwiches in their hands, little leaves of purplish lettuce hanging over the corners of the toasted bread. Ratzinger dabbing mayonnaise off his lips with the rose-colored napkin. She pictured Perry nodding, that sort of slight, humble tilt of the head, as Ratzinger listed all the things they liked — the studiousness, the ease with the clients, the ability to work on the team.

She could see Perry clenching down on his back teeth, curling up his toes inside his wing tips, waiting for the moment when Ratzinger actually said the word, let it fall from his lips as the waiter cleared the coffee cups: Partnership.