Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

His own parents understood perfectly. His mother was particularly adamant that borrowing money from Harve and Jill was a bad idea. “Good God,” she said. “Imagine owing money to people like them.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Mom, given that you’ve only met them once,” he chided her, but thinking as he did so how strange it was that he always ended up defending Joy’s parents to his own, an impulse he otherwise kept under control. He had, in fact, imagined vividly what indebtedness to her parents would mean. In practical terms, every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and Fourth of July invitation would have to be accepted. Nor would paying back the loan nullify such obligations. Worse was the attendant symbolism, because accepting their money would be a tacit admission that they needed it, and Harve would brag about “helping them out” long into the future. Griffin was pretty sure he made better money than Joy’s father ever had, but accepting this loan would cede to him the high economic moral ground. Harve could lay claim to a kind of fiscal virtue, and Griffin himself would become, by implication, the wastrel who needed assistance. This was, of course, an ungenerous view of his in-laws’ motives, one he didn’t go into with his mother. “They mean well,” he told her, damning them with faint praise. Though even this, his mother thought, was overly generous. “Boorish know-nothings” was how she remembered them from that single meeting. “Proud of their ignorance.”

“Maybe you just know different things.”

“Did you or did you not tell me they belong to a country club, that they live in a gated community?”

Which was his mother in top form. Catch her in one unkindness and she’d quickly hopscotch to another. Attempting to corner her was like trying to put a cat in a bag; there was always an arm left over and, at the end of it, claws.

“Call your father,” she advised. “He and I may not agree on much, but I’m certain he’d never want to owe money to anyone who plays golf. Bartleby would agree, too, if he ever said anything.”

Actually, he happened to know that his father himself had taken up golf after Claudia left him. His doctor at the time, himself an avid player, had suggested it as a way to relax-strange advice, Griffin thought, since the sport had pretty much the opposite effect on him, though that probably had less to do with the game than that he usually played it with Harve.

In lieu of offering to loan them the money herself-had Griffin actually imagined she might?-his mother continued to explain why he’d be wise to reject the offer of someone who had. “Remember your Thoreau,” she counseled. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.”

“That’s all well and good, Mom, but Joy’s talking location, location, location.”

“Then save. When you have enough for a down payment on a crappy three-bedroom ranch out there, you’d have enough for a real house back East, maybe even a place on the Cape. I could visit you there. I’ve missed you.”

Now this was a surprising admission, and Griffin immediately tested its sincerity. “You could visit us now in L.A. ”

“That’s all right. I can wait.”

Save and wait. For a while at least, that’s what they decided to do. Dear God , he remembered thinking. Was he actually going to follow his mother’s advice? But in this case it made sense, didn’t it, to scale back and get real? Okay, maybe not Thoreau real, but real enough. For instance, there was no law that said screenplays had to be written on the balconies of expensive Mexican hotels (though in Tommy’s opinion there should’ve been). If they could rein in their spendthrift ways (yeah, Harve was right, they did spend too much and get too little for their money), Griffin made more than enough for them to live on. Joy, who worked part-time in the UCLA admissions office, didn’t make a fortune, but if they opened a savings account and deposited her earnings automatically and treated the money therein as sacred, in two or three years they’d have a tidy sum. If it wasn’t tidy enough, they could revisit the idea of a loan from her parents. By then maybe he’d be ready to quit screen-writing, which was, let’s face it, a young man’s game. He’d already been at it far longer than they planned in Truro.

If it weren’t for Tommy, who’d be lost without him and needed time to get back on his feet after the meltdown of his marriage, he would’ve already said goodbye to the whole twisted life. Feature-film deals were getting harder and harder to make, and Griffin hated that the deals always seemed more important than the work that resulted from them. He could and often did riff on the subject. The “juice,” the creative surge, was all front-loaded. Talking up the deal, you were excited and the producer was excited and the young studio exec was fucking beside himself with excitement. Why? Because nobody had ever made a movie like this before. It was beyond quirky, it was fucking unique. It was fucking better than unique, it was one of a kind. Just go away and write it, the exec would tell them, because this was a can’t-miss idea. In fact, there was almost no way to fuck it up. After two years, a new producer and fifteen drafts (only three paid for) based on fifteen conflicting sets of notes, what you had, if you were lucky and the whole thing hadn’t been put in turnaround, was yet another standard-issue piece of shit that lacked a single compelling reason to shoot it, which was, Tommy was fond of pointing out, the best reason to think it would be. Fuck it, Griffin thought. Another two or three years, and he was out.

Joy accepted his assurance, but for the record she expressed several explicit objections to his (or his mother’s?) strategy to save, scale back on spending and patiently bide their time. For one thing it flew directly in the face of human nature in general and their own in particular. The best way to save for the house they wanted back East, she (or her father?) argued, was to buy one here. They wouldn’t even have to save (something they’d never demonstrated much skill at), because the house itself would do the saving for them. It would appreciate in value, and when the time came to sell, the profit they made would provide the down payment on the house they wanted. Also, it was all well and good for Griffin to rail against the business of screenwriting and claim he was burning out, but there wasn’t ever going to be a good time to quit. Ten years from now Tommy would still be lost without him, and they’d always be in the middle of a project, unable to walk away. Even Tommy, ever the cynic, agreed with her. When it came to quitting, to getting the hell out, screenwriters were like stockbrokers. You could hate the job all you wanted but it remained lucrative, which fact hit home when you seriously considered the other options. Plus, he reminded Griffin, deep down, fucked up as it was, you loved it. A Stockholm syndrome kind of love, maybe, but real enough for all that.

And Joy had one further objection, this one more personal than practical. If they followed his plan, it was she, not Griffin, who’d have to explain to her parents why they’d decided not to accept their generous offer of help. She did it, though, calling home over the Fourth, when the family always gathered for a patriotic celebration. This year Jason and Jared were both home on leave, and the family had been especially disappointed when Griffin and Joy had begged off, pleading, as always, a deadline. No, she told them, they weren’t ready to take the house plunge quite yet. They appreciated the offer, they’d talked it through, but this was what they’d decided. Maybe next year, or the year after that…

Harve, at least, had shrugged it off. Hey, his son-in-law was proud-okay, hardheaded-but, hell, he could understand that, maybe even admire it a little. Just so long as his little girl understood the money wasn’t going anywhere. In the end, he assured her, Griffin would come around, and when he did, she could just let him know, and he’d write the check. Jill, though, was more perceptive. “I can’t help feeling Jack doesn’t like us,” she confessed to her daughter. (“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harve bellowed from the next room. “Why wouldn’t he like us?” followed by Jared and Jason, who shared a talent for mimicry and used it to devastating effect on their father, “Why wouldn’t he like us?”) Griffin had listened in on his wife’s half of the conversation and her patient attempt to dispel her mother’s misgivings (“No, no, that’s not true, Mom. He’s just afraid we won’t be able… I know, I know… He doesn’t mean anything by it… Of course he does, and so do I… Of course I’m happy…”). After Joy finally hung up, she was quiet, staring out the window at the courtyard below, where a young woman was shrieking with delight as two young men tossed her into the pool. Griffin turned off the radio, which had been playing jazz.