Jacquelyn Mitchard - No Time to Wave Goodbye

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

B efore dawn on the day she would finally see his first real film, Beth Cappadora slipped into the guest room and lay down on the edge of the bed where her son, Vincent, slept.

Had she touched his hair or his shoulder, he would not have stirred. When he slept at all, Vincent slept like a man whod fallen from a relaxed standing position after being hit on the back of the head by a frying pan. Still, she didnt take the risk. Her relationship with Vincent didnt admit of nighttime confidences, funny cards, all the trappings of the sentimental, platonic courtship between a mother and her grown boy. Instead, Beth blessed the air around his head, where coiled wisps of dark hair still sprang up as they had when he was a child.

Show them, Vincent, she said softly. Knock em dead.

Beth asked only a minor redemptionsomething that would stuff back the acid remarks that everyone had made about where Vincents career of minor crime and major slough-offs would end, because it had so far outlasted the most generous boundaries of juvenile delinquency. She wished one thing itself, simple and linear: Let Vincents movie succeed.

That night, as she watched the film, and recognized its might and its worth, Beth had to appreciateby then, against her willthat her wish was coming true. What she didnt realize was something that shed learned long ago.

Only long months from that morning did Beth, a superstitious woman all her life, realize she had forgotten that if a wish slipped like an arrow through a momentary slice in the firmament, it was free to come true any way it would. Only fools thought its trajectory could ever be controlled.

Sixteen hours after Beth tiptoed from Vincents bedside, a spotlight beam shined out over the seat where she sat fidgeting and craning her neck to peek at everyone else taking their seats in the Harrington Community Center Auditorium.

Suddenly, there was Vincent, onstage. He looked up from nervously adjusting the pink tie he wore against his white shirt and twilight gray suit and said, I have to apologize. We have a little technical glitch we need to fix and then well be ready. Thanks for your patience. In just a moment, the first voice you will hear is my sister, the opera singer Kerry Rose Cappadora, who also narrates this film. Ill be right back. I mean, the film will. Thanks again.

Beth leaned forward as if from the prow of a ship. Her husband, Pat, reached out to ease her back.

Dont jump, he teased. You cant do this for him. Its high time, Bethie. You have to agree. Vincents lived la vita facile too long.

I know, Beth agreed. Though she didnt speak Italian, she wanted to poke Pat in the ribs and not gently. Vincent earned his way, after a fashion. Vincent owned a home, after a fashiontwo rooms in Venice Beach, California, that had once been a garage. Vincent had made a gourmet chocolate commercial nominated for an ADDY Award. He hadnt asked them for a dime since well, since the last time he dropped out of college. But she said only, Youre right, of course.

Bethie?

Yeah?

Why arent you arguing with me? Pat asked. Whats the matter with you? Beth shrugged, battling the urge to drag her fingers through her careful blowout: If you have to mess with your hair, Beths friend Candy said, shake, dont rake. Pat cracked his knuckles. Damn it, Pat said then. Who am I trying to kid? I havent wanted a cigarette this bad since the grease fire at the restaurant. I want to jump up on the stage and yell at everybody, This is my sons work! You better appreciate this! But weve got to give this over to him.

Absolutely, Beth said, her heartbeat now a busy little mallet that must be visible through her pale silk chemise.

You sound like a robot. Wheres my wife? You could object a little, Pat said.

Too nervous, Beth replied.

It was more than that, of course. Nothing that she could confide, even in Pat. For Beth was in part responsible for her sons brushes with the law and his seeming inability to finish anything. (In part? Was she flattering herself? Once upon a time, Vincent had done everything he could, including selling a few bushels of thankfully low-order drugs, to get his mothers thousand-yard stare to focus on him.) If this film were to be worthy at allBeth hugged herself, smilingthen this private screening for a hundred people in the rented theater of a community center would also be the long-overdue premiere of her sons life as a man in full.

More than this, in just a moment, Beth would learn the answers to the questions shed asked herself for months.

What was the documentary about?

Why had Vincent enlisted his sister and his brother to help him make it? Last year, during the filming, had been the busiest time of their lives: Ben had a wife, a full share in the family business, and a baby on the way. Kerry still lived at her parents house, but her college major was so demanding that some nights she came home from school or the voice studio with dark smudges under her eyes and fell asleep before she could eat the food shed microwaved.

Was it because the subject was too intimate or incendiary or simply too off the wall to entrust to a stranger, even a fellow professional? Why had Vincent used film instead of video, which probably quadrupled the cost?

Was the obsessive privacy all pride? Did he have to do this all on his own?

With his first documentary, Alpha Female, a snapshot of the life of a young farmers wife and mother of four putting herself through college as a part-time dominatrix, Vincent had turned to Beth, a photographer for nearly thirty years, on everything from how to light someone so blond that her features were nearly achromatic to how to coax an interview out of the womans stern, disapproving parents. Beth recalled the look on her mother-in-laws face when that film had first screened, in the auditorium of the high school from which Vincent had been expelled. Freckle-faced Katie Hubner saddle-soaped her leather garter belt and said, They dont care anything about sex, poor things! They just want me to treat them like their mean old mamas did!

Of this film, Beth knew nothing but its title, No Time to Wave Goodbye. In her good moments, it seemed almost a private message from her older son. Her own first photo booka series of black-and-white shots of her own children walking away from her, dragging fishing poles, hurrying toward the blooming pagoda of a fireworks display, each underlined with a tender quotationwas called Wave Goodbye.

What other connection could there possibly be?

Beth began to twist her wedding ring round and round. Did no one else notice the minutes that had collapsed since Vincents introduction? Two, three seven?

No one close to the family would mind. There they all were, chatting, her family, her in-laws, Ben and his wife, Eliza. People were admiring Ben and Elizas baby, two-month-old Stella, Beths first grandchild, on her very first outing. Along with Elizas motherBeths beloved friend Candythe crowd included dozens of business associates and old and new neighborhood friends. They were the cheering section.