A Film by Spencer Ludwig Read online

  ‘Spencer!’

  ‘Yes,’ he says to his stepmother. ‘Just one more call.’

  He signs off to Cheryl Baumbach with an attempt at the sort of benevolent charm one might expect from a director whom festivals deem worthy of a retrospective and then he calls his daughter.

  Mary is ten years old. She is air whereas he is earth, free where he is most trammelled. Her company delights and somewhat intimidates him. Her mother, to whom he was nearly married, is sensible, and worldly. The period when he was with her, when he had temporarily learned to clean the dishes the same day they were dirtied, to wash the basin after he shaved, to respond to a direct question with more than a grunt, had lifted Spencer in the opinion of his father, an unearned respect that he has not entirely squandered.

  Mary has a cold and she is looking for something from him that will make her feel better. Mary has a direct relationship to the world that usually involves acquisition.

  ‘Daddy. Will you get me an iPod?’

  ‘No honey. I won’t get you an iPod.’

  ‘Why not? You’re in America. You’re in New York’

  ‘You’re ten years old. You don’t need an iPod.’

  He does not need to listen to the list of her friends who own iPods, the Roses and Lilys and Poppys and all the others, who stand out, pink skinned, yellow haired, floral named, from the Shinequas and Taaliyahs and Chanels at her primary school (and who, presumably, do not own iPods or iTouches or iTastes). Unspoken but loudly declared in the list she reels off are all the indignities and unfairnesses of her life, and the precarious-ness of her loyalty to Spencer.

  ‘Spencer! Gribitz!’

  ‘Yes yes. I know. Look, honey. I have to go in a moment. I’m taking Papa Jimmy to his proctologist.’

  She does not ask what a proctologist is, because Mary, like her mother, does not wish to appear unknowledgeable about any subject. But showing off his vocabulary of fancy medical terms will not protect him from his daughter’s needs or scorn.

  His daughter does not have to stay loyal to him. There is another man in her world, whose name is Doug. Mary’s mother has demonstrated her preference for Doug over Spencer so why shouldn’t Mary feel the same way? She lives with him and Doug has money, so Doug can buy her an i-anything if only she would ask him—it is a tattered piece of loyalty that impels her to persist with Spencer anyway. And she has a headache. And her stomach hurts. She is off school and Mummy has said that she may not go to Grace’s party, which is unfair.

  ‘Not if you’re sick, honey,’ Spencer says, nobly resisting the opportunity to join forces with his daughter against her mother.

  Spencer had tried to be a family man. He had done what he thought was his best at making a go of it, family Christmases, family holidays, but he had not convinced anyone of his sincerity, least of all himself.

  Mary’s mother made more money than Spencer did and she saw the world rather as Spencer’s father did, a straightforward place where value was measurable by money, in which the person who owned the most things was the winner.

  ‘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.

  ‘It’s on two,’ Spencer says. And Spencer checks the volume on the spare oxygen tank and puts it in the tote-bag along with his father’s cap and scarf and his stepmother’s discarded sections of the New York Times.

  ‘Have you called for the car?’ Spencer’s stepmother says and Spencer says that he has and tells his father, We’re all set.

  ‘ Take the cane,’ Spencer’s stepmother says, and Spencer nods and finds the cane in its place under the hall table, which has mail ready to be sent secured under the base of a carved wooden Buddha, a souvenir from a trip to South-East Asia made in the days before she got sick.

  ‘Don’t forget the toaster-oven,’ Spencer’s stepmother says.

  ‘Where’s the affidavit?’ Spencer’s father says.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Spencer’s stepmother says. ‘What affidavit?’

  And Spencer is familiar enough with his father’s mind to know that he is referring to something non-legal that he has decided is integral to their outing. One of the symptoms of his aphasia is that he tends to substitute a word that he was accustomed to use for work for something that he requires in the present.

  ‘What?’ says Spencer. ‘Your pills? You’ve taken them.’

  His father irritably shakes his head.

  ‘ The affidavit,’ he says, and shakes his right hand in a loosely held fist.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Spencer’s stepmother says. ‘Why is he doing that? That tremor is new. Do you think we should take him back to the neurologist?’

  By we Spencer’s stepmother means you. She cannot bear to be alone with her husband any more.

  ‘I think I get it. You mean the backgammon?’ Spencer says.

  His father nods, no less irritably.

  ‘That’s what I said, the affidavit.’

  Spencer adds the backgammon set to the tote-bag and their preparations are complete. His father consents to take the cane in his left hand. Spencer’s stepmother stumps along with them for their journey to the elevator, which is precarious because Spencer’s father just follows his own erratic path, making no allowances for the tube that connects his nose to the oxygen cylinder that Spencer is carrying. Spencer, with the tote-bag over his right shoulder, the cylinder over his left (and both hands poised to catch his father should he fall), has to twist and skip to keep the oxygen tube straight. The elevator operator is a kind man who has grown old inside his brown uniform. The badge he wears on the breast pocket of his jacket announces just his first name.

  ‘How are you doing today, Mister Ludwig? Mister Ludwig.’

  It is only recently that Spencer has been honoured by being greeted formally by the doormen and elevator operators of his father’s building. In former times his appearance had been too disreputable, his manner too odd by Museum Tower standards, to merit more than a nod, a request every time he stepped into the elevator for his floor number, even though he had been visiting his father and stepmother here for close to twenty years. But the group mind of the building’s staff had promoted Spencer in the aftermath of his father’s stroke and his display of dutiful care to the rank of someone to whom it was appropriate to show respect.

  Spencer’s father stumbles into the elevator, and relievedly allows himself to fall against its rear wall with his hands behind him in case he needs to push off again.

  ‘Thank you James.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Mister Ludwig.’

  Spencer’s father waits in the lobby of his building with his oxygen tank and the supplies for their journey while Spencer walks the half-block to the garage where Spencer’s father keeps his car. He holds the dollar bill that his father has given him to tip the car-jockey with and which Spencer obscurely resents.

  He has tried to persuade his father to sell the car. It costs money to maintain and garage. He hardly uses it, indeed he shouldn’t use it at all because of his medical conditions, and when his son comes to visit him, he is the one to drive it, a black Cadillac El Dorado that had been new six years before, but now is battered and dented from his father’s geriatric adventures in city traffic. Despite his attempts to persuade his father to surrender the car, Spencer likes driving it. It is a much better car than the one he has in London.

  Chapter Two

  When he was young, and visiting his father in New York, his father would be there to meet him at the airport, pacing in the Arrivals lounge in impatience and anticipation and perhaps even pleasure at seeing his son, who would materialise holding a stewardess’s hand, blinking in mother-chosen clothes that were creased and hateful to him from seven hours on a transatlantic flight, or, a few years later, slouching through, his late-teenaged self, dressing to be the person he hoped to become, in jeans and a ripped leather jacket—and his father’s mood, whether it was born out of nervousness or love, would show itself in a suddenness that felt like aggression. In the car from th
e airport, questions would be hurled by Jimmy Ludwig at his son, How’s school? How’s your social life? How’s your mother? What scores did you get on your tests? When are you going to decide what you’re going to do with your life? Guess what? Guess what? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count, which were all the more alarming as he seemed to be giving the better part of his attention to the road, twisting his car at high speed within the traffic, yelling, Move it Charlie! to anyone who held up his progress.

  His father’s Americanness had manifested itself early in an aptitude for hard work, a disregard for anyone who didn’t have the smarts or the stamina to get on in life, and tastes for chewing gum and television and cars. His father’s decline, or, rather, his father’s announcement of his consciousness of his decline, had shown itself for the first time a few years ago, on what had been supposedly an ordinary visit of Spencer’s into his father’s world, when they were setting off for a downtown restaurant and he passed his keys to Spencer and sat down, uncomplaining and humble, in the passenger seat.

  Ever since then, Spencer has always been the designated driver of his father’s car, an accession to power that is not without constraint or perpetual accountability.

  Driving through midtown Manhattan after the appointment with Dr Gribitz, Spencer has been telling his father about the Short Beach Film Festival, because an obscure part of himself that he would like to disown is still hungry for his father’s approval.

  ‘Take a right,’ his father says, gesturing impatiently at the limousine that is hogging the lane in front of them. ‘OK.’

  Spencer indicates and shifts into the right lane, though the traffic there is even less mobile, because of the bus a block ahead, which is struggling to manoeuvre past some roadworks.

  ‘Right! I said right!’

  And his father angrily lifts away the oxygen tube to wipe some of the spit that has collected on his chin. ‘I am going right!’