from MIRRORS: A MEMOIR by Steve Fellner

Siskel and Ebert

My pre-teen idols were the tall and fat movie critics of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. First thing every Friday I rode my bicycle to the 7-11 near our house and bought the newspapers. I couldn’t even wait to get home to read them. Outside the store, I sat on the sidewalk, flipped through the pages. Didn’t stop until I found the cinema section.
Nothing was more enjoyable than reading their reviews. I loved when they panned a movie. Seeing ZERO STARS printed near the headline excited me. I imagined a fledgling director calling up his wife and telling him that he was going to off himself. Tragedy titillated me. It was more satisfying than reading the obituaries.
I couldn’t imagine any profession more satisfying than a movie critic. You got paid to sit in the dark and watch flickering images on the screen. Everyone read what you wrote. No doubt all your friends would want to know what you thought. Who didn’t go to the movies?
Besides all that, you determined the fates of people’s lives. You determined whether they would become homeless. Or a sensation.
“Why do you care what some fat balding guy thinks?” my mother said.
“Because,” I said.
“But why his?”
I knew Ebert and Siskel’s star ratings for every movie since they had been critics. It mattered to me. They had standards. My parents didn’t seem to have any. My dad was constantly abandoning us for a new woman. My mother engaged in interminable bouts of self-pity and depression. No one was offering a sustained, thoughtful critique of their own behavior.
I wanted Ebert and Siskel to adopt me. They knew how to behave in the world. If they could tell directors, writers, and actors, they could surely advise a boy.
On Fridays, I snuck into the closet where my mother stored the family photo albums. Each week, I took out family photos and replaced them with the movie critiques. During the week, I read and re-read them, skipping over the plot summaries. All I wanted was the nasty jabs.
One day my mother came home from work and said, “Have a surprise for you.”
“They fired you,” I said, “but you found another new job.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “Tonight we’re going to Stratford Square.” Stratford Square was an upscale mall. We never went there. Kmart and Sears were our outlets.
“Why?”
“Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert are going to be there,” she said. “They’re going to predict the Oscars. You’ll be able to get their autographs.”
My heart started to race. I was so nervous. The newspaper hadn’t even printed their Oscar prediction yet. I was going to be privy to information no one else in the nation had.
“What am I going to wear?” I said.
“This is Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert,” she said. “They’re not really celebrities.”
“How dare you,” I said. “You don’t like anyone who has a stronger opinion than you.”
I marched into my bedroom. Only two hours before the national event. I decided to spend my time brushing up on their takes of the critical successes of the year: E. T., The Verdict, Gandhi . . .
Without knocking, my mother walked inside my room. “What are you doing?” she said. She had the album in her hands: “Where are all the pictures?”
“In my sock drawer,” I said.
“Why not here?”
“Because my family needed a space.”
“These are movie reviews,” she said.
“They’re not just any reviews,” I said. “They’re Siskel and Ebert’s reviews. They protect me from bad things.”
“Unlike dad ever did,” I said. I knew she’d appreciate that.
So I said it again for dramatic effect: “Unlike dad ever did.”
“Just replace him then. Not me.”
“O. K.,” I said.
Next to the Stratford Square Food Court was an elevated platform. On a couch sat Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. They were wearing tuxedos. Roger Ebert looked fatter than he did on TV. I wondered if he wore extra padding. Only about a dozen people were there. We sat on metal chairs in front of them. It made me nervous. I had never sat so close to someone I worshipped. They were pretty upbeat about all the movies they saw as Oscar contenders. That disappointed me. I wanted conflict.
Someone behind us kept talking. It was annoying me.
My mother turned around and said, “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“We’re not at the movies,” the person said back.
“Have some respect,” my mother said.
Ebert winked at my mother.
I couldn’t believe it.
I was afraid she was going to make a pass at him. She was lonely. He must have been lonely, too. So overweight. Sitting in the dark all day.
Maybe Roger Ebert would be my stepfather.
After they talked, my mother told me to go ask them for an autograph. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“You look up to them,” she said. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”
“I’m tired,” I said.
My mother grabbed my hand and dragged me to them. “Hello, Mr. Ebert,” my mother said.
“You can call me Roger,” he said.
“My son reads all your reviews,” she said.
“Really?” Ebert said.
“Ask him the star rating of any movie and he’ll tell you,” my mother said.
“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” he said, “with Jessica Lange.”
“Two and a half stars,” I said.
“The Verdict.”
“Three and a half stars,” I said.
“Mr. North.”
“Zero stars,” I said.
“This kid is good,” he said.
“He is,” my mother said.
“I was surprised you gave Bachelor Party three stars,” I said. I was surprised. Bachelor Party was a stupid movie with Tom Hanks. Some guys throw a wild party and dumb, sexual things happen. It bothered me that he liked it.
“You have to accept something on its own terms,” he said. “It wanted to be a silly, fun film. And it was. How can you knock something for not having high aspirations?”
“Are you telling my kid to have small dreams?” my mother said.
“Mom,” I said.
“I wasn’t saying anything about kids,” Ebert said.
“You don’t even realize what you were saying,” she said. “You can knock something for not wanting more. In fact, you need to. My kid will leave the trailer park and have a good life. He won’t settle like I did. If he does, I will chastise him. I hope you’ll treat your kids with the same respect.”

The Hypnotist

Every Christmas, my mother’s bosses hired a hypnotist. They took the entire company out to a fancy restaurant and then asked for volunteers. Everyone took advantage of the bar so the hypnotist went home early; he couldn’t work his wonders on someone tipsy. My mother didn’t drink. Everyone knew that. That’s why she avoided the Christmas party. She didn’t want to find out any other bad news about herself.
One year we were real broke so we went to the party. Free food. We tried to make a dash for the exit but the main boss stopped her.
“Try the hypnotist,” the boss said.
“Maybe next year,” my mother said.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I wanted to know about my past life. Maybe something about an old life would lead me to news about my current one. I imagined that in a past life I was a famous toy manufacturer. Or that I was once an unwed mother as my own biological mother was. Or that I was the son of a fan dancer. Something interesting, something that would offer insight into why I ended up here.
“We’ll both do it,” my mother said.
The boss instructed us to go backstage to meet the hypnotist. He needed to meet us. Find out what our souls were like.
The hypnotist was pudgy. It was impossible to make eye contact with him. He was always looking down at the ground. Was his gaze so powerful that he had to avoid eye contact, fearful that he’d put you under his spell with even the shortest of glances?
“Hello,” I said. “You’re going to find out who we were.”
“Were. Are,” he said. “Whatever. It’s all the same thing.”
“You’re not going to have us strut around stage, clucking like a chicken?” my mother said.
“Promise,” he said.
“Why won’t you look at us?” I said.
My mother flashed me a nasty look.
I was going to be under the man’s control. I wanted to know what his problem was.
“People are mean,” he said. “It hurts to see bad thoughts.”
“I’m nice,” I said. “Please look at me.”
He looked into my eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re a good boy.”
“Told you,” I said smiling.
“Let’s go out on stage,” he said.
We went out on stage. Everyone clapped. I loved the idea of getting applause for doing nothing. I started clapping too. My mother nudged me.
“Who wants to go first?”
I raised my hand.
Everyone laughed. Funny school boy, I suppose.
The fortune teller walked in front of me and held a pendulum. He told me to stare at it and listen to his voice. Almost immediately I felt like I lost consciousness. My eyes opened to the sound of another applause.
“What happened?” I said.
Everyone laughed. I couldn’t believe they weren’t going to tell me. This was my life. Being on stage and in front of dozens of people kept me from arguing.
“Your turn,” the fortune teller said to my mother.
He did the same thing he did to me. She went under quick. The audience was dead quiet.
“We’re going to go back in time. Way back in time. As far as you can remember.”
“O.K.,” my mother said. It creeped me out seeing my mother so far gone.
“Stop,” the fortune teller said. “Where are you? Who are you?”
“Here,” she said.
Someone in the audience yelled, “Is she really under?”
“Yes,” the fortune teller said.
I could tell she was. I said, she is. He looked touched that I vouched for him. I wanted him to know that there were some people whose eyes were kind and so were they.
“Let’s try it again. You’re moving back. Way back. To a life you lived long, long ago.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“Vicki Fellner.”
You could tell that the audience was growing impatient.
“On the count of three, wake up,” the fortune teller said.
He counted to three. She woke up. Asking for more volunteers, he shooed us backstage.
“So what happened?” she said.
“You really were out,” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Tell me first. I’ve been waiting longer.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. “He kept asking you to move backward into time and nothing happened. It’s like you didn’t have a past.”
“Weird,” she said. “It reminds me of the fortune cookie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once I got a fortune cookie and it had no fortune. I had no future.”
“What happened with the next cookie you opened?”
“I never ate Chinese again.”
It was true. We never ate Chinese.
“No future,” she said. “No past. All I have is this.”
“What’s this?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“What about me?” I said. “What about my past?”
“Please,” she said. “Don’t make me tell you. Don’t make me be alone. At least not now. Not right now.”

Prom

I didn’t want to go to my prom, but my best friend insisted. My best friend was Alicia. Alicia turned out to be a lesbian but she hadn’t told me yet. I was gay and she didn’t know. Hanging out every day together, we had the most intense platonic relationship. She was fat and always wore neckties. Everyone was afraid of her. Her manic energy reminded me of my mother.
“I want to go to the prom,” she said.
“Ask someone,” I said.
“I want to go with you.”
“Why?” I said.
“Once we get there, you’ll leave me alone.”
“And I want you to know something,” she added.
“What?”
“I’m going to wear a tuxedo,” she said. “With a miniskirt.”
“Why?”
“It’s cool.”
“But – ”
“I’m doing it,” she said. “You know you’re not going to be able to stop me.”
When Alicia told all my friends this, everyone asked me if I was going to be wearing a dress. Little did they know.
Or maybe they did.
On the night of prom, my friends, about six couples, showed up on my driveway. We stopped at everybody’s house so our parents could take our pictures. My mother didn’t own a camera so she bought a disposable one for the occasion. My father was inside the house, packing his stuff up in boxes. The week before, he had decided to divorce my mother.
We were all posing on the front lawn. Mother was frustrated with the camera, thinking it was defective. There was no noise going off. Hot and sweaty in our formal clothes, we were stuck in poses fated to last an eternity. We all tried to stay as still as possible as my mother shook the camera, looking like she was about to break it in two. She then started to swear.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Someone said, “Hi, Mr. Fellner.”
My dad was behind us, putting his stuff in the trunk of his Chevy.
“What are you doing?” Alicia asked. I was too embarrassed to tell her that my parents were getting a divorce.
“Leaving?”
“Really?” Alicia asked.
“Yep. I’m definitely leaving,” my father said.
The camera finally worked. Mother snapped a few more pictures and then said she was tired, and had to go inside to rest, and wished us all a good time.
When we got our prom pictures, you could see all of us on the driveway with our forced bright smiles. Behind us, my dad was carting all his belongings into the backseat of his car.

Church

I never understood why someone would want to do the same thing every week. Why did my parents feel compelled to arrange their schedule in such a predictable way? Why engage in conversation with people you would never otherwise talk to?
I was the sort of kid who avoided people I knew whenever I saw them in public. I ducked into bathrooms, hid behind clothing racks, pretended not to see them. My parents weren’t like that. Every week we went to church. We encountered boring people who loved their brand-new clothes and loved them even more when they saw the shabbiness of our own. We were poor. One week it was over a hundred degrees outside. “It’s too hot to go to church,” I said, “and listen to a really boring sermon.”
“It is hot,” my mother said, “but we’re going to church. It’s the right thing to do.”
“But there’s so many people. I can’t pay attention to anything. I’m too busy wiping the sweat from my brow.”
“Then wear your shorts. It’s not like you have any brand-new clothes to show off anyway.”
“Wear shorts to church?” I said. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’ll wear shorts too,” she said, “to show you how ridiculous I am.”
We all wore shorts. On the drive there, our skin stuck to the vinyl. The lifting of our legs made a funny noise. “You farted,” my brother said.
“Shut up,” I said.
“He did,” my mother said. “He let a big one go.”
As we approached the front entrance, people stared at us. Here we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts. I was scared that God would see us as disrespectful and launch a thunderbolt at the church.
Good thing the sky was clear. Not a single cloud.
As we walked past the altar boys, I heard someone say in the loudest whisper, “They came to church in their underpants!”
My mother turned around and said in a loud voice: “You think God cares what you wear. All He wants is you to be here. Praying to Him. Showing your love for Him.”
Then with one hand she held onto my hand, the other grasped my brother’s. We marched to the last pew. We always sat in the last pew. It was our regular seat. We wanted to be consistent. We wanted God to know that he could depend on us.
It was a lot shorter than the other pews. But it didn’t matter to us. We sat real close. Our legs touched. My brother and I poked and pinched each other. How could we resist?
As a family, I never felt closer.
My mother knelt and said a prayer. It began: Dear Lord, Forgive me for causing my sons’ embarrassment. I gave them bad advice.
I started to echo her words. They seemed perfect.
My mother stopped and looked at me. “You’re cheating,” she said. “That’s my prayer. Make up one of your own.”
“I like yours.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Then get it right. You are messing up some of the phrasing,” she said. “If you can’t paraphase me accurately, then quote me.”
“Mom.”
“I’m serious.”
“I like your words too,” my brother piped up. I knew he wasn’t paying attention. But I didn’t say that. He was sweet in a dumb way.
“Why don’t we do this?” she said. She held my hand and then reached for my brother’s. She added: “Why don’t we say my prayer together? That way God will know how intense we feel about Him.”
“O. K.,” I said.
“After me,” she said.
Then she started the prayer: My Lord, forgive that lady for mocking us. She does not know better. She is rich. The rich don’t know any better. Pay more attention to them than the poor. The poor know how to take care of themselves. We don’t need You as much. We’re survivors. The rich are petty, because they don’t know what’s important. Yet. But they will, my Lord. They will know. They will know once they’ve lost everything. At some point we all lose everything. So please, love that lady, My Lord. Don’t worry about me and my sons. One day she will have room in her heart for You.

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Steve Fellner’s narratives have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, North American Review, Northwest Review, Mid-American Review, and Puerto del Sol.