COMEDY OF MANNERS
By Dylan Brody
[If you’re on a desktop or tablet, and would prefer to read this piece as it appeared in Bystander #6, you can download a PDF here. — The Editors]
Ellen sipped her Scotch. Paul turned his wine glass slowly on the paper cocktail napkin, spreading a spilled drop into a red circle.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t have chosen someplace nicer,” Ellen said.
“She said she wanted to buy us dinner,” Paul said. “I was trying to be polite.”
“Still. We could have gone somewhere decent and then insisted on picking up the bill.”
“This is decent,” Paul said.
“You know what I mean,” Ellen said.
“You mean you prefer the 18-year-old Macallan to the 12.”
Ellen gave him the look that meant, you’re not at all funny, and then said, “This is Dewar’s.” Then, responding to his apologetic shrug, “They have 12 and 18. But if she’s buying . . .”
“We really are very decent, polite people,” Paul said. He sipped his wine.
“Is she late?”
“We’re early.”
“I should’ve gotten the Macallan and paid for it separately.”
“You still can.”
“Too late.” She didn’t quite nod toward the front of the restaurant and Paul turned to see Lindsay out there on the sidewalk, beyond the glass, moving toward the door. He read the body language as best he could, but there wasn’t much to go on and he could never tell the difference between chilly and irritable anyway. Or needing to pee.
In hushed tones, a hurried whisper, Ellen said, “Don’t push her about grad school.” Lindsay came toward them and then Paul was up, out of his seat to watch her approach.
He took in her coat, slouchy soft in a way that suggested it had been expensive originally. He imagined her, out there in Los Angeles, going through the racks at thrift stores, keeping up appearances. She looked thin, too. Fit. He opened his arms and she hugged him affectionately, smelling of shampoo and autumn.
Ellen remained seated so that Lindsay had to lean over her shoulder to kiss her, and Ellen returned the kiss awkwardly, patted a conveniently placed hand and gestured for one of the empty seats at the four-top.
Lindsay said, “Actually, can we — ” She turned to a passing waiter: “Can we move to that booth in the back? Is that going to mess things up for you guys?”
“That’s fine. Let me just — ” He looked at Lindsay, saw something in her demeanor that altered his tone and said, “I’ll let your server know.” He hurried off as though he’d been sent on a very important errand. Ellen stood up and collected her drink.
Paul lifted his coat from the back of the chair where he’d draped it, grabbed Ellen’s coat as well and then said, “Would you grab my wine, baby girl?”
Lindsay said: “It’s okay, Dad. They’ll bring it over.”
“I don’t like to make extra work for them. Would you?”
Lindsay sighed a sigh that held in it a lifetime of tiny battles lost, tiny points conceded. She picked up the wine. She also picked up the circle-stained cocktail napkin to avoid that additional moment of dialogue. Ellen was already on her way to the back booth with a forced cheer in her gait to indicate a false lack of irritation at the displacement. Lindsay and Paul followed.
They settled in.
“So,” Paul said as an opening probe, “You’re in town.”
“Yes,” Lindsay said. “Just for a couple of nights.”
“Working,” Paul said.
“Yes.”
“Is this a television thing?” Ellen asked. “Or one of those other things?”
“What other things?”
“Sometimes you do those other — what do you call them? You know what I’m talking about, Paul. Borging or something.”
“Blogging?” Lindsay asked.
“Right! Those.”
Lindsay said, “I was a blogger for three years, Mom. For a travel site. I know you read at least some of the posts.”
“I did read some of them. You know. On the computer. When you sent me the thing to click on.”
Paul winced.
“The links?” Lindsay asked.
Ellen said: “Right! The links to the blogging! All the new language. It really is something. Anyway, I only read them on the computer. You know. Where you scroll through and read all the text and see the pictures and it’s all just on one long page.”
Lindsay said, “As opposed to what, Mom?”
Ellen said, “I didn’t go out and try to find copies of the – you know – the actual thing.”
Paul said, “Ellen.”
Ellen said, “What?”
Lindsay said, “What actual thing?”
Ellen said: “You know. The magazine or the little booklet or wherever they were really publishing the stuff.”
Lindsay said, “What?”
Ellen said: “Oh, come on, now. Don’t be like that. I read all the ones you sent me the clicky things to.”
Paul said, “Links.”
Ellen said: “Right. Sometimes I even left comments.”
Lindsay said, “Yes.”
Ellen said: “Right there at the bottom. Did you read those?”
“Yes.”
“I remember once I typed: ‘This was really well written! Thanks for sending it!’ and sometimes if there were little mistakes with punctuation or grammar I pointed it out for you.”
Lindsay said: “Yes. I remember.”
Ellen said, “’Cause, you know, I figure if I can help in any way.”
“Yes.”
Paul said, “You did that in the comments section?”
Ellen said: “Sure! That way she could fix it, maybe, before it actually got published or printed or whatever.”
Paul said, “Ellen.”
Ellen said, “What?”
Lindsay said: “I’m not doing that any more. I’m here with a location shoot.”
Ellen said, “Isn’t that wonderful.”
A waitress approached the table. She said: “Hi. I’m Signe. I’ll be your server this evening.”
Ellen said, “You already told us that.”
Signe said: “Yes. But I was introducing myself to the other young lady.”
“Hello, Signe. I’m Lindsay.”
“She doesn’t need to know that, honey,” Paul said.
Ellen pulled down the last of her Scotch and then crunched a bit of ice in her teeth as she slid the glass toward the waitress.
Signe did not respond to that. She said: “Can I bring you anything to drink? Have you had a chance to look at the menu?”
“I haven’t. I’m sorry. Do you have any herbal tea?”
Signe listed some teas, and Lindsay chose one. Then Signe said, “Would you like another Dewar’s?”
“Please,” Ellen said.
“Not Macallan?” Lindsay asked.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Ellen said.
Lindsay said, “Bring her a glass of your oldest Macallan, and if the bartender grumbles about putting it on the rocks tell him that when he can afford good Scotch he can decide how he wants it served.”
Signe said to Ellen, “We have a 25-year-old.”
Ellen said: “Oh, that’s just absurd. Eighteen is fine.”
Signe said, “Okay.”
Lindsay said, “Bring the 25.”
Signe left them alone.
“So, you’re shooting a location?” Ellen said.
Lindsay said: “We’re shooting on location. Have you seen the show?”
“What show, honey?” Paul asked.
Lindsay blinked slowly. She said: “I told you about this. In an email. Last year.”
“About what, dear? You know I don’t understand half of what you say when you’re talking about work.” Ellen patted her daughter’s hand.
Paul waved to Signe as she approached with the fresh Scotch and pointed at his empty wine glass.
“Served Cold. TNT? Thursday nights?”
Ellen said: “Oh! I heard about that show. You remember, Paul?”
“What are we talking about now?”
“That show!” Ellen said. “The one Stacy Kiel was going on about the other night. And on NPR… what’s his name? Oh, help me out here, Paul. The guy with the funny inflection.”
“Bander Sujianmati.”
“Yes! That’s the one. He did a whole piece on it, about how it’s so violent and angry…”
“Oh!” Paul suddenly said, engaged. “I remember that review. He compared it to the whole Quentin Tarentino thing in cinema and talked about how it all started with Kubrick’s The Shining. The — I loved this line -— ‘the celebration of our darkest impulses; the repeated affirmation of an underlying hostility, a fundamental violence at the heart of every family.’”
“Yes! I don’t know how you remember whole chunks like that.”
“It struck me when I heard it. I remember.”
“It stars that woman, I think,” Ellen said. “The one who used to be on that other show. The comedy. We never watched that either. Except that one episode you wrote. You remember that, honey? You called us all excited ‘cause you’d sold one episode to this ridiculous sitcom on network television?”
“Show Me the Love,” Lindsay informed her. “Yes. I remember.”
Paul said, “You were so excited to be getting into the Guild.”
Lindsay said, “Yes.”
Ellen said: “And then we tried to watch it, and we just couldn’t even sit through the whole half-hour, it was such utter schlock. I mean, I’m sure you did a wonderful job of writing just what they wanted, but it was all those corny one-liners and then the big fake laughs from the studio audience. Just ridiculous.”
Lindsay said, “Okay.”
Paul said: “But you were so excited about selling that episode and getting into the Guild. I remember that. What was that? Three years ago? Four?”
Signe put Paul’s full glass of wine on a fresh new cocktail napkin. She put a small tin of steeping tea beside a teacup for Lindsay. She paused for a moment, then said: “I’ll be back in just a minute to take your orders. Okay?”
Paul waved her away without looking.
Lindsay said, “Thank you, Signe.”
Lindsay’s phone made a small noise. She ignored it.
“So,” she said, “What have you guys been up to? Dad, you have to be starting to think about retirement.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Paul said.
“And yet, he does. Several times a day,” Ellen said. “Usually half a sentence grumbled into the refrigerator.”
Paul sipped his wine. He crinkled his eyes in the way that told both Lindsay and Ellen that he was about to say something but wasn’t sure how it would be received. He said, “Lindsay, I want to say something.”
Lindsay said, “I’m not going to graduate school.”
Paul said, “That’s not what I was going to say.” But then he didn’t go on at all.
Lindsay poured tea into her cup. She waited. She sipped.
Ellen said, “You’re not drinking at all now?”
Lindsay said, “I have an early call tomorrow morning.”
“To whom?” Ellen asked.
“What?”
“Who do you have to call early tomorrow?”
“That’s — no. That’s what time I have to get to work. It’s called a call time.”
“Oh,” Ellen said.
Paul said, “We don’t really know all the lingo.”
Lindsay said, “I know.”
Abruptly, Paul blurted out, in an oddly scolding tone, “You know we love you, right?”
“I do,” Lindsay said. “Sometimes I wish you could love me with, you know, less hostility.”
Paul chuckled. “I get that,” he said.
Ellen said, “I still drink.”
Lindsay said: “Yes. I see that.”
Ellen said, “Your father really only drinks wine, but I just love Scotch. Mostly only in the evenings.”
Lindsay said, “Mostly?”
“Sometimes on the weekend, if we’re playing Scrabble, you know, and it’s the afternoon.”
“Ah.”
“Ellen.”
Ellen said, as though she was answering a question that nobody had asked, “Never more than two.”
Lindsay said, “Okay.”
Ellen said: “I know my limit. That’s how I know I’m not an alcoholic. Just two drinks and no more. If I have too much I fall down. Literally. One time I went to sit on the toilet and woke up on the floor of the bathroom.”
Paul said, “Good story.”
Lindsay said, “And this is how you know you’re not an alcoholic?”
Ellen said, “Don’t be like that.” Then she stood up. “You know what I want, right, Paul? You can order for us. I’m going out to have a cigarette while we wait for the food.”
She made her way to the front door.
Lindsay and Paul sat in silence for a moment. Paul said, “We’re missing something, aren’t we?”
Lindsay nodded. She said, “It doesn’t matter, Dad.”
He said, “I don’t know what you want from us.”
She shrugged. She said, “It’d be nice if you said you were proud of me.”
“Oh, honey. We are so, so proud of you. We tell people all the time about how wonderfully you turned out. We might have made some mistakes as parents, but you are proof that we were not completely incompetent.”
Lindsay chuckled. “Is that what I am?”
Paul said, “What?”
“Proof of your competence.”
Paul said, “I don’t understand.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Her phone made a noise. She reached into her purse and fished it out. She swiped through the combination lock to bring her screen to life. She began scrolling through texts.
Paul said, “Don’t do that.”
Without looking up, she said, “What?”
“Look at your phone in the middle of a conversation.”
“It was actually the middle of a pause.”
“Still,” Paul said.
“It’s not 5 o’clock yet in LA. I’m still working, Dad.”
“You’re at a restaurant. With your parents.”
“One of them.”
“It’s rude,” he said. “Put it away.”
“Rude? Your wife just walked out of the room to have a cigarette. I waited until there was a pause, and now I’m checking through a great many texts, some of which I really should have responded to when they came in.”
“Really? You’re so important that people in LA need you to get back to them right away when they text you in Boston?”
“I’m not on vacation, Dad. Yes. They need me to get back to them.”
“Oh, stop it,” Paul said. “You’re just avoiding talking to me.”
“Now who’s overestimating their importance?”
“What?”
She finished thumbing out a response to the texts and put the phone back into her purse.
Ellen returned in a small cloud of eau de Parliament. “What’d I miss?”
Paul said, “We had a fight.”
“Oooh. Exciting. What about? Did you offer to pay for grad school?”
“I told her it was rude to look at her phone at the dinner table.”
“Oh! Your father is right about that dear. I read about it in the advice column in the paper. It’s not Dear Abby. I don’t remember her name. But someone wrote in about that, and she said that it’s very rude. Very common now, but totally unacceptable.”
“Is that what you read about it in your print-medium newspaper, Mom?” She heard the defensive anger in her own voice.
“What does that mean?”
Lindsay sighed.
“Wait,” Ellen said. “I remembered something when I was outside. You started saying something and then we got sidetracked. Something about that awful show on the Dynamite Channel.”
“TNT. Not the Dynamite Channel.”
“I know, dear. I like to call it the Dynamite Channel.”
Lindsay waved to Signe, who came at once. “Are you all ready to order?”
Paul said: “My wife and I would like to split a Cobb salad. Is that allowed?”
“Of course. Do you want that all chopped up and mixed to make things easy or — ”
“Oh, do it the way you usually do it. I like when it’s all fancy in the separate wedges and then I get to mix it up myself,” Ellen said.
“Okay. And for you?”
“You know what? Do you still have the bisque?”
“I love the bisque. Would you like a cup or — ”
“A bowl,” Lindsay said.
“Terrific,” Signe said.
Lindsay said: “A big bowl. Does it come in extra-large? Do you have a tureen of bisque that I could order?”
Signe laughed. “One venti bisque. If the bowl’s not enough for you, I’ll bring you a second one and only charge you exactly the same amount for that one.”
“Wow. You made that sound like a bargain. You’re awesome.”
“I strive to not suck,” Signe said with a smile as she collected the menus.
Ellen finished off her drink and handed Signe the glass. “Could I have another of those?”
“Of course.”
Signe went.
As if in response to an accusation, Ellen said: “Oh, come on. The first one was just Dewar’s.”
Paul said, “Ellen.”
Ellen said to Lindsay, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
Lindsay said, “What do you wish I wouldn’t do?”
Ellen said, “Make jokes with waitresses like that.”
“What kind of waitresses should I make jokes with?”
“You know what I mean. Stop being funny. Everyone finds it exhausting.”
Lindsay closed her eyes in a way that suggested that she had a terrible headache, although she did not. She opened them again and sipped her tea.
Paul said, “So, is that what you’re working on?”
Lindsay said, “What?”
Paul said, “That TNT show? Cold Servings?”
“Served Cold.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Ellen said. “I didn’t realize you worked on that show.”
“I know. I got that.”
“What do you do on it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just… let’s eat and talk about something else.”
“Are you upset because I said what I heard on NPR? That wasn’t my opinion. I’ve never even watched the thing.”
“Yeah. Got that.”
Signe set down a fresh drink for Ellen. Paul sipped his wine.
“Are you upset because we never watch it?” Ellen asked.
“A little. Yes.”
“Because you work on it? I didn’t realize you worked on it, honey,” Ellen said. Her inflection implied that she believed her words were an apology.
“I sent you an email when it went to pilot. Another when it was picked up.”
“I know, honey. But I don’t really know what all of that means.”
“So,” Paul said, “You’ve really been with this thing from the beginning.”
“Yes,” Lindsay said. “The very beginning.”
“I can see how that feels important to you, baby girl,” Paul said. “But it’s still just a TV show.”
“No. It’s not, Dad. It’s not just a TV show. It’s my show. It’s my series. We’re out here shooting a bunch of location scenes for the second season. We’re picked up for a second season. My show.”
Ellen said: “Oh, don’t be pretentious about it. So you work on a show. It doesn’t make it yours.”
“I’m not — it is my show.”
Paul said: “No. It’s that woman from that other show. The comedy.”
“She’s the star, Dad. I created it. I executive produce it. It’s my show.”
Signe brought the salad and the bisque. She put down an extra plate so that Ellen and Paul could split the salad. Ellen set about mixing the salad together. She said, “I love this part!”
As Paul moved some of the newly mixed salad to the extra plate, Ellen sipped her Scotch.
Paul said, “We don’t really know what any of that means.”
Lindsay said: “I pitched a show. Then I wrote the pilot. Then I sold the show. Then we made 22 episodes of which I wrote nine while overseeing the writing staff that wrote the others.”
Ellen said: “Well, I think it’s great that you’re working, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you should be bragging about. I mean, don’t put this Cold Justice thing on your résumé.”
“Served Cold,” Lindsay said.
“Whatever it’s called.”
“Ellen,” Paul said. Then he said: “This is the thing, isn’t it? The thing we were missing?”
Lindsay nodded.
“You’re — that’s a big deal, selling and running a show.”
Lindsay nodded.
“I don’t even see how you would know how to do all of that,” Ellen said.
Paul said, “Ellen.”
Lindsay said, “It doesn’t matter, Mom.” She blew on a spoonful of bisque.
“Seriously, though, honey,” Ellen went on. “I think it’s great that you’re making a living doing this TV stuff while you’re working on your real writing and whatever, but you shouldn’t tell people you’re working on that awful show.”
Paul sighed.
“Why’s that, Mom?”
“Because nobody likes it. Apparently it’s very violent.”
“It’s consistently beating out the big three networks in its time slot.”
“That doesn’t mean anybody likes it.”
“Actually, Mom, it means a lot of people like it.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. A lot of people thought Milton Berle was funnier than Jack Benny. A lot of people liked the Stooges more than the Marx Brothers.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“I hope you’re socking away a lot of money in the bank so that you have something of a cushion and you can just relax when that show is over and do your real writing.”
“This is real writing.”
“It’s television,” Paul said.
“It’s been called innovative television. And — we’re getting terrific ratings. And we got picked up for a second season.” She heard her voice getting higher. She heard the plea behind it, the need to be heard, to be recognized.
Paul said, “Well, I suppose that’s the sort of thing people in LA would be very impressed by.” Then, after the shortest of beats, he said, “I don’t know what you think you need my approval for.”
Lindsay sighed. She pulled bisque into her mouth, focusing on the sound and then sensation of the warm broth.
Paul said: “Don’t slurp, baby girl. It’s very rude.”
“It really is,” Ellen said. She signaled the waitress that her glass was empty. ◊
DYLAN BRODY is a playwright and humorist, poet and snappy dresser. Don’t ask him about his tie. He’ll talk for an hour about the Plattsburgh knot. Check out his webseries Corona Dialogues. His latest book is here.
This article appears in The American Bystander #6. Buy it here.
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