HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (13 page)

“You may think that now,” I said, “But in a
few months or years, you may wind up with some woman on your arm
and you may want to knock her up.”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Larry, “get real.” He
finished his croissant and lifted the tiny spoon on his saucer and
began stirring and pushing foamed milk into the cappuccino. “I’m
not gonna have kids. I’ve known that since I was a kid. This line
is dying with me. The name doesn’t deserve to live.”

“What about your grandmother?” I asked.
“Don’t you want her to be a great grandmother?”

“She already is a great grandmother,” said
Larry. “She doesn’t need me to pop out a kid to be more
awesome.”

“Not what I meant,” I said.

Larry quickly said, “I’m gonna end this
name, end this line. To hell with the whole lot of them. That
mansion on Treasure Island poisoned everyone.”

.

The National Cemetery at The Presidio, where
Larry’s great grandfather is buried, may be home to the most
spectacular view of San Francisco Bay of any spot in the city, but
because the graveyard was set on a steep hillside, I felt like I
would tumble and roll into the Bay, and not stop rolling until I
bumped into Alcatraz, off in the distance.

Larry said we needed to wait at the cemetery
to meet two Danes who wanted to shoot a film about his family. He
sat on the grass, eating a pastrami sandwich, which he would
occasionally set down on the stone that read:

“
Col. CARL VAN DER BIX. 1896 –
1944. Army Aviator WWI, WWII. Loving Husband, Loving
Father.”

Mustard dripped from Larry’s sandwich onto
the stone, as he ate potato salad. “I guess this was my great
grandmother’s favorite spot in America,” said Larry. He picked up
his sandwich, leaving a heavy glob of mustard on the date 1896.
“Not the cemetery, necessarily, although it is pretty....”

“Hal-lowww,” said a tall, blond man, walking
up the cemetery hillside, towards me and Larry. With him was a
tall, blonde woman, carrying a handheld camera and aiming the
enormous lens at Larry. “Tres…,” said the man, fully ten paces
away, but reaching his hand out, as though Larry and I would be
shaking it a second later. “Tres von Sommerberg, from Denmark...
the director, film director... hello.”

Von Sommerberg and the tall woman closed the
distance between us and, his hand as an invitation, soon four hands
were shaking.

“Lena,” said the woman, extending her
hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Lawrence.”

“Larry? Lena. Nice to meet you.”

“Tres, Lawrence, yes.”

Then, in the seconds it took for her to pass
the camera, suddenly, the tall blonde-haired man was operating the
camera, whose lens seemed grotesquely oversized for the proportions
of the unit.

“Hello, yes, The Presidio, and whose is that
stone?” The man with the camera circled Larry and cut my physical
presence from becoming part of his photographic field. “Is that
family?”

“That? That?” said Larry.

The man hovered over Larry and then stooped
down low, in a way that might suggest to a viewer they were on a
roller coaster, and, just as suddenly, von Sommerberg stood, and
slowly descended the hill, then stopped, did a long pan of the
sweeping 180-degree view of the Bay. With his long legs, the Dane
closed the distance with Larry, and – avoiding Larry’s face –
brought the camera in low to the ground, and halted inches above
the van der Bix stone. When von Sommerberg raised the lens upwards,
he photographed Larry’s face, twisted into an angry sneer.

.

I watched Larry as he sliced and cut his way
through a Porterhouse steak. We had joined the two Danish
filmmakers at the Hotel Intercontinental and with their bags stowed
in their rental car, had agreed to turn in my own rental, and join
them to drive down the coast to Long Beach.

I was half-way through my Asian chicken
salad, and Lena well on her way through her halibut, as von
Sommerberg ignored his food and kept pulling Larry away from his
methodical cutting of his steak, to offer greater detail about his
commission to film the story of Astrid Ullagård, or to ask why
Larry objected to participating.

“Because you’re an annoying idiot,” Larry
said, not looking away from his plate. His steak had been reduced
to a pile of meat cubes. He sat back and raised a hand, drawing the
waiter.

“Can I get beer?” asked Larry and, getting a
nod, asked if what was on draught and in bottles. Larry steered his
questions towards draught. “So, twelve ounce or pint by the glass
or a pitcher?” Larry looked around the table. Lena and Tres showed
interest. “A pitcher and three glasses.”

“Our patron is very interested in Miss
Ullagård’s story,” said von Sommerberg, “and of course, it is our
pleasure for meeting you, but there are gaps in what we know and to
complete this film, we must ask questions to your own family.”

“I’m sorry,” said Larry, “but I don’t buy
your facts. My grandmother’s mom didn’t have any more kids, so what
you’re saying is wrong.” He leaned back into the booth. “The dates
don’t work. And the people you describe don’t fit anything I’ve
been told. My great grandparents were married and living together
until Carl died during the war.”

“Two years after Astrid ceased her dancing
career, she bore a child as Harald Lander’s mistress,” said Lena.
“Her rank on retirement was as Principal Dancer, a status that her
son, Ingeborg, also attained.”

“She lived
here
during the war,
here
, in San Francisco, while Carl was teaching Jimmy
Stewart how to fly,” said Larry.
“Jimmy Stewart.”

“Yes, during the war,” said Lena. “After
Carl was stationed briefly at Fort MacArthur, San Pedro, Los
Angeles,” said Lena, “but that was years after Astrid had returned
to Copenhagen.”

“And returned
from
Copenhagen…. She
always
came back
!” said Larry. “Every year after she danced
the ballet, she came
back
to Carl and Emma in California.
I’ve seen goddamned pictures! She even brought members of the Royal
Troupe to vacation in California as her guests in the suite. That’s
how she stayed fit as a dancer. That’s why she
had
the dance
studio.”

The server set down the pitcher and glasses
and von Sommerberg took the first poured beer. “We all have our
interesting little stories.”

.

“Bright,” said von Sommerberg, stumbling
from the Intercontinental and shading his eyes with his hands. A
valet handed the director the car keys and he stiffly made his way
to the rental car. Lena passed him the camera and he wobbled as he
filmed Larry getting into the car, the subject appearing none too
happy at the filmmaker’s attention.

“Maybe I should drive,” I suggested, after
the director nearly took a fall – camera and all – when Larry
slammed his door closed as von Sommerberg filmed him. Lena, who
drank as heartily as Larry and Tres – though showed little in the
way of intoxication – took shotgun, as von Sommerberg climbed into
the back, joining Larry.

.

We had left the Intercontinental a little
over an hour earlier and managed good time moving down the San
Francisco peninsula. Since Larry was busy spacing out, the time
passed pleasantly. When I would look at him through the rear-view
mirror, I would see his head turned, as though something far off in
the distance, in the middle of the southern waters of the San
Francisco Bay, called out to him.

“California, I have to tell you, is really
something,” said Lena, looking out from the front seat of the car,
onto the waters of the San Francisco Bay.

I would occasionally glance over to look at
Lena. In a world where everyone wants to be blonde – and so few
seem to naturally be – there’s something beyond hair color for
those who, like Lena and the director – and Lori – suggests there
is a land where the uniqueness of being a natural blonde is
normal.

“Really lovely,” added von Sommerberg,
leaning forward such that he leaned a forearm onto the back of my
seat and Lena’s, as he typed a message on his phone with his
thumbs.

“In California, it’s the driver who gets
ticketed if someone is not wearing a seatbelt,” I said to von
Sommerberg.

“I’m not driving,” he replied, sitting back
in his seat.

“And it’s really great to ask us to come
back with you, to Long Beach,” said Lena. “After two years, it will
be really something to meet Emma Mathilde.”

“Two years?” asked Larry, reconnecting with
the conversation, breaking his gaze to the Bay. “What about two
years?”

“My research,” said Lena. “Ever since Tres
got this commission almost three years ago, I’ve been studying the
life of Astrid Ullagård and her son, Ingeborg. And so now to be
able to meet the ballerina’s first child... really something.”

“She may be research to you,” said Larry,
“but she’s my grandma, so you better be nice.”

“We’ll be
really
nice,” said von
Sommerberg.

.

“There!” yelled Tres von Sommerberg. “Stop
there!”

I screeched the Danes’ rental car to a halt
on the southbound lane of State Highway One, just past a solitary
restaurant built over the edge of one of the steep cliffs
overlooking the Pacific. I backed up slowly and then inched into
one of the few open parking spaces. “We only have a few hours of
daylight and we’ve got quite a ways to go before The One
straightens out.”

Lena had quickly made her way of the car and
had opened the trunk and lifted out the camera, which she put onto
her shoulder. Larry wore his customary scowl as Lena shot him
exiting the car.

Inside, I flipped through the menu, as did
Larry, while the director slowly moved through the dining room,
seemingly to irritate the greatest number of patrons possible
before being seated. Lena dutifully took the camera from the
director when he approached the table and got waved away by Larry,
who flashed the middle finger up to the enormous lens.

“Denmark is a flat little country,” said von
Sommerberg, “and we are only here on the coast, and it’s like a
mountain range.”

“Like Norway,” said Lena.

“Of course, the fjords,” said von
Sommerberg, quickly, quietly back to Lena.

The waiter approached and Larry ordered. “A
dinner salad with oil and vinegar. And water.”

“Just that?”

“Um, uh,” said Larry. “Yeh, only that.”

“The Chef’s salad,” said Lena, nodding to
Larry. “And beer. What do you have from Europe?” On hearing the
list of German, Dutch, Belgian Italian and English beers, she
ordered the Italian.

“Never had that,” said Larry. “Two.”

I ordered the fifteen dollar patty melt and
von Sommerberg, the thirty dollar fish.

“The facts are as they are,” said Lena. “We
are not accepting the ballerina’s granddaughter’s statements
without verification, and that also is why we are here. The film in
its written form is ready for shooting, but perhaps the story is
wrong, perhaps there is a better story.”

“Perhaps there is no story,” said Larry.

“Harald Lander is one of the great Artistic
Directors in the history of the Royal Ballet and a great figure in
Danish culture,” said von Sommerberg. “That the master had a love
child with a dancer who returned from America, even though she was
washed up, that is a story worth telling.”

“Washed up?” said Larry, anger in his
voice.

“Astrid Ullagård was in her mid-thirties
when she was Lander’s principal dancer,” said Lena. “She had only
four years on the stage after her return. The films show….”

“The films…?”

“The performance recordings,” said von
Sommerberg.

“You have films of my grandmother’s mom
dancing?”

“Not us,” said Lena. “The Queen’s household.
It is a part of the collection the Royal Ballet compiles after each
season as a gift to Her Majesty, or, in this case, to King
Christian X.”

“The Royal Ballet allowed us to view the
films, but we don’t have them,” said von Sommerberg.

Salads arrived and Larry, on getting a pair
of flasks in a basket, seemed baffled as to how much oil versus how
much vinegar to sprinkle. He went back and forth until a deep lake
soaked the greens, turning his plate into an oil-&-vinegar
soup. He poked at his croutons. “What does Lori see in this
stuff’?”

Three beers arrived. On seeing an extra,
unordered bottle, von Sommerberg grabbed a spoon, slipped the tip
under the bottle cap and, his index finger the fulcrum, pushed down
on the spoon’s handle, popping the cap. Larry and Lena did the
same, one using a knife and the other a lighter.

“The material is ready,” said Lana. “It is
only finance and distribution that await finalizing.” Lena lifted
her glass towards me, and on my water glass touching hers, said,
“skål” and took a sip.

“Why even bother meeting my grandmother
then?” said Larry, with spite in his voice.

“She’s the unknown one,” said von
Sommerberg. “Mysterious minds makes for good cinema. Who is she?
Why did she stay? Why did she get left behind?”

Food arrived. Plates filled the table, as
salads got pushed aside to allow fish and a patty melt to crowd in.
Larry pushed greens through his oil-&-vinegar soup and formed
an island in the center of his plate, before giving up. The waiter,
on returning to ask if anyone wished to have anything else, took
Larry’s plate and swiftly returned with three more beers.

“This is really lovely,” said von
Sommerberg, gazing out the window. He raised his bottle, prompting
Lena to quickly grab hers. Larry slowly, hesitantly lifted his, and
von Sommerberg touched his together with the other two, offered a
“skål” and took a long draw.

“My grandmother is not a mystery to me,”
said Larry.

“But look,” said Lena. “Here is a famous
dancer, coming back from America. She is alone....”