It was Popcorn Day at Potemkin Village, or that is what the sign said by the slow elevator in the lobby. There was also a wine and music event in the formal dining room, scheduled for two o’clock. I thought I might suggest that to Big Mama as an afternoon activity, since Raven just sleeps in the car, and there is so much to be done in The Place We Don’t Talk About where we kids live when we come to visit.
Town was jammed with visitors- the 4th is Monday, so plans are to celebrate the holiday on the 2nd with the high explosives.
I went up to the apartment a little before lunch and discovered they were gone. I checked my watch and looked at the over sized clock that Annook had placed on the wall. It was too early for lunch, but the parents were gone.
I went down to the cognitively challenged dining room on the second floor and was startled to see that their table was empty. Marilyn the Waitress said Big Mama had brought them down for lunch at 10:30, and she had sent them to the café on the first floor, the one that has donuts and coffee in the morning.
I took the stairs down to the lobby and found them. Raven was slumped backward, mouth agape. Big Mama was still in the nice blouse and skirt from the day before with a couple extra stains. She was talking animatedly with an attractive woman in her seventies, perhaps, though I can’t judge age any more.
Potemkin Village has a population that ranges from the old to the super-old, some of whom are ravaged and some of whom appear just fine. Karen, who did not introduce herself until I asked specifically, lives, when not here, on Mackinaw Island.
We had a marvelous conversation, to which Big Mama contributed loopy but connected discourse as Raven slumbered.
Karen had lived all over the world, and we shared the scraps of languages we had in common. She was fluent in Swedish, or close to it, and loved Italian. It was fun, bantering in pigeon, and Big Mama enjoyed it. I glanced at my watch and saw we could go to lunch. I mentioned as much, and shook Raven’s arm. He gradually came back to consciousness and as he did, became fixated on the doughnut on the napkin in front of him and the Styrofoam cup of tepid coffee.
It took a while to disentangle him, but eventually I got the party to lunch and then went up to get a haircut from Sherry in the beauty-salon-slash-barbershop. She is nice, and sane, which is a great break at Potemkin Village.
The folks were still at table when I went downstairs and we watched Raven plow through his lemon tart with whipped cream, and then start in on Big Mama’s when she disdained hers.
I walked with them back to the apartment- Raven seemed determined to amble off on his own someplace, and he seemed agitated about something. Eventually we got him on the couch, Big Mama settled into to watch a vintage film on Turner Classic Movies.
Ted has done some fabulous work on the catalog of old movies he purchased: they are crisp now, the ones I recall being fuzzy on Mary Martin’s Million Dollar Movie on CKLW back in the fifties.
Big Mama is entranced by them, and it is a good thing. I suggested we go down to Popcorn, wine and music at two, but she decided to watch “The Canterville Ghost” with Robert Young and Charles Laughton.
(Charles Laughton Meets Robert Young and Margaret O’Brian. Photo MGM and TCM.)
She was happy and Raven slumped over asleep. I went down to the lobby and got a paper bag of popcorn in the lobby and settled in to watch the movie. There was a lot of stuff to be done but as usual Up North, I don’t seem to be able to get to it once the trance of Potemkin Village settles in.
It is like Brigadoon, you know? That was a Broadway show by Lerner and Lowe, a musical about a little Scottish village that only appears every century or so for an evening. It is a dreamy film, as I recall. I think it is on TCM tonight.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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