Old movies

Short fiction

Here’s my submission for this week’s Stories from the Jukebox prompt from MJ Polk: Mirror by Rick West.


Old movies

- - By Steve McKennon

Although the kids were now in bed, the ghosts of their activities still haunted the living room floor. Here, a stuffed dog; there, a set of mini construction vehicles; and dispersed everywhere a small fleet of matchbox cars waited like rideshare drivers to ferry unseen passengers between the different groups of discarded toys.

Pouring out glasses of wine and turning on the television, he and his wife now prepared to welcome in the New Year. Quietly doing the math on how old the arrival of 2026 would make him; he took an extra-long gulp and, as had become their tradition over the past few years, they settled in to watch the 1945 movie Christmas in Connecticut starring Barbara Stanwyck. It was hard to get through this film before Christmas with all the demands for children-oriented movies and music and activities, so New Year’s Eve had become their classic movie catch-up time.

“Do you think they’re actually asleep yet?” she asked. “I swear I heard him banging around in there just 30 minutes ago.”

As if in answer, another bang from someone jumping - probably down from the top of his dresser - came from their three-year-old son’s room. For someone that at times seemed scared of very simple things, he sure had no fear of free climbing to the top of any piece of furniture and leaping to the floor like a Spider monkey.

“One way or another, he has to go to sleep eventually,” he said. “Let’s just ignore him and see what happens. The other two sleep like logs and won’t wake up anyway.”

Sure enough, that seemed to be the last loud bang of the evening, at least before the neighbors lit their fireworks at midnight.

As per their usual arrangement, his wife was fast asleep 20 minutes into the story and would not awaken until 15 minutes before the end. He was almost certain she had never seen this entire movie in all the years they had watched it. It must seem like a weird plotline for her with the whole middle missing: Stanwyck pretends to have a farm for her column in Smart Housekeeping magazine, then must fool her editor by going to stay at a fake husband’s farm during Christmas … and then she suddenly kisses a sailor and gets a raise. In contrast, the movie he watched every year was 45 minutes longer and much better written.

That evening he too started to slightly doze and found himself teleported back in time to 1945 where he was cuddling with Stanwyck as character Elizabeth Lane while they were pulled in a sleigh along a country road through mounds of fake snow. Her crooked smile and thinly veiled suggestions hinted that she was available for the taking if he wished to lean forward and lock lips under the studio moon.

“We could use the excuse of the kids having whooping cough to get out of the party a little longer,” he said.

“Whooping cough, or maybe scarlet fever. It’s a better color for Christmas,” Elizabeth Lane replied.

Then they laughed, and she leaned back into his shoulder. What a great character Elizabeth Lane was! Hair always in place, quick with a retort, endearing in her lack of any knowledge of children or cooking or keeping a house all while making a good living writing about all three of them.

As his bobbing head jerked him back awake, he recalled the real actress’ story was a little less carefree. Barbara Stanwyck’s mother died as a result of a trolley accident when she was very young, and her father abandoned the family and had drunk himself to death within two years. A four-year-old Stanwyck was then separated from her siblings and passed between unofficial foster homes, eventually dropping out before high school to support herself.

Stanwyck is quoted as saying, “I knew that after fourteen I’d have to earn my own living, but I was willing to do that ... I’ve always been a little sorry for pampered people, and of course, they’re “very” sorry for me.”

The endearing blend of laid-back and passion she mixed into her roles turns out to be the dull reflection of a woman left without the ability to sustain a relationship, even with someone she called the love of her life. Stanwyck also had one child, but as one biographer wrote, the boy “resembled her in just one respect: both were, effectively, orphans.” She only met with her son a few times after he became an adult.

Definitely wanting the woman snoozing in the chair next to him rather than the shadow of the one in the imaginary sleigh, he woke up his wife to clink glasses for the New Year along with the sounds of consumer grade fireworks from the street. A kiss framed the moment in full, unfiltered reality.

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In response to Stories from the Jukebox weekly prompt #21 (“Mirror” by Rick West):

Mirror