Hollywood Classics, Rebekah Jennings - © Copyright 2010 [black authors fiction txt] 📗

Sitting in her favourite cafe, Janine flicked through the Frankston Gazette as she did every Wednesday morning, on her own. She enjoyed her local paper, paid for out of her council rates and made sure to get her money’s worth by reading it in its entirety. Frank used to do that, read the paper. He’d even read articles to her.

Janine had been without Frank for ten years. If he’d been asked he’d say it was a heart attack that had taken him to the grave. And it was, but not to his grave and then it ended, like he believed. Janine knew he had moved on to his next life. Probably to learn more about managing money, he was never very good at that. He didn’t value money; she could tell by the way he skipped through large chunks of their newspaper. Maybe in his next life he’d be an accountant or a child born to the horn of Africa.

She sipped her soy latté slowly, taking in its bitter sweet flavour and milky froth. She could break apart the flavours, individualising them as a prism does to white light. Similar to the way Frank smoked a cigarette. For the coffee though, Frank drank quickly, using it to wet his mouth after every deep drag of his cigarette, renewing his palate for the unsullied taste of nicotine and tar. Frank could be damned annoying but Janine missed his company.

People walked by Janine, left and right as she sat. The clanging from the kitchen and conversation in the air were filtered out by her brain as she read her weekly star sign prediction. Leo foretold the week ahead, it would be filled with socialising; friendships were highlighted. Janine shook her head, were her sixty five-year-old bones up to it? But, the prediction did remind her she needed to phone her friend Leanne, who’d probably be home from the hospital by now, being fussed over by her lovely and devoted daughter, Mariah.

Leanne and Janine shared the important experience of being widowed after a long marriage. Theirs was an enduring friendship that began when their daughters started primary school. Over the past few months Leanne had been in and out of hospital for a range of symptoms and illnesses from gallbladder trouble, and then surgery; through to the onset of diabetes, and arthritis her most recent afflictions.

Janine’s coffee cooled nicely as she moved on to the classifieds, scanning the for sale section, wanted ads, jobs and wedding services. It was as she skimmed the groups and activities segment that she noticed something new. Hollywood Classics

, a group for seniors, was to begin at her local library.

Janine wasn’t much of a group person, who really was? But loneliness had come knocking at her door of late, as it had on and off over the years since Frank had passed. Her daughter, an only child, moved interstate a few years ago, following her own husband in his crusade within the world of business.

Hollywood Classics

she repeated the word over in her mind. Come along if you love old movies; actresses and actors and a bygone era. Janine's heart picked up pace. She was experiencing a warm sensation across her chest. The idea of meeting new people, she discovered with surprise, inflamed her insides. Excitement brewed like good strong tea. Where was fear? Her lifelong companion was nowhere to be found at that moment.

Janine shifted in her seat allowing blood flow to her right leg. She favoured it when sitting, keeping her weight from her left hip. Leaning forward and using the table as her prop, she shifted weight and continued reading.

“Excuse me,” a young lady said patted her shoulder, “this just fell from the back of your chair.”

“Oh, thank you. I hadn’t even noticed,” Janine replied smiling, her hand to her chest. She took her jacket.

Returning to her paper she took a pen from her bag and underlined Hollywood Classics. The group would meet once a week on a Thursday afternoon. Firstly a film would be viewed and then a discussion over refreshments. Janine had never heard of such a group and the idea appealed to her right away.

Over the weekend she stopped in to see Leanne.

“I’ve joined a new group Leanne,” she said, “it begins next week. I’ve already phoned through my interest.”

“That’s not at all like you Janine, what sort of group?” Leanne laid back on her lounge suite, feet up. Mariah, brought coffee for them both and puffed up a pillow to pop behind her mother’s back. Frank used to do that when Janine was sick.

“I almost don’t want to tell you, you’ll be so jealous.”

“Now I AM interested. Come on, spit it out.”

Janine told Leanne about the advert she’d found last Wednesday.

“It’s to be held at the Frankston Library. First the group watches a film in one of the rooms at the library, then when it finishes, we sit and chat about it over cuppa and snacks. It’s really all a bit strange but I’m interested enough to go along.”

“Sounds like you’re replacing me already?” Leanne teased.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. See, I knew that would be the first thing you’d say.”

“Well, you know I do miss our movie watching.”

“Yes, me too,” Janine said, “we can still do that you know, when your home that is. Plus you might want to come along when you’re feeling a bit better.”

When it was time to go, Leanne wanted to walk Janine to the door but Janine wouldn’t have it.

“You need to follow doctor’s orders; Mariah told me that means resting for the next week. And don’t you waste all those chocolates you were given,” Leanne had a few chocolate bearing friends visiting her in hospital on her last stay, “if you won’t eat them then give them to someone else. You can always re-gift chocolates so long as they’re in date.”

“Yes, yes,” Leanne’s eyes were closed as she nodded her head, “I won’t throw anything out Janine and if I did, I’d never tell you.”

“Oh, hush. Waste not, want not. Be good for that daughter of yours.”

And with that she left. But Leanne remained on Janine’s mind over the next few days as Thursday drew closer. Was it guilt?

Janine dropped in daily to see Leanne in the lead up to Hollywood Classics. She even brought the 1954 Oscar winning, Calamity Jane, Leanne’s favourite, along on her last visit. Wasn’t Doris Day beautiful? It wasn’t their usual Saturday afternoon but it still filled the spot.

Leanne had confessed to Janine that she loved having her daughter around looking after her. She wasn’t as lonely these past weeks and though she was ill, she almost felt her life had improved.

“It’s sad really,” Janine said, “that we rely so heavily on our kids to keep away the loneliness at our age.”

They both had other friends whose lives were filled with lots of friends, lots of grandchildren; and husbands to irritate them.

Thursday came round quickly; Janine had curled her hair, plucked her eyebrows to a fine line and wore a barely there lipstick, not a gloss like all these youngsters wore. It was a ‘nude’ lipstick that women often wore to work, lipstick without wearing lipstick. It had lived in her draw for many years and she wouldn’t dare throw it out. Not until the last scrape could be sought using the lipstick brush she’d purchased in her twenties when she walked the streets with her Avon catalogues.

The drive to the Frankston library was a short one ending too soon. She saw what looked like two individual married couples speed walking, one in her street and one down Kars.

Adrenaline took hold of Janine’s heart forcing her blood flow to increase. The gushing of blood through her ears even hid the manufactured sound of flocks of birds chirping and shrieking through speakers on the roof of the library. A technique employed to scare the real variety away. A waste of money, she’d thought in the past, birds still littered the area with their droppings and wasn’t that alarm unbearable?

So worked up was Janine, she could no longer feel the pain in her left hip as her usual gait disappeared behind a speed walking imposter. She scanned the faces in the library as she hurried to the desk not wanting to be late on her first day.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here for the Hollywood Classics group.”

“Oh, yes. You must be excited, this is the first day. It has attracted quite a crowd actually. They organiser might need to book the larger room next time.”

“Really!” Janine found herself suddenly wondering whether the crowd were all female or of mixed gender.

“Yes, we had no idea this would be so popular.”

She pointed to an area behind Janine’s back and said, “You’ll find the group down there. You don’t need to do anything just enter and take a seat.”

“Thank you very much.”

Janine felt a drip of sweat trickle from her temple. Damn menopause

, she didn't take into consideration the fact she hadn’t walked so fast in years. She patted the sweat away with a handkerchief she’d given Frank a few years before he died, and tucked it quickly into her handbag.

The library was quiet and well lit. Janine hadn’t been there in many years and thought it should be given more interest as she passed by the special attention tables and the shelve ends with their contents written on boldly. Fiction, gardening, sewing and so on.

A moment away from the door she’d been directed too. Janine felt light headed, her nerves dancing pirouettes in her stomach. She twisted the door handle, cool in her hand and opened the door. Her hand shook as she removed it and she found herself apologising to Frank inside her mind. Why? Why was she feeling guilty? Why was her heart beating so insistently? Frank had been gone now for ten years, was it wrong to be curious about the opposite sex, to wonder who she might meet?

Janine quickly located an empty seat. She was relieved to find a mixture of women, all over fifty as the article had stated, there looked to be some in their seventies even. Some were thin and elegant, some where large and smiling. All were dressed well, with a bit of makeup and some costume jewellery or understated gold.

There were men too, again, well dressed in jumpers and jeans or corduroys. One wore a hat, a few had hair and some were bald or almost there. Janine averted her eyes to avoid direct eye contact, except to the person who appeared to be the group organiser.

A plump lady in a floral chiffon over-shirt and matching lilac undergarment stood commandingly in front of the group, eyes touching on each member.

“Hi to you all, I’m Marian Whailer, organiser for this new group.”

A few ‘hello’s’ were tossed warmly her way, some like dice on a craps table, some like butterflies in the breeze. One or two were darts on a trajectory pinpointed for target. Janine felt the personalities in the room, eager for attention, perhaps even control, but she didn’t know enough yet for that kind of judgement. She remained quiet, offering a shy smile.

The room was set up