KEEPSAKE
Written by
Mara Collins
A Memoir Productions film
Written by
Mara Collins
A Memoir Productions film
FADE IN:
Clipped hedges, a dry fountain, a lawn so dark it reads as water. The big house: forty windows, one lit. In it, tiny: a very long table, two place settings, one old woman. She has never once looked this way. Behind the garages, a cottage. Out of its basement grate pokes a homemade telescope, mostly tape.
A dead boiler, a mattress fort, walls papered in blueprints for a hundred half-finished projects. Across the biggest wall, on years of taped paper: THE HERON, a pedal-powered flying machine for one boy. At its heart, a circle: "GYROSCOPE (WHITLOCK) — $41,000 — ???"
THEO REYES (12¾) at the eyepiece: wild curls, round wire glasses, an olive sweater crowded with felt badges he awarded himself.
THEO
(writing in a log)
Night two thousand one hundred ninety-one. Two plates. One lady.
A corkboard: "SECOND PLATE: THEORIES. 1. GHOST. 4. SPY. 9. VERY HUNGRY. 14. ROBOT(?)"
Down the coal chute, feet first: PRIYA ANAND (13), small and fierce, orange overalls, goggles, a black bob pinned by one enormous hair clip.
PRIYA
(her calculator watch beeps)
Nineteen years of winners: big, moves, loud. The Heron's big, moves, loud. Thirty-one percent.
THEO
Higher.
PRIYA
Your left wing math is wrong.
THEO
My math is perfect.
PRIYA
Our physics teacher is the swim coach. He calls friction "grip."
(beat)
And our roof leaks. I need this, Theo.
He nods gravely. Then holds his phone over a sticky note in his mother's scrawl: "MOM DECODER v0.3." The ink lifts off the paper and folds itself into a small origami bird, the handwriting still on its wings. A flat robot voice:
PHONE
"Eat something. Proud of you anyway."
THEO
(half a second)
Anyway what?
(moving on)
It'd be her voice if she read one out loud once. She never has time.
A fridge shingled with yellow sticky notes: "Eat something. — M." A plate wrapped in foil, a note on top. Theo asleep sitting up beside it. The door. ADELA REYES (38), tall and tired, the estate's night engineer: wild dark curls pinned up with a pencil, a headlamp pushed up on her forehead, a navy quilted chore coat with oil on the cuffs, a ring of brass keys, a key card on a lanyard. She has spent the night keeping a house she doesn't live in running.
INSERT - THE NOTE: "MOM. Lasagna 2:40 (NOT 3). FINALS TODAY. P.S. Wake me up when you get home. You never do. — T."
She flicks his ear.
THEO
(bolting up)
I was resting my eyes on purpose.
ADELA
Workshop door in, workshop door out. You do not go past—
THEO
—the kitchen. I know.
(as she unwraps the plate)
Who's the second plate for? At her table.
ADELA
(eating the lasagna cold, with her fingers)
What second plate.
She sticks a note on his forehead and goes to bed. "Win or don't. Home by six. Eat something. — M."
A hangar of lathes, looms and ladders to nowhere. Over the door, carved: TOUCH EVERYTHING — A.W. A giant flip clock: 6:00:00. Twelve teams; one is assembling a fourteen-foot robot giraffe.
A brass gyroscope in a glass case. Plaque: "ARTHUR WHITLOCK · 1968." Above it, the famous poster: Arthur grinning, the gyroscope floating at his chest. Beside it, a screen loops a 1974 TV clip: ARTHUR WHITLOCK (40s), tweed and a grin.
ARTHUR (ON SCREEN)
Every great idea begins with a single spark.
On a gallery above, a door opens. ELEANOR WHITLOCK (84): small, very upright, a long carved face, plum velvet to the chin, a tailor's tape around her neck, a man's heavy watch loose on her wrist.
ELEANOR
Begin. Try not to set anything on fire. The insurance people cry.
She's already turning away. Theo is the only one who waves.
White gloves set the gyroscope on Theo and Priya's bench. For the mounting specs, Theo pulls Notebook Nine from a wall of sixty. Dense, slanted cursive. Priya squints at it.
THEO
Nobody can read cursive. It's a dead language. Like Latin. Or fax.
His phone over the page: the pencil folds into a grey paper bird. "Spin axis forty degrees. Brass cradle—" Then, from the margin, in a different pencil, a smaller bird.
PHONE
"E's idea. Hers, not mine."
Another page, another margin, another bird.
THEO
How many times does he write that?
PHONE
Forty-one.
A snapshot slides out: a young woman in overalls, both hands on the gyroscope. Beside her, young Arthur, grinning, hands in his pockets.
Theo holds it against the poster. Same photograph, cropped. The gyroscope floats because the hands holding it were cut off by the frame. Fifty years, and nobody noticed.
THEO
The plaque's wrong.
PRIYA
Lots of plaques are wrong. Our school has one that says "Swimming Pool." It's a parking lot.
THEO
If you could point at these and hear him say it—
PRIYA
We have five hours and the part you've wanted since you were six. On our bench.
Theo holds his phone up to the looping screen, recording Arthur's voice.
PRIYA
You're doing the thing that isn't the thing. Like always.
(beat)
She's rich, Theo. You're spending our one shot on a rich lady's feelings?
THEO
It's a fact.
PRIYA
It's a fact nobody asked for.
Theo pulls the travel copy of the Heron from his tool belt. Pushes it across the bench.
THEO
Then build it.
PRIYA
That's six years.
THEO
It's a drawing.
She looks at him. At the clock. She's thirteen, and there's a roof. She takes it.
They work back to back and do not speak. Priya cuts balsa and paper. Theo feeds page after page to his phone, and now the birds speak in Arthur's big, warm TV voice.
0:41:00. Priya's quarter-scale Heron rolls left and crashes. She looks at Theo's wing math, pulls the clip out of her hair, and clips it to the left wingtip. Counterweight.
0:00:00. A bell. The giraffe pours tea onto a JUDGE. Then Priya launches the Heron. It flaps. Dips left. Catches. Flies a slow circle under the rafters, past the poster, past the empty gallery. Every head tilts up. Theo's too: his drawing, flying, in somebody else's hands. It lands on Priya's arm like a falcon. The room erupts.
Theo's table. Three JUDGES and HOLLIS (20s, headset, dead eyes).
THEO
This is Memri. Formerly Mom Decoder. Point it at handwriting, it reads it in the writer's voice. Sorry, I talk when I'm nervous. I'm not that nervous.
A margin rises into a bird. Arthur's voice:
ARTHUR (V.O.)
E's idea. Hers, not mine.
HEAD JUDGE
Isn't that a teeny bit ghoulish?
JUDGE 2
Accessibility is so important.
They move on. Theo looks up at the gallery. Empty.
LATER. A giant check: "PRIYA ANAND — THE HERON." Priya hunts for Theo in the crowd. He's clapping harder than anyone.
A brass letterbox: TO THE FOUNDER. Theo's envelope carries a small printed code: "Point your phone at this letter."
THEO
Put mine in your envelope.
PRIYA
No. It's the only thing I get to say to her.
She drops hers in. Hollis sorts: three envelopes into a leather folder stamped MRS. WHITLOCK. The rest into a bin: ARCHIVE.
THEO
Does she read the archive?
HOLLIS
She reads the winners'. She's eighty-four, kid. She's not a post office.
Theo fishes his letter out of the bin. Hollis lets him.
Adela's gone to work. Taped inside the junk drawer: a spare key card, and masking tape in her scrawl: "EMERGENCY ONLY. (NOT YOU.)"
Theo takes it. And Notebook Nine. The sign did say touch everything.
Black felt lawn, indigo sky. Theo crosses it, letter and notebook to his chest. Sprinklers pop up around him like periscopes. He walks straight through the spray. The service door. The key card. A green light.
A vast sleeping kitchen. At the far end, tile turns to dark wood. A line. Theo's wet sneakers at the edge of it. He steps over.
A staircase curls up into the dark like a shell. He climbs, dripping. Halfway, a light swings onto him: a headlamp. ADELA, at the top, the grandfather clock's winding key in one hand, a tea tray balanced on her tool roll in the other: a pot, two cups, a leather folder stamped MRS. WHITLOCK.
Everything that follows is whispered.
ADELA
Down. Now.
THEO
I just have to put it on the table.
ADELA
This house is the cottage. It's your boiler room. It comes with the job. One complaint and we're in a motel by the highway with a hot plate.
(beat)
I've been fired from a house for less. You were three. You don't remember. I do.
THEO
It's a stupid rule. She didn't even make it.
ADELA
I made it.
That stops him. He looks at the tray. Two cups.
THEO
It's you. The second plate.
ADELA
It's my job.
THEO
Does she read the letters?
Adela is a vault. She is deciding.
ADELA
Every one they give her.
THEO
(holding up his phone)
Just look. Ten seconds—
She pushes it down. Not hard. Firm.
ADELA
No.
THEO
Why?
ADELA
Because then I'll want something.
She holds out her hand. He gives her the letter, then the notebook.
ADELA
Kitchen door. Walk, don't run. Anybody sees you, you're sleepwalking.
THEO
I'm soaking wet.
ADELA
Then you're sleep-swimming. Go.
He goes. Adela stands on the stairs with the tray and her son's letter. She doesn't look at the code. She looks up, at a line of light under a door.
A table long enough to land a plane. One place set at this end. One at the far end, thirty feet away, before an empty chair. A fire. A clock that ticks too loud.
ELEANOR, a letter opener in her fist. A knock. Adela pours one cup and carries the second all the way down the table to the empty chair. She sets down the folder. On top: a damp envelope wearing a yellow sticky note, and a battered notebook.
ELEANOR
(the envelope)
It's wet. And it's wearing a sticky note.
(reads)
"I put this here. Not the boy. A. Reyes, nights."
(looks up)
Are you A. Reyes, nights?
ADELA
Yes, ma'am. Nine years.
Eleanor studies her like a noise in an engine.
ELEANOR
Go away, A. Reyes.
The door clicks. Eleanor flicks the wet letter aside and opens the folder.
ELEANOR
(reading; a sugary child's voice)
"Dear Mr. Whitlock, like you, I believe every great idea begins with a single spark."
(to the far chair)
Nineteen years dead and still getting fan mail, Arthur. It isn't even true. Most great ideas begin with somebody else's.
ELEANOR
(next; one page, blocky print)
"Dear Founder."
(an eyebrow)
Somebody did her homework.
(reads)
"The Heron was designed by Theo Reyes. I built it. He didn't want to. I did. I'm keeping the money, because our roof leaks. But the design is his, and somebody should write that down where it gets read. Priya Anand. P.S. The left wing was wrong. I fixed it."
(to the far chair)
She kept the money. Good.
Her eyes go to the wet envelope. "Point your phone at this letter."
ELEANOR
Certainly not.
(tears it open; turns it sideways)
Good God. Handwriting like a spider having a fit.
She takes an old phone from a drawer and points it. The scrawl folds into a clumsy paper bird that can't fly straight. A boy's voice, fast:
THEO (V.O.)
Dear Mrs. Whitlock. Not Mr. Everybody else wrote Mr., I checked. I'm Theo Reyes, I'm twelve and three-quarters, I live in the cottage behind your garages, and I lost. That's not why I'm writing.
ELEANOR
Mercifully.
THEO (V.O.)
I have observed your window for two thousand one hundred ninety-one nights. Not in a creepy way. In a scientific way.
ELEANOR
It's always creepy when they say scientific.
THEO (V.O.)
You set two plates. My mom works nights. I set one for her.
Eleanor looks down the long table at the empty chair.
THEO (V.O.)
Here is a fact. In Notebook Nine your husband wrote "E's idea" forty-one times. I counted twice. The app counted once, but I didn't trust it. I think E is you. I think the plaque is wrong. I tried to fix it, and I lost.
(beat)
The notebook's under this. I borrowed it. The sign says touch everything. Page two hundred twelve. It's his voice. I got it off the TV. Sorry.
(beat)
Sincerely, Theo Reyes. P.S. I know I'm not supposed to be past the kitchen.
ELEANOR
(to the far chair, cold)
The help's boy has watched me eat for six years. And now he's stolen your notebook.
She hasn't opened one in nineteen years. The phone hovers. Her hand isn't steady.
The margin folds into a small grey bird and speaks in the big, warm television voice.
ARTHUR (V.O.)
E's idea.
(a page; another bird)
E's idea. Hers, not mine.
Faster, pages whipping, grey birds rising around her like a flock off a field. One voice, a man telling the truth to nobody.
ARTHUR (V.O.)
E's idea. Hers, not mine. E's. E's idea.
Page two hundred twelve. A note squeezed in sideways.
ARTHUR (V.O.)
E's idea. Hers, not mine. Don't tell her I said so. She'll be insufferable.
Forty-one paper birds hang in the firelight. Then a sound Eleanor Whitlock hasn't made in years. It starts in her nose. It gets out anyway. She laughs, a real, ugly, helpless laugh that bends her over the table and rattles the letter opener on the plate.
ELEANOR
(to the far chair)
You coward. Forty-one times. In pencil.
(wiping her eyes)
I would have been.
Adela, on a step stool at the grandfather clock, the one that ticks too loud, stops winding. Behind the door: laughter. In nine years she has never heard it. She listens to all of it.
Eleanor peels Adela's sticky note off the envelope, turns it over, and writes on the back with a fountain pen, small and spiky, turning the square to keep going around the edge.
The phone: "READ IT ONCE, OUT LOUD?"
She regards it as she would a waiter who spoke first. Clears her throat.
ELEANOR
Mr. Reyes—
LATER. At the window, for the first time, she looks down the lawn: past the garages, to a cottage and a glint of glass at a basement grate.
In Theo's eyepiece: Eleanor Whitlock, looking straight at him. She pulls the curtain shut.
THEO
(tiny)
Okay.
6:00. The wrapped plate. Theo's note on the foil: "I'm sorry. — T." Nothing. 6:40. Nothing. 7:10. The school bus honks twice, waits, leaves.
He calls MOM. Voicemail.
ADELA (ON PHONE)
This is Adela. I'm working. Leave it.
He hangs up. Calls again, just to hear it.
LATER. Beside him on the table, a cardboard box, the Heron rolled up inside it. In marker: BOILER ROOM.
11:40. The door. Adela, chore coat still on, headlamp around her neck. Awake twenty-nine hours. Her face tells him nothing.
THEO
Mom—
One finger up. She peels a sticky note off her cardigan, sticks it on the foil of her plate, sits, and eats the lasagna cold.
The note, face up, in her handwriting: "I put this here. Not the boy. — A. Reyes, nights."
THEO
You put it there.
She chews. He turns the note over. The back is crammed edge to edge in tiny spiky cursive. He can't read a word.
His phone. The ink lifts in one sharp spiral and folds into a bird with creases like knife-edges. A voice, dry, eighty-four, unimpressed:
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Mr. Reyes. Your letter was four pages too long, and there is no J in gyroscope.
(beat)
Mine. Not his. Thank you.
(beat)
Saturday, nine o'clock, the workshop. Bring the bird. I believe we have the part.
(beat)
E. Whitlock. P.S. Learn cursive.
Adela has stopped chewing.
THEO
Are we fired?
ADELA
No.
THEO
Where were you?
ADELA
In a chair outside her door. Five hours. Waiting to get fired.
(beat)
Then she asked me my name.
THEO
What else?
ADELA
That's between me and Mrs. Whitlock.
THEO
Was she mad? Last night?
Adela puts down the lasagna.
ADELA
She was laughing.
A beat. She holds out her hand for the phone.
ADELA
Show me how it works.
ARTHUR (ON SCREEN)
Every great idea begins with a single—
Click. A brass-gear cane handle on the off switch. Enormous silence. Eleanor in the doorway under TOUCH EVERYTHING, for the first time in nineteen years. She glances up.
ELEANOR
That was mine too.
Passing the glass case, she presses a yellow sticky note onto the plaque without breaking stride.
At a bench: Theo, the Heron unrolled and re-taped. Priya beside him, the winning model between them, her hair clip still on its left wing.
Eleanor takes a gyroscope from her pocket, smaller and darker than the one in the case, and sets it down like a salt shaker.
ELEANOR
I made four. The one in the case is the worst. Arthur liked it because it hummed.
(to Priya)
You kept the money.
PRIYA
...Our roof.
ELEANOR
Good. Never give it back.
(to Theo)
She wrote to me about you. The only letter this year under a page.
Theo looks at Priya. Priya looks at the ceiling. Eleanor runs her tailor's tape along the left wing of his drawing.
ELEANOR
This is wrong.
THEO
It's not wrong.
PRIYA AND ELEANOR
It's wrong.
Theo looks at the wing. At the hair clip. At the two of them.
THEO
It's wrong in an interesting way.
ELEANOR
That's the only kind worth fixing. Sit.
She takes the pencil from his tool belt. An eighty-four-year-old and a twelve-year-old lean over a paper wing, rubbing out each other's lines.
Across the room, the glass case. The plaque: "ARTHUR WHITLOCK · 1968." Beside his name, a yellow sticky note in spiky black ink:
"& E."
ELEANOR (O.S.)
Again.
THEO (O.S.)
It's not—
ELEANOR (O.S.)
Again.
CUT TO BLACK.
TITLE: KEEPSAKE
THE END