Ma objected to soap operas in
general (they would give us dangerous "idears"), but when it appeared
in 1966, the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows ranked high on her
objectionable-content list. Good Catholics did not deliberately invite Satanic
creatures such as vampires and werewolves into their home every four p.m. God may have seen fit to create full moons
and black cats, Ma reasoned, but my sisters and I could protect ourselves by staying
indoors when the moon waxed large. And
if a dark feline should fix its devilish green eyes upon us, we could cross the
street or else just cross ourselves.
Ma's second objection to Dark
Shadows: it wasn't "real."
My mother's brown eyes narrowed like slits on a piggy bank if we so much as
hinted we enjoyed a little fiction. Her
worst accusations were "Did you make that up?” and “Are you telling me a
story?" Dark Shadows was an
ongoing story, and thus stuff and nonsense, poppycock, a barrel of fazool,
and a bunch of hooey.
Objection numero tre: Ma firmly believed we should not come home
from school and sit around on our lazy culs (American translation: butts) like a "buncha-lazy mamalooks"
(American translation: nonexistent) in front of the TV. Especially when we
could be doing something useful, like dusting my father's bowling trophies.
Even at age seven, I knew the show was not godly. But in my opinion, it was still as Catholic
as all get out. Which was to say, it was gory.
In the dark, smelly pews of Saint
Ann
So where was my disapproving mother
at four p.m. on the fateful day one of my sisters first turned on Dark
Shadows? Was Ma down in the cellar
stuffing wet towels into the dryer? Or was she once again at the funeral
parlor, where she clocked so many hours we suspected she stuck around after
early viewings to dust and polish her own coffin?
I’m not sure. But Ma was certainly
elsewhere on the afternoon when my sister Jo—ever more daring than I—threw down
her dust rag and ran over to the TV, a behemoth black-and-white Zenith, which
delivered only ABC and CBS. Since the
knob was broken, Jo had to use a tweezers to switch on the screen. She rotated the rabbit-ear antenna on top, tweaking
the aluminum foil on the end to get even better reception. I watched, with
fascination and horror, as the opening credits rolled. First came eerie music, which sounded like my
uncle playing "viulino" on his Stanley
I gulped. Scary things really scared
me. I preferred gentler fare, like The
Waltons, an evening series about a hard-working multigenerational family
trying to eke by in the Depression. The Waltons lived in a sprawling farmhouse
in good old healthy Appalachia . They did not come into contact with fog. Or cliffs.
Or bats. Or lightning. They would no more think of time traveling
than they would consider driving their jalopy to the nearest brothel.
"This looks scary," I said
to my sister.
"Don't be a baby," Jo
said.
"Are you sure you don't want to
watch Gomer Pyle?"
"If you don't want to see it,
then go back to dusting."
I stayed put. But I sat cross-legged, because I was scared
I'd pee from fright. The sets of Dark
Shadows alone were enough to raise the gee-willikers on the back of my
neck. Every room in the Collins family mansion was dark and candlelit and
ominous as church on Passion Friday. Doors creaked. Gaslights flickered. The characters—whom I did not yet know by
name—looked pale and ghoulish. The women—who resembled Druid-esses who got lost
on the way back from Stonehenge —wore hooded
cloaks over diaphanous floor-length dresses.
The men wore ruffled shirts, brocade vests, and velvet capes that surely
didn’t come off the rack at the Edward T. Malley Department Store in downtown New Haven
The plot—such as it might be
called—eluded me. Why was the young girl with the long blond hair making eyes
at that hawked-nosed guy carrying a cane? What was the significance of the red
leather book left on the velvet couch? Why did the camera linger so
portentously on the portrait over the fireplace?
I didn't get it, except to know that
it had something to do with a family curse. But that didn’t matter. The minute
I lay eyes on the dark, brooding brow of the character named Quentin, all
thoughts of Gomer Pyle and John-Boy Walton were laid to rest. I had fallen in
love! with a man whose name began with the letter Q! Which meant that after the first episode was
over, I just had to watch another.
I went to great lengths to gawk at
Quentin on a regular basis. I switched
on Dark Shadows—sound off—while my mother was in the kitchen making
meatballs and braciole. I invited myself over to the houses of girls
whose mothers did not object to afternoon TV-watching. I prayed sick relatives
would die so my mother would depart for the funeral parlor at four p.m. While
she mourned, I could have half an hour minus commercials alone with the man of
my dreams.
Quentin wore an ascot. He sported
mutton chops—not a little unlike the guys on Gunsmoke—and often arched
his brow. (The significance of this gesture eluded me, yet it only deepened my
love for him.) Alas, Quentin was not in
love with me, but with Daphne, a
governess and raven-haired beauty. Quentin and Daphne enjoyed furtive kisses in
graveyards. They ventured down dark hallways by flickering candlelight and up
staircases that took them back in time, causing Daphne to cling to Quentin's
manly chest as she cried out, "Quentin, we're trapped! We're trapped in another century!" I
never failed to swoon as Quentin enfolded Daphne in yet another passionate
embrace.
My love for Quentin was rivaled only
by my fear of The Head. The Head was just that: the disembodied head of a man
preserved under a glass dome, reminding me of the way the Eucharist was kept
inside the tabernacle. I couldn't figure out if The Head was dead, alive, or
just a symbol of Satan. His eyes
sometimes followed Quentin and Daphne and the rest of the Dark Shadows crew
as they moved about the candlelit chambers.
He was silent, except at key moments, when his disembodied (be-headed?)
voice echoed throughout the house, warning the characters that they were about
to suffer for the sins of their ancestors.
The Head terrified me. I was
convinced God had put him on Dark Shadows to punish me for watching it.
At night, in bed, after I said my prayers and asked God for Dark Shadows forgiveness,
I tried to dream of Quentin. Yet I lay there quaking in the dark, convinced The
Head was hiding in the closet, next to my dead grandmother's fox furs (whose
own heads sported teeth as sharp as vampires and eyes beady as bats). The Head
watched me censoriously. With brown eyes that looked suspiciously like…my
mother's. The Head, and its connection to Ma’s ever-present gaze, gave me such
nightmares that I began falling out of bed. The thud of my body hitting the
hardwood floor awoke even my father, who could sleep through the most violent, Dark
Shadows-like thunderstorm.
Finally Ma demanded to know what I
was dreaming about. I refused to tell her Dark Shadows, but somehow she
knew. The tweezers were removed from the top of the TV. Now at four p.m.—unless
I had sneaked over to a friend's house—I could only stare at the blank, dusty
screen, longing to climb behind its greenish glass. True, The Head lay on the
other side. But so did Quentin. And I desperately wanted to get trapped. With
him. In another time. Another place. Another story.
I was bereft. Then, one day in the
school library, I picked up a book called Jane Eyre. Reader, you know what happened next. Soon I had forgotten Quentin and was swooning
instead over the original bad boys of the 19th century: Mr.
Rochester, Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff. I couldn't get enough of their brooding.
Their glowering looks. Their commanding presence. But the best thing about
these guys wasn’t their romantic appeal. It was the fact that, unlike the
vampires of Dark Shadows, these men
really did live forever.
Once lodged in my imagination, their
stories played over and over on the screen inside my head—and even Ma couldn’t
turn them off. <Rita Ciresi is director of creative writing at the University of South Florida
and author of the romantic comedies Pink Slip, Blue Italian, and Remind Me Again
Why I Married You, and the story collections Mother Rocket and Sometimes I Dream
in Italian. Visit her website at www.ritaciresi.com.