Tidewater Review - June 2011

 

What You See in the Dark
reviewed by
Anne Stinson

 

What You See In The Dark by Manuel Muñoz. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 251 pages. $23.95.
Life is stranger than fiction, and this novel combines both in a taut, engrossing story of love, death and missed chances in a 1950s setting in the small town of Bakersfield, just over the hill from Los Angeles. As the reader follows the action, Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho comes to mind. It’s not an accident. The fictional treatments are based on a real event.
At the heart of this story are four women, all different, all affected by yearning and insecurity, or loneliness and a search for love, or escape from shame. One is a Hollywood actress, only identified as Actress, who comes to town on a search for location shots of a motel. Another is a waitress and motel owner, Mrs. Watson. One is Teresa, a young Latino woman who works in the back room of a shoe store. Her co-worker, briefly identified as Candy, sees all but never tells all.
Muñoz is as observant as a camera lens. His characters are drawn with spot-on veracity. The Actress is brilliant in her admiration for the Director. She trusts him implicitly, in spite of being uncomfortable with her role as a secretary who absconds with money to join her married lover. The part requires her to be nude and stabbed to death in a motel shower. Does that trigger an image of the Bates Motel?
Mrs. Watson’s life is one of quiet desperation. Her brutal husband walked out on her years ago, leaving her with ownership of the motel, a day job at the local cafe and supervision of giggling young waitresses. She also is the mother of the most attractive son in town.
Teresa’s job in the storage room of the shoe store pays for a single-room apartment above the bowling alley. She’s a good girl, left alone when her mother takes off for Texas to reunite with Teresa’s father. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” her mother tells her when Teresa decides to stay in Bakersfield. “You’ll be fine.”
Candy provides the tale with the role of a jealous observer. With no authority over Teresa except her white skin, she assumes her superiority by assigning the dirty jobs to her.
Much of the action in the story takes place at night, validating the book title. A wonderful scene occurs early in the book at the drive-in movie. Teenage kids and young courting couples cuddle in cars or sit on the car hoods, munching popcorn or burgers, sipping sodas and hooting at their friends as dusk turns into darkness for the double feature. Older couples watch the movies, irritated by the ruckus but comfortably aware that it’s just how they acted a decade or so ago. High school boys with their Saturday night dates learn how to unsnap the back of a girl’s bra with one hand. Silhouettes of heads sink lower and lower.
By November, the drive-in is closed for the season, but Mrs. Watson makes a rare stop at the downtown movie house to see if her motel is a bit player in the newly released movie. When the Actress had lunch at the café the previous spring day, Mrs. Watson recognized her immediately, but the Actress denied her identification. When later she and the Director drove by the Watson Motel, they agreed that it was perfectly situated for camera angles. They offered to pay for photographs, but Mrs. Watson sniffed a refusal, saying that she didn’t deal with liars. The studio-built replica of her motel is an obvious copy, but it isn’t until the nude shower scene comes on screen that Mrs. Watson walks out in disgust.
Meanwhile, all the young waitresses at the café are jealous when handsome Dan Watson begin an open relationship with Teresa. A young Mexican farm worker is also timidly courting her, not speaking, but leaving modest gifts for her on trash can lids in the alley behind the shoe store. More endearingly, he asks her permission to teach her to play the guitar, having heard radio music coming from her apartment window in the early morning as he waits with his compatriots for job pickups at the corner gathering spot of her alley. Candy observes his attentions to Teresa and purloins his offerings. She hoards her secret.
Dan is barkeeper at a Latino nightspot where he persuades Teresa to sing. Before long, her Mexican suitor shows up to confirm that his love has been rejected. The stage is set for tragedy.
The plot becomes a steamroller with Muñoz at the wheel, never flattening the nuances or the genuine decency of all involved. As he notes near the end of the book, “What you do with darkness is pitch yourself into it.” To the extent it brings you sorrow or bliss, it’s often a surprise.
So is this wonderful, haunting book.

Anne Stinson began her career in the 1950s as a free lance for the now defunct Baltimore News-American, then later for Chesapeake Publishing, the Baltimore Sun and Maryland Public Television’s panel show, Maryland Newsrap. Now in her ninth decade, she still writes a monthly book review for Tidewater Times.