Heaven Looks Like the Movie Theater
“Let’s flip a coin for who has to scrub toilets. Heads I win, tails you lose,” Clara said, all too confident. She was referring to the grime-caked bathrooms at the retro movie theater where we worked together.
“Ha ha, very funny. That’s all on you, I have church tonight.” I glanced at my watch, wincing at the time. “Actually, I gotta dip right now.”
She slapped her wet rag down on the concession counter she had almost finished wiping. “Are you serious, Liz? Bailing on me for your sky daddy is straight up cruel.”
I groaned. “Don’t start, Clara.” We had already been in that circle of disagreements a thousand times before and never seemed to find common ground. Clara’s parents were staunch atheists and donated to Planned Parenthood; my parents were devout Catholics who tithed ten percent of their income to the church. They didn’t get along.
“All I’m saying is, why would you want to sit through the boring blah blah blah when you could come over, binge the Buffy DVD set I got at Goodwill, and eat Red Vines until we puke?” she exclaimed, watching me throw my coat on and skip toward the door.
“I love you and I’ll see you on Monday.” I laughed, reaching for the creaking glass door. “I’ll pray for you!”
It was Saturday night, and I showed up to midnight Catholic Mass still in my movie theater uniform. Among a sea of suit jackets and dresses with frills, my maroon vest, crooked black bow tie, thrift-store slacks, and wrinkled white shirt stood out in an embarrassingly obvious way. I had scooped my cross necklace from where it hid under my blouse so that it could be on full display during the service. I liked to believe there were little things like that that gave me bonus points from God—listening to non-explicit music, making sure my devotional book didn’t collect dust, that sort of thing.
My mom was scowling, lips pressed tight enough to cut glass, clearly disturbed that I would show up in such a manner and disrupt the family’s polished image. She had always been proper about things. When I told her I was pulling the late shift at the theater on Christmas Eve, she’d gone silent, then disappeared into her room to “compose herself.” She didn’t understand the appeal of the place, no matter how many times I tried to explain it—the old sticky floors that never quite dried, the permanent buttery smell, the flickering marquee bulbs that looked like tired stars. Somehow, that theater brought me more comfort than our echoing, magazine-catalog house ever did.
The fact was, I loved my mom. She just took things too seriously, almost like happiness was something she had to earn instead of feel. I think that’s the curse of being overly convicted about things. Sometimes, in rare moments, I would see a small shimmer of her true character, but that vulnerability would be gone almost as soon as it started. My dad, on the other hand, floated through life like he didn’t have a damn care in the world. He was a lover of all things Christmas (and not just the Jesus stuff), so when he heard there was a 10:00 pm showing of Home Alone, he gave me the go-ahead.
“Don’t worry about your mom, Liz,” he had said, smiling into his cup of eggnog. “Just make sure you’re done in time for church.”
So here I was, shuffling down the passageway between the pews looking like a middle school boy dressed for his first communion. I realized this was the first time I’d ever worn pants to church, and it was strangely liberating—like a rebellion disguised as polyester.
We finally made it to the front of the line, and I approached Father Mark with my head slightly bowed.
“Body of Christ, broken for you,” he said in his shaky voice, and all I could focus on was the way the loose skin on his neck wobbled with every word. I had known Father Mark my entire life: his coughs, his pauses, the feeling of his wrinkled hands as he greeted every person who entered his church. I had attended almost every Sunday since I was baptized, and if I ever did miss a service, it was something monumental. A list of circumstances my mom considered not valid reasons for skipping: my first period, strep throat (twice), being broken up with the night before, and, of course, working a shift at the theater. Father Mark had been as old as dirt for as long as I could remember, but there was something almost tragically beautiful about his dedication to spreading the gospel.
He placed the wafer on my tongue and I washed it down with a gulp of wine from the chalice, practically skipping back to my seat. Communion was almost over, and over meant going home to take a long shower and eat leftover Christmas Eve dinner plates straight from the fridge. Once, I had pocketed one of those paper wafers to make Clara try, and she spit it out right onto the grass in front of her. Clara wasn’t just my coworker—she was my best friend, and I loved her more than anyone in the world. More than God, probably.
Christmas was good stuff. I preferred Halloween, but I still loved watching my twin brothers’ faces light up when they tore open their presents, and how we all stayed in pajamas until the early afternoon, wrapped in that hazy, wintry kind of peace. The boys, Luke and James, had been particularly video-game obsessed, and a brand new Xbox was already being plugged into the TV mere seconds after being unwrapped like animals. Dad really had to coax Mom into that one, and she only agreed if they loaded the cart with educational games from Best Buy on Black Friday. I was especially excited because my parents had finally given me an iPhone, which was my first real connection to the world outside my house. It meant I could text Clara whenever I wanted.
I was working nearly the entire Christmas break. Rogue One had just come out, so our small theater had been flooded with more people than usual. A shiny new AMC had opened a few blocks away last year, but some people still had enough brains (or nostalgia) to appreciate the chipped art deco tiles and worn seats of our old theater.
That night, I was manning the ticket booth with Clara, and we were having a competition to see who could get the most people to come to our station. Since clocking in an hour ago, I was at 71 and she was at 93.
“I just have that face,” she teased when the line finally died down. “People flock to me.”
“Yeah, yeah. You have that punk thing going on, and I’m too plain for these people,” I sighed, pretending to pout while twirling a finger through my limp blonde hair. Clara’s was jet black and always styled into something outrageous and beautiful. Tonight it was parted down the middle and twisted into buns like Princess Leia. That, plus her thick eyeliner and purple lipstick, made her look like someone who could get away with anything. She even made her uniform look cooler than mine, though they were the exact same.
Once the last showing began, we closed up the ticket booth and plopped into the worn lounge chairs in the lobby. Frankie, a college student in the next town over, was at the concession stand but was too busy texting her boyfriend to notice us come in. I made my way to the Employees Only closet to grab the broom and start the closing tasks for the night. Clara stayed put, swinging her legs and watching me.
“You know Harold’s gonna kill you if he sees you not doing anything,” I said pointedly. Our boss was a real stickler when it came to productivity.
“Too bad Harold’s holed up in his office for the foreseeable future,” Clara murmured, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I heard through the grapevine that Frankie’s been snagging candy on the down-low. Concession inventory and the cash box haven’t been adding up. He’s real pissed.”
“Yeah, well. I happen to like my job too much to get chewed out.”
It was past 1 a.m. when everyone finally cleared out. It was just Clara and me (plus Harold in his cave of an office), and I had to wait for her to put up all the new showtimes for the week. I had failed my driver’s license test for the second time and had to rely on her ancient, rumbling truck for any rides.
“You know, Lizzy, I can’t believe you still haven’t seen the new Conjuring,” Clara said. “It’s so rad.”
“My mom doesn’t want me to. She thinks it’ll bring bad stuff into our lives,” I said, half laughing, half serious.
“Well, I think your mom needs a glass of wine and a Xanax, so we’re all about different things, I guess. Plus, your mom thinks that everything brings bad stuff into your lives.”
I sighed, knowing what was coming. “Look, you don’t have to believe any of it, just—don’t make fun of her. Or me.”
She froze mid-reach, letter half-raised. “I’m not making fun of you.”
“You kind of are,” I said softly. “You do that thing where everything sounds like a jab even if you don’t mean it that way.”
Clara’s jaw tightened. “Well, maybe I get defensive because every time religion comes up, you shut down like I kicked a puppy.”
I blinked, surprised. “I don’t shut down. I just… don’t like fighting with you.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” she snapped—then immediately winced, like she regretted the tone. “You act like disagreeing means we’re gonna explode or something.”
“Because sometimes it does,” I muttered. “You get heated, and then I feel like you’re mad that I believe in something.”
Clara set the rest of the letters down with a clatter that echoed off the tiled floor. “I’m not mad that you believe in something. I’m mad that the thing you believe in—” She stopped herself. Her hands flexed, restless and unsure. “—that it gets to decide stuff about you. About your life.”
“It doesn’t decide everything,” I exclaimed.
“It decides enough,” she said quietly. “Enough that you won’t watch a dumb horror movie That you won’t…” she trailed off.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
Clara shook her head, frustrated but hurt underneath. “I don’t care if you’re Christian. I care when it makes you disappear.”
The room felt suddenly too still, like all the air had been sucked out.
“I’m not disappearing,” I said.
Clara exhaled, tired. “Christians always think people are trying to take their faith away. I’m not. I just… want space where I don’t have to fight for you.”
“I’m a Christian,” I said again, gently this time.
“I know,” she said, almost helplessly. “And I love you anyway. That’s the confusing part.”
Her face flushed the second the words slipped out. She jerked her eyes away, pretending to re-sort the letters into their original box.
Before I could absorb it, she added too fast, “Come on, the truck’s all warmed up.” She grabbed her keys off the counter and started disappearing into the darkness of the near-empty lot.
But the damage was already done to both of us. The moment soured, too raw, too exposed. Clara shut herself back inside her armor, and I let her.
The next time we had a shift together was three days later. She didn’t say anything about that night, and I didn’t either. The air between us was fragile, like the surface of a pond right before it freezes. They were showing some indie horror movie I had never heard of, and I promised Clara we’d watch it on our next day off. The soda machine had busted over the weekend, so we’d spent the last half hour cleaning the dried sticky mess around it.
“This sucks. Majorly sucks,” she grumbled, dunking her rag into the bucket of soapy water.
“At least we can do it together,” I said, trying to sound light.
She smiled that perfect half-smile she always wore. “That’s very true,” she said, bumping her shoulder into mine. “We’re always better together.”
I smiled back before grimacing. “Ugh, I can tell this is Mountain Dew. The color is so—”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she cut in, her voice suddenly edged with something I couldn’t place. “Do you wanna go to the Snowball dance with me next Saturday? It’ll probably be lame, but I heard they’re using the same DJ who did Rory’s Bar Mitzvah, and that was actually fun. And we could go to that vintage market for dresses and take baller-ass pics. What do you think?”
I felt blood rush to my face, warming me from the inside out. “I thought you said school dances were stupid,” I said.
She looked away, fiddling with her rag. “I mean, I do, but… I just thought it’d be something different. Something fun for us.”
“I want to,” I blurted, too quickly. Sensing her hesitation and drowning in my own, I added, “I just don’t want my mom to find out. She would flip.”
Clara looked at me again, eyes sharp and searching. “Even just as friends?”
“Even then.”
“Well… what would she say if it wasn’t as friends?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. It felt like a dare, but I didn’t know what she wanted me to do with it.
I had no idea what to say. I stared at the patch of sticky tile between us where we’d stopped scrubbing. Slowly, our pinkies inched closer, like something pulling us both forward. When they finally brushed, it was so faint it felt imaginary. For a moment, the ridges of our fingerprints seemed to sink into each other—merging, mapping, becoming something new. And it was okay. It was everything.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it snapped. A sharp screech of violin strings from a jump scare in the movie playing cut violently through the quiet. Someone in the audience screamed. Clara jerked her hand away. A deep, hot pain spread through my chest and shot up my throat. I blinked hard, mortified by the sting of tears.
“Geez, what pussies,” she laughed too loudly, gesturing toward the viewers leaving early. Her voice was too bright, too quick. She bent over the floor again, scrubbing furiously with her back half-turned to me.
“Yeah, for real,” I echoed, pasting on a grin. I imagined grabbing her shoulders and kissing her until the world made sense, and the fantasy terrified me and thrilled me all at once.
But the moment had already slipped away.
We didn’t speak for the rest of the shift. When Harold finally emerged and asked someone to sweep the auditorium, Clara volunteered before I could move. It was twenty minutes past my shift’s end, and she still hadn’t come outside. Maybe she forgot I needed a ride. Maybe she didn’t want to remember.
I started walking home, but my feet didn’t take me there. Not even close. By the time I realized where I was going, I was two miles in the opposite direction, my feet blistering, my lungs stinging from the cold. Two cars sat in the parking lot. One of them, the tan Camry, was as familiar as the church itself.
The doors were heavier than I remembered. I was used to my dad opening them for me, and the strength it took to push inside seemed all too fitting. The air inside was sharp and cold, carrying the scent of old wax and leftover evergreen wreaths. I knew Father Mark would be there. His schedule never changed. With each step toward the confessional tucked in the back chapel, the air felt colder.
Being in the confessional made me feel the same way hiding in my closet had when I was a child: that strange mix of shame and safety. Sitting in the dark, feelings pressing in from all sides. Wondering why God made me different. Why it hurt so much to try and change.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last confession,” I began. The words were heavy, like stones in my mouth.
“Child, what is it you have come to confess?”
“There’s this girl at my work. She and I—we’re good friends. Really good friends. And sometimes… I wish we were more than that.” My throat tightened. “We have closing shifts together, and we talk for hours. She understands me. But I know it’s wrong to feel this way.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “This friend of yours,” he said slowly. “Have you ever acted on these urges?”
My cheeks burned. “No. Not really. I’ve… wanted to, though. Today, I thought about what it would be like to have a girlfriend.”
“It is blessed to recognize your wrongdoings,” he said gently, though his voice carried something rigid underneath. “You aren’t the first to confess such thoughts, and you won’t be the last. What you need is repentance. A union as God intends is between a man and a woman. That is what is holy. Whenever you feel these sinful urges, push them down until they no longer trouble you.”
“What if it’s too hard to do that?” My voice cracked. “What if I’m never happy with a man?”
“Cleansing one’s sins does not always bring happiness,” he said, “but it brings peace. Peace that you are doing what is right and honorable to God.”
“Thank you, Father,” I whispered, unable to bear another word. “I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.”
I didn’t know what I expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. I did not feel cleansed. I felt hollow. I left the booth faster than I’d entered, my pulse racing. My footsteps echoed too loudly as I walked down the long aisle, and then I was pushing open the heavy doors and stumbling into the outside light.
The birds were singing. The sun was shining. The grass rustled gently in the breeze.
And I kept pushing it down.
Kate Machacek recently graduated from the University of Colorado, Denver, pursuing a degree in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. She was previously published in the Fargo Library’s Northern Narratives. In her free time, she likes to read, hike, and create music.
