Page 114 of Playworld
I considered her wall of books. There were hundreds of them, arranged alphabetically. In the morning, when Mom woke, the first thing she saw was those books. When Dad brought her the first cup of coffee, she stared at those books. She looked at their spines before she went to sleep. Whatever book she was reading on her bedside table went up there once she’d finished it, so that she could see that one too. Did she like to look at them because they were a way of measuring time? Had she lost many in the fire?
On Thursday evening, Mom said she was going with Al to his house in Montauk for the weekend and it was up to me if I wanted to join. I asked if Oren was going too and she said no, he had to work. I told her I’d think about it and then called Amanda in Westhampton.
A woman, whose voice I didn’t recognize, answered. I asked for Amanda; she repeated my name and then said, “Hold on, please.”
When Amanda came on the line, she greeted me with a tone that, in its welcome, was close to wariness: “How have you been?” she asked, as if our recent date hadn’t been a disaster.
I told her I was going to be in Montauk that weekend, maybe I could come see her Saturday if she was around?
“Montauk’s pretty far from Westhampton,” she said.
When I didn’t respond to this, she said, “But if you’re in the area, sure, let me know.”
From my bed later, I could hear Mom in the bathtub, weeping.
—
The following afternoon, Mom and I caught the 7 Train to the Vernon Boulevard stop in Queens, where Al picked us up in his car. It was a dual-tone Cadillac Seville. “Nice ride,” I told Al when we got in.
Al grimaced. “The only bad piece of advice Elliott ever gave me,” Al said, “was to buy this piece of shit.”
It was a Friday, so we hit traffic on 495. I lay stretched out on the back seat with my Walkman, listening to the mixtape I’d made Amanda that morning. It began with Air Supply’s “The One That You Love” followed by Blondie’s “The Tide Is High.” My fantasy began in Montauk. I had my arms wrapped around Amanda’s waist at the Puff N’ Putt, together we stroked the shot and the ball dropped in the hole, then we were on a catamaran, me firmly holding the boat’s rudder, she in a bikini, her legs stretched out like the girl pictured on a semi’s wheel flaps. I imagined the pair of us swimming in the ocean, at sunset, and I saved Amanda from a great white by punching it in the nose, my heroic act backed by Foreigner’s “Urgent.” I lay on the beach with my leg bitten off (Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”), Amanda held my hand while I bled out on the sand, and she confessed her undying love for me, but I came back to life during “More Than a Woman,” by the Bee Gees.
When Al, Mom, and I stopped at the Lobster Roll in Amagansett for dinner, I said to Al, since Mom couldn’t drive, “I kind of wanted to go visit a friend in Westhampton tomorrow.”
Al said, “Westhampton is an hour the other way, kid.” He took a bite of fried cod. “So I think no dice.”
“I could take the train.”
Al shrugged. “It’s up to your mother.”
I asked Mom if she minded my taking the train. Her back was to me. She had barely touched her food. She was watching the cars on Route 27, chin resting on her palm. She turned to face us and, after blinking several times, said to Al, “Whatever he wants to do.” She emptied the carafe’s contents into her glass, then went back to watching the traffic.
Al caught my eye and mouthed,I’ll handle it.
Because it was dark by the time we arrived, I couldn’t make out much of Al’s house beyond the splash of lights against its siding. We’d driven down a long gravel drive; its dust drifted through the headlights’ beams. After Al cut the engine, he gently rubbed Mom’s shoulder to wake her. “Lily, we’re here,” he said. She started and then looked at Al as if affronted, which made me embarrassed for her. She then checked the back seat, although it wasn’t clear she recognized where she was. She said, “Where’s Oren?” and I told her, “In the city.” She said, “What?” and crossed her arms, sinking in her seat so that she disappeared beneath the headrest. “I need to go to bed,” she said, and I suffered the twinned desires to clutch her to my chest and run away. Al said to me, “Get the bags,” and in the headlights’ glare, I watched him walk Mom to the screen door with his arm around her waist and, supporting her, lead her inside. When the light flicked on downstairs, I got her suitcase and my book bag and stepped into the house, waiting several minutes while Al thudded about upstairs. I heard Mom say something. It was close to a sob, but there was also a question nestled in it, which Al answered softly.
The floor plan was open, like our apartment. There was a small kitchen on the left. Over its bar, I could see a breakfast nook by the far windows. To my right there was a sofa and a love seat and a coffee table and, in the corner, a narrow wicker shelf of paperbacks, their jackets battered and their pages swollen from sea spray and sun. Straight ahead, a set of sliding glass doors looked out onto the ocean. The stairwell was to the right of the doors, and Al wearily thunked down their carpeted runner. He walked past me, out to the car, and turned off the headlights. When he returned, he cut the overhead light and waved for me to follow him, which I did. He unlocked the sliding door, pulled it open, andstepped outside. There was a wooden deck, edged by reeds that shushed and sighed down the slope of a hill that dropped off precipitously; and beyond it, beneath the mute crescent moon, which sat abandoned in a cloudless sky, there stretched before us the bone-white Atlantic. I could hear the breakers boiling before they thumped invisibly below. Al produced a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, shook out a cigarette, and held it toward me, and after I fearfully shook my head no, he produced his lighter, cupped his palm over the flame, and inhaled, the illuminated mask of his face now snuffed out, and along with this world’s deep blue and the bleached ocean, there was for color only the ember orange of his cigarette’s cherry.
“Sweet spot,” I said.
“It’s something, huh?”
“Dad calls this place a saltbox,” I said.
Al frowned. “For your information, a saltbox has a sloped roof. And gables. Which this house does not have. So once again, beyond opera, your father doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.”
I was mildly shocked by his anger; I was also relieved that he expressed it. We listened to the tide’spoomand hiss, and Al said, “My parents fought so much when I was a kid. They were like cats in a pillowcase getting carried to the fucking river. But back then I thought it was my fault and that I could maybe stop them by being good—which you can’t, for your information.” He blew smoke. The ocean sighed. “So be good for you first and foremost, Griffin. You weren’t put on the planet to make sure they love each other, okay?”
“Okay.”
He flicked his cigarette out over the reeds. It caught the wind and meteored over the ledge.
“I checked the train schedule,” he said. “I’ll get you fed tomorrow and on your way.”
—
When I came downstairs the next morning, Al was already in his bathing suit and flip-flops. His Hawaiian shirt, which was unbuttoned and open, let his belly protrude. He was sipping coffee and staring out the screen door, a cigarette in his hand. The surf took great slow swings of itshammer against the shore. On the horizon, I could make out a tanker’s ghostly form. “Fucking spectacular,” Al said. Then he consulted his wristwatch. “There’s a ten a.m. to Westhampton, which gives us plenty of time to eat.” As if reading my mind, he said, “Let’s let her sleep, okay?”