Page 137 of Playworld

The bell rang viciously. He had to go.

“Come eat here sometime,” he said. “I’ll comp you some drinks.”

I watched him hustle back downstairs. I watched him race back up, the stacked tray pronged by his fingers and lifted high above his head. He had our father’s mammoth hands. The work had already changed his body: it had swelled his calves and veined his forearms. He winked at us as he passed, then took the sets of stairs with a practiced ease, and I caught him noticing me notice this out of the corner of his eye, and this gave him, I could tell, enormous satisfaction; and what I asked myself, walking home later, was whether he had made a decision, or if he felt a decision had been made for him.

—

Auditions forThe Tempesthad been the week before. I had spent the weekend memorizing Prospero’s epilogue and felt good after the tryout. On Tuesday, Damiano had announced the cast. To the surprise of several seniors, I got the lead. We spent the rest of the week doing read-throughs, with light blocking the following week. Monday evening, when I got home, I saw the table was set for four, and when I turned the corner into the kitchen, there was Mom, cooking dinner.

I lifted her in the air and shook her side to side, until finally she laughed and said, “Okay, Griffin, put me down and let’s eat. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Dad appeared and said, “Look who’s home.”

He took his seat, and then Mom walked to the table holding a wok and a serving spoon. “Your grandma had one of these when I was in Virginia, and I just loved it so much I had to get one.” She served my father and me and then herself. She said to me, “This is a perfect meal. It’s got a lot of protein, and if you go easy on the rice you can get yourcarbohydrates from the vegetables.” She sat. “I’m going to take over your diet this fall.”

If she’d told me she’d be feeding me only liver for the next year I’d have agreed so long as she stayed.

Dad, holding the bottle of wine, offered to top off her glass. She covered the goblet with her palm.

I served myself seconds. Dad, meanwhile, was holding a piece of chicken breast in his fingers and taking bites out of it.

“Shel,” Mom said, and he dropped it like a bad dog.

“It’s sogood,” he said with his mouth full and then found his napkin.

Later, she and I did the dishes together. It was quiet work, and I could not help but occasionally stare in wonder at her presence. Finally, she squinted at me and shook her head and chuckled. We were finished, but the faucet still ran. “What is it?” she asked.

I turned off the water. “Why’d you come back?”

She sighed. She toweled off her hands. Then, with the back of her damp fingers, she lightly stroked my face. “Your father is who he is. I am who I am. Until the end. Together. It’s that simple.”

I shrugged. “That sounds hard.”

“Lots of simple things are,” she said.

She glanced at Oren’s empty place setting that we’d left on the table and back at me. “Where’s your brother?” she asked.

—

First period, I had geometry. Geometry I liked. Geometry Igot.On the blackboard, not entirely erased, was the faint tracery of several maps from our first game ofD&Dthis past weekend. I sat next to Deb Peryton. Sometimes we passed notes to each other. I wrote:

Got third free?

When she replied yes, I wrote:Meet under the stairs?

She wrote:I don’t smoke.

I wrote:I don’t either.

When she read this, I relished her little grin.

It was the last day to turn in changes to our schedule to Miss Abbasi, and later, on my way to her office, I spotted Mr. Damiano walking up the half flight of steps toward the lockers. I called to him, brightly,warmly, and he stopped on the landing as I ran toward him at full speed. I leaped—you have to picture it—up to the landing, where he stood. It was a solid four feet tall, and in a single bound I, like Baryshnikov, launched into flight, I practically did a grand jeté to land on the ball of one foot, grasping the railing that separated us in one hand, my other foot pointed behind me, over the ledge. Damiano smiled at this bit of showing off, at this hammy athleticism. “Should’ve cast you as Ariel,” he said.

“Sir,” I said, “I have news!”

Now I had two feet planted on the landing and was leaning away from him, alternating my grip on the railing with one hand and then letting go to grip it with the other, before letting go and then catching myself.

“I,” I said, “will not be at rehearsal today.”