Page 25 of Playworld
On election night, my parents took Oren and me with them to vote. Their voting station was at P.S. 87, on Seventy-Eighth Street. Dad let me pull the lever that drew the curtain. He showed me how to flip the smaller levers that punched his ballot, saying the names aloud as if he were narrating a documentary. I worried that other voters might hear, since his voice carried, and when I paused to ask him about one of the candidates—“Is he good?”—he said only, “He’s a Democrat.” A great smash of gears, as if we were on a service elevator, when he pulled the lever once more to open the curtain.
It was dark by now, and we walked down Broadway. Dad was walking ahead of us, which drove Mom crazy. “Go get your father,” she orderedme.
There was an enormous crash. From our side of the street a storefront’s glass exploded, and for a moment on the sidewalk there lay a man covered in frost. His jacket and pants, even his face, were powdered white. Shattered glass piled around him like rock salt. He was quickly up and running at full stride, across the avenue, headed east. Three butchers—heavyset, wearing yarmulkes and bloodstained aprons—were in pursuit. The carving knives they carried glinted in the headlights. Here Oren showed his age and huddled with Mom. We heard sirens in the distance, and within moments, a squad car’s flashers strobed across Broadway. Dad was never shy about asking police or bystanders questions. His bravery in such moments was unmatched, part of his actor’s chutzpah. He treated any official like his personal 411 and, after consulting with the cops, rejoined us with the official report. Mom was angry at him for abandoning us; Oren and I were angry for Mom. “Do you want to know what happened or not?” Dad asked her. It turned out that earlier in the day, along with a partner, the man had attempted to rob the store, a crime the butchers had foiled. When the two perps made their getaway, oneran out the front door, the other toward the back, accidentally locking himself in the freezer. He’d spent the day hiding out, but rather than die of hypothermia, he finally made a break for it.
Dad, chastened, made it a great show of letting Mom take his arm for the remainder of our walk.
When we arrived home and turned on the television to see the returns, nearly half the country was blue. No states west of Texas had posted their returns, but John Chancellor was already calling the race for Reagan,a sports announcer, a film actor, a governor of California, is our projected winner at eight fifteen Eastern Standard Time.
“Holy shit,” Mom said. Oren and I laughed because she never cursed.
Dad sat down on the bed. As Oren and I were leaving, Mom, who’d draped her arm over his shoulders, asked us, over her own, to close the door.
—
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, the usual crowd gathered at The Saloon, a restaurant across the street from Lincoln Center. Elliott and Lynn. His daughter, Deborah, and her husband, Eli. Al Moretti, my parents. And lo and behold, the Shahs.
Their two daughters, Danny and Jackie, had performed inTheNutcrackermatinee and were still in stage makeup, their hair bunned and cheeks rouged, their lipstick so bright they looked like pageant contestants. I hadn’t seen Naomi since our last meeting, and when the Shahs arrived at our long table, I whispered to my mother, whom I was sitting next to, “You didn’t tell me the Shahs were coming.” “Was I supposed to?” Mom asked. Naomi brought Danny and Jackie over to greet her. She stood with a hand on each of her daughters’ shoulders. The pair spoke to Mom with something close to reverence. My mother gave the two girls her complete attention, asking them about their performance that afternoon.
Naomi took the opportunity to look at me and smile weakly, almost apologetically and imploringly—for all the guests, for this encroachment upon our time together. For some sign from me that I too had missed her and wished that we could be somewhere else, alone. And beneath her daughters’ conversation she said, “Hey, Griffin,” and then, almost accusatorially, “It’s been a while.”
When I could not summon a response, Mom said, “Griffin, an adult is talking to you.” She turned back to Naomi’s girls, which seemed to create a zone of silence where Naomi could ask more intimately, in a tone that was almost taciturn, “How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“School going good? Now that your show’s over.”
“Better,” I said.
“I’m glad,” she said, with real feeling.
I caught Oren’s eye. I sent him my telepathic red alert. He was standing next to Elliott and Sam while they talked. He noticed my alarm and then nodded that I meet him midpoint at the long table. “Oren and I are going to go playSpace Invaders,” I said to Naomi, and left to join him.
We had some money of our own but decided to see how much we could grift from each one of the adults. We started with Al, who was talking with Dad. “Shel,” he was telling my father, “what can I say? My heart’s shattered. I mean”—he stretched his arm out in front of his crotch—“my cock was out to here for this kid. I was like the man of fucking steel.”
Oren tapped his shoulder and blinked his eyes sweetly while I made the ask.
“Al,” I said, “don’t be sad, you’re a good guy.”
“That’s sweet of you, Oren.”
“Griffin.”
“Whichever. Now what the fuck do you want?”
“A dollar.”
“For?”
“Space Invaders.”
“Who?”
“It’s a video game.”
“Maybe for a Shirley Temple I might.”
“Okay then,” Oren cut in, “how about for two Shirley Temples?”