Page 27 of Playworld
“I already gave to the March of Dimes.”
“We’re playingSpace Invaders.”
“How much is a game?” she asked.
“A quarter.”
“You know,” Lynn said, “when you think about it, a quarter is a lot of money.” Like magic she produced a quarter between her thumb and index finger and held it toward us. When I reached to grab it, she quickly withdrew her hand. “Let me ask you this. If you saved a quarter once a week for a year instead of wasting it on a pinball game, how much would you have by next November?”
“Thirteen dollars,” said Oren, who sensed a trap but remained riveted.
“Correct,” Lynn said. “So you put that money in the bank at twelve percent interest, and then how much have you got?”
Oren, mumbling, tapped his thumb to the tips of his remaining fingers. “Almost fifteen bucks!” he said.
“Fourteen dollars and fifty-six cents, to be exact. Imagine what you could buy at Hanukkah with that kind of money. Aspecialpresent,” she said, slowly nodding, “that gives lasting joy instead ofbingboopbleepover there.” She dismissed the game with a flick of her wrist, and Oren shook his head. Hanukkah. Eight days of gifts we were missing out on because of our diluted blood.“Roses are red,”Mom liked to say,“violets are bluish. If it wasn’t for me, we’d all be Jewish.”
“I’m going to give you this quarter,” Lynn said sadly, and handed it to Oren, folding his fingers over it and then laying her palm on his fist, as if she had gifted him an heirloom. “I want you to go now and have your fun, but I also want you to remember this little lesson.”
Oren asked me if we should approach Naomi and I said no. When I asked him if we should approach Sam, he said, “That’s embarrassing.”
It was while we were sitting at the tabletop video game and sipping our Shirley Temples that Naomi appeared.
I felt her hip at my side, her elbow touching my shoulder, and then I caught her face’s reflection in the black glass while the screen flashed. She bent farther forward so that we were nearly temple to temple. She tucked her hair behind her ear, her scent and the tick-tock of her necklace’s pendants fogging me in embarrassment.
“What’s the object here?” Naomi asked.
“Clear the board,” Oren said. It was his turn and he was transfixed. “Before the aliens land.”
“I like the squid one,” Naomi said.
“I like the crab,” Oren said.
“Which one doyoulike?” Naomi asked me.
The aliens’ march was to the beat of a snare drum, and I felt like Oren’s laser cannon: nowhere to hide while his bunkers disintegrated.
“You look skinny,” Naomi said, still watching the screen. “You should come to the table and order something to eat.”
“I’ve got another turn,” I said, and then Oren’s avatar was destroyed.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “But don’t leave without catching up.”
We stared at the screen until she left. When I glanced up Oren was looking at me.
“Grody,” he said.
Naomi did not approach me again that night, although back at the table she took the seat next to my father and, for the rest of the evening, seemed to be in competition with Al as to who could laugh loudest at his jokes. She knocked her shoulder against Dad’s whenever he said something witty, or she pushed herself away from him while blurting out, “Shel, you’re terrible.”
Sam took the seat next to Mom and gave her his blinking, smug attention. He was quick to laugh at his own jokes. His laugh was horrible; it was like something you’d write in a speech bubble; it ended with a hideous gurgle. Throughout the rest of the evening, he would lean across Mom’s person, as if to hear her better, in the rare instances when he would listen. Oren and I had been seated next to her, at the table’s far corner with Danny and Jackie, who huddled in our presence or peeked toward us warily, like rabbits in a nest. What exactly were they afraid of? At one point, Mom, who sat with her elbow at rest on her crossed legs and chin propped on her palm, turned to face me. Sam wasfinishing up a sentence: “Don’t you worry, Lily, this administration’s going to unshackle this economy from so many restrictions and red tape, the energy it unleashes will be orgiastic,” upon which he put his arm over her shoulders to give her a loving squeeze; and my mother, now that she held my gaze, crossed her eyes. At moments such as these, she was the only person in the room I trusted.
As for Naomi, I managed not to say goodbye.
My family walked home through Lincoln Center. We headed west past the plaza’s fountains, past Moore’sReclining Figuresculpture, doubled in its reflection pool, past the theater and along the upper walkway that ran parallel to Sixty-Fifth Street far below. The gusts off the river assailed us here, elevated as we were. It was a lightless stretch, and the towering limestone beams to our left were perfect places for muggers to hide. Dad and Mom walked ahead of Oren and me, a little unsteadily, arm in arm, the sight of which calmed my tingling spider sense. The pavement beneath our feet was dotted with bird shit, and when I looked up, I could see the huddled pigeons, sheltered from the wind in the overhang’s ledges, puffed and fat and armored against the growing cold.
—
Against Poly Prep and Storm King I was pinned. Against Dwight-Englewood and Hackley, pinned. Against Dalton and Trinity, pinned yet again. I toggled between 121 and 129 pounds, sucking down to the former in the run-up to our dual meets, half starved in the days beforehand. I took long trips on buses to other schools in other boroughs and states, weighed in, warmed up, and then was, in the sport’s parlance, stacked, dropped, stuck, caught, decked—the outcome so certain the moment I stepped on the mat it was a challenge not to make the result seem rehearsed.