Page 59 of Playworld
“I want a skateboard. At that rate, I can buy some Peralta wheels and still have money left over.”
“Maybe next weekend.”
“You mean tomorrow?”
“I mean the weekend after.”
Oren crossed his arms and shook his head. “There is no discount, is there?”
Dad’s eye twitched. “I don’t like your attitude, young man.”
“You and your endless bs,” Oren said.
Dad slapped him in the mouth. When Oren covered up, Dad grabbed his shirt collar, turned him around, and mushed his cheek against the wall, giving his ass a good whupping. Then Dad dragged him to our room and flung him in the corner, where Oren sat facing him.
“No allowance for a week!” Dad said.
“Fuck your cheap allowance!” Oren cried.
“Make it a month then!”
“I’ve got a year saved up!”
“Two years and nothing for you!”
“Make it till I move out!” Oren screamed.
Dad stormed off. I closed our door and quietly locked it. Then I slid down next to my brother. Oren reverted to his boyishness when he cried. He whimpered and mumbled and let his nose run. There were lots of consonants in his burbling. I took a mental snapshot, in case I needed the face down the road. “You okay?” I asked.
“Cut the caring crap. It’s the same load of horseshit as his.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“See!” Oren said, and pointed at my face. “You’re about to laugh.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and then climbed into my top bunk, covered my face with my pillow, and giggled into it.
“Fucking assholes,” Oren said of us. “Only out for yourselves. The both of you.”
I stared into the muffled dark, listening to my breathing. It wasn’t the first time Oren had leveled this accusation. Even though its origin was a mystery, I knew it to be true, and didn’t ask.
—
What my father’s talents perfectly suited him for was the stage—for musicals in particular. Some of my earliest memories were of seeing and hearing him sing. But it was the attendant emotional and physicalresponse to his voice, paired with music, that registered, in my bones, as something close to joy. I recall, for example, seeing Dad perform Beethoven’sFidelioon television—this at our first apartment, before the fire—playing Rocco, the old jailkeeper, in Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. It was a recital with no costumes. My father and the soprano with whom he sang wore black turtlenecks and slacks. Elliott, who was, along with Lynn, watching at our apartment with us, translated the German as Dad sang:
Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben.
Es währt nicht lang, er kommt herein.
—making theeininhereinring with such immediacy I felt my neck tingle.“Hurry and dig the grave,”Elliott translated,“it won’t be long, it won’t be long, and he’ll arrive.”And then Dad thundered:
Es währt nicht lang,
Es währt nicht lang,
er kommt herein.
I also saw countless performances of my father inJacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Parisat the Village Gate. Certain songs he sang thrilled me and stay with me, so that I find myself humming them, or singing to this day: