Playworld, p.43
Playworld, page 43
At the conclusion of exam week, Miss Sullens found me kneeling before my locker while I cleaned it out. She was in sneakers and jeans and a sleeveless blouse that showed off her impressive shoulders. She was thrilled by my reaction as I read my grade: the circled A-minus and Brilliant essay! double-underlined on the inside flap. “I am so proud of you,” she said, and mussed my hair, and before standing “to leave”—an adverb, I realized too late to make an A, modifying “standing” by answering the question why—added, “Have a great summer.” I watched her walk away, disappointed in myself for not thanking her. Though the noise all around was familiar—lockers slamming, students whoop-whooping as they celebrated the end of the academic year or, in some cases, of high school—it was also alien to me, did not align with internal displeasure. My locker was adjacent the tech booth’s door. Music played from within, and when it opened, Marc Mason appeared in an MIT sweatshirt, singing, “People can change, they always do / Haven’t they noticed the changes in you?” He spotted me and pointed, and then said, “Keep the campaign going, my man.” He slung his book bag over his shoulder and said to the nearly empty halls, “Marc Mason…is officially…leaving the building.”
I paged through my exam. I reread my essay. We’d been asked to write on a theme that ran through at least four texts we’d read this year, and I chose Romeo and Juliet, The Catcher in the Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, and the e.e. cummings poem “Since Feeling Is First.” In each of these works, those who are most suspicious of language are often the most capable of telling the truth. Mercutio reveals to Romeo the lasciviousness beneath his flowery love for Rosalind, Holden Caulfield identifies the phoniness embedded in people’s concerns for him because they wanted him to conform to their values, Stanley Kowalski violently pokes a finger in the “paper lantern” of Blanche DuBois’s nostalgia, and, finally, it is the speaker in the cummings poem who knows the “eyelids’ flutter” of any lover (I thought of Amanda) is more potent than any wisdom (I thought of the conclusion to my father’s story about Millie Van Bourne), that it is holy to be “wholly…a fool,” to trust instinct—what the “blood approves”—before the brain’s “best gesture.” To give oneself over to another is best; to resist playacting is required. What anyone wants, standing before the beloved, is the person wholly themselves—which was close, I concluded, to holiness.
What I felt after reading this was pride, which gave on to uncanniness. I only partly recognized myself in the sentences, in the voice. Mostly, I did not. How was this possible? And as I finished emptying my locker, my bewilderment gave on to regret. As I flipped through loose-leaf binders full of botched quizzes, my textbooks full of already forgotten facts and formulas, I was ashamed by how much I’d missed these past two semesters. Of the opportunities I’d lost. Of how far behind I remained.
Next year could be different, I thought, if I had a better start.
* * *
—
By June, everyone was working.
Oren got a job at Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken and regularly conspired to sneak home free buckets of drumsticks and thighs along with sweaty cups of mashed potatoes and slaw. Cliffnotes took shifts at Häagen-Dazs (“The dots are called an umlaut,” he said, holding out his embroidered apron when I asked). On weekends, the Columbus Avenue store had a line out the entrance, and during his shift he was packed in behind the case with four servers and a manager who marched behind them shouting, “Watch your scoops! Watch your scoops!” He got tendinitis in his wrist and wrapped this in an ACE bandage, but the sacrifice was worth it, he said, because there was always extra milkshake left over in the malt cup, which he was sure to slug when the manager wasn’t looking, since he was trying to gain weight for lacrosse season next year. Tanner, who we had seen only once since school got out, returned to his childhood summer camp in Maine to be a counselor.
Mom graduated from NYU. Grandma and Grandpa flew to New York to attend the ceremony, and the first thing Dad asked her at its conclusion was “So now what?” To which she replied, “Is that all you have to say?” followed by, “I’m going to start my own business, if you really want to know.” And in her regalia, she marched off to join a group of her classmates, in response to which Dad grimaced at me and mouthed, Whoops. I turned away so as not to let him off the hook. When Mom first came to New York, she’d been an instruction model for Joseph Pilates. In her bathroom, she kept a framed picture of herself assisting him in his studio. In it, she was hanging bow-bent backward beneath a set of parallel bars while Pilates spotted her. The German’s hair was as white as his turtleneck, his eyes as black as the Speedo he was wearing. She’d continue teaching ballet at Neubert’s in the afternoons, she later told Dad, but during the day would make house calls to women on the Upper East and West Sides—she already had ten clients lined up—putting them through mat work at their apartments, in buildings like the Beresford and the Century and the El Dorado and the Sherry-Netherland and the Pierre. “So there,” she’d said to Dad, when she returned and let him take her in his outstretched arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and clasped her neck in the crook of his arm and kissed her hair; and she smiled and wiped a tear from her eye—it was difficult to tell if she was happy or sad—and replied, “You should be.” And then she laughed. Dad had his camera with him and shot pictures of her with Grandma and Grandpa and Oren and me; and later, Mom whispered in my ear, “Remember, better late than never.” I wasn’t sure if she meant getting her master’s degree or apologizing or both.
Amanda was working at Bloomingdale’s as a perfume tester. “Smell,” she said when I visited, and raised her wrist to my nose. “It’s Charlie.” The place was so bright it was like one big dressing room’s vanity mirror. “What do you think?” she asked.
Amanda was wearing a red dress with shoulder pads and white tights. She had on a ton of makeup, like when she went out with Rob.
“It’s kind of young, kind of now…” I sang.
Amanda slowly shook her head.
“…kind of free, kind of wow…” I continued with the jingle.
“Okay, Bobby Short, try this one.” From her woven basket she removed a bottle and sprayed the air ahead of her and then walked through its mist.
“Am I supposed to do that?” I asked.
“No, silly, you’re supposed to smell it on me.”
The white-frocked cosmeticians, the businessmen and -women, the tourists speaking Japanese, Spanish, and French—all disappeared as Amanda cleared her curls from her neck, exposing it, so that as I leaned in, I passed through the fragrance’s zone into a nearness ever so slightly darkened by our proximity, to spy her ear that, if I were bold enough, I might take in my teeth.
“Do you like it?” she asked, watching me, sidelong, a bit caught off guard, as I slowly withdrew.
“Very much,” I said.
“It’s…” But she had to look at the bottle. “L’Air du Temps,” she said.
“Bonjour,” came a deep voice behind us.
It was Rob. In a suit and tie. With a smile that was wolfish.
“Griffin,” he said, “you keeping my girl company?” Then to Amanda: “Can you still get away for lunch?”
When she nodded enthusiastically, he said, “La Goulue or Café Sabarsky?”
“You pick.” Red Riding Hood disappeared under his arm. “Thanks for stopping by,” Amanda said to me before Rob led her away.
The Saturday morning before the Sam and Sara cast departed for Delaware, Dad took me to exercise with him at the West Side YMCA. It was the last time we’d spend significant time together until the show swung back to Broadway that fall. The Businessman’s Club had its own steam room and sauna; it was carpeted and had personalized lockers with nameplates. The place smelled like Clubman cologne and chlorine. All the men walked around with open robes, towels wrapped everywhere but their waists. The sight made me never want to grow old.
Dad changed his clothes, said, “See you in an hour,” and made his way to the indoor track, which was adjacent to the weight room, above the basketball court, and through the two pairs of double doors I’d spot Dad come rounding into view, his eyes to his sneakers, his jog more of a mincing shuffle, closer in pace to speed-walking but without the hip swivel. I went and did some lackadaisical sit-ups. I approached the Universal machine, considered my options, and then I did a sudsy set on the bench press. I took a drink at the water fountain. I wiped my lips with the hem of my shirt. After Dad passed by again, I returned to the bench for another set. Then I stood before the wall mirror and, when no one was looking, did a Hulk flex. That was when I spotted Vince Voelker.
I did not recognize his reflection at first. He was on the chin-up bar, faced away from me, wearing athletic shorts, wrestling shoes, and a tank top. He was doing an exercise I had never seen, one that began as a pull-up and then transitioned, unimaginably, into a push-up when his head was above the bar. I counted eight repetitions. He had bulked up since wrestling season, if that were even possible, and his body seemed entirely devoid of fat. But what was mesmerizing was the effortlessness of the performance, this slide-rule action, so smooth as to be antigravitational. His shoulders and back were livid with anatomical action, the tendons and muscles rippling into a topographical map, with one particular grouping, dead center above his scapulae, distending in the shape of a bull’s head, horn tips to snout.
He released the bar and turned to face me. He dusted off his hands, which I now saw were coated in chalk, and the morning light blasting through the high windows illuminated the tiny cloud. He identified himself, as if it were somehow possible I’d forgotten who he was, a courtesy I considered almost comical. He asked how my season had gone, and I told him. He said, “Well, that means you won one more match than me as a freshman.” I congratulated him for winning state. I asked him where he was going to college. He said, “Syracuse. But I’m guessing it’ll be two years before I start.” I asked him what he was doing this summer. “You’re looking at it,” he said. Then: “Do me a favor?” When I nodded, he asked, “Give me a spot?”
He led me to the incline bench; he had a forty-five-pound plate on each side of the bar, to which he added a twenty-five-pound plate on his side, an act I copied. Across from us, on the flat bench, a man was bent over the face of his supine partner. He placed his outstretched index fingers below the bar and exerted only the slightest pressure upward as his friend raised the weight. “All you,” he brayed. I took my place on the platform behind Voelker. “Give me a lift off,” he said, adjusting his grip, “on three.” He counted down and then we raised the bar. The plates gonged as Voelker lowered the bar and bounced it off his chest. He made a sound like a piston at the top of each rep. He did nine reps without my help, nearly failing on the tenth, and then hopped off and turned to me and said, “You’re up.”
“I can’t lift that much,” I said.
Voelker was already removing the plates. “Not yet,” he said. Then: “Let’s start with twenty-five on each side. The bar weighs forty-five.”
He took me through his circuit. From his shorts pocket he produced a tiny spiral notepad and, from behind his ear, a golf pencil—which I didn’t notice because of his bushy hair—to record his weights and repetitions. He flipped to a blank page and started recording mine. “Want to know when you’ve had a good workout?” he said. He held up the implement. “When you can’t lift this.” At our final set of dumbbell rows, my father appeared. He was pouring with sweat. He’d hung a towel around his neck and dabbed his beaded upper lip with the tail. When he introduced himself to Vince, he said, “Sheldon Hurt,” in a voice so gravelly and out of the side of his mouth I thought the next thing he might do was spit tobacco.
From his notepad, Vince tore out my page and handed it to me. “Tomorrow’s leg day,” he said, “if you’re up to it.” When I pointed at myself, he added, “Six sharp.”
Later, in the steam room, Dad said, “He seems like a nice young man.”
I recalled our match and shivered. “Not if you’re wrestling him.”
The air in the room was on the verge of scalding. I walked under the ceiling’s showerhead and reached for the pull chain. My arms felt like pipe cleaners. I let the freezing water hit me for as long as I could take it. After I returned to the bench, Dad rose for his downpour. I couldn’t help it: I’d been thinking about what Miss West had said about Rob’s dick for weeks and took a good look at Dad’s dong. It was as fat as a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler and as long as a Ball Park frank. I considered my own. Was it like a skeleton key? I remained baffled as to how it might unlock the chambers of Amanda’s heart, and once again my near total lack of guidance in such matters was revealed: I knew sex’s endpoint but had no idea how to get there.
Dad took his seat next to me and, as if he’d read my mind, asked, “How’s that girl of yours? Aria?”
“Amanda.”
“You ask her out yet?”
“She still has a boyfriend,” I said.
“That never stopped anybody,” Dad said. “Does she know how you feel?”
I shrugged.
“Have you ever told her that you like her?”
I shook my head.
“Has she ever told you, unconditionally, that she’s not interested in you?”
I shook my head again.
“In my experience—this was before your mother, of course—no girl’s ever going to spend that much time with you if she doesn’t like you.”
I felt so flooded with hope I couldn’t speak.
“Some women,” Dad said, “want to be in control. And some want you to take control. True, some just like to keep their options open, which is maybe what she’s doing. But do you ever get that feeling? That sense,” he went on, and paused, “of an opening?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Next time you do”—he grabbed at the air as if he were trying to catch the steam in his clenched fist—“take it.”
Two men entered the room.
“Maybe treat this period like the offseason,” Dad continued. “Like your wrestler friend. Work on other parts of your game until Alissa comes around.”
“Amanda.”
“In the meantime”—and here Dad lowered his voice—“rent a good porno. For the technical aspects.” He winked. Then he cupped my head and, after pulling it toward him, kissed my temple. “I’m gonna miss you, boychik.”
“I’m going to miss you too.”
“Take care of your mom,” he said. “She can get very emotional when I’m gone.”
* * *
—
Until early July, when we began shooting The Nuclear Family, my only jobs were to audition, work out at the Y, and get ahead on my summer reading.
The Boyd Prep summer reading list always arrived with my final grades and was as dreadful a document as my transcript, if not more so, since it hung over my summer like bus exhaust. That morning, I found Mom in her bedroom, sitting at her desk with both the list and my grades. I was just home from my second audition of the day. “Congratulations on your English exam,” Mom said, handing me my report card and Boyd’s reading list. She watched me review them: four high Cs and a B-plus (English); four novels of our choice, as if that made it any better, plus The Sun Also Rises. I half smiled at her and she half smiled back when I returned my transcript. I noticed she’d done some reorganizing. Dad’s clutter, which had collaged her desktop, had been arranged in several new office trays. Her closet door, open behind her, revealed a file cabinet, its bottom drawer open. She placed my transcript in a folder with my name on the tab. She checked her watch and then got up from her chair. “Come on,” she said, and held up the reading list, “we can go to Shakespeare and Company and buy some of these, and then I’ll take you to lunch before your next appointment.”
At the bookstore, we separated. I took my time, and this greatly pleased Mom, who came up to me now and again and said, “Isn’t wandering around this place the best?” I nodded brightly, though I was making my choices based strictly on the width of the spines. When we reconvened at the checkout line, I’d arrived with the four thinnest ones I could find: Heart of Darkness, Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Crying of Lot 49, and Seize the Day.
“Don’t get that,” Mom said, frowning at the Pynchon. “Get this instead.” She handed me Goodbye, Columbus. “It’s romantic. Oh, and I picked this out for you”—she held up Moby-Dick—“because I know how much you liked that Farley Mowat book last year. And these,” she said, holding up Middlemarch and The Portrait of a Lady, “because they’re only the greatest novels of all time.”
I flipped through the latter and slowly nodded. Four hundred plus pages of the smallest print I’d ever seen.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Even if you don’t read those this summer, you can have them for your library. Should we go eat? All this shopping has left me famished.”
We walked down Broadway. Under this June-blue sky, the summer felt endless. On the crossing islands trees, the light silvered the rustling leaves, so that they flashed like metallic pom-poms.
