Playworld

by Adam Ross

Dad, anxious to change the subject, said to Mom, “I think Sam was quite taken with you.” “Ugh,” she replied, “he just went on and on about his orchids and his wine cellar.” “If you’d married a man like that,” Dad said, “he’d’ve given you the royal treatment.” “You’d definitely be going home in a nicer ride,” Oren said. “A man like that,” Mom countered, “treats his cars like women and his women like cars.”

Our building’s modern, high-ceilinged lobby, meanwhile, had all the charm of an airport concourse, with a wall, opposite the mail room, covered with an ugly mosaic, the abstract image its tiles formed as large as a stegosaur but so nebulous in shape that it resisted any attempt to morph it into something I could categorize as animal, vegetable, or mineral. Our hallway was two bowling lanes long and similarly narrow, its floor tiles the hue of a neglected aquarium.

What made her swoon, however, were his hands, in both of which he cradled hers when she greeted him. Something about their size and squareness, the hard angles of his thumbs’ metacarpals and the pronounced, indented triangles where they joined his wrists, made her desire take flight and then bloom inside her chest like fireworks. She was a deeply loyal person, incapable of infidelity, and yet it took all of her self-control not to turn to my father and say, “Why don’t you go find something else to do?”

I remember my feeling of utter surrender during that seemingly endless walk. The sensation of flying—of being held aloft—with the hallway floor far below. Of dried tears staining my cheeks. The girth of my father’s neck, which I clutched now. And the strangest sense that the smallest space—not even a unit of measure I could name—had opened up between my thoughts and my face; and the conviction that, so long as I hid behind this mask, I’d be safe.

Dad told me to wait in the hallway while he and Brent signed papers, though he intentionally left the door ajar. He was a big believer that an overheard conversation was more authentic than a direct one.

She placed her palm over mine; her hand was cold and dry. Sometimes, as now, I was aware of how much my company meant to her, and the feeling was as weighty as the garment, as nearly suffocating as it was pleasant, and my discomfort, which won out today, was like the first night we met, so I felt an overwhelming urge to flee.

In response, her face went through a moon phase: first, a sort of frown, her lower lip pressed forward, as if she might cry; followed by a smile that was warm and blooming; and finally, an expression that was slit-eyed and wicked.

He pulled a five from his fat black wallet, its fold stuffed with so many bills it looked like a slim book of poems.

But by now he had rolled with at least one of us and by day’s end several more. He smelled of deodorant and cheap detergent, and beneath that, an odor that was enfolded and in transformation, like the yogurt that hardened at its container’s rim.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” he said, and was so distraught he excused himself and went to our room. There were times, as now, when Oren acted as if he’d failed me in some far more essential manner than the circumstance, when half the time I felt like I’d failed him, and this mystery made the gulf between us seem even more unbridgeable than the fact that we no longer spent our days at school together.

One of wrestling’s physiological mysteries is that sometimes those with the most statuesque physiques, who from pure optics looked like they emerged from the inked corners of a comic book’s panels, in fact lack fight and determination. They have a capacity to collapse, to tank; like Thanksgiving floats, their bodies, in spite of their size, feel air-filled, light.

And conversely (at times) the most powerful just as often appeared otherwise: their thin arms hide bones fashioned of rebar, the soles of their feet are tethered to the earth’s core, and the force they generate, exponent to your base, seems to come from a place that is spiritual rather than physical, elemental as opposed to gym-built—ocean deep or jungle dark.

Roaring on the floor, a lion skin rug. Rob Dolinski, one of Boyd’s most popular seniors, was seated on the couch. If he’d had even a scintilla of interest in acting he’d have been a star, his wattage was that powerful.

I am no apologist—“We were boys”—I grant no pardons. Our education was spatial. Racial. Tribal. Urban. American. But mostly—and this is the most important thing—it was dominated by Kepplemen, over whom we were each failing to gain leverage. And who wore the costume of love. And who was, day in and day out, teaching us fury, aggression, complicity, desperation, exploitation, and, most of all, silence.

His eyes bulged slightly. He too was a ginger, and his ’fro was so big it Jiffy Popped his beanie. Nine years from this night, after serving his first tour as a Navy SEAL, he would fall asleep at the wheel driving home for the holiday and, just a few miles from where we stood, hit a tree head-on and be killed instantly.

Strangely, it was as if Bridget were permanently it, even if she wasn’t. I was aware of her location at all times; simply being in the zone of her person commanded the totality of my attention. She put all my senses on highest alert: her scent was part Prell shampoo, part Cherry Smash lip gloss; the sound of her laugh was like a muffled bell.

There was a strange luminescence about her person that shined from beneath her skin like a hand cupped over a flashlight.

My brother took a step forward and then dug into his jeans pocket. He offered Dusty a fistful of sugar cubes. It was an odd moment, full of tenderness and almost mercenary foresight—further evidence that my brother had a life apart from me and the family about which I knew next to nothing. When had it started? Perhaps with the fire, since that was the last time I could recall Oren willingly following me anywhere.

it was a joy to be amazed by my brother. I could tell that, like me, he too was desperate to master something, and I was suddenly certain he would exceed me in life, in all endeavors; that since we were little he had been waiting to demonstrate such prowess, and now that he was doing something so unimaginable and impossible to me—to all of us—I was thrilled for him and wished only my parents were here to see it as well.

The previous Christmas, I had consumed seven pieces—a record among the cousins, and one I now intended to break. Because something was ending, I was sure of it ever since I’d arrived, and like a salmon before swimming upstream, I had to stuff myself with everything from this place while I could.

After they’d removed her wig and the clips from her hair, her lashes and rouge, her face possessed the unique tabula rasa quality certain women are either gifted with or cursed by—they are so entirely transfigured by eyeshadow and eyeliner, by lipstick and blush, they could rob a bank in one face and disappear into obscurity in the other.

Because he was my brother, he was always there; ever since the fire, he was my once-upon-a-timer, and I loved him maybe more than anyone else in my life.

From his back pocket, Damiano produced a paperback copy and flapped it at me, which to my disgust was warm to the touch.

Mr. McElmore, who ran marathons, came into their line of sight. Runners in general, and their outfits in particular, were outlandish back then, especially since they were on the continuum of nearly naked.

In what remains one of the most intimate gestures I have ever seen, Dr. West pointed his remaining speared olive at Tina, and she, without hesitation, plucked it from the toothpick with her teeth.

I didn’t bother to mention to Amanda—the both of us, by that point, having had enough of her dad for the evening—that out the cab’s window, I spotted Dr. West and Tina walking down Broadway, her arm slipped through his, something that, back then, didn’t strike me as especially odd, so well groomed was I by that time, so desensitized, up and down the food chain, to such behavior.

Why was I asking? Was it because I had always suspected that Mom and Dad loved each other differently? Because there was in Mom a loyalty that seemed unreciprocated? Because I needed to know if she’d married the great love of her life? “Any you liked as much as him?” Mom smiled reassuringly and shook her head. “Your dad always has been and always will be my favorite.”

“Young man,” he said, “your father’s got a voice from God. Your mother moves like an angel. You can breathe life into characters. Be that as it may, just because you have a talent doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

To this day, I can conjure it, but there are times when it seems to conjure me, so that I wonder if it is Naomi’s doing, her passing thought, some arcane aspect of our connection, current traveling down memory’s hot wire to arc across space and time. I confess I live in fear of seeing her. She could be decrepit, and I am certain that, in my presence, her youth and my desire would be restored.

As if all three adults—my father, my mother, and the woman—were suddenly as translucent as jellyfish, I imagined I spied my father’s increased heart rate, which he tried to cloak in noise; Mom’s lungs shrank as she slowly emptied them of all breath; the woman’s blood vessels narrowed so that their currents quickened.

Our windows were down, the sun made every color vibrant—who had seen such blues, such greens? When I glanced at him, he glanced at me, gladdened I too was gladdened by the day, since the both of us were sad, I was sure of it, that my mother was not with us to enjoy such weather.

We drifted toward the lot’s exit, then Dr. West took a left and gunned the accelerator, and I felt pinned to the seat’s black leather, as if Amanda had looped her Lasso of Truth around my torso and yanked.

It was not mint, but the seats were soft as a well-worn saddle in spite of the tears where the foam protruded; and hidden beneath the hood, the machine had tremendous power he had clearly not even tapped. The man, I thought—overbrimming as I was with heartache and the lonely clarity it conferred—must drive his relatively impoverished daughter crazy.

The older kids were a breed apart, the boys in swim trunks as entirely comfortable and unselfconscious among the bikini-clad girls as if among cousins, the girls here and there as astonishingly beautiful as Amanda, the ease of their fraternizing, their sly familiarity, regressing me, so that I felt the same shyness as on the first day of high school.

His hair, parted to the side, was like a creek bottom full of gold to be panned.

Every person on the island, I imagined, was ocean-facing, the beachgoers’ chairs and towels ticking clockwise after the sun.

I felt strangely wistful as the cars sped along. I was certain I was the only one here who was sure I’d never see these people again. When I found Tanner and returned his father’s jacket, it was like returning a costume on the last night of a performance.

After Sam turned the ignition, he took a moment, while the car idled and his gloved hands gripped the wheel—he drummed all his fingers once, twice—to revel in the sight of Amanda, Claire, and Vince, his expression unabashedly wistful as the three chatted and laughed, not so much having forgotten us but seeming to have never noticed us in the first place. And while I could not say exactly what Sam was thinking, what I did want to tell him, during those forever seconds, was that I knew exactly how he felt.

When it was deep enough, I sank below my chest, letting the breakers foam me. And when I emerged and turned to face Naomi, she was all I could see in the fog. She covered her mouth, nodding, her eyes bright with tears, and then she waved me in, circling her hand as if I were a boy who’d swum out too far.

I also knew I possessed qualities that he did not and was envious of, jacked up as I was from my summer workouts, my body pheromone-flooded, my dalliances with his wife signaling, precognitively, my alpha status. It was to my great surprise, during these drives, that I discovered how insecure he was about what he perceived to be his deficits. That in spite of his money, clothes, and cars, he suspected he was…uncool. What he wanted, then, was my approval.

Their foyers lit by gargantuan chandeliers. Their old-world masonry and landscaping, their limestone and copper flashing mottled with the sea spray’s patina, their ivy-covered chimneys and two-boat slips. Their lawns for lawn’s sake, as if grass were a staple crop. The millions of ways there were in America to make millions. The beguiling edifices of the rich that proclaimed more, more, more. What to do with such plenty? What to make of such wealth? How to live your life?

“I don’t want to go upstairs,” she said. Then: “I don’t want you to ever leave.” Then: “I don’t want to lose my family.” Then: “I don’t want to be with Sam anymore.” Then: “I want to wake up in your bed one morning.” Then: “I don’t want my daughters to ever be this unhappy.” Then: “I don’t want to be scared anymore.” Then: “I don’t want to keep hating myself.” Then: “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you.”

We heard her keys in the door and rushed from our bedroom to greet her. I let Oren hug her first. She swayed with him in her arms, his hair bunched in her fist while he shook. “Sweet boy,” she whispered, “how did you get so big so fast?” She waved me to her and hugged me while Oren took her suitcase to her room.

Mom was smiling as if she had just told herself a private joke or had made a final decision. She sat with her elbow on the table, chin to palm, her mouth hidden behind her bent fingers, her eyes flickering between anger and delight. What I was certain of was that when she turned to me to speak, when she let her arm fall in order to be heard, I understood, with total clarity, why my father needed her, trusted her, sometimes hated her, feared her, occasionally fled from her—and loved her. “It means,” she said, “that soon this will all be over.”

And when he sang, he soared through his seemingly endless range, and I was reminded of the times I dropped Sam’s Ferrari into fifth gear. Oh, to be flooded with my father’s full-throated sound! To hear, as he hit his highest note and held it, how much he had to give if he’d ever had the chance.

And her love for my father, I realized, exceeded mine, exceeded her love even for Oren and me. Was that a love, in marriage, to aspire to? I remember watching Mom watch him, shaking her head at times and squinting when he hit certain notes; how during other moments, she turned her head away ever so slightly, as if she were averting her eyes from the sun.

Talent, I thought. That great leveler. Smasher of gates and all-access pass. Velvet-rope opener and the penthouse view. Follow me please, says the maître d’ to talent, I have our best table waiting. That uniquely and unfairly bestowed gift America had figured out how to tap more efficiently and mercilessly than any other country in history.

I said I was not the only one to notice how perfect Dad was as the lead, how—I truly believe this—the fortunes of that show might have been otherwise if he’d been properly cast, if they’d given him his one shot. That night, during Dad’s last performance of “Getting Away with It,” I felt someone touch my shoulder. Then I noticed Fountain’s white-gloved hand there, the cotton fabric dotted with tiny sequins. His touch, which had startled me, briefly turning my body to ice. He gave me a warm squeeze. “Finally,” he whispered, “I can hear my lyrics.”

As she chewed, I noticed that her hair was dyed, that the lipstick was crumbling at the corners of her mouth. She was—long had been—in flight from something, and if she were to excuse herself to the bathroom and remove her makeup, I might not recognize her when she rejoined us.

Nearest where we stood was another seating area, arranged around a set of built-in bookshelves, with picture lights illuminating the spines. Adjacent a recessed bar was an accent chair made of creamy brown leather—the reading nook of my mother’s dreams. Oren, I thought, would also love this place. In the corner, I noticed an upright piano, which I could imagine Dad playing.