Thirty

A woman in a drooping skirt and brilliant yellow leotard top pulled the big wooden door of the playhouse shut. “No hurry,” she said. “It’s just getting a bit chilly in there. You’ve got plenty of time.”

I walked up the worn steps toward the stone Star of David carved above the door. I had seen that six-pointed stone star innumerable times, but now it struck me as forcefully as a blow to the heart. I had never thought of myself as Jewish, no more than I thought of myself as Irish. I had never thought of my mother as Jewish. My mother’s parents, yes, the grandparents I’d never known, but me—I wasn’t anything in that way.

People streamed around me, entering the theater, murmuring, laughing. I looked up at the stone star. Oh, please … oh, please … What I was pleading for I didn’t know, yet it seemed to me the closest to real prayer I’d ever come. Oh, please … oh, please …

Inside, I handed over my ticket. A slip of paper had been inserted in the playbill, stating that Gene would play Lord Fancourt and Howard Faulk would play Brassett.

“Excuse me.” A tall thin girl, her face and arms as spotted as a leopard’s, pushed past me. “Do you think they’ll start on time? My friend is late.”

What if I stood up, clapped my hands, and yelled, Listen, everybody. Pay attention. My mother is back.

“I’ve never seen this theater company before. Are they good?”

I made an effort to act normal. “My uncle’s in the play.”

“Oh, I see.” She smiled at me and, for some reason, I felt almost crazily grateful. Then Martha came and sat down next to me. Her hair flopped around her shoulders. She wore a purple dress printed with green parrots. “Hi, sweetie. Where’s Cary? Are you nervous? I am! I’m probably more nervous than Gene.” I said something, stared at the mad-looking parrot on her shoulder.

My mother is back. Back. Returned. The sojourner from strange lands, from the underground, from the land beneath the land, from somewhere that was nowhere, that was yet somewhere. And how had she done it? Had she burst through the earth, red hair flying, arms outstretched? Wonder Woman! But when I had seen her, she had only been hastily but sedately walking up stone steps to a courthouse. A man, not my father, had held her arm and fended off the reporters. A scene from a movie to be called Courthouse, or Justice. But real. A documentary. A movie about real people, starring my real mother who had returned to the real world, suddenly changing all the rules of the game I had played for eight years. The game of Pete-not-Pax.

The lights dimmed, the curtains drew back. Something was happening onstage. Voices chattered, actors came and went. Gene made his entrance and Martha nudged me.

“I’ve been indiscreet,” Lord Spettigue informed the audience in a nasal aside. “Oh, I am sorry, very, very sorry,” he said obsequiously to Donna Lucia, the rich widow. Donna Lucia, actually young Lord Fancourt disguised in a long skirt and bonnet, actually my uncle, flapped “her” fan vigorously, whisking it against Lord Spettigue’s pompous face.

Martha leaned toward me, whispering. “Gene looks much better than I expected. Don’t tell him, but I was sort of worried. He’s not exactly your typical English college boy. But I think he’s really carrying it off, don’t you?”

Had I really seen my mother? The moment on the TV screen passed behind my eyes, like a dream: something half remembered, shadowy, doubtful. A woman went up a flight of steps. A man held the woman’s arm. The steps led to a courthouse. A woman holding a man’s arm went up a flight of steps. Yes, a dream. Or a memory. Or a wish. I must have wished that scene into being!

But there was something wrong with my wish picture … something—someone—missing. Where, for instance, was my father? Where was Hal Connors in that picture? Was he walking up another flight of stairs in the grip of another lawyer?

During the intermission, standing in the lobby, I heard someone say my name, my real name. Pax. I turned my head sharply. But no one was speaking to me, no one was even looking at me. Later as the play ended and the actors took their bows, it happened a second time. Pax. Was it my mother, calling me over the miles? Everyone stood up, but I sat there, waiting to hear my name again.

“Pete.” Martha hauled me to my feet. “I told Gene we’d meet him at the cast party.”

The party was held in Regina’s, a restaurant around the corner from the playhouse. People milled around the long tables, eating and drinking. A cloud of smoke hung over the room.

“I think it went wonderfully, don’t you?”

“… almost forgot my lines in act three, then they came to me as from above.”

“Lover! You were fabulous! How was I?”

Gene appeared and put his arms around me and Martha. “So what do you think, my people? How’d we do? Was all the work worth it? I don’t know if I’m up or down. I had the most god-awful case of stage fright before I went on. Panic, panic. Halfway through the first scene, it left me, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“You’re up,” Martha said. “Definitely up.”

“I’ll really be up if we get a good review. See that little guy over there, the one with the wild mustache? Donald Friedman. He writes the reviews for the New Winston Times. If he likes us, we’ll have full houses. If not—” Gene drew his hand across his throat.

I left early. At home I went straight to my room, took the manila envelope from its hiding place and emptied the contents on my bed. There were the letters from my parents. There were the articles and the pictures I had collected about them. It was their lives and, by extension, my life. I picked up the article with the picture of my parents on their graduation day: my father holding the small Pax on his shoulders, my mother gesturing to the reporter, both of them wearing black graduation robes. The tassel from my mother’s mortarboard fell over her face, giving her a rakish look.

She had returned to this world and never let me know that she was coming. She must have made plans, talked to people, written letters, made phone calls. That lawyer wasn’t there by accident. But no phone calls to me. No letters. No messages. I had had to watch the evening news to find out my news. “Laura,” I yelled. “Laura! Laura! Laura!” I pounded the walls like a madman, crying and cursing. My eye fell on the letters. I crumpled and tore them. The phone rang. I tore Laura’s picture and threw it to the floor. The phone rang again. “Shut up, shut up.” I tore up everything, all the letters, all the articles, tore them into smaller and smaller pieces.