—
The following Saturday morning, when I showed up in the basement theater and reported to Damiano that I had detention, he slowly shook his head and said to the cast, “Take five, people.” Then he asked me, “Who’s the proctor?” When I told him I didn’t know yet, he said, “Let’s go,” and we marched upstairs to the front hallway and waited.
It turned out it was Miss Sullens.
They spoke softly, and after exchanging a knowing look, first at me and then at each other, she gave me permission to skip.
“Don’t thank me all at once,” Damiano said as we walked back downstairs.
To which I replied, “I won’t.”
Since performances began next week, we were in dress rehearsal.
Wearing a ruff, doublet, breeches, and hose, plus shoes like a pixie’s, I sat in the wings, feeling like a total asshole.
But because we were doing two run-throughs today and my pair of scenes came early in the first act, I didn’t have to be back for the second performance until after lunch.
Which meant that I could head upstairs for the next several hours and rejoin the D Fistly: lawful evil; Mom: lawful neutral, Dad: chaotic neutral, Oren: chaotic neutral).
“Why do I need to ‘be mindful of weather in outdoor combat’?” I asked, echoing one of the notes I had just read.
Mason, who was talking to Chip, held up a finger to him and said, “What do you think happens if you Call Lightning during a thunderstorm?”
Chip said to Mason, “Did you hear they’re going to add a new class of magic user this August?”
Mason scoffed.
“No one’s seen the revised rulebook, you fucking nerd.”
“My cousin in Kenosha has,” Chip said.
“He was at Gen Con last year and that was the rumor.”
“What’s the ‘Gen’ in Gen Con stand for?” I asked.
“Lake Geneva,” Chip said.
I didn’t know anything about anything.
I didn’t even know where Lake Geneva was, or Kenosha.
“As you can tell,” Mason said to me, “Chip’s not getting a lot of action here at Boyd.”
Chip pushed up his glasses, then crossed his skinny arms.
“Neither are you, blood.”
“Oh, snap,” Mason said.
Wexworth opened the door.
“Gentlemen, will you join us, please?”
We stepped inside.
Everyone in the room looked upset, except for Wexworth.
When Mason took his seat, he said, “Don’t they have to leave the room?”
“No,” Wexworth said.
“They’re all dead.”
I’d gotten so wrapped up in the game I’d spaced on rehearsal.
Damiano appeared at our door and said, “Hey, asshole, did you forget something?” He waved for me to follow him, but as we were leaving the classroom, Mason called out, “Mr.
D,” and caught up with us outside.
“Can I have a word with Griffin, please?” And while Damiano stood in the hallway, fists to hips, Mason said to him, “It’s private.”
“Come to the theater the second you’re done,” Damiano said.
We watched him huff off.
Mason said, “You still don’t know what you’re doing in there.” When I started to apologize, he interrupted.
“Cut the bullshit.
I’ve got plans for your character but not if you don’t.
So straight up.
Do you want to play or not?”
I nodded.
“Then march your tyro ass to West Side Comics and buy the books.
Don’t come back until you do.”
I started to walk away.
“And, Griffin,” Mason said.
When I turned around, he added, “ Read them.”
Which I did not.
At least not at first.
Late that afternoon, on the bus ride home from the store, I opened the Player’s Handbook to its table of contents and scanned its endless appendices and tables and charts and its preface, at which point I closed the book, cowed, and opened the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
This was an even thicker, more intimidating volume, and as if it were a flipbook, I let its pages flap from front to back with my thumb and spied its index, its vast glossary of miscellaneous treasure and magic interrupted by pictures that were far easier to pause and dream on than the blocks of text were to peruse.
And then, randomly, I stopped at “General Naval Terminology,” the first several items of which read:
Aftthe rear part of a ship.
Corvicea bridge with a long spike in its end used by the Romans for grappling and boarding.
Devilthe longest seam on the bottom of a wooden ship.
Devil to paycaulking the seam of the same name.
When this job is assigned, it is given to the ship’s goof-off and thus comes the expression “You will have the devil to pay.”
Who knew? Not I, the ship’s goof-off.
Caulking the seam until he abandons ship.
Which I now considered.
Or, if I were to stay, if I were to stick it out, at the very least I’d ultimately hand off that role to someone lowlier, yes? I took a moment to gaze out the window.
We were passing the Museum of Natural History, the building’s footprint stretching two full city blocks, and in my mind, I was a child again.
Mom had practically raised Oren and me there, we spent so much time racing through its corridors.
I spotted the Seventy-Seventh Street entrance, our usual point of ingress, and a map of its levels, long ago memorized, floated before me in three dimensions, and I mentally made my way through the Hall of New York State Environment, past the log-sized earthworm and cross section of the redwood with its historical markers at each ring, through the Hall of North American Forests and the Hall of Biodiversity to my destination, the Hall of Ocean Life, where, after a loop around the mezzanine, I descended the wide stairs to the bottom level, where I’d lie on the floor, beneath the blue whale, feeling the subway rumble below, waiting until Mom and Oren finally caught up with me.
And when they did, I would walk them past every diorama and, like a tour guide, supply the scientific name of every creature Architeuthis, Physeter macrocephalus my recall as perfect as a marine biologist’s.
I found Mom in her bedroom, seated at her desk, typing an essay she’d handwritten on a yellow pad.
There were Henry James novels piled around her.
Her Smith Corona hummed with current.
She was a superfast typist, she didn’t need to look at the keys, and when she hit Return and the platen slid to the right, the whole table shuddered.
“Hey, Griff,” she said, and kept typing.
“Did you sleep at Tanner’s last night?”
“No,” I said.
“I was here.”
“Oh.”
“Where’s Oren?”
“He and Matt are at Dad’s studio.”
“Doing what?”
“Recording something, I think.”
“What does ‘q.v.’ mean?” I asked.
She paused to look at me.
“I thought you took Latin,” she said.
I’d failed middle school Latin, which she just now recalled.
“Quod vide,” she said.
When I repeated the phrase, still perplexed, she added, “?‘See which.’?”
“Like…the monster?”
“What?” she said, and squinted.
Then she chuckled.
“No.
As in: ‘With regard to this matter, go see x.’?”
“Ah,” I said.
She resumed her typing.
“What about ‘tyro’?” I asked.
She nodded toward the Merriam-Webster on the table.
“Look it up,” she said.
Standing there, I flipped through the dictionary’s onionskin pages until I found the definition: “a beginner in learning anything; novice.”
“Can I borrow this?” I asked.
“Only if you bring it back,” Mom said.
Later, in our room, while I was studying the Monster Manual, Oren appeared.
“Yo,” he said when he entered.
He was wearing sunglasses and his Walkman headphones.
He was also carrying a bag from Tower Records.
When I asked Oren a question, he pulled one of the earphones away from his head.
“I said,” I repeated, “why are you wearing your sunglasses inside?”
“Because I’m maxing and relaxing,” Oren said.
“Because you’re a douche bag,” I said.
“Because I’m…” He let the earphone spring back.
Melle Mel, right on time
And Taurus the bull is my zodiac sign
And I’m Mr.
Ness and I’m ready to go
And I go by the sign of Scorpio
He popped and locked, did a bit of the Robot, and then slid the earphones around his neck.
“Matt and I cut a single.” He held up the cassette.
“Want to hear?” He slid the tape into our deck.
A drum machine started up.
Next, Oren and Matt alternated raps:
We’re the White Boys
We’re white as can be
Hey yo, my name O-reo
And I’m M-A-double T.
“That’s great,” I said over the song, “if you’re retarded.”
“You’re just jealous of our talent.”
“An Oreo isn’t as white as can be.”
“Fair,” Oren conceded.
“How about Matty Matt instead?”
“How about,” Oren said, “you join the group.
You could be DJ McGriff.”
“Why the ‘Mc’?”
“Because you’re fast, like McDonald’s.”
The phone rang.
Mom immediately picked up.
Then she shouted, “Griffin, it’s for you.”
It was Amanda.
“I know this is last minute, but are you busy later?” she asked.
Her voice was so bright and ringing it was close to shrill.
When I told her I was free, she said, “My father’s in town and wanted to take me to dinner.
He said I could bring someone.”
“Sure,” I said, and punched the sky.
“What time?”
“Can you be here by six thirty? It’s probably a fancy place.” When I told her yes, she said, “Great,” and then gave me her address.
“I’ll see you soon.”
When I hung up, Oren said, “You should come record with us tonight.”
“Can’t,” I said.
“Got a date.”
“With who?”
“You don’t know her.”
“Maybe she lives in Canada,” Oren said.
He produced the forty-five of Grandmaster Flash’s “Freedom,” touched the needle to the vinyl, and when the kazoos kicked in, he started dancing, so I joined him until the end of the track, because it was the only way to deal with my nervous excitement.
Later, I was leaving just as Mom was setting the table.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To dinner.”
From our bedroom, Oren shouted, “With a girl.”
“Oh,” Mom said, and smiled.
“Just the two of you?”
“And I think her dad,” I said.
Mom gave me the once-over.
“Then go put on some khakis and a button-down.” When I rolled my eyes she said, “Loafers too.”
“I’m gonna be late.”
“Go,” she said.
I lurched back to my room to change and shambled back for inspection right as Dad was pulling up his chair.
“I hear you have a hot date,” he said.
“He’s meeting her father,” Mom said.
“He can’t wear that shirt then,” Dad said.
“Why?” I groaned.
“It’s wrinkled.”
“I have to go. ”
He snapped his fingers three times quick.
“Give it to me,” Dad said.
He pushed back from the table and went to the kitchen.
He emerged with the ironing board and folded open the legs, and its wire made its subway screech.
He waved to me c’mon, c’mon to hand him the shirt, which I removed and then sat down on the couch, topless, burning with impatience and shame as my back stuck to the leather.
He returned with the iron and plugged it in.
The signal lamp was red.
After another trip to the kitchen, Dad appeared with a can of spray starch and a measuring cup full of water.
He carefully poured the latter into the iron’s nostril.
He waited until the iron burbled and sighed.
Dad did a cuff first, spreading it over the board’s nose, hitting it with some starch and a puff of steam, and then stretched out the sleeve, running the sole plate along its hemline with a couple of farty pumps of the spray button.
I could see Dad’s reflection in the framed painting’s glass, the one above the living room’s console table of a bouquet that had survived the fire.
His expression was focused and calm, and now, as he ran the iron’s nose between the shirt’s plackets, steam chuffed merrily from the machine.
Then he flipped over the shirt to do the back.
Finally, after setting the iron on its heel, he hooked the shirt by the hanging loop and held it out to me on his index finger.
It appeared slightly boxy and sculptural.
Buoyant, so that it twirled ever so slightly, like a mobile.
When I put it on, he said, “Better.” Then he kissed my forehead and patted my cheek.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”