Page 49 of Playworld

The snow had paused overnight, but that morning it began to snow again. I worried, watching it come down, because Dad might make us leave today. Which meant we wouldn’t be able to spend the night at the Locatellos’ house, which we always did the night before we went home. Which, I thought, since the conversation with Bridget was still on my mind, was one of our traditions. The houses across the fairway were mere smudges; the trees lining it were ghosts of bone. Mom sat before the fireplace, cross-stitching, Oren by her side, reading. When Dad thumped through the room, we all eyed him warily as he passed.

Once Oren and I got clearance, we headed straight to Auntie Maine’s. I put on the same outfit as yesterday but wore a hat this time. The Locatellos had a barn, but there was nothing to see in the fenced yard: therabbits were in their hutch, the chickens sheltered in their coop. Dusty, Lucy’s horse, invisible in her stall, neighed a hello, as if the structure itself had offered a greeting. When we arrived in the front room, the TV was tuned toWheel of Fortune,the volume high but no one watching. We heard our cousins playing music in the basement. Auntie Maine was in the kitchen but came rushing toward us and pointed at the screen.

“All’s well that ends well!” she said, beating the contestant to the right guess, and then returned to the kitchen to make our lunch.

There was a lot to pack in in a short period of time. Bridget and Patrick were already here, and she and I acted like it was a secret we’d run into each other on the golf course. After some jamming (Leo on drums, Anthony on bass, me on rhythm guitar, Oren on tambourine, the girls singing backup, and Patrick, surprising us with his booming voice, singing lead), we set up the poker table beneath the living room’s gun rack and cycled through dealer’s choice. Oren won handily, and we moved on to Monopoly, which was interrupted by dinner, which on our last night was always lasagna: Auntie Maine’s recipe was at least ten layers, and we dipped our artichoke leaves in mayonnaise and Oren let me eat his heart. In the dining room, through the sliding door, we noticed the snow had stopped falling. We were stuffed silly, but I still hit the Count Chocula with fresh cow’s milk and ate a slice of the leftover pecan pie.

It was Oren who suggested we take Dusty for a ride.

Oren loved the idea of a horse. He had once gotten Dad to take him to Claremont Riding Academy for a set of lessons, which was the only thing I could ever recall the two of them doing alone together. He’d have kept a horse on our terrace if he’d been allowed.

Dusty was black and short-legged and ornery. She was named Dusty because no amount of brushing removed the dirt that seemed permanently settled on her—pat her neck or side and you could see the outline in her coat like a handprint on a cave wall. In spite of her lack of height, she was intimidating to face, so broad-bellied and scoop-backed that head-on her aspect was closer to a hippo’s. Her obedience to Lucy barely verged on tolerance, and when we entered the barn and Anthony snapped on the light, she appeared from the stall’s inky darkness and considered the group of us from within her stable as if she held a particular grudge from a long-standing wrong. Her eyes were black and pitiless.She reminded me of every adult who didn’t like me but revealed it only in private.

It was not clear who had the authority in this situation. Leo, who rocked back on his heels with his hands stuffed in his Redskins jacket,chuckled respectfully and then said, “I’m not getting near her.” Bridget, clearly frightened, and in a gesture that none of us was prepared for, took Leo’s arm in both of hers. Anthony said, “Last time I was in here with her, she kicked me in the stomach,” and then he pointed at a pair of knocked-in boards, “all the way to there.” Dusty seemed to follow the conversation, eyeing first Leo and then Anthony, and, uncannily, I thought—perhaps because we could not see her legs—seemed to glide along the stall’s half door to where Lucy stood and then nose her, but in a fashion that bordered on unfriendly, closer to a head butt. Lucy said to Oren, “Well, you wanted to ride her.” 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.

Dusty pressed her mouth to his palm, and I marveled at the prehensile elegance with which she sampled the individual cubes, her lips as malleable and as delicate as the end of an elephant’s trunk. She allowed Oren to remove her halter from her. He asked Lucy where the bridle and saddle were, and when she indicated the back of the barn he disappeared into its darkness and returned with the jingling equipment. He opened the stall door and stepped inside; he cupped Dusty’s head in his arm, and when she gave him next to no resistance, he said, “That’s my girl,” and Bridget knocked her shoulder to Leo’s in a confirmation of something mysterious. Oren slid the bridle over Dusty’s face, and, more amazingly, when she resisted taking the bit, he stuck his thumb in her mouth and she opened it. His movements were so practiced, and so alien to me, that he might just as well have folded and then paneled a parachute. Again he disappeared and returned with the saddle and pad; while he laid the cotton fleece over her back he asked Lucy, “Is she a Shetland cross?” to which Lucy replied, “Old Welsh pony.” With thearm of his hoodie, he wiped down the saddle and then placed it on her back. There was an elaborate bit of business with a strap beneath her belly, which he secured. Then he put his foot in the stirrup and lifted himself into the saddle. When Lucy reached beneath the horse he said, “Don’t tighten the girth too fast.” He took the reins in hand and then sucked at his cheek, a loud double click, in a perfect impersonation of the Central Park carriage drivers. Then Oren led Dusty out of the stable and the barn, and we followed him like a retinue into the snowy night.

The stars in the now-clear sky were diamonds scattered atop blue velvet. The waxing gibbous moon like a fat belly. Our bodies were the same near-black as the trees. The snow beneath our feet was crunchy and aglow. Lucy walked alongside Dusty and Oren. Anthony and Patrick were behind them, their fists stuffed in their jackets. I brought up the rear behind Leo and Bridget, who were holding hands. I felt everyone’s admiration of my brother as well as my distance from them all. Bridget must’ve sensed this, for she briefly looked over her shoulder at me and, shrugging once, smiled. I shrugged and smiled in return, because I didn’t know what was going to happen either and her corroboration made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

“Let’s take her on the golf course,” Oren said, and he and Dusty waited on the dirt road while we negotiated the fence break and walked out from under the tree cover into the open. We stopped in the middle of the fairway and turned, and because we could not see either Oren or the horse through the black space in the fence, we pricked our ears. We heard Oren click his cheek again and say,“Giddup,”and then with a rumble Dusty burst through the break. This explosion shook the adjacent branches so forcefully snow tumbled from the evergreens’ tops to form a falling curtain their bodies parted. Oren trotted Dusty toward us and then pulled on the reins and stopped. They made quite a sight: Oren’s legs stretched wide around her belly and his feet in the stirrups as if he were balancing on a big round bomb. We all took another step back from the pair, and again Oren clicked his cheek and snapped the reins; in response Dusty lowered her head, shaking it once, and then snuffled the snow. Lucy said, “Maybe I should walk her a bit,” and when she reached out, Dusty pinned her ears back, rose on her hind legs, and, turning around, bolted.

She ran uphill, in a great sweeping loop, away from us, toward thegreen, banking again, and then, by some control Oren exerted, began to circle downhill, back in our direction. I had never seen a horse gallop except in movies. Just the thunderous timpani of it, her body’s action charging full tilt with my brother bent and attached to her—Oren’s command being the even more amazing part. The speed seemed impossible given how round she was, how short-legged and low to the ground. She slowed as she approached us, shaking her head low and angrily, her forelegs and haunches moving in opposite directions in an action close to juking, the bridle and reins jingling, and Oren fighting for control. And then she stopped, suddenly, forelegs locked and haunches raised, so that she skidded to a halt. Oren was thrown forward, toward her neck, which he briefly clasped, for backstop and balance, and then he managed to right himself. He spoke calmingly to her and sat up straight. He patted her neck and pulled the reins so that her head turned left, and he clicked his cheek again and kicked his heels into her sides. Again she took off, this time at Oren’s behest. He led her along the same path. Her hooves, when she banked toward the green, cleaved the snow-covered sod into small black divots that caught the moonlight. Oren was leaning with her; she was all action and movement in contrast to his balanced stillness above. They banked, at an impossible angle this time, hurtling downhill toward us again. We stood transfixed by her coursing. The beauty of it made us forget the punishment we might suffer when the snow melted to reveal the chewed-up turf below, and when they barreled past our loose gauntlet, I could feel Dusty’s hoofbeats shake my teeth. This time we all whooped in support and shouted Oren’s name. Maybe I did the loudest, because while I was a bit jealous, 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 pair made another near-perfect overlay of this darkened track, and then Dusty, headed uphill, abruptly changed direction—she snapped off the circle, she broke left, seesawing, bucking, and then turned downhill, toward us again, faster, it seemed, than even before. Oren was shouting,“Whoa, WHOA!”—it was more anexclamation than a command—and it distracted us from the danger he was in, that we were in. She gathered speed and we froze. We were pins to her bowling ball and just as still, and maybe ten feet before impact, Oren yanked her reins as if he were heaving an anvil over his shoulders. At this, Dusty slammed her hooves into the ground and ducked her head, so that Oren, launched from her back, was flung toward us, his arms and legs outstretched—he did one full revolution—to land on his back, with a great heaped thud, at our feet. Dusty, relieved of him, stood instantly becalmed and inert. She snorted, happily.

We all bent over him.

“Don’t move,” Leo said.

Oren, eyeing each of us, wiggled his fingers and knocked his toes together. “Was that wicked,” he said, “or what?”

Did I wake up before any of the cousins the next morning to make the morning last longer? I’d slept in Leo’s room, Oren in Anthony’s. There was the dual sense, as I rose from sleep, that it was very early and that there was activity downstairs. It was a tradition, on our final morning with the cousins, that Uncle Marco made cream chipped beef. When I appeared in the kitchen, I found him and Auntie Maine already up, preparing the meal. The oven’s clock read 6:47. The lights in here were bright. I could see our reflections in the picture window because it was still dark outside. The open oven, along with the steaming pot, which Uncle Marco stood over, warmed the room. The linoleum was the same off-white as the cream chipped beef. The food smelled peppery. In spite of the kitchen’s temperature, Uncle Marco still seemed underdressed in his crewneck T-shirt and pajama pants. From the oven rack, Auntie Maine tonged toasted Wonder Bread onto a plate and disappeared into the dining room. I stood by Uncle Marco as he stirred the mixture with the wooden spoon. His belly nearly touched the range’s knobs. I could hear him breathe. He did not smoke but still wheezed like Grandma. Beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip.

By now the cousins had come downstairs. We were all still in our pajamas. We took our seats at the dining room table, Uncle Marco at the head and Auntie Maine at the other. Bridget and Patrick were gone; we had our family to ourselves again. Lucy was asked to say grace and we all joined hands. The entire breakfast was cream chipped beef and toast. Ithad the consistency of papier-mâché. It was salty from the shredded bits of corned beef. It was best practice, after ladling some onto your toast, to let it stand for a minute so that the bread’s scorched pores could absorb the steaming liquid. 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.

By the time the plate of toast made it back around to Uncle Marco, I had finished the first slice. “I’ll have seconds, please,” I said, my fork aimed at the next serving. Uncle Marco held the plate out toward me, and when I speared my second piece, he grinned at Leo and Anthony.

“That’s two,” Lucy said, meaning,Game on.

By my third slice, Aunt Maine said, “I’m going to have to toast another loaf,” and got up from the table. Anthony, in appearance a Russian nesting doll of his father, pushed back after his sixth slice. Leo followed suit. He said, “I am going to lie down on the floor now,” an act he knew his father would not tolerate. Sweat had also beaded on Uncle Marco’s forehead, and his shirtfront was dotted with sauce. He had kept pace but tapped out after our eighth slice. Lucy said, “Can he do nine, ladies and gentlemen?” and when I blew past that number, everyone grew quiet and watched, since now something extraordinary seemed within reach, not simply a new record but a new power, a mutant ability: I was possessed of a superheroic capacity for consumption. I was the fish who ate the fish who ate the fish. I was a boy with ten stomachs. I was a carny creature with a camel hump growing on my back.

I was going for twelve. Twelve was an entire loaf, was drummers drumming. Thirteen was unlucky, so I needed to eat one more slice. Fourteen was the Partridge Family plus the Brady Bunch, minus Alice. Uncle Marco was mildly amazed and slightly disgusted and not displeased. “Well, go ahead and eat it, son,” he said. I cut my last piece into nineHollywood Squares,which I stacked on my fork into three mini club sandwiches, and after I swallowed the last bite, I said, in my best Porky Pig impression, “That’s all, folks.”

Because it was time for my family to leave.

Hostages

“Asshole,” Coach Kepplemen yelled, and smacked me in the back of the head.

We were in the locker room. I was naked and standing on the scale. He’d cuffed me hard enough that I shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands to block another blow. He set the Detecto’s poises back to zero. He was blinking and stiff-mouthed and now spoke quietly, which was terrifying. “Step off, please,” he nearly whispered, and I did.

He slid the poises to my weight class’s limit, 121, and then, after indicating I step on the scale again, fingered the square forward, to 125, to 129, and then just over 133, when the balance finally floated.

“Two days from now we have a match,” he said. “Youknewthis over break.”

He rubbed his eyes with one hand, then ran his palm over his mouth, down to his neck, which he held as if he were about to choke himself. “What are we going to do about this? I got no one to replace you.”

“I can make it.”

“I’m going to have to forfeit your class.”

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