Page 9 of Playworld

Several weeks after the Barrs’ party, Naomi and I went for our first drive.

It was one of those fall days when the sun, rising in a clear sky, shined white and blindingly down the cross streets, while the avenues, blued and gusting with chill winds, made it seem as if New York were stitched of two weathers. I was returning home from an audition, walking west past the Juilliard School, when, to my right, I heard a persistent rapping on glass. A car’s window hummed down, erasing my reflection, to reveal Naomi’s face.

“Well,” she said, “if it isn’t the movie star.”

Naomi had a newspaper draped over her steering wheel and a cup of coffee in her hand. She wore the same expression as when we’d first met: open-mouthed, expectant. I was as surprised to see her myself, and just as pleased—it was as if by thinking of our time together at the party I’d somehow summoned her. When I asked why she was parked here, she explained that her daughters, Danny and Jackie, were in the school’s program, they were performing in New York City Ballet’sThe Nutcrackerand rehearsed at the school. “But the Mouse King’s soldiers,” she said, “Mother Ginger’s kids.” She rolled her eyes. “Not big parts or anything.” When Naomi asked where I was headed, I told her we lived just downthe block, between Amsterdam and West End, in response to which she looked toward the river and said, “Huh.” I’d moved closer to her window and now stood slightly bent, a thumb hooked beneath my book bag’s strap, my other hand at rest on her door, waiting—for what, I wasn’t sure. She seemed to be waiting as well—her eyes darted across mine—but then said, “Come sit before you freeze to death.”

It wasn’t especially cold, but I came around and, once seated, Naomi rolled up her window, sealing off the city’s noise. We smiled at each other. Naomi sat up straight and then took her necklace’s pendant in her fingers, running it up and down its chain. She watched me watch this, and when our eyes met again, she said her daughters wouldn’t be finished for at least an hour. There was the distinct feeling, which would dominate our time together that year, that each was waiting for the other to make a decision. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?” she asked. I shook my head. I leaned forward to look out her window at the school’s entrance, at the kids milling about, at the pedestrians passing by. “Okay,” she said, and, almost gingerly, turned the key in the ignition. She listened to the Mercedes idle; she shifted into drive but kept her foot on the brake; she put her hands on the wheel, then pressed her back against the seat, locking out her arms and thinking for a moment. “Okay,” she repeated, then checked her side mirror. And we left.

Of that first drive I recall a few distinct impressions. The way Naomi signaled and then calmly glanced at her side mirrors before changing lanes. How she turned the wheel one-handed and let it hiss against her palm when it spun back. Were these acts memorable because my mom did not drive? The breadth of the car itself: how it seemed less an interior and more like a room. The pretense that we were in no rush, but if we stopped moving it might alter the mood or our ease together. Yet there also hung over us a kind of anxiety, a feeling, nearly impossible to articulate, that she was looking for someplace toget to,one that was specific but as yet unknown, and this made her slightly distracted and me more watchful, on the lookout, as if I’d been appointed her navigator but lacked both a destination and a map.

We turned north first, up Amsterdam, toward Seventy-Second Street, where it intersected with Broadway, and when the Ansonia came into view—that famous hotel with its Caribbean-blue railings and blackmansard roof, the turquoise patina on torpedo-shaped turrets and porthole windows—I remarked that it always reminded me of a castle from Atlantis. I immediately felt stupid for saying so, thinking my comment childish. But surprisingly, Naomi agreed. She leaned toward me, as if she were telling me a secret, and said, “You know, the original owner kept cows on the roof,” a fact I tried to picture. My interest prompted her to head west again, so we might pass before the building, then to Riverside Drive, where Naomi continued north once more. The Hudson, visible beyond the park, ran on our left. Naomi gestured toward the buildings on our right—“These gorgeous pre-wars,” she said wistfully, remarking that she sometimes wished she could move the girls into the city and ditch the Long Island commute. “ ‘But where would the kids play?’ Sam says. ‘And what about my cars?’ ” I shook my head, sharing in her disappointment. Naomi added, “Ridiculous, right? But what are you gonna do?” The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument rose into view, that cylindrical structure whose columns make it look like a Gatling gun. I told her it was a favorite place to roller-skate when we’d lived this far uptown, just a couple of blocks from the apartment where we’d moved after the fire.

“What fire?” she asked.

I launched into my story with great flair, albeit a truncated version, since it would be years before Dad filled me in on the events with Salvatore, and Mom had yet to tell me her version of that night. I had long before discovered how riveting adults found this tale—Naomi was no exception—one I’d edit with each retelling. I had learned to give extra attention to certain moments for dramatic effect: The coat I’d ignited, visible beneath the combusting plastic, like the burning bush. The parade of firemen, shouldering their tanks and wearing masks as they marched into our lobby. The splash Dad’s feet made as he carried me from room to room on our tour. And then his final command, like a door slamming shut. “Oh my God,” Naomi said when I finished. “Why would he do that to you?” Her question shook me. I had never thought to doubt his decision. Unsettled, but putting on my best face, I suggested we head down West End Avenue, so I could show her our former building, the one we’d moved into after the fire, and see if Pete, a beloved doorman, was standing out front. “There’s Pete,” I said, as we proceeded south, and, passing it, I told her about the apartment’s size, how much larger it wascompared with the one we lived in now. I mentioned this with neither regret nor shame, since I didn’t think of our circumstances in terms of fallen station. I described the apartment fondly: its enclosed dining room, around whose table Oren and I often raced our bikes, and in which Mom sometimes locked herself to type her undergraduate essays; my bedroom at the apartment’s far end, off the kitchen, where I had my own TV and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Oren’s room, where we kept our bunk beds, and which had its own shower and bath. The living room, which looked out over West End Avenue, and from whose open windows you could hear the trees rustle spring through fall.

“Sounds like a nice place,” Naomi said. “How long did you live there?”

“Two years,” I said.

When she asked why we’d moved back to Lincoln Towers, I explained that we’d been “priced out,” parroting my father, forced to vacate because the landlord, Mr. Moses, had wanted to take it “co-op,” a word I uttered with Dad’s same headshaking amazement at people’s greed in spite of the fact that I barely understood what it meant. Naomi considered this as she drove. She had her near hand on the wheel, her elbow propped against the window and a knuckle pressed to her lips. Now I see that she was pondering the reversals my family had suffered, although what happened next was just as consequential. We came to a stop, upon which she turned to face me and half smiled—a concerned, bittersweet expression I mimicked but did not understand. She reached out and placed her palm on my cheek. I had never been touched like this. I felt strangely stirred, a little sad, and I closed my eyes, instantly, like one of those dolls when you tip back its head, and then leaned my face’s weight against her. I was so tired suddenly—my relief was so palpable—I thought I might fall asleep. I could feel Naomi take my temple’s pulse, its fillips traveling along her fingertips and up her arm. She slowly exhaled; it was close to a sigh. I had to swallow but refused, lest Naomi hear it. The light changed. She removed her hand to take the wheel, gripping it in both fists. She shook her hair away from her sunglasses, and we drove back to my street without speaking. She pulled into the driveway. Before I got out of the car we said goodbye very formally, perhaps a bit hurriedly, and then I watched her drive to West End Avenue, signal left, and disappear.

Did I reflect on our talk? Was I stirred toward introspection afterward? Did I consider, for instance, that the next catastrophe might evict my family from the city altogether? That the next success might permanently transport us to roomy luxury uptown? More likely, upon arriving home—before I reached beneath my shirt’s collar and produced our key from where it hung on a ball chain—I placed my ear to the door and listened. Hearing nothing, I entered. To confirm that I was alone, I called outhello.Probably I went straight to the kitchen, through our living/dining area, and poured myself a bowl of cereal. Maybe I sat at the table, in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors Dad had installed—an improvement, he liked to say, that made the space “seem bigger”—and contemplated the nutrition label. Or gazed through our windows’ third-floor view to the top of the Empire State Building’s antenna. More likely, I went to my study, a large closet off this open-floor plan, and, after finishing my Raisin Bran, placed an LP on the turntable, put on Dad’s headphones, and, standing before the closed door, played some air guitar and lip-synched the lyrics, pretending to be a jukebox hero to my roaring fans. Or I caught the second half ofThe 4:30 Movieon Mom and Dad’s television, lying on their bed. Or I stood on their dresser and from Mom’s track shelves above this—another improvement of Dad’s—where all her books from grad school were kept, pulled down, say,The Magic MountainorMoby-Dickand, having long ago discovered this was where Dad stashed his dough, plucked a crisp five-spot from its center and then walked up West End Avenue to Stanley’s Stationery Store to playAsteroids.Or I climbed to my top bunk and read a comic book. Or lay with my legs climbing the wall and, tilting my head backward, over the mattress, pretended our ceiling was a pristine floor. Or I marveled at Farrah Fawcett in her red swimsuit—her poster was above my pillows—as she stared at me upside down. It never occurred to me to masturbate, since no one had taught me how.

Dad usually got home before Mom; Mom, returning from teaching ballet, arrived soon after and went straight to the kitchen to make dinner. Oren, back from cross-country practice, entered our room and turned on the radio that sat atop his desk, or our small Sony TV atop our dresser, or both. Later Mom called us to the table. Every night of the week, and almost without fail, we gathered to eat. Mom served us andthen sat with her back to the mirrors, blocking my view of myself. Dad was to my left; Oren, to my right. “What’d you get into today?” Mom might ask me. Conversation, having commenced, was always lively and wide-ranging. We were, after all, a gregarious, performative bunch, and no subject was off-limits, except for the secrets we wittingly or unwittingly kept from one another—the ones, in my case, I knew not to tell, and the others I didn’t know were secrets at all.

—

The following week, when I spotted Naomi’s Mercedes in front of Juilliard again—she had her usual newspaper and coffee—I was so excited to see her I walked around to the passenger door without an invitation and got in. She, too, seemed keenly impatient and eager, as if she had a surprise for me, and immediately drove down Sixty-Sixth Street, crossing West End Avenue, descending a hill and then making a right turn to a short, four-block stretch Oren and I knew well that ran parallel to the Hudson and ended at Seventieth. It is now named Freedom Place, but then it had none, at least to my knowledge. It has since been developed by Trump into waterfront properties, mixed-use luxury apartment towers built on a brand-new avenue west of it called Riverside Boulevard. These begin at Seventy-Second Street and terminate ten blocks south, skyscrapers that stand nearly shoulder to shoulder, casting long shadows in the afternoon that block everyone else’s view. But back then the street was merely a dead space. Its east side was fronted by a massive, windowless, two-story parking garage that stretched nearly its entire length, whose brick facade shivered with heat haze in the summer; and since it lacked any entrance or egress besides its giant blue louver doors, the whole area felt sealed off. Above it was one of Lincoln Towers’ parks, with benches for the elderly and a playground Oren and I often visited, but from below all you could see was the ivy lining its railings and a few of its taller trees. Along the street’s west side, meanwhile, there ran a concrete wall topped with a high chain-link fence Oren and I often scaled and then peered over. This secured what were then several hundred feral acres stretching north to Seventy-Second Street and south as far as the eye could see. We never risked vaulting to its other side, for the jump down was significant—too far, perhaps, for us to climb out afterward, and vagrants were thought to live there. This land was reed-covered andwild, dotted with the rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles and appliances peeking out from its high grasses. The breeze carried the loamy gray-green smell of the Hudson along with the stink of dead fish and trash. Its expanse continued to slope all the way to the waterfront but first ran beneath the West Side Highway, whose sibilant traffic we could hear like wind in a shell, interrupted by sporadic detonations, louder than gunshots, that tires made as they struck the steel road plates bolted to its lanes—permanently, it seemed. Absent pedestrians, this street was barren by day and forbidding at night, so isolated it was to be avoided entirely. But because of this there was always a place to park, which was why I’d assumed we’d come here. Only years later did it occur to me that Naomi had gone looking for it, that it was a place she’d watched for during our first drive and had dreamed of afterward, so close by it must have seemed genie-granted, and it was along this strip of two-lane road, hidden in plain sight, that she and I could be alone.

Naomi cut the engine. I watched her keys stop swinging in the ignition switch. She tucked her right foot beneath her leg and turned to face me—the car’s seats were wide enough for that—her mouth close enough to mine that I could smell her breath. We talked for a while. I’d been having a terrible time and explained everything as best I could. When I finished, Naomi said something encouraging and, under cover of my brightening expression, leaned across the console and kissed me.

She gently pressed her lips to my cheek, and her hair fell across my face, but instead of breaking away she remained still. An even greater silence settled over the car. My mouth was urged toward her ear’s small hillock with a soft nudge of her temple, and my indrawn breath caused her to shiver. She retreated, albeit slowly, pulling back until the moment the edges of our parted lips brushed each other’s. On this verge, Naomi delicately reached out to lay her palm against my shoulder. And then she closed her eyes, which I saw because I stole a glance at her now upturned face, at her mysterious expression, which was as much like an inward search for a muscle’s painful knot, for its precise locus, as it was the enjoyment of something abstract, so that she appeared to be listening to an almost too beautiful piece of music. Because I was an actor and knew the role I was inhabiting, I could perform these gestures along with her, utter the same soft sounds—mirroring her, as if it were an exercise,while remaining utterly aloof. We saw each other many times during that month, always returning to this place, carefully approaching this boundary and considering what lay beyond it, just as Oren and I stood with our fingers laced through the chain link. For a time, her hesitance was inviolate, a line she’d drawn between us that I instinctually realized was dependent upon me to cross. But because I was only a boy and inexperienced in these matters, I did not know how.

Nor would I necessarily have done so, given the chance. The truth was that I felt no physical desire for her—not then, at least. What Ididwant, what I desperately needed, was her audience. Hers was a great comfort I could find nowhere else, but securing it required I take on a specific role: one of a young man who seemed outwardly confident but was inwardly unsure, a watchful boy so lacking in adult guidance he’d been forced, in nearly all matters, to improvise. Every time I saw her that year, I did the very thing required of me whenever I stepped in front of the camera: I played myself.

—

On Saturday mornings, Dad, Oren, and I took the subway downtown to Elliott’s Gramercy Park office. On the weekends, the trains seemed to pause longer on the platforms, leaving a quieter wake as they disappeared down the tunnels. Elliott’s office was on the first floor of an apartment building, with a separate entrance that faced the gated park. You walked down a half flight of steps, then made a left at the end of a dark hallway into the small waiting room, against whose walls were arranged several chairs. The space had five offices: if you were standing in its entrance, then the one to your immediate left belonged to Elliott; the one directly across from you, on the far wall, was used by his daughter, Deborah, also a psychologist; his son-in-law, Eli, a psychiatrist and sex therapist, had the office to the right of hers; to the right of Eli’s, on the adjacent wall, was the office leased to a psychologist named Brian, memorable, back then, for his size—he was six-six, easily. There was also a darkened, unoccupied office with a phone—this between Elliott’s and Deborah’s—of which my father often availed himself to “check in with his service” for messages, in spite of the fact that it was the weekend and local calls weren’t free. When he excused himself to do this, it also required he close the door. I too closed the door, sneaking in once Dad and Elliott hadstarted their session and pressing my ear to the wall, but I couldn’t hear anything beyond a low mumble.

Nor was anything audible from the waiting room. A small noise-canceling machine emitted a wet, staticky sound that made eavesdropping impossible. Some mornings, Al Moretti was there, and he and my father immediately engaged in conversation that was impossible to ignore, since both men were incapable of whispering. Finally, Elliott appeared. There was a great whoosh at his door opening, like the breaching of an air lock, followed by an outrush, a gust, of emotion—a complicated current of condolence, gratitude, and relief buoying a patient as they made their way out the door, dreamy, happy, clearly having just wept, and sometimes all of the above.

Dad went first, he and Elliott often departing for a walk come rain or shine. To kill time, Oren and I often brought along our baseball mitts or a football and were just as often discouraged by the street’s doormen, and so we reconciled ourselves to reading the magazines—Time, Newsweek,or theEconomist—which in my case meant looking at the pictures and graphs. The boredom was profound. If Al Moretti deigned to talk to us (this only after Dad had left), the conversations were brief. “How’s school goin’?” he’d ask, and while we muttered, “Fine,” or made the effort to mention a book we were reading or subject we were studying, he’d trace a knuckle against the wall, considering the picture only he could see in the wallpaper. When we were finished, he’d say, “Well, workhahd.” Then he’d shake his head with disgusted remorse and, frowning viciously, add, “God knows I didn’t.”

Oren went second, glumly entering Elliott’s office and exiting a half hour later even more abashed, slumping in his chair afterward and hiding his face behind a periodical.

I always went last.

In our household, Elliott was referred to so often it was a bit like belonging to a cult. “You know what Elliott callsthat,” Dad said, nodding over his shoulder after a guy carrying a boom box passed us. “Ego boundaries.” Or of attorneys: “Know Elliott’s name for them?The Gray People.” (This in spite of the fact that his son, Matthew, was a lawyer.) I might tell Mom, “It bothers me when Dad gets up from the dinner table to take calls from his agency,” or “How come Dad’s eye twitches when helies?” or, in a bit of real nastiness, “Who is Dad calling every time we go to see Elliott?”; and, after pausing to inwardly smile at the confirmation of her grievances, at the fact that her dissatisfactions were grounded in a shared reality, she’d respond, without fail, “You should talk to Elliott about that.” In Dad’s case, I might ask, “Why does Mom sometimes slur her words at night?” or “Why does Mom say none of your friends are her friends?” or “How come every time we ask Mom why she’s crying she says it’s private?” to which he’d shake his head, in a bid, I always thought, for kinship or allegiance, and reply, “Your mother is a complicated woman.” In this way, it wasn’t just my questions or concerns about my parents that were to be likewise outsourced but also their questions about each other.

Elliott waved me into his office, and indicated I should close the door, after which I sat. He too sat quietly for a while, writing several notes on a scratch pad with a silver Space Pen, which I coveted. I knew not to disturb him as he gathered his thoughts about Oren, but I still peeked unsuccessfully at his elegant microscript, wondering what he might have to scribble about me later. Elliott was roundish and short. He always wore a bespoke suit to work, its solid colors trending from navy blue to black, his shirts monogrammed on the cuff, his chin hiding his tie’s fat knot behind his wattle. The room was illuminated by a single lamp on the side table. A tall, framed, Japanese painting of a frog hung on the wall between us, looming in the semidarkness, an elegant creature I thought strongly resembled Elliott himself—the pair of them squat, large-eyed, wide-mouthed, and lacking a neck.

“Well, sir,” Elliott would finally say, still not entirely focused, removing his readers and carefully placing them in their case, “what have you got for me?” And this question magically erased every subject my parents suggested I discuss with him as well as any I might have brought up on my own. Most Saturdays, this led to much blathering on my part, the usual child-adult pabulum, broader in scope but as shallow in content as my brief chats with Al, and several minutes into my update, without fail, Elliott would begin to doze.

This was my favorite part of therapy. I’d continue talking as his lids got heavy—bemoaning my struggles in math, say, or expressing my excitement about the approach of wrestling season—waiting for him to nod off, his body listing sideways while I counted his catnap’s seconds,beginning a new subject the moment he snapped awake, just to see if he was listening, which he was not.

“Is that right?” Elliott asked, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy, and I’d continue down this different path, enjoying myself in an animal-trainer sort of way, watching Elliott drift again, trying to beat his previous snooze’s duration, counting Mississippis until his head jerked violently and he said, “How about we go for a walk?”

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