“Awesome!” Mark punched him on the arm. “You gave it to the soulful vixen! You’re gonna get some lovin’ tonight. If you want it, that is!”
“No,” Philip said. “We’re just friends.” But even he knew how lame that sounded.
“Whoa, dude.” Mark looked at him in disbelief. “You gave a ticket to a sold-out Broadway show to a chick, not so you could make the ultimate moves on her, but because you’re ‘friends’? You gave it to her out of ‘friendship’?”
“Yes.”
“Whoa,” Mark said. “Whoa. That is some gay thing to do.”
“What’s going on in here?” Mrs. Nebbling peeked into their bedroom. Boys’ bedrooms tended to be funky, and the Nebbling boys’ room was no exception. Between the gym shoes, the dirty laundry, and the half-eaten snacks that had fallen behind the bookshelves, Mrs. Nebbling would have been wise to don her hazmat suit before entering.
“How does pizza for dinner sound?” Mrs. Nebbling asked. “I’ve got a ton more work to do, so I’m not going to get around to making anything. Unless you boys want to cook?”
Naturally, Mrs. Nebbling thought the boys could cook. Why shouldn’t she? Every time she’d called from Wilmington and asked Mark what they’d had for dinner, he’d made something up. Baked ziti. Steaks. Fried chicken. Sometimes he even mentioned a vegetable.
“Philip will make something,” Mark volunteered. “You people are so good in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Nebbling frowned. “Mark, come on. That’s a stereotype. It’s up to Philip to decide whether or not he likes to cook, or be an astronaut, or, I don’t know, run for Congress—”
“Or just go see lots of Broadway musicals!” crowed Mark.
“Well, we already know he likes to do that.” Mrs. Nebbling smiled. “Mushrooms, pepperoni? What’ll it be?”
It’s up to Philip to decide. The phrase tightened around Philip’s throat. When had it ever been up to Philip to decide anything? His mother, his father, Mark—they all came and went as they pleased and did whatever they wanted, didn’t they? Philip was the one who was trapped in the chaos they left behind.
He stood up, in a sudden fury. “I am not eating pizza for dinner tonight or ever again,” he said. “I’ve eaten pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner four days a week for months, and that is enough for one lifetime!”
“What are you talking about, dude?” said Mark. “What about that nice steak I made you the other day? With the, what-do-you call-’ems? Carrots?”
Philip yanked open his dresser drawer and rummaged wildly for the fake ID Mark had given him for his birthday. “Steak?” he snarled. “Don’t you mean ‘fake’?” His intention was to shove it in his mother’s face and show her just what kind of liar Mark was, but she was looking at him with such kindness he froze.
“Philip!” Mrs. Nebbling said. “Please! I know this is a stressful time for you. I’ve been reading about how difficult it can be for a boy your age to accept his sexual orientation, even with a supportive family structure—”
“Did you check out that PFLAG reading list I e-mailed you, Mom?” said Mark, all but batting his eyes in innocence.
“Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, yes, that was very thoughtful, Mark. See, Philip? There’s no need to lash out at your brother and me—”
“Would you please listen!” said Philip, still clutching the ID in his hand. “I am not talking about my sexual orientation! I am talking about what I want for dinner! And it is not pizza. It can be hamburgers, Chinese food, cheese and crackers, or a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup, but not pizza! Okay?”
“Okay,” said Mrs. Nebbling cautiously. “But don’t you think all this anger is really about the fact that you’re still struggling—”
“And stop with the gay thing!” Philip yelled. “Like whether or not I’m gay is the most important thing about me! It’s not, okay? I’m sixteen years old and I’ve never even had sex with anyone, so who cares?”
A red-letter day this was turning out to be, but Philip was helpless to stop himself. “You’re my mother!” he babbled on, like it needed saying. “You’re the only parent I’ve got who lives on the same coast as me! Wouldn’t it be more important to know if I’ve done my homework?” He looked at Mark, who was engrossed in pulling loose threads out of his socks. “Or if I need a ride home from school? Or who my friends are, or where I spend my time when I’m not here?”
Philip realized with horror that there were tears running down his cheeks, but it was too late to turn back. “Or if I’m happy?” he shouted. “Or what I want to be when I grow up? Or whether . . . I even . . . care . . .”
He couldn’t say any more. He grabbed his backpack and bolted out of the room.
“Phil,” cried Mrs. Nebbling. “Where are you going?”
“Aurora Aurora Aurora,” Philip answered, but it just sounded like sobbing, even to him. He didn’t bother to get his coat—he just needed to leave, now.
“Come back, dude!” yelled Mark as the front door to D-West slammed shut. “You’re gonna miss the pizza!”
This was how it began, and this was how it would end: Philip Nebbling, angry and on the run from what was left of his family, drowning his sorrows in the glossy, make-believe world of Broadway. Aurora was an urban story with a fair amount of grit, but even so, when the mean streets of the city are filled with dance numbers, and Aurora’s dying mother can belt a B-natural fortissimo and hold it for sixteen beats until the audience leaps to its feet in appreciation, how bad can things really be?
Philip knew the train schedule like the back of his hand, and the 7:03 was what he needed. It was the last train out of Rockville Centre that would get you into the city in time to make curtain. Seven-oh-three, seven-oh-three, seven-oh-three—the chant played in his head like the rumble of train wheels as he walked, even faster than usual to keep warm.
He had no idea what time it was now, but Philip had never missed a train in his life. He was worried that his mother would guess where he was going, though, so he took the back roads and stayed off the most direct routes to the station. She was probably driving up and down those streets right now, looking for him. At least, Philip kind of hoped she was.
Perhaps that was why, when the high, hollow whistle of the train approaching the station shrieked through the cold night air, Philip was still three blocks away.
Like a thoroughbred trained to charge full tilt from the gate at the starter’s pistol, at the sound of the whistle Philip started running as fast as he could, even as his brain realized there was no way, no possible way, he could ever make this train.
“Yes, Mr. Henderson, I understand. No, she’s not sick, but her grandmother is in the hospital and we’ve had some disciplinary issues lately, so her father and I are trying to curtail any unsupervised . . . But you will be supervising? I see. Sprained her ankle! That’s too bad. No, Emily didn’t tell us. And when does the show open? . . . Tomorrow! No, she never mentioned the extra credit. I agree, grades are so important in sophomore year, the colleges certainly do pay attention. . . .”
Mrs. Pearl shut her cell phone. “Stuart, we need to drop Emily at school.”
“I thought we were going to the Toyota dealership.” Mr. Pearl was in a sour mood. Grandma Rose was spending one more night in the hospital—for observation, they’d said, but Mr. Pearl was convinced it was because the doctor was too busy playing golf to come by and sign her discharge papers. And the car was now in need of a new headlight.
“We have to drop Emily first. She was supposed to be at rehearsal a half hour ago.” Mrs. Pearl craned her head around to the backseat. “Emily, why didn’t you tell us you were in the drama club show?”
“I’m not. I’m just the understudy,” Emily said. She was angry because Mr. Pearl had threatened to confiscate her phone permanently when the nurse told him what happened, though he didn’t actually do it. “Why do I have to go? I thought I was grounded.”
“If she doesn’t want to do it, I’m all for it,” said
Mr. Pearl. He changed lanes and headed for the exit that would bring them to Emily’s school.
“Mr. Henderson said he really, really needs your participation,” Mrs. Pearl said, trying to make peace. “He said he admired your moxie for jumping in at the last minute.”
“I’m not in the mood to be in a musical right now,” Emily grumbled, but inside she was thinking, Moxie? Roxie? Is this guy SAVEME or not? Why, oh why can’t I talk to Philip?
“Emily,” Mrs. Pearl said sternly. “The show must go on.”
23
“IT’S A HELLUVA FIX WE’RE IN”
Inferno! The Musical
Unproduced. Author unknown.
Aurora Aurora Aurora. Aurora Aurora Aurora.
Philip sat on the curb hugging his knees, with his backpack in front of his face so no one could see the grief that was written there. Hardly anyone was out anyway; the weather was getting worse and the residents of Rockville Centre were safe inside their cars, not walking about in the open air the way Philip always did.
He was shivering. He opened his backpack in the hope that there might be something stuffed in the bottom, a dirty gym shirt or hoodie that he could put on. But all Philip saw was the producing book he’d picked up yesterday at the Drama Book Shop, and the file folder he’d nicked from Miss O’Malley’s desk. The excitement of meeting Marlena and being given the ticket had made him forget all about the stolen folder.
It’s not so bad, he told himself as he rocked back and forth in the embrace of his own thin arms. It’s not so bad. He had something to read. He had numbers to crunch. He needed to go somplace warm, where he could sit and be welcome and not feel like a freak.
He could only think of one place like that.
By the time Philip boarded the 7:53 in Rockville Centre and rode it all the way to Penn Station, he’d skimmed through most of the book about producing.
The concepts were straightforward enough: you raised money from investors, you used the money to put on the show, you sold tickets, and with that money you covered the “nut” and eventually paid back the investors—but if the show closed before you “recouped” (that was what they called it when you’d made back all the initial cost of the show and actually started seeing a profit), the investors kissed their money goodbye and wrote it off on their taxes as a loss.
And yet it was a puzzling endeavor. To Philip it seemed neither business nor charity, more like flushing your money down the toilet. Still, there was no shortage of people willing to put their cash into such a dicey venture.
Philip had been most surprised to learn it was standard for the writers of a musical to get six percent of the box office. Six percent! That wasn’t very much, considering there would be no show at all without the writers. It seemed even skimpier when you broke it down: two percent for the book writer, two for the lyricist, and two for the composer.
Puzzling or not, these numbers calmed Philip a great deal. He hardly noticed the moment during his train ride when eight o’clock p.m. came and went and the Aurora ticket in his pocket officially became garbage. It was almost nine by the time he got to Don’t Tell Mama.
“Look who’s here! From the hinterlands of suburbia to a piano bar near you!” Ian was leaning against the bar, a Coke in his hand. He’d had a haircut and had let a bit of stubble grow on his face since Wednesday, when Philip had seen him last. He looked more grown-up somehow, and Philip was intensely glad to see him.
“Hey,” said Philip. “Looks like I came to the right place.”
“It’s the only place,” Ian agreed. “Friendly faces and musical theatre! Where’s Emily?”
“I don’t know,” said Philip truthfully. “I came into the city by myself.”
“Huh,” said Ian. “That’s a first. Well, I’m pleasantly surprised to see you. Pull up a drink and have a chair. Stay close to the piano, though—I’ll be performing in a bit!”
What would it be like, thought Philip as he walked across the warm, softly lit room and took a seat at Ian’s table, to sing a song or two myself?
Chinese food for dinner on Friday nights was a Pearl family tradition, but everything seemed like a tradition to Emily at the moment. Tradition, tradition; after three hours of rehearsing Fiddler the word was stuck in her head like gum to the bottom of a chair.
That afternoon the other cast members had been there. It wasn’t so bad, really. Michelle, Cindy, Chantal, and Beth gave her welcoming hugs and helped remind her which scene came next. Lorelei, who watched from the audience with her ankle in a cast and crutches propped nearby, even faked a grateful smile. “Thank you so much, Emily!” she’d said. “You saved the show!” But Emily had seen Lorelei’s lips moving through the whole rehearsal, mouthing every word.
Mr. Henderson had seemed pretty tense, but whether it was because his production of Fiddler was opening the next day or because he was worried about concealing his secret SAVEME identity from Emily, she had no way of knowing.
Emily thought of all this as she picked at her General Tso’s chicken. The vegetable egg foo yong that Grandma Rose always craved was still in its white cardboard container, unopened, since Grandma Rose wouldn’t be home until tomorrow morning and nobody had thought to change the order.
Mr. Pearl was gnawing on a spare rib when the phone rang. Mrs. Pearl got up from her meal to answer, worried that it might be the hospital, but it was Stan’s son. Their conversation contained a number of phrases that, to Emily’s knowledge, had never been spoken in the Pearls’ home before:
“Yes, of course, resisting arrest is quite serious. . . .
“It is a first offense, and at their age . . .
“I know, it’s unfortunate that she closed the window on the officer’s arm. At least he wasn’t injured. . . .”
The more she talked, the more ferociously Mr. Pearl bit into the bone. “Damn!” he suddenly exclaimed, sticking a finger into his mouth. “I think I lost a filling.”
“I have to go,” said Mrs. Pearl, on the phone. “But we’ll see you tomorrow, at the lawyer’s office. Yes, good night!”
She sat down just as Mr. Pearl got up to go examine his tooth. “Tell her about tomorrow,” he mumbled, exploring his mouth with his finger and peering into the hall mirror.
“What’s tomorrow?” Emily knew that whatever her parents had cooked up for tomorrow had to be bad, but she didn’t care. Every conceivable torment paled beside the fact that tomorrow was the very last day of Aurora. At two o’clock there would be a matinee, and then the final closing performance at eight. Did her parents know this? No. Would they care if they did? No. How she wished she could talk to Philip!
Mrs. Pearl sipped her wonton soup delicately before she spoke. “Emily. Your father and I are so worried.”
“They’re not going to send Grandma to jail,” Emily said. “That would be ridiculous.”
“Not ’bout her,” Mr. Pearl called. Having his hand in his mouth reduced him to caveman speak. “ ’Bout you.”
“There has been an awful lot of lying going on,” Mrs. Pearl said. “We understand that you’re sixteen now and entitled to some privacy, but this was too much. And all that money!”
“Unacceptable!” her father said with effort as he headed upstairs. “I take Motrin. Go call dentist.”
Mrs. Pearl sighed and turned back to Emily. “We feel you need some help sorting out your values right now, Emily, and your father and I don’t know where to begin. This drama club show of yours—it gave us an idea.” She paused to pick up her chopsticks, though her food was probably cold by now.
“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Pearl said, “we’re taking you to see Rabbi Levin.”
The bartender looked twice at Philip’s fake ID but ultimately poured him a pint of Sam Adams. It didn’t take long for the beer to start going to Philip’s head, since he hadn’t eaten and wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the first place. Ian perched on the edge of the piano bench next to the pianist, leafing through a fat binder full of sheet music and chatting flirtatiously about which ke
ys sat well in his voice and his preferred tempo for each song.
The lighting in Don’t Tell Mama was pleasantly dim, but if you positioned yourself carefully, you could find a little pin spot of light at each table, just enough to read by. Philip sipped his beer and leafed through the spreadsheets from Miss O’Malley’s file. He found comfort in the columns of figures, the beautiful order and predictability of it all. A show was either in the red or in the black. One thing or another; there was no middle ground. No wondering. No waffling. Philip knew it was a high compliment to say of an actor that one would pay to hear him read the phone book, and now he understood why: numbers had no subtext.
“So hey,” Ian said, sliding gracefully into his seat. “I’m still hornswaggled to find you here in town, after dark no less. And don’t be offended, but you look a tad like shit. Is everything okay?”
Philip shrugged. “There was some stuff going on at home. I just needed to get out.” Suddenly words were coming out of his mouth that he hadn’t planned to say. “They keep hammering me about whether or not I’m gay,” he said. “And I think Emily’s mad at me, too.”
Ian’s eyes opened wider, but he just nodded. “I hear you. What happened with Em? You guys are so tight.”
Philip groaned and put his head in his hands. “I asked her to be my girlfriend. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“LaGuardia! You’re on!” It was the pianist, gesturing to Ian.
“Oh,” said Ian. “My. To be continued.” He jumped up and smoothed his pants. “What you need is a song. This one’s for you.”
“What is it?”
Ian’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “Something even Philip Nebbling has never heard before.”
With that, Ian went to the piano and positioned himself behind the mike stand. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned. “Welcome to Don’t Tell Mama’s piano bar, home of the stars of today, tomorrow, and even yesterday. But she’s not working this shift.” There was some rude laughter from the audience. “I will now perform, for the first time ever in public: selections from Inferno! The Musical.” He held up a hand to stifle the audience’s reaction, and spoke with solemn reverence. “Based on the epic poem—by Dante.”
My Life Page 15