The play had absolutely nothing to do with space, nothing to do with planets. It was all about Joe and Judy Moon and their mentally retarded daughter who live—guess where? Pluto, Missouri. Which is not even a real place.
The play was definitely not my cup of tea. You believed everything but it was boring. You kept hoping the mentally retarded girl could secretly fly or read people’s minds, but this wasn’t the case. She was just retarded, and she hardly had any lines. What a role for an actor, it was mostly about drooling.
Ma wore a black dress with silver flowers on it. I forgot what a wonder she can be when she tries. She put her hair up and let a few snakes of it fall down the back of her neck. Da wore a black suit that made him look like a millionaire. It could have been the two of them before I existed.
I just wore jeans and a sweater. I’m saving the fashion fireworks for tomorrow. I’ve already chosen Helene’s dress. My dress. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better by then. My stom-ach’s still a little funny from everything that happened at that stupid play. My head’s not too great either. What a night, I’m telling you. Odious. Odious with cherries on top.
Our seats were good but at a bad play good seats are the last thing you want. It’s like death row. Da sat on the aisle and Ma sat next to him and then me. At one point Da took Ma’s hand. It was the sad part of the play when Judy Moon is talking about her life before Joe, when she was a professional ice skater. The signs outside the theater said “funny and touching,” but I didn’t laugh once. Da laughed exactly three times but only through his nose.
What was interesting was thinking about how these people were not really Joe and Judy Moon. They weren’t married in real life because in real life they were actors. In real life his name was William Miller and her name was Cynthia Callis. I kept feeling sorry for them except I didn’t know who I was feeling sorry for, Joe and Judy or William and Cynthia.
At intermission Ma ran into the bathroom. Da and I waited in the lobby. He had a glass of wine and I had a juice and a cookie.
“What do you think?” Da said.
“I thought it was supposed to be funny,” I said.
“It’s a different kind of funny,” Da said.
“What kind?” I asked him. But he didn’t answer me. He sipped his wine and looked up at the paintings on the ceiling.
“How about that?” he said. He sort of got lost up there.
Lately I’ve noticed Da is starting to disappear. He’s basically following Ma, but where is she even going?
“How’s your cookie?” he said.
“Awful,” I said.
I glanced around at the snazzy crowd in the lobby and I thought about the people who died at the opera last year. Drinking wine and eating cookies just like us. Da kept looking toward the bathroom. He looked nervous.
“She’s been in there a long time, huh?” He said it like maybe he wanted help.
I asked him did he want me to go get her. And just then the lights went on and off a few times, which means get back to your seat.
“You go and sit down,” Da said.
I just stood there. For some reason I felt like the three of us should stick together.
“Go on,” Da said. “That way you can tell us what happened if we miss anything. You know where our seats are, right?”
I nodded and then I just left him standing there with the glass of wine glowing in his hand. I didn’t look back. I’m superstitious about looking back at someone when you’re walking away from them, on account of that story about the musician who messes everything up when he’s walking out of the underworld. He gets the chance of a lifetime, but he’s twitchy and he blows it.
In the theater the curtain was closed but you could feel people breathing behind it. When I got to my seat the woman next to me looked over and smiled. “Are you having a nice time, honey?”
She was old and smelled like potpourri.
“Yes,” I said.
“I love that little girl,” she said. “Breaks your heart.”
“Do you think it’s funny?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “The mother’s a card.”
I said to the old lady how I didn’t hear her laughing and she said she was laughing inside. Which I thought was an interesting comment. She patted her chest to show me where the secret laughter was hiding. And then the lights went down and she said, “Shhh,” as if I was the one who started the stupid conversation.
When the curtain parted it was a completely different world. The living room had vanished and the whole stage was white. You couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be the North Pole or heaven or were they just trying to blind us. The light was crazy bright.
Lucy Moon was onstage all by herself. Lucy was the daughter. She just stood there and for a long time nothing happened. It was like a mistake. Then finally Lucy started to make sounds. Half animal and half baby. I thought maybe this was supposed to be the funny part. I looked at the old lady next to me and she had her hand over her mouth and her eyes were all buggy.
When I looked back at the stage it had started to snow. It was fake snow but somehow even better than real snow. It was pretty amazing actually. Lucy Moon looked to her right and then to her left and then all of a sudden she screamed. It was the cry of the wild.
When Lucy stopped screaming she looked out into the audience. She looked right at me. I was in the third row, pretty close. “Help me,” she said. I didn’t like the sound of that. I turned around but I couldn’t see Ma or Da anywhere. When I looked back at the stage Lucy was still staring at me.
“I want to go home,” she said. But retarded-like. She was practically crying.
I could feel the heat moving up my neck.
I turned to the old lady. She made a gesture like I should get up and do something.
“It’s a play,” I said.
I had no idea what the hell was happening, it was like I was dreaming.
The old lady put her mouth by my ear. “Audience participation,” she said.
Lucy was holding out her hand toward me.
“I don’t know the lines,” I said. My neck was really burning. Even my throat was on fire.
“Be a good sport,” the old lady said. And she pushed me a little.
I looked at Lucy and I shook my head. Everybody was staring at me. I could feel the cookie moving around in my stomach. Finally Lucy turned to someone else thank god, a man in a red shirt. He got up from his seat and climbed the stairs toward the stage. The old lady clicked her tongue at me. Fuck you, I said. Except I didn’t say it for real. I said it inside ha ha like her stupid laughter.
And I don’t even know what the man in the red shirt did for Lucy because I’d turned to look for Ma and Da again. But the next thing I knew the snow had stopped and Lucy was kissing the man’s cheek. Thank you, she said. Dank you. I watched the man go back to his seat, smiling and brushing the fake snow from his shoulders like he was some kind of hero. And when I looked back at the stage all the furniture was there again, I don’t know how they did it. And there was Lucy, safe and sound, smack in the middle of her living room. And then Joe and Judy entered like nothing had happened and the stupid chitchat started up again.
That’s when I threw up on Ma’s empty seat. I kept my head down in case it happened again. I felt a tap on my shoulder. But it wasn’t them.