Free Broadway Baby by Alan Shapiro

twin beds. Every now and then, not often, they’d find their parents in the same bed, and something in the way they lay there tangled together told them not to enter, and they returned to the damp sheets upstairs. On those mornings, there was an indefinable sadness in the house; the rooms grew spacious with loneliness. Th ey didn’t know how or why. Th eir mother moved as in a daze to get them dressed, to make them breakfast; she was distracted, elsewhere, moving in slow motion, trudging it seemed across a foreign land, a desert, as if, if she paused even for a moment, she would collapse and die. Th eir father looked somehow defeated, like a center fielder who started running in at the crack of the ball, then realized too late that he’d gone the wrong way and could only watch as the ball flew over his head, beyond the outstretched glove. Mornings were like that when the boys found them in the same bed, although it happened less and less often. And then they almost never found them in the same bed. And almost anytime they wanted, whether they wet the bed or not, Ethan could get in next to Curly, and Sam could slip into the crack between the mattresses.

Scene V
    Of the three children, only Julie wanted to go to summer camp. Th e boys were too young and besides both were bed wetters. But Julie couldn’t wait to go to Camp Winnipesaukee where several of her friends were going, and of course unlike her friends, she wanted to go for the entire eight-week session. Of course she boarded the bus happily, without a tear, without a wave good-bye—and of course she seldom wrote and when she did it was just to Sam, and when visiting day came four weeks later, and Miriam and Curly drove the three hours up to see her, what did she do as she came down the path with the other campers, all of whom when they saw their parents ran to greet them—what did Julie do? She smiled and waved and then ran right past them with another girl who wanted to introduce her to her parents whom Julie, of course, was happy, even eager, to meet.

Scene VI
    In the summertime for the next few years, on the rare Saturdays when Curly wasn’t needed at the slaughterhouse, he’d take the family to the beach.
    Th ey’d carry their beach bags full of toys and towels over the hot sand to the middle of a mass of bodies. In the far distance where the shore curved sharply eastward out into the water, they could see the bright white roller coaster from the amusement park rise above the grassy dunes. All around them they could hear the tiny buzzing of thousands of transistor radios—“Young at Heart” on one side, and on the other “Hound Dog” or “Fly Me to the Moon.” Th ey could hear children squealing in the surf and on the shore among the glistening teenage boys and girls parading back and forth. Overhead, contrails of jets too high to see would scratch a razor-thin white line across the sky, and slower planes closer to the ground would pass pulling banners advertising tires and restaurants. Everywhere, too, the odor of coconut oil and French fries, salt and sand. Everywhere laughter and small talk. Summertime, Miriam sang to herself, and the livin’ is easy.
    Ethan would show Sam how to build a sand castle, which meant Ethan played with the pail and shovel while Sam looked on. Eventually, of course, Sam would want to do more than watch, and Miriam would have to get up and tell Ethan to share. He would stomp off in a huff, but sooner or later (usually sooner) he’d return and the boys would play together. Miriam would then lie back down next to Curly, her leg brushing his or his hers while men, even those with women, would look down admiringly at Miriam’s sleek figure, and women, even those with men, would glance at Curly’s chiseled frame.
    Th e day was spacious, with nothing to do except lie there and be noticed while you noticed others. And yet at the end of it how tired they always were, but tired without the crankiness they often felt at home in