The play’s terrible. Everything about it: acting, writing, characterizations, laugh lines that aren’t funny, romantic and tender scenes and one tragic one — a soldier learns his brother has been killed in battle in Europe — that are cloying, boring, totally unconvincing, something, but they’re awful. Fifteen minutes into the play, he wishes he hadn’t come to it. He’d leave but thinks that would disturb the actors: walking up the aisle, opening the door and trying not to make a sound. If he’s lucky, he thinks, it’ll be a short act.
The first act lasts for about an hour and a half. Maybe it only felt that long because he was so bored by it and it was a half hour or so less. The audience applauds at the end of it. He doesn’t. The actors leave the stage. Lights come on. Three teenagers immediately start rearranging the furniture on stage — letting down the blinds, removing one cot. He hurries up the aisle, gets his jacket and puts it on in the lobby. He seems to be the first one there. The girl who gave him the program is sitting behind the card table with a woman — they look like mother and daughter — selling candy bars and what seem like homemade brownies and cupcakes with pink and white frosting and fruit juice in paper cups. He was wrong. The money will go to some children’s group of the church, a sign on the table says. “Would you like to buy a refreshment?” the girl says as he’s putting on his cap. “No thanks, sweetheart,” he says. “Maybe some other time,” and he leaves the church. Outside, he thinks she looked disappointed when he said no. And that was so stupid what he said about some other time. He was in too great a rush to get out of there. He should have bought something even if he didn’t eat or drink it. She probably even made the brownies and cupcakes with her mother. Well, others will buy. He can’t always feel bad for everyone. There’ll have to be some sales. Others might even buy just because they don’t want to disappoint the girl by saying no. And it’d be silly and seem peculiar to go back and buy something, though something in him wants to.
He gets home, changes into his bathrobe, sits in the easy chair in the living room and reads the op-ed articles in the newspaper. He has a drink, then a second. Place is nice and warm. He makes himself a tuna melt with tuna salad he made the day before and sits in the easy chair and eats it. So. Was it worth it going to the play? He feels no pride, or relief, or whatever it is, that he finally got out of the house to go to a performance of some kind. Because what did it prove? He now feels even worse than before he went. Why? He just does. Oh, damn, why does it always have to be this way? He feels even less willing now to go alone to some future concert or movie or a play done by professionals in a real theater in the city. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get in his car to go to one if it means he has to go alone. He didn’t feel good sitting by himself in the vestry, and it wasn’t just the boring play. Though there were, though he only got quick looks before the room went dark, a couple of attractive women there with women friends, it seemed. Who knows? If he had stayed he might have been able to start a conversation with one of them during the intermission in the anteroom or the lobby while he had a refreshment, the fruit juice, probably; he’s not much for candy or cake. But what is he thinking? From what he saw, they were too young for him. Thirty years younger than he at least. That will always be the case, it seems. Ah, don’t be so down on yourself. It doesn’t always have to be the case. He might meet someone somewhere accidentally, or a friend could set up something or introduce him to her, and things could start up between them. “This was fun. Like to meet for coffee someday?” That sort of thing. He doesn’t have to think it’s too late for him. Just stay in shape and be ready to say the right thing to get or keep things going. Someone to go to a play with and later talk about it, even the awful plays. Someone who might do the driving-home after, if she’s staying at his place that night, or he at hers. All of that could happen. He has to think it can. Oh, dream on, dream on.
What They’ll Find
He wakes up, washes, dresses, makes the bed, lets the cat out, and right after he puts his sneakers on for a short run, he gets a sharp pain in his stomach. He lies down on his bed, doesn’t know what’s causing the pain but thinks it’ll go away. It gets worse and won’t stop. He sits on the toilet awhile, thinking maybe it’s that, but nothing comes. Three hours after he first got the pain, and when it’s hurting even worse than before, he decides to drive to Emergency in the hospital about two miles away. He puts on his muffler, coat and cap, gets his wallet out of the sideboard in the dining room and his keys off the hook by the front door, but feels too weak to drive and sits down by the phone in his wife’s old study and dials 911. EMU comes, checks him over, has him walk to the truck outside and lie down on the gurney in back, and takes him to Emergency. He dies two hours later. In his wallet, under a two-by-three-inch piece of transparent plastic — it’s the first thing one sees when the wallet’s opened — is a handwritten note that says “If I should die unexpectedly or be incapacitated, my name is Philip Seidel, SS#099-56-3324. Instructions on other side.” He wrote that and inserted it in his wallet after he got out of the hospital the last time. The instructions say “Call my daughters, first one first,” and gives their names and cell phone numbers. “If neither’s reachable, call Aaron Henry,” and gives his home, office and cell phone numbers. “If he’s unreachable, call Maggie Rothman,” who was his wife’s best friend since they were freshmen in college together and became sort of a surrogate mother to his daughters after his wife died, and gives her phone numbers, though she lives in New York, as do his daughters. Next he gives his own address and home phone number. Underneath this folded-up slip of paper are two sterile adhesive bandages and several passport and school yearbook photos of his wife and daughters, all of them at least ten years old, which is about how long he’s had the wallet, and one of them his wife’s visa photo to the Soviet Union that goes back to three years before he met her.