← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Playing Games
01:00:01
Guest host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories in which games are featured. Brian Agler’s “The Rules of this Board Game Are Long, But Also Complicated” speaks for itself as the unnamed host of game night makes it clear there is no way to win this one. Meg Wolitzer is the reader. In John Updike’s “Still of Some Use,” a family clears its attic of old games; memories and emotions surface, along with battered boards and random game pieces. The reader is James Naughton. In Susan Perabo’s “Some Say the World,” a fragile young woman holds the world at bay with Parcheesi. The reader is Colby Minifie.
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After investing billions to light up our.
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Network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every.
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@T mobile.com KeepAndSwitch up to four lines.
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Via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported 90 plus days with device.
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Meg Wolitzer
Ineligible carrier and timely redemption required.
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- [00:29]
James Naughton
In six months Tito's handmade vodka had been mixed with its fair share of cocktails, but one night a chilled glass topped with lime and cranberry would change everything this bottle knew about Happy hour from the producers of America's favorite vodka. It turns out the cocktail you've been waiting for was right there the whole time. The Tito's ROM Cosmo. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sip. With Tito's coming to cocktail parties near you@tito's vodka.com 40% alcohol by volume, namely 80 proof, crafted to be savored responsibly.
- [01:10]
Meg Wolitzer
This week on Selected Shorts, authors including John Updike play games, or at least their characters do. And it turns out that from board games to mind games, the stakes are higher than the rules of that particular game. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Pick up your tiles and join me. You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. At first, the word game suggests something light hearted. After all, we've been playing them since childhood. From hide and seek to checkers and beyond, I am what's known as a word person. And I say that not to brag, but to distinguish myself from a numbers person. If I see a number, I get really nervous. Numbers, to me, are like wild animals. I don't know what they're capable of or exactly how to understand them. Words, however, seem closer to domesticated creatures. They've existed in my home for my entire life. I start the day with wordle and Spelling Bee, and I play a few games of Scrabble online with strangers who I know only by their hand scrambles or sometimes by the comments they occasionally hurl. If I win a game, comments such as Nice work, cheater. And yet I go back to the Scrabble board again and again. Because words are what I love. As a writer, my job is arranging words into sentences, paragraphs, stories, essays, novels. But as a Scrabble player, my so called job is rearranging letters into words. It's as simple as that. But with Scrabble and a variety of games, it's often true that somewhere along the line, other elements creep into the field of play. Those untidy human things that are less easy to move around a board. Ego duplicity, Existential absurdity, Love. We thought this was an idea worth poking a stick at, which in the selected shorts world means creating a live evening around the theme. And I got to host it. On this program we share three stories from that evening. They look at games, particularly board games, those little subcultures, as ways of reflecting on, mediating and avoiding life. In the first, the rules of the game are the game. In the second, discarded games call up a lifetime. And in the third, a game helps a damaged soul take control one move at a time. Our first story comes from the sly and savvy multi platform journal McSweeney's. It's Brian Agler's the Rules of this Board Game are Long but Also Complicated, A reader beware title if ever I heard one. Agler was a speechwriter, humorist, and longtime McSweeney's contributor. His work also appeared in the New Yorker and Esquire. While we at Shorts were saddened to learn of agler's death in 2020, we're grateful his sense of humor lives on. And this witty piece is a perfect example. Healthy competition is one thing, but in this story it's really a mind game. Explaining the rules is a subtle act of war. The Shorts evening was my party, and you know how it is when you're the host. You have no time for yourself. So I reserved the wicked pleasure of reading this one for one of our studio recordings. Imagine the laughs there would have been. Laughs. I just know it. I'm so happy you all could make it to board game night. We're gonna have a blast. Okay, so what do we want to play? What did you bring? Clue. Okay, Monopoly. Hmm. Those are all good options. But. But we could also play this new game that I just picked up. It's called the Secret of the Golden Tomb. It's really fun and it's super easy to learn. Sorry, did I say super easy? I meant needlessly complicated. We can start by setting up the board. See that stack of 750 tiles? Each one goes into its own unique space like a jigsaw puzzle. But it's way worse because any sense of accomplishment is drowned out by the fact that this is just the beginning of what will be a multi hour. Oh, also, I'm missing A few of the tiles, so we'll just have to imagine that they're there. It probably won't be a big issue, but then again, it almost certainly will. To move around the board, all you have to do is roll a die. Well, actually 32 separate dice rolled one at a time. The goal here is to have each roll be higher than the last one. If it isn't, you have to start over. You may be wondering, die only have six sides. How can there be 32 ascending numbers? Exactly. It's a challenging game. You'll notice that the board is divided up into different areas. Specifically, there are four quadrants. Also, there are 70 different sectors. Also, there are an ever shifting and often indeterminate number of cosmo zones. Once a player controls at least 2 quadrants, 23 sectors, the square root of a negative number of cosmo zones, and correctly answers a series of trivia questions about the 1973 Cincinnati Reds, we move into the next phase of the game. This is where it gets a little tricky, but you'll catch on. We'll total up the number of everyone's power cubes and convert them into resource tokens using an algorithm that's roughly based on the math that powers the Bitcoin blockchain. After this conversion, which could take up to a week, depending on how slow my computer is, the player who is winning may still be winning. Or maybe the player who was losing will be winning. Or maybe another player whom we haven't met yet will be winning. That brings us to Elijah's cup. Go ahead and grab that chalice out of the box. That's for the prophet Elijah, who may or may not join the game. We'll cover what to do if that happens. But it probably won't happen. He's only appeared like three times, and one of those times he just wanted to watch us play and eat our snacks. This next section of the rules is on how to build and maintain your fortresses. It's not really necessary, so we'll just skip it. But rest assured, I will use an obscure rule from this section to win later on. And you'll have no idea what I just did. Is anyone here left handed? Marjorie, you are okay. You can't play. This is an important rule, so pay attention. If you reach the ranch, you become the sheriff. This part of the rule book explains what happens when you become the sheriff. But it's written in Greek. I could translate, but you'll grasp the nuances of the game better if you read the rules in the original Greek while you all are learning Greek. Maybe I can go get everyone some spanakopita. That's spinach pie. See, you're picking it up already. Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Does anyone want to play with the expansion pack? We don't have to, but it will make the game marginally more fun and infinitely more confusing. You know what? I'll just go grab it. Now you're probably asking, why is there a loaded revolver in the box? Honestly, it's never come up. But that's the great thing about this game. It totally could. And of course, there's the big how do you win the game? Have you read Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra? That's basically what you're trying to do. Oh, one last thing to remember. If you have anything you're confused about, ask now, because once the game starts, we have to burn the rule book. But don't worry, if you have any questions, I'll be sure to explain the answer to you in an extraordinarily patronizing manner. Ready? Let's play. That was my reading of Brian Agler's the rules of this board game are long but also complicated, and in case we haven't caught on, we losers. All is revealed in the last paragraph where Friedrich Nietzsche is invoked. This isn't a game, it's existentialism. Our second story is by the late John Updike, who put an indelible stamp on both short fiction and on ways of thinking about our emotional lives, especially in the context of family. His many published works included the Four Rabbit novels and the short story collections the Afterlife and Licks of Love. He also edited the Best American Short Stories of the Century, still of some use, was published. Like so many of Updike stories in the New Yorker, the story's premise, Cleaning out the Attic, is the perfect one in which to view old games, with their missing pieces and humorously dated social reference, as parallels to life. There is an open nostalgia in the Updike story, and to me that felt right, because I associate his stories and novels with a different era in American fiction and a different era in my own reading life. When I was growing up, his books, which often were about marriage and tensions within a marriage, were on the shelf in my parents den and felt so resonant in a way. Those books on the shelf aren't that dissimilar to the games in the attic in this story, they provide an emotional key to the way things were in a different time. The story will be read by a Shorts regular who has even taken on Updike for us. In the past, he's known for tony winning turns on Broadway, in City of Angels and Chicago, as well as regular film and TV appearances such as Gossip Girl and the recent Three Women. Here, James Naughton brings touching and rueful gravitas to John Updike's still of some.
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T-Mobile Representative
Use.
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Still of Some Use When Foster helped his ex wife clean out the attic of the house where they had once lived and which was now selling, they came across dozens of forgotten broken games. Parcheesi, Monopoly, Lotto games aping the strategies of the stock market, of crime detection, of real estate, speculation, of international diplomacy and war games with spinners, dice lettered tiles, cardboard spacemen and plastic battleships. Games bought in five and tens in department stores, feverish and musical with Christmas expectations, games enjoyed on the afternoon of a birthday and for few afternoons thereafter, and then allowed, shy of one or two pieces to drift into closets and toward the attic. Yet discovered in their bright flat boxes, between trunks of overgrown clothes and defunct appliances, the games presented a forceful semblance of value. The springs of their miniature launchers still reacted. The logic of their instructions would still generate suspense given a chance. What shall we do with all these games? Foster shouted in a kind of agony to his scattered family as they moved up and down the attic stairs. Trash him. His younger son, a strapping 19, urged. Would the Goodwill still want them? Asked his ex wife, still wife enough to think that all of his questions deserved answers. You used to be able to give things like that to orphanages. But they don't call them orphanages anymore, do they? They call them normal American homes, foster said. His older son, now 22 with a cinnamon colored beard, offered. They wouldn't work anyhow. They all have something missing. That's how they got to be in the attic. Well, why didn't we throw them away at the time? Foster asked, and had to answer himself. Cowardice. The answer was inertia. Clinging to the past. His sons, with the shadow of old obedience, came and looked over his shoulder at the sad wealth of abandoned playthings, silently groping with him for the particular happy day connected to this and that pattern of coded squares and colored arrows. Their lives had touched these tokens and counters once. Excitement had flowed along the paths of these stylized landscapes, but the day was gone and scarcely a memory remained. Toss em, the younger decreed in his manly voice, for these days of cleaning out. The boy had borrowed a pickup truck from a friend and parked it on the lawn beneath the attic window so the smaller items of discard could be tossed directly into it. The bigger items were lugged down the stairs and through the front hall and out. Already the truck was loaded with old mattresses, broken clock radios, obsolete skis and boots. It was a game of sorts to hit the truck bed with objects dropped from the height of the house. Foster flipped game after game at the target two stories below. When the boxes hit, they exploded, throwing a spray of dice tokens, counters, and cards into the air and across the lawn a box called Mousetrap, its lid showing laughing children gathered around. A Rube Goldberg device, drifted sideways, struck one side wall of the truck, and spilled its plastic compartment into a flower bed as a set of something called Drag Race, floated gently as a snowflake before coming to rest, much diminished, on a stained mattress, Foster saw in the depth of downward space the cause of his melancholy. He had not played enough with these games. Now no one wanted to play. Had he and his wife avoided divorce, of course, these boxes would have continued to gather dust in an undisturbed attic, their sorrow unexposed. The toys of his own childhood still rested in his mother's attic. At his last visit he had wound the spring of a tin Donald Duck that had responded with an angry clack of its bill and a few stiff strokes on its drum. A tin shield with concentric grooves for marbles still waited in a bushel basket with his Alphabet blocks and lead airplanes, waited for his childhood to return. His ex wife paused where he squatted at the attic window and asked him, what's the matter? Nothing. These games weren't used much. I know it happens fast. You better stop now. It's making you too sad. Behind him, his family had cleaned out the attic. The slant ceilinged rooms stood empty with drooping insulation. How can you bear it? He asked her of the emptiness. Oh, it's fun once you get into it. Off with the old, on with the new. The new people seem nice. They have little children. He looked at her and wondered if she was being brave or truly hard hearted. The attic trembled slightly. That's Ted, she said. She had acquired a boyfriend, a big athletic banker fleeing from domestic embarrassments in a neighboring town. When Ted slammed the kitchen door two stories below the glass shade of a kerosene lamp that, though long unused, Foster hadn't had the heart to throw out, the window vibrated in its copper clips, emitting a thin note like a trapped wasp song. Time to go. Foster's dusty knees creaked when he stood. His ex wife's eager steps raced ahead of him, down through the emptied house. He followed carrying the lamp and set it finally on the bare top of a bookcase he had once built on the first floor landing. He remembered screwing the top board, a prized piece of knot free pine, into place from underneath so that not a nail head marred its smoothness. After all the vacant rooms and halls, the kitchen seemed indecently full of heat and life. Dad, want a beer? The red bearded son asked. Ted brought some. The back of the boy's hand holding forth the dewy can blazed with fine ginger hairs. His girlfriend, wearing gypsy earrings and a no Nukes sweatshirt, leaned against the disconnected stove, her hair in a bandana and a black smirch becomingly placed on one temple. From the kind way she smiled at Foster, he felt this party was making room for him. No, better go. Ted shook Foster's hand as he always did. He had a thin pink skin and silver hair whose fluffy waves seemed mechanically induced. Foster could look him in the eye no longer than he could gaze at the sun. He wondered how such a radiant brute had got into such a tame line of work. Ted had not helped with the attic today because he had been off in his old town visiting his teenage twins. I hear you did a splendid job today, he announced. They did, foster said. I wasn't much use. I just sat there stunned. All those things I had forgotten buying some were presents, his son reminded him. He passed the can his father had snubbed to his mother, who took it and tore up the tab with that defiant sounding. She had never liked beer, yet tipped the can to her mouth. Give me one sip, foster begged, and took the can from her and drank a long swallow. Then he opened his eyes, and when he did, Ted's big hand was cupped under Mrs. Foster's chin while his thumb rubbed away a smudge of dirt along her jaw, which Foster had not noticed. This protective gesture made her face look small, pouty, frail, and somehow parched. Ted, Foster noticed now, was dressed in a certain comical perfection, in a banker's Saturday outfit, softened blue jeans, crisp tennis sneakers, lumberjack shirt with cuffs rolled back. The youthful outfit accented his age, his hypertensive flush. Foster saw them suddenly as a touching aging couple, and this perception seemed permission to go. He handed back the can. Thanks for your help, his former wife said. Yes, we do. Thank you, ted said. Talk to Tommy, she unexpectedly added. She was still sending out trip wires to slow his departures. This is harder on him than he shows. Ted looked at his watch, a fat black faced thing he could swim underwater with. I said to him, coming in, don't dawdle until the dump closes. He loafed all day, his brother complained, mooning over old stuff. And now he's going to screw up getting to the dump. He's very sensitive, the visiting gypsy said with a strange chiming brightness, as if repeating something she had heard. Outside, the boy was picking up litter that had fallen wide of the truck. Foster helped him. In the grass were dozens of tokens and dice. Some were engraved with curious little faces, olive oil, Snuffy Smith, Dagworth, and others with hieroglyphs, numbers, diamonds, spades, hexagons whose code was lost. He held out a handful for Tommy to see. Can you remember what these were for? Comic strip Lotto, the boy said without hesitation. And a game called Gambling Fools. There was a kind of slot machine for the light of old chances and payoff flickered in his eyes as he gazed down at the rubble in his father's hand. Though Foster was taller, the boy was broader in the shoulders and growing. Want to ride with me to the dump? Tommy asked. I would, but I better go. He too had a new life to lead by being on this godforsaken property at all. Foster was, in a sense, on the wrong square, if not once he'd begun to teach his boy chess. But in the sadness of watching him lose a little bowed head, frowning above his trapped king, the lessons had stopped. Foster tossed the tokens into the truck. They rattled to rest on the metal. This depress you? He asked. His son, the boy amended. Kind of. You'll feel great, foster promised him, coming back with a clean truck. I used to love it at the dump. All that old happiness heaped up in the seagulls. It's changed since you left. They all have these new rules. The lady there yelled at me last time for putting stuff in the wrong place. She did? Yeah. It was scary seeing his father waver, he added, It'll only take 20 minutes. Though broad of build, Tommy had beardless cheeks, and between thickening eyebrows, a trace of that rounded, faintly baffled blankness. Babies have that wrinkles before they cry. Okay, foster said, greatly lightened. I'll protect you.
- [24:04]
Meg Wolitzer
James Naughton performed John Updike's still of Some Use. I'm Meg Wolitzer, and I'm glad to still be of some use to you as host of this show. And I hope, unlike an ancient board game, I am not missing any crucial pieces. Updike's emotional specificity is a lesson in deft construction. Games are a rite of passage. Attics are always full of material detritus old clothes, old photographs, discarded appliances, but also of the immaterial. And we hear that connection surfacing as the story progresses. Really, Updike had Miette the sad wealth of abandoned playthings. And there's some suggestion here that despite being a grown man with grown sons, Foster himself is still something of a child. The use of games is a clever way of showing that aspect. I actually have been writing a piece of fiction that uses games in it too, because like many writers, I understand that games contain multitudes. Except, of course, when some of those multitudes have gone missing over the years. And may I add that there is nothing sadder than an old score pad left inside a game, causing you to vaguely remember certain rules. Rainy day when you and your siblings were way, way younger. When we return, the allure of fire and Parcheesi. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
- [25:32]
T-Mobile Representative
After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it.
- [25:41]
Off up to $800.
- [25:43]
See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and at&t@t mobile.com KeepAndSwitch.
- [25:51]
Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported, 90 plus days with device.
- [25:57]
Meg Wolitzer
And eligible carrier and timely redemption required.
- [25:58]
T-Mobile Representative
Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [26:02]
James Naughton
Tito's handmade Vodka had been mixed with its fair share of cocktails. But one night, a chilled glass topped with lime and cranberry would change everything this bottle knew about. Happy hour from the producers of America's favorite vodka. It turns out the cocktail you've been waiting for was right there the whole time. The Tito's Rom Cosmo. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sip. With Tito's coming to cocktail parties near you@tito's vodka.com 40% alcohol by volume, namely 80 proof. Crafted to be savored responsibly.
- [26:52]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. The stories on this show are all about playing games, literally and figuratively. At Selected Shorts, everyone's a winner. No confusing rules, missing game pieces, or hopeless partners. All you need to do to play is go to our website, selectedshorts.org to collect your prizes, links to our podcasts and recent shows and information about our tours and this year's writing contest. Our final story, in which the playing of a game shapes the narrative, is by the deft and complex contemporary author Susan Perabo, whose short story collections are who I Was Supposed To Be and why they Run the Way they Do. If there is a shortest line between two points in fiction, Perabo does not want to take it. Instead, her writing beautifully deflects us, so by the time her narratives arrive at their often surprising conclusions, we are dazed and captivated. You'll hear this in Some say the World, which follows. It's performed by a reader we're always eager to work with, Colby Mine, known for her television work on the Boys and Fear the Walking Dead. On stage, you might have caught her in Long Day's Journey into Night or Six Degrees of Separation. Here's her compelling read of Some say the World by Susan Perabo.
- [28:28]
T-Mobile Representative
Some the World There is fire in my heart. I do what I can. I sleep. Deep sleep. I sit in my bedroom window, bare feet on the roof, and scratch dry sticks across the slate. In the two months I've been living here, though, I've spent most of my time playing board games with Mr. Arnett, my mother's new husband. He seems to have an unending supply of them in his basement for from when his kids lived at home. My mother isn't around very often. She works at the makeup counter at Neiman Marcus, although she really hasn't needed to since she and Mr. Arnett were married. Mr. Arnett retired a few years ago, at 45, when he sold the windshield safety glass company he had started right out of high school for what my mother describes as a fancy sum for something that still shatters. It was right after that that she met and married him, but she works anyway, only now she calls it a hobby. It's early March, more importantly, Monday night, the night my mother pretends to be in class at community college. This semester it's poetry, but she's run the gamut. Two summers ago she thought she had me convinced she'd taken up diving. When she comes in the door a little after nine, she sets her clearly untouched poetry book on the end table, next to where I am on the couch. How was it? Mr. Arnett asks, smacking his gum and not looking up from the board. Oh my, my mother says. You wouldn't believe the things those people wrote then. Who'd you do tonight? I ask her. It's a game that I have worked up. Sometimes I suspect that Mr. Arnett is playing it as well, but other times I think he's just being duped by her. You can Never Tell with Mr. Arnett. Sometimes I imagine he has a secret life, although he rarely leaves his house. He seems the type of guy who might have boxes of Knick knacks buried all over the world for no reason. What's that? My mother asks, separating the lashes over one eye which have been caked with sweat soaked mascara. Who'd you do tonight? I put a cigarette in my mouth, wait for one of them to light it. Oh, Browning, my mother Sundays. Which one? Mr. Arnett asks. He looks up at me, not her, then takes the lighter from his shirt pocket and snaps on the flame in front of my face, so close I could reach out and swallow it. Which one? She asks. Which Browning? Mr. Arnett says. The lighter disappears back into his shirt. My mother misses a beat, then says all of them. She hovers over the Parcheesi board, feigning interest in the game, and her mink stole brushes one of my pieces to the floor. Mr. Arnett makes a disgusted sigh. Although it was him I know who bought her the thing. She likes to wear it to work, along with a lot of expensive jewelry. She does not work for her customers, she recently explained to me. She works with them. She pats my head. About your bedtime, she says, as if I am 12 and have to get up early to catch the school bus, not 18 and drugged beyond understanding anything much more difficult than Parcheesi and knowing that my mother at 40, is sneaking around in motel rooms. My parents were divorced when I was five. I've not seen my father since then, but I've been able to keep track of his moods. Even so, if my mother is irritable on Monday nights, I know that my father is considering calling everything off. If she's sad, I know that he has asked for her back. If she is her usual perky self like tonight, I know that things have gone as planned. They have met every Monday in the same motel since I was in the sixth grade and playing with lighters under my covers after bedtime, I used to find motel receipts not even torn or wadded up but just lying in the kitchen waste basket next to orange peels and soggy cigarettes with Mr. And Mrs. And then my father's name following. Still, my mother, through eight years and two more husbands, has never spoken of it to me and acts as if I could not possibly have figured it out. Thus, over the years I've been forced to make up my own story of them, passionate but incompatible My father, a dashing and successful salesman, only through town once a week, only able willing to give my mother three hours. And other times I think it's she who insists on being home each Monday by nine, she that likes doling herself out on her terms only in small doses. I imagine that they do not talk, that their clothes are strewn about the room before there is time to say anything, and back on. By the time they catch their breath, it's easier for me to think of it this way because I can't imagine what they might possibly say to each other. At Neiman Marcus, where my mother works, they found me in a dressing room last winter with a can of lighter fluid in my pocket, stuffed with old underwear and dish towels. This incident was especially distressing because everyone finally thought that after nearly eight years I'd been cured, that the fire was gone, that I was no longer a threat to society. The police led me out of the store, handcuffed, first through women's lingerie, then smack past the makeup counter where my mother was halfway pretending not to know me or to know me just well enough to be interested in what was taking place. They put me away for almost a year for that one, my third time in the hospital since the first fire. The long stay was caused by pure frustration, I'm convinced, on the part of my doctors. The we'll teach her philosophy of psychology. Two months ago they let me out yet again, and I spend my days spitting on dice with her husband and asking politely for matches to light my cigarettes. Either the doctors think I'm cured or they've given in the way I have, the way I did when I was only 11, when I realized the fire was like blood, water, shelter, essential. The thing about fire is it is completely yours. For one glorious moment. You bear it. You raise it. The first time in the record store downtown, I stood over it in the bathroom trash can, thinking I would not let it grow, that I would love it only to a point and then kill it. This is the trick. Fire. For that 30 seconds, you have a choice. Spit on it, step on it, douse it with a can of Coke. But one moment too long, get caught up in its beauty and it has grown beyond your control. And it is this moment that you live for, the relinquishing. The power passes from you to it. The world opens up and takes you along. I cried in the record store when the flame rose above my head. Not from fear but from ecstasy. I sleep 16 hours a day, more if it's rainy. Another rationale. Enough xanax and I will be too tired to start fires. I'm in bed by 10 and don't get up till nearly noon. Usually I take a nap before dinner. The rest of the time it's game time. It's a murky haze, more often than not, me forgetting which color I am, what the rules are. Sometimes Mr. Arnett corrects me, other times he lets it go, and it is three turns later by the time I realize I have moved my piece the wrong way on a one way board. We're on a Parcheesi kick now, seven or eight games a day. We don't talk much. Mostly we just talk about the game, about the pieces, as if they are real people with spouses and children waiting in some tiny house for them to return from their endless road trip in a slump. You're due, Mr. Arnett will say to his men. Sometimes he whispers to the dice. I suspect this is all to entertain me because he's always checking for my reaction. Usually I smile. Twice a week Mr. Arnett drives me across town to see my psychiatrist. He reads magazines in the waiting room while I explain to the doctor that I am fine except for the fact that I take so much Xanax I feel my brain has been rewired for a task other than real life. The doctor always nods at this, raising his eyebrows as if I have given him some interesting new information that he will get right on, and then tells me that medication will eventually remedy any discomfort I might be feeling. I am used to this and have learned not to greet with great surprise the fact that no one is going to help me in any way whatsoever. It's Friday, and on the way home from the doctors we drive by a Lions Club carnival that is set up in a Park near Mr. Arnett's house. It's twilight and my mother will be waiting for us at home, but for some reason Mr. Arnett follows the waving arms of a fat clown and pulls into the carnival parking lot. What do you say? He says. He takes a piece of gum from his pocket and puts it in his mouth. I look out the window at the carnival. I don't get out much. Grocery stores are monumental at this point, and the sight of all these people milling around the rides, the games, frightens me. A Ferris wheel directly in front of me is spinning around and around, and it makes me dizzy just watching it. I'm kind of tired, I say. Mr. Arnett chews louder, manipulates the gum into actually sounding frustrated. I think it'd be good for you, he says. He's never said such a thing before, but instead of causing me to feel loved and comforted, it makes me feel nauseous. I have been told everything from shock treatments to making lanyards would be good for me in practically the same tone. I feel like crying and know that if I do he will panic and take me home, but I don't have the time. He's out of the car before I can well up any tears, and I continue to sit, my seatbelt still on, staring out the window into the gray sky. Mr. Arnett stands in front of the fender, gesturing for me to join him. The last time I was at a carnival was the freshman carnival at my high school, 5,000 years ago. I went on a Saturday night with a boy named David who took pictures for the school paper. He held my hand as we walked through the crowds of people and he was sweaty, greasy almost. He stuck his tongue in my ear in the haunted house ride and I barely noticed because they had a burning effigy of our rival school's mascot on the wall. The fire licked along the walls and I realized with absolute glee that they had set up one hell of a fire hazard. Mr. Arnett gets back into the car with a sigh, but he doesn't drive away. You need to get out more, he says, and I wonder what has changed, wonder if he had a fight with my mother or sex with my mother or some other unlikely thing. Used to take the kids here, he says, spinning his keys around his finger. I don't even know his kids names. They call occasionally, but he speaks so rarely when he's on the phone with them that I can't pick up very much information. I imagine them jabbering away somewhere about work and weather and the price of ground round while he sits on the kitchen stool, picking his fingernails and nodding into the phone. I'm not exactly a kid, I say. You don't like carnivals? I just don't feel like it. If she doesn't feel like it, then she doesn't feel like it, he says, as if there's someone else in the car, another part of him maybe, who he's arguing with. We continue our drive home in silence. When we stop at a red light, he says, why do you take all that shit if it makes you feel so bad? I laugh at him. It is a question so logical that it pegs him for a fool, and I can't believe I'm really sitting here with him. It's not quite that simple, I say. He shrugs, gives it up, continues the drive home. He's not a fighter. He's not a radical. Once I came upon him in my bedroom, looking through a photo album of people he never met. I stood in the doorway and watched him for nearly 10 minutes as he smiled slightly, turning the pages, and I imagined him making up lives for the people in my life. He is that way, content to not get the whole picture. I'm standing in the bathroom, trying to stir up enough nerve to just dump them, the whole bottle. My mother taps slightly on the door. I spend more than two minutes in the bathroom and she gets edgy. Honey, just a second, I say. I'm holding them in my hand, all of them. It looks like a million pills, enough to confuse me until I hit menopause. Are you sick? I close my hand around the pills and open the door just far enough for her to get her foot in it. Mother, I say. I'm fine. I'm just putting on a little makeup. This gets her physically, sends her back a step. She wants to believe it so much that I can see her talking herself into it. But it's almost time for bed, she says. Just to see how it looks, I say, giving her a big smile through the crack and inching the door closed again, I hear Mr. Arnett's heavy footsteps come tromping up the stairs. What's the fuss? He asks. She's putting on makeup, my mother says in a stage whisper. Maybe she's trying to look cute for you. That takes care of my clenched hand. It opens on its own, in my mother's words, and the pills sink to the bottom of the toilet, falling to pieces as they go. I think she's just really feeling up to it, starting to feel better, I hear my mother say. It's a new tone for her, and this time it's really a whisper, really some sentiment she doesn't want me to hear. I put my ear against the door. I want her so much to be happy, she says. It makes my chest hurt. It means so much. Sunday has come and my eyes can't stay open wide enough. I feel as if I have gotten glasses and a hearing aid over the weekend. Colors are brighter and words sharper, no echoes. Words stop when mouths stop. My mother looks at me suspiciously when she comes into the kitchen early in the morning and finds me cooking bacon. What's gotten into you? She asks, pleasantly enough, but with a flicker of panic in her face. Me around the oven means bad news for her, but the heat rising from the burners is only making me warm, and the smell of bacon is so good that I can't think of much else. Just feeling awake, I say. She smiles, nods, then studies me. I'm fine, I tell her. Mr. Arnett drags into the kitchen, his hair must and his robe worn. I've never seen him in the morning. Well, look who's up, he says. He winks at me. Why don't I finish up and you two go in and start a game? My mother says brightly. Mr. Arnett sits down at the table and opens the newspaper. I don't feel like it, I say. Why don't we do something today? We have to go to a party later, my mother says, glancing at Mr. Arnett for support. I don't think you'd have very much fun there. I set a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Mr. Arnett. Where's mine? My mother asks. You hate eggs, I say. We don't have to go to the party, Mr. Arnett says. My mother frowns, looks from him to me. Well, I do, she says. And I think it would be right for you to come with me. She can take care of herself. I see my mother now like she's been stripped down, out of her clothes and her skin and even her bones. Her soul is steamed over and dripping fat droplets. You all go on, I say. I don't mind. I spend the day with my father. I sit out on the porch with the photo album. The pictures make sense now, fit into an order I have never seen before. My father, as a young man, raises a tennis racket over his head. He's swinging at something, a butterfly or a bug, though not a ball. In another, he stares away into the distance while my mother pulls his arm, trying to get him to look at the camera. They're so clear now, my father and his bird nose. In one picture he holds me on his lap. I'm crying, screaming, and my father is looking at me, perplexed. He's barely 20, I know, and cannot believe that I am his. My mother and Mr. Arnett do not come home until later. I've lost all track of time, still sitting with the photo album, when the headlights swim into the driveway. They get out of the car and my mother takes Mr. Arnett's hand, swings wildly around. Oh, darling. My mother exclaims. I'm not sure if it's to me or Mr. Arnett. They're both drunk. My mother stumbles going through the door, and Mr. Arnett catches her, leads her inside. Then he comes back out and sits with a grunt on the porch step. What have you been doing all night? He asks, looking through this, I say, holding up the album. He's quiet for a moment. Then he says, you ever see your father? He says it almost as an afterthought to something that wasn't ever said. He says it like we've been on the porch together all night, discussing my father for hours, like he was really one of the family. Just in here, I say. Think he's still a good looking guy? Dashing, I imagine, I say. He snorts out a laugh. Why did you marry her? I hear myself ask. He leans back, rests his head on the wood, inches from my feet. Company, he says. He yawns and I can see him now, too, safety glass that shatters. He begins to snore. Mr. Arnett? I say. I reach down and just barely touch the top of his head. He doesn't move. I go into the house and up the stairs. Their bedroom door is closed and I imagine my mother is in about the same shape he is, but that they will sleep it off in different places, with dreams of different people's arms. When I open my door my mother is standing in my room, the empty bottle of Xanax in one hand, the other hand palm up, as if she were questioning someone before I arrived. Wait a minute, I say. Just wait. I knew it, she says. I knew there was something wrong. Nothing's wrong, I say. What are you doing in my room? You scared me, standing there like that. Her mouth opens. I scared you? I don't think I need those anymore, I say. Forgive me if I find it difficult to trust your judgment, she says. I want a cigarette bad. I had to go all night without them. I go to my dresser and take one from the pack. A light, I say. Do you have a light? Not on your life, she says. I'm fine, I say. I accidentally break the cigarette between my two fingers and reach for another one. She sits down on the bed. You hurt people, she says quietly. Not just me. You think you take those pills because I don't want you to hurt me? I never hurt anybody, I say. You are so lucky, she says. You could have killed both of us five times over in that dressing room. Did you ever think about the woman in the next one? I wasn't trying to hurt anybody, I say. You don't understand. You're right about that, she says. She sets the empty bottle on the bed and stands up. I'm sorry, she says. I can only live with this for so long. She leaves. I hear her bedroom door close. The house is silent below me. Mr. Arnett sleeps on the porch. I sit down on the bed. I am crazy, all right. I have always been crazy. I see my mother standing on the front porch as I get out of my first police car, only 14 braces, squeezing my teeth. She stares at me in disbelief when the police tell her that I have caused over $1,000 in damage at the record store. $1,000 with one match. It is then that she begins to look at me like a stranger. It's Monday again and she's in her bedroom preparing. Mr. Arnett sits in the rocking chair watching a basketball game. I'm on the couch, cheers from the crowd. She wants you to go back to the hospital, he says. He doesn't look at me. He moves his glasses from hand to hand. I know, I say. It's okay. Not so bad there. Anybody play Parcheesi? A man on the court has lost his contact lens. Players are on their knees. Hunting cards mostly, I say. Lots of jigsaw puzzles. He nods. You take those drugs today? No, I say. Soon enough. It's funny being able to see so well. But not great so much. My mother comes into the room and picks up her purse. Have a good game, she Sundays. She kisses Mr. Arnett on the top of the head, presses her lips into his hair for a long time until he moves away. What was that for? He asks. He really wants to know, I can tell. Doesn't have to be for anything, does it? She says. She smiles at me for a moment, lingers as if she has something to say, then leaves without another word. Mr. Arnett swings the rocking chair around and faces me. You don't have to go, he says. Imagine me here all by myself. You'll do okay, I say. Come visit. He nods, picks up the poetry book from the coffee table, absently flips through it. She didn't even think to take it along this time, he says. She doesn't try so hard anymore, I say. To fool anybody. He stops on a page, squints at it, puts on his glasses. Here's one you'd like, he says, smiling. Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice. He pauses, looks up at me, raises his eyebrows. I'd like to see them, I say. I hear my mother's car start up in the driveway. Just one time, see them together. Be a fly on the wall. He closes the book. Let's both be flies, he says. It's not a long drive, only a few miles. Much too close, as far as I'm concerned. For something that seems like it must be another world. Mr. Arnett stays a few cars behind her, then drives past the motel. After she pulls into the lot. He drives around the block twice, then three times. What are you waiting for? I ask him. A reason not to do this, he says. He presses down the accelerator and we speed past the motel again. We drive around the city, looking at closed down stores, empty streets. We don't talk, act as if we really have nowhere else to go. He finally makes his way back to the motel and this time he pulls into the lot. We park at the far end and walk along the row of empty spaces toward my mother's car. The motel is nearly empty, but the room next to her car is occupied. The shade on the window is up a couple of inches. Mr. Arnett squats down, then reaches for me. I close one eye and look inside. The bathroom light is on, the door open, and I can see my mother gingerly applying her eye shadow in front of the mirror. There is a man on the bed, sitting up, yawning. He stretches his skinny arms. He's nearly bald but has a small mustache under his pointed nose. It's a stranger, no one I've ever seen before. He looks a lot different than the pictures, Mr. Arnett whispers. It's not him, I say, but as soon as I say this I know that it is him. Mr. Arnett looks at me. Sweetheart, he says. My mother shuts off the bathroom light and I can see her silhouette move to the edge of the bed. She sits down and touches the man on the chest, running her finger from his throat to his waist. He takes her hand and puts the finger in his mouth. It's like watching shadows. She says something I cannot make out. Is it about me? Of course it isn't. I shiver in the cold. Mr. Arnett takes off his sweater and sets it around my shoulders. The man begins to put his clothes on slowly next to me. I hear Mr. Arnett's breath catch. What is it? I whisper. I wonder if he can be jealous, if he cares that much. He only shakes his head, chilling. He whispers. What? I say. What happens to people? They're holding hands on the bed. My mother fumbles for her purse, takes out a pack of cigarettes, gives one to my father and takes one for herself. She lights them both. Where will we go? Mr. Arnett whispers. What? I say. They're holding hands on the bed. The shadow of smoke drifts above them, the tiny circles of fire, all that lights the room. Where will we go? He says again. I lean in against him. He's warm inside the room. It is quiet together the man and the woman raise the cigarettes to their mouths for a moment, the faces of my parents aglow in the flames. Then Mr. Arnett takes me by the arm and actually lifts me up off the ground. Wait, I say. Wait. But I don't fight him. I want him to take me away. Finally, I have seen enough. We're three blocks from the motel before he remembers to turn on his headlights. Slow down, I say. You're gonna kill us both. I take out a cigarette and push the car lighter in. Jesus Christ, he says. What would she do? Then for a moment he is insane. So much more than I ever could have hoped to be. There are lights up ahead, Music. It's the carnival. It's the last night in full swing. The car wildly spits up gravel as Mr. Arnett rumbles across the lot. He jumps out of the car, dashes forward a few feet, then turns and slams his fist into the hood. Then he is perfectly still. He looks straight at me and I am afraid to move. The cigarette lighter clicks out. A father rushes his children into the back of the station wagon next to us, where they look at us through a big back window, mouths open. I pull the lighter out, touch my fingers close enough to the middle to feel the raw heat. Then I light my cigarette and blow smoke into the windshield. Mr. Arnett watches me. I know now that he will never go back to my mother, will probably never lay eyes on her again. Something about seeing them, even though he knew something about seeing them. He turns and starts walking toward the ticket booth. I get out of the car and follow him, stand behind him, smoking while he buys two tickets. Ferris wheel, he says, turning to me. He smiles slightly. None of those puke rides. Slow, slow rides tonight. We get into a car that I am sure is broken. It swings different than the others, crooked somehow. I start to say something, but a girl with yellow teeth and matching hair closes the bar over us and we are suddenly moving in a great lurch forward. Hey, hey, Mr. Arnett says, squeezing the bar and looking down into the park. These things are dangerous, I say. Bullshit, he says. We're safer up here than anywhere else in the world. We screech to a halt near the top for the loading of passengers into to the cars below us. We swing crookedly over the game booths and I can see us crashing down into the middle of the ring toss. So many ways to buy it, so few to stay alive. I've always liked the looks of Canada, Mr. Arnett says. He's smiling pleasantly, innocent as the dawn. We start moving again. The motion is hypnotizing, and I no longer feel sick, but only strange, detached. Nice night for driving, I hear myself say. He doesn't answer. He's looking at my hands, which are open, palms up on my lap, as if I am waiting for something on this ride. He reaches into his sweater pocket and takes out a pack of gum. He sets it in my hand and my fingers close around it. We swing around again. Below me I see a circle of teenagers standing around a small bonfire, warming their hands. Sparks pop around them and die in the grass as the flame reaches higher. The Ferris wheel whips us toward it and then again up into the night.
- [59:10]
Meg Wolitzer
Colby Mine read Susan Perabo's Some say the World. I'm Meg Wolitzer, and if Updike is the master of the gradual reveal, Perabo is more like a spy, every sentence packed and encoded like, in fact, a game. So pay attention, 007, as you learn why the story's title is a fragment of the Robert Frost poem Fire and Ice, and why Parcheesi is a way of reading, reclaiming yourself one move at a time. I love how Parcheesi is a kind of anchor here, a backdrop, something stable in an unstable world. I think that may be true of board games. Generally you sit and play them in good faith, following rules and agreeing to stay there as long as it takes. Sigmund Freud may or may not have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but it's tempting to adapt this much uttered line to the subject of games. When we sat down for a round of Trivial Pursuit all those years ago, we were probably just wondering if Cary Grant was the right answer to the silver screen question, not how our marriages were holding up or some other personal dilemma. I emerge from my daily battle with wordle content if I've achieved a five letter victory. Not an existential truth, but in the stories on this program, we've been asked to think about games in more complex terms, as a form of aggression, as an emotional catalyst, as an escape. Well played. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts.
- [60:52]
James Naughton
Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague.
- [60:57]
T-Mobile Representative
Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson.
- [61:00]
James Naughton
Mary Shimpkin, Vivianne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with.
- [61:26]
Meg Wolitzer
Public funds from the New York State.
- [61:28]
James Naughton
Council on the Orts, with the support.
- [61:30]
T-Mobile Representative
Of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
- [61:34]
Meg Wolitzer
Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [62:07]
James Naughton
Tito's handmade vodka had been mixed with its fair share of cocktails. But one night, a chilled glass topped with lime and cranberry would change everything. This bottle knew about Happy hour from the producers of America's favorite vodka. It turns out the cocktail you've been waiting for was right there the whole time. The Tito's Rom Cosmo. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sip with Tito's coming to cocktail parties near you at Tito's vodka, 40% alcohol by volume, namely 80 proof, crafted to be savored responsibly.