Broadway Baby by Alan Shapiro Page B

was about a chair and how, if you wanted it, you would have to buy it, she wasn’t going to give it away, since after all it had only been used once or twice and it was still nice and tight and, you see, if she couldn’t sell it, she’d keep sitting on it, she wasn’t gonna give it away. Th ere was no better pair of legs in town, and no better back anywhere around, no no no—if she couldn’t sell it, she was gonna sit down on it, she wasn’t gonna give it away . . .
    By the third refrain, they were singing together. As she repeated, “If I can’t sell it, I gonna keep sittin’ on it,” she wasn’t anybody’s wife, or anybody’s mother. She was his Mae West or Marilyn Monroe; and who was he, if not her own Rock Hudson?
    T HEY WERE TALKING to the new student, Paul Minatelli. Blond hair, willowy frame, angelic smile, he sat between Stuart and Miriam on the piano bench, their back to the keys. His parents were divorced. He was twenty-one but looked younger. Stuart was especially taken with him; Miriam liked him, too, or tried to—one of his eyebrows seemed permanently raised above the other, which gave him an ironic, somewhat mocking air that made Miriam uncomfortable, though she did her best to hide it. He had just moved to Boston with his mother, from Asheville, North Carolina.
    Stuart said, “Paul, where’d you get such adorable looks?”
    Paul said, “From my father. If you think I’m cute, you should see him.”
    Stuart and Miriam leaned closer, smiling, as Stuart said, “Really!”
    And Miriam said, “Oh do tell us more!”
    Paul said, looking from Stuart to Miriam, “Not to dis­appoint you both, but he’s married now!”
    Miriam and Stuart asked, at the same time, “Happily?”
    M IRIAM BREEZED IN late one evening full of ex­citement. She’d convinced Stuart to use one of her favorites, “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” in a new review he was working up. He had also decided to let Miriam do all the choreography for the show.
    At dinner, she shared the good news (she just couldn’t help herself even though everyone was tired and sulky, having to wait so long for dinner). She was going on with such enthusiasm she didn’t notice that Curly wasn’t listening. She looked up and saw the muscles twitching in his face.
    She said, “I guess I ought to quit while I’m ahead.”
    “And when would that be?” Curly scoffed. “What are you two, partners now? It’s always “we this” and “we that”; you’d think you were running the place.”
    “I’m just telling you how my day was,” she said. “Excuse me for thinking you’d be interested.”
    Curly stared at her, one finger tapping the table. “ Th is isn’t right,” he said after a moment.
    “What isn’t right?”
    “ Th is, this job, this guy you work for, if you can call him a guy; all the time Ethan’s spending practicing and performing when he ought to be doing kid things, like playing ball and hanging out. It isn’t right; it isn’t natural.” He banged his fist down on the table. And as he stalked out, he said, “Do you even know where Julie is? When was the last time we all ate together?”
    Sam started to cry. Ethan laughed at Sam.
    “Now what’s wrong?” she asked. “And Ethan, you can be excused. Go practice, will you?”
    “My shoelaces came untied,” Sam sobbed.
    No, he couldn’t walk in the dark down to Sigrid’s house; no, she wouldn’t take him. And if he wouldn’t let her tie the laces, he should just shut up and do it himself. It surprised her how annoyed she was, when just a moment before she had felt elated.
    Now there were two Miriams. One was back at the studio, thumbing through the Show Boat score, recalling all her favorite scenes and songs from that long-ago musical, already working out the dance moves for the kids. Th at Miriam watched her son, her youngest, the baby, from a faraway stage, and it broke her heart to see how sad and all alone he was, and if she hadn’t been so far away, she would have