Front Rows
Acts and Curtains
The towel never broke the window.
The towel always, always hit the window.
Not the floor, not the wall next to the window.
Mac Hewton noticed.
His son noticed, committed it to memory.
Mom hits the window every time.
Then she doesn’t talk, not even to me.
Trina Hewton’s last word before the silence was Goddamnit.
Rogie Hewton grew from thinking the towel was magic, to his mom was magic, to one day Dad is gonna get out of that chair and punch her.
Mac Hewton mostly stayed in his chair, piles of papers to either side, laptop with a faded Penguins sticker on his lap, open to screens full of numbers.
It was like a dance to Rogie Hewton, once he was old enough to understand the words.
Mac and Trina would argue, Mac would change the subject, Trina would bring it back to topic, Mac would call his wife horrible names, and she would throw one of two towels at the window.
One towel she used to dab paint on or off her canvases and boards.
Another, damp usually, that she used to tidy her little art area.
She told Rogie it was a studio until he was old enough to know it was just a spare room, and not much of one.
Trina painted.
Mac moved money, or pretend money on his screens, invested in schemes, remortgaged the house.
Sometimes the towel was soaking wet and made a satisfying splat against the window.
It was one of these times that Rogie wished the window would break, his mother would jump through it, and run away.
He would follow, of course, with mom’s paintings and they would sell them and get rich and have everything they ever wanted.
Rogie wasn’t sure what his mother wanted outside their little house.
But he wanted her out of it, wanted her to be in a place where she didn’t get called vile things.
***
The theater seats forty, the first row purposely missing a few folding chairs.
They’ve never sold forty tickets, staging unknown plays.
A critic says that Rogie Avon needs to branch out, needs to push envelopes, find new avenues.
Rogie shrugs his thin shoulders and dims the house lights.
He has taken his mother’s maiden name as his professional name. She likes it, he knows.
The set on the stage is a simple living room, one you would find in millions of American households.
Two actors enter.
One pauses briefly and admires a painting before speaking.
Rogie wrote the play that way, with the subtle pause.
The painting is not his favorite of his mothers, but it fits the tone of the play.
The actor glances back at it.
That is not in Rogie’s script, but he smiles, and looks from the stage right wing out to the house.
His mother is in her motorized chair in the front row. She appears to be sleeping. Her nurse wipes some drool from her mouth with a small cloth. Like a towel.
The actors, in character, begin to argue.
Even the heightened volume doesn’t seem to wake Trina Hewton.
Rogie turns, and his lips form one word.
Goddamnit.
*****
Beautiful.
This one stings.