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Turning back to the stage he saw a woman wearing a turquoise housedress and beige slippers enter the room from stage left.

She had a roundish face going towards plump and her eyes were flat and lackluster. There was an essential weariness about her.

Dominic felt tears growing in his eyes, a tightness in his throat, as he looked, stunned, at his mother.

“Mom! Mom, what’re you doing here? Hey, Mom!”

But she did not hear him. Mechanically, his mother began setting a simple table with paper napkins, Melmac plates, and plain utensils. Dominic ran up to the edge of the stage and yelled at her but she ignored him. It became clear that she could neither see nor hear him—as though they were dimensions apart, as though he saw everything through a one-way mirror.

What the hell was going on?

Dominic grappled with the sheer insanity of it all, trying to make sense out of the hallucinated moment, when it continued.

The door at stage center flew open and his father entered the set.

At the sight of the man, something tightened around Dominic’s heart like a fist, staggering him. His father was dead. And yet, there he was, standing in the doorway full of sweat and shine and dirt. There was a defiance in the old man’s posture, in the way he slammed the door shut behind him. He wore greasy chino pants and a plaid flannel shirt. One hand carried a beat-up lunch pail with the word “Kazan” stenciled on the side; the other the evening paper.

Dropping the lunch bucket on the kitchen table, his father moved quickly to his favorite chair and unflapped the paper. If he had acknowledged the presence of his wife, Dominic had missed it. There was a somehow surreal quality to the scene—suggesting more than was actually taking place. He sensed this moment could have been taking place at any point in their lives over perhaps a twenty-year span.

Dominic fought off the emotional waves which crashed over him, trying to concentrate on the images on the stage. He was surprised to see how plain his mother actually was—not the pretty woman of his memories—and how much smaller and less imposing his father seemed. Again the convex glass of memory had worked its distorted magic.

The door at stage left abruptly opened and a small, frightfully thin boy of perhaps nine years entered the room. The boy had large ears, bright blue eyes, and Brylcreem-slicked dark hair. Dominic felt stunned as he recognized the boy as himself.

He had never realized how frail and odd he had looked as a child; he winced as he heard the young boy speak in a high-pitched voice.

BOY

Hi, Daddy!

Look what me and Beezie are go in’ to do … I

The boy advanced to his father’s chair, carrying a sheaf of papers.

The greeting was met with silence. His father’s face remained hidden behind the newspaper.

MOTHER

Joseph, the boy is talkin’ to you.

FATHER

Eh! What does he want?

The paper dropped to the working man’s lap, and the father stared at his son with a slack, almost hostile expression.

BOY

Daddy, look! Beezie and me are goin’ to direct a

play! And we’re goin’ to charge ten cents apiece for

all the kids to come and see it.

(hands some papers to his father)

Here’s some drawings I made. … See, this is Snow

White’s house, and—

FATHER

Play? Snow White … ? That’s a fairy tale, ain’t it?

BOY

Yeah, it’s like the Walt Disney movie, and—

The father laughed roughly.

FATHER

A fairy tale is for a buncha fairies!

(he sweeps out his hand, scattering the drawings across the floor)

That’s nothin’ for a boy to be up to! Plays are for fairies … you want to be a fairy, boy?

BOY

But, Daddy, it’s a good show, and—

FATHER

Listen, pick up this crap and get it outta here. And don’t let me hear no more about it. You oughta be out playin’ ball … not foolin’ with this pansy crap!

Dominic stood in the aisle, his mind reeling from the impact of the scene. How he remembered that night! His father had so thoroughly crushed him that evening that he had given up