The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  We slowed as we entered my neighborhood, a grid of small, tightly packed houses just south of Route 4.

  My mother—full name Barbara, though everyone calls her Barb or, at school, Ms. Jump—moved here when I was a toddler. I have no memory of living anywhere else, nor with anyone else. My father, to whom she was not married, left us before my first birthday, under circumstances she has never discussed. It never occurred to me to feel deprived by his absence. You can’t miss what you don’t know.

  Before I was born, Mom had tried to make it as a stand-up comedienne, waiting tables during the day so she could be free to book gigs at night. From what I know of it now, it’s a brutal line of work—doubly so if you’re a woman. I can only imagine what it was like for her in the eighties and early nineties, with even more sexist attitudes holding sway and even fewer women trying to hack it. When she started showing with me, there were several club managers who absolutely refused to book a pregnant woman, especially one without a wedding ring.

  I want people laughing, not feeling sorry for you, one of them told her.

  Once I was born, that was it. She never explicitly said she chose me over stand-up. It hadn’t occurred to me that’s what she had done until later in my teenage years, when I was already deep into my own acting career and it finally started dawning on me my mother had once been—and still was—a human being with drives and desires that went beyond merely raising her son. But while her attempts to become a successful comedienne ended with my arrival, her love for the stage did not. When I demonstrated a proclivity for performing as a four- and five-year-old, she was the first to encourage it, signing me up for local kids’ theater productions, doing all she could to nurture my talent. Her experience in comedy made her the toughest stage mom on the block. Woe to the director who tried to give us crap.

  Mom buried her own aspirations deep, seldom even acknowledging what she had once wanted to be. Though there was one time when I was sixteen and, in retrospect, at the pinnacle of my run on Broadway. I had just gotten a rave from Ben Brantley in the Times for my work in Cherokee Purples. We were all dreaming of the show becoming a hit. We were at a party after opening night, and Mom had drunk too much wine, which was unusual for her. With her tongue loosened, she admitted she had once dreamed of having a one-woman show on Broadway, of seeing STARRING BARB JUMP on a marquee on Forty-Second Street.

  “I never made it,” she said with tears rimming her eyes. “But now my son has.”

  If there was one thing that really killed me about giving up acting, it was that I felt like I was failing for both of us.

  This is not to portray my mother as some kind of tragic figure living in wistful remembrance of the past. For the last twenty-five years, she’s been a secretary at Hackensack High School. It might sound strange to say she’s become famous for it, but in her own way, she’s much more legendary as a school secretary than she ever could have been as a struggling comic. Everyone in Hackensack knows Ms. Jump, who is not quite five feet tall but cuts a larger-than-life figure.

  Her job is to run the main office, but she treats it more like she’s emceeing a cabaret. The Barb Jump Show at Hackensack High is one of the longest-running acts in American theater, and no one—not the students, not the parents, not even the principal—is safe. If anyone gives her a hard time, she treats them like they’re a heckler at Carolines.

  She is also notoriously impatient, which is why she was waiting for us in the short driveway that fronted her tidy, two-bedroom, postwar ranch as we pulled up.

  I don’t want to say I was shocked by her appearance. Maybe just mildly surprised my forever-young mother was starting to show her age. In a few weeks, she’d turn fifty-three. Her mostly dark brown hair was gaining more gray strands, and they refused to lie down as politely as the others did. Her crow’s-feet had spread a little farther away from her soft brown eyes. The skin around her neck was loosening.

  “My babies!” she called as we got out of the car, assaulting Amanda with a big hug.

  Mom plainly didn’t like Amanda when we first starting dating. I think a Jersey girl didn’t know what to make of someone from Mississippi, like Amanda was going to burn a cross on our lawn because Mom was half-Jewish. Early on, I had the suspicion my mother would have been thrilled if we broke up and I wound up dating some girl from Hackensack, someone more in my mother’s immediate realm of comprehension.

  She had since warmed to Amanda and was now always cooing over her hair, her clothes, whatever. Mom could coo with the best of them.

  Once she was done with Amanda, Mom grabbed me, wrapping her tiny arms as far around me as she could. I don’t care what age you are. A hug from your mom always feels good.

  “My God, Tommy, you’re like squeezing a two-by-four,” she said, poking my shoulder. “You’re lucky I don’t have a pin on me. I’d prick you and I swear all those muscles would pop.”

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  The Chevy Caprice had pulled up at the curb. Danny was already out, lingering on the sidewalk. Mom broke away from me.

  “Danny Ruiz!” she called. “What’s this I hear about you joining the FBI? Does the FBI know you used to try to sneak candy out of my jar at work? Did that come up in your background check? Because if anyone asks, I’m diming you out.”

  “Hey, Ms. Jump,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

  He had stuffed his hands in his pockets. His shoulders had slumped a little. Only my mother could instantly turn an FBI agent into a high school sophomore who was sheepish about forgetting his hall pass.

  “Look at you, in your suit. You look like you’re coming out of a penguin factory,” she said. “Don’t worry. If you’re staying for dinner I think I’ve got some sardines in the cupboard.”

  Then she turned to Gilmartin, instantly measured his nonexistent sense of humor, and thrust out her right hand.

  “Hi, Barb Jump,” she said crisply.

  “Rick Gilmartin,” he said.

  “Very nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “So can you stay for dinner?” my mother asked Danny. “If you don’t want the sardines, I’ve got potato salad and burgers. I’d love to have you both.”

  I held my breath for a moment. It was one thing for my mother to resist her natural urge to ask fifty-seven thousand questions of Rick and Danny while we were out in the driveway. I doubted she could keep her resolve throughout an entire dinner.

  But Danny saved all of us by saying, “That’s very kind, Ms. Jump. But we’re going to help Tommy and Amanda get their things stored, then we’re going to take off.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gilmartin had already moved to the back of our Explorer, trying to get as far from my mother as possible.

  * * *

  • • •

  Mom had cleared out a corner in the basement for our stuff. Once we had it stowed, the agents announced their departure. Danny said they’d be back by nine the next morning so we could continue toward West Virginia.

  Before long, I was out in the backyard, a fenced-in enclosure that was just barely longer than the house and perhaps twenty feet deep.

  A portion of it was dedicated to a tiny deck that had held the same metal-and-plastic Kmart patio set for the last quarter century. Mom had already opened the sun-faded umbrella. Amanda was in the house, showering off the grit from the move, so it was just the two of us.

  I could tell from the way my mother was hovering around me that she was dying to know what was going on. I was fiddling around with the charcoal—Mom inexplicably stored it outside, in a small shed that contained her gardening supplies and was something short of waterproof—which was my excuse for being evasive with her.

  It didn’t take long for Mom to get fed up. And not with the charcoal.

  “Tommy, stop messing with the fire and talk to me. I’m your mother
. Sit.”

  I sat. As a rule, Barb Jump was where nondisclosure agreements went to be broken. But there would be no keeping this from her. So after swearing her to secrecy, I filled her in on my interactions with the FBI.

  When I was through, she didn’t bother hiding her feelings. She simply demanded, “Okay, why are you doing this?”

  “It’s a lot of money, Mom.”

  “I know, but I don’t like it. It feels like Damn Yankees. You’re Joe Hardy and you’re making a bargain with the devil.”

  “It’s not the devil. It’s Danny Ruiz.”

  “You know what I mean. Since when do we do things for the money in this family?”

  “Since I’m twenty-seven years old and it’s time I grow up and face reality. I’m not hacking it as an actor, and this will go a long way toward helping us transition to whatever comes next.”

  “You’re hacking it just fine. You’ve been in a rough patch since Mr. Martelowitz died, that’s all. You’ve got too much talent to walk away.”

  “I was in a rough patch before Mr. Martelowitz died. Him being alive just covered it up. We’ve talked about this, Mom.”

  “I know, I know. But I thought . . . I thought you would come to your senses. I thought this summer thing would end and you’d rededicate yourself, or maybe something else would shake loose and . . . I don’t know, I just don’t think you should quit on yourself, that’s all. You were an eyelash away from a Tony, for God’s sake.”

  “Mom, I was only nominated.”

  “Yes, but you should have won. That guy from Billy Elliot wasn’t nearly as good as you.”

  “Even if I had won it wouldn’t matter. Do you know how many Tony winners are out of work?”

  “I know,” she said, pouting a little. “But what if . . . what if you gave yourself a year? Just a year. It could be your present to yourself. Or to me. You could live here and take the bus into the city for auditions. Would you do that for your mother?”

  “Mom, no. I appreciate what you’re saying. But it’s over. This FBI thing is going to pay me a lot of money, and it’s what I’m going to do.”

  She leaned back, now studying me, her son, who wasn’t as young as he used to be, either.

  “Is this coming from Amanda? Is something going on with you guys?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You think that if you come home with all this money, she’s finally going to marry you. Is that it?”

  I almost said no. But I didn’t want to lie to my mother. So I said, “Well, yeah, that’s crossed my mind.”

  And then, like she could smell it on me, my mother pulled the truth out of thin air: “She’s pregnant.”

  My face must have fallen by half a foot. My mother required no further confirmation.

  “Oh my goodness! She’s pregnant! Oh, Tommy, honey,” she said, putting both hands to her mouth and sucking in sharply.

  I still hadn’t said anything.

  “I knew it,” my mother continued. “I knew the moment I looked at her. Her ass was bigger.”

  “Mom, stop,” I said. “That’s not even possible. She just found out.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s first-trimester ass. Everyone gets it. Even your walking stick of a mother. One moment, I was the same scrawny little girl I had always been. The next moment, I was Kim Kardashian.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, the Barb Jump Show.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious. I can’t have you going all BBC on this one.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, then heaved an outsize sigh. “You realize this is exactly why you shouldn’t do this . . . this prison thing. Amanda is young and pregnant and unmarried and scared. Believe me, I’ve been there. She needs you, Tommy. Not a pile of cash.”

  “And she’ll have me. In six months.”

  She grabbed my hand. “Tommy, can you please think about this? If not for you or Amanda, for me? Prison is dangerous. They don’t send people there as a reward for saintly behavior. You’re my sweet, gentle, loving boy. I don’t care how many muscles you have now. You don’t belong in a place like that.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said.

  Then, because there were tears starting to form in her eyes, and because I didn’t want to have to deal with her emotions on top of everything else, I took my hand away and stood up.

  “The fire is probably hot enough by now,” I said. “I’m going to start the burgers.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Amanda stepped out of the shower, finished drying herself, and wrapped the towel around her head.

  For a few moments, she stopped to examine herself in the mirror, looking for some external confirmation of what was happening inside. Was her skin glowing yet? Had her breasts begun to swell? Were her hips broadening?

  It was like waiting for puberty all over again. And, much like the first time, when she began the first anxious search for changes in her nine-year-old self, nothing much was happening.

  She briefly drummed her still-flat stomach, then walked out of the en suite bathroom and into the bedroom. It had been Tommy’s when he was a boy, and his mother had since turned it into a museum to her only child. Framed Playbill covers lined the walls, as did pictures of Tommy’s adolescence.

  There was Tommy as a ten-year-old, appearing in a regional production of Oliver! There was Tommy at the barricades in Les Miz. There was Tommy, stage left for a big company number in Wicked. There was Tommy with Michael Crawford at a benefit.

  As much as it was a shrine to a boy’s achievement, it was also a testament to a mother’s devotion.

  While Amanda dressed, she peeked out the blinds toward the porch, where Tommy and his mother were having what appeared to be an intense conversation.

  Amanda loved Barb. From a distance. Barb was just a little . . . overwhelming at times. So high-energy. So constantly putting on a show. So garrulous. Her habit of saying whatever came to her mind whenever it arrived there was fundamentally at odds with Amanda’s southern upbringing, where politeness was prized above honesty.

  But then again, what did she expect from a woman whose name was a sharp object combined with an action verb?

  Amanda was just stepping away from the window when Tommy’s phone, which he had tossed on the bed, began to blare out “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin. The caller ID showed a 501 area code. A girl from northern Mississippi didn’t need to be told that was Arkansas.

  Without a second thought, she answered the call.

  “Hello?”

  The man on the other end said his name so quickly Amanda missed it. But she didn’t miss the end part: “. . . from the Arkansas Repertory Theatre.”

  “Oh, yes, hello.”

  “Is this Amanda?”

  “It is.”

  “Tommy brags about you all the time. He says you’re quite an artist.”

  “Depends on the day,” she said.

  He laughed. She hadn’t been trying to make a joke.

  “Anyhow, is Tommy around?”

  Amanda again glanced outside, where Tommy was still in a serious-seeming conversation with Barb.

  “Actually, he’s busy at the moment.”

  “Oh. Well, I was actually calling to offer him a job. I know he was in the middle of a run up until yesterday so I wasn’t going to bother him. But now that it’s over I didn’t want to wait too much longer. His cover letter was amazing. I read it to the board, and they were like, ‘We’ve got to get this guy.’ We’d love to have him join us.”

  Amanda squeezed the phone. It might as well have been fate calling, telling them to ditch this FBI foolishness. Forget the instant riches. Forget the New York galleries. Move to Little Rock—a lovely town with its own galleries—and join the ranks of the other artists who couldn’t quite make it in New York.
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br />   Wow. That last part just hopped into Amanda’s brain, bypassing the usual filters of kindness or fairness.

  Yet she couldn’t deny it, either.

  Then there was something else, even more spontaneous: Whatever Arkansas was paying him, it sure wasn’t three hundred thousand dollars.

  Still. Forget it. Money wasn’t everything.

  Except her mother cleaned houses. Three hundred thousand dollars was more than she made in a decade.

  For six months’ work.

  And then he could keep acting. Which, whatever he might say about it, was what he really wanted. In some ways, so did she. Amanda hadn’t fallen in love with an assistant managing director. She had fallen in love with a man whose passion was being onstage, not near it.

  She worried being deprived of that great joy would change him. She worried he’d come to resent the baby if the knowledge of the child’s conception and the formal capitulation of his dreams were so intimately entwined. She worried he’d resent her, as the person who made the baby.

  And then they’d split, and she’d end up raising the child by herself, brave and lonely in Mississippi, just like her own mother.

  Her brain urged her to stop having these destructive thoughts, to recognize that they were being offered one last chance to take a graceful exit ramp off this insane FBI highway.

  That’s very exciting. Hang on. Let me see if I can interrupt him.

  She knew that’s what she should have said.

  What came out instead was: “Oh, I’m so sorry. He accepted another job earlier today.”

  Which was true.

  “Uhh, oh. Okay. Well, I’m sorry to hear that, obviously. But tell him I said congratulations. That’s . . . that’s great.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “Thanks so much for calling.”

  She finished dressing, then walked out onto the deck, where Tommy was flipping burgers and ignoring his mother.