“Hey you,” came from around the corner of a bookshelf.

His teaching colleague, Abby Fenwick, trim in her cardinal red jogging suit with white racing stripes, peeked from behind an array of volumes by Stanislavski and Boleslavsky. A paisley scarf was wrapped stylishly around her sinewy neck, and she had lost the gold, rather grannyish glasses. A fashion blossoming had accompanied Miss Fenwick's brush with the ESL theater.

“What's new?”

After being asked that so often, you would think Jason would have a ready answer now. He gaped for a long moment.

“You know I do have something to share with you. About Fermin,” Jason said. “I saw him after class Thursday night. Thought he might be interested in ESL theater, and I said How are you? How's Miss Fenwick's class. He clammed up and said, Me no speak English.”

“I wonder when Fermin decided to join the Iroquois tribe,” Miss Fenwick said. “He did terribly on the APEL test. He got three points out of eighty. And he can barely write the letters. Tears in his eyes, he told me he never went to school in his country.”

“The Fermin I knew was fluent,” Jason insisted. “Could have moved him right up and out of the system.”

“Of course we want them to stay,” said Miss Fenwick. “Get them lost in the hall of mirrors and milk all the ADA. What level are you?”

“I teach Bla Bla Bla.” Miss Fenwick looked at him. “The acronym for Beginning Low A is BLA, so I teach Bla Bla Bla.”

“You are funny, Jason. It always leaves me happier to see you. And your acting isn't bad, either.”

Just outside Samuel French, Jason opened up his cell phone and called his mom. Buoyed by the round of rehearsals and the promise of new songs fermenting, he felt an earnest urge to reach out. With the two-hour time difference in Ohio, Jason figured he would catch her before her afternoon cocktail(s). The talk was harsh, punctuated by sighs. If Helen had launched a thousand ships, Jason's mom's sigh had sunk a thousand dreams, choked them in the womb with her sigh, expressing displeasure, implying the lack of something needed but that Jason wasn't giving or able to give.

“I'm starting to rehearse a musical with ESL students,” Jason ventured.

“What are they paying you?” his mother asked.

“The privilege of sharing a theatrical experience,” Jason replied.

“You can't afford to do that. . . You've got Kit to think about. And your medical benefits at the night school. By the time he was thirty, your brother had built up a dental practice. . . Seven, no eight, years in Hollywood. Nothing to show for it. Time to give it up.”

Jason just about puked and hung up on his mom. The fury overcame him. He'd reached a tentative peace in the case of Mom. Then today, her viper tongue rattled on, and he suddenly wanted to subject her to long-distance electrocution.

He hung up his cell and raced to his volume of Mylanta. He expected soothing, vague words along the lines of Never ever give up. Instead, the book fell open to this passage straightway: Live and worship the truth, harsh as it may be. Never confuse the messenger with the message. Speak to those whom we loathe.

Mylanta's words breathed tallness into his soul. Jason took a deep breath and quickly redialed his mom's phone number.

“Mom, I don't know what happened,” he said. “I think my phone broke up.”

And they resumed their conversation, which soon reached the point of exasperation until Jason bit his tongue.

“Eight years in Hollywood, what do you have to show for it?” She never gave him a chance to answer. “A couple of bit parts in movies, we tell the relatives about and they have to bring a telescope to the theater to make you out from the background. And you make yourself out to be a big shot.” His mom went on. He could hear her pull on a Winston and take a sip of booze. “Suzanne, she's doing great things. Have you seen her show?”

“No, ma, I don't even have cable, O.K. So I haven't seen her show. Look I gotta be going, O.K.?”

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