Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes Read online

  CHAD: older brother

  ANNABELLE: King Richard’s elder daughter

  LESLIE: King Richard’s younger daughter

  ACT I

  SCENE: The Balog family is seated around the death trap (a.k.a. their kitchen table), which is surrounded by still-wobbly stacks of newspaper. There are three mostly eaten pizzas in the center of the table. None of them have pineapple as a topping, but Leslie doesn’t complain. There’s a collection of empty glass jars—mostly old pickle jars—on top of the kitchen cupboards, a mountain of empty milk containers spills out of the pantry, and stacks of old egg cartons cover the counters.

  GRANDMA NORA (with a deep, steadying breath): So what games do you guys like?

  LESLIE: Oh, anything.

  ME: Do we even have any games?

  Mom narrows her eyes at me.

  LESLIE: We could play cards. I think there’s a deck under the—

  CHAD (popping a last bite of crust into his mouth): No can do. I’ve gotta go.

  ME: What? Where’re you going?

  CHAD (pushes back his chair, stands up): Dinner with Sheila.

  ME: But you just ate, like, six slices of pizza.

  CHAD: That was an appetizer.

  MOM: Sit down.

  CHAD: Mom, seriously, Sheila and I do have plans.

  GRANDMA NORA: Well, just send your girl a text and let her know that you’ll be late. It can’t take you long to play a game of cards with your aging grandmother. Who knows? The next time you see me, I might be in a coffin.

  CHAD: Fine.

  He sits and starts fiddling with his phone.

  MOM: This isn’t Family Card Night. It’s Family Game Night. I’ll be right back.

  Mom shuffles out of the room.

  GRANDMA NORA: I thought cards were a game.

  ME: And I really don’t think we own any games. Except maybe cards.

  GRANDMA NORA (shaking her head): She’s always been this way. When she gets an idea in her head, your mother has a hard time letting it go. I guess she wants us to play a board game.

  CHAD: More like bored game. B-o-r-e-d game. Get it? (He cracks up and goes back to his phone, probably texting his lame joke to Sheila.)

  LESLIE: I don’t think they’re boring.

  ME: Depends on the game.

  GRANDMA NORA (staring in the direction of our pantry): Where did all these milk jugs come from?

  CHAD: The grocery store. (He cracks up again.)

  ME: It also depends on who you’re playing with.

  GRANDMA NORA: And when is the last time anyone mopped the floor in here?

  MOM (shouting from the stairs): I can hear you.

  LESLIE: Well, our game night won’t be boring.

  ME: You can say that again.

  ACT II

  SCENE: Mom returns a few minutes later, her arms full of battered old game boxes, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. This house has everything—Leslie once found a box of wigs in the closet under the stairs.

  ME (as Mom reenters): Where did those come from?

  MOM: They were in Leslie’s room.

  LESLIE: They were?

  ME: Do any of them even still have the pieces?

  GRANDMA NORA (still trying her best to get along with Mom): I’m sure we’ll find a way to make it work.

  LESLIE (leaning forward): Which one are we gonna play?

  CHAD: Why can’t we just play cards? A couple of rounds of blackjack or something?

  GRANDMA NORA: I don’t hold with young people gambling.

  MOM (dumps the pile of games on the table and starts distributing them): Let’s see what we’ve got.

  CHAD: We wouldn’t have to play for money.

  I sift through a beat-up version of the game Trouble. It contains cards from Sorry and the buzzer from Taboo. I try the buzzer. It doesn’t work. The batteries must be dead. Trouble has only one game piece.

  ME: Well, we can’t play this one.

  MOM: I’ve got most of a backgammon set here.

  CHAD: Actually, blackjack would probably be better if we didn’t bet. It would take less time that way.

  GRANDMA NORA: And I would wipe you out, young man. Know your opponent. First rule of cards.

  ME: I’m pretty sure backgammon is a two-player game.

  MOM: I know that.

  CHAD (standing up): Perfect! You don’t even need me here for that one.

  LESLIE (still rooting through the game Mom handed her): Isn’t Monopoly supposed to have money or something?

  MOM: Sit down, Chad.

  ME: I think Monopoly takes, like, three or four hours to play.

  LESLIE: That sounds good.

  CHAD (sits back down. He waves his phone with the timer app on it.): That’s it. You’re all officially on the clock.

  GRANDMA NORA (pointing toward Leslie): Is that a hairbrush in your box?

  LESLIE (dangles an old wire hairbrush from two of her fingers. It’s full of long black hairs. No one in our family has long black hair.): Eww! Where do you think this came from?

  CHAD: Here, let me take care of that for you.

  He winks and snatches Monopoly, hairbrush and all, from Leslie. He flicks it away, and the box lands with a crunch in a nearby mound of grocery bags. A few loose bags scatter across the kitchen.

  MOM: This game’s good to go. It’s even got (she pauses to hold up a mess of papers) the directions.

  GRANDMA NORA (with pursed lips): How nice.

  LESLIE: Oh goody, which game is it?

  MOM: The Game of Life.

  ACT III

  SCENE: (An aside—this is the part of the play that Ms. Leary called the climax—it’s where everything changes.) We set up our board and discover that the Life money is missing. But we find the Monopoly cash in the Scrabble box. The wheel from Life is also missing, so Chad digs out the dice from Parcheesi.

  We find only four game pieces in the Life box. Grandma Nora volunteers to be a Scrabble tile instead of a Life car, but we can’t find a single one of the pink and blue pegs that are supposed to drive the cars around the board. No one cares except for Leslie, who insists that we need them. She digs out a package of spaghetti and a couple of markers. The colored spaghetti people are closer to green and orange than blue and pink, but Leslie is satisfied.

  LESLIE: Here’s your noodle-man, Chad. Sorry the color is a little off.

  CHAD (without looking up from his phone): No prob. Just stick in it my car.

  GRANDMA NORA (twitching her foot around under the table): My foot keeps sticking to something under here.

  LESLIE: Which car do you want to be, Chad?

  ME: Give him the red one.

  GRANDMA NORA: You know, your aunt Jill drives a red car. It’s a convertible.

  CHAD (looks up at me, surprised): Yeah, red’s good.

  GRANDMA NORA (still twitching her foot): Is there a sponge I can use? Or maybe I should just wipe this up with a paper towel? I think I saw some in the den.

  MOM: Why were you in the den?

  LESLIE: Here, Grandma Nora, why don’t you be the banker?

  MOM (studying the directions): Each player receives ten thousand dollars, so maybe each player can have one five-thousand-dollar bill and five of the one-thousand-dollar bills?

  GRANDMA NORA (takes the Monopoly money from Leslie): I don’t think there are thousand-dollar bills in Monopoly.

  LESLIE: I can make some!

  CHAD: No time.

  GRANDMA NORA (still twitching her foot every now and then): How about we each just get two of the five-hundred-dollar bills and say they’re worth five thousand each?

  LESLIE: And we can pretend the hundred-dollar bills are one-thousand-dollar bills!

  CHAD (pockets his phone, leans forward, and rubs his hands together. He must have reached some kind of agreement with Sheila.): Good enough for me. All righty, let’s get this started. Youngest goes first?

  GRANDMA NORA: That sounds good. Leslie, sweetie, you start.

  MOM (clinging to her directi
ons, like they prove something): No. These say, “All players spin the wheel. Highest spinner takes the first turn.”

  ME: But there’s no wheel.

  CHAD: I’ve got dice.

  He rolls an eleven. No one beats his number, so Chad takes the first turn. Life gives players two options: business or college. The business route is shorter, and Chad sends his car that way.

  MOM: Turn that car around. You will be going to college.

  GRANDMA NORA: Oh, for heaven’s sake, Pauline. It’s just a board game.

  MOM: Don’t tell me how to raise my children.

  ME (muttering): Cue the apocalypse.

  LESLIE: What did you say, Annabelle?

  CHAD: It’s no big deal, Mom.

  ME: Never mind, Leslie.

  GRANDMA NORA: I never went to college, and I turned out just fine. (She jerks her foot around. We can all hear the sticky sound from the floor under her chair.) I certainly didn’t need a college degree to keep my floors clean.

  LESLIE (quickly takes the dice from Chad): I’m next. I’ll go to college.

  GRANDMA NORA: You know who else didn’t go to college? Bill Gates. He didn’t go to college, and he’s the richest man in the world.

  LESLIE: Oooh nooo! Study for exams. Miss next turn.

  ME: Bill Gates went to college. He just didn’t graduate.

  CHAD: Ha! See, Les? That’s why I didn’t go. Now you lost your turn and you owe the bank forty thousand in loans.

  GRANDMA NORA (the sticky sound is coming from under her chair again): Does anyone want to switch seats with me? This spot is giving me fits.

  LESLIE (shoving the dice at me): Here, Annabelle. Your turn.

  Chad’s timer buzzes. He springs to his feet.

  CHAD: You can have my seat, Grandma. It’s been fun, but I’m already forty-five minutes late, so I’m outta here.

  MOM: No, you’re not.

  CHAD: Yes, I am.

  MOM (stands up): No, you’re not.

  LESLIE: Roll, Annabelle.

  CHAD: Yes, I am.

  Mom sits back down. She doesn’t look at Chad.

  MOM: Fine. If you don’t want to be here, we don’t need you.

  Chad stomps out of the room. We hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs. I catch Leslie’s eye and remember that it’s supposed to be my turn. I roll. Grandma Nora takes her turn after me. Neither of us speaks, but we both take the college route. Mom is rolling the dice when Chad thuds back through the kitchen, smelling strongly of cologne. He slams the side door as he exits.

  If this play was a Greek tragedy instead of an Elizabethan one, this is the part where the chorus would start wringing their hands and wailing. I feel like wringing my hands and wailing, too. But instead I just sit there and watch.

  For the second time in three days, the whole house reverberates from Chad’s door slam. I watch the newspapers in the “mid to upper 70s” column tremble and sway. Mom must have done a terrible job restacking them.

  They shake. They swing. And they come crashing down.

  Enter the rat.

  There’s a shocked silence. Followed by a squeak. The crashing newspapers must have startled the rat out into the open. We’re all going to die from hantavirus. I want to strap a gas mask over my face. Surely we have one somewhere in this house. But I can’t think where.

  In the distance, a universe away from this rat-infested trench, Chad’s truck roars to life. The sound breaks some sort of spell, and the remaining actors fly into action. Chairs scrape against the floor as Mom, Leslie, and Grandma Nora scramble after the rat. But not me. Now, I’m not proud of this. I’d like to think I’m one of those leap-into-action, once-more-unto-the-breach types. But I’m not.

  Turns out, I’m the type who shrieks and jumps onto a chair.

  Rat germs. Rat disease. Rat air particles. My gut reaction is to put as much space between me and the rodent microbes as possible.

  Leslie, who by all rights should be the delicate flower up on a chair, is creeping toward the intruder. Mom is behind her, and Grandma Nora is just behind Mom. Grandma Nora has armed herself with one of the rolled-up newspapers, and as they close in on the rat, she suddenly pushes past Mom and Leslie.

  “I’ll get him!” she shouts, brandishing the newspaper like a Viking with a long sword.

  “Don’t hurt him!” says Leslie. She looks ready to save the rat by throwing herself on Grandma Nora’s sword. If I know Leslie at all, she is totally planning to capture the rat, nurse it back to health, and free it in the woods behind our house.

  At the same time, Mom grabs Grandma Nora by her sword arm but not out of any misguided concern for the rodent. No, her misguided concern is directed elsewhere.

  “Don’t rip my newspaper!” Mom shouts.

  Meanwhile the rat, like my brother and my dad before him, has performed a vanishing act. The rat hightails it out of Family Game Night. Smart rat. His exit ushers us well into the fourth act.

  See, the fourth and fifth acts of an Elizabethan tragedy are when things get really ugly. In act four, which Ms. Leary calls “the falling action,” plans go awry. Everything comes undone. The poop hits the fan. And in act five, it all gets worse. Much, much worse. Act five is the part where everybody (and his brother) dies. Usually violently. They get stabbed or poisoned or buried alive or smothered with a pillow or baked into a pie.

  The good news: No one actually dies in our little family tragedy. Still, what does happen is gruesome enough. With the rat’s disappearance, Grandma Nora snaps back into tiger mode, and she chooses this moment to pounce.

  “What. Is. Wrong. With. You,” Grandma Nora shouts at Mom. She sounds so angry that each word is its own sentence. “You have a rat. In your kitchen. And you’re worried about a newspaper?”

  Mom doesn’t answer. She drops to the ground and starts messing with the toppled newspapers.

  “What are you doing?” Grandma Nora’s eyes bug out so far I think they may pop.

  When Mom doesn’t answer, I chime in: “She’s restacking the newspapers.”

  “Shut up, Annabelle,” says Grandma Nora.

  “Hey,” Leslie protests softly, so softly that no one else hears. But I do. I send Leslie a small smile.

  “What are you smirking at?” Grandma Nora asks me. I don’t feel like explaining. I don’t want to drag Leslie into this, so I just shrug. Grandma Nora turns back to Mom.

  “What are you doing?” she repeats.

  Silence.

  “Answer me.”

  More silence.

  “Answer me,” Grandma Nora says yet again. She still wields the rolled-up newspaper, and when Mom continues to ignore her, Grandma Nora lifts her arm and thumps Mom with it. She whacks her squarely on the top of her head, like Mom is puppy who just piddled on the living room carpet.

  See what I mean about things getting worse in act four?

  And it keeps going downhill.

  Mom drops her armful of newspapers and snatches at the rolled paper in Grandma Nora’s fist. Grandma Nora doesn’t let go. Leslie and I watch in shock and awe as Grandma Nora and Mom start a tug-of-war over the newspaper. They remind me of a couple of kindergarteners fighting over a favorite toy. As they wrestle—Mom yanking down and Grandma Nora pulling up—the paper unfurls, then rips. I can see a partial headline, which reads: FEELING THE PAIN. Beneath is a picture of football players in a messy heap on the ground.

  Without warning, Grandma Nora suddenly drops her end of the paper, causing Mom and the football players to shoot backward. Since Mom never stood up, at least she didn’t have far to fall.

  “I can’t believe this.” Grandma Nora shakes her head so fast that her little red hair spikes flutter in the breeze. She’s still standing, looking down on Mom, who is smoothing out the wrinkled football players. “The only real surprise,” Grandma Nora continues, “is that Richard didn’t leave you sooner.”

  Mom stops messing with her newspaper. Her voice is unexpectedly soft. “What?”

  “You heard me. You’re si
ck. This has to be an illness.” Grandma Nora waves her hands in a sweeping gesture around our kitchen. “How could you keep this from me for so long? How could you do this to your family?”

  “To my family?” Mom echoes Grandma Nora in the same soft voice as before.

  “I’ve gotta go call Jill. This is so much worse than we thought.” Grandma Nora spins around.

  At her sister’s name, Mom straightens up. Her voice is loud and harsh again. “Don’t you dare call Jillian. This is none of her business.”

  “Yes, it is. She’s your sister.”

  “Was my sister.”

  “She’ll always be your sister, no matter how you feel about it.”

  “Huh. As far as I’m concerned, she’s just some real estate agent. There’s no reason for you to drag her into this.”

  “I disagree,” Grandma Nora says over her shoulder. “After all, Jillian was a psychology minor. Or have you forgotten?” Grandma Nora says this with a great deal of dignity, as if she wasn’t just fighting over a rolled-up newspaper like some sort of geriatric kindergartner.

  Exit Grandma Nora.

  Mom’s not done shouting.

  “Fine! Do what you want. But you should know Richard did NOT leave me. He goes to England EVERY YEAR.” She slams around a few more newspapers. “EVERY YEAR!” Then when she realizes Grandma Nora isn’t going to answer back, she creaks into a standing position and limps away.

  Exit Mom.

  End scene.

  Leslie and I (and possibly the rat) are alone on stage for the final act. Leslie is standing there, looking like Bambi after his mother got shot. And I—I realize I’m still standing on my chair. I climb awkwardly down and try to lighten the mood. I scoop up the dice from the table and hold them out to Leslie. “Your turn.”

  “But I lost my turn. Remember?”

  I can’t help it. I laugh.

  Leslie looks back toward the spot where the rat disappeared. Her shoulders start shaking, and at first I think she’s laughing with me. It’s all so over-the-top dramatic. Ridiculous, really. Then she makes a noise, and it’s not a happy noise. I stop mid-laugh.

  “Oh, Leslie,” I say, and take a step toward her.

  “It’s not funny,” she says, and she runs from the kitchen.

  Exit Leslie.

  But you can turn off bad feelings, and you can shove the hurt down so far and so deep that it fades. I box it up and picture lots and lots of duct tape holding the box closed. I put it out of my mind and focus on cleaning up Life.