That’s when I saw my entire summer falling away from me—ten weeks of mind-numbing, soul-crushing, forty-hour shifts through Labor Day: push, twist, push, twist, push, twist.
There were twelve other interns, all boys. Half of them were mentally disabled; the other half looked like they wanted to kill me. The adult employees were Hispanics, Asians, and Indians with limited English skills; at lunch they divided into factions, like cliques in a high school or gangs in a prison. No one ever said hello or even smiled at me; I might as well have been invisible.
At break time, I took my sandwich outside to the parking lot, crouched in the shade of a Dumpster, and read Stephen King novels. I crammed as much story as I could in the allotted thirty-minute break so I could spend the afternoon chewing over the plot, trying to figure out what might happen next. There was nothing else to occupy my mind. Sometimes I’d try to count the mascara tubes (this required more concentration than you’d think; the highest I ever got was 715 tubes in 47 minutes). But most of the time I just thought of Mary and Zelinsky and how I managed to ruin everything.
Meanwhile, Alf and Clark had joined the closing shift at the Wetbridge McDonald’s. They were constantly complaining about the difficulty of their work—the rude customers, the sweltering kitchens, the filthy grease traps. But I could tell they were having the time of their lives. The restaurant was staffed entirely with teenagers, half of them girls, and the night shifts sounded like long, raucous parties. They were staying up until midnight, pigging out on Quarter Pounders and Chicken McNuggets, and clearing more than a hundred bucks every week.
Most nights I’d walk over to the McDonald’s and sit on a playground designed for little kids, reading my Stephen King books until Alf and Clark came outside for their breaks. Over the weeks, I met all of their coworkers—the cute girls on register, the other guys in grill, the friendly geezer who dragged out the trash and swept up the dining room. They entertained me with outrageous stories of crazy customers, like the vegetarian who ordered a Big Mac with no meat, or the guy who paid with a fifty-dollar bill and drove away without his change.
“How about you?” Clark would ask me after they’d carried on for too long. “Tell us a story from the factory. What’s going on?”
I never had anything to share. Every day at Cosmex was the same. The factory never stopped; the machines never broke; the giant vats never ran dry of mascara. I spent the mornings dreaming of my lunch break, and my afternoons dreaming of the bus rides home.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, my mother started dating Tack. It took me a while to catch on. Sure, I’d noticed little changes in her behavior: she cut her hair short; she started blending fruit shakes every morning; she was doing her Jane Fonda Workout video again. Apparently Tack would visit the Food World on her break, and they would go across the street to the Wetbridge Diner for coffee. This all became clear one Thursday afternoon when Tack showed up at our house for dinner. He arrived in a shirt and tie, carrying a bouquet of daisies. They tried to act like there was nothing awkward about the situation—“grown-ups can be friends,” they assured me—but I saw what was happening, and I didn’t want any part of it. Tack tried making conversation over dinner. He said he was thinking about purchasing a home computer and he asked if I could recommend anything. I just shrugged and said I didn’t know. I didn’t want to encourage him. I didn’t like having him at our table with his stiff posture and his silver buzz cut and his loaded gun, like he expected Libyan rebels to come crashing through the windows any moment.
My mother insisted he stay for coffee and dessert, and he even lingered long enough to watch The Cosby Show and Cheers. I excused myself, went back to my bedroom, and read my computer magazines. I still had all of my old subscriptions, and new issues kept arriving on a monthly basis, advertising all the latest games and programming tricks that I’d never get to try.
Tack started coming for dinner every Thursday. He always brought fresh flowers, and he always stayed until Cheers was over. My mother and Tack carried on like Cheers was the best thing since Dallas. They were constantly debating if Diane Chambers would return to the show in the fall to marry Sam Malone.
July 12 was my mother’s birthday. Tack drove us to Seaside Heights, and I spent the night following them up and down the boardwalk. They played mini golf while I just watched. They ate frozen custard, but I didn’t want any. They rode through the haunted house on a tiny little buggy, but I chose to wait outside. I knew I was being a jerk, but I didn’t care. At one point my mother lost her patience and pulled me aside. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “It’s my birthday. Why do you have to be so miserable?”
“Because I’m miserable,” I said.
Through that long, awful, never-ending summer, there was just one thing keeping me going: the Game of the Year Contest for High School Computer Programmers. In the third week of July, I received a letter from the Rutgers faculty, explaining that the 118 games submitted for the award had been culled to five finalists, including The Impossible Fortress by Will Marvin and Mary Zelinsky. The faculty hoped we would attend the awards ceremony, where guest judge Fletcher Mulligan of Digital Artists would declare the winner. Every finalist was guaranteed a fifty-dollar college savings bond, and the winner would take home an IBM PS/2, approximate retail value $4,000.
I showed the letter to my mother, and we debated next steps. Technically I was still forbidden to contact Mary, but we both agreed that she deserved to see the letter. And the last time I’d tried to deliver a letter to Mary, things hadn’t gone so well. I didn’t know what to do.
One Thursday night at dinner, my mother showed the letter to Tack and explained the dilemma. Tack folded the letter in half, then placed it in the pocket of his sports coat. “I’ll visit the store in the morning,” he said. “I’ll give it to Sal.”
“He hates me,” I said. “You have to give it to Mary.”
Tack shook his head. “I can’t go behind his back.”
“Then you might as well tear it up,” I said. “Because that’s all Zelinsky’s going to do. He’ll never let her see it.”
Tack paused to take a long sip of coffee. “My goodness, Beth, this is really delicious coffee.”
“Thank you,” Mom said. “It’s Maxwell House.”
“Give me the letter,” I told Tack.
“Let me help you, Will,” he said. “I’ve known Sal for eight years. He’s a reasonable guy. Maybe I can fix this.”