Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow

going to be me—and, you know, Kristina Stakuna is never going to forgive me. But it’s so exciting! I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I had to tell you. I can’t even think about it; it gets me too crazy. So are we getting together today?”
    I suddenly knew I wasn’t going to tell her about Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre. Not yet. This was her moment—her lead in the spring play. And Orson Welles was still too fragile a dream: too impossibly wonderful, too perilous, and too achingly mine to tell anyone yet. When it was absolutely certain I was opening in the show, when it couldn’t be canceled, when my part was perfect, and all I had to do was astonish them, then I’d tell them all.
    â€œI think I’m going to be busy today,” I said.
    My mother walked into the kitchen. She spoke to me as if I weren’t even on the phone. “Are you waiting for your father to pick up those leaves? Is that what you want? Sure, let the horse do it. All week long he works; he kills himself for this family. And you’re on that phone day and night. Sure, let the horse do it.”
    â€œMa, I’m going to help; I’m on the phone right now.”
    â€œAnd he’s out there now. Sunday morning. He’s out raking leaves. With his back. And you—every two seconds you’re running out that door.”
    â€œMa! I’m raking right now. Caroline, I’ll call you later!”
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    I raked the dead leaves into a pile in the backyard, and then began burning them in a wire metal trash basket. In about ten minutes the entire backyard was on fire, and my mother had to call the fire department.
    â€œIt’s no use,” she said.
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    At Newark I took the bus to Broad Street. I carried my ukulele and my script in a grocery bag. My clothes and skin still smelled like smoke.
    I was working that fall for Leonard Goldberg, who managed the Rialto Theatre. He was fat and nervous; he chain-smoked Kools, and he was allergic to practically everything. He was also pretty much entirely incapable of dealing with other human beings, so he spent most of the day hiding in his office, sending me out for a “blueberry Danish and a Sanka-dark-half-sugar.”
    He generally let me run the place. First, I sold tickets at the window (that week it was Broadway Melody of 1938). Then, in between features, I’d walk center stage. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I’d say, “and welcome to another gift night at the Rialto Theatre.” Just this sentence usually got some applause. Then I’d reach into a wicker basket and draw out ten winning ticket stubs, reading the numbers out loud. The winners stood up, and I’d get the rest of the audience to applaud them. Later on, they’d come up to claim their broken lamps and their too-tight shoes or their year’s supply of Fleischmann’s yeast. What the audience didn’t know—and what even Mr. Goldberg didn’t know—was that I’d rigged the entire thing so that my family won every single drawing. Some nights it was my mother, other nights my grandmother, my sister, my Aunt Minnie. When I’d sell them their tickets, I’d write their ticket numbers on the palm of my hand. Then, onstage, I’d reach into the basket, pull out a ticket, then read the number on my palm. “And the first of tonight’s lucky winners is number 0144!” My Aunt Minnie would cry out in surprise. Or my grandmother would stand up smiling. My sister was the best at winning; she’d scream, jump up and down, hug her girlfriend.
    Pretty soon all our houses were filled with enough boxes of dishes and glassware to entertain twelve thousand for lunch.
    I told Mr. Goldberg that I wouldn’t be able to work that evening’s show, or any night that week, because of a “death in the family.”
    â€œAh bruch,” he said. “Who died?” He sneezed messily into his