“Yes, Joe.” She took it from his frantic hands.
“It’s about an audition. A radio audition.”
“That’s what it says. An audition.”
“To-morrow. An audition to-morrow.”
“I understand that.” She shook him gently. “What are you going to read?”
“Oh!” said the boy. Her calmness washed the incoherence out of him. “I—I’m not sure,” he said and went upstairs. After that he paced his room with a book. The sun passed over the front of the house and sent long, slanting rays out of the west across the lawn. And still he paced.
“Joe!” his mother called. “Do radio actors bother with food?”
He ate, spoke to two shadows who were his father and his mother, and went upstairs again. At midnight, when Tom Carlin looked into the bedroom, he found Joe standing in front of the mirror trying to achieve gauntness by lengthening his face and sucking in his cheeks.
“I’m reading an Abe Lincoln part,” the boy croaked. “I’m getting in the mood.”
Tom Carlin closed the door and stared helplessly at his wife.