) Peter, you see your father more often than I saw my adoptive father… Soon your Dad will come home, have dinner with you, read to you and tuck you in. (
Pause) Now tell me where you have hidden my electric razor.
PETER (sulking): Didn’t hide it.
MICHAEL: It’s always on the shelf in the bathroom, and now it isn’t there. I guess, you want to play “hide and seek”…
PETER (still sulking): I don’t want to play any games with you. I want my Papa. (Pause) He bought me like a loaf of bread!
(PETER starts crying. MICHAEL tries to hug him but is pushed away.)
MICHAEL: We have talked about a lot… about a lot big things… adult things… It’s all new to you… I’ve been completely honest with you… and I love you.
PETER: I want Papa…
MICHAEL: He’ll be home soon for dinner… Let’s try not to upset him… He’ll be tired. Papa doesn’t know that you know so much. (Pause) This has been hard for me. I’m tired too. (Pause) And now if you don’t want to play “hide and seek,” tell me where my razor is.
PETER: Why do you want your razor?
MICHAEL: I’d like to shave and shower, and put on a clean shirt, neaten up for dinner…
PETER: You haven’t shaved all week and now that Papa is coming home you want to shave!
MICHAEL: Jake likes me clean-shaven…
PETER: So you and Papa can kiss each other?
MICHAEL(stunned): What have you seen?
PETER: I saw how you and Papa kissed… I never saw him kiss my other babysitters… Every babysitter left after awhile, and another one came. Why are you always here?
MICHAEL: Papa entrusts you to me. We agreed we’d see how you and I got along.
PETER: You’ll be here, even when Papa is home?
MICHAEL: We all will be sort of like a family.
PETER: A family?
MICHAEL: Not a family like your friends Andy or Zack has with their parents… It would be another sort of family…There are a lot different kinds of families nowadays…
Our family would be a better family than you having one babysitter and then another babysitter. We will all get to know each other better.
PETER: It means you’ll live with us always?
MICHAEL: Maybe….I like to read to you… I like to play with you… I love you. (Pause) We’ll get different kinds of power from each other… Like Harry Potter has powers beyond anybody else…
PETER: What kind of powers?
MICHAEL: Who knows? So much happens that we don’t understand…
(PETER has been getting more and more unsettled.)
Peter, what do you want to ask me about? What’s the matter?
PETER: I don’t it like when you pick me up at school!
