He has to see what happens

He clapped.

Not loud. Not theatrical. Just brought both hands together once because the screen told him to and he had already pressed one button today by accident, he had nothing to lose.

Judith stopped.

No freeze-frame this time. No rewind. She just… halted. The anger drained out of her face like someone had pulled a plug behind her eyes. The paper was still in her hand. The bun was still perfect. The blouse still looked obscene if you had a filthy mind, which Ron did. But the woman wearing all of it looked at him like a performer waiting on a note.

Confused.

“Did I do something wrong?” Judith asked. “Is there something we need to change?”

Ron’s brain went blank for a second.

What was this?

“Umm,” he said. “Change what?”

“Change how I was doing the scene?” She said it like that sentence belonged. Like she had not just been ready to throw her own kid out. Her voice was completely earnest. No sarcasm. No trap. “Please tell me how I can do it differently.”

Ron looked at her. Really looked. Same Judith. Same brown eyes. Same mouth that had been ripping him open thirty seconds ago. Now she was standing in his room asking for direction like the grades lecture was a part she had been cast in.

He was even more confused. His pulse was in his throat. The phone was a warm stupid weight in his other hand.

“Uhhh,” he said. “I guess you can be more lenient and soft?”

He said it to see what would happen. That was all. A test. A stupid little push because if this was a dream he wanted to know how far the dream would go.

Judith actually thought about it.

He watched her think. That was the part that made his skin crawl in a way he did not have a name for. His hot-headed mother, the woman who timed people and called his room a pigsty in other lives of this same morning, standing there in her charcoal suit considering lenient.

“Oh,” she said. “Are you sure that’s how the scene should be done? It is my understanding that the mother, Judith, would be very angry at Ron for failing.”

Hearing her refer to herself in the third person was crazy. The mother, Judith. Ron. Like they were roles meant to be played.

He was starting to understand what was happening here. Not all of it. But enough to start making sense of things.

The app had not swapped her for a different woman. It had turned the fight into a scene and handed him the director’s chair.

“No!” Ron said, too fast. “I think even if she is angry she should be polite in how she communicates herself to him. That’s the best way for him to learn?”

Judith pondered that.

A second. Maybe two. Her eyes flicked like she was reviewing the script. The paper lowered a fraction. The tits in the blouse stayed a problem he was going to have to live with.

Then she nodded.

“Ok, director. I shall incorporate your feedback. Shall we redo the scene?”

Director.

The word sat in the room between them. She had said it simply. No joke. No wink. Judith Shaw in her work suit called her son director because the scene required a director and he had been assigned that role by the app.

Ron did not know what else to say. If he said no, she might snap back into the version that wanted him on the street. If he said yes, she was going to walk out and do it again, softer, because he had asked. The choice was simple.

“Yes,” he said. “I guess we can.”

“Good.” Judith smoothed the already-smooth front of her skirt with the hand that was not holding his failure.

“I’ll take it from the top.”

She turned.

He watched her go. She walked back into her room with the same authority she used for everything else in this house and closed the door behind her.

The latch clicked.

Ron stood in the suddenly quiet room with his phone still glowing purple in his hand. The hallway was empty. The grades were on the other side of that door now. So was Judith. Waiting, apparently, for her cue.

He looked down at the screen again.

‘Scene in progress’ had gone dark.

A new line sat underneath like it had been there the whole time and he had only just earned the right to see it.

‘Redo queued’