All i want, p.14
All I Want, page 14
Emma puts down her glass.
Ben says, “I don’t think that, at this point, the baby would mind a sip of white wine.” He gets a clean class, pours an inch of wine, and gives it to Emma. Everyone toasts Ben and Emma.
The wine is delicious.
“Names,” says Jeb. “Have we decided?”
“Not yet,” says Ben. “Emma and I can’t agree.”
There’s a rough moment. A beat.
“Laurel and Hardy,” Avery says.
“Brad and Angelina,” Rebecca says.
Everyone laughs except Emma, who’s watching how Ben and Rebecca watch each other when they think no one is looking.
That night, in bed, Ben puts his arm around Emma and tenderly pulls her head onto his chest. The physical warmth melts away the unpleasant ice of the evening.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
There are so many things that Emma doesn’t want to hear next. “For what?”
“For taking all the credit. For acting like I put the house together when we both know it was you. I don’t know why I did that. I was being an asshole. Everybody knew. I’ll never ever do it again. Can you forgive me? Emma, please?”
Emma breathes again. She’s imagined so much worse. Of course she forgives him. Most men don’t apologize, ever. They always take the credit for everything and they don’t even notice. Ben gets points just for saying it. He knows the evening was hard for her, and he’s sorry for that too. He cares about how she feels.
They sound like a happy couple as they discuss how great the dinner was, how much their friends love their house. But something’s bothering Emma.
She says, “I need to ask you something.”
“My life is an open book,” says Ben. “Ask me anything. Go ahead.”
“Is there something like… something… going on between you and Rebecca?”
The silence lasts less than five seconds before Ben bursts out laughing.
“You’re kidding,” he says. “If there were, you’d smell it all over me. My god, that hideous perfume. I had to ignore it so I could taste the food.”
Emma finds it comforting. She knows him. He’s telling the truth.
“Don’t be like that, Emma,” says Ben.
“Like what?”
“Please don’t ruin the weekend.”
Emma hadn’t known she could. She feels the happiness trickling out of her like sand from an hourglass.
“Good night, sweetheart,” Ben says.
“Good night, darling,” says Emma.
They don’t even sound like themselves.
* * *
LINDSAY AND BETH are in charge of casting the Christmas pageant, or, as Beth puts it, rounding up the usual suspects.
On the morning of the first Saturday in December, around thirty people show up at the front door, awkwardly wiping their feet on the doormat, offering to take off their boots, acting as if they’re auditioning for a professional production, as if they’d never done this before, though many of them have been doing it for years. For the first time since Ben and Emma moved here, cars and trucks fill the semicircular drive and are parked along the road farther than Emma can see.
Welcome welcome welcome, Emma keeps saying, we’re so happy you’re here.
It’s true. She’s glad her neighbors have come. She hopes some will want to come back. She doesn’t want anyone to feel intimidated by the house or think it’s weird that they’d want to live in a former rehab clinic, a former haunted house with crazy hermits.
It’s neither of those things now. It’s a family home, and the neighbors are welcome.
Several guests tell Emma how they’ve been doing the pageant in the auditorium since the stupid public school outlawed religious observances. The pageant isn’t religious. It’s a play. The rec center is “a real pit,” they say. It reeks, just reeks.
The neighbors fall silent when they walk into the theater. As if they’re entering a church. A cathedral.
Emma overhears a woman say, “I can’t believe this is part of someone’s house.”
So much for no one feeling intimidated by Hideaway Home.
When JD arrives, he stands at the back of the theater, looking uncomfortable in a way that Emma finds touching, especially considering that, for months, he’s worked here five days a week. At first, he’d refused to be in the play. But then he changed his mind. He told Emma he thought he’d better be onstage, just in case.
“Just in case what?” Ben asks Emma, when she tells him. “In case someone falls through the stage?”
“I don’t think he meant that,” Emma says. But what did he mean? Is Ben jealous of JD? The idea makes Emma feel guilty, partly because she likes it that Ben cares.
JD will play one of the shepherds. He’s made it clear he won’t wear a head cloth and a rope around his head. Beth promised he won’t have to.
Emma recognizes people from the supermarket, the post office. The guys from the gas station and the tire place. The girl from the convenience store. And the women at that charity sale she’d gone to early in her time here, the women who had made her feel so excluded. Now they couldn’t be nicer, asking when the baby is due, is it a girl or boy, do they have a name picked out?
When she says that they don’t know, the neighbors scrutinize her belly and predict the baby’s sex. So what if she doesn’t want to know? They’re going to tell her.
A few moms ask if their kids can touch Emma’s belly. The kids don’t want to touch her any more than she wants to be touched. Emma hardly feels their little hands through her thick jacket. JD’s been working on the heat, but the theater still isn’t warm.
Emma has come to greet people and guide them to the cider and doughnuts, and now as the chat dies down and they take their seats in the first rows and start getting serious about assigning roles, she finds a seat in the third row. It’s where she sits when she comes in here alone. But it feels so different with people here. She thinks of the journal in the attic. That poor woman came to talent shows here. What happened to her book?
The seats on both sides of Emma stay empty. Emma tries not to feel hurt because no one wants to sit beside her. She tries not to look around or seem desperate. Everyone knows everyone else, but no one knows her.
Finally someone sits next to her.
Sally!
How happy Emma is to see her! How glad they had that lunch. Sally will be her guide. Sally will explain who everyone is, what they’re saying, what they’re really saying. She’ll help Emma understand their community.
“Good to see you!” Emma says.
“Good to be here,” says Sally. “It’s so nice of you, opening your house like this.” Then she puts her finger to her lips. Hush. The rehearsal’s beginning.
Lindsay, Beth, and Ben take the stage. Lindsay thanks everyone for coming.
Beth says, “Mostly we’ll do what some of you have been doing for decades. I’ll narrate. Lindsay will stage-manage. Stage-micromanage, I should say.”
Everyone laughs politely.
“And this year we have a director.” People clap, uncertainly. Ben bows. He looks out over the audience, and Emma wonders if he was imagining anything like this when he sat in the theater.
Earlier that week, Lindsay and Beth came over to work out some ideas for the play. Ben invited Emma to join them, but she could tell Lindsay and Beth didn’t want her. She was puzzled by Beth’s coldness. But Emma knows Lindsay never liked her. Emma has decided that she’s the type of woman who doesn’t like other women and doesn’t care if other women dislike her.
Emma had been asleep by the time Ben came upstairs and kissed her on the forehead.
“And a star shone over Bethlehem,” he said.
“Just in time,” said Emma.
* * *
NOW BETH HAS a list in front of her, but Lindsay seems to know it by heart.
Joe from the pizza place will play Joseph. Mr. Aiello from the school board will play Pontius Pilate, which everyone thinks is hilarious. She lists the kids who will play shepherds and reminds them to sign their lambs out of the prop room.
Lindsay calls on a very old man who has raised his hand. He volunteers some lambs from his farm to be in the play.
Sally whispers, “He does this every year. Those so-called lambs of his are eight months old by now. Smelly and disgusting.”
Lindsay thanks him, but they’re trying to keep it simple. She flashes a toothy smile at the farmer, and they move on to asking the high school art teacher if she can paint another cardboard camel, because last year’s succumbed to a leak in the auditorium prop room.
Then Lindsay says, “You know what? We have an actual pregnant woman in the house! Wouldn’t it be awesome if Emma played the Virgin Mary being visited by the angel? And then we could get someone else—maybe someone with a baby—to play Mary, holding the infant Jesus as she greets the kings and shepherds.”
“And the shepherds’ wives,” a woman pipes up.
“Of course,” Lindsay says. “The shepherds’ wives. Emma, would you consider it? I know it’s a lot to ask—”
She’s half shouting down to Emma, and Emma has to half shout back as everybody watches.
“I don’t know…” says Emma. It seems like the worst bad luck, pretending she’s pregnant with the Baby Jesus.
“I know it’s probably a hardship in your condition—”
It’s that “in your condition” that annoys Emma into saying, “Let me think about it.”
“Do that.” Emma can’t read Lindsay’s tone. “That would be great.”
“So,” Lindsay goes on, “who is going to play the Madonna in the manger? Who’s got a baby old enough not to puke and scream but not old enough to jump off her lap and wreck the place?”
There are some small children in the audience, but no babies, and no one wants to cast an angry wriggling two-year-old as the Christ child.
“Who used to play the Madonna?” Emma asks Sally.
“For years, it was the high school principal’s daughter. She got married and stayed around here and always seemed to have a new baby. Then her husband got into drugs, and she took the kids and moved to New Jersey.”
Lindsay seems to have said something that’s gotten everybody excited, and when the buzz dies down, even an outsider can feel the tension in the air.
Lindsay says, “Let’s ask Heather.”
Emma looks at Ben, but he’s looking at Lindsay. Who is Heather?
Sally leans toward Emma. “Lindsay is a genius.”
It’s not how Emma would describe Lindsay, but she gets it: Sally is trying to be a supportive stepmother.
“Poor Heather,” Sally says. “Nobody knows who the baby’s father is, and she’s never told. Probably because this is the only place north of the Bible Belt where anyone still cares about unmarried girls having babies. But now, if they listen to Lindsay, they can feel good about themselves for letting a single mom play the Blessed Virgin. They can feel big-hearted and forgiving and Christian.”
Lindsay beams at the audience. “Is anyone not okay with that?”
Not one hand goes up.
“Bingo!” Sally tells Emma, and Lindsay leads the audience in a round of applause for their own forgiving hearts.
“Who wants to ask Heather?” asks Lindsay.
A woman says, “I babysit for baby Barry, so I know her schedule. She’s taking classes at the community college. One of her classes is on Saturday morning. I usually stay with Barry, but Heather’s mom is visiting from California. That’s why I can be here now. I don’t know how many Saturday rehearsals Heather can make.”
“That could be a problem,” says Ben.
Lindsay won’t let it go. Not after the whole neighborhood has applauded her generosity and goodness.
“I’ve got an idea,” she says. “I’ll sit in for Heather. And then when Sullivan Community College goes on holiday break, she can attend the second rehearsal.”
“I don’t know,” says Ben.
“Come on,” says Beth. “This isn’t a Broadway spectacular, Be—en.” The way Beth says Ben’s name makes Emma think that Beth has been resenting the attention Ben and Lindsay have been getting. Beth must think they’ve been hogging the spotlight. Beth wants some light too.
“Beth’s right,” says Lindsay. “Mary is an important part. But all she has to do is sit there and smile while everyone worships her baby.”
There’s some uneasy chuckling from these kindly, hard-working people. Many of them have known each other since childhood. This town is their home. Now it’s Ben and Emma’s home. Maybe it will take time for the newcomers to be accepted. Hosting this play is a step in the right direction.
Sally says, “The town has been using the same costumes forever. One of the women who plays a shepherd’s wife runs the dry cleaning and alteration shop. So we can keep the costumes shipshape all year long for free.”
Ben has downloaded some beautiful medieval and Renaissance church music, which he plays full volume on his speakers. Beth is the narrator. She’ll read the Nativity story from the Gospels. No one else wants the part, and Beth has a pretty voice, melodious and mellow.
Lindsay doesn’t want to be in the play. She says she prefers to work behind the scenes.
In the beautiful old theater, her theater, Emma loves watching people figure out how to put on a play in which no one will speak except Beth. The music—Gregorian chants, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater—is powerful and stirring. Emma makes a mental note to download Ben’s playlist onto her phone.
A tall, pretty high school girl named Karen will play the angel Gabriel. How funny, that was the part Emma played in school, and now she’s the one being visited by the angel.
“Okay,” says Emma. “I’ll do it.”
No one hears her.
“Okay,” she repeats, louder this time. “I’m in.”
“Excellent!” says Lindsay.
Ben looks at Emma, looks at Lindsay. He’s frowning, but he doesn’t object. Maybe he’s the only sensible person, wondering what will happen if Emma delivers early.
So it’s decided. When it’s Emma’s turn to take the stage and sit quietly, everyone understands that if she kneels, like the Virgin in an Old Masters painting, it will take two strong people to help her stand up again.
Fear not.
“Fear not, Mary,” Beth reads, “for thou hast found favor with God.” Emma is shocked to feel tears spring into her eyes. It’s miraculous, the wonder of birth, of new life. Okay. She’s emotional. Pregnant. People will understand. Anyway, no one’s paying any attention to her. Not even Ben.
“Fine,” says Lindsay. “Let’s let everyone get back to their busy Saturday morning lives. See you all here next week. Same time, same place.”
* * *
EMMA IS LOOKING forward to the second and final rehearsal. The dress rehearsal. She likes the idea of hearing that beautiful music and being around so much faith and community spirit.
She’s a little anxious about her costume. She imagines her robes smelling like a year in storage. Or like dry-cleaning chemicals. But the costume department has done a great job. The blue gabardine robe fits perfectly, and the white cloth that Emma wears over her head smells like lemon detergent and lavender water.
My signature scent. Emma wishes she hadn’t thought that. She hates thinking about Rebecca and how uneasy she’d felt at Thanksgiving. Since then Ben’s given her no further reason for suspicion, but then again, he hasn’t been around much. Maybe that’s reason enough for suspicion.
* * *
LIKE ANY PRODUCTION, even the homegrown Christmas play has problems. The biggest one is the town’s insistence that the pageant be immediately followed by a local talent show. The grade-school pianists, the preteen gymnasts, the ancient violinists. They’ve been doing it this way for generations, and no one has ever objected. It makes everyone feel more involved, closer to their neighbors. It gives everyone a chance to shine. Displaying their skills and talents is like giving one another Christmas presents.
“I hate talent shows,” Ben tells Emma. “I was always the guy who dropped the pins I was supposed to be juggling, the kid who forgot the lyrics to the duet I was singing with the prettiest girl in eighth grade.”
“Who was she?” asks Emma.
“I don’t remember.” Ben gives Emma a kiss meant to say that Emma is the only pretty girl he remembers.
He tells Emma that Lindsay and Beth ignored his suggestion that they have a separate talent night. “Go ahead,” Lindsay apparently told him. “If you want to alienate the entire community. If you want everyone to, like, totally hate you?”
Ben imitates Lindsay for Emma’s benefit, and Emma giggles obligingly.
What makes it even worse, in Ben’s opinion, is that the talent segment won’t be rehearsed. No one can agree on a convenient rehearsal time, and no one is even sure they want to perform until they see how they feel that day. Either folks will feel moved to sing and dance and do whatever they do… or they won’t.
Emma thinks it sounds like a mess. But if that’s how they do it here, who is she to object? She and Ben are the outsiders. If not for the theater, they probably wouldn’t even know about the pageant, let alone be invited to participate.
To minimize the chaos, Lindsay will stand at the back of the theater with a clipboard, and the would-be performers will go onstage in the order they register with Lindsay.
It’s way outside Ben’s comfort zone. He’s a professional. This is too loose for him. Emma feels at once proud and sourly triumphant when Ben gives in. The town will do it the way they’ve always done it.
The other problem is that Heather still hasn’t shown up. Community college went on break, then she got a cold, then the baby got a cold.
But Heather keeps sending messages through her babysitter. Don’t worry. She’ll be there.
Fear not.
* * *
EMMA’S BLOOD PRESSURE is up. It’s nowhere near the red zone, but still Dr. Snyder says they’ll keep an eye on it. It scares Emma more than it should, and when she tells herself that fear is bad for the baby, she gets even more upset. Lying on the doctor’s table, she breathes deeply until she calms down.
