All i want, p.15
All I Want, page 15
Maybe it would be good to spend some time in the city. Just to be safe. She’ll stay in the country for the pageant, and then she’ll go back to the city with Ben. They can leave one car upstate.
After that she’ll pretty much stay in the city until the baby is born. JD is still working on the house, so he’ll watch it for them. He’ll be there all week and check it on weekends.
Emma will miss the country. She’ll miss JD. But there are some things she won’t miss. Despite all JD’s best efforts, a draft rips through the house when the wind blows from a certain direction. She looks forward to cocooning in the overheated city apartment, to seeing Ben every night, even if he comes home late. The play is in its final weeks of rehearsal. He’s at work a lot, but he’ll be nearby when she needs him. He’ll pick up his phone, no matter what.
He’s promised.
* * *
BEN TRIES TO talk Emma out of being in the pageant. The stress of being onstage, being in a crowd, performing—it could raise her blood pressure. Emma says that sitting there while a high school girl in a long white dress and a tinsel halo raises her arm and tells her to fear not will not be stressful. She’s looking forward to it. She’ll like being told to fear not.
She’s glad Ben is being so thoughtful. And yet she can’t help feeling that he just doesn’t want her to be in the play, there’s something he doesn’t want her to see. Is he worried that the pageant will be bad? Does he really have such a personal investment in this little community performance? Poor Ben. He just wants things to go well. Why is Emma being so mistrustful?
Everything will be fine. The baby isn’t due for another month or so. First babies are always late.
The Nativity play and the talent show will mark Emma’s temporary goodbye to the house. When the baby is a few months old—in early spring—they’ll return.
Emma and Ben and the baby.
* * *
THE WEEK BEFORE the Nativity pageant is one of the busiest in Emma’s life. All day long, neighbors are delivering bits of scenery they made in the high school art classes, cardboard camels, straw for the manger, brooms and containers to get the straw off the stage. One kid drops off a tuba, another a drum set, another a small trampoline, all of which gives Emma a sinking feeling about the talent show. Well, maybe it will be charming.
It’s amazing how smoothly everything runs, though Heather still hasn’t shown up, which makes Ben uneasy. How can they do a manger scene without the Madonna?
Two sweet, responsible high school girls, Denver and Maren, are assigned to take care of Emma and help her down from the stage and out into the audience into her reserved seat, from which she can watch the rest of the play and then the talent show.
Denver and Maren are friends with Karen, who’s playing the angel Gabriel. They’re Emma’s personal guardian angels, making sure she’s comfortable and hydrated. Secure.
There is no dressing room. Backstage is stuffy, small, and cramped, but the girls find an armchair for Emma so she can wait for her cue.
Chapter Eleven ONSTAGE
ALL THAT SATURDAY—the day of the performance—the house buzzes with people coming and going. Emma sleeps away much of the afternoon so she can be rested. She wakes up just before four thirty, when the cast is scheduled to start assembling in the theater.
By now she recognizes everyone. It seems like a sign of progress: her neighbors, whom she hadn’t known until the rehearsals started.
Emma’s feeling calm, centered, looking forward to the evening ahead. The baby is squirming, thrusting out a foot or an elbow every so often as if to reassure Emma of its presence and good health.
A blond girl with a baby is standing uncertainly in the door of the theater. Emma sees her from where she’s standing, up front, near the stage.
It’s the girl from the field. The girl who was there and then wasn’t.
For a moment, Emma feels breathless, unsteady on her feet. She feels as if she’s having another hallucination. But this time she’s not imagining it. A few people go over and greet the girl. They’re not hugging Emma’s fantasy or stroking the hair of an imaginary baby.
It’s the same girl. There’s no mistake. And the baby is the same baby—older since the first day Emma and Ben came to look at the house. But still… the baby.
The girl—Heather—wears a pink jacket and purple leggings that she manages to make look old-fashioned, like something a medieval page might wear. She’s small and thin, and her face has that hollowed-out, Depression-era hunger that Emma saw from the road and the window.
She’s the girl who turned up in the photo at the historical society and then again in the photo in Sally’s office . How could the same girl be alive—at the same age, at different times?
There’s a logical explanation: small-town DNA. Sally comes from here. Her daughter looked like Sally. A female relative, generations back, worked at Hideaway Home. But what was Heather doing, standing in the field?
Everything has a reasonable explanation. Doesn’t it?
This is good news. The girl was not a hallucination. She hiked to the field, she hiked behind their house. But still the memory delivers an unpleasant jolt.
Lindsay leads Heather to the front of the theater. “Emma, this is Heather, Heather, this is Emma, our hostess.”
Heather looks puzzled.
“This is her house,” explains Lindsay.
“Pleased to meet you,” they both say at once. Heather sounds like a normal young woman, and her smile suggests she’s eager to please. The baby, in a furry blue snowsuit, sits on her hip and watches.
“Have we met?” asks Emma. “I don’t know why I have the feeling I’ve seen you before.”
A flash of unease blazes in the girl’s sleepy eyes. Emma’s hit on something. The girl knows something she’s not saying.
“Nice house,” says Heather.
“Thanks. What a beautiful baby.” Is it? Emma’s too distracted to tell.
“Have you been here before?” Emma says. “Do you… hike around here?”
“No,” says Heather. “Gosh, I’ve got enough to do with school and the baby and—”
The baby has seen Emma before. But Emma knows that’s impossible. The baby would have had to see her from a distance, farther than babies can see. Emma’s imagining things again.
“When are you due?” asks Heather.
Lindsay’s tapping her foot. Emma feels an edge of guilty triumph at excluding Lindsay from the world of moms and moms-to-be.
“A couple of weeks or so,” Emma says.
“Wow,” says Heather. “Get ready. You do have a lovely house. I guess I already said that.”
“Thank you again,” Emma says.
Lindsay says, “We assume our audience won’t care that the Madonna is like twenty years younger than the Virgin Mother getting the good news from the angel.” She waits for them to laugh, but Heather looks blank. Emma’s slightly dazed by the shock of meeting the girl in the field, but not so out of it that she doesn’t notice: Lindsay’s calling attention to Emma’s age is not especially nice. Lindsay must think it’s funny. Has Emma lost her sense of humor, as Ben has been suggesting lately?
“Nice to finally meet you,” Emma says. It is a relief to find out that her hallucination is a real person. Then why does she feel so unsettled? Something’s still bothering her—but what?
As Heather moves away, the baby looks over her shoulder at Emma.
* * *
THE PLAY IS scheduled for six in the evening, and by five thirty every seat in the theater is filled. Everyone seems slightly high on frayed nerves and goodwill. The audience has lots to say, but everyone gets very quiet the instant the lights go down and Ben’s music comes on. Even the babies and toddlers are stunned into silence.
Rob, who owns the hardware store, is doing the lights. A spot comes up on Beth, who is dressed in a red choir robe, standing at a lectern. She begins to read from the Gospel in her low, musical voice. “Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ ”
The Holy Ghost. Emma’s not religious, but those three words bring tears to her eyes.
A bright light hits the top of the curtain. The star of Bethlehem! It’s Emma’s cue to let Denver and Maren guide her from the chair in the wings to the chair onstage. Diane, who runs the church thrift store, has given her some needlework in a frame as a prop, and Emma pretends to work on it.
The curtain opens, the audience applauds. It doesn’t bother them that these scenes from the Bible are taking place in front of a set that shows an eighteenth-century French garden. They’re just happy to be here, watching.
The needlework gives Emma something to do, something to look at until Karen, the angel Gabriel, enters stage right, followed by a dozen little girls dressed as angels, along with one little boy—a first this year, Emma has heard.
Karen raises her arm. “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.”
Tears stream down Emma’s face.
How beautiful this is. All these good-hearted people, the music, the hard work that’s gone into their doing this for one another. The loveliness of the angels, the poetry of the Gospels.
The Holy Ghost.
She’s aware of the audience watching her. Everyone knows this is her house. She’s not only restored but redeemed it, transformed the space that has seen so much unhappiness, so many broken souls trying to heal. And now it’s the center of light, of hope, occupied by saints and angels.
The angels file off, leaving Emma onstage. The lights go down again, and Maren and Denver reappear to help her change out of her robe, underneath which she’s wearing a light sweater and jeans. She’d been barefoot—the stage floor was cold—but now the girls kneel to help her put on her boots. It reminds her of what she’d forgotten for a few moments: She’s so pregnant she needs help. It reminds her that pregnancy is an inconvenience as well as a blessing.
Something brushes against her cheek as she leaves the wings. It’s Ben, kissing her. Gratitude and relief flood through her.
Everything will be fine.
Fear not.
* * *
ALL HEATHER HAS to do is sit there and hold the baby and nod as the shepherds kneel and pay their respects to the child, little baby Barry. When the cardboard, wood, and shag-rug camels appear onstage, the audience cheers, an exultant moment in the mostly serious pageant.
The Three Kings—high school boys in fake beards and turbans—bring down the house.
Emma almost bursts out laughing when she spots JD, painfully self-conscious in his burlap shepherd’s robe, tied at the waist with a rope. Emma’s happy to see him. She’s glad he’s still working on the house, that after she returns with the baby he will still be there, and they will continue working together—planning and deciding on construction details while the baby nurses and sleeps.
Finally, Beth comes to the end of her reading. Everyone onstage—Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and kings—face the audience and bow solemnly. Wild applause rocks the theater.
Ben’s mixtape switches over to Handel’s Messiah.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.
Joy, pure joy. They’ve done the play. It all worked better than anyone could have imagined.
“Intermission,” announces Beth. “Ten minutes, then back in your seats for the talent show.”
* * *
JUST WHEN EMMA’S wishing she could slap Ben a high five for the success of the pageant, Ben appears out of the crowd, raises his hand, and they grin and exchange high fives. They’re reading each other’s minds. They’re doing this together. It’s their house, and in a way, their play. Maybe they’ll do it every year. Maybe this is their future. Babysitters, groceries. Emma can paint when the baby naps. Ben will have another hit play.
Ben puts his arm around her and they stand like that for a while. No one comes to talk to them, but everybody is aware of them, and gives them friendly smiles. The guy from the hardware store gives them a hearty thumbs-up.
Emma turns to see people lining up and giving their names to Lindsay, who is nodding and writing everything down on a clipboard. Sally stands beside Lindsay, chatting people up. Emma can tell she’s trying to make them comfortable enough to go onstage.
The success of the Nativity play must have encouraged more people to participate in the talent segment. They can tell it’s a friendly audience, an easy, generous crowd.
“That’s as good as it’s going to get,” says Ben, too low for anyone to hear. “Don’t expect much from here on.”
“Come on,” says Emma. “There’s something so sweet about this whole thing. It could be fun.”
“Let’s hope,” says Ben. “Meanwhile, I’m going backstage in case one of the hula-hoopers gets hurt.”
Lindsay gives the clipboard to Beth, who is going to be the emcee. The first act is a middle school girl in a white dress that seems to have been stitched from shredded scraps of Kleenex and a guitar slung across her chest. She sings “Landslide,” her voice a trembly octave above Stevie Nicks’s. She keeps pulling and lifting the guitar strap, so maybe the instrument is too heavy for her, which is maybe why she gives the lyrics an oddly furious tone. Then a woman in a cheerleading costume does a slightly inappropriate dance to a Shakira song, swinging her long blond hair, crouching and grabbing suggestively at her crotch. It stuns the crowd into silence.
But harmony is restored when a sweet, overweight eighth-grade boy comes out and plays “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his tuba. A few kids stand, maybe wanting a better view of their friend, maybe confusing the national anthem with the Pledge of Allegiance. Other kids laugh as parents push their standing kids back into their chairs. A piano is wheeled out onstage and a woman Beth introduces as “everyone’s favorite piano teacher” plays the first section of the Moonlight Sonata.
A little girl sings a passionate love song Emma doesn’t recognize and can’t pay attention to because the girl is the wrong distance from the mic, which explodes every time she sings “baby” and “please,” two words she repeats a lot. Plus, the drum machine is too loud.
A cute little boy in thick glasses plays the spoons, a talent Beth introduces as a “lost art.” He’s Emma’s favorite. A girl with two knee bandages and scraps of tulle mysteriously tucked into the waistband of her denim shorts does a melancholy gymnastic routine to Antony and the Johnsons’ song about wanting to become a girl. Does the audience know what the song is saying? Would they care? Five kindergarteners sing “Do-Re-Mi.”
Finally, Beth says, “And now for our last act.”
The audience applauds so hard at their last chance that Emma misses the name of the final performer.
* * *
A WOMAN TIPTOES out onstage, sideways, like a crab. The audience applauds. She’s wearing a funny hat shaped like a pastry tart, an old-fashioned wasp-waist jacket, a long skirt, and sensible shoes. And she’s carrying an umbrella. An open umbrella indoors? Doesn’t she know it’s bad luck?
She closes it. Her smile is coy and flirtatious. Tendrils of gray hair peek out from the edges of her dark wig. Her heavy makeup makes her look like a clown-faced Mary Poppins.
Emma knows her from somewhere, but the wig and makeup are confusing. Who is she? The audience knows. They’re laughing. They love it.
She stands at the microphone and waits, as if for an orchestra to start up. There is no orchestra. She’s on her own. She frowns. She seems distracted, totters a little. Is she ill?
She begins to sing. Her voice is wobbly but clear. A good church-choir soprano, a cappella and very slow, like a record played at the wrong speed, threatening and dirge-like:
“All I want is a room somewhere.”
Seven words. That’s all it takes. Emma’s adrenaline spikes. She lays both hands flat on her belly.
Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
It’s not Mary Poppins.
It’s Eliza Doolittle. Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady.
Now Emma recognizes Sally. She should have known right away. Why didn’t she? Because it’s too perfect. Too strange. And Sally said she’d never dare to go onstage. But it’s true. It’s her. She’s singing the last song Emma wants to hear, the song she heard in her head all last summer, the song Rapunzel sang in the Broadway chorus.
Why does Eliza Doolittle need an umbrella? And why is she singing so slowly?
Sally is singing the song her mother sang in the chorus on Broadway.
The song Sally’s mother wrote about in her journal.
“Far away from the cold night air.”
Emma scrambles to put the fragments together. She’s missing the piece—the critical piece—that might solve the puzzle.
Earlier, in the Nativity pageant, there was… the girl and the baby. The baby looked at her. He knew he’d seen her before.
Only crazy people imagine that babies see them from a distance and remember them months later.
“With one enormous chair.”
The woman reaches into an enormous carpet bag slung over one shoulder and pulls out a doll. It’s a baby doll, with a frilly bonnet and a bow around its neck. A black bow. She turns it to face the audience, but the doll has no face, just a jagged wound surrounded by a stained white ruffle. Its face looks as if it’s been chewed off by an animal, leaving two ragged holes, extruding stuffing where its eyes should have been.
Emma feels tiny, as if she’s being pushed into a gigantic armchair. She’s a child, a child’s doll, drowning in the upholstery, struggling to breathe. She’s Alice in Wonderland, shrunk to the size of a mouse.
The woman points the doll at Emma, then dances it in the air in time to her slow, menacing song.
