by Mary Volmer
“What part she playing?” a young man laboring by with a broad bench asked his partner. “God?”
“The angel Gabriel,” said the other. “God didn’t have enough lines.”
“Madelyn, there you are,” called Miss Rose brightly. “Come. Look at that stage. Does it look straight to you?”
The day was gray. Dreary light through six great windows on the north wall seemed to sweep the darkness into corners, but even this illusion couldn’t account for the strange angle of that stage.
“And opening night a day away. Well! I once produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a tent in Hangtown with a skunk-drunk Oberon. The fairy queen ran off with a gambler the day before opening, and still we made a success of it! Of course,” she said, beaming down at me, “my audience was less than discerning.”
Really, I’d never seen anyone throw herself with such joyful and aggressive conviction into a project. Mr. Stockwell had been forced to withdraw his petition against the theater. He’d found arguing the immorality of a Nativity play awkward, as Miss Rose expected. I’m not sure, however, she expected how quickly interest in the venture would grow. Within a week of its announcement in the Register, Miss Rose’s play had blossomed into a pageant, which would feature the Firemen’s Brass Band, the German Choir, Mrs. Alvin Soto singing “Ave Maria,” and others—performances meant to “unite the town in this most hallowed of seasons,” but as easily might become what Mrs. French dreaded, a pissing contest of Christmas cheer (although she would not have phrased it that way). I doubted Miss Rose would consider the latter a failure so long as there was good attendance, but I could tell Mrs. French was worried, and this worried me.
Needless to say, work on Miss Rose’s memoirs had come to a halt. Today, even Susan and Lizzette had been drafted to sew costumes and decorate. For the last three days, after reading to Old Man, I raced to the waterfront to play gopher, wearing the title of assistant stage manager, which suited me f ine, because it meant I would not be expected to step onstage, much less share it with Violet, who, as the Virgin Mary, had spent the last two weeks cradling an overgrown squash and practicing tragic expressions. At Mrs. Smith’s suggestion, Emil Le Duc, the cobbler with whom she shared a shop wall, had volunteered to play Joseph. Main Street School’s f irst-grade boys and girls had been hee-hawing, lowing, and clucking their parts all over town for a week. The role of the Messiah was to be played by Little John.
Finally, in a stroke of inspiration, Miss Rose flattered Judge Bennett, Mr. Wallace Mack, the assessor, and Mr. Alfred Kroft, the clerk, into playing Wise Men. This meant that as the Angel Gabriel, she had spent these two days of rehearsal telling them just where to go and what to bring.
“Perhaps an iron rod, Mr. Brisson, instead of a rope?” suggested Miss Rose, then turned back to me. “The playbills and broadsheets?”
“Hanley’s bringing . . .”
“I said iron, Mr. Brisson! An iron rod to stretch the length of the stage. Surely you have such a thing at the docks?”
He surely did not, but I knew who did and shuffled off, happy for any excuse to barge into William’s studio.
I found William alone, holding before his eyes a peculiar little device, much like binoculars but with twin photos joined side-by-side by a vertical seam and attached where the front lenses should have been. Never sure of his mood, I waited to be acknowledged.
“Well,” he said, taking the device down. His eyes were clear, his hands steady. “Is it soup yet?”
“The stage is crooked, and the curtain won’t hang right. But other than that . . .”
“Other than that.” He smiled and I relaxed some, though I wasn’t pleased.
I expected him in public to act as if we shared no secrets. Yet even on those rare occasions I caught him alone, he held me at a distance with the same teasing banter that had governed our time before. That is, before we’d found the dead young woman, Aileen. Before he’d kissed me and then lied for me. He acted as if nothing had changed, when I, for one, was changed. I didn’t imagine I was alluring yet, but I knew hundreds of new things I hadn’t known before: I could recite a dozen poems from memory, knew what fork to use when, and walked without clomping when I remembered to think about it. I wore new clothes—new to me, that is—and today a corset, which frankly was making raw meat of my vitals.
Mrs. French had opposed the garment for reasons she’d cited by author and page, but the choice had been mine, and I was not ready to admit my regret. And I wasn’t going to let Mrs. French’s distrust of William worry me, either. She had told Miss Rose that William must want something to be making himself so useful.
“Of course he does,” Miss Rose had laughed. “He wants to go to Europe to take his pictures. He thinks I will send him. I might.”
She meant after Old Man died and left her the estate, a certainty not even Mrs. French questioned. I didn’t wish death on Old Man but maybe wouldn’t have minded so much if Miss Rose sent me abroad with William.
He fussed with his device, looking at me sideways as I f idgeted in my stays. Whalebone made turning in any direction a whole-body endeavor.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Why are you standing like that?”
“Miss Rose says that if I wear it day and night for two years, I might achieve an admirable waist.” I said this with an enthusiasm I no longer felt.
“Oh, Maddy,” William said.
“What?” I asked, for he looked truly dismayed.
“Don’t let her make a Violet out of you.”
Which pleased me very much, as you might imagine, but not nearly so much as the device he handed over. The photographs were identical images of my Daphne statue at the manor. But when I looked at them through the eyepiece as William had done, the images became one full, lifelike whole; the girl and the room beyond sprang into life. I found myself reaching out to touch her plump marble thigh, then jerked the device away to look again at the flat photographs from which she’d risen.
“William!” I said.
“It’s called a stereopticon.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“Well, don’t tell Miss Rose. It’s a surprise.”
“I am discreet, remember.” His face darkened. Not the right thing to say.
“What did you say Miss Rose wanted?” he asked. I hadn’t said but told him now, and together we considered the long iron bars that held the cloth in place over the studio’s glass ceiling.
“And I’m guessing no is out of the question.” Indeed the workmen were already on their way to William’s shop.
Hanley, with an armload of playbills and broadsheets, caught up to me as I passed the print shop.
“Hey,” he said. “Why are you walking like that?”
“Me?” I said, annoyed. I had been trying for elegance. “Look at you, Hanley.” He was limping, too, after all. Beaver hat too high on his head, sleeves and trouser cuffs too short, a fresh bruise on his brow, he looked every bit the brute Violet thought he was.
“Fighting again,” I said.
He said nothing, continuing down the street; in the corset, I struggled to keep up.
“I’d as soon f ight for a snake as for that Adam Harrison,” I said. “That boy walks around like he’s king of this place, and can’t even f ight the f ights his mouth runs him into.”
We passed the dress shop, and still he said nothing.
“Well?” I asked, breathless, frustrated. “What does your sister think about you f ighting so much?”
With a swiftness that shocked the both of us, Hanley turned on me. “Shut up about it,” he said, f ists clenched, his great bulk pressing down on me. “You hear me? You don’t know anything about anything!” He slammed the box of broadsheets to the ground and strode away, leaving me too startled to say boo.
“Madelyn?” said Mrs. Smith stepping out of the dress shop with Mama. “Was that Hanley?
” she asked and then, putting her arm around me, f igured out why I was heaving so. “Come in here. Let me loosen that thing.”
Hanley still hadn’t come back by the time the four of us—Mrs. Smith and Mama, with Little John sleeping in his basket, and I, carrying the broadsheets—reached the theater. I tried not to think about it. The two o’clock steamer had arrived with a serviceable upright piano, which the workmen manhandled into place. The broad benches sat in orderly rows. The choirmaster, the bandleader, and Mrs. Alvin Soto, having received their marching orders from Mrs. French, abandoned the crooked stage, which left Miss Rose and the Nativity cast to admire their little silent star.
Silent, that is, until it came time for Mama to hand Little John over to Violet.
Lord, the way he shrieked startled all of us, Violet most of all (the squash had never objected). He bucked and screamed and would have nothing of Emil Le Duc, either, or Mrs. Smith, who offered herself as understudy Mary. The workmen hushed. First graders, scattered around the theater, paused their mooing and cooing in shocked respect until, at Mama’s pleading look, I snatched Little John and didn’t think anything more until together we’d shushed and loved him quiet.
“Well,” said Mrs. Smith. “Well,” she said again.
This time I looked up to f ind every eye upon me.
“No. Uh-uh,” I said, standing up. Little John burbled happily. “No.”
“Maddy,” said Mrs. French in her “be reasonable” voice. “You have only to hold him.”
“We’ll f ind another baby, that’s all,” I said, looking at Mrs. Smith for support. “There must be another baby, boy or girl, it can’t matter.”
“No lines at all,” Mrs. Smith offered.
Only Violet appeared as horrif ied at the prospect of bequeathing her starring role to the likes of me. Everyone else had turned to Miss Rose to ratify the alternative, when Mama’s voice piped into the silence. “I’ll do it.”
I could not have heard right. I was sure I hadn’t heard right, until Mama, taking Little John from my arms and holding him tight, said it again. “I’ll do it. He wants me. I’ll do it.”
“Good. Settled,” said Miss Rose and, before some other crisis could hamstring her production, spurred the company to action.
Pray for blizzard, or flood, or quake. Until this new wrinkle, I had been looking forward, with some concern but mostly excitement, to the Christmas pageant. Especially since the closest I’d come to a theater had been the buckboard stage of a traveling minstrel show with a lardy conf idence man spouting Shakespeare, or close enough, and three blackfaced white boys acting fools. What was Mama thinking? She had never been the hallelujah type, but what, barring a strong nudge from the Holy Spirit, could have possessed her? The more I thought about it, the less conscionable the thought became. Mama standing before the town on that stage—or on any stage.
It took me all night, but by the next morning, I’d summoned courage enough to confront Miss Rose.
“Madelyn,” she said. Her tone nearly undid me. She was sitting behind her desk, in her off ice, Mrs. Hardrow attending her. “Did I call for you?”
I shook my head.
“But I can see by the way you are standing that you have something of great urgency to divest. Your body speaks, Madelyn. Be aware of what it is saying.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said in a rush, then glancing at Mrs. Hardrow. “About my sister. People will talk.”
“People are talking, Madelyn. Always talking. You are mistaken if you think she does not already suffer the perdition of public judgment. Anyway. It is too late now to change. The show must go on, and so it will. Leave us.”
The night came. No rain, no snow, no flood or quake. Through the high windows behind the stage, I could even see a few stars peeking through a silver ragbag of clouds.
“Madelyn,” Violet hissed as I placed the last luminary candles. “Ma-da-lyn,” said Violet. “Where is Hanley? He’s supposed to hand out programs.”
“How should I know? Can’t you do it?”
That’s all I said, but what she must have heard was, “Now that you’ve got nothing better to do.”
The slight was not intentional. I’d much, much rather Violet act the Blessed Virgin than Mama, already in the outbuilding we were using as a backstage with Little John. Mama’s part was simple, to be sure. All she had to do was stand onstage and look beautiful and fragile. Next to great big Emil Le Duc, everyone I knew, except maybe Hanley, would look fragile. That wasn’t the point. The point was . . . what? Why did I feel this sense of dread?
Violet shoved the programs to Susan, who handed them to the houseboy, Tom, who took his position at the door happily enough. The broad benches f illed. William and Mr. Dryfus, walking slowly with Clara, settled in the second row on the left. Lutherans, Baptists, Unitarians, and Presbyterians mingled cautiously, their voices rising with the heat and stink of bodies; but no matter how many handshakes and smiles and shows of fellow feeling they shared, the night still bristled with a kind of competitive elation that formed a second ceiling with the pipe smoke, halfway up the window frames.
Mrs. French could feel it too. I could tell from the set of her shoulders.
Together we lit the stage lamps. Tom snuffed the houselights. I took position behind the curtain on the other side of the stage with Miss Rose, who stood, radiant in cream silk, breathing. One hand on her chest, the other on her abdomen, breathing. I thought again of Mama backstage, but couldn’t imagine what she might be thinking or feeling. The brass band tested its lungs, as Mrs. Alvin Soto trilled her scales. Mr. Heinrick shepherded his choir from wings, and a cough-f illed silence teased through the audience.
“Geist!” mouthed Mrs. French from the other side of the stage. “Maddy.”
“Mr. Geist,” I hissed. “Mr. Geist. Now!”
The ancient barnacle of a man, slouching before the piano, jolted upright. Music erupted. People clapped. Miss Rose took the stage. People clapped again, then laughed at something she said. Mrs. French waved from the other wing, and after a struggle with the rope, I tugged the curtain open, and the pageant began.
I mean no disrespect to the German Choir, whose robust harmonies hovered in the rafters long after they left the stage, or to the brass band, or to Heidi Leggatte, who recited “a humorous poem of deep sentiment,” or to Mrs. Alvin Soto, whose brave attempt to nail the “Ave Maria” was matched only by the audience’s equally brave effort to withstand it. But I remember little of the performances leading up to the Nativity scene.
I opened the curtain. I closed the curtain. The luminary candles waved streaks of light up the brick walls, and as the play approached, my belly began a nervous wave of its own.
Enter from the back, walking the center aisle, the wandering Wise Men.
Behold, Miss Rose, the Angel Gabriel on high, upon a stool, stage left.
See, the North Star bull's-eye lamp, suspended from a rope above the curtain.
Ignore the f irst-grade farm animals f idgeting in the wings.
Lo, Joseph, staff in hand, and by his side, the Virgin Mother with child.
Mama, that is. Mama with Little John slung close to her chest under her robe. Mama, draped in gray homespun, her lovely face pale and tragic in the lamplight. Mama wide-eyed, stricken at the terrible pressure of eyes upon her. I could hear my heartbeat. My fists clenched. Just one snigger, one whisper, denigrating or not . . .
But there was no sound from the audience. No sound at all, apart from one collective breath at f irst sight of her so vulnerable and lovely.
“No room,” said Mr. Heinwerken, as the innkeeper. “No room,” said Mrs. Smith. “No,” said Mr. Leonard.
“No room for you” is what I heard, remembering the seething looks Mama endured on the Susanville street and in the Stockwell home. “No room for you” is what Mama must have heard as well, for to my horror, she b
egan to cry. Soundlessly, her eyes gleaming, the set of her jaw def iant. Next to Emil Le Duc’s girth, she stood out like a small glittering f igure of cut glass. Mrs. French, across the stage in the wings, looked unsure, and Miss Rose, beside me, wore the same distressed expression she wore the day Mrs. French threw her leg over the bicycle seat. Wind, gentle all night, hissed through the eaves, the only sound.
Until an exasperated little voice crackled from the wings. “The main-ger!”
Mama blinked. The crowd turned. A blond boy wearing donkey ears broke from the wings to the stage. He stared, hands on hips, at Mama, paying no mind to the audience or to the tears in Mama’s eyes.
“Mrs. Dryfus, look,” he said, pointing with the bossy impatience of one much older at the basket of straw behind him. “There’s the main-ger! You’re supposed to put the baby in the main-ger.”
Mama, grief arrested, looked at Emil Le Duc, who, a moment ago helpless as the rest of us in the face of real emotion, improvised.
“Praise God!” he said. “The ass is right!”
This might have offended the more pious audience members had they been able to hear him. As it was, laughter pummeled all but a squinting and aged few who had heard nothing and seen less to laugh about. Across the stage, Mrs. French, gripping the curtain pole as if holding herself back or preparing to charge from the wings, heard him, as did Miss Rose, in very much the same posture by my side. She saw, as I did, that Mama was having a time freeing Little John from his wraps.
Mama rushed to me offstage; the farm animals tumbled on. “Help,” she whispered, and when we’d freed Little John, she walked back onstage and laid him red faced and walleyed in the manger amid a medley of lusty barnyard impressions. Order might have been restored if the Wise Men hadn’t missed their entrances, forcing the little donkey back offstage to herd the Wise Men into place. After which Little John, patient all night, opened his lungs and let the Lord know exactly what he thought of all this foolery.