Wishin' and Hopin'

by Wally Lamb

  Bridget Mann: Scottish shortbread cookies.

  Monte Montoya: sopaipilla cheesecake pie.

  Jackie Burnham: plum pudding.

  Edgy Chang: Chinese almond cookies.

  Me: pizelles. (The Christmas before, Pop had given Ma a bottle of perfume, a bottle of anisette from Italy, and a pizelle iron.)

  Rosalie: Polish poppyseed roll, rum babka with marzipan Christmas decorations, and chrusciki. “Otherwise known as angel wings,” Rosalie added. “And I’ll have my mother put extra powdered sugar on them. They’re so good.”

  “How about you, Zhenya?” Madame said. “Will your mother be able to make something?”

  “Een our house, my fodder eese cooker,” she said. “He mek for party samouk vid pruns.”

  “Did you say prunes, Zhenya?” Madame said.

  “Ya, ya. He mek dat end he mek strudel vid meelk curds end raisins.”

  Prunes and raisins? Milk curds? Well, it could have been worse, I figured. At least she wasn’t bringing that stinky herring she ate at lunchtime.

  “Merveilleux!” Madame said, clapping her hands together. “Our food table will be worthy of l’Organisation des Nations Unies! And I myself shall add two desserts québecoise to our fête internationale.” She wrote what she was making on the board—tartelettes au sucre and bûche de Noël au chocolat—then turned back toward us, beaming. “Sounds good. Oui?”

  We said it in unison. “Oui, Madame.”

  7

  Noël

  By the Thursday before “the big shew,” things were falling nicely into place. Ernie Overturf and his dad arrived at school in their pickup truck and a bunch of us boys helped them unload the plywood animals they’d made: stand-up cows, sheep, a donkey, identical triplet camels. Mr. Overturf and Mr. Dombrowski, our janitor, carried the biggest and heaviest prop: the front of the stable where Jesus was going to get born in the big finale. (There was nothing in back; just these wooden braces that held it up. Madame said it was a “façade,” which was one of the many, many English words that everyone had the French to thank for.)

  Madame had cast the three MaryAnns as angels in the final nativity scene and Franz Duzio as the only boy angel, Gabriel, in the Annunciation tableau. MaryAnn V.’s mother had gone to Careen’s Costumes and rented four curly blond wigs, four sets of wings, and these really cool halos that you put batteries in and they lit up. Madame told the MaryAnns to wear floor-length nightgowns—white ones. Franz Duzio wanted to know what he was supposed to wear, and Madame said a white nightshirt if he had one, and Franz said he didn’t—that he just slept in his underpants, and when he said that, some of the girls covered their mouths with their hands. Well, then, Madame said, maybe his mother or sister had a nightgown that he might borrow. Glaring at the rest of us, Franz scanned the room, trying to locate who had just laughed. (Me.)

  Mrs. Kubiak had dropped off, along with the twins, a half dozen bales of hay, the corn crib that would be Jesus’s manger, and enough burlap bags from Thompson’s Feed & Grain to clothe all nine shepherdesses and shepherds. And the Kubiaks’ older brother, who went to trade school instead of regular high school, had made us this big silver star of Bethlehem that had sockets that you could put Christmas bulbs in. We were using that for the shepherds’ tableau, the Wise Men’s tableau, and the nativity tableau. And this was cool: Ronald and Roland’s brother had even rigged up this special pulley-and-rope thing that you could raise and lower the star with.

  There was a kind of contest between Bridget Mann and Margaret Elizabeth McCormick about which one’s baby doll was going to get picked to be Jesus. Madame Frechette said that, since Bridget’s doll didn’t look as “well-used” as Margaret Elizabeth’s, and since it still had both of its glass eyes, that was the one she was picking, but that Margaret Elizabeth’s doll could be the understudy. When Margaret Elizabeth heard the news, she started crying, so Madame took her out in the hallway for a talk, and while they were gone, Zhenya asked, out loud to no one in particular, “What det is? Onderstoody?”

  Several of us shrugged, but from across the room, Franz Duzio said, “Means the one-eyed doll’s gonna sit the bench and never get in the game.”

  “Gemm?” Zhenya said. “Vut gemme you means?”

  “Bezbull,” Franz said, imitating her.

  Zhenya laughed at that. “Franz, you big cuckoo head,” she said. “You no play bezbull vit bebby dull.”

  Rosalie told them they’d both better shut up. “Because the rule is, whenever Madame is out of the room, we’re supposed to carry on in silence. Remember?”

  “Oh, ya ya,” Zhenya retorted. “I forgetted det. Tenk you for remembering me about it, cheeky bum-bum geuhl.” She looked over at me and winked.

  Margaret Elizabeth was dry eyed when her and Madame came back in the room, but now she was pouting. I overheard her telling Kitty Callahan that understudies were stupid and she was just bringing her doll home.

  On Friday, we all had to bring in our costumes and try them on in the boys’ and girls’ rooms after lunch and then come out and show Madame so she could approve them. When Madame saw Lonny in the costume Simone had put together for him, I watched her eyes move from Anna Ianuzzi’s blue garter stretched over his dish-toweled head down to where my bathrobe ended and Lonny’s bare legs began. Madame asked if, peut-être, he had a robe that dropped a little further down. “This is Felix’s bathrobe,” he said. “I ain’t got one.”

  “Do you think your mother might be able to purchase you one that’s a better fit?” When Lonny shook his head, Madame nodded and told him, very well then, she guessed his costume would be okay.

  Pauline Papelbon’s Mary costume got okayed, too, which kinda surprised me. Pauline told Madame that her neighbors, the Madraswallas, were Indians—from India, not cowboys-and-Indians Indians—and so she’d borrowed this sari thing that showed some of her bloopy stomach in the middle between the top part and the bottom part, plus this sorta see-through veil. I thought Pauline looked not so much like the Blessed Virgin as she did that lady in my 1001 Arabian Nights book—the one that had to keep telling the king stories so he wouldn’t croak her. But I guess Madame didn’t think that.

  When I came out in my costume, everyone was saying all this wiseguy stuff like what was it like meeting George Washington, and how was the Boston Tea Party? And I was like ha, ha, ha, that was so funny I forgot to laugh. (Pop says that, when someone’s teasing you, don’t give them the satisfaction of letting them know it’s bugging you.) But when Arthur Coté told me I had knock knees, I kinda forgot Pop’s advice and jabbed him with one of my chopstick drumsticks—not that hard, but hard enough to leave this little red mark that kinda looked like a bullet hole. Arthur didn’t squeal on me, though. I bet if I’d poked Rosalie like that, she probably would’ve skipped Mother Filomina and gone right to Pope Paul to see if he’d excommunication me.

  All’s the shepherds and shepherdesses had to do for their costumes was cut holes in the top of their burlap feed bags, slip them over their heads, and tie a rope around their waist. But from the looks of it, Zhenya had gone a little crazy with the scissors when she was cutting her head hole. You couldn’t see her bazoom-booms or anything, but if she’d cut away a few more inches, you maybe could’ve. Scrawny Geraldine and Zhenya were standing next to each other in the inspection line, and it reminded me of down at the lunch counter—looking first at Annette when she was in Mickey Mouse Club and then at the poster of her from Beach Blanket Bingo—the one I French-kissed and had to have that talk with Monsignor about. When Zhenya asked Madame if, during the shepherds’ scene, she could wear her Carnaby Street cap, too, Madame put her hand over her heart and went, “Non, non, non!”

  “H’okay, boss lady,” Zhenya said, patting Madame’s arm and smiling. “I nut wear het. H’everytink eese groovy, ya ya?”

  Rosalie’s costumes were the fanciest—both of them. For her Wise Man outfit, her parents had paid some seamstress to make her this long red velvet cape with fake white fur trim. Plus, after T
urdski and her mother went to Careen’s Costumes and didn’t find anything they thought was good enough, they drove to this other costume place all the way down in New York City! Down there, they rented this fancy-looking crown with big fake jewels that looked real. Plus, they bought Rosalie a fake beard and a tube of this stuff called spirit gum that real actors use to stick beards and things on their face with. As the narrator of her play, Rosalie was wearing one of her mother’s old evening gowns and these long, dangly earrings, and another crown that Rosalie kept telling everyone was “an exact replica of Miss America’s crown.” Mother Filomina had okayed her wearing makeup, too—lipstick and eyeshadow—but only for her play, and then she’d have to go to the girls’ room and take it right off before she came out as Caspar the Wise Man. Plus, Mother said, none of the other fifth grade girls had better get any ideas about wearing makeup for the tableaux. This was just a one-time special privilege because Rosalie’d written her stupid play.

  Like Rosalie, Marion Pemberton had two parts, Saint Martin de Porres and the black Wise Man, but he was wearing his same costume for both, on account of, even though Rosalie didn’t want him to, Madame Frechette said he could. Marion’s mother had sewn his costume out of an old shiny silver sheet, and she made him a turban out of a pillowcase that went with the sheet, and I thought he looked pretty cool.

  I thought the three MaryAnns looked good, too, in their white nightgowns and angel wings and light-up halos. But one angel didn’t look so hot: Franz Duzio. With his bushy black eyebrows, his curly blond wig, and this lady’s nightgown he had to borrow “from my fat aunt,” Franz looked not so much like the Angel Gabriel as he did some psycho combination of Cupid and Shirley Temple. When he first came out of the boys’ room in his get-up, a bunch of us started giggling. We couldn’t help it. But Franz said whoever kept laughing was gonna get beaten to a bloody pulp as soon as we got off school property. So after that, nobody laughed. Franz was the second oldest and toughest boy in our class after Lonny, and in a fight he might even be able to take Lonny, I’m not sure. Not that they were gonna fight or anything. Franz and Lonny got along pretty good. When they arm-wrestled during indoor recess, sometimes Lonny won and sometimes Franz did, but they always shook hands afterwards like gentlemen.

  Saturday afternoon was dress rehearsal for every single kid who was in the Christmas program. Attendance was mandatory, Sister Fabian said over the P.A. the day before, which meant you had to be there unless you or one of your parents were croaking or something. Or maybe one of your grandparents.

  The first and second graders were lucky stiffs. Even though they were going on second to last in the program the next day, they got to practice first because Sister Fabian said they’d get ants in their pants if they had to wait around. They were singing the only song in the whole show that wasn’t holy. This is what they were doing: first Father Hanrahan comes out on the stage carrying this fake Christmas tree. Then he goes to the audience, “Hey, do you folks hear what I hear?” And backstage, there’s these jingle bells that the audience can hear but not see yet. Then one of the stage hands—Ernie Overturf’s older brother, Richard, who’s in eighth grade but doesn’t play a musical instrument—starts a record backstage and holds a microphone up to the speaker. And all the first and second graders come out holding hands, and they start circling the tree and singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” along with Brenda Lee (not the real her, just the record). Plus, every first and second grader’s wearing reindeer antlers and they got jingle bells tied to their shoelaces—which was where the jingle bell sounds were coming from when Father asked, “Hey, do you hear what I hear?” See, while they’re still backstage, all the little kids shake their feet to make their jingle bells jingle.

  After the little kids got to leave dress rehearsal, the eighth grade orchestra, seventh grade choir, sixth grade chorus, and fourth grade glee club all got to practice their musical numbers with Mrs. Button, the music teacher. (Mrs. Button and Madame were our school’s only lay teachers, which all that means is they’re not nuns.) The music sounded okay, except the eighth grade orchestra kinda stunk a little, especially the screechy violins. Anyways, us tableaux kids had to just hang around and wait while all the musicians rehearsed, and it was so boring. Then? When the sixth grade chorus was practicing that “We Three Kings” song, Lonny and me started singing the funny version:

  We three kings of Orient are

  Tried to smoke a rubber cigar…

  We had to shut up, though, because Sister Fabian gave us a dirty look and said something about being sacrilegious. And right after that? Pauline Papelbon walked by Lonny and Franz and me, eating Fritos in her Mary costume with her stomach kinda stickin’ out, and Franz went to Lonny that, since Lonny was Joseph and Pauline was Mary, he sure must be glad that the baby was God’s son, not his, because Pauline was probably the last girl Lonny would wanna do you-know-what with.

  “You better watch it,” I warned Franz. “That’s real sacrilegious.” But Franz ignored me and started making pig snorts in Pauline’s direction, which Lonny kinda laughed at a little, but then he stopped. I didn’t laugh at all because it was pretty mean. Plus, Pauline never really bothered anybody. And if her mother had to go to the state hospital last year, which everyone knew about, that wasn’t her fault. To tell you the truth, I was a little bit glad she got picked to be Mary, on account of Pauline hardly ever got picked for anything, and the only other girl I ever seen sit with her in the lunch room was her seventh grade sister, Claudette, who, come to think of it, was kind of a chowhound, too. But anyways, like I said, I didn’t think dress rehearsal was all that fair, because even though we had to wait around for all the musicians to get done, after they finished, they got to leave instead of hanging around waiting for us.

  This was the way Madame said it was gonna go. For each tableau (except the last one), there would be two songs: one before the curtain opened and one after it did. “So for the Annunciation, par exemple, the seventh graders will sing ‘Angels We Have Heard on High.’ Then the curtain will open to reveal the Angel Gabriel telling the Virgin the news that she is with child. And as that scene is revealed to the audience, the orchestra plays and the soloist sings the ‘Ave Maria.’ Vous comprenez?” We all said yeah. This kid Happy Rocketto? Who was on my last year’s Little League team? His sister’s the soloist, and she has this kind of opera voice. When Zhenya heard her during rehearsal, she said, “Wow-ee, I luff opera. That geuhl sing bootyful, ya Fillix?” and I said yeah, but what I was really thinking was yuck, get me some earplugs.

  After the Annunciation would come the shepherds’ scene, Madame said, then Rosalie’s play, and then the Magi scene. (Which meant Rosalie had to change real fast from her narrator gown into her king costume and get all of her narrator eyeshadow and lipstick off.) “After the Kindergarteners’ song and ‘Away in a Manger,’ we shall have the big finale with the Christ child and all who have come to adore Him,” Madame said. Which was the tableau I was in—me and our whole class except for the Kubiak brothers who were stagehands, and so they got to just set up and take down things like the hay bales and plywood animals and not have to wear a costume and go out on stage and act paralyzed and practically not even breathe until the curtain closed. The Kubiaks were also in charge of keeping the lambs quiet until the last tableau—the real lambs, not the plywood ones. Oh, and Mr. Dombrowski, our janitor, he was kinda like a stagehand, too, I guess, because he was in charge of working the rope that was gonna raise and lower the star of Bethlehem. It was pretty cool, that pulley thing, and some of us boys wanted to try raising and lowering it, but Madame said no, not even the Kubiak twins could do it, even though it was their own brother who made it. Only Mr. Dombrowski could.

  Near the end of dress rehearsal, I got yelled at by Madame Frechette. I deserved it, kind of. In the middle of rehearsing kids, Madame had taken off her beret and left it on a chair backstage. And me and Oscar Landry and Monte Montoya started playing frisbee with it, and she caught us. She yelled
at all three of us, but mostly at me because when she asked whose idea it was, Oscar and Monte both pointed at me. We all said we were sorry and Madame nodded, stuck her beret back on, and didn’t give us detention.

  At the end of dress rehearsal, Madame reminded us that the Christmas program started promptly at 2:00 P.M. the next afternoon, but that everyone should get dropped off no later than 1:00 P.M. so we could get into our costumes and wait on the stair landing until our tableau came up and it was time for us to tiptoe down the back stairs, get into our places on stage, and freeze. Then she had us all sit on the stage floor, and she started walking back and forth in front of us with her hands on her hips, and giving us a speech. “You must remember, mes élèves, that as the singers and players will be celebrating la nativité with their music, you are the ones who will embody the Christmas story!” When she said the word “embody,” she closed her eyes and put her hands up in the air. We all kind of looked at each other funny and waited, cause it looked like she was in a trance or something.

  After Madame opened her eyes again, she said, “Should your nose itch while the curtain remains open, you must resist the urge to scratch it. Should you wish to gaze out upon the audience to see if you can spot your family, you must forbid yourself to do so.” She adjusted her beret, took one hand off of one hip, and left the other one on her other hip. “Any questions?”

  Susan Ekizian raised her hand. “What if we hafta sneeze?”

  “Then you must suppress it, mademoiselle.”

  “How?” someone else asked.

  Madame shrugged. “However you are able. Perhaps by digging your fingernails into your leg or forcing yourself to think about something else—something sad, perhaps, or something joyous. And if, in your nervousness, the urge to laugh comes over you, then you must bite your lip hard, drawing a drop or two of blood if you have to, but you must not, under any circumstances, break the illusion that you are a living, three-dimensional painting as breathtaking and beautiful as any in the Louvre.” Madame had told us a million times about the time she visited the Louvre. (Which is in Paris, France. See, England owns Canada, but if you live in Québec, you like France better.)