Duck the Halls(81)

To my delight, the idea of dressing up in pajamas and then going outside in them had just enough flavor of forbidden fruit to delight the boys, so they cooperated unusually well. Then I left them and Rob to continue watching It’s a SpongeBob Christmas and went upstairs to get cleaned up and dressed myself.

I was wearing a long black dress, and the black sling was almost invisible against the fabric. Was that a bad thing? Should I perhaps go back and borrow a scrap of red velvet, so people could see the sling and perhaps avoid jostling me? No, I decided on elegance. If I got jostled a bit—well, we all have to suffer for beauty.

We all had a quick supper—ham-and-cheese sandwiches and Rose Noire’s potato-leek soup. Well, all of us but Michael, who preferred not to eat too close to a performance. But Rob, Grandfather, Caroline, and the boys more than made up for any self-restraint on Michael’s part.

“So you do this Christmas Carol thing every year?” Caroline asked.

“Every year for five years now,” Michael said.

He’d started doing it because he wanted to help to raise money for the local food bank whose supplies usually ran particularly low at the holiday season, and had come up with the idea of doing a dramatic reading of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Not the whole book of course, but luckily Dickens himself had created a condensed version that he could perform on his frequent tours of America.

The first year, a brave fifty or sixty of us filled the first few rows in one of the college’s smaller auditoriums. Last year it had been standing-room only in the drama department’s main theater. I hoped they didn’t have to turn too many people away tonight. Next year we might need to schedule two performances, unless the new drama department building, now under construction on the north side of the campus, was finished slightly ahead of time. The J. Montgomery Blake Center for the Dramatic Arts—Grandfather had donated a good chunk of its cost and browbeat a number of friends and foundations for the rest—would have several performance spaces, including an enormous state-of-the-art theater that could hold twice as many people as the hall we were in tonight. But since it wasn’t scheduled to open for another year …

We could worry about having two performances—complete with two sets of preperformance jitters—next Christmas.

“And this is the first year the boys are old enough to go!” Michael added, beaming at his sons.

Actually, I wasn’t all that optimistic about their chances of staying the course, but they were so eager that I thought we’d at least give them a chance. And if I had to leave early with one or both of them—well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen the performance before. Thanks to all that rehearsing, I could have recited it along with him.

“And it’s time we all took off,” I said. “Daddy needs to get there early,” I added to the boys.

I drove, since in his preperformance state Michael tended to forget about boring, practical things like turn signals and stoplights. The boys chattered happily about SpongeBob and Frosty the Snowman, which I hoped was enough of a distraction to keep his nerves from starting to fray.

We dropped him off at the stage door of what people were already calling the Old Drama Building. It was built in the overly ornate Gothic-revival style that made the Caerphilly campus so popular for film crews looking for locations for music videos and low-budget vampire films. Fortunately the snow and the addition of wreaths on the doors and candles in the windows created more of a festive Victorian Christmas atmosphere.

“Bweak a leg, Daddy,” Jamie said. I’d been coaching him on the fact that it was bad luck to wish an actor good luck.

“Two yegs,” Josh said, competitive as usual.

I parked in one of the faculty spaces and then led the boys around to the front door. We probably could have slipped in with Michael, but I wanted the boys to see all the people lining up and paying money to see Daddy. To keep down expenses we didn’t print tickets for the show—just took contributions at the door, and attendees could donate any amount they felt comfortable with. Last year we’d taken in a lot more fifty and hundred dollar bills than fives or ones.

Of course we were early, so there weren’t too many people lining up. Still, we formally handed over our contributions to the ushers, who were clad in Dickensian costumes. I recognized the one in front of us as one of Michael’s graduate drama students.

“Thank you, my good man,” the usher said as Josh handed over his dollar. “At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable—”

“That we should make some provision for the poor and destitute,” Jamie rattled off.