No matter how early you arrived at a Bayberry Holiday Performance, coats, purses, nannies, and the occasional baby in a carrier would already be sprawled across the best seats. These items were planted as place holders by families who were either entitled or sneaky, or perhaps a hybrid of the two. Or maybe it was just the preschool version of camping out to get the best seats at a rock concert. While their seats were being saved, sometimes the families milled around in the all-purpose room, chatting with other families or talking on their cellphones. Sometimes they had the audacity to go out for a quick bite.
The first row of seats was reserved for Kate Stone and the teachers who weren’t on the holiday performance committee. In part, this was a gesture of respect. Mostly it was to keep them close enough to the stage to intervene at lightning speed if necessary. The reserved seats were individually marked with poster board signs. Just to be sure there was no room for misinterpretation, brightly colored yarn was wrapped around the entire section. A large RESERVED sign hung from the yarn enclosure.
Lorna shook her head, grabbed a winter coat and a designer purse that had invaded the reserved section to save two seats. Since the purse alone was probably worth more than a teacher’s salary for an entire month, there was no doubt at all that the items didn’t belong there. Lorna wound up, got ready to pitch them in the direction of the cheap seats.
Pandora’s mother came running up and held out her hand. “Oh, well, it was worth a try.” She gave Lorna and me a dazzling smile. “At least I didn’t let Pandora drive her Barbie jeep in and park it in the back of the room, which is what she wanted to do.”
“And you wonder why teachers drink,” Lorna said, possibly a little too loudly, as Pandora’s mother walked away.
I waved at two Bayberry graduates with younger siblings in tonight’s performance who were passing out programs for us. I tried to guess how old they were now. Third grade? Fourth?
Ethan peeked out between the stage curtains. I checked my teacher’s watch with the big analog face and nodded to him. Ethan disappeared again. Lorna and I walked to the back of the room. I flicked the light switches repeatedly. “Please silence all personal electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones,” Lorna and I repeated over and over again like flight attendants.
The audience—parents and grands and siblings—chittered and chattered away as everybody took their seats.
I felt John’s presence before I saw him. My heart actually skipped a beat when I picked him out in the back row, dressed in a charcoal gray suit and red tie. He looked handsome and intelligent and kind and everything you’d want the guy you were hoping to spend the rest of your life with to be. It had been his idea to come watch the performance. I want to see you shine, he’d said.
In all the years we were married, my wasband had never once come to a Bayberry performance. Although, of course, my life being my life, he was here now with his replacement wife to watch their twins perform. Not only that, but he was waving at me from his seat. I ignored him, smiled at John.
My dad and Johnny slid into the seats beside John. Behave, I mouthed to them. I wasn’t even pissed that I knew they’d come more for Polly than for me.
Kate Stone and the teachers filled in the front row. They wound up the brightly colored yarn and piled up the poster board signs and handed it all to me like a neatly wrapped Christmas present.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Break a leg,” my bitch of a boss said.
“Not with our health insurance,” Lorna mumbled as we walked away.
The Bayberry students were jammed into the green room, which was a long narrow room off the backstage area. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with their assistant teachers.
Ethan and I smiled at everybody. “Shhh,” we said as we put our fingers to our lips. The kids’ eyes lit up as they put their fingers to their own lips and shhh-ed.
I walked the third-year students who were playing the two dogs and two cats to the short podium Ethan had made out of repurposed wood pallets, which we’d placed near the front of the stage and off to stage right. They’d stay there and recite their dialog as the song and dance numbers unfurled behind them.
Ethan joined us on stage. When he turned on the microphone attached to the podium, it made a noise like a fart. The students playing the dogs and cats completely lost it. The kids behind us in the green room joined in with an explosion of laughter that carried right out to the audience. The audience started laughing, too. In true preschool fashion, the kids who could fart on command began doing just that.
A putrid odor followed, like rotten eggs crossed with sour milk and tinged with the distinct smell of peanut butter, strong enough to clear a room. Polly tiptoed down the stairs on one side of the stage, holding Griffin by the hand, on the way to Griffin’s cubby to find his change-of-clothing bag. Not only wasn’t Griffin quite as toilet trained as his parents had led us to believe he was, but apparently he hadn’t quite mastered farting on command either.
People were trying to hold their noses without being obvious. Griffin’s mom scrunched down in her chair and covered her face with her program as Polly and Griffin passed. Griffin’s dad videoed his son’s walk of shame with his iPhone.
Everybody was laughing now, performers and audience alike. I wondered if we could get away with calling it a performance and taking our bows now.
Ethan and I each gave the dogs and cats a thumbs up, then we walked behind the curtains, where Gloria had the students who were doing the cave kids dance all set up and ready to go.
“What a beautiful world,” one of the cats said into the microphone. “If only I had a family to belong to.”
“I know,” one of the dogs said. “Let’s travel through time and place and see if we can all find the perfect homes to live.”
“That way we can enjoy all the magical celebrations along the way,” the other cat said. “Starting with the first people in the history of the world ever to dance.”
“I was supposed to say that part!” the other dog sobbed.
The audience erupted in laughter.
I figured if we opened the curtain fast it might look like it was supposed to be part of the performance. I nodded across the stage to Ethan and we both started pulling the ropes. June crawled out from the side of the curtain to make sure the crying dog was okay.
The cave kids dance was adorable. Lots of knee bending and low swinging arms and hopping around which might have looked a little more frog-like than caveman-like, if not for the animal print fabric wrapped around the dancers.
We moved on to Polly’s and my class dance to “Walk Like an Egyptian.” Our kids were all dressed in white T-shirts and sweats, except for Griffin, whose back-up clothes happened to be red and black plaid, but that was fine. I mean, it was preschool, not Broadway. Polly had made gold lamé bands to wrap around their foreheads, smaller serpent-like gold bands for their upper arms.
What our students lacked in finesse they made up for in enthusiasm. They sang along to the record as they bent and straightened their knees and made their pyramid hands go up and down. They formed a single file with minimal shoving. They yelled, “Walk like an Egyptian” at the top of their lungs as they walked through the back door of Ethan’s awesome pyramid and out the front door. They took turns climbing up the little stepladder, with a hidden Polly holding their hands, and peering over the red bow on the top of the pyramid for their photo opp moment. When some of their parents guerilla-crawled across the floor with their video cameras and phones to get closer, they looked like wannabe Spielbergs taking a Cross-fit class.
Nobody fell. Nobody else cried. Which in the preschool world is a raving success.
Polly leaned over and whispered, “Wow. Just wow. I could spend my whole life doing this.”
“Great,” I whispered. “Then you can be in charge of the next one.”
The audience cheered and howled. The students sang and danced up a storm. Time flew. As soon as each class finished its number, the adults backstage scrambled to attach jingle bells to the kids’ shoes with twist ties for our grand finale.
Finally, we were all on stage together. The teachers from the front row came up to join us, along with our bitch of a boss. Pandora’s mother moved in to take over one of the front row seats. Several other people followed—parent see, parent do.
We sang and circled around to Woodie Guthrie’s “Hanukkah Dance.” Then Gloria brought out her ukulele to accompany us as we sang and clapped to “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Kwanza’s Here.” The kids put those jingle bells to work with “Jingle Bell Rock.” Ethan slid a green slipcover over his pyramid, and two of his students rolled it center stage and we all danced around it for “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” We brought down the house with “We Wish You a Happy Howliday and a Bark-Filled New Year.”
“Home sweet home,” the dogs and cats yelled, their arms stretched wide. They walked carefully down the stage stairs the way they’d rehearsed and then ran to their parents in the audience.
With perfect timing, the doors to the lobby opened. In walked the shelter dogs, big red bows around their collars, volunteers in Santa hats holding their leashes. Several other volunteers carried out cats in crates with big red bows on top. Everybody oohed and aahed.
I walked over to the mic. “We hope you enjoyed our howliday tail. And we hope you’ll help these animals find their home sweet home, too. All the dogs and cats you see here, the non-preschool ones anyway, are available for adoption through the Marshbury Animal Shelter.”
“Maybe some of the preschool ones, too,” somebody yelled. Everybody laughed.
The rest of the kids marched down the stage stairs and made a beeline for their families. The families made a beeline for the dogs. My eyes teared up. Sometimes, in your own small way, you really can make a difference in this crazy, crazy world.
And then I saw the scruffy dog from the beach.
Time stopped. The heavens practically opened and the angels almost sang, like in those old religious holy cards my grandmothers used to send us tucked into our birthday cards along with a five-dollar bill.
It really was the scruffy dog, wagging its tail, surrounded by a circle of kids who were petting it. It had been bathed and brushed and had a big red bow around its neck. And yet somehow it was still undeniably scruffy.
I scanned the room looking for John, couldn’t find him anywhere in the crowd.
I race-walked across the room, dodging and weaving around parents and kids, and wiggled my way in to get close to the scruffy dog. It seemed to recognize me, or maybe I just wanted to think so. I squatted down, scratched it behind the ears while it licked my face. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” I whispered.
“Hi,” I said to the volunteer on the other side of the scruffy dog’s leash. “Does this one have a home yet?”
The woman smiled, adjusted her Santa hat. “I’m happy to say they’re all spoken for, and we even have waiting lists for most of them. Of course, all of our adoptions are contingent upon a home visit so we can be sure it’s a good match.”
“That’s great,” I said in a sad little voice I didn’t even recognize.
I made sure all my students had found their families. Then I walked through the lobby and down the hallway to my classroom. I grabbed my coat and stood outside in the frigid air, leaning back against the building and staring up at the stars. At least it was a good night for stars.
I knew I should be happy for the scruffy dog. I knew I was completely overreacting, that I’d lost a dog and not a baby. But I still felt a hole in my heart, like I’d felt a hole month after month when I found out I wasn’t pregnant after all, like I’d felt when my niece Siobhan lost the baby she was going to let John and me adopt. Loss is loss.
John came out of the school and walked toward me, his long overcoat buttoned up.
“You’re amazing,” he said when he got close. “Truly impressive performance,” He whipped out a big bouquet of roses and baby’s breath from behind his back. “Brava.”
“Thanks.” I tried to take in the deep, heady smell of the roses as I sniffed them, to appreciate the gesture, the thought behind it.
“So, we’ve got her.”
“Polly?” I said. “She doesn’t need a ride—she drove her own car.”
John grinned. It was what my father would call a pie-eating grin, what my sisters and brothers would call a shit-eating grin. Or maybe it was like the proverbial cat who ate that poor canary.
“The scruffy dog,” John said. “She’s ours, as long as we pass the home visit tomorrow.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really. I recognized her right away. I think she recognized me, too, although it could be that I just smell like Horatio.”
I held the bouquet out to the side so I could lean in for a kiss.
A clump of kids walked by with their parents. The kids giggled. One of the parents made kissy sounds.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“One hundred percent,” he said. “You were right.”
I smiled. “The most important three words in any relationship.”
John put his arm around me, and we walked toward our cars under a sky full of stars on the eve of winter break.
“Well, I’ll be doggoned,” I said.