The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (285 page)

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.)

When we finally got out of dress rehearsal, both
Simone and Frances were waiting for me in our station wagon. It was strange to see Frances and not Simone behind the wheel. Fran had gotten her learner’s permit the week before, but Ma and Pop were too busy to give her driving lessons, so Simone was doing it. I got in the backseat without saying anything. And I
kept
not saying anything, too, on the way home until finally Simone looked back at me and said, “How come
you’re
so quiet today, Felix?”

“I’m just tired,” I said.

“Yeah, standing still on a stage is really exhausting, huh?” Frances said. And I went “Shut up,” and Fran said why didn’t
I
shut up, and Simone told her to stop bickering and concentrate on the road.

The real reason I was being so quiet was because I was worried. What if, just as the curtain opened and they started singing “The Little Drummer Boy,” I got diarrhea like Ma at the Bake-Off? I wasn’t going to tell my sisters that, though, because Frances would probably lose control of the car from laughing so hard and get us into a crack-up. In my opinion,
I didn’t think Simone should be teaching Frances how to drive because Simone wasn’t that hot a driver herself. Whenever she had to parallel park, she either ended up on the curb or else three feet away from it.

M
ost Saturday nights I got to stay up and watch
Gunsmoke
, but that night Ma made me go to bed at 9:30 because the next day was gonna be such a big day for me. Here’s who was coming to the
tableaux
to see me: Ma, Simone, Frances, and my Nonna Napolitano, if her corns weren’t bothering her too bad. Pop said he was gonna
try
to come, but he couldn’t make any promises. On account of, with everyone traveling for the holiday, the bus station was gonna be real, real busy and so the manager, Mr. Popinchalk, told Pop he wanted him to keep the lunch counter open all day and not close early like we usually did on Sundays. And Chino was still getting over the flu, so he was “iffy,” Pop said. If Chino couldn’t work, then
Pop definitely wouldn’t be able to come. “But I’ll do my best to get there, kiddo,” he promised me.

At first, I couldn’t get to sleep because I was too excited. Then I started worrying again about sneezing, or having to laugh, or getting the runs. Then, finally, I started getting tired. I closed my eyes and was just about falling asleep when my stupid imagination made me see it again: Joseph Cotten’s chopped-off head bouncing bumpity bump bump bump down those stairs….

When Ma finally let me get up and have warm milk and Saltines, the 11:00 o’clock news was already on. So, really, I coulda watched
Gunsmoke
because I was awake all that time anyway. And it was way after midnight when I finally went into Ma and Pop’s bedroom, and woke up Ma, and whispered, “I’m
still
not sleeping.” And Pop moaned and went, “Oh, brother. Here we go again.” But he was the one who said I could go get my sleeping bag and then come back and camp out on the floor at the foot of their bed.

And after I did that, I fell asleep in about two seconds.

ST. ALOYSIUS GONZAGA
PAROCHIAL SCHOOL

Christmas Program

Sunday December 20, 1964

WELCOMING REMARKS:

Mother M. Filomina, Principal

OPENING BENEDICTION:

Monsignor Angus P. Muldoon, Pastor

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:

Kevin Wojcik, Grade 8 Class President

MASTER OF CEREMONIES:

Rev. Gerald “Jerry” Hanrahan, Pastoral Vicar

I.

“Angels We Have Heard on High”
Grade 7 Choir

Tableau # I: The Annunciation

Students of Grade 5

“Ave Maria” Grade 8 Orchestra
w/ Margaret Rocketto, soloist

II.

“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks”
Grade 6 Chorus

Tableau # 2: Shepherds in Their Fields

Students of Grade 5

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
Grade 6 Chorus

III.

A DRAMATIC INTERLUDE:
“JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON
”

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga: Ernest Overturf

(Grade 5)

Saint Martin de Porres: Marion Pemberton

(Grade 5)

Saint Teresa Lisieux: Geraldine Balchunas

(Grade 5)

Written, narrated, & produced by
Rosalie Elaine Twerski
(Grade 5)

IV.

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
Grade 7 Choir

Tableau # 3: The Wise Men’s Journey

Students of Grade 5

“We Three Kings of Orient Are”
Grade 8 Orchestra w. Grade 6 Chorus

V.

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
Grades I and 2 w/ Father “Jerry”

VI.

“Away in a Manger” Grade 4 Glee Club

Tableau # 4: The Nativity

Students of Grade 5

“The Little Drummer Boy”
Grade 7 Choir

“Joy to the World” Grade 7 Choir &
Grade 6 Chorus

Closing Remarks:
Father “Jerry”

“God Bless America”
Entire Company & Audience

Pauline Papelbon’s mother
was
too sick to make those cupcakes, and so Pauline, instead, brought in a whole big bag of Hostess Sno Balls for her refreshment. And I guess if she’d have brought them up to our classroom like Madame had told us to, instead of keeping them with her on the stair landing, maybe things would have turned out different. Or maybe they wouldn’t have. Who knows?

The first thing that went wrong—not too wrong, just kind of—was that Monsignor Muldoon might have been a little bit drunk. When he walked past us on the stair landing on his way to give his benediction, instead of smelling like Butter Rum Life Savers, he smelled a little like Mush Moriarty. Monsignor slipped a little on the stairs when he started down there for his opening benediction, but then he caught himself. And when he went out on the stage? Frances
said he was kinda teeter-tottering a little and holding on to the microphone stand to steady himself. (The rest of us
tableaux
kids all had to wait up on the stair landing and couldn’t see anything; we could only hear things.) Ma said maybe Monsignor was just having a little trouble with his balance, and that “that’s the way false rumors get started, young lady.” But when I mentioned that I’d smelled him and he kind of smelled like Mush, Ma said, “Well, whether he was or wasn’t tipsy, it’s certainly none of our business.”

Then the eighth grade president, that Kevin kid, got stage fright while he was leading the Pledge of Allegiance. He must have, I figured, because he was sorta laughing in the middle of saying it, and there’s nothing really funny about the Pledge of Allegiance, except when Zhenya says it:
I plidge leejinks to flig h’uv United Stets h’uv H’Ametekka
. Ma said later that she didn’t think anyone even noticed the class president was laughing, and Frances said, “Oh, yes they did!”

During the first
tableau
, Happy Rocketto’s sister’s voice cracked a little during “Ave Maria.” Twice.
And Frances and Simone both said later on that Franz Duzio looked like he was picking his nose a little in the middle of his scene. “And eating it!” Frances added. Simone said no he wasn’t, but Fran said yes he was, she’d swear on a stack of Bibles.

Simone said she thought Pauline Papelbon did good—that she didn’t hardly move her arms at all, even though she had to hold them up in the air in this position like
Oh, my gosh! Really?
because Gabriel is telling her she’s gonna get pregnant with God’s baby. Then Frances said, after Simone said that Pauline did a good job, “Yeah, but how come she was wearing a costume that made her look like Scheherazade?” (Which was the same lady
I
thought her costume made her look like—the one from
1001 Arabian Nights
.) And when Fran said that, Ma said, “Frances Ann Funicello, do you have to criticize
every
one and
every
thing?” And Frances went, no, she didn’t have to, she just
wanted
to. So Ma went, “I suppose if
you
were in charge, everything would be perfect. Right?” and Fran went, “Yeah, probably.”

The shepherds’
tableau
went pretty okay, I guess, except in the middle of the sixth graders singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” we all heard this noise like
bang
. And before that, I heard this guy from the audience yell, “Yoo hoo, Evgeniya! Ooo-wee! Nice job, leetle geuhl!” and I was pretty sure who
that
was. At least he didn’t get up on stage and give her one of those little kicks in her rear end the way he did when he walked her to school. After all the shepherds came back upstairs, Arthur told me what that bang was: one of the plywood sheeps that Mr. Overturf had made fell over. I said, “Did someone bump into it or something?” and Arthur got all red and mad and he said, “Well,
I
didn’t! What are you accusing
me
for?” So I thought that maybe he did.

Rosalie’s play? At the beginning, you could hear people in the audience oohing and ahhing when she walked out on stage in her fancy gown and crown and up on the stair landing, Franz started singing,
There she is, Miss America
, and everyone laughed a little, even some of the girls. At dress rehearsal, Ernie Overturf had
complained to me that whenever Turdski made them practice their parts, she was always acting bossy and yelling at them to speak louder. And boy, when him and Marion and Geraldine came on, they sure
were
loud. It sounded like they were all yelling at each other!