Authors: Gary D. Schmidt
bundled us inside like we were two hours late instead of two hours early. He sent Lil into the
dressing room so that she could start becoming Helen Burns. I didn't have to do anything. If you're
offstage, you can shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years
without looking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years.
So I read
Our Town
—terrific—while Lil got ready, and my mother and Mr. and Mrs. Spicer went
for a walk in Times Square because they couldn't bear to wait in the theater, they said. And besides,
my mother had never seen Times Square.
And that is why they were not around when Mr. Gregory came looking for them.
"They're out for a walk," I said.
His face looked like Disaster.
"What?" I said.
Mrs. Windermere happened to make her theater appearance right then. Blue dress flouncing, a
couple of hundred strands of pearls draped around her, an ivory cane that she didn't really need.
"Gregory," she said, "this is the night!"
Mr. Gregory looked at her.
"What's happened?" she said.
"Come with me," he said.
"What's going on?" I said.
"Everything's fine," said Mrs. Windermere.
Sure.
They were gone a long time.
While I waited to see how fine everything was, I watched the theater fill up through this little hole
in the stage wings. Mrs. Windermere said that she had never had a play open without a packed house,
and it looked like she was going to keep her stats perfect. The Rose was filling up pretty fast, and it
wasn't filling up with just anybody, I'm not lying. Mayor Lindsay came down the aisle, shaking hands
with everyone who could reach him and smiling like this was a parade or something. And a little after
him came Jimmy Stewart. Really. Jimmy Stewart, walking down and shaking hands too, with those
huge hands he has. Jimmy Stewart!
But you know what? That was nothing.
I saw my mother and Lil's parents come in and sit in the second row, and then Mr. Gregory going
out to see them, and them all getting up and heading backstage—I guess to wish me and Lil good luck
one more time. And then, right near where their seats were, guess who came in and sat down. Just sat
down, real easy, and crossed his legs and leaned back and looked up at the ceiling a couple of times
and then turned around to someone and shook his hand and then turned around to someone else and
took his program and signed it. You know who this was?
Joe Pepitone.
I'm not lying. Joe Pepitone was sitting in the second row of the Rose Theater.
Joe Pepitone.
And you know what I was going to do? I was going to shriek like an insane woman who has been
locked in an attic for a great many years.
In front of Joe Pepitone.
You know what that feels like?
You can't know what that feels like, because no one has ever had to shriek like an insane woman
who has been locked in an attic for a great many years in front of Joe Pepitone.
I couldn't do it.
I wouldn't do it.
Not in front of Joe Pepitone.
I looked through the little hole in the stage wings again. He was reading his program. He was
probably getting to the part where it said,
Voice of Bertha Mason: Douglas Swieteck.
Any second
now he was going to lean over to someone near him and point to my name.
Isn't that a guy?
he was
going to say.
How can a guy play the voice of Bertha Mason?
Then he was going to look at my name
again, and he was going to say,
You know, that name sounds familiar.
And then he was going to think
about it some more, and he'd say,
That name is so familiar.
And then, then, then he was going to
remember.
Terrific.
I looked around wildly.
And suddenly, there were my mother and Mr. and Mrs. Spicer. And Mr. Gregory and Mrs.
Windermere. And Lil—who was taking her turn looking like Disaster.
"We've got to get out of here," I said.
Mrs. Spicer nodded. "We know, we know. We're going to take her to the hospital right away."
Her? Hospital?
"We think it might be the pencils," said Mr. Spicer.
Lil smiled, sort of. She was holding on to her parents pretty tight. She had been crying. "Break a
leg," she said. She was still crying.
"Break a leg?" I said.
"It's what is said to actors before they go on stage," said Mr. Gregory.
"On stage?" I said.
Lil tried to smile again. "Remember, Doug, it's Scat
cherd.
"
I shook my head. "I'm not going onstage."
My mother put both her hands up to her face.
Mrs. Windermere came and stood beside me. She put one hand on my shoulder and another on my
elbow. "Who else knows all the lines for Helen Burns?" she said.
I looked at her. I looked at Mr. Gregory. At my mother. Then Mr. and Mrs. Spicer. Then Lil. "Break
a leg," she said again, sort of weak.
"He'll be fine," said Mrs. Windermere.
"No," I said.
"We've got to get you to the dressing room," said Mr. Gregory.
"No, no," I said again.
You remember who is sitting in the audience? In the second row?
"You do know the lines, don't you?" said Mr. Gregory.
"No," I said.
"He's lying," said Lil.
"If we were to tie his hair up into a bun..."
A bun!
"...and some baby powder to make his face pale..."
Baby powder!
"Did you know that Joe Pepitone is sitting out there?"
"A great many people are sitting out there," said Mr. Gregory.
Lil grimaced, but not because of Joe Pepitone. "I think we'd better..."
The Spicers left. Lil's stomach was hurting so bad, she didn't even look back.
Mr. Gregory and Mrs. Windermere took me to the dressing room. "This is what we have to work
with," they said to a whole lot of people who began to smile at me a whole lot—and they weren't the
kind of smiles that make you happy.
"Listen," I said, "if this is just because of a stomachache—"
" Remember," Mrs. Windermere said—people were starting to tie my hair up into a bun—"Jane
Eyre will walk across the stage and address you. You'll be reading a book on a bench. Jane won't
speak to you until you turn the page, so don't forget to turn it. Then she'll say, 'Is your book
interesting?' and you say ... Skinny Delivery Boy, you say..."
"Nope, it stinks."
"Doug," said Mrs. Windermere.
"I say, 'I like it,' and she says, 'What is it about?' and I hand it to her and say, 'You may look at it.'"
By this time, my hair was tied up in a bun. A tight bun. And someone was powdering the back of
my neck.
"Could you go out there and tell Joe Pepitone to go home?" I said.
"And when she says, 'Do you like the teachers here at Lowood Institution?' you say..."
"They stink too."
Mrs. Windermere looked at me. Hard.
"They're all criminally insane?"
I think Mr. Gregory was about to start crying right there, even though it wasn't him that was getting
his hair tied up in a bun—which, by the way, hurts. "You have to get this right!" Mr. Gregory said.
And I think it was the
have to
that gave me the idea, even as someone told me to raise my arms so
she could slip a long Lowood Institution dress over me, which didn't exactly help the bun.
"Mrs. Windermere," I said, "I know the part. But this changes things."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Lil and I were getting the Snowy Heron for this, right?"
She nodded, a little suspicious.
"If I'm going to play Helen Burns in front of Joe Pepitone, then I want the Red-Throated Divers
too."
Mrs. Windermere opened her eyes wide. I mean, really wide. "I've had those Divers for years," she
said.
I waited.
"That wasn't part of our agreement."
I waited.
"They're perfect over the mantel."
"They're perfect back in the book," I said.
She shook her head. "Absolutely not. Do you realize how much that plate costs?"
I waited some more.
"Agreed," said Mr. Gregory.
There it was.
Mrs. Windermere looked at him the way an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a
great many years would look at him. "It's not your decision, Gregory," she said.
"It's my theater, it's my production, it's my reputation, and it's my money," said Mr. Gregory. He
held out his hand. I shook it.
"I could use a bowl of lemon ice cream," said Mrs. Windermere.
I'm not lying, I was a killer Helen Burns.
I stepped out on to that stage like I was the Great Esquimaux Curlew. When Jane Eyre came to look
at my book—which happened to be
Our Town
—I handed it to her just right. When Miss
Scatcherd
told me I never cleaned my nails, I was about as quiet and innocent as a Large-Billed Puffin. When
she hit me a dozen times with a bunch of twigs, I was the Brown Pelican: I didn't bat an eye—and you
try getting hit a dozen times with a bunch of twigs. And when I had to die, people were crying. Really.
And you know why? Because I was the Black-Backed Gull, and so people cried like Helen Burns
was their best friend.
Maybe even Joe Pepitone was crying. Who knows?
And Mr. Gregory was crying too. Probably in relief. You should have heard the clapping as the
curtain came down on dead Helen Burns. When I got to the wings, Mr. Gregory picked me up and
hugged me and twirled me around and got baby powder all over himself and I had to tell him to let me
go since I was headed back to the dressing room because I wasn't going to be Helen Burns any longer
than I had to and was someone going to help me get this stupid bun untied?
By the way, you can guess what my mother was doing in the wings.
But the best part was still to come!
Maybe it was because of the Helen Burns applause. Or maybe it was all the practice. Or maybe it
was because Joe Pepitone was in the second row. But I let out the Bertha Mason shriek, and by the
time the first echoes finished bouncing back from the mezzanine, I wasn't the only one in the Rose
Theater who was shrieking. It was that good. I bet that everyone there really did think that there was
an insane woman who had been locked in the attic of the theater for a great many years and they had
just heard her.
I guess the rest of the play was all right. I spent some of it reading
Our Town
and some of it
working on the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States report, which was almost finished even
though a certain someone hadn't written a single word and now she would probably say that she was
so sick that she couldn't write a thing.
Terrific.
But I'm not lying, what I was thinking about more was a certain book, and certain missing pages,
and bringing those pages back to a certain library, and handing them to a certain librarian, and me and
Lil watching him put them back.
I know what the Red-Throated Divers are watching for. I know what the next spectacular thing is.
By the time we got to the "Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and
clerk, were alone present" part, it was almost eleven o'clock, and Mrs. Windermere still had to drive
my mother and me back home, which meant it would be almost one o'clock before I even got close to
sleep. But I didn't care. I'd finished laying the last transcontinental rail and pounded in the Golden
Spike, and the audience was standing and hollering, and the next day, I'd be handing two Audubon
prints to Mr. Powell.
What could be better?
Who cares if Mrs. Windermere was taking forever being The Playwright out in the lobby? Who
cares if she was holding my mother beside her like her new best friend?
What could be better?
And about then, Joe Pepitone came backstage.
He really did. Joe Pepitone. Backstage.
"Hey, kid," he said.
I looked at him. Joe Pepitone.
"Doug, right?"
I nodded. Joe Pepitone.
"I threw with you last fall. You still got my cap?"
I nodded. Joe Pepitone.
He laughed. A laugh that only Joe Pepitone could laugh. "I saw your name in the program. So you
were the guy who shrieked offstage."
I nodded.
"You know, kid, you almost made me wet my pants."
I laughed. He laughed. I tried to laugh like him.
"And you were Helen Burns too."
My heart stopped. You know what it means when your heart stops? It means that when you think
that nothing could be better, right about then, it all falls apart. If you remember, I told you that a long
time ago.
I nodded. "Yup," I said.
He shook his head. Big smile. "You were great," he said. "You had me bawling, even though I knew
it was you. Bawling, kid." He shook his head again. "Man," he said, "I wish I had your talent. You had
the whole house tonight." Then he held out his program.
"I already have one," I said.
He laughed again. "It's not for you, kid. It's for me. I want you to sign it." He opened it up to where
my name was. "Right there," he said, and handed me a pen from his inside pocket like he had put it