Rapture Practice (14 page)

Nanny is waiting for me in the garage when I pull in. Mom called her three weeks ago to tell her I wasn’t going to be in the play after all, but she insisted on coming for the weekend anyway.

“You better put down that backpack and give your Nanny a hug.”

I obey, and suddenly I am crying again. Nanny kisses my cheek and holds me for what feels like a very long time.

“Darlin’, what’s wrong?” she whispers.

“You came all this way to see me in this stupid play.” I sob into her shoulder. “I disappointed everybody.”

“Hey. Hey, you look at me, young man.” She steps back and takes my face in both her hands. “Nothing you could do would
ever
disappoint me. Do you hear me?
Nothing.
”

I raise my eyes to meet hers shining back at me, bright even in the dim light of the garage. “I’m sorry you can’t be in this play,” she says, “but that’s a decision your daddy made. I’m here to celebrate
you
.”

She hugs me tight once more, and I remember the night she carried me into McLemore’s market, wrapped up in Papa’s crocheted afghan. Nanny always makes me feel safe.

“Now then,” she says, heading over to the trunk of Dad’s car, “will you be a gentleman, please, and help me carry up another tank of oxygen for Papa?”

Papa’s breathing has grown steadily worse. He wheels a little green tank of oxygen around with him wherever he goes now.

“How is he doing?” I ask.

“As well as you can do with emphysema,” Nanny says. “Your uncle Edward won’t quit smoking, and I’ve informed him he’d better have other plans for long-term care. Your papa is my last emphysema patient.”

I lift a green tank out of the trunk.

“ ’Course Papa is a stubborn man, darlin’. He may outlast us all,” she says. “I sat him down the other day and said if he didn’t stop being so ornery, we weren’t gonna have a funeral for him.”

“Nanny!”

She laughs and winks at me as she closes the trunk. “Told him he best start being sweet, or I’m gonna use his insurance money to put a swimming pool in the backyard. We’ll bury him under the diving board.”

The next night after dinner, instead of heading up to school so I can get into costume and perform, I sit at the table and wait as Dad takes out his Bible and leads family devotions. He reads a passage of scripture, then Josh reads from a little devotional book called
The Daily Bread
. Mom has Miriam pull a postcard out of the Missionary Prayer Box, and we all take turns praying for the missionary family whose picture is on the card.

This is supposed to be my big opening night. Instead, it’s like every other night—only Nanny is here with her coffee cup, Papa is here with his oxygen tank, and Dad has an announcement:

“I know we thought we were going to see a play at Blue Ridge tonight,” he says, “but because that didn’t work out, I thought we’d go see the musical at Tri-City tomorrow.”

“Tri-City?” I ask. The alarms are ringing in my head. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. “How’d you hear about the musical at Tri-City?” Something about this feels wrong.
Very
wrong.

“I went to speak in their chapel service last week, and the principal, Mr. Friesen, invited us all to come and see the show tomorrow night.”

“You spoke in chapel at Tri-City last week?” I ask.

“You know they’ve got this big new church auditorium, where they’re doing the play,” Dad says, “and they’re building a brand-new high school wing.”

“Aren’t they sort of crazy conservative?” I ask.

“Yeah,” says Josh. “I hear they don’t let boys and girls talk to each other between classes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Dad laughs. “Besides, your friend Erica from camp goes to school there.”

It hits me like a ton of bricks out of the clear blue sky—right there in the kitchen while Nanny pours more coffee, and Mom loads the dishwasher, and Papa breathes air through a tube in his nose. A horrible certainty settles in the pit of my stomach:

Dad is going to make us go to Tri-City next year.

I can see how the whole weekend will unfold with perfect clarity before I even leave the dinner table. I can see us watching the musical, and Dad introducing me to the director. I can already hear his sales pitch about how great the music and theater and sports programs are. I can see right now how I will argue and bargain and beg, and ultimately it
will not matter. God already knows who will get into heaven, and Dad already knows we’ll be changing schools.

Dad has decided, and that settles it. His decision started two summers ago when I bought a ticket to a movie he doesn’t know I saw—a movie that led to a soundtrack I loved, a lie I can never un-tell, and three words I can never take back.

Across the table, Nanny smiles and winks at me, unaware of what has just transpired.

You’d be surprised how one thing leads to another.

A short, stout woman in her fifties with an enthusiastic wave and no waist swings open the door of the school office when she sees Dad and me striding down the empty corridor of lockers and classrooms. She’s the same size from her shoulders to her ankles, and I imagine her welcoming Santa Claus home on Christmas morning from a night dodging angels and delivering gifts.

“Oooooooooooh, Dr. Hartzler,” she squeals in a thick Southern drawl, “we are so excited that y’all are joinin’ us here at Tri-City this year.”

Dad smiles. “We’re glad to be here, Lynne. This is Aaron.”

I am instantly engulfed in a bear hug. Lynne is wearing denim from head to toe, and her straight skirt clings to her thighs like a sausage casing. This woman is a blue-jean hot dog.

“I’m Principal Friesen’s wife, Lynne, but you can call me Mama Friesen.” She turns to Dad. “Larry is in a meeting, but he’ll be done in a sec, so let’s get Aaron down to play practice.”

I cringe. Everyone who knows
anything
about theater
knows the word is
rehearsal
, but I keep my best smile plastered firmly in place as I follow her and Dad down the hallway. I’ve been here for roughly fifty-seven seconds, and I already know I have zero intention of referring to this woman as “Mama.”

After weeks of pleading with Dad to not make us change schools, the deed is done. Classes start at the end of the month, and we’ll be driving thirty minutes across town to attend until we find a house closer to the school. Dad has worked a deal with Principal Friesen and the drama teacher, and somehow I’ve been assigned a part in the school play, which was cast last spring. I got a call from a Mrs. Hastings two weeks ago informing me I’d been given a small but memorable role—no audition required.

Dad has been trying really hard to reach out to me over the past few weeks especially. There were surprise tickets to a Royals game, a trip to Worlds of Fun, and a hundred hopeful glances in the hallway. He’s been very vocal about how beautiful my piano playing is when I’m practicing, and the other night he turned on the lamp next to the chair where I was reading in the living room, and stood there waiting until I looked up at him.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just love you so much, Aaron.”

When the part in the play came through, his relief was palpable, like this would fix everything. “See?” Dad said with a hopeful smile when I hung up the phone. “The Lord is working everything out for you, son. ‘God delights to give his best to those who leave the choice with him.’ ”

Of course, I have had no choice about this at all. If it were my choice, I wouldn’t be here for the first day of rehearsal for the play at Tri-City. For weeks Dad has been trying to make this better somehow—brokering a role in the play, telling me over and over again how this is what he and Mom “have peace about,” explaining how much they prayed about making this decision.

They spent a lot of time asking God if they should put us in a new school. I wish they’d spent time asking me about it. I’m the one who has to go to class here every day. They care more about what God thinks of where they send me to school than they do about what I think, that’s for certain. Dad said it best the other day:

“Aaron, I have to answer to God one day for the decisions I make as a parent. I want to send you to a school where the students are going to exert positive peer pressure on you to serve the Lord.”

As we walk down the hall toward the rehearsal, I feel my stomach turn. At least if I have to go to school here, I’ll get to be in the play, but even this makes me nervous. I’m simply being given a role. How does that look?
Did someone else lose this part because I got it?

Dad and Mrs. Friesen are chatting like old friends. “Larry was so happy this all worked out,” she says. “And, Aaron, you’ll just
love
Mrs. Hastings, the drama teacher. She’s done such a wonderful thing with our plays and musicals. I know she’s looking forward to having you here.”

I see Dad’s eyes glance over at me, watching for my reaction. He wants so badly for this to work.

“Yes, we saw the musical this past spring,” I say cheerfully. “It was terrific.” My face already hurts from smiling, but I can tell Lynne Friesen thinks I’m the bee’s knees.

“Aaron’s the best actor I’ve ever directed,” Dad says. “I directed him in a play when he was four years old. He stole the show then, and he’s been a natural ever since.” I realize he’s right. Even now, Mrs. Friesen has no idea how much I don’t want to be here. Maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.

We reach the door of a large multipurpose room. Through a thin window I can see the backs of two other students holding scripts and reading lines while a woman with red hair a shade I’m certain was not created by God scribbles notes on a clipboard. The rest of the cast watches the rehearsal from large round tables off to the side.

“This is where y’all will practice until school starts,” Mrs. Friesen says, “then we move into the church auditorium. Ready?”

Without waiting for an answer, she turns the handle and swings the door wide, plowing a course for center stage directly through the scene, already in progress.

The drama teacher, looks up, startled, as Mrs. Friesen marches into the room, but when Mrs. Hastings sees me standing next to my dad, she lets loose a warm smile, her lips a hypnotizing shade of pink.

“Aaron!” She floats over and extends one hand to me, the other folded across her chest as she turns her head to the side in the sort of demure curtsy one might expect of a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.

This is it. It’s up to me how this goes from here. I make a split-second decision and turn on the charm.

“Mrs.
Hastings
.” I take her extended hand in both of mine and grasp it as if being welcomed by royalty. She pulls herself close to me in a cloud of gardenia perfume and whispers, “We’re so pleased to have a true thespian of your caliber in our midst.”

“Good to see you again, Margaret.” Dad is smiling at Mrs. Hastings, who smiles at Mrs. Friesen, who is smiling at me as I smile back at all three of them. Smiles all around. We’re a smiley bunch of Baptists.

“We really enjoyed the musical this spring,” says Dad. “Thank you for making room for Aaron in your new production.”