Of Mice and Nutcrackers: A Peeler Christmas Page 2

  “Sorry, Mr. March,” I say. Funny, it didn’t occur to me to say sorry to Patti. Maybe because I’m not marking up her nice clean floor. Maybe because she isn’t smiling.

  There’s a series of black boot marks going down the middle of the hall. Mr. March wipes them with his mop, but they don’t come away.

  Language arts is right after lunch recess. Today we’re trying to run through the whole play, so we can be ready for our rehearsal in the gym this afternoon. We’re in the middle of the second scene when I notice something important.

  “Stop!” I call. “Patti, I think you’ve fallen off the stage!”

  Our classroom is in the old part of the school. The wooden desks are planted in rows, like the crosses in Flanders fields, and cannot be moved. No matter how we lay it out, there are always a few desks in the middle of the stage area. In trying to step around a desk, Patti has fallen into the audience. “Sorry,” she says.

  “Remember to keep upstage, so that you don’t have to turn away from the audience to look at Michael.” Michael is Herr Stahlbaum, Fritz and Maria’s godfather. He’s the one who brings the nutcracker. Michael’s a strange guy – he laughs a lot, but he’s angry too. His voice is deep and raspy. A big, funny bully is what he is.

  Do I mean that? Bully? I think so. He laughs when people fall down, and he punches a lot. That’s a bully, I guess.

  “Upstage? You mean back,” says Patti. “You want me to keep back.” “Yes,” I say.

  Michael snorts and rolls his eyes – sorry, his one eye. The other one has a patch on it.

  Miss Gonsalves turns to me. We’re the only ones on chairs. The rest of the class is either onstage, or waiting to go on.

  “What do you think, Jane? Should they do it one more time?”

  I frown at my notebook. “There’s a lot to go through,” I say. “I’ll make a note about Patti staying upstage, and Michael speaking a bit more slowly.”

  “Hey!” says Michael.

  “Good idea, Jane.” Miss Gonsalves smiles at Michael. She’s almost the only one who can. She and Jiri.

  “It’s this stupid classroom,” says Patti. “I’ll do better when we get on a real stage.”

  “Of course you will,” says Miss Gonsalves warmly.

  I can’t decide what I want to be when I grow up, but Miss Gonsalves is one option. She’s smart and she wears neat clothes and is never never upset. And she’s gorgeous. If I end up like Miss Gonsalves, I’ll be pretty happy.

  She likes me too. She likes everyone. That’s what’s so great about her. She even smiles when Michael pushes his way into class, slams his books on the desk, and frowns like a thundercloud.

  Essa used to sit in front of Michael. She said she could feel how angry he was, all the time. “It was like a furnace,” she said. Of course Miss Gonsalves likes Essa, who is the smallest grade 7 you ever saw. Smaller than you, if you’re reading this by yourself. Smaller than most grade 4s. Michael could pick her up and carry her under one arm like a bread stick. Not that Miss Gonsalves would let him.

  Zillah sits in front of Michael now. Zillah, all in black, who never says a word. She doesn’t seem to notice the anger.

  *

  “Places!” I call. “Patti and Michael, we’ll start where the clock strikes midnight.” I check the stage. The nutcracker doll is on one of the “onstage” desks, and the grandfather clock – actually an old chest of drawers, with a big cardboard clock face taped on top – is at the back, near the blackboard. “Now, Patti, it’s Christmas Eye and everyone’s asleep. You’ve been woken up. You go downstairs in the middle of the night, and suddenly you see your godfather sitting on top of your old clock. How do you feel?”

  “Surprised?” lisps Patti.

  Michael laughs again. “You think?” he says. “This old geezer comes out of my clock, I’d be surprised too.”

  The class laughs. I feel stupid. “Let’s see if we can get all the way through the magic spell,” I say. “Let’s go. Patti, downstage center. Brad, get ready. You’re on in a minute. For now you’re under the table. Michael, you’re –”

  “On top of the clock,” he says, in a loud voice. Another laugh.

  “Right. That’s, um, upstage center. Okay, Patti, take it from your line ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ And – action.”

  The music changes now: deeper, slower. You know this bit. It’s really famous. Dweedle-dweedle-dee, dee-doo-dee, dah doo dee, dah-dah-dah, doo-doo-doo, doh-doh-doh, dah-dee-dah-dee-doh.

  Well, that’s the way I hear it. I don’t read music.

  Jiri looks excited. He recognizes the tune. He elbows his way forward. Oh, no. I hold up my hand to stop him, but he’s onstage now, facing Patti like I told him to, smiling, and following his musical cue with enthusiasm.

  “Welcome, Princess, to the North.

  I… uh … welcome you to … ding it!”

  Jiri always says “ding it!” when he’s upset.

  Michael sighs. Patti frowns. The music stops.

  “Wait!” I call. “We’ll try that again. Jiri! Remember what we talked about last time?”

  He hangs his head now. He remembers. “Not my cue yet?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “You’re at the very end of the play. That dance music comes back a few times. Remember?”

  “It is the correct music?”

  “Oh, yes. You got the music part right.”

  He beams.

  “But it’s the wrong time. You must wait. Stand next to me, and I’ll tell you when to go on. Okay?” “Sorry, Jane. Ding it!” he says. Ding it! is right.

  Miss Gonsalves catches my eye. In her face is a hint of worry – the first I’ve ever seen.

  “Nice try, Jiri!” she says brightly.

  I:45. Second-last period of the day. Geography. Miss Gonsalves sits on her desk, legs crossed neatly.

  “What’s latitude?” She spins her globe around and around. A couple of hands go up. Not mine. I stare at the clock. Thirty minutes until our Nutcracker rehearsal.

  “How would you define latitude, Patti?”

  “Is it … width?” Patti sprays gently.

  “Width?”

  “Well, the lines on the globe go sideways.”

  “So that longitude would be height? Is that it?” Miss Gonsalves laughs. A beautiful gurgling laugh, very infectious. Justin, in paisley today, giggles. Essa, beside Justin, smiles up at him. “An ingenious idea, Patti.”

  I check the clock again. Twenty-eight minutes.

  Michael laughs meanly. Miss Gonsalves keeps smiling, and walks down the row to his desk. “And what do you think, Michael?”

  He glowers up at her. Her smile doesn’t change a bit. “Latitude,” she prompts him. “Right now you are sitting on forty-four degrees north latitude. What does that make latitude?”

  “If he’s sitting on it,” begins Jiri. “Then it might be …”

  “Might be what, Jiri?”

  Jiri doesn’t know, of course. He’s the biggest kid in the class, even bigger than Michael; and the nicest kid, but he’s not smart at all. If Essa is a puny body and a giant brain, Jiri is the other way around. He should probably be back in grade 2 or 3, but he’s always been with this class, and we’d miss him. He spends a lot of time with a resource teacher.

  “Yes, Jiri?”

  He frowns, concentrating. His hair tumbles off his head in cascades, like a waterfall. He pushes it back with a big sweaty hand. His veins stand out, like a man’s. A strong man’s.

  “It’s not … a chair, is it?”

  “Latitude? No, not quite.”

  “Ding it!” He looks down.

  You’d expect Michael to make fun of Jiri, but he doesn’t. No one does – not even the real bullies. Last year a huge kid from high school kicked a neighborhood cat that Jiri was playing with. Jiri broke the kid’s arm.

  Five minutes before the last period, Miss Gonsalves asks us to tidy off our desks. She reminds us to bring in an authentic artifact from the 1950s for our history diorama. I don’t know what to brin
g. I wonder if my dad would count as an artifact. He was born in the 1950s.

  “And now, class, I want you to take out your Nutcracker scripts. We’ll be going to the gymnasium for last period.”

  The gym is where the stage is. This will be our first rehearsal onstage. Miss Gonsalves told me how much trouble she had arranging it. Mr. Gebohm hates to have the gym used for anything except sports.

  Michael cheers. Miss Gonsalves tells him to shush. “Let’s work hard today. We only have forty minutes because there’s a basketball practice right after school.”

  The clock ticks. One minute to the bell. Miss Gonsalves nods to me. I’m in charge now. I stand up, clear my throat. And get interrupted before I can open my mouth.

  Miss Gonsalves.

  A stern voice coming from the wall.

  Miss Gonsalves, are you there?

  It’s the intercom. Miss Gonsalves raises her voice. “Yes, Mrs. Winter?”

  Are Jane Peeler and Brad Ogilvy in your class right now?

  I look up.

  “Yes, Mrs. Winter.”

  Send them to the office, please. Right away. Of course Michael snickers. “Jane and Brad, ha-ha-ha.” He’s the loudest, but he’s not the only one.

  I start blushing. Why? Is Brad blushing? I don’t know. I’m not looking at him.

  Patti smiles at me uncertainly. Then at Brad. Then she looks back at me, but she’s not smiling anymore.

  “I’ll do that, Mrs. Winter,” says Miss Gonsalves out loud. Then, quieter, to us, “Better get going, you two. See you in the gym when you’re finished.”

  And of course that starts Michael off again. “You two. Ha-ha-ha.”

  The hallways are clean, except for a fresh line of dirty scuff marks down the middle. From the classrooms come smells of chalk and wet wool, sounds of incomprehension and exasperation.

  Brad walks quickly. I trot to keep up. Not that I have to, no reason to think we’re together. But I do. You two. I’d like to talk to Brad, but I don’t really know how to open the conversation.

  “How’s the hangnail?” I ask finally.

  “Better.” He doesn’t turn around. The back of his neck is red. He might be blushing.

  I wonder what the principal wants us for. Last year I was called to the office because they couldn’t read Dad’s handwriting on a form. But Brad and me – why single us out?

  Turns out we’re not the only ones who were called to the office. My brother Bill’s there, too.

  All right, I give up. What could it be?

  Bill gives me a look. A little-brother-to-big-sister look. The one that says now what have you got me into? I shrug my shoulders.

  Our principal’s name is Mr. Gordon. He’s young, for a principal. He dresses young, in jeans and sweatshirts, and he actually likes you to call him by his first name, which is Gordon too. Gordon Gordon. I can’t imagine what his parents were thinking.

  He’s a bald guy, with eyebrows that jump up and down when he talks. He makes jokes – and he doesn’t seem to mind when no one laughs. I’d say that he isn’t bad, for a principal, which I suppose is like saying that corn isn’t bad, for a vegetable; or that the measles booster isn’t bad, for a needle.

  Right now he’s looking concerned. His eyebrows are pointing down. He tells us good afternoon, and then asks how we’re feeling. It’s a formal question – how are you all feeling? His eyebrows crawl along the ridge of bone over his eye sockets, like fuzzy caterpillars looking for each other. I picture them meeting in the middle of his face.

  “I feel fine,” says Brad.

  “Me, too,” I say.

  The principal nods at Bill. “And you? You feel fine too?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” says Bill.

  Gordon stares down at a piece of paper in his hand. “This is a public health notice from Our Lady Of Mercy Hospital,” he says. “They want to see everyone who was in the pediatrics walk-in clinic last night. Your names were all on their computer.”

  My mouth drops open. So that’s it. That’s what we’ve got in common. The waiting room with the germs and the ugly baby.

  “That true?” Gordon asks. “You three were there last night? Brad Ogilvy, Bill Peeler, Jane Peeler?”

  We nod. Is it my imagination, or does the principal roll his big office chair farther away from his desk? Farther away from us?

  “I’m sure it’s just a precaution,” he says, “but we’re going to send you home early. And you’re to stay at home until the hospital tests come back.”

  I’m not worried about the hospital. I feel fine. I say the first thing on my mind. “You can’t send us home,” I say. “Not Brad and me. What about our rehearsal?”

  “Rehearsal?”

  “For the winter concert. Our class is doing The Nutcracker.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Gebohm was in here complaining about that.”

  “I’m directing, and Brad here is the star.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to miss it.”

  “But we can’t. How can we practice The Nutcracker without the Nutcracker?”

  Brad, I notice, isn’t saying anything. In fact, he’s looking relieved. Like he wants to miss rehearsal.

  “Don’t worry,” says the principal. “Miss Gonsalves is a very talented person. She’ll manage without you.”

  “But it’s our first chance onstage!”

  There’s a knock at the door, and Mrs. Winter pops her head in. She’s the office secretary – very efficient, very busy, not exactly cheerful. You know her. You’ve probably got her at your school too.

  “They’re here,” she says, with a meaningful nod. She’s holding a handkerchief.

  Gordon stands up. “Your parents have come to pick you up,” he says to us. “Your father, Jane and Bill, and your mother, Brad.”

  As we file past Mrs. Winter, she raises her handkerchief to block her face.

  What is going on? What are we supposed to have?

  It’s not far to the hospital. We walk down Copernicus Street. When we pass the fruit store that sells Christmas trees, Bernie asks when we’ll get our tree, and Dad doesn’t answer. When we get to the big automatic door, Bernie climbs out of his stroller and runs ahead. He knows where to go. What with ear infections, stomach upsets, and sore throats, we’ve spent plenty of time at the hospital.

  Today’s different. The glass doors with the picture of Goofy are locked. There’s a guard outside. “You folks looking for the kids’ clinic?” he asks.

  “We were here yesterday,” says Dad. “We –”

  “Down the hall,” says the guard. “Radiology.”

  I notice a sign on the wall outside the clinic: CONTAMINATED AREA.

  “I thought Bernie was getting better,” I whisper to Dad.

  “Me, too,” he says. His face is pinched and gray.

  Brad and his mom are ahead of us in line. I wave. He nods back. His mom turns to stare. She has her arm around him, as if she’s afraid he’ll escape. “Oh, it’s you,” she says. “The nut girl.”

  Radiology is X-rays. Pretty cool. I get to wear a heavy lead apron and stand in front of what looks like a laser gun. Zzzap. Then it’s Bill’s turn. Then Dad’s and Bernie’s. Bernie has to stand on a chair. Zzzap! That’s it.

  I don’t feel sick. I don’t look sick. I don’t see anyone who looks sick.

  I check around for sweet pea, the ugly baby; can’t find her.

  And then we go home. Tough work walking through the unshoveled stretches of sidewalk. Poor Dad – even tougher pushing the stroller through the snow. Bernie climbs in and out, trying to help. Bill slouches along. I’m preoccupied.

  What if the X-rays show that I’m sick? What if I have to stay at home? I’ll miss rehearsals. I’ll have to miss the show. That can’t happen.

  What if Brad is sick? No one else would be as good.

  I wonder how rehearsal went without me and Brad? I hope Michael didn’t overdo his part. At the last rehearsal, he put on a “godfather” accent – as if he were making Fritz and Maria an offer t
hey couldn’t refuse. Miss Gonsalves laughed and laughed, and Michael actually blushed.

  We’ll have to arrange a rehearsal schedule. The show is a week away. Five school days. At least two or three rehearsals will have to be onstage.

  “There it is, Dad – see it?” Bill’s eyes are wide. He points.

  In our front yard is a big old maple tree. It’s a great tree. I love the shade it provides in the summer. The leaves that fall off it in the autumn cover our small front lawn waist-deep. It’s a home for squirrels and bats and cicadas. It’s bare now, of course. I can see the house beside ours through the bare black branches.

  On a low branch is a huge black bump – a lump bigger than any squirrel I’ve ever encountered. It’s practically the size of a small bear.

  “Do you see, Dad?” says Bill.

  “I see it,” says Bernie, looking in the wrong direction.

  Dad frowns. “What is it?”

  As I watch, the bump unfolds a gigantic pair of wings, and flaps slowly toward us. It’s a crow. A huge crow. Or maybe, a raven. Bernie shrieks, and hides against Dad. The crow looks big enough to carry him off.

  “It’s a sign,” whispers Bill.

  I’ve had enough of this.

  “No, Bill,” I say. “That’s a sign.” I point to the STOP sign on the corner. “And those are signs.” I point to a telephone pole with NO PARKING and speed limit signs. Bill doesn’t say anything. “What you’re pointing at, Bill, is a bird. Not a sign. Okay? Enough with this silly superstition.”

  I don’t know why I’m so upset. Maybe it’s because superstitions are so negative. Walk under a ladder, break a mirror, spill the salt, cross a black cat – you could wreck your whole future in a morning. Why must evil always win?

  “It’s in our front yard,” says Bill. “A bad luck sign. Someone is ill. Very ill.”

  “But Bernie’s better,” I say. “And what about all the good luck signs? Ever hear the one about the front porch? A sagging front porch is good luck – did you know that? So is a cracked front walk. So is a burnt-out lightbulb.”