The Ghost of Christmas Past was saying, “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.” And Scrooge began to cry. The sound was phony, dismissible. Abel closed his eyes. Sophia’s hand slipped from his; he folded his hands on his lap, and soon he was falling asleep. He knew this because of the incongruity of his thoughts, and felt gratitude that he could give himself over to the pleasant exhaustion rolling up against his shoulders; he remembered, and it was like a yellow light shining in the dusk behind his closed eyes, how he had seen Lucy Barton last year when she came to Chicago on her book tour, Lucy Barton, the daughter of his mother’s cousin, oh, that poor girl, and yet there she was, an older woman, and he had stepped into the bookstore and waited in line to have his book signed, and she had said, Abel, and risen, and tears had come into her eyes—all this made him feel happy as he felt himself falling into sleep, but then he was trying to find his mother, riding in an elevator that would not stop when the buttons were pushed, then he was in a narrow hallway, searching for her, going one way then another, sensing her in the darkness—and she was gone; even deep inside the dream he recognized the ancient, unquenchable longing that was not quite panic— He woke as gasps came from the audience.
The lights had gone out. The stage was in darkness. The actors had stopped speaking. Only the EXIT signs shone above the doors. And the rows of lights like bright buttons on the floor of the aisle. Abel could feel fear rising around him like dark water. Sophia began to cry, and other children were crying too. “Mommy?” Abel scooped up the tiny Sophia and tucked her onto his lap. “Ssh,” he said, spreading his hand across the back of her warm head. “It’s nothing, it will be fine.” Still, the child cried. Zoe’s voice said, “Honey, I’m right here.”
How long it stayed dark Abel could not have said, probably no more than a few minutes, but what he was most aware of during this strange time was the number of families that began to argue strenuously, his own included. Elaine said, “Abel, get us out of here. Watch the children.” Already in the darkness people were trying to scramble to the aisle, some flipping on cellphones for the light, so that wrists and cuffs were illuminated in what seemed to be disembodied flickers of an ectoplasmic presence. Zoe said, “Mom, stop. This is how people get trampled to death. Dad, hold Sophia, I’ve got Jake.”
“I want us out of here, Abel,” his wife said. “And if you—”
After many years of marriage things get said, scenes occur, and there is a cumulative effect as well. All this sped through Abel’s heart, that the tenderness between husband and wife had long been attenuating and that he might have to live the rest of his life without it. A sound came from him.
“Dad? Are you okay?” The light of Zoe’s cellphone was aimed toward him.
“I’m fine, honey,” he said. “We’ll wait. Just as you say.”
A voice from the stage called out for folks to remain calm, and then the lights came on, catching families in their various states of panic and disarray. The Blaine family remained where they were—not every family did—and they watched as the show at last continued, but the tension of the event could not fully dissipate, and when, finally, the lights went out, the applause was that of relief.
They were silent in the car, and only when they were close to home did Abel glance in the rearview mirror to ask Sophia if she had been able to enjoy the show in spite of the mishap. “What’s mishap?” she asked.
Zoe said, “When something goes wrong. Like tonight when the lights went out.”
“But why did the lights go out?” Jake asked quietly.
“We don’t know,” Abel said. “Sometimes a fuse gets blown. No harm done.”
“Exit signs are lit by generators.” This was Elaine’s contribution. “Thank God emergency lights are required by law to have separate sources of energy.”
“Mom, let’s just leave this alone,” said Zoe tiredly. Perhaps Zoe, as grown children so frequently did, found fault with her parents’ marriage, had glimpsed the waning of tenderness over the years, felt for them a deep aversion: My marriage will never be like yours, Dad. Fine, he would have said, that’s fine, honey.
Hungry as he was, he sat with his grandchildren after they were in their pajamas. He made them laugh doing imitations of Scrooge, wanting to rid them of any fear. Sophia suddenly slid from his knee, and in a moment she screamed. It was a piercing, horrifying sound, and she ran into the bedroom where the grandchildren always stayed; the screaming turned to sobs.
Snowball was nowhere to be found.
The car was searched quickly and thoroughly. No plastic pony with bright pink hair was discovered. “I think she left it in the theater, Dad.” Zoe looked at him with apology, and Abel got the car keys and said to Sophia, “I will return with your pony.”
He was dizzy with fatigue.
“Another mizzap,” said Sophia, bashfully. “Right, Grandpa?”
“You go to sleep.” He bent to kiss her. “And when you wake up in the morning, all will be well.”
Driving through the darkened streets, crossing over the river into the center of town, he worried that the theater would be closed. He parked his car on the street and found that the front door of the theater did not yield, nor could anyone be seen through the dark glass. He fumbled for his cellphone and discovered that in his hurry he had left the phone behind. Very quietly he swore, then ran his hand over his mouth. A young man appeared, coming out a side door. Abel called out “Wait!” The fellow must be a theater student, Abel surmised, because he smiled at Abel, and held the door, and when Abel said, “My granddaughter left her toy pony here,” the fellow said, “I think the stage manager is still around, maybe he can help you.”
So Abel was inside. But it was dark and he did not know exactly where he was, as the door he had entered was a side door and seemingly led backstage. Tentatively he touched the wall for a light switch and found none as he stepped forward slowly. But then—ha! He flipped it, but saw only a dim light respond from the distance, enough to illuminate the narrow hallway before him. Yellow-painted brick walls marked with graffiti were on each side of him. He knocked on the first door he saw, and found it to be locked. “Hello?” He called the word out cheerfully, but there was no answer. The place smelled familiar and unmistakably theatrical.
His hunger caused the hallway to seem very long. Abel saw, between two black curtains, what must be the stage. Above him were dark rows of stage lights, unlit, like enormous beetles, waiting. “Hello,” he called again, and again there was no answer, though he sensed now the presence of someone. “Hello? I’m trying to find the stage manager, hello? My granddaughter left her—”
Turning right, he saw above him the pony hanging from a small noose of clothesline that was looped over a bare unlit bulb in the hallway. Snowball, her plastic feet pointing in front of her, her pink hair sticking out from her head, was caught in a look of eternal dismay; her eyes were wide open, their long dark lashes coquettishly splayed.
Behind him was the sudden sound of a door opening, and he turned. There was Linck McKenzie, Scrooge, with his wig off but his makeup still on, which made him look half-crazed. “Hello,” said Abel, holding forth his hand. “My granddaughter left her pony here—” He nodded at it hanging from the lightbulb. “I imagine some student was having a bit of fun, but I need to bring it home or I’ll lose the child’s respect, I’m afraid.”
Scrooge returned the handshake. His hand was bony and strong and very dry. “Come in,” Scrooge said, as though it were an office he was occupying, but it was, Abel saw as he entered, a small square room that must have been used for storage; it had dropcloths and old lamps and a table missing a leg.
Abel said, “I’m afraid I need a stepladder or a chair. Oh, there—” In the corner was an old-fashioned-looking chair with a curved armrest.
Scrooge shut the door behind him and said, “Well, there’s only that one chair, so why don’t you sit.”
“Oh no, no, I hardly need to—”
Scrooge jerked his head in the direction of the chair. “I want you to sit.”
Abel understood then that he was in the presence of instability, but oddly this only caused an increase in his enervation, and after a moment he said politely, “I think I’ll stand, thank you. Is there something I can help you with?” He smiled benignly at Scrooge, who remained leaning against the door. Abel wanted to say, How long do you think this will take? Realizing this was his thought, he understood that he was removed from himself in a way distinct and strange.