“Here is the vapor for you,” Harlon told her in his deepest Old Ocean voice, holding a pitchfork that was tipped with paper triangles so it would look more like a trident—a clever touch, in Ansel’s view.
Then Neva cried gaily, “I will fly with the vapor!” stretching out the word fly and spreading her arms dramatically, triumphantly. They could all see the rope, of course, and she was wearing a harness that looked like Clare’s work, so it was no surprise when someone on the other side of the curtain (Clare, it turned out, had slipped away from his chair) pulled Neva-the-Ray-Fairy up into the air in fits and jerks while she, with visible effort, lifted her legs and stretched out her arms in the posture of flying. Her expression was serene, as if her ability to think of this ungainly suspension as flight could make it actual, and for a moment Ansel felt a swelling pride in his daughter’s happiness, and in his son’s ingenuity, and in Aldine’s influence on them all.
Ansel would remember that sentiment, and wonder at its completeness and purity, and also its brevity, because in the next instant everything changed.
Old Ocean didn’t quite finish his line, something that began “I shall soon—” when Yauncy Tanner began to groan and bawl and point, standing up so suddenly from his chair that everyone around him stood up, too, in surprise or confusion or maybe fright. The sound reminded Ansel of a cow when calving hurt it deep inside. Yauncy was taller than plenty of men and all of the women, and he was heavier, too, than most. “Et oun!” he yelled. “Et oun!”
That was when the similarity struck him, and likely other people: the rope looked like the one Yauncy had found his father hanging from that day in the barn.
Neva didn’t know what was the matter, and Emmeline just stared at Yauncy, her wreath of artificial daisies slightly crooked and her cheeks pink from makeup and heat. Aldine, standing to the side of the stage, looked paralyzed, but Mrs. Odekirk stood up on her stork-thin legs and took Yauncy’s hand, the one his mother wasn’t already clinging to, and said, “It’s all right, Yauncy. She’s not choking.” Yauncy was still agitated, frantic even, moving toward the stage, and Emmeline backed into the curtain, as if Yauncy were coming to grab her, so Ansel could only think to help Neva get down. “Let’s get her down, then,” he called gently to Yauncy, and he stepped around Mrs. Odekirk and around little Phay in his snow clothes and reached up to hold Neva by the waist. Neva had by this time lost her angel-flight pose and was hanging like a lamb in a winch, looking not a bit grateful for his interference with her big moment, but she didn’t fight him, either, as he held her tight and undid the hook and set her gently down on the wooden floor.
“See?” he called to Yauncy. “She’s right as rain.”
Yauncy sat back down but Mrs. Tanner was silently crying, a handkerchief balled in her hand, and when Mrs. Odekirk sat down, she kept Yauncy’s hand on her lap, patting it in that benign, confident way she had.
Ansel nodded at Aldine, who was just staring out, hand to throat, and he mouthed the words, “Go on,” nodding again when she didn’t move, trying to coax her into a prompt that would get the play moving again. Every time he looked at her he felt the desire to hold her and kiss every part of her, a longing that he tried to convert to some acceptable feeling, like friendship or paternal care. “Go on,” he said again gently.
Aldine stepped across the stage, finally, and whispered into Emmeline’s ear, and Emmeline said miserably, “Blow upon the clouds, Jack Frost! Fill the air with snowflakes!”
Harlon wasn’t dressed as Jack Frost. He was holding the pitchfork-trident. Still, Emmeline’s line had roused him, and he pushed open the crack in the curtain. After some rustling, he came back out with handfuls of mica and cut-paper flakes, which he began awkwardly to toss, and a bucket appeared behind him, above the curtain, and began to shake sawdust down onto the stage.
Neva looked at Berenice and Melba, but none of them spoke. It was Phay who finally remembered the line and shouted it. “Hurrah!” he said gamely. “Hurrah! Here comes the snowstorm!”
Aldine started clapping, so Ansel joined in, and others, too, but with restraint, and the children bowed in uncertain little waves. A few of them, including Neva, smiled despite the confusion. The older ones, who Ansel guessed knew how Horace Tanner died, might have known what had disturbed Yauncy, or they might have thought it was yet another time when Yauncy was different and flubbed things for himself or others, hopeless to blame or help. Mrs. Tanner gathered up her coat and stood to go, thinking either that the event was over or that it was over for her.
Perhaps fearing that the other parents would leave, Aldine said, “And now we hope you’ll all enjoy our next entertainment, a song called ‘Rain Drops.’”
Mrs. Tanner didn’t sit back down, but pulled Yauncy along with her, not roughly, but firmly. He let go of Mrs. Odekirk’s hand.
“Please don’t go, Mrs. Tanner,” Aldine said. “It’s all right.”
But Mrs. Tanner just shook her head and kept walking, and people let her pass, looking like they wished they could put on their own hats and coats and disappear into the dark.
Aldine had to wait while the two Tanners went out the door, the sound of Yauncy’s big feet loud upon the hollow floor. The children shuffled out holding paper raindrops as big as their heads, but they sang uncertainly now, in hushed voices, and could not keep together well enough for all the words to come through. Ansel thought that would be all until he saw that the last song on the program was the song he’d so often heard Aldine singing to Neva, the one he had sung with her himself before Ellie chided him. He wished it wasn’t included, or that Aldine would see that calling it a night would be best for all, but she didn’t.
She looked scared, but she stepped forward and said, “Our last number is a Scottish ballad I’ve taught the children. I hope you’ll enjoy it—it’s about making do. Emmeline Josephson, who has excellent handwriting, has ta’en the trouble to write out some of the last verses for you so you can sing along at the end. If you like,” she added, and Ansel tried to give her an encouraging nod when she glanced at him.
She seated herself at the piano and looked toward the curtain, one edge of which was gripped by a small hand. The hand belonged to Phay, who held a sheepskin, and who in a wavering voice introduced them to Bryan O’Linn’s troubles. The props for the song were funny: a feed sack, a graniteware pot, a turnip from somebody’s root cellar. The women in the audience, stilled by Mrs. Tanner’s grief, managed to smile as the children sang about Bryan’s lack of hosiery, trousers, watch, and shoes. On the last verse Aldine sang alone, a cappella, with her hands still on the piano keys.
“Bryan O’Linn, his wife, and wife’s mother,
Were all going over the bridge together,
The bridge it broke up and they all tumbled in,
‘We’ll go home by water,’ says Bryan O’Linn.”