The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  “She said over there, Ollie!”

  “Now?”

  “Okay, ready!”

  The curtain was hurled back, and Julie uncovered her eyes.

  On the stage stood a lighthouse.

  The children had written their script so that instead of a tower, Rapunzel was locked away in a lighthouse, the beam forever aimed toward ships at sea, never able to reach land. This served as a metaphor for their play, and now, a physical backdrop to it.

  Julie had been in dozens of shows in her life: school productions, then community theater, even summer stock for one glorious July before her parents finally reeled her in, chastising her for how impulsive she’d always been, while claiming this was the worst example yet, a whole month squandered when she could’ve been earning money for her education, until Julie, aflush with shame and guilt and selfish regret over what she was about to give up, abdicated her part to an understudy who went on to achieve minor fame off-Broadway.

  Never had the sets equaled the sight before her now.

  Julie boosted herself onto stage, not bothering to use the stairs.

  The lighthouse rose eight feet in the air, stabilized from behind by long planks of wood nailed to brackets on the floor. The structure had been fashioned out of plywood, its surface painted to look like stone, with blocks affixed here and there in patches across the exterior, which gave the whole thing a dimensionality worthy of the pros.

  In the uppermost, narrower portion, a circle had been cut out through which a light could be aimed to simulate the beam. Crude but sturdy steps had been nailed to the interior wall in a spiral, leading to a platform at the top with a hole for entrance and exit. The front wall swung open on metal hinges so the audience could watch the actors perform.

  The rear of the lighthouse had a wide slit, allowing for hidden access and departure.

  “Do you like it, Ms. Weathers?”

  “What do you think of the lighthouse?”

  “Ms. W? Are you okay?”

  “How?” Julie could scarcely speak. “How on earth did you do this? You told me none of you had ever been in a play. You couldn’t have any familiarity with set design.”

  She walked in a circle around the structure, trailing her hand across the stones. They felt craggy, practically real. The children had used glue to adhere sand and loops of kelp at the base, and painted cresting waves.

  The sixth-grade boys all began to talk at once.

  “We may’ve never built a set before but—”

  “—we’ve built chicken coops and boat slips and—”

  “—chimneys!”

  “Dude, you’ve never built a chimney.”

  “That needs a flue. And to, like, vent properly—”

  “Have so—”

  “No way—”

  “All right.” Julie intervened with a smile. “The fact that you know why a chimney would be hard to construct tells me how you were able to do this.”

  She had been planning to stack crates, maybe do a team mural at lunch. But this would be like a magic trick. Make the eleven-year-old boy disappear.

  “Our dads helped,” Scott Harness said on a confessional note.

  “Only a little,” another put in.

  “Mine didn’t haul traps all day. He said rain was coming, but it never rained.”

  “My dad made the slots that let us put it together so easy.”

  It was a marvel of engineering, both in construction and assembly, and Julie told the boys so. They ducked their heads, hiding red-flushed cheeks. Their level of pride went beyond fist bumps or high fives, rendered them still and contained. Only the boy in seventh grade broke the spell, racing up to the top of the structure, whereupon all the children began taking turns testing the staircase and pushing open the front wall.

  “Careful!” Julie called. “No more than three at a time up there.”

  The students climbed down and assembled onstage without being told—even, for once, the seventh-grade boy. The degree of excitement present in the schoolhouse felt physical, unseen, like wind or heat.

  “Everyone have the scene we’re going to perform down? We’ll run through it one more time, dress rehearsal at lunch today. But first we have to do our usual lessons—”

  Groans and complaints, which Julie quickly shushed.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll devote the afternoon to getting ready. The song Macy wrote for Peter with the rest of the cast a-cappella-ing the beat—”

  Peter beamed, accepting fist bumps, exclamations of You got this from his friends.

  “—after which Rapunzel leaves the lighthouse for the first time in her life, just like we practiced, and her mother—”

  “That’s me,” Macy burst out.

  “—who’s just barely been trilling her song, bursts into a wail, longing, terror, rage, then the curtain comes down, you all take your bows, go home to celebrate, and tomorrow afternoon we start getting ready for the full shebang, which goes up in just a few months.”

  At lunchtime, Julie called Peter aside. The other kids would figure she was giving the lead a few last-minute directions. “Peter? If I asked you to go somewhere with me, would that be scary for you? Would you be frightened?”

  Peter’s eyes looked like placid blue pools. “You know some awesome places on this island already, those tide pools, the walks you take Depot on. If you wanted me to go someplace, I’d probably just think you found something else to show me.”

  “Well,” Julie told him, “you’d be right.”

  Chapter Seventy-One

  The only change that needed to take place in the schoolhouse in order for Julie’s scheme to work was for the curtain to be extended so that a section could hang in front of the side door. Julie took Depot on a walk, going over details in her head. A bit different from the usual setup, but it should seem like a reasonable part of turning a classroom into a theater for any parents who noticed.

  Come tomorrow, Mercy Island would close over Peter like a lid. He’d either be removed from Julie’s circle of influence, or she from his. If she didn’t do this today, then Peter might never get the opportunity to learn that he had a whole other set of parents who loved him, a chance at another life. The grandmother clearly intended to let her grandson live out his days never knowing of Melinda’s and Bobby’s existence.

  Julie found a bolt of fabric in the compartment beneath the stage. While the performers practiced, she asked the sewing-whiz/costume-design girls to turn a section of flannel into a drape. Attached by a row of Velcro tabs, it would cloak the exit stage right, anyone behind it invisible to those in the audience.

  “Ms. W?” Macy called out from the lighthouse.

  Overseeing the curtain process, Julie glanced up and nodded.

  “We’re ready to run through the first song for you now.”

  Peter wore a silken shirt of glistening lilac and a pair of brown trousers. His blond locks appeared freshly combed, the work of one of the girls on hair and makeup who had an impossible-to-hide crush and had made Peter’s head shine like a cap of gold.

  At the top of the lighthouse, he pushed open the front wall.

  Down on stage, a hush fell. The other performers crouched, hands on their knees, only the seventh-grade boy starting a jittery tap prematurely. For just a moment everyone else was frozen, holding their positions as they aimed their gazes up at Peter. Then the kids deepened into squats, before straightening up again and dropping, up and down, up and down, human bellows giving life to the beat Macy had composed.

  Peter broke into a hard-hitting volley of words, each syllable punctuated by the rhythm being stomped out onstage.

  “This tower’s—a bower—it don’t have the power—to hold me—”

  His voice gathered force and speed, as on stage the chorus made instruments of their bodies, crooned a wordless melody with their mouths.
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  “—a prison, a fortress, that saves all the ships lost at sea—”

  Peter’s song continued to pound, while his moves took him around the lighthouse so fast his body blurred. He gazed outward at the audience, although from his desperate expression, it seemed he might actually be seeing the ocean, vast and endless, searching for something that never appeared. Peter moved fast and faster, a human whirlpool, and yet he never missed a step, and his notes were delivered not one bit out of breath.

  “—grants protection—course correction—to captains and merchants and sailors—”

  The sounds from the chorus waned to a simultaneous patter-clap of hands and a butterfly tremble of voices. Continuous yet quiet, even the seventh-grade boy momentarily subdued in his antics, so that Peter’s final line seemed to shatter the stage.

  “—so why can’t it give—the safety that’s promised—to me?”

  Julie wondered if a gathering of boisterous children had ever in history been so silent. If she didn’t start clapping soon, it might be that no one ever would, captured and stilled for all time in this moment of utter pleasure over what they had done, combined with awed appreciation for greatness in one of their own.

  * * *

  The parents arrived right on time at three o’clock.

  Come Christmas, if she was still here, Julie hoped to have adult-sized chairs, even just folding ones, but today she had settled for the children angling the seats away from their desks and orienting each one toward the stage. The awkward act of fitting into the undersized accommodations would create delay if the grown-ups tried to get up. Every extra second Julie could get before her ruse was discovered would help.

  Macy was almost as much of a scene stealer as Peter. When she appeared in the lighthouse, howling out her rage and betrayal and loss, the audience would be transfixed.

  No one would be thinking of Rapunzel at that moment. They would’ve just seen him perform. Have no reason to think he had gone anywhere except backstage to await taking his bow. Or so Julie hoped.

  She checked one last time that the cast had taken their places. Peeking out from behind the curtain, she saw every seat filled. The children doing sets and costumes and hair and makeup sat on the floor beside their parents to watch.

  Mike Cowry had come.

  The fathers of the sixth-grade boys had shown up along with the mothers, and Julie knew by now what such a thing meant, how hard it was to get time off a boat.

  Only Martha was missing from the audience.

  You’re free, Julie heard her say.

  The schoolroom vibrated with chatter and exchanges of news, people gathered who hadn’t seen each other beyond a quick hello in passing for a while, who might never have been together in this large a group before, not even at the Hempsteads’ party.

  Julie stepped out from behind the curtain, and the chatting decreased in volume to murmurs before dying out altogether. Before coming here, Julie had envisioned the islanders as a hard and flinty people, steeped in the salt of the sea, connections as difficult to till as island soil. But the faces that turned to her were rapt, expectant, even friendly.

  “Hello!” Julie cried.

  She hoped the tremor in her voice would be attributed to nerves over the performance rather than the discreet looks she kept snatching at the wall clock, checking how much time they had before Callum could hopefully muffle the sound of his engine sufficiently to conceal his boat’s arrival in the cove. She felt a pinch of panic, no way could this be pulled off as planned. The grandmother saw and heard everything, and anything she didn’t, she had found out for her.

  But Julie had no choice. Because Peter had no choice. It was up to her to give him one. The children’s voices would drown out any noise from outside, hints or signs of the escape.

  “I’m so happy to see you all here today for our first-ever performance at the Hempstead Theater!” Julie continued.

  After a second’s delay, the assembled crowd began to clap, finding the grandmother and the Captain in the audience and leaning over or twisting back to smile and congratulate them in whispers, delivering handshakes or touches on the arm, if they could reach.

  Looking out over the seats, Julie aimed a smile whose wobble she hoped wouldn’t be detectable at this distance. “First, I would like to introduce you all to someone I know there’s been some gossip about, my big, friendly dog, Depot.”

  Julie walked Depot back and forth in front of the stage, mocking the motions made at a dog show, and feeling relieved when the audience members laughed convivially. Then she led Depot behind the newly strung-up portion of curtain, getting the parents accustomed to seeing it used. Julie told Depot to stay before slipping back through a gap in the fabric.

  “Next, I want to thank Mrs. Hempstead and the entire school board for our brand-new spotlights. I think you will all agree in just a few moments that we are already putting them to great use. And now, without further ado, I present to you your children!”

  The velvet curtain was drawn back, and the students launched into their act.

  There were gasps of admiration and even fright from the audience when Peter skidded to a stop at the open lighthouse wall, belting out the final line of his rap. Each word was delivered like a blow, a punch; the audience rocked in their seats, mouths open in wonder at this Peter who had never appeared to them before, at least not in this form. His performance had been so magnificent that Julie feared it would be cruel, if not impossible, to drag him away before curtain call. Peter might forget their plan entirely, caught in the throes of the theater high.

  But when Julie ducked behind the newly attached length of curtain, using the pounding of applause to shield any sound of her motion, she found Peter standing there, his hand on Depot’s collar. Their gazes darted back and forth as they waited for her to appear.

  “Oh good,” Julie said, breathless with relief. She tugged open the side entrance, and nudged both boy and dog through.

  She was just about to follow when a woman came up and blocked her exit.

  * * *

  Julie knew who she was, could identify her now, although she hadn’t been able to put a name to a face the other day on the library path. Perhaps because this mother had been in the company of a toddler then, instead of here on behalf of a seventh-grade boy.

  The side door swung shut, casting Julie and her companion into darkness.

  On the other side of the curtain, a hushed silence hovered, the moments before a new performer was set to take her place, and a new act could begin.

  During Julie’s conversation with Chloe Manning, this woman had straddled the line between harried, slightly out-of-control mother and menacing threat. Today the side she inhabited was clear. The woman barred Julie’s way, though she didn’t quite face her or look at her, instead staring somewhere just past with a cold, dead blankness in her eyes.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Ms. Weathers,” she said.

  Julie might almost have laughed at the idea that the warrior who’d been sent to prevent her passage was a stay-at-home mom, last seen attending story hour, except that when Julie made a move to get by, the woman reached into her purse and took out a knife.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  The woman seemed utterly ready to use her weapon; in fact, her leaden expression had changed, suggesting more than preparedness. Relish, delight, as if the bounds of normalcy had been loosened, and something dreadful inside her had been unleashed. She bounced on her toes, just daring Julie to oppose her; the skin on her face glowed with a manic coat of perspiration.

  From the stage came the slap of Macy’s footsteps up the lighthouse steps.

  Julie didn’t have much time before the performance ended, the children took their bows, and everyone cleared out of the schoolhouse. She wasn’t even sure where Peter and Depot were right now; when Julie hadn’t come out, would they have just stayed put?
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  The woman kept the hand not holding the knife on her hip, in a posture that looked for all the world like a disciplining mom, which Julie supposed she was. The blade she wielded belonged to a kitchen set, although that didn’t make it any less lethal, especially given the fact that it was held between steady, unshaking fingers, angled right at neck height.

  Julie heard the first words of the solo Macy had written, which she’d titled “I’ve Already Lost You.” The song would end two minutes from now, give or take, on a single, wailing note of rage. Macy could keep such a note suspended for a staggering, dazzling amount of time, and Julie had instructed her to hold it as long as possible.

  “Mrs. Pratt,” she said, the name coming to her just in time, one she had recently circled on the roster as requiring outreach. “This is… Well, it’s nuts.”

  She was hoping plain speech would jar the woman out of whatever surely temporary state of insanity had allowed her to transform from island mom to knife-flaunting lunatic, but Mrs. Pratt didn’t shift or stir from her position, nor did her grip on the blade falter.

  “Maryanne has done so much for me and my family,” she told Julie, eyes alight with a by-now-familiar fervor. “The least I can do is make sure today goes without a hitch.”

  “Even if it’s illegal?” Julie said. “Threatening bodily harm? Assault?”

  Mrs. Pratt appeared to consider the question. “Or worse.”

  Julie recoiled, retreating backward just a step toward the roar of Macy’s song.

  “You still don’t seem to understand our island,” Mrs. Pratt said distantly. “Maryanne Hempstead protects us. She gives us life. And in return we do whatever she asks. In this case, making sure you don’t leave the schoolhouse before she does.”

  Julie wasn’t sure which was worse—the madness of the woman’s statement, or the fact that she didn’t appear to know it was mad. She fought to find words, anything that could combat such ferocious but misplaced loyalty.

  “In less than two years,” Julie said at last, “your son is going to leave for the high school on the mainland, where he will either be medicated into a stupor, placed in a self-contained classroom hundreds of miles away, or both.” Julie brought the woman’s face into focus. “You will need a teacher who knows Oliver well to be an effective advocate so that a better plan can be put in place. Now”—she looked down at the knife—“I suggest you get out of my way.”