Cliques, Hicks, and Ugly Sticks

by KD McCrite

  Isabel dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Well, darling, they want us to come back.”

  “Of course they do!” Mama said. “They want you and Ian to be a part of our community. Oh, I wish I’d been there! I really miss church and seeing all my friends. Did anyone say anything to you about the Christmas play?”

  Isabel shook her head.

  “Not one word. I found that a little odd. When you want to be in a play, you want the director to be familiar with you.”

  “I know we’re going to have a great program this year, thanks to Isabel,” Daddy said. “Why, just think of it! Our church will have the very first professionally directed play ever seen in Cedar Ridge.”

  If ole Isabel had been a bird, she would’ve preened.

  That afternoon, after dinner, Grandma went for a drive with Rob Estes in his blue Buick LeSabre. I hoped Ernie Beason, who drove a Jeep and often took his dog, Rascal, on rides with them, did not call while she was gone, but if he did, I hoped I wasn’t the one who answered the phone.

  Daddy excused himself to go take a nap, and Ian went off to Grandma’s house for the same reason. Me, my own personal self, I don’t like wasting a perfectly nice day sleeping, so I figured I’d go for a walk with Daisy. Maybe we’d go down by the creek after Myra and I got through washing the dishes.

  Isabel and Mama sat at the dining room table with the play script, notebooks, and pens. They would’ve got started a lot quicker if ole Isabel didn’t have to puff a cigarette or two on the front porch first.

  “Now, if you feel tired, Lily,” I heard Isabel tell Mama, “we must move our conference into the living room where you can put your feet up.”

  Just the two of them at the dining room table was a “conference”?

  “May I be of assistance?” Myra Sue asked them, all prissy, as we came out of the kitchen.

  “Sure, honey,” Mama said. “You may sit right here by me.”

  “Here, darling,” Isabel said. “Use this pen and notebook, and take notes for us.”

  My sister smiled all over herself until Isabel glanced at me and said, “April, dear, would you help, too? I can always use a plan of action, and you have the best plans.”

  Boy, ole Myra Sue gave me a look that said she wanted to snatch me bald-headed. I don’t think she liked it that Isabel wanted me there, too.

  You know what I thought about that? Tough cookies, that’s what.

  “Sure,” I said, pulling out a chair. “I’ll help, but I want to go on a walk with Daisy, so I hope I don’t have to hang around too long.”

  “Now, Lily, darling,” Isabel said, ignoring my comment, “you’ve examined this script completely. Tell me what this play is about. I do hope it isn’t excessively religious.”

  “I’m not sure what you consider excessively religious, Isabel,” Mama said kindly, “but it’s a fairly simple story. It is set in Bethlehem, Kansas. There is a young family, the Millers, who find themselves facing hard times. They have three children. He has lost his job, she’s expecting another child, and their bills need to be paid. They are in desperate circumstances that test their faith, but help comes from unexpected sources—”

  “Hence this title, Three Angels for Bethlehem, I assume? Angels flutter down from heaven, strumming harps, with wings flapping, delivering pots of gold?” Isabel said this with some derision.

  I did not like her tone or her smirk. “Isabel, your idea is the craziest Christmas story I ever heard of!” I declared.

  Mama shook her head at me, and I hushed.

  She answered Isabel, quietly and with courtesy, but also with the tiniest edge in her voice: “No, Isabel, angels do not flutter down and give them gold. The three angels are actually three regular people who cross the Millers’ paths: an elderly woman, a homeless man, and a blind girl. There are also four people who have the ability to help but do not—a store owner, a banker, and their wives. The three who have the least give the most and make a difference not only in the lives of the family, but in the whole town. By the end of the play, the merchant and banker and the wives begin to understand what true giving is.”

  Isabel rolled her eyes. “Goodness, what a concept.”

  “What do you mean?” Mama asked her.

  The two women met each other’s eyes.

  “I was expecting a more—oh, I don’t know—something deeper, something richer, something with significance,” Isabel said.

  “I will grant you, the story is fairly simple,” Mama said.

  “We don’t want something too complicated or lengthy, but you will find this play does have rich significance.”

  Isabel blinked a few times, then said, “Very well. Let’s take a look, shall we? And, of course, I will take this book home and study it thoroughly.”

  We all watched as she scanned the pages.

  “We’ll have a casting call,” she declared when she finished. Her eyes were all bright and sparkling. “I shall put it on the radio and television. We’ll get auditions from all over the state—”

  “Whoa, Isabel!” Mama said, laughing. “Slow down. This is just a church play, for the community. And it’s starring kids.”

  “It’s quality I’m looking for, Lily,” she was saying. “Good actors who can bring the story alive. Some young people are good actors.”

  “Like me, Isabel?” Myra Sue said, all fluttery.

  “Yes, darling, I’m sure you are excellent.”

  In a weird kind of way and in spite of her being hardheaded in her ideas, it was good to hear ole Isabel get all excited about something. But here’s what I have decided: there’ll probably always be something to get her all worked up, so it would be better for us all if we could keep her focused on something without going off the deep end.

  “Isabel?” I said.

  She dragged her intense gaze from Mama and said, “Yes?”

  “If you try to make this a bigger deal than it is, no one will cooperate with you.”

  “Well.” She blinked some more and shmooshed up her lips.

  “I think a casting call is a perfectly marvelous idea!” Myra Sue said, sighing wistfully. “In fact, I wrote it down.”

  Oh, good grief.

  “This is gonna be the youth group, not the grown-ups, remember?” I said. “A casting call would be a Dumb Thing to do.”

  “April Grace,” Mama said, reproving. She turned back to Isabel. “The way we usually do it is to simply assign the parts—”

  Isabel sat up so straight, it was like someone had poked her with a sharp stick. “Oh, my dear. That is not the way it’s done.”

  “No, Mother,” Myra Sue said. “Not done that way at all!”

  I saw no reason for my sister to be so snooty to our mother.

  “Then why don’t you tell us how it’s done, Myra?” I asked her. “Educate Mama and me, would you?”

  Well, I reckon Mama did not like that, or maybe she didn’t like my personal snooty tone, because she gave me the Look. She did not chastise me aloud, but to tell you the honest truth, I couldn’t understand why it seemed she didn’t hear ole Myra Sue being snooty and uppity.

  “Your idea of merely assigning parts will never work,” Isabel said. “Lily, if the wrong person plays a certain role, the entire play will bomb. This little play is . . . well, it’s not the most intriguing story line I’ve ever heard, so the acting must carry the play. We simply must have auditions. If you want me to direct this play, then it really has to be done the right way. I insist.”

  The two women sat there silently, eyeballing each other. Maybe each was waiting for the other one to give in. Mama was the one who caved.

  “I’m sure it’ll be just fine, Isabel, if you want to have the kids audition. And I’m sure the girls will encourage their friends to try out.” She looked at us. “Won’t you, girls?”

  “Of course!” Myra Sue said, all but clapping her hands.

  “Hmm,” I said. I was not at all thrilled at the prospect, but as long as I, my own personal self, didn’t have to
try out, I was all right.

  “Now, where is our stage?” Isabel asked. “I really prefer auditions on the stage rather than dry readings elsewhere.”

  “It’s the church platform,” Mama said, “not a regular stage.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Isabel said, all aghast-sounding.

  “The play will be staged on the platform in the sanctuary,” Mama said.

  “You aren’t serious.”

  “That’s the only place we can do it,” I piped up. “Unless you want to have it outside in the parking lot.”

  “April Grace.” Mama gave me a third look that said my sassy suggestion topped her list of Unapproved Suggestions.

  Isabel blinked twenty-eight times, or thereabouts, then heaved a big sigh.

  “Well, I’ll need to see it again. Then I must go through the props and costumes.”

  Was she kidding?

  “Oh dear,” Mama said, laughing a little. “Isabel, I hope you won’t be too disappointed, but the church has very little money for theatrical productions. We’ve just always made do with what we can scrounge up at home.”

  Isabel made an O of her mouth.

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” she said finally, about halfway muttering. “I intend to bring some culture to this backwoods, and no one is going to stop me.”

  Oh brother. I was beginning to regret Big-Time what had seemed to be a good idea just a few days ago.

  TWENTY-ONE

  How Crazy Does a Two-Edged Sword Have to Be?

  Well, I tell you what. Sometimes I think Isabel is crazier than a two-edged sword. Here is what happened after school the very next afternoon after she agreed to help with the program.

  Isabel took me and Myra Sue with her to meet with Pastor Ross at the church.

  “This church is the absolute worst place for a performance,” she groaned as the three of us stood on that platform so she could “get a feel for the arena.” Isabel St. James has some mighty weird ways of saying things, in case you hadn’t noticed.

  “On the contrary,” Pastor Ross said, “the Cedar Ridge Community Church Christmas program has always played to a full sanctuary. A packed house, you might say.”

  When he mentioned “packed house,” Isabel got all pleased-looking. She slowly made a complete turn, like rotisserie chicken without the skewer, eyeballing the entire sanctuary, taking in the overflow rooms and the choir loft. Muttering about acoustics, she studied the height of the ceiling and gazed down at the dark red carpeting on which we stood.

  She pointed to the railing that separated the choir loft from the sanctuary. “That thing must go.”

  Pastor Ross followed her pointing finger and looked at the choir rail as if he’d never seen it before.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but if we do that, it will ruin the carpeting. You see, it was—”

  “Wonderful!” she said. “For the sake of our acoustics, rip it out! Carpet absorbs the voices and dulls projection. The play will be better without it. We must have acoustics!”

  Pastor Ross gaped at her. “Mrs. St. James, we can’t rip up the carpeting.”

  Ole Isabel blinked about twenty times. “I fail to see why not. You can put it back down when the play is finished.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. That is out of the question.”

  Her eyes got all big and buggy. “You refuse to help?”

  “Help? Mrs. St. James, I’m happy to do anything that is reasonable to help you, but pulling up a brand-new carpet that has been down less than three months is costly and unwise.”

  Had ole Isabel lost her cotton-pickin’ mind? I looked at Myra Sue, who was watching the whole crazy scene with her mouth slightly open and her eyes all big.

  Isabel’s lips thinned. “Is that your final word on the matter?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Very well. Since you’re so uncooperative, I must make do.” She sniffed with all the uppity, snooty sniffiness you can imagine. “I do assume you or someone can build our sets.”

  “Sets?” Pastor Ross echoed.

  “Yes. Sets. Plays take sets. Scenes. Backgrounds. Rooms and landscapes. Sets.” She spoke to Pastor Ross as if he were two years old.

  “I know what sets are, but I’m not sure about having them built—”

  “What about costumes?” she snapped.

  “I hardly think you’ll need costumes,” he told her. “The play is contemporary. The kids can wear their own clothes.”

  “So no one will be making costumes?”

  “I hardly see the point.”

  “We must have stage lights,” she bit off, like biting the tops off of the words.

  “I’m sorry?”

  All this time you could see, plain as day, that good ole Pastor Ross was trying to be a gentleman about this whole business. But I’ll tell you something: I saw his left eyelid twitch. I think Isabel was getting on his nerves just a wee bit. Or maybe a lot.

  She blinked at him, and her face got redder and redder. I’d seen her look at Ian in just that way, and I knew, sure as shootin’, she was gonna blow.

  “Isabel?” I said. “I’m thinking we can—”

  “Why are you trying to derail me, you wretched, wretched man?” she shouted, waving her fist at him like he was a dirty old dog in the street.

  We gawked at her. I knew she could be a stinkpot, but I didn’t know anyone would ever yell at a good preacher the way she yelled at him.

  “Isabel, the pastor is not trying to derail you,” I said as fast as the words would come out of my mouth.

  “Of course not, ma’am,” he said, with his face pink, his body tense, and his left eyelid twitching like crazy. “Our church simply does not have the budget for what you’re asking.”

  As he went on to explain church finances to Isabel, Myra Sue inched closer to me and whispered in my ear, “But if he won’t let her have what she wants, then he’s messing up everything.”

  “No, he isn’t,” I hissed. “She’s wanting something far and away more than what she needs for this play. She’s being a complete Isabel about the whole thing.”

  Myra Sue gave me a look that told me I did not understand anything.

  “And even if I sanctioned all these things you want, Mrs. St. James,” the pastor was saying, “the church board would put its foot down. Hard. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s just the way it is.”

  Steam practically came out of her ears.

  “Then I see no reason to continue this . . . travesty in the face of all that is refined!” she announced, turning on her high heels and stomping off.

  She was halfway toward the back of the sanctuary before I could find my voice ’cause I’d never seen or heard someone act so crazy in my life, unless it was all those other times when she said and did crazy things.

  “Isabel!” Myra Sue shrieked, reaching out her arms, as if her Highly Esteemed Role Model were being dragged off to prison, where she’d have to live off bread and water for the next sixty-eight years.

  That skinny, angry, ungrateful woman did not stop, turn, or slow down.

  “Isabel,” I hollered. “Wait!”

  She kept marching.

  “Isabel St. James, do you want to kill my mama?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. My words echoed acoustically off the church walls and high ceiling.

  I hoped God would forgive me for bellowing like a wounded woolly mammoth in church.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A Teary, Snotty, Blubbery Mess

  I reckon after that I forgot I was in the church sanctuary. Or that my sister stood nearby, wringing her hands, or that Pastor Ross with the twitchy left eye was right there, listening to my yelling voice. I yelled anyway.

  “You will kill Lily Reilly, the best friend you have in all of Arkansas, in all of the South, and maybe in all of the whole entire world, if you quit this play.”

  She stopped and turned. Her eyes were hard and narrow, and she fixed that steely look right smack-dab on me. I’m telling you, I t
hought my very gizzard would bust a blood vessel just from the look she gave me.

  “Child, I do not understand what you are screeching about.”

  Now, I want it known here and now that I was not screeching. I might have been hollering and screaming and yelling, but I was not screeching.

  I jumped off the platform and trotted up the aisle toward that woman. If my gizzard bled to death, so be it.

  “If you do not direct this play for our church, my mama will do it because she knows no one else is gonna. You know she will, Isabel St. James. You know she will! Her doctor said for her to stay off her feet and have no stress, and now her blood pressure will go up, and she’ll get puffier than you ever thought she could, and her ankles will swell to where she can’t even stand up, and she’ll get sicker . . . and . . . and . . .”

  To my utter astonishment and downright vexation, I busted out bawling like a big fat nincompoop baby, and that was not what I meant to do at all.

  “Oh my!” Isabel said, her eyes big and round.

  “April Grace,” said the preacher, hurrying toward me.

  I looked at his concerned, kind face and blurted, “If that dumb ole baby doesn’t kill my mama, then Isabel St. James is gonna. That’s what’s gonna happen.”

  And then I set up the awfullest, howlingest sob-fest you ever heard and didn’t know how to stop, even though I wanted to more than you can possibly imagine.

  “Well, forevermore!” Isabel said, sounding exactly like my grandma. I reckon she really had gone nuts, ’cause she’d never say such a country-sounding thing if she’d been in her right mind.

  “April Grace, what on earth is wrong with you?” Myra Sue said.

  I caught a glimpse of her between my teary-gooed eyes, and she looked all horrified and embarrassed. Well, let me tell you, she couldn’t feel any more horrified and embarrassed than yours very truly. But I could not stop bawling.

  Pastor Ross led me to a pew and sat me down. He blotted my cheek with a tissue, then handed me an entire box of them he’d picked up from the pew in front of us.

  “Whatever is the matter with that child?” Isabel fretted. “Is she having some sort of breakdown?”