Of Mice and Nutcrackers: A Peeler Christmas

by Richard Scrimger

  I picture the backdrops ripped to shreds, or defaced with graffiti. I drag them into the middle of the room and lay them out on the floor, side by side. The first one is the inside of the Stahlbaum house, with a window and a fireplace. At the big scene change, Michael pulls a string and the top sheet drops open to reveal licorice trees and pink bubblegum clouds and things like that. This is Candyland, where Maria and her Nutcracker Prince will reign happily ever after, if only Jiri can remember his lines.

  I examine the backdrops carefully. They both look all right. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Very nice,” Mr. March comments. “But your twine is all knotted.”

  “Yes, that happened last night. Michael kept tugging and tugging.”

  “You want a quick release knot,” he says. “Then the second whatsis here will fall with one pull.”

  He gets down on his knees to peer at the string. “Dear, dear. You got yourself quite a tangle here. Can you undo it?”

  The phone rings, startling me. It’s beside the door; I didn’t notice it when I came into the room. It sounds as loud as the recess bell.

  Mr. March gets slowly to his feet. I can hear his knee joints creak when he stands. Dad’s knees do that too. “Hello,” he says into the phone.

  I pick up the twine. The knot is as big as my knuckle. It’ll take me an hour to undo. And I don’t have an hour. I do, however, have a pair of scissors. I reach into my knapsack.

  “I’m with Jane Peeler, now, Mr. Gordon,” says Mr. March. “Yes, about The Nutcracker. We’re fixing some of the scenery…. Yes, sir, we want to look our best for the TV cameras. I’ll be up there as soon as I finish down here.”

  He hangs up with a smile on his face. “Mr. Gebohm may want to wreck the performance tonight, but Mr. Gordon sure doesn’t.” Mr. March regards the broken twine with regret. “Well, that is one way to untie a knot. Let’s get you some more twine.”

  The sign on the room next door says COAL CELL. I picture hunks of black rock, and bars. Mr. March opens the door. I’m wrong. The room is bright yellow and very clean. There’s a sink and a long counter, a table, and two wooden chairs. On the table sit a radio and a book. On the counter sit a teapot and two cups. And a menorah.

  “Sit down, Jane.” Mr. March hunts through a drawer, finds tea bags, sugar, and twine. He plugs in the kettle, puts tea bags into a pot, and then cuts a length of twine.

  I figure the chair with arms is Mr. March’s. I sit on the other one.

  The menorah has one candle in it. I remember what Grandma said yesterday.

  “Gut yontiff,” I say.

  Mr. March smiles. “Thank you. A happy holiday to you too.” He cuts a length of twine and ties it in a big loopy knot. It doesn’t take him long, but it looks complicated. The kettle is boiling. He hands the knotted twine to me, unplugs the kettle and pours.

  “Would you drink tea with me, Jane? As a celebration of the holiday season. Eight days the lamps burned, when there was no oil. A great miracle.”

  I check my watch. 8:35. Plenty of time. “Thank you. I don’t have tea very often.”

  Mr. March pours tea into both cups, adds sugar to one and pushes it across the table to me. I pull the loose end of the twine and … the knot comes apart in my hand. Instantly and completely, like a dropped egg. “Wa-hoo!” I say. “Talk about a miracle!”

  He shakes his head. “Just a useful trick. Let me show you.”

  He takes the twine and loops it in his hand. I try to follow. He does it again. And again. And again. I sip the tea. He gives me the twine. I try to loop it the way he does. I can’t do it. He shows me again. And again. Then it’s my turn again. I do one loop, and then it falls apart.

  He shows me again. I try. Nope. And I try again. And … this time I get it. The knot disappears in my hand. Wa-hoo.

  “That’s it,” says Mr. March.

  I do it again – pulling the knot apart, retying it, pulling on the loose end, and watching the knot fall to pieces. “Thanks, Mr. March,” I say. “Thanks very much.”

  “No bother. Now, drink your tea and practice some more.”

  I tie the knot again. And again. And as I fiddle with the twine, I start to tell Mr. March about my troubles in school. And at home. Everything.

  He listens attentively. When I tell him about Dad, he clucks his teeth sympathetically. When I tell him about the basketball practice, he shakes his head in admiration. “So that’s what Mr. Gebohm was upset about. You are a formidable foe, Jane Peeler. But I would watch out for him all the same.”

  When I tell Mr. March about my problem with Jiri, he nods vigorously. “Good for you,” he says.

  “Did I do the right thing?”

  “Oh, yes. You gave the boy a chance. That’s good.”

  His certainty is comforting. I’ve been in such doubt. The tea is hot and sweet. It’s comforting too. I put down my cup.

  “But what if he forgets his lines tonight?” I ask.

  “What if he remembers them? What if someone else forgets? My Aunt Sadie had a funny saying for situations like that. ‘What if the goat has kittens?’ she used to say, meaning that you can’t foresee everything. You can only do your best.”

  We go back to the Electrical Room. He ties the two backdrops together with the new length of twine. I practice the trick knot one more time. It works perfectly.

  “But, Mr. March, how can a goat have kittens?”

  “It’s just an expression. And, to be honest, Aunt Sadie was a strange old lady.”

  Two absentees in our class today. Michael will probably show up after lunch, yawning. He’s done that before. But Jiri is away too – and he hasn’t been late or absent all term.

  Miss Gonsalves takes me aside during silent reading period. “It’s about Jiri,” she says in a low voice. She’s wearing a black pantsuit. She looks like a panther with jewelry. “I hope you did the right thing, leaving him in the play. What if he forgets his lines tonight?”

  “Well, what if Justin gets sick? Or you? What if Patti forgets all her lines?”

  Miss Gonsalves frowns. She doesn’t get it about the goat having kittens. “If Jiri’s sick, that might solve our problem. You can give his lines to someone else.”

  I’m onstage, in the last period of the day, checking lights. There are separate rheostats for the reds, blues, greens, and yellows. These are the four kinds of colored lights on the grid.

  Four hours until show time. No point in another rehearsal after school: either we have it now or we don’t.

  The gym door opens. I hear hall noise for a second, then silence as the door closes. I check my notes: Scene I: Red and yellow up, blue down.

  I turn out the houselights. The stage looks unnatural from up here. I wonder how it looks from out there. I jump down to the gym floor and practically bump into Zillah. She’s in black – black shirt, black pants, black hair, black lips and nails. If she was dark skinned and frowning she’d be almost invisible, but her face is pale and her teeth gleam in a rare smile.

  I smile back. “Oh, hi, Zillah.”

  She doesn’t reply. Her head is on one side, like a bird’s. She stares up at the stage. “Spooky,” she says approvingly.

  “Really?” It isn’t supposed to be. It’s the Stahlbaum house. Spooky is for later. “Stay there. Don’t move.” I run back to the stage, and dim the blues some more. “How does it look now?” I call.

  “Spooky.”

  Maybe she’s the wrong person to ask. To Zillah everything is going to be a shade of spooky. I make a note.

  There is a light in Mr. Gebohm’s office across the gym. I’m worried about him, but I have a job to do.

  Zillah is clumping around in her heavy black shoes. Does she want to be friends with me? Is that why she came to the gym? I’m not used to this. Patti is my friend – was my friend. But that’s because I’ve known her forever. Normally – last week, say – she and I would be checking the lighting cues. Zillah is a new friend. I don’t know what new friends do.

  “Do
you want to help?” I ask.

  She nods, shaking her hair out of her eyes.

  “Then tell me how these lights look.” I turn the houselights back off. Then I push up the blues for the midnight scene. “What’s the effect now?” I ask.

  “Spooky.”

  “How spooky?”

  “Really spooky!”

  “Good.” I make another note.

  Now there’s only the scene in Candyland. Houselights very low, red and yellow up, green medium. I turn the dials. “How spooky is this?” I ask.

  “Not very.”

  “Good.”

  When I turn up the gym lights, Zillah has moved closer to the stage. She’s frowning, the way she usually does. You know, she should smile more. Her face is prettier when she smiles. She cocks her head, listening. I listen too. There is something coming from … underneath me.

  Under the stage.

  I shudder. I think about the mice in our house. I don’t like the idea of animals living in my walls. In my floor.

  Zillah opens the cupboard doors that lead under the stage. The school stores hundreds of stacking chairs there on big rolling dollies. Zillah opens the cupboard doors. “Aha!” she says.

  Out crawl Michael and Jiri. They’re covered in dust. So are their coats and knapsacks. Jiri smiles nervously.

  “There you are!” I say. “You’ve been gone all day. What have you –”

  Michael holds up his hand to stop me. He nods to Jiri, who clears his throat and declaims, in a loud voice:

  “Welcome, Prince and Princess both,

  From your travels East and Noth.

  In Candyland the prospects please

  –Sunshine, warmth, a gentle breeze,

  And we use tissues when we sneeze.”

  The last lines of the play. Pronounced perfectly. He’s got them.

  “Congratulations, Jiri!” I shake his hand.

  “We’ve been practicing all day, in there,” Jiri says. “With a flashlight.” He opens his knapsack to show me.

  “That’s great. You too, Michael.”

  Jiri smiles hugely, like a kid on his first two-wheeler. Michael cracks his knuckles.

  “You There! What Do You Think You’re Doing?”

  Mr. Gebohm, of course. He stands in the doorway to his office. His face is ugly – well, it always is, of course, but what I mean is that it’s uglier than usual: all red, and his lips are stretched thin so that you can see his teeth between them. Not that he’s smiling.

  “Nothing,” says Michael. An instinctive answer when a teacher asks what you’re doing.

  “No, nothing,” echoes Jiri.

  But I see no reason to lie. “We’re working on tonight’s show,” I say. “Zillah and I are doing a light check, and Michael and Jiri are practicing their lines.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Peeler.” He really doesn’t like me, and – this is going to sound funny, because I don’t like him either – it hurts. “The show tonight. The Nutcracker. Well, I hope you all enjoy it. Ha-ha-ha.”

  He starts to close the door, then notices what Zillah is wearing. “Don’t You Know You’re Not Allowed Here In Those Shoes?” he shouts. “Get Out!”

  Does he mean get out of the gym, or get out of the shoes? I don’t know. Neither does Zillah. She rolls her eyes. Mr. Gebohm stands there, vibrating like a tuning fork. An angry tuning fork. His face is redder than ever.

  “Get Out! All Of You! Out Out Out!” Mr. Gebohm points dramatically at the door. I guess he means out of the gym.

  I gather up my notes. Michael and Jiri and I move quietly in our indoor running shoes. Zillah clumps after us.

  Dinner is take-out chicken. What a waste! I have no appetite. I’m too worried. The whole school will be there, kids and moms and dads, aldermen and trustees, and TV cameras. What if we stink? What if we don’t stink, and they hate it anyway? What if Mr. Gebohm does something? I don’t know what he’d do, but what if he does?

  I take a teeny bite of a chicken wing and put it down. The first meal in days that Grandma hasn’t cooked – which means the first meal in days that tastes halfway good – and I can’t eat it.

  “What’s wrong, Jane?” Dad is eating with us. Another first – in a while. He’s sitting at the head of the table. Grandma is beside Bernie, cutting up his chicken for him.

  “Nothing. Just nervous, I guess.”

  “She’s on a diet,” Bill teases. Just because I mentioned that my jeans were getting tight.

  “Am not.” I hate diets. Imagine not eating chocolate cake because someone else thinks it’s bad for you. The way I figure it, life doesn’t give you too many chances at chocolate cake, and you should try to grab them all. Turning down lettuce doesn’t matter. You know you’ll see it again soon enough. And if your jeans get tight, buy another pair. Or wear a skirt.

  “Your mother used to go on diets,” says Grandma. I stare. I can’t imagine Mom on a diet. She’s so elegant. And she never seems to work at it. “Oh, sure. She ate nothing but grapefruit for a week, I recall.”

  “Yuck.” Bill grabs another piece of chicken. He’s eating fast, even for him. He seems nervous. How can he eat when he’s nervous?

  “Whoa, boy. Slow down,” says Dad. “Your jaws are moving faster than light. They’re just a blur.”

  “It’s the Einstein diet,” Grandma cackles. “If you eat fast enough, you finish dinner before you start it.”

  Dad’s mouth opens in surprise. He laughs so hard he chokes. “Einstein,” he sputters.

  Grandma looks proud of herself.

  Bernie drops his new toy. I haven’t seen it before: a square wooden pyramid with a stick coming out of one end. There are funny marks on the sides. Grandma picks it up.

  “Where’d you get that, Bernard?” she asks.

  “Bill’s friend gave it to me,” says Bernie.

  “A dreidel.” There’s a smile hovering on the edge of Grandma’s face, like early morning light, before the sun bursts over the horizon. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  Bill stares at her. “Dreidel, that’s right. How did you know?”

  “I remember playing the game. You spin it, and pick up your prizes depending on which letter shows up.” She turns it slowly in her hands “A great miracle happened here, right?”

  “Prizes?”

  “Well, we used to play for –”

  The front door opens with a bang. Mom sweeps down the hall and into the kitchen, where we’re all eating.

  “You’re up!” she says to Dad, and gives him a big kiss. “Oh, isn’t that good!”

  Dad smiles up at her face.

  “And there’s chicken for dinner!” calls Bernie. “That’s good, too.”

  “Yes, it is.” Mom pulls up a chair. “Oh, look, here’s a … what are those things called again?”

  “Dreidel,” says everyone.

  “Right.” Mom stares around the table.

  Dinner is over, and Bill is wearing his costume in the living room. His class is singing the “Twelve Days of Christmas” in the first half of the winter concert. Bill is wearing a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. A paper crown sits crookedly on his head.

  “What are you supposed to be?” asks Dad. He’s dressed too – going outside for the first time in days. The doctor said it was okay, as long as he took it easy.

  “A lord-a-leaping,” I say.

  “Jane! It’s a surprise!” Bill, furious, leaps at me. Not a very lordly leap. He kicks me in the knee.

  Grandma and Bernie are sitting on the floor, heads bent low. “Your turn,” says Bernie. Grandma twirls the dreidel.

  “Gimmel!” she says.

  “That means pick up everything, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t know you were Jewish, Grandma,” says Bernie.

  She snorts, without looking up from the game. There’s a pile of candies in the middle of the floor. She pops one in her mouth. “I’m not. But I … well, before I met your grandfather, there was this nice Jewish boy who
came to call.”

  “Mother?” Mom stands in the doorway. “What did you say?” A look of total surprise on her face.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Dad chuckles.

  I love the atmosphere of a school in the evening. The hallways are full, the desks are empty, the kids are running around with big grins on their faces. It’s all so familiar, and yet different – because we’re not at work. I wonder if offices are like this in the evening? I doubt it. When Mom gets home late, she looks like she’s been working hard.

  I feel like Mom right now. I have a list in my hand, and a million details to check. Does Michael have his eyepatch? Can Essa see out of her costume if she wears her hat to make her head bigger? Do all the toys have swords? Do all the mice have mouse ears? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Am I having fun? Not really.

  What makes it worse, of course, is all the people who are having fun. The classroom is really noisy. Kids are standing on desks, pretend fighting, giggling, telling jokes, sharing snacks. I’d love to be part of it. I’d love to sit down with Patti and just giggle at all the pandemonium, and wait for a teacher to tell us what to do.

  No, not Patti. She’s not having any fun either. Her hair is way up in a princessy style – her mom must have helped. Patti keeps patting it, as if to make sure that, like the American flag, it’s still there.

  From the gym down the hall comes the faint echo of laughter, and applause. The show must be about half over. Bill will be in the audience now. You’re allowed to sit with your parents when your class is done. It doesn’t seem fair. Bill will see my show, but I won’t see his.

  We’re on in a few minutes.

  Oh-oh. There’s the Mouse King’s mask head, flying through the air. “Watch out!” calls Michael. He’s the one who just threw it. The big mask falls to the ground. Michael laughs.

  “Hey, watch out, there!” I sound like a teacher. I hate that.

  “That’s what I said,” says Michael. I give him a look.

  Miss Gonsalves comes in with a young-old man. His hair and clothes are young, but his face is old. He carries a portable video camera. Not the kind your mom and dad have – a real big one. Miss Gonsalves introduces him as Lance. He’s the videographer with CITY TV.