Southampton Spectacular

by M. C. Soutter

  Not to his face, of course.

  The standard, base-line-level price for an event conceived and arranged by Mahlmann Group Events in New York was $10,000, but most events ended up costing far, far more. In addition to innumerable weddings and birthday parties and promotions handled by his company, Theo Mahlmann had personally overseen the production of two Kennedy weddings, the opening of every Ralph Lauren store in New York since 1983, Chelsea Clinton’s 21st birthday party, and the funeral of John Lennon. Mr. Mahlmann had also been single-handedly responsible for the production of the Meadow Club talent show for the last ten years. He had never charged the club a cent. Theo considered it a rare and precious annual opportunity to be able to design with impunity; to not have to worry, even for a second, about his client’s ego or opinions or hang-ups; to experiment, and to find the delight in his job all over again. One year he made the room up to look like the opera theater at Lincoln center, but glitzier. More fun. Complete with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and, at the perimeter of the room, groups of chairs enclosed in wood-and-velvet to make them look like box seats. Another year he went the other way, turning the hall into a shantytown playhouse, so that the audience felt as though the performance were taking place in the middle of a barn on a Nebraska farm. Still another year, he made the room up to look like a massive, Tony-night awards ceremony, with lights and signs and a Lazy Susan up on the stage for quick scene changes.

  Everyone always loved what Mr. Mahlmann created. The parents were impressed, the children were delighted, and Theo got to come onto the stage at the end of the show each year, to strut out and pause under the lights and wave, like a menswear designer making a triumphant appearance on the runway after the models had come and gone.

  That year, the year when Ned Dunn brought the house down, Mr. Mahlmann was in a quiet mood, taste-wise. He decided on an old-Hollywood theme, which meant placing orders for yards and yards of heavy, white and silver cloth to hang everywhere, and huge, powerful lights to hide behind these billowing curtains in random spots along the floor. And then the floor itself: at higher-than-usual personal expense, Theo Mahlmann brought in a team of workers to lay down a thin layer of faux-stone tile, which he had painted in white and mother-of-pearl and veins of black and gold, so that the entire room seemed to be covered in marble.

  Devon came to the Meadow Club talent show that year with her parents. She was looking forward to Florin’s latest display of dog training, and she hoped to see the rest of her friends – and of course Austin – but for the arrival itself she was focused on her mother and father. This was Peter Hall’s first time in public since his accident. And her parents’ first time out as a couple since then. Peter was excited to be returning, officially, to another aspect of normal life. Devon was glad just to see them walking together. Holding hands, chatting, smiling. As if nothing had happened.

  The three of them walked to the clubhouse as a group. A few paces slower than normal, but far better for Peter Hall than in days past. It was almost eight o’clock, and getting dark, and they could see the light from Theo Mahlmann’s latest creation spilling out of the windows and doors.

  “Looks good,” Devon’s father said. He turned to her. “Are you sitting with us?”

  Devon nodded.

  “Is Austin going to serenade you or anything?”

  “Dad.”

  “Just asking. Because you might want to be sitting somewhere else if he does. At least for that part. So that he doesn’t have to sit in my lap while he’s singing.”

  “He can serenade all of us,” Cynthia Hall said. “If it comes to that.”

  Devon sighed and endured.

  They walked into the clubhouse, and then into the huge main hall that was used for all the biggest events: awards banquets, fundraising dinners, wedding receptions. Mr. Mahlmann’s latest design had come together flawlessly; Devon and her parents felt as if they were walking into a production from the 1940’s. The room had been transformed into a glowing, black-and-white reproduction of old-time glamour and glitz. White curtains stretched before every window, cutting the room into sections. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and the stage was ablaze in silvery whiteness. Devon half-expected a chorus line of girls with pixie cuts and egg-cream, halter-top leotards to come out high-kicking from one of the side wings.

  They found their little table and sat down, and Devon scanned the growing crowd. She found Nina and James, and she waved to them both. Nina looked as if she wanted very much to come over, but then she saw Peter Hall and seemed to think better of it. Injured father. Family time.

  Devon waved to her again, beckoning, but Nina only shook her head; she blew Devon a kiss and turned away.

  Devon went back to searching. Florin would certainly be backstage with Jasper, but where was Barnes? And where was Austin? Unless he really was going to perform –

  “Mr. and Mrs. Hall, I wanted to introduce myself formally.”

  How does he do that? Devon wondered. He could be an assassin.

  Cynthia nodded and Peter stood, and Austin shook hands with them both. Devon saw that he was dressed in a suit, and she wondered if this was something for the talent show or for her parents.

  He sat down and talked to them. He said all the right things. He asked Devon’s father how he was feeling, and he shook his head humbly when Devon’s mother thanked him again for catching Peter by the pool. He submitted cheerfully to their questions about Dartmouth and sports and his future career, and he followed up with questions for them about what they thought made sense for summer internships in today’s job market, and what did they think about this latest business on Wall Street?

  He performed flawlessly.

  Devon noticed that he managed to avoid mentioning that he was hoping to lure their daughter to Spain in a month or so.

  Small detail, she thought.

  After another minute Austin excused himself, again making all the right sounds of pleased to meet you and it was a pleasure and hope to see you again soon and it’s so good to see you’re doing better Mr. Hall. Then he turned to Devon for a moment, and she was suddenly aware of how tense she had become while watching him talking to her parents. Because now he was looking at her, only at her, with those calm, brown eyes, and she felt the rough edge melt away from her like frost off a glass. Everything was fine. He had come over to say hi to her parents. And then to her. The way any nice boy would. Perfect.

  “Devon?”

  She came back to herself. “Sorry. Where are you sitting?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll be backstage most of the time.”

  “What? I thought you said you weren’t – ”

  “I’m not,” he said, and gave her hand a little squeeze. “A supporting role later on, that’s all,” he said. And he walked away.

  Devon sighed and turned to her parents. “Can we just – ” she began, and then stopped. Collected herself. “He’s very nice, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Cynthia said.

  “Absolutely,” Peter said.

  “Let’s stop right there,” Devon said, and she turned away resolutely so that she was facing the stage.

  Her parents didn’t respond, but she could feel them slooking at her. Smiling at her. Mercifully, the house lights went down only a moment later. The stage was now the only source of light in the room. A tiny little girl, one of the Messier twins, toddled out into the lights, and she waved to the crowd. Then, in a clear and gratifyingly loud voice, she called out, “Welcome to the fifteenth annual Meadow Club Talent Show! Enjoy!”

  This was the official cue. The reminder to everyone in the audience that although Theodore Robert Mahlmann was in charge of lights, curtain, microphones, floral arrangements, window dressings, table layout, floor decoration, and stage design, he was not, emphatically not responsible for any of the acts in the show itself. And he could not be blamed for these acts, thank you very much.

  So the entire audience took a collective, steadying breath, and settled i
tself into position, and prepared to suffer an hour and a half of mostly horrible performances.

  Which it did.

  There were exceptions, as always. Seven-year-old Kyle Phipps recited a poem without needing to be prompted even once, and he performed with actual style and a sense of delivery. He was applauded lustily, especially by those in the back who were delighted to have been able to hear him. Later on, there was a piece of actual, independent talent from ten-year-old Liam Peterman, who played an acoustic guitar with a real feel for the control and pacing of the instrument, moving his head with the rhythm of the song so that people in the audience could forget, if only for a moment, that they were in the middle of a long-distance endurance event.

  There was one other thing. Besides Florin’s act. And Ned, of course.

  Through it all, there were a few people in the crowd who noticed – or thought they noticed – a connective thread from one performance to the next. A kind of theme.

  Devon Hall certainly noticed.

  To her, it was obvious. And she knew there could be no coincidence. Because when eight different songs had been sung, three poems had been recited, and five single-scene skits had been performed, she thought it unlikely that eleven out of those sixteen acts would just happen to mention the words “Spain” or “Spanish” or “Spaniard.”

  Very unlikely.

  After the first few times, she began smiling to herself. And then stifling a little giggle the next few times it happened. With the show approaching its end, Devon was doing all she could to keep from embarrassing herself by laughing out loud. Every single time, she wondered how Austin had managed to convince the particular child performing – not to mention his parents – to go along with the game.

  Did he just tell everyone in the world he’s trying to take me away? Are they all in on it?

  She glanced at her parents, suddenly feeling paranoid again. Just as she had been at the tennis tournament, when she thought Austin was in cahoots with James and Barnes. Might her own parents be in on this Spain thing, too?

  No way, she decided. Convincing them is my job.

  She might have gone on worrying about it all night, except that now, finally, Florin Bean had made her way to the stage. Florin received hearty applause and a few whistles. The crowd knew her act – or at least the basic premise: dog tricks of some sort – and they were happy to have a familiar piece of entertainment to fall back on. Also, Florin’s routine traditionally signaled that the show was near its end.

  “Something special this year,” Florin was saying now. “We’ve recruited a few assistants. Friends of mine, and now of Jasper’s. I hope you enjoy the act.” She backed away from the lights, behind one of the huge and flowing white curtains.

  The stage was empty for a minute, and then Florin appeared again, this time dressed in what looked like an EMT uniform. Otto Barnes and Austin Riley appeared on stage as well, to applause and shouts. Austin was still in his suit, and Barnes was dressed casually.

  The crowd settled in, ready to enjoy the act. Which they did. Florin had created an entire series of challenges for Jasper, all of which involved saving either Austin or Barnes from various situations of peril. Austin was stuck under something; Barnes was unconscious; Austin was injured and far from home and lost. There were barriers to be jumped, hiding places to be searched, and endless costume changes for Barnes and Austin to endure. By the end, Jasper was leaping over a temporary wall, slithering under a wire, and then digging through a pile of old clothes to find both Austin and Barnes, who were by this time pretending to be two toddlers trapped in a hypothetical fire.

  The applause was loud and true, and the three of them bowed together. Jasper barked once at the end. He seemed to know he had done well.

  2

  There was a pause now, as the audience waited for the house lights to go up. Or for Theo Mahlmann to make an appearance. To take a bow. But instead Tracy Dunn was suddenly before them under the lights, which was unexpected. Devon thought she looked uncommonly sober and steady, especially for so late in the day. “I’m sorry to interfere with the standard routine,” Mrs. Dunn said. She sounded hesitant. As though simply existing with so little alcohol in her system at such an hour was hard enough, never mind having to speak in front of a crowd. “We’ve been trying to get Ned to come out and do one last thing for you, but he’s a little shy.” She paused and shielded her eyes against the bright spotlights with one hand. As though searching the crowd. “For starters, could we dim the lights a bit?”

  Somewhere in the back, they heard her. The lights on the stage lost half their power.

  “Thank you.” Now she was partly in shadow, and she looked out at the audience with an expression that was a mixture of hope and fear. As though she had something deeply important to explain, but doubted her ability to find the words. “Ned is –” she began, and then she closed her mouth. She let her head drop down for a minute. The audience held its breath. Dog tricks were one thing, but this was different. This was the local lush, trying to pull herself together for long enough to present her middle child, a child who had been going through a rough summer so far.

  Tracy Dunn raised her head. “Ned is a good boy,” she said. And now her voice was stronger. She raised her chin a fraction of an inch, as if preparing to issue a challenge. “If you can all promise to be a little bit quiet, he’ll come out here.” She waited for another moment, scanning the crowd. Making sure her plea had been understood. Then she looked to her right and held out a hand. “Ned? It’s okay.”

  Ned Dunn walked slowly, so slowly out onto the stage, looking down at his feet. He was dressed very simply, in a pair of freshly washed khaki shorts and a polo. As though he were on his way to play a round of golf.

  The talent show crowd was silent at first. They had heard Tracy Dunn’s request, and they were ready. These were people accustomed to doing what they pleased, but their social instincts were also finely tuned. So when Ned came out, they waited for a moment, and then they produced a three-second round of perfectly modulated applause. The sound was full of support – anyone listening to a recording of this sound could have told you that the entire room had joined in – and yet it was a whispering clap. It sounded like heavy rain on a thick rug. Start, hold for one long moment, and then stop.

  Then the silence.

  You can do it, Ned, they thought. Whatever your crazy mother has in mind, it’s going to be great. And we’ll tell you it’s great even if it isn’t, because you’re one of us. We don’t let our people get shipped off to the loony bin just for throwing their little brother over a wall. That’s nothing. That was just an accident. When we were your age, most of us wanted to do that to our little brothers on PURPOSE. Come back to us, Ned.

  Ned Dunn stood by his mother, and he looked up, finally, at the crowd. His eyes darted left and right, as if he were looking for a particular face. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath, but then something seemed to come over him. He began shaking his head slowly back and forth, and his mouth curled into a grimace of pain. Tears began running down his cheeks.

  The talent show audience, in a varsity-level display of collaborative restraint, made no sound. There was not a single “aw.” No one murmured, “That’s okay, Ned.” They waited silently, filling the air with their unspoken support, and they gave him the time to bring himself under control. They did not shift uncomfortably in their chairs. They did not cough.

  Tracy Dunn reached out and put a hand on her son’s back. Held it there. She waited with the crowd. When Ned’s chin had stopped quivering, she gave him a little pat. “Can I start it with you?” she said.

  Ned glanced at her, then back at the crowd. All at once, he seemed to realize that this was his moment. That no, his mother should not be starting anything for him here. This was his show, his chance at saying sorry, at saying that he hadn’t meant it. That he loved his little brother. That he wanted to start again.

  His eyes brightened, and he lifted up his head, and sang.

&nbs
p; The voice of an eleven-year-old boy may be many things. Timid, or lacking inflection, or cloyingly sweet, or brassy with overtraining and undulation, or simply off-key. Ned Dunn had not trained, or had lessons, or even sung in the school choir, but he had learned at a very early age that his parents liked the sound of his voice. Even when they were angry. Or drunk. Or painfully, viciously hung-over.

  They still liked it when Ned sang.

  He could sing to them even in the morning, and they would smile from their beds with their eyes closed, their tongues lolling from their cotton-dry mouths. So he had learned to sing simply, and with love. In a way that made no demands, a way that let the beauty of the song come forward on its own, as though it were being somehow played through him, rather than sung.

  He sang now, to the talent show crowd, and he shook his head with the joy of it. The notes came so easily one to the next, impossibly high and clear, and the men and women in the audience watched this disgraced and disturbed eleven-year-old boy transform himself into a beacon, an amulet, a blinding flash.

  Ned did not sing loudly. Or for very long. It was a song they all knew, “Jerusalem,” a standard in the Episcopal hymnal from a William Blake poem, and it was over too soon. Through the song, Tracy Dunn kept her hand on Ned’s back. She looked out at the audience while he sang, her expression calm and bemused, as though gently mocking them all for being so impressed with something she heard every day.

  My boy, not yours.

  She let them see her pride. The warmth of it.

  Ned sang the last note, and he let his head drop a fraction of an inch. There was a moment of silence, and another, and then the Meadow Club members could not contain themselves.