“I have two readings and the responsorial psalm,” I said, pulling back from her. “That’s when you raise your hand, like this.” I raised my hand. “Then everyone knows it’s their turn. I have to get started right away.”
“Well, I can certainly help,” my mother said. “You know I did theater in college.”
“Really?” The thought of my mother doing anything except being a mother seemed highly unlikely, but theater came as a real surprise. I would have thought she’d consider acting a display of vanity.
“I’ll have you know I played Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.”
I had no idea if that was a big deal, but from the grin on my mother’s face, I could tell it meant something to her. “That’s great, Mom. Can you help me?”
12
We studied and worked on the readings each day after school, my mother helping me with the pronunciations of the difficult words and then with my posture and presentation.
“Hold your head high,” she said. “Make eye contact with the audience before you speak. Slow down—you’re rushing.”
After posture and presentation, she moved to voice inflection, which words to emphasize. This resulted in a few disagreements between my parents.
“No, no. Emphasize not. Don’t emphasize road,” my father would say.
“Emphasize road,” my mother would correct.
My mother made a makeshift lectern by having me stand on several volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I would perform the readings after dinner. My parents surely must have tired of these performances, but if they did, they never complained.
“We have a regular showman,” my father said one evening as we sat down for meat loaf and mashed potatoes with gravy.
“He gets it from me,” my mother said. “You know I played Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice in college.”
“How could I forget,” my father said, taking a piece of meat loaf and holding the plate for me. “You kissed Bill Mahler right there onstage before God and man.”
I nearly dropped the meat loaf on the floor. “You kissed another man?” I asked. “I hope you socked him one, Dad.”
“I did not kiss anyone,” my mother said. “I was in character. That was Elizabeth.”
My father rolled his eyes. “Well, Bill Mahler found it convincing. He asked you out for two years after that one kiss. And I would have socked him, Sam, but he was also captain of the basketball team.”
My mother smiled. “I will have you know, Samuel Hill, that I have always only had eyes for one man, and he’s sitting right here at this table.”
I grinned and wedged a green bean between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
“I wish I could be there in person to hear you, but I’ll be there in spirit,” my father said.
My father continued to work six days a week, leaving the house early and working so late sometimes that he’d even miss dinner. The table felt empty without him.
“We have to tighten our belts,” my mother said during one of our meals without him. “A chain pharmacy just opened on Burlingame Avenue, and your father’s prescription count has dropped.”
I was disappointed my father would miss my performance, but I understood how hard he was working.
13
Friday morning, I was nervous, mainly because throughout the week Ernie had continued to stew over all the things that could go wrong and suggested that I feign an illness, or laryngitis. I continued to focus on just one thought. I knew my classmates and their parents still considered me the devil boy. This was surely God’s way for me to prove I was a normal kid, maybe even extraordinary, as my mother frequently professed. Who was I to argue with a woman who’d had the lead in Pride and Prejudice?