Paula, have you met my
daughter, Merry? She owns Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, on Jingle Bell Lane. And this
is Alan Anderson, who makes the most divine things out of wood you’ve ever
seen. Merry and Alan, this is Paula Monahan. Paula’s an important part of the
theater family. Isn’t that lovely?”
Probably only I, because I know
my mother so well, heard the unsaid “not” at the end of that sentence.
“Are you in the cast, Paula?”
Alan asked. “Or crew?”
I’d seen Paula around town, but
I didn’t remember having ever met her and I didn’t think she shopped at my
store. She was in her early forties, younger than most of the company, slightly
taller than my five foot four, and slim beneath a padded black jacket. Heavy
brown bangs peeked out from beneath her wool cap. “I play Mrs. Cratchit. My
son, Eddie—he’s around here somewhere—is Tiny Tim.”
“Important roles. Tim, in
particular,” Alan said.
Paula didn’t smile in
acknowledgment. Instead she threw a not-friendly glare at my mother. “It is. As
some people fail to understand. If you’ll
excuse me. I need to ensure Eddie finds something other than cake to eat.”
“Sounds like an idea,” Alan
said once she’d gone. “I’m ready to hit the buffet. Merry?”
“Go ahead. I’ll be with you in
a minute.”
He needed no further
encouragement and barely managed to refrain from breaking into a run as he
crossed the lawn.
“That was tense,” I said to my
mom. “What’s with you and Paula?”
Mom sighed. “All these years I
have refrained from engaging in amateur dramatics, no matter how hard Desmond
and Ron worked to entice me. At last, I succumbed. Much to my regret.”
Mom wasn’t exaggerating or
bragging. The director and former artistic director of the Rudolph Community
Theater Players came on pilgrimage once a year to the house to beg her to join
the group. In her glory days, my mom had been a professional opera singer. Not
just a singer, but a true diva. She’s sung solo parts with the Metropolitan
Opera and at some of the best opera houses in Europe, including a sold-out
performance of Madama Butterfly at La
Scala, in which she sang Suzuki.
With her travel and performance
schedule, it had largely been my dad—solid, sensible, small-town dad—who’d
raised my three younger siblings and me. Mom was retired now, and she kept her
hand in teaching vocal lessons to local children and a few adults who’d always
wanted to sing but never had the chance to learn formally. She might be
retired, but she was still every inch the diva. She’d never had anything but
scorn for amateur theatrics. To everyone’s surprise, probably hers most of all,
she agreed to appear with the Rudolph Community Theater Players in this year’s
production of A Christmas Carol. Desmond
Kerslake, the director, told her they’d be doing the musical version, and they
desperately needed her help.
She not only would play the
Ghost of Christmas Past, as well as Belle, Scrooge’s former fiancée, but she
served as the musical coach. When I’d asked how she could play both the ghost
and Belle when the ghost shows Scrooge his youth, she said, “With a bit of deft
maneuvering from stage left to center and a flick of a cape. Belle has the
strongest female song in the entire production, no one else is remotely capable
of doing it.” She tried not to smile too widely as she said it.
“This,” she now declared dramatically,
“is going to be the death of me.” All that was missing was the back of the hand
held to the forehead and the drop into the fainting couch. “If not of me,
likely someone else.”
