A Perfect Pair

The Mother’s Day pageant was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Twenty-seven third-graders ran amok backstage, darting around abandoned, faded backdrops, hiding behind black curtains and giggling as they tripped over their own baggy, assorted animal costumes and landed on the dusty wooden floorboards. Fifty-four little sneakered feet thundered back and forth in a frenzied pre-performance game of demented tag, no one knowing who was it, but everyone joining in, anyway, for the sheer joy of running in circles and screaming.

Josey squinted at her watch, straining in the dank backstage dimness to see the clock. Five minutes until curtain time. The best way to get a grip on this eight-year-old hysteria, she knew, was her piercing, unladylike taxi-hail whistle, the one she used when her pumped-up kids returned to the classroom from either recess or gym class, the one that made them cover their ears in mock terror and shriek, “Miss St. John! That’s so loud!” But she hated to use it here, aware of the mothers and handful of fathers currently seating themselves out front, and dreading what they would think of her archaic method of crowd control.

“Kids! Kids, settle down!” she hissed in—appropriately—a stage whisper, but no one heard or cared. Arms and legs flailing, they continued their chase around and around until finally, Josey felt forced to take her drastic measure. She put two fingers in her mouth and blew with all her might.

Small hands flew to heads. “Miss St. John! Ow!”

Josey winced, remembering the parents, but then she heard several amused titters and one outright laugh come from out front. She should have known they’d understand—and approve. Relieved, she turned to her class.

“Okay, everyone,” she said, widening her arms and allowing all the children to gather around her. She did a silent head count, did it again and was satisfied. “Just remember to do your best. If you forget your lines or a song, it’s okay. We’re just doing this to have fun, right?”

They all nodded, suddenly very serious in their fuzzy costumes and rainbow feathers and painted-on whiskers. My kids, Josey caught herself thinking, and smiled to herself.

“And,” she added with a wink, “I’ll be right in front of the stage like I showed you this morning, if you need help remembering anything. I’ll wave right at the beginning so you all can see me. Our rehearsal today was awesome, right?”

Enthusiastic nods.

“Your parents are going to be so proud. And if your parents couldn’t come today—” she focused on a few specific faces “—I’m especially proud of you for being good sports.”

Ally Berenson, the music teacher, poked her head through the curtain then. “Hi, Miss Berenson!” a chorus of voices called, and Ally waggled her fingers at them.

“Hi, gang. Are you ready to rock and roll?”

“Yes!” they all yelled happily, even though Josey was sure the expression went right over their heads. Ally was a kid favorite. With her wild mop of brassy hair tumbling around her face and her ability to make up a silly spontaneous song about any student, it was easy to understand why.

Ally flicked her gaze to Josey. “Are you ready?” she asked more quietly, grinning. “Full house out there. Somehow, when they dim the lights, I forget it’s a gymnasium with folding chairs.”

Josey smiled back. “Just soothing some opening-night—uh, make that opening-afternoon—jitters.”

“Your own or the kids’?”

“Well,” Josey admitted, “I am a little nervous.”

“Me, too,” Ally whispered. “And I have no excuse. I write songs for every class, kindergarten through sixth, for plays every year. I deserve a Tony by now. Maybe two.”

Josey turned back to her class. “Everyone get in your places!” she called. And as the third-grade zoo animals scrambled around the stage, she added in a low voice to Ally, “You’re terrific. I thought when I came up with this year’s Mother’s Day play idea you were going to kill me.”

“No, it’s great!” Ally said. “I had a lot of fun with them. The tiger song was tough, but hey, I’m a genius.”

“Anyway,” Josey pointed out, “this audience didn’t come here to see you and me.”

Ally chuckled. “True enough. Good luck! See you at the cast party. I hear Mel Gibson may show.” She laughed and ducked as Josey took a playful swat at her, then disappeared again behind the curtain.

Josey hustled a few children around, and when all seemed in order, she took a small lion named Jeremy by the hand and led him to where the curtain parted. She put Jeremy’s hand—now a golden paw—on the curtain in the right spot so he wouldn’t have to fumble, then knelt by him.

“Okay, Jeremy. All set?”

“Yeah,” the boy answered in a shaky but definitely determined voice.

“I’m going to go out front. You stay here and count to twenty-five slowly, then come on out.”

“Okay, Miss St. John. I’m not scared,” he added, more to himself than to her.

Touched, she put a playful finger on his now-brown nose. “I know. Okay, start counting!”

Josey tiptoed offstage so as not to make a clatter, then once safely in the wings, she ran down the stairs, leaping off three steps from the bottom. She smoothed her long, swirly rust-colored skirt and tucked a strand of hair behind each ear before pushing open the door and stepping out before the audience.

She opted out of an opening speech, aware that Jeremy was probably counting fast. Instead, she waved an acknowledging hand to the clapping parents and took her place in front of the stage just in time for Jeremy to hustle his way through the curtain. The crowd behind Josey murmured at the adorable costume.

“Moms and dads,” Jeremy began, and Josey was relieved to hear he’d remembered to speak very loudly. “Miss St. John’s third-graders are proud to present ‘Wild Moms.’ We take you now to the zoo. The animals are all getting ready to celebrate Mother’s Day.” He ad-libbed a growl, which elicited an auditorium full of laughter, then moved stage left as the sixth-grader Josey had hired for the day pulled open the curtain.

The play went amazingly well. Ally’s songs were perfect; the parents loved the one about the mama tiger teaching her cub how to growl. One child, Jamie Cranston, forgot her lines, and though Josey called them out in a whisper for her, it clearly distressed Jamie, one of the smartest little girls in the class, to have been the only one helped by the teacher. She watched as Jamie slunk backstage in humiliation. Josey made a mental note to talk to the little girl after the play and tell her how brave she was.

But then she saw that she wouldn’t need to.

A moment later, out of the corner of her eye, she spied Jamie’s parents. They slipped into the side aisle and climbed quietly up the side stage stairs, pushing behind the heavy black curtain. No one else in the audience seemed to notice, all focused on their own children. But the black curtain didn’t fall all the way behind the Cranstons, and through the open space Josey saw them approach their miserable daughter, and then saw the father scoop Jamie up in his arms.

Josey turned her eyes back to her job, back to the play, but it was going without a hitch, and she just couldn’t help herself from peeking at the backstage family again. Jamie’s father lifted his mouth to her ear, blew away a strand of flaxen hair and whispered. Josey watched his lips form words that only his little girl could hear, words that produced a small wisp of a smile. Then the mother leaned in closer and added her own soft comments, which elicited an even larger smile. And then Jamie snuggled her face happily in her dad’s shoulder.

And Josey, suddenly distracted from her onstage class, her gaze on the backstage drama, was sure she would never forget, in her whole life, the look on the mother’s face. As the woman gazed at her husband and daughter, there was a glowing serenity about her, a sweet combination of love and satisfaction that reminded Josey of a holy madonna statue.

And although Josey couldn’t hear her voice, she instinctively knew that when the woman bent her head toward her husband, her murmured words were, “I love you.”

Then the pair slipped quietly back to their seats, and Josey returned her attention to her class, and the show went on.

When the curtain closed, all the parents jumped to their feet, clapping and whistling. Josey leaped onto the stage, pushed behind the curtain and lined up the children, holding hands, for their bow. When one little boy and girl in the middle refused to touch each other’s hand—fear of cooties, no doubt—Josey alleviated the problem by stepping between them and taking a small hand in each of hers. She nodded at the stage girl to pull the curtain open again, and as cameras flashed and camcorders whirred, Josey took the deserved bow with her hardworking, exhausted kids.

But in that moment, when she expected her heart would swell with its usual pride, it felt achy and hollow—a first for her.

When the last straggling child had gone for the day, Josey looked around the room, abandoned for the afternoon. Rays of sunshine filtered through the window blinds and lit up the desks in the front row. Everything was so familiar and yet felt strange to her. She felt strange, really. As if she’d never really seen anything before and now it was all suddenly clear.

Instead of rummaging through her desk for her take-home work—papers to grade, lessons to plan—she just went to the closet, grabbed her spring trench coat and flung it over her arm. She picked her keys absently out of her top desk drawer and left the classroom, slamming the door behind her.

The subway ride home passed in a daze. Josey hung on to the overhead bar, the car’s motion bumping her into fellow Boston commuters. She didn’t notice. She just stared at her own face, reflected in the window as the train moved through the darkness in between stations. She looked at herself, standing in the crowd, the way someone else on the subway might have looked at her, and she didn’t feel anything at all. She got off at her stop automatically, and walked the three blocks to her apartment building. It was a pleasant walk, and usually Josey thought about how nice it was to live in such a historic, if slightly overpriced, neighborhood. But today she may as well have been walking through a war zone, for all she knew.

She turned her key in the front door and without stopping at her mailbox, started up the stairs to her apartment. She didn’t bother knocking on Nate’s door to see if he was home yet, just dragged up one more flight and let herself into her own place.

The answering machine was blinking—two messages—but Josey didn’t care. She threw her coat over a chair and flopped onto the sofa, listlessly staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t care at all. She felt…empty. She kicked off her beige suede pumps.

What had happened to her? This day had been turning out so well. The play went off with barely a hitch. She was able to talk to parents without stammering… Even this morning, her kids had done so well on their spelling tests—

Her kids. Her kids.

They weren’t her kids. They were all someone else’s kids.

In the peeling ceiling plaster, Josey suddenly saw Jamie’s mother’s face again, beaming with pride and love at her family. Josey didn’t know what the woman did for a living, but she suspected family was the woman’s first priority.