John Irving - Until I Find You

Miss Wurtz had on her enraptured face an expression of stunned enlightenment; in her literary snobbery, she’d underestimated both Jack’s improvisational powers and the theatrical potential of A Mail-Order Bride in the Northwest Territories. The entire cast was frozen. Backstage, Sandra Stewart vomited again. (Ginny Jarvis, now the murdered Mr. Halliday, said this was all Jack’s doing.)

Emma had stopped chewing her gum with her mouth open. Even Mrs. Oastler seemed impressed by all the blood and screaming. Mrs. Peewee was clutching her hat as if she were strangling the parrot. Jack barely noticed that Peewee had rushed onstage to attend to him. He just went on screaming and bleeding. Jack was only distracted from his audience of one when he looked at his mother.

It had not been an easy time for Alice lately. She had recently caught Jack under the covers trying to sneak a look at the scar from her C-section. In the semidarkness of her bedroom, Jack couldn’t see it. He explained that he was curious as to whether she had a bikini cut, like Leslie Oastler, or if her incision had been the vertical kind.

“It’s private, Jack—it’s not your business!” his mom cried. But why had she been so upset about it?

In the front row at the St. Hilda’s theater, maybe Alice was remembering that awkward moment—or the passing of Mrs. Wicksteed, or losing Lottie. (Or the future—moving in with Mrs. Oastler, among other things.)

Even as he went on screaming and bleeding onstage, Jack realized that his mom, like Peewee, was not much of a theatergoer. She may have thought she’d seen him “act” before, but this was nothing she’d been prepared for. Her mouth was as open as Emma’s, her hands were fists pressed against her temples, her knees were clamped as tightly together as if she were the one who was hemorrhaging. And because Jack was screaming, he couldn’t hear her crying. He saw the tears flow down her cheeks. She cried and cried, without restraint; she was hysterical. Jack saw Leslie Oastler trying to comfort her. Emma had stopped looking at Jack and was staring at Alice instead.

“I’m all right,” Jack said to Peewee, who had picked him up and was shouting for a doctor. “It’s a play, Peewee!”

“Mon, you have bled enough for both of us!” Peewee said; but Jack was transfixed by his mother.

“Oh, Jackie, Jackie!” she was crying. “I’m sorry, Jack—I’m so sorry!”

“I’m okay, Mom,” he tried to tell her, but she didn’t hear him. There was now the applause to contend with—it had swelled to a standing ovation. (Even The Wurtz was applauding.) The entire cast was onstage with Peewee and Jack. It was time for their bows, but Peewee wouldn’t put Jack down.

“It’s just water with red food coloring, Peewee,” Jack whispered in the big man’s ear. “It was a prop. I’m not bleeding.”

“Shit, mon,” Peewee said, “what am I supposed to do with you then?”

“Try bowing,” the boy told him. Still holding Jack-as-Jenny in his arms, Peewee bowed.

On Monday, Mr. Ramsey would inquire if he could ask Peewee to be there for the remaining performances, but it was not an experience Peewee wanted to repeat. (Years later, Peewee told Jack that he never got over it.)

Jack saw that The Gray Ghost had magically materialized at his mother’s side. Faithful combat nurse that she was, Mrs. McQuat was doing her best to calm Alice down, but not even The Gray Ghost was effective. Alice’s sobs were lost in the uproar, but Jack could still see her stricken face. He could read her lips—his name, over and over again, and she kept repeating that she was sorry.

Jack had meant to ask her if they were to become Mrs. Oastler’s rent-free boarders—and, on the subject of “free,” had his mom given Emma’s mom a free tattoo? But seeing his mom so dissolved by his performance as Darlin’ Jenny, Jack knew better than to ask. Without fully understanding his mother’s relationship with Leslie Oastler, he guessed that nothing in this world (nothing that mattered) was ever free.

Despite the applause, Jack would have begun to scream again—had not the curtain come down and he found himself backstage, still in Peewee’s arms. Peewee had only momentarily viewed the falling curtain as another unscripted calamity. Once the sea of girls had surrounded them, Peewee calmed himself and congratulated Jack on his performance. He finally put the boy down.

“Jack Burns!” Mr. Ramsey was calling. “Every mail-order bride in the world is in your debt!” Jack saw that Mr. Ramsey had a camera; he was taking a picture of Jack-as-Jenny.

“You can shoot me anytime, Jack,” Ginny Jarvis said too loudly in his ear.

Penny Hamilton, who overheard her—and whose unfortunate forehead had been in the way of his near-death ejaculation—said: “Yeah, Jack, the odds are that you’re not shooting blanks.”

“What?”

“Leave him alone,” Emma Oastler said. She’d managed to make her way backstage and had thrown a protective arm around him.

Also backstage was the haunted face that would stalk Jack’s future. Bonnie Hamilton was looking at him from a distance, as if her heart couldn’t bear coming any closer. She had stopped prompting, but he could still read her trembling lips.

“You see ?” Jack whispered in Emma’s ear. “You see how Bonnie’s looking at me —that’s what I mean.”

But in the clamor of the moment, Emma didn’t hear him—or else she was too preoccupied, fending off the older girls. “You know what, baby cakes?” Emma was saying. “It might not be the world’s worst idea that you’re going to an all-boys’ school in Maine.”

“Why?”

There was his makeup to remove, and the stage lipstick—not to mention all the blood. The director, Mr. Ramsey, the child Viking, could not stop bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Just when I was beginning to think that Abigail Cooke might be a pinch dated, ” he was saying to Miss Wurtz, who’d come (with tears in her eyes) to offer her congratulations.

Emma’s old friends Wendy Holton and Charlotte Barford had come backstage to join them. “If I ever had a period like that, I think I’d die, ” Wendy told Jack. Charlotte Barford kept eyeing him as if he were a neglected hors d’oeuvre.

Somehow, despite his considerable size—not to mention his last-minute contribution to the production—Peewee had managed to slip away. In the happy chaos following the successful opening night, Jack allowed his mother’s visible distress to drift to the back of his mind. But if he ever had a conscience at St. Hilda’s, her name was Mrs. McQuat. Not to be outdone by Jack’s success, The Gray Ghost staged a characteristic sudden appearance that took the boy’s breath away. If he’d had any blood left in him, he would have started bleeding afresh. If his throat weren’t raw from screaming, he would have screamed again—only louder.

Jack was going home with Emma. “Our first sleepover, honey pie!” Emma had declared. She’d left the backstage area to go find her mom, who was waiting with Alice. Jack was, albeit briefly, still backstage but miraculously alone. Even his beloved prompter had slipped away, her limp for once unnoticed.

That was when The Gray Ghost appeared at his side—her cold hands taking Jack by both wrists, exactly where they’d been bound together. “Good show, Jack,” Mrs. McQuat breathed on him. “But you have work to do. I don’t mean … onstage,” she whispered.

“What work?” he asked.

“Look after your mother, Jack. You’ll blame yourself … if you don’t.”

“Oh.” (Look after her how ? he wanted to ask. Look after her why ?) But The Gray Ghost, who was almost always in character, had disappeared.