Abel closed his eyes and was immediately visited by the vision of his sister, Dottie, two hours away in Jennisberg, outside of Peoria, and what would she be doing on Christmas Day? His concern—his love—for her was genuine, yet the responsibility he felt toward her revolted him in a way he’d admit to no one. It was because she was alone and unhappy, he thought, his eyes opening. But she might not be unhappy, and she might not be alone either, since she ran a bed-and-breakfast and could keep it open, he supposed, for the holiday. He would telephone her from work tomorrow. His wife could not abide her.
He squeezed Sophia’s hand and gave his attention to the show, which was as familiar to him as a church service. How many years had they been coming to see A Christmas Carol? First with Zoe and her brothers, and now with Zoe’s own children, sweet Sophia and her older brother, Jake. Confusedly, Abel’s mind could not quite connect itself either to his sister’s life or to the youth of his children; inside him was a tiny gasp at the ungraspable concept of time going by. From onstage came the hearty and false-sounding “A merry Christmas, Uncle!” Then the slamming of a thin door that seemed as if it might topple. “Bah, humbug!” came Scrooge’s reply.
Hunger descended with a rush. Abel pictured pork chops and almost groaned; fantastical images came to him of roasted potatoes and boiled onions. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, bumping his knee into the woman who sat in front of him, and he leaned forward to whisper, “Sorry, sorry!” He felt that she grimaced slightly; he’d overdone it with the apology. In the dim light he shook his head once.
The show seemed ponderously slow.
He glanced at Sophia, who was staring at the stage attentively. He glanced at Zoe, who cast her eyes over him with a coldness he did not understand. Onstage, Scrooge was scrambling about his bedroom as Marley’s Ghost appeared in chains. “You are fettered,” said Scrooge to the ghost. “Tell me why.”
A thought came to Abel like a bat that swooped from the eaves: Zoe was unhappy. The thought became a dark shape in his lap, as though he was required to hold it there.
But no.
Zoe had little kids who kept her very busy, and this was not unhappiness.
Her husband had stayed in Chicago tonight because he had to work, as a lawyer about to be made partner must do. There was nothing wrong with Zoe. She belonged to the privileged layer of society, to what was referred to these days as the one percent, and this was due partly to the hard work and perseverance of her father. Decency was why he was where he was. People had always known to trust him, and trust in business was everything. Zoe had chosen to marry a man who would keep her in this position, and there was nothing wrong with that, not one thing. He had argued with his son-in-law only once, when the young man suggested ways for Abel to not pay so much in taxes. “I only thought—” the fellow began.
“That I am a Republican and don’t believe in big government—and you are right—but I will pay my taxes.” Recalling this, he never understood the fury he had felt.
Abel now took a deep, unquiet breath and sat up straight; he discreetly checked his pulse and found it to be high.
Onstage, Scrooge was peering through the filthy nighttime window. Then he was on his bed listening to the ding-dongs of the bell, then he was off his bed, agitated, saying, “It can’t be!” Abel recalled—at that moment—how his wife had handed him the newspaper at breakfast a few days earlier, tapping with her finger one column. Linck McKenzie, the man who played Scrooge, might be a favorite with the townspeople, he might be a favorite with the students he taught in the MFA program at Littleton College, but he was no favorite of the critic who wrote that he was a lucky man, this Mr. Linck McKenzie, being the only person in the theater who did not have to watch his own performance.
Elaine and Abel had agreed: The review was gratuitously mean. And then Abel had forgotten it. But now the words affected him. Now it seemed that Scrooge really was ridiculous, that the entire thing was arguably ridiculous. It seemed to Abel that everyone was loudly reciting a line, and this caused him discomfort, as though he’d not be able to leave the theater without thinking that everyone he met was reciting a line. Surely going to the theater should not have that effect on a person. He glanced down at sweet Sophia, and she gave him the compressed, fleeting smile of a polite young woman. He squeezed her knee and she became a little girl again, ducking her head, then holding his hand, with the plastic pony gripped in her other.
The Ghost of Christmas Past was saying, “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.” And Scrooge began to cry. The sound was phony, dismissible. Abel closed his eyes. Sophia’s hand slipped from his; he folded his hands on his lap, and soon he was falling asleep. He knew this because of the incongruity of his thoughts, and felt gratitude that he could give himself over to the pleasant exhaustion rolling up against his shoulders; he remembered, and it was like a yellow light shining in the dusk behind his closed eyes, how he had seen Lucy Barton last year when she came to Chicago on her book tour, Lucy Barton, the daughter of his mother’s cousin, oh, that poor girl, and yet there she was, an older woman, and he had stepped into the bookstore and waited in line to have his book signed, and she had said, Abel, and risen, and tears had come into her eyes—all this made him feel happy as he felt himself falling into sleep, but then he was trying to find his mother, riding in an elevator that would not stop when the buttons were pushed, then he was in a narrow hallway, searching for her, going one way then another, sensing her in the darkness—and she was gone; even deep inside the dream he recognized the ancient, unquenchable longing that was not quite panic— He woke as gasps came from the audience.
The lights had gone out. The stage was in darkness. The actors had stopped speaking. Only the EXIT signs shone above the doors. And the rows of lights like bright buttons on the floor of the aisle. Abel could feel fear rising around him like dark water. Sophia began to cry, and other children were crying too. “Mommy?” Abel scooped up the tiny Sophia and tucked her onto his lap. “Ssh,” he said, spreading his hand across the back of her warm head. “It’s nothing, it will be fine.” Still, the child cried. Zoe’s voice said, “Honey, I’m right here.”
How long it stayed dark Abel could not have said, probably no more than a few minutes, but what he was most aware of during this strange time was the number of families that began to argue strenuously, his own included. Elaine said, “Abel, get us out of here. Watch the children.” Already in the darkness people were trying to scramble to the aisle, some flipping on cellphones for the light, so that wrists and cuffs were illuminated in what seemed to be disembodied flickers of an ectoplasmic presence. Zoe said, “Mom, stop. This is how people get trampled to death. Dad, hold Sophia, I’ve got Jake.”
“I want us out of here, Abel,” his wife said. “And if you—”
After many years of marriage things get said, scenes occur, and there is a cumulative effect as well. All this sped through Abel’s heart, that the tenderness between husband and wife had long been attenuating and that he might have to live the rest of his life without it. A sound came from him.
“Dad? Are you okay?” The light of Zoe’s cellphone was aimed toward him.
“I’m fine, honey,” he said. “We’ll wait. Just as you say.”
A voice from the stage called out for folks to remain calm, and then the lights came on, catching families in their various states of panic and disarray. The Blaine family remained where they were—not every family did—and they watched as the show at last continued, but the tension of the event could not fully dissipate, and when, finally, the lights went out, the applause was that of relief.
They were silent in the car, and only when they were close to home did Abel glance in the rearview mirror to ask Sophia if she had been able to enjoy the show in spite of the mishap. “What’s mishap?” she asked.
Zoe said, “When something goes wrong. Like tonight when the lights went out.”
“But why did the lights go out?” Jake asked quietly.
&n
bsp; “We don’t know,” Abel said. “Sometimes a fuse gets blown. No harm done.”
“Exit signs are lit by generators.” This was Elaine’s contribution. “Thank God emergency lights are required by law to have separate sources of energy.”
“Mom, let’s just leave this alone,” said Zoe tiredly. Perhaps Zoe, as grown children so frequently did, found fault with her parents’ marriage, had glimpsed the waning of tenderness over the years, felt for them a deep aversion: My marriage will never be like yours, Dad. Fine, he would have said, that’s fine, honey.
Hungry as he was, he sat with his grandchildren after they were in their pajamas. He made them laugh doing imitations of Scrooge, wanting to rid them of any fear. Sophia suddenly slid from his knee, and in a moment she screamed. It was a piercing, horrifying sound, and she ran into the bedroom where the grandchildren always stayed; the screaming turned to sobs.
Snowball was nowhere to be found.
The car was searched quickly and thoroughly. No plastic pony with bright pink hair was discovered. “I think she left it in the theater, Dad.” Zoe looked at him with apology, and Abel got the car keys and said to Sophia, “I will return with your pony.”
He was dizzy with fatigue.
“Another mizzap,” said Sophia, bashfully. “Right, Grandpa?”
“You go to sleep.” He bent to kiss her. “And when you wake up in the morning, all will be well.”
Driving through the darkened streets, crossing over the river into the center of town, he worried that the theater would be closed. He parked his car on the street and found that the front door of the theater did not yield, nor could anyone be seen through the dark glass. He fumbled for his cellphone and discovered that in his hurry he had left the phone behind. Very quietly he swore, then ran his hand over his mouth. A young man appeared, coming out a side door. Abel called out “Wait!” The fellow must be a theater student, Abel surmised, because he smiled at Abel, and held the door, and when Abel said, “My granddaughter left her toy pony here,” the fellow said, “I think the stage manager is still around, maybe he can help you.”
So Abel was inside. But it was dark and he did not know exactly where he was, as the door he had entered was a side door and seemingly led backstage. Tentatively he touched the wall for a light switch and found none as he stepped forward slowly. But then—ha! He flipped it, but saw only a dim light respond from the distance, enough to illuminate the narrow hallway before him. Yellow-painted brick walls marked with graffiti were on each side of him. He knocked on the first door he saw, and found it to be locked. “Hello?” He called the word out cheerfully, but there was no answer. The place smelled familiar and unmistakably theatrical.
His hunger caused the hallway to seem very long. Abel saw, between two black curtains, what must be the stage. Above him were dark rows of stage lights, unlit, like enormous beetles, waiting. “Hello,” he called again, and again there was no answer, though he sensed now the presence of someone. “Hello? I’m trying to find the stage manager, hello? My granddaughter left her—”
Turning right, he saw above him the pony hanging from a small noose of clothesline that was looped over a bare unlit bulb in the hallway. Snowball, her plastic feet pointing in front of her, her pink hair sticking out from her head, was caught in a look of eternal dismay; her eyes were wide open, their long dark lashes coquettishly splayed.
Behind him was the sudden sound of a door opening, and he turned. There was Linck McKenzie, Scrooge, with his wig off but his makeup still on, which made him look half-crazed. “Hello,” said Abel, holding forth his hand. “My granddaughter left her pony here—” He nodded at it hanging from the lightbulb. “I imagine some student was having a bit of fun, but I need to bring it home or I’ll lose the child’s respect, I’m afraid.”
Scrooge returned the handshake. His hand was bony and strong and very dry. “Come in,” Scrooge said, as though it were an office he was occupying, but it was, Abel saw as he entered, a small square room that must have been used for storage; it had dropcloths and old lamps and a table missing a leg.
Abel said, “I’m afraid I need a stepladder or a chair. Oh, there—” In the corner was an old-fashioned-looking chair with a curved armrest.
Scrooge shut the door behind him and said, “Well, there’s only that one chair, so why don’t you sit.”
“Oh no, no, I hardly need to—”
Scrooge jerked his head in the direction of the chair. “I want you to sit.”
Abel understood then that he was in the presence of instability, but oddly this only caused an increase in his enervation, and after a moment he said politely, “I think I’ll stand, thank you. Is there something I can help you with?” He smiled benignly at Scrooge, who remained leaning against the door. Abel wanted to say, How long do you think this will take? Realizing this was his thought, he understood that he was removed from himself in a way distinct and strange.
Scrooge said, “I’d like to say some things, you see. Then when I’m done, you can go. You’ll manage. You strike me as the kind of old man who thinks he’s in good shape because so far you’ve not had a heart attack.” A mirthless smile came to Scrooge as he studied Abel. “Your clothes are expensive.” He nodded. “A devoted secretary organizes your days. Nothing is really expected of you anymore, you’re a figurehead. A few leadership qualities left. But physical strength, I doubt you have much. So please. Sit.”
Abel stayed exactly where he was, but he felt winded. Everything this wretched man had said was essentially—except for the part about not having had a heart attack yet—true. The heart attack had been only a year ago and had scared Abel severely. He took two steps toward the chair and sat down; the chair swiveled backward, surprising him.
“Weak in the knees,” Scrooge said. “Well, I’m strong as wire. I’m also at the end of my rope. No one should be in a room with a man who’s at the end of his rope.” He laughed, showing his fillings, and Abel now felt a true bolt of alarm. He wondered how long he would have to be gone before his wife—or perhaps Zoe—would drive to the theater, God in heaven.
“That pony belongs to your grandchild?”
“It does,” Abel said. “She’s very attached to it.”
“I hate children,” Scrooge said. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor cross-legged. He was not a young man; Abel was surprised at his suppleness. “They’re little, they move quickly, they’re very judgmental. You look surprised.”
“This whole thing is surprising.” Abel tried to smile, but Scrooge did not smile. Abel continued, his mouth dry, “Look, I’m awfully sorry, but can we—”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Well, I suppose—”
“You’re stuck in a room with a lunatic and you apologize?”
“I see what you mean. Well, I would like to go, if you think—”
“I think I would like to say a few things. I told you that. The first thing I’d like to say is that I’m deeply, deeply tired of the theater. I only went into it because it takes everyone, especially if you were born queer back when I was, it scoops you up and gives you a sense of belonging—which is false, phony, silliness. And the second thing I would like to say is that I caused the lights to go out tonight. I did it with a cellphone inside my nightshirt. It’s all on the Internet, you know, pretty soon you’ll be able to blow up a whole country with a cellphone. But I followed the directions and I was quite surprised. I wanted to cause chaos and I did. Anyway, I had no one to tell. I was quite pleased with myself, and now find it to be a hollow victory.”
“Are you serious?”
“About the hollow victory?”
“About the lights.”
“Completely. Awesome, as the kids would say.” Scrooge shook his head slowly. Accentuating his words with a pointed index finger aimed at Abel, he said, “We all want an audience. If we do something, and no one knows we did it?— Well, then the tree might not have fallen in the forest.” His face opened in surprise. “So there. Now I’ve reported
it, it happened, I’m satisfied. Though not as satisfied as I expected to be, honestly. And what are we going to do with you? You’ll walk out of here and tell the police, or your wife, and eventually Linck McKenzie will be even more of a joke. The town can watch him go down.”
“I’m not interested in that,” Abel said.
“You might be tomorrow. Or the day after.”
“I’m interested in getting the pony back to my granddaughter.”
After a long pause, Scrooge said, “It’s the oddest thing. But that just makes me hurt with jealousy. You probably want to say, ‘If you had a grandchild yourself, Mr. Oddball Theater Queer, you might understand that love.’ ”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all. That’s not close to anything I was thinking. I was thinking about Sophia. Waiting for her pony. I hope she’s been able to fall asleep.”
Scrooge frowned. “Sophia. I suppose this little girl is well off?”
Abel waited a moment before he said, “She is, yes.”
“When you were her age, were you rich?”
“I was not remotely rich.”
“And did you get rich by working hard?”
Abel again hesitated. “I work hard,” he said. “I have always worked hard.”
Scrooge clapped his hands. “Ha! I bet you married your wealth! Don’t blush, old man. It’s terribly American, it’s fine. Nothing to be ashamed of. Oh, I’ve really embarrassed you. Quick, quick, let’s change the subject. This Sophia—do you think she’ll be a hard worker too? I’m concerned. I don’t think people work hard anymore. And these kids—I heard that some preschooler got a gold star just for showing up for the week! My dear man, you’ve turned red as a beet.”