Noah McNichol and the Backstage Ghost by Martha Freeman

Author:Martha Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
Published: 2021-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I gave myself two weeks to save the day.

I should have made it three.

First, I was busy rehearsing and memorizing lines for four separate characters.

Four!!!

Take that, Fuli, who only has to play Hamlet, and Clive, who thinks he’s some kind of a big deal because he gets to be the villain.

After that—boom—it was Passover.

* * *

For the memorizing, I gave up playing ShredSauce and stayed awake an extra half hour every night, which, when you think about it, that’s commitment to my art right there.

Once I started to get the hang, Mom helped me run lines. She was good in the scene in the graveyard. There’s a part where Hamlet is talking to a skull and I, Gravedigger One, am hanging around along with Hamlet’s friend Horatio.

It was Saturday afternoon, and we were at the kitchen table. There were no skulls available, so Mom took a green apple from the bowl, looked at it sadly, and said, “ ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.’ ” And when the speech goes on—“ ‘Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?’ ”—Mom’s voice caught, and she got tears in her eyes.

“Whoa, you’re really into this,” I said.

Mom sniffed. “I don’t see that line anywhere in the script, Noah.”

“Oh, sorry. I mean, it’s great that you’re into it. But IRL—are you okay, Mom?”

“I’m fine. I was”—she sniffed again—“thinking about my dad.”

“Did Grandpa like apples?”

That made her smile. “Funny guy. Like your father. And mine, too, I guess, because gibes and gambols—jokes and pranks—make me think of him.”

My grandfather died last year, some kind of heart something. He was fine, and then my grandmother called, and then Mom was crying and Dad was hugging her, and then we were on a plane to California for the service. That’s where those grandparents lived; when we visited them we’d go to Disneyland and Universal and the beach.

They never visited us. They didn’t like the climate, they said.

I was sad my grandfather was dead, mostly sad for my grandmother because now she was by herself. But for real? My grandfather had never been part of my everyday life. It was rare for me to think about him. Now I saw for my mom it was different.

“They talk about death a lot in Hamlet. Did you notice?” I asked Mom.

“I noticed,” Mom said. “And Claudius says since death is natural, you shouldn’t be too sad. ‘’Tis a fault to heaven,’ if you are.”

“I know,” I said, “but Claudius is the villain, don’t forget. It’s not like you can trust him for good advice.”

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