Читать книгу The Folded Heart - Michael Collier - Страница 14

The Pageant

When Brian McCarthy, the male lead

in our third-grade, Spanish-class

production of Alice in Wonderland,

didn’t show, Mrs. Carrera’s husband,

Tito, had to read lines from the wings,

where he also managed the plywood

and canvas scenery. Paunchy in a white

T-shirt, sleeves covering tattooed anchors,

he lost whole sentences in drapery

and screens, which made Alice, the precocious

Diane Grasso, bossier than ever, more confident,

so that she served up tildes and rolled

r’s like virtuoso yo-yo tricks.

The pageant made city news in the morning paper:

a photograph framed by the ratty proscenium

of the social hall, in which Mrs. Carrera

occupies the foreground, holding

her blue-and-red velveteen

needlepoint portrait of Kennedy

(her scapular of gratitude for America)

while the cast stands by height

in tiers behind her, and Tito out of sight

in the wings smokes in his folding chair,

a hand on the drapery cords, his feet

propped on the tiny canvas door he made for Alice.