Amelia turned away, but I could see the tears in her eyes. It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry. I think part of me wanted to cry, too.
"I am not asking you to do it for me," she said softly,"I am really not, if you say no, I'll not say anything bad about you. I promise. but if you'd like to do something kind for a wonderful man who means so much to me...will you just think about it?"
Her eyes looked like those of a cocker spanial that had just messed on the rug. I looked down at my feet.
"I don't have to think about it." I finally said it,"I'll do it!"
I really didn't have a choice, did I?
The old Mason wrote The Winter Angel one day and decided to put that on play instead. After I read the script, it wasn't that bad actually. It's basically the story of a man who had lost his wife a few years back. This guy, Harry Preston, used to be real religious, but he had crises of faith after his wife died during childbirth. He's raising this little girl all on his own, but he hasn't been the greatest father, and what the little girl wants for Christmas is a music box with an angel engraved on top, a picture of which she'd cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and hard to find the gift but, he can't find it anywhere. So it's Christmas eve and he's still searching, and while he's out looking for stores, he comes across a strange women he's never seen before, and she promises him to help him find the gift for his daughter. First, though, they help this homeless person, then they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then visit a lonely old women who just wanted some company on Christmas eve. At this point, mysterious women asks Harry Preston what he wants for Christmas, and he says he wants his wife back. She brings him to the city fountain and tells him to look in the water and he'll find what he's looking for. When he looks in the water, he sees the face of his little girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While he was sobbing, the mysterious lady ran off, and Harry Preston searches but can't find her anywhere. Eventually he heads home, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind. He walks into his little girl's room, and her sleeping figure makes him realize that she's all he has left of his wife, and he starts to cry again because he knows he hasn't been a good enough father to her. Next morning, magically, the music box is underneath the tree, and angel that's engraved on it looks exactly like the women he'd seen the night before.
So, the play wasn't bad, really.
The next day I talked to miss chole, went through the audition and got the part. Eddie, by the way, wasn't upset at all. In fact, I could tell he was actually relieved about the whole thing. When miss chole asked him if he'd be willing to let me play the role of Harry Preston, his face sort of relaxed right there and one of his eyes popped back open. "Y-y-yes, a-a-a-a-absolutely," he said, stuttering,"I-i-i- un-un-un-understand." It practically took him ten seconds to get the words out.
For his generosity, Miss chole gave him the role of homeless person, and we knew he'd do fairly well in that role. The homeless person, you see, was completely mute, but the angel always knew what he was thinking. At one point in the play she has to tell the mute homeless person that God will always watch out for him because God especially cares for the poor and downtrodden. That will be one of the tip-offs to the audience that she'd be sent from heaven. Old Mason is being attacked emotionally.
Our vacation got started next week, so is our rehearsals, we rehearsed in the classroom, because the play house won't open the door for us untill we'd got all the "little bugs" out of our performance. By little bugs, I mean our tendency to accidentally knock over the material of props. They've been putting all the stuffs there and started making them, so we can't really mess things up before it's even started. So, we need to practice until we'd worked out our "little bugs". Fortunately the old Mason wasn't involved with the actual production of the play, because of all his church duties and school duties. The role fell to Miss chole, and the first thing she told us to do was to memorize our lines in a month. She gave us plenty time and warned us to memorize it word to word and line to line in a month. We had enough of time in our hand, it was the start of May but the play was in August, so we'd get more than normal time for the rehearsals, and old Mason didn't want it to be performed too close to Christmas so as not to interfere with "its true meaning".
to be continued...