THIS WAY TO LOVE.
Parents clap, whistle, and cheer as the sheep break out of their slow-crawl toward hate and reverse course, joining together in a joyous embrace of unity and acceptance—this is, after all, Morningside Montessori, and it wouldn’t be Spotlight without Mr. Noah turning up the music and coming out to join the teens in dance to mark the end of Inhabitancy. Gary and I exchange glances—knowing what we now do about him, we can’t help but feel gutted at his childlike ebullience, his blissful ignorance, the last dance of his career as head of school. The whole world is ending tonight, and we are helpless to change it.
It’s then that the sheep clear out and the lights go down. When they go back on again, slowly, and dimly, there are only two People Puppets—Nick and Phoebe—for the finale they promised. They’re presenting as two sheeted figures: a woman and a dog. The Puppet-Woman is sitting on the floor, crying, holding her heart as she waves goodbye and blows farewell kisses to invisible people, bereft until she looks down at the Puppet-Dog, who crawls over to her and puts its head in her lap. And then, through the magic of yards and yards of fabric and some kind of pulley system, the smaller Puppet-Dog—Phoebe—is hoisted up into a sling that the Puppet-Woman slips over her head and around her neck. Suddenly, the big sad papier-mâché face is gone, replaced by a giant papier-mâché happy face. A sense of beatific bliss, created through warm yellow lighting, bathes the stage: the once-sad Puppet-Woman is now wearing a Puppet-Dog, and she is saved.
It takes a few seconds for me to realize that they are acting out my life. That they, spies in our house for three weeks, have been preparing to make a public mockery of my story, of my most private pain.
Before I can turn to Gary and say Let’s leave, the room explodes in applause. I feel people’s eyes on me, on the sling, on Charlotte, on Gary; it’s clear to everyone who the People Puppets modeled their closing act on—me, standing there, wearing a dog. I’m so embarrassed I can barely breathe.
I wish the floor would open up or that I could disappear into the crowd the way Teddy did a few weeks ago when I came to talk about my writing, but for once the ground I’m standing on feels solid and real. It is not going anywhere, and neither am I. I glance at Gary, expecting to read shame on his face, too, but his eyes are soft, and full of love and understanding and compassion. “I’m sorry,” he mouths, and we lean against each other, holding each other up, I realize, the way we always do, while everyone turns back to the stage. Then all the People Puppets and all the children, the little ones and the big ones, including Mr. Noah, who looks like one of them, return to take a noisy group bow. Nick puts his arm around Mr. Noah and hugs him, and then Phoebe, still dressed as a dog, hugs Nick. Grace finds them and joins the hug. Nick searches the crowd of onstage sheep-kids to find Teddy, and suddenly he is next to him, absorbed into the hug, too. Nick starts to cry, his body shaking in its giant white sheet: his father’s brain is dying, and all he can do is weep and let himself be held together by love.
I reach for Gary’s hand and hold it. Our eyes lock. I feel all the available light—all the life—all the tiny shards of joy and sadness and grief and love—flow through me, the chimera of the past finally giving way to the reality of the present: we are who we are; we are doing our best; it will all work out. It is a choice—to accept, to believe, to remain—and I am choosing all of it now. It’s then that my phone vibrates in my pocket. I’m certain it’s Daisy, calling to tell me that Glenn has left us, that the world as we’ve known it is gone again. But I’m not ready to leave it yet. I stay, where we are right now, in this place, in this moment, for as long as I can.