Grey Hearts and Flowers

We've Got a Really Big Show: Part II

Thank you a thousand times over for your patience and your support of my stories. There will be more of both soon. Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday. Happy New Year! ❤❤❤

Now, another holiday... Back to July 4th!

"In the little little town of Kittery, a wee wee Whipple is born," Tilly sings as the colonial dressed and orange life-vested kids trample each other across the makeshift stage to see America's newborn prodigal son—William Whipple Junior.

"As the snow came down..." Tilly continues, as some stage-side kids chuck boxfuls of shredded up paper and packing supplies out to simulate a January snowstorm in Maine. It's a sideways snow, but we're suspending disbelief all over the fucking place today. "Out came the town... to kiss this blessed baby child on the crown."

You'd think the wisemen were about to show up at the manger from the sound of this.

Little Suzetta Buchanan—who's playing Mother Whipple—holds an anatomically correct baby doll out for the world to see. I know it's anatomically correct because, in this Lion King moment, the anatomical correctness is not covered by the blanket and flashed like Gordon to the crowd.

"It's a boy! It's a boy!" Little Mother Whipple calls out and my grandfather, who's seated in the front row of the audience, hollers back, "We can see it!" Everyone laughs, except my grandmother and a horrified Grace.

"This thing is worse up on its feet than it was on the page," I whisper backstage to Taylor from my place of peeking at the curtain. It's hard to watch this monstrosity on its feet—and not just Tilly, the play, too. We didn't make cuts or changes to the opening, so as not to alert her to our shenanigans, but fuck is this whole mess terrible.

"I think the piano accompaniment is off, Mr. Grey," Taylor says as he adjusts his cherries drooping on each side of his wood—on his costume, that is. He's a tree. He's always a tree. Unless he's a vegetable.

"You think?" I say, sarcastically, as I watch Tilly's mother pound away on some eighties keyboard with her pink lacquered hooves.

"Do I look alright, sir?" Taylor asks me. "These cherries are quite heavy for the stems and they tend to fall off." He works to secure one that's hanging on within an inch of its life from a green pipe cleaner.

"Did Gail make your costume?" I give him the thrice over. If so, she did it at midnight, on sleeping pills, with her left foot.

"No, the preschoolers made this one, sir."

"Oh, then yes. No one was ever a better tree than you, Taylor."

"Thank you, sir." He's so humbled by that compliment, it's troubling.

I peek out at the stage again, but before I can focus on the action happening, I feel another sort of action happening on my right ass cheek. Either Taylor is prodding me with his limb or there's a bug in my revolutionary knickers. No, that's not the bite of an insect—it's a pinch, from greedy fingers. One of those mothers is trying to accost me again. I turn to face the pinching perpetrator, pissed. "I have a wife, you know—"

"And she thinks you look quite adorable," Ana says.

Ana!

I close the curtain and walk down the few deck steps to face her. "Well, you're quite adorable yourself, Mrs. Grey," I smile and give her a sweet kiss. "Wait, why are you up, walking around and pinching my bottom?"

"Because if I sit down I can't get up in time for my part." She puts her hands on top of her belly and I place my hands on top of hers. "Plus, I just felt like making myself busy and the pinching of your bottom seemed like a good way to expend my energy."