The children nod and then begin reading from the pages in their hands.
“Oh no! What shall I do?” cries a slender girl with the vocal commitment of a Disney channel starlet. “Our finances are a mess!”
“You need the greatest h-h-hero the world has ever seen!” cries another child, stumbling a bit over the words.
“Superman?” asks my daughter Hannah, her eyes shining.
“No,” says a small boy, stepping forward. “An accountant!”
Everyone laughs as the tiny ‘accountant’ strides forward.
“These numbers are all messed up. We need a tax attorney, too!”
Right then, the red-haired man’s cell phone rings. He glances at it, puzzled.
“Sorry,” he says quietly as he heads to the door. “I think I grabbed my wife’s cell phone this morning. Keep going! You’re doing great!”
The play continues, but my eyes follow him out into the hallway. I glance between Hannah’s performance and the man I can still see through the glass wall. He is staring at the phone. He hasn’t answered the call, but his expression grows darker as hescrolls through notifications. Then his face shifts like he’s been punched. I try to look away, but it is hard to ignore how upset he is, leaning against the wall, pulling his hand slowly over his face. I tear my gaze back to my daughter.
Hannah grins at me as she clutches a paper with our company’s Murano Accounting logo printed on it, and I smile back encouragingly. She loves being on stage, just like I did at her age. I used to tap-dance and sing even though my mother could never afford to get us lessons. I copied whatever I saw on television, and I thought that meant I was a great performer until I got old enough to compare myself with the other girls whose mothers had bought them real lessons at local dance studios. It was one step on my path to realizing that our family wasn’t like other families, that our life with my mother was a slow-moving trainwreck.
Does Hannah need dance class?I wonder. It’s one of a long line of doubts I have about whether I’m sufficiently enriching my child’s future. The constant worry hums in the back of my mind, a whispering voice that says I am not being a good enough parent.
She grins again, and I smile back. I can’t help but feel grateful to the man who pulled this silliness together, especially if he is having a bad day. I want to tell him that much, at least, whenever this is over—that he did something special for these kids.
But when I turn around to look for him, he is gone.
