Giggleswick: The Amadán Map

Chapter Twelve: The Amadán Map

“You forgiven me yet?” Elliot asked.

Eliza gave him a wry smile, and her eye looked considerably less swollen. “I don’t have time to be mad –– I have to practice my lines,” she said quickly, handing him a script as they made their way through the hallways toward the theater. “Here, you can help me rehearse.” She pointed to the first line on the page where he was to begin. 

Elliot cleared his throat. “Wanda, is there no hope for us?” he said, reading the line for one of Wailing Wanda’s crew members. 

Eliza gripped the air passionately. “Where art thy will, young Albert? For it is with will and perseverance we shall find our way out of this misty prison,” she said. “Hard to starboard, Albert. Hard to starboard,” she commanded, and she pretended to be yanking on a rope or something nautical like that.  

Elliot’s script read Albert gazes at Wanda with inspiration in his breast, which Elliot ignored and instead continued to his next line. “Where do you find the will, Captain?” he asked. 

“You shall find it in your heart, young seaman,” said Eliza meaningfully, and it was only a second or so before Elliot broke into fits of giggles.

“Alright, alright,” Eliza conceded, trying not to laugh herself. “And then comes my big solo,” she said. She began singing softly under her breath to make sure she knew all of the words, which were mostly about her love of the sea and how this love would find her “a way back to your arms”, as the song title suggested. Eliza got a little carried away with these last few words in which Wanda pined for the comfort of her lover’s arms, and she was soon singing in a high-pitched voice akin to that of an Austrian governess with seven charges clad in sailor suits. This garnered stares from several passing students, though Eliza was too enamored by her own voice to notice.

“Get yourselves backstage –– full run-through today,” Agnes barked at them as they entered the theater. She was flopped in one of the seats and using a pencil to scratch underneath her wig.  

“Now listen up,” she said, hobbling herself backstage once everyone had arrived, “we got three months till show time, people.” She swatted at several pages in her notebook until she found the notes from their last rehearsal. “Uh huuuh,” she groaned, squinting through her bifocals. “Well, gauging from the strangled cat noises you all called singing last week, we’ve got no time to spare.” She hacked several times into her fist and adjusted the shawl around her shoulders. 

“Today’s your first full run through, but it’s also the first day you’ll be singing along with Ms. Cass Tinnettes’s piano playing.” Agnes gestured with her cane to the lady behind the piano. “In case you’re all blind, Ms. Tinnettes is the music teacher here, and she accompanies the musicals every year ... to the best of her ability,” Agnes added under her breath. 

“Ya’ll may call me Mama Cass if you like,” the woman yelled to them over the piano lid with a wave, and Agnes made a sort of gurgling noise. Elliot saw that Ms. Tinnettes was rather large and draped in something that looked like a curtain, and her backside drooped off all sides of the piano bench. She was wearing a large string of pearls around her neck that looked to be cutting off her circulation, and her wavy brunette hair was parted down the middle.  

“Hey!” croaked Agnes, poking at the air with her cane to get their attention. “Let’s get a move on. I don’t want to be here all night –– got a pot roast in the slow cooker,” she choked, wiping her nose with her shawl as she hobbled back off the stage to sit on her stool in the front row. “And don’t let me catch any of you snotty little girls singing pretty,” she snarled at them from her perch. “Sing like women, dammit!”