While Renee falls in line at the register, I get to work, kicking down the door of every blog and community calendar in search of alternative afternoon plans. My eyes light up on the park district website right as Renee returns with a butter-stained pastry bag. Before she can sit, I pocket my phone, shove up from the table, and duck under the strap of my messenger bag. “C’mon.”
“Come on where?” Renee presses.
“My place first. After that, you’ll see.”
Renee grumbles in protest the whole walk back to my apartment, where I haul two camp chairs out of my storage locker, each one folded and stuffed in its nylon drawstring sack. We each sling one over our shoulders, and I check my broken internal compass against the map on my phone. “It’s a bit of a walk,” I warn.
“A bit of a walk to where?”
“The park.”
Renee waits for more of an explanation, but I don’t offer one. I just lead us off in probably the right direction.
“Why the park?” Renee presses, not willing to drop the interrogation. When I don’t respond, she grinds to a halt, dropping her chair on the sidewalk with a swishy clatter. She folds her arms over her chest, one brow cocked in a challenge. Once again, she’s calling my bluff.
“What if you just went with me on this?” I suggest, knowing that, for her, this is an enormous ask. “What if you didn’t know all the details ahead of time? What if you trusted me?”
We stand in silence for a long moment. Renee doesn’t quite smile, but her face relaxes, all the hard creases smoothing out to something softer. More willing. “Okay.” She bends to pick up her camp chair. “I trust you.”
Those three little words echo through me like a song in a canyon.She trusts me.A metallic feeling coats the entire inside of my body as we walk the rest of the way to the park, where a group of parents, siblings, and strangers have laid out a patchwork of picnic blankets. I find us a spot and set down my camp chair, freeing it from its nylon prison.
“Is this Shakespeare in the park?” Renee guesses.
“Nope. Better.” I unfold my chair and motion for Renee to dothe same. She obliges, and we sit down with our chocolate croissants just in time for the show to begin. Eight minutes late. I like these people already.
“Good afternoon,” a woman in a floral muumuu greets us. “Welcome to the Chicago Park District Kids Theater Camp production…”
Renee twists to look at me, eyes wide with disbelief. “A children’s theater camp production?” she whisper-shouts with the enthusiasm I’d expect had I brought her to a Broadway production.
“Please silence all cell phones and avoid talking during the show,” the muumuu woman says directly to us. “These kids have worked really hard for the last six weeks, and they’re excited to show you what they’ve learned.” She swoops a hand across the stage—more of a platform, really—and steps aside to make room for three miniature pirates, each of their costumes at entirely different tiers of effort. One looks to be handsewn, another cobbled together from the best Village Thrift had to offer, and the final of the three kids wears his street clothes and an eye patch.
This proves to be a bit of a theme throughout the performance. There’s a real breadth of effort and enthusiasm among the cast of whatever G-rated pirate show this is. I can’t hear much of what the kids are saying, and the ones who enunciate are let down by their castmates who skip entire lines and seemingly scenes, but over the course of forty-five minutes, I watch Renee come alive. She’s the first on her feet for a standing ovation, eyes welling up with tears when the cast lines up for one final bow. The pirates grab each other’s tiny hands, reach them toward the sky, then all at once fold in half at the hips to the raucous applause of their parents, siblings, babysitters, and neighbors. And us.
On the walk back to my place, Renee is still buzzing as we take turns recounting our favorite parts of the show.
“I liked how the pirate with the eye patch sang all of his lines,” Renee says. “That was a bold choice. He really committed.”
“That was good,” I agree. “But was it as good as the girl who kept accidentally slapping people with her fairy wings every time she turned around?”
“Nothing could be as good as that,” Renee insists. “Actors will study her physical comedy for decades.”
“And to think we may have seen some of her earliest work,” I muse. “For free, nonetheless.”
“Yeah, how did you find this, by the way?”
“I remembered what you said about your dad signing you up for all those theater camps at the park district, and I knew there was a park district not too far from here.”
Renee’s pace slows as she blinks the wonder from her eyes. They’re a soft, velvety blue, almost awestruck. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“Of course I did. That was the first time you made the theater face.”
“Thewhat?”
“You know. Your theater face. The face you make when you talk about theater.” I close my eyes, referencing the memory of her in my kitchen, swinging her legs and rambling about productions long gone. “You look…glowy,” I say. “Confident. Like…like the world is made out of hope.”
I open my eyes, and Renee looks back at me, raking her teeth over her plush bottom lip. “Hope, huh?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “It’s the theater face. It’s really cute.”
