Page 114 of Just Ten Seconds

He grunts as if I’m lying to him. “You’re back to looking like a car ran over your cat. Where’s the smile you’ve been wearing the last few weeks?”

“I smiled before.”

“A fake smile. As good as the one I have when I’m wearing my dentures.” He points his fork at me with every syllable. “You’re doing a good job with those kids at the theater.”

“That’s just what you’ve heard.”

“I see it with my own two eyes. While you’re busy prancing around the stage with those kids, I’ve kept to the back. You’re good at keeping them in line. I would have given that Ariel a swift kick in the you know where with that attitude. But you got to her.”

She was a tough cookie to crack, but once we tapped into her ability to let the reality go, she’s been doing great.

I lower the pot of coffee to the table and give him my full attention. “They’re good kids. I’m not doing anything spectacular.”

“Poppycock.” A tiny bit of food spits from his mouth. He takes his napkin and wipes his mouth, and then he leans forward with a raised finger. “You use Meisner and Stanislavski. Those are powerhouse acting techniques, and you were able to connect them with children. If I had known you had that in you, I would have gotten you over to the theater a long time ago.”

His knowledge of methods intrigues me. I never would have pegged old man Kenner as a man who knew anything about the art of acting.

“How did you get involved with the theater?”

He lifts his mouth up in a sideways smile. “My wife. She was an actress a long time ago.” There’s a far-off stare in his eyes as he glances out the window onto Main Street. There’s a vacant chair across from him. A spot I’m now sure his late wife once sat. “I stayed on the committee. When you get to be my age, you’ll see you have to be involved in a lot of things or else you lose your mind.”

The restaurant is pretty quiet, so instead of walking away from him, as I usually do, I take a seat. He looks surprised to see me do so.

“Why do you come here?” I ask. “I know you’ve been eating here for thirty-five years. Lunch on Fridays, breakfast on Sundays. But everything is new. The staff, the menu, the decor. You send perfectly prepared food back and give Nick a hard time even though you know that is how he prepares it.”

Mr. Kenner sits up a little straighter. His hands rest on his lap as he looks around the Harvest Café. His pale eyes seem to take in everything from the wood plank floors to the subway tiles behind the coffee bar. He lets out a deep breath, exhaling his whole being in that moment.

“It’s the bones,” he says.

I’m confused by his meaning, so I just sit here and let him wax nostalgic.

His eyes glaze over. “You can put up fancy tiles and hang your lights—which, in my day, were barn garbage, and now, they’re trendy. You can put cream cheese in my sandwich, but it’s still the same place. Right over there in that booth, I asked my wife to marry me. My kids used to have breakfast with me every Sunday in a red booth that was in this very spot. And when I put my dog to sleep, Nick’s grandfather made me an ice cream at that counter. You can’t change the past. It’s the foundation.” He looks around the room and lets out a deep breath. “You also can’t live in it. Change is a good thing. You said so yourself. You can’t stop it from happening, so you just go with it. That’s what I do. I come here, just as I always did. I fight the boy, and sometimes, he appeases me. He lets me have my memory of what it was like a long time ago. That’s why he always leaves this table open for me. He knows I want to look out the window.”

I didn’t know that about Nick, but it sounds like something he’d do. “You don’t think letting go of the past helps keep the hurt away?”

“If I forget the hurt, I also forget the good times.”

And this is why you should always talk to your elders. They might not roll with the punches the way you do, and their patience is most certainly shortened, but they always have the ability to put things into perspective.

“You got me there.”

He looks back out the window, down the street in the direction of the theater. “Did you know they’re putting on a production of Footloose?”

I place the tray on the table and tap my fingers against it. “That’s a good show. The kids will love doing it.”

“Kids?” He looks confused by my comment. “The theater isn’t just for children. We have an adult program too. I already told them you’d try out.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re ready for your next move,” he declares.

“You think so?”

“I do,” he states with a firm head nod. “But first, you’re gonna go over to the kitchen and tell him green peppers have no place in my damn potatoes!”

When opening night of The Little Mermaid arrives, I’m backstage, getting the kids into costumes and making sure everyone is on cue. These kids have worked so hard, and Amanda has put so much effort into this. I can’t wait to see how they do.

When the curtain opens and the lights shine in the dark theater, my heart leaps at the sight of the set. When I saw the pieces in Dean’s shed, it did nothing to furnish my imagination of what the finished product would look like. Vibrant seascapes and coral reefs stretch across the stage. Some structures go as high as eight feet, and there’re even two fabric structures on each end with a wind machine blowing upward, mimicking the flow of the ocean. Ariel’s rock is stage right and looks so realistic that I’m in awe.