The audience was huge. The house was sold out. David and Brie sat in a private box to the left of the stage with Malachai and Amanda in the box to their left. They’d been brought an autographed program from the entire cast. David had arranged for a bouquet of roses to be delivered to Miranda, telling her to break a leg and rock the stage. She didn’t have a lot of solos, but she was onstage enough to be a staple.
There was a deafening silence that fell over the auditorium and the house lights went down. There was an electric quiet in the air. Brie leaned into David and laid her head against his chest as they awaited the curtain opening and the opening number to come up. “Excited?” he asked as she leaned into his side.
“Well, of course. I’ve always wanted to see this play live.”
“Well, it’s finally happening and starring one of our grandchildren.” He brushed his fingertips along her cheek. “Are you happy, love?”
She smiled softly in the dark. “Very.” The curtain started to part and she looked up at him. “Shh, it’s starting.” The music came up and Mark and Roger started their number. They were both very glad to see that the young man playing Mark wasn’t Zack.
As the play progressed, they laughed with the jokes as they were made and cried where tears were called for. When Miranda was doing “Over the Moon”, they laughed as she sang, “It feels like I’m being tired to the hood of a yellow rental trucked that’s being packed in with fertilizer and fuel oil, Pushed over a cliff by a suicidal Mickey Mouse!”
During the intermission, Will was sent to get Brie and David both a bottle of water while they got up and moved about the halls to stretch their legs. “My back can’t take this sitting for hours and hours in that hard ass chair. It hurts like crazy”, Brie said as she rubbed her lower back where she’d had a fusion of the vertebrae corrected years before.
“Are you ok, baby?” David asked when he saw her carefully rubbing her back.
“I’m fine, David. My back is just sore.”
“I still worry about you Brie, and I will until the day one of us is cold and in the ground.” He pulled her close and kissed her temple.
Her arms wound around his waist and he pressed her head against his chest. “I know, baby. And I love you all the more for it. Now, let’s get back to our seats. The show will be starting soon.”
“When Will gets back with our water, I’ll have him see about a cushion or something soft for you to sit on.”
“I’m not worried about it David. We’ll be out of here soon.”
“I want you to be comfortable.”
“I’ll be fine, David. I’ll need a hot soak in the tub when we get back to the hotel, but I’ll be fine. Now let’s get situated again before the play starts again.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the box so that they could be seated. Will walked in with their bottled water and David asked him to see about a cushion. Brie looked at him from the corner of her eye. “I said not to make a big deal out of it, honey. I can tough it out for the last act of the play.”
“I want you to be comfortable and the theater manager told us that if we needed anything to let him know. You need a cushion to sit on for your back and I’m letting him know that. Just let me take care of you.”
She smiled. “You do a very good job of it, no matter how big a fit I throw.” She kissed his cheek. “Thank you, baby.”
“You’re very welcome. I’m just doing my job.”
Will came back into the box with a cushion for Brie to sit on. Brie got situated and snuggled against her husband to watch the rest of the show just as the lights were going down on the auditorium. When the curtain came up and the stage lights went on Brie smiled when she heard the music. She knew the song and when the cast started singing, she mouthed the words along with them. It was one of her favorite songs in the play. “525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.” She knew the song like the back of her hand. The second act of the play was going to be electric, she could feel it.
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The family was escorted backstage after the show was over. Brie wanted to give her granddaughter something special for her first starring role on Broadway. She’d achieved the dream. When they spotted her they walked over applauding. “Brava!” Brie said. “Brava Diva.”
Miranda smiled. “Thank you everyone!” she said with a smile. “I’m so glad that you guys came back.”
“Miranda, I have something special for you”, Brie said as the noise calmed down.
“What Gramma?”
Brie pulled a small box out of her clutch. “It’s a little something Grampa and I picked up on the way out that we wanted to give you after the play debuted.”
Miranda took the box gingerly and opened it. Inside was a diamond tennis bracelet set in a 24k white gold chain. She looked at it in awe. “Oh my goodness”, she gasped. “It’s beautiful!” She jumped and hugged both other her grandparents. “Thank you so much. I absolutely love it.”
“Your grandmother picked it out”, David said.
“I don’t care, Grampa. I love it. Thank you so much, both of you.”
Malachai and Amanda laughed. “We didn’t get you a diamond bracelet, but we did buy you flowers to say congratulations”, he said and handed her the bouquet of lilies and baby's breath. “I had to make sure that they weren’t roses like Grampa sent.”
“I love them, Daddy. Thank you.” She hugged her father then turned to her mother. “Thank you too, Mama. I’m sure you’re the one that picked the flowers.”
“I know what you like, so of course I did”, Mandy said with a smile. “You were fantastic, baby girl.”
“Thank you. So, when do you all go home?”
“We go home tomorrow”, David said. “Gramma and I have a massage with Aunt Maddie and Aunt Lilah, and Gramma’s getting some acupuncture done for her hands.”
“That sucks.”
“Well dear, the arthritis and Carpal Tunnel have started making it difficult for me to even hold a fork to eat. Something must be done about this”, Brie said.
“If you want Dad and me to stick around until the play is over and you find someone to rent the loft out to, we can”, Mandy offered.
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it tonight and give you a call in the morning. It might actually be helpful.”
“Well, give it some thought and get back to us”, Malachai said. “We’re going to go to the hotel for the night and get some rest.”
Miranda nodded. “I understand. I’m going to do the same after I get out of costume and listen to the director bitch for a little while. I love you all and I’ll see you all later.” She stood up and gave everyone a hug.
With farewells said, David and Brie headed toward the rear entrance so that they could go back to their hotel. Malachai and Amanda were escorted out the front door where Malachai was asked his opinion of the show and how well he enjoyed everything that New York had to offer. “The show was amazing- but I’m biased because my daughter played Maureen. Of course I’m going to love the show, right?” He made his comments on New York and how Reckless Disregard always loved coming to the city. When asked if his parents were in attendance, he told them to call his father and ask him themselves. Malachai really didn’t want to put any attention on his retired parents. It wasn’t fair to them. They had just come out to watch Miranda perform professionally for the first- and unbeknownst to any of them, the only- time.
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After they got back to their hotel room, David put on the TV to watch a little news and Brie grabbed the ice bucket and went down the hall to get ice. She wanted a night cap after such a day. It was a good day, but it was a rather long one. Too long, if one had asked her. She made her way down the hall toward the ice machine.
Once the bucket was full and she was headed back down the hall, she heard a young man’s voice hollering at her. “Hey!” she heard and turned toward the voice.
“Can I help you?” she asked when she saw the person hollering at her.
“Tell that bitch of a granddaughter of yours to stop lying and saying that she’s carrying my baby”, the young man said to her as he approached her.
“Excuse me?”
The young man moved as though he were about to put his hands on her, thinking that because she was elderly she was helpless. “You heard me”, he said as he reached for her.
She threw the ice in his face out of instinct. Her flight or fight instinct kicked in and she was always a fighter. While he was stunned, she slapped the shit out of the boy in front of her. “Young man, you decided to mess with the wrong person. I may well be in my 80’s but helpless I am not. Now, I suggest you start running because if I push this button on my bracelet”, she said and pointed to the life alert bracelet she wore around her tiny wrist, “three things will happen. One, my husband and our bodyguard will come running down here. Two, hotel security will be notified and come running. And three, the police will come straight away. Now, try me. I dare you.” Her finger hovered over the button on the bracelet as she waited for the young man to make up his mind.
“Just tell Miranda to stop telling people she’s pregnant by me. It’s a bald faced lie. I know she was seeing one of the stage hands after I got fired. That baby is his, not mine.” The young man ran off as quickly as he appeared.
Brie shook her head and carefully bent over to pick up the ice bucket, her hand going to her sore lower back as her spine screamed at her. Once she had the bucket in her hand she went back to the ice machine and refilled it. The young man had the audacity to come after her. She shook her head in disbelief. It was a sad thing indeed that he thought to come after an old woman. Once the ice bucket was full she made her way back down the hall to the room she was sharing with her husband. After slipping the key in the door and going in, she got her husband’s attention. “Hey baby. I’m back.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Hey baby, what took so long?”
“Oh nothing really. You might want to get ahold of Will and tell him to keep an eye out. I just had a run in with Zachary in the hallway. He won’t mess with me again, that’s for sure.”
David reached for his phone on the table. “What happened?”
“In essence, he told me to tell Miranda to stop telling everyone that the baby is his. Thought he was going to put his hands on me and got a face full of ice as well as slapped.”
David had been trying to dial the number and had to stop because he was laughing too hard. “What?” Brie recounted verbatim what had happened in the hall as she tried to make them each a drink for the evening and he laughed hysterically. “I cannot believe this little shit head”, he said as he called Will. “Will, keep an eye out for Zack. He just came to the hotel and decided he was going to harass Brie while she was getting ice for drinks tonight.” Will agreed to keep an eye out for Zack and thought that it was hilarious that Brie owned that little punk. He was going to be sure that Miranda heard. She was sure to tell the rest of the cast how her 81 year old grandmother put Zack’s cocky ass in his place.
Once he hung up, Brie handed him his drink. “So, are we having a laugh at Zachary’s expense love?” she asked as she sat down next to him and curled against his side as she always did.
“For the moment, I suppose we are. I can’t believe that little punk thought that he was going to put his hands on you. What a moron.”
“Yes, David. I think we’ve established that already. He found out how stupid he was the day he decided to be a prick to Miranda at homestead.”
“This is true, but I didn’t think he was as stupid as he just proved himself to be. He’s in a rude awakening, that for sure.”
“Yep. On the other hand, I hope we’re still around long enough to meet her Marine friend.”
“I agree. I’m impressed with him so far. I would really like to meet him in person.”
“Maybe we’ll have the chance.”
“I hope so because it would be nice to have another Marine in the family, that’s for sure. At least we know that he’ll treat Miranda right.”
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Will was extra vigilant that night. Having been told that Zachary Winfield had paid Brie Draiman a visit was cause for worry, especially since the elderly woman had made a fool of him. No man liked to be made a fool by a woman, but most especially not by a woman in her 80’s.
Miranda thought that her grandmother making a fool of the father of her unborn child was hilarious and planned to start telling everyone in the cast about it the next day as they were all getting ready to go on for the night.
Her parents called her to make sure she was alright and to tell her that they were there if she needed someone to talk to. As long as she was healthy, they were happy. The first sign that something was wrong and they would forsake their flight home so that they could take care of their daughter and get her ready to go home. Malachai and Amanda Draiman may not have always had wedded bliss, but they were both always there for any of their six children.
As Miranda laid her head on her pillow that night, she could sleep in peace because she knew that Will was there to keep her safe, that her parents had Travis to protect them and that her grandparents had the much feared Morbus watching over them. Peaceful wasn’t far behind that final thought.
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