Page 88 of Not Home Alone

The audience applauds. I’m pretty sure I hear a woman in the audience say something about wanting to give my butt a standing ovation and someone else shushes her. A little kid asks if the big mouse is dead. Mouse King calls out, ad-libbing, that he’s all good, getting another laugh.

The lighting shifts. A sudden blackout, then gold, warm light. Behind the screen, the mouse army scatters. I stand center stage and remove my Nutcracker mask, revealing my face to the audience. I remember one of my favorite stage directions in the script said: This is the important part. Everyone should be quiet now. If there’s a baby crying in the audience, that’s okay. It’s a baby. But everyone else should be quiet.

The playwright would be pleased to know that it is indeed now very quiet as Merrily walks on stage as Clara. I can’t see her, but I can tell she’s making a slow and careful approach, and it feels so different from the last time I was on stage with her. I was dreading our scenes together ten years ago. Now I can’t wait to kiss her.

“Nutcracker?” Clara says. She sounds all choked up. “We won. Thou fought bravely… Nutcracker, thou art standing differently… Thou art standing like a person who stands. Not like a notcracker… I mean—a nutcracker!” The audience laughs, amiably, and I can hear Merrily smiling. “Not like a nutcracker stands. Nutcrackers are stiff and they stand like there’s somewhere they have to be, but they can’t go there. But you, you’re standing like you could go somewhere if you wanted to… Can you?”

I can, but I don’t want to leave you, baby, is what I want to say.

Slowly, I turn to face her.

Clara takes a step back as we lock eyes and it’s electric. “Oh.”

“Hello, Clara.”

She clears her throat. “Wow. This is heavy. I need to sit down.” She sits down, cross-legged, on the floor.

“There’s a chair over there.”

“I know. The floor is fine. The floor is good. The floor is where I am.”

I look down at my hands, flexing them. “I had forgotten what this feels like.”

“What what feels like?”

“Hands. Having hands that are hands. Not just painted hands.”

“How long have you had painted hands?”

“A considerable time.”

“How considerable?”

Then I tell her that Drosselmeyer can explain, that he has a monologue prepared, and has been waiting to deliver it. She calls him in, tells him she’s ready to hear his monologue.

“I threw my slipper at the Mouse King,” she says. “I’d like that acknowledged.”

“It is acknowledged. It was an excellent throw.” I get a little choked up as I say the next line, but only because I’m an awesome actor. “You cared about me and you saved me, and I will always, always appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome… Nutcracker? Tell me the truth, before Drosselmeyer gets here. Art thou… Is this…? Is this real?” Her voice is shaky too. She is also an excellent actor. “Is this really you? Or is this all going to turn out to be a dream at the end?”

“Clara. I was a wooden nutcracker for a long time. I would not waste being real on a dream. In the end, I promise, you will know that all of this, what you and I have gone through together, is real.”

She nods and there are tears in her eyes that only I can see.

Drosselmeyer enters, with notes, and has a long monologue explaining things. Revealing that I am, in fact, dunh dunh dunh—his nephew. That he was once the court clockmaker and the inventor to a king. Mouse King’s mother cursed a princess. Drosselmeyer was blamed. In order to break the curse and avoid execution, he traveled far and wide to find the right man to crack the right nut. But the dying Mouse Queen transferred the curse onto me—his nephew, a prince from another kingdom. Drosselmeyer had a lot of guilt about it. It’s quite a backstory, and the young playwright wrote it in a quirky, somewhat digestible monologue.

Another one of my favorite stage directions is: They stand next to each other while Drosselmeyer explains everything. At some point, Clara’s hand and the Prince’s hand are next to each other. Whether they hold hands is up to the actors, and also how brave they are feeling. The playwright recommends that they hold hands. The playwright feels strongly about this.

Again, the playwright would be pleased to know that we do, in fact, hold hands.

After Drosselmeyer exits the stage, I say to Clara, “To sum up what Drosselmeyer just said—I was not always wooden. I was made of flesh, like you, with a normal face and boyish feelings. Also, I just happen to be a prince. A curse was placed upon me by a mouse. Specifically, the mother of the mouse we just defeated. There’s a complicated backstory that we may or may not understand. But what’s important is this—thou believed in me. Thou threw thy slipper to save me. Thou said good night to me. Twice. And so…” I offer her my outstretched hand. “Wouldst thou do me the honor of accompanying me to my kingdom? It is very nice there. There’s candy and toys and everything is great.”

She takes my hand and says, “Nutcracker Prince, I think that I would go anywhere with thee if thou asked it of me. Even New Jersey.”

The Narrator looks up from the podium, pretends to flip through the script to see if that line is in there and confirms that it is. It’s a cute moment.

THIRTY-ONE