Chapter Text
For fifty years the Madrigals had worked for the Encanto. Day and night, year after year, they watered the crops and healed the sick and solved the problems and beautified the gardens and carried the burdens of the villagers. Now, Mirabel thought, it was time for the Madrigals to play for the Encanto.
It was Mirabel’s own fault she got caught in the rain. Tia Pepa had told everyone at breakfast she was planning to water the Encanto that afternoon and they should plan to stay in. But she stayed out too long on errands, and wound up slamming through Casita’s door soaking wet, to the bemused stares of her family. Antonio giggled as she cleaned her glasses on her skirt. “What?” Mirabel semi-snapped.
He pointed at the rat by his side. “Blanca says, ‘She looks like a drowned me.’”
Various giggles and snorts followed. “That’s a pretty good joke,” Mirabel admitted, less annoyed at herself. It was Blanca’s curse to be a gifted comic when she longed for dramatic roles.
Mirabel surveyed the tableau in front of her thoughtfully. Pepa was curled up on the couch with a pot of tea and her favorite childhood book, about a heroic sled dog who finds love and freedom after terrible ordeals. Alma and Agustin were catching up on various correspondence and paperwork at the small table in the alcove, sharing a second pot of tea, occasional gossip, and the warmth of Parce asleep on their feet. (Parce was nearly as fond of Agustin as he was of Antonio, a fact in which Agustin took inordinate delight.) The laughter and clatter in the kitchen indicated that Julieta had drafted Felix, Luisa, and Camilo into her long-promised reorganization project.
And in the middle of the courtyard, on a stage of cardboard boxes, Bruno and Antonio were making telenovelas with the rats. Little kids didn’t know what “normal” was, everything was new and strange to them, but Mirabel was still impressed with her primo’s ability to take things in stride. Hola, soy Antonio, I could talk to animals for a day and then I couldn’t for a while and now I can again and so I’m making rat “telenovelas,” whatever those are, with my tio who disappeared but was actually living in the walls the whole time and now he’s back, what’s your name? He was a wonder.
The rats had become much more enthusiastic about the telenovelas once Antonio explained the concept to them, to the point of refusing to cooperate if they felt they were being asked to behave out of character. The productions were en fuego these days, though Bruno secretly thought the rats had been easier to work with before they had so much artistic integrity. That afternoon, they’d been joined by Isabela and Dolores, offering commentary and small floral props. (“If you put the dance hall scene before the spy meeting it will be more dramatic, first music then whispering, can you hear it?” “I know it’s too big for you to hold, Blanca, when I saw those books on bonsai I didn’t think it would be so challenging, give me a second and I’ll try again!”)
That was when Mirabel got the first little seedling of an idea, climbing the stairs to change into dry clothes. She decided to spend the afternoon with the kitchen team. She wanted to be downstairs with the family, not up in her room, but she had some plotting to do. Pot-scrubbing detail or a similar mindless task would set her imagination free for a few hours. Mirabel grabbed an old smock from her closet and grinned. Was it weird to be downright excited about an afternoon scrubbing pots?
***
Mirabel was distracted during dinner, so much that she didn’t notice the worried glances shooting around her. Bruno was out of his seat the moment the meal was over and clearly about to sprint back to his room when Mirabel asked if she could talk with him in private. “Uh, sure,” he replied, as the looks around the table went from worried to surprised. “We can have coffee in my room,” Mirabel said, and the surprise turned to relief. If Mirabel was inviting people for coffee in her room, she was okay.
“Go. Isabela and I will clean up,” Alma said. The two of them always had their most important conversations over the dinner dishes. Agustin looked at his departing daughters and shrugged. “I’m feeling left out. Want to play cards?” he asked Luisa.
Mirabel’s room was still a delightful novelty to her. The suite opened to a parlor like a tiny café, with reading lamps and overstuffed chairs, that led to a sewing room/library and small bedroom. She got the coffee started before realizing that Bruno seemed exceedingly nervous. “Um, tio, if this is a bad time we don’t have to talk now. Or maybe you want to talk about something. Or maybe coffee isn’t the best idea.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Bruno said, pacing in a decidedly not-fine manner. “I just hate when dinners get like that.”
“Like what?” Mirabel was confused. She’d been absorbed in her own thoughts but not wholly oblivious, and dinner had been low-key and pleasant? Everyone chatting and no arguments or frozen silences? She was beginning to get concerned about her tio.
“Everyone … ” Bruno pantomimed shooting beams from his eyes. “Worried and looking at each other. But I’m glad you reached out to me, kid. It means a lot.”
“You’re welcome and I am extremely confused, Tio Bruno. What was everyone worried about?”
“You!”
“Why? I’m fine! I’m perfectly fine!”
“You always say that, Mirabel!” Bruno yelled, sounding truly upset.
“There’s a bowl of salt on my bookshelf if that would help,” Mirabel offered. She took pride in being a good hostess.
“Oh, thanks,” Bruno said, taking a pinch and tossing it. “Nice bowl,” he added, holding it to the light with a critical eye.
“Gracias, Anita Romero the potter’s apprentice gave it to me. It had a chip so they couldn’t use it in the shop.”
“You can hardly see it.”
“I know, right? And the color is so pretty. She’s nice.” Not the most compelling tale ever told, but small talk could go an amazingly long way with Tio Bruno when things went off the rails, Mirabel had discovered. She continued fussing with the coffee service to keep up the appearance of normality. “So why is everyone worried about me? I didn’t say anything.”
“No, you didn’t! You didn’t come home until after the rain started and then you put on an old smock and sat in the kitchen scrubbing pots for three hours like Cinderella without talking to anyone and then didn’t say a word during dinner.” He fidgeted with the hem of his ruana. “It just seemed like you were feeling really bad. About something.”
“Oh!” Mirabel stopped mid-pour. “I didn’t even realize how that looked! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to worry everyone.” She’d always thought it was selfish to expect to be in the center of attention all the time, like Isabela … but Mirabel was starting to think that maybe expecting no one to pay attention could be a little selfish, too. “I wasn’t upset or sad at all, I was just trying to work out an idea I had, I was lost in thought. It was actually a great day!”
Bruno’s eyes gleamed and he snuggled deeper into his chair, holding his coffee cup in both hands. “Diga me,” he said, anxiety vanished. He knew Mira was okay, everything in her voice and manner was genuine, but it was more than that. The way she’d said great day—Bruno could tell, sometimes, when some offhand comment had a piece of future in it. Not a vision or anything, just a sense, a tickle in the back of his throat, when a person said something that they would later look back on and think, it started then. Mirabel’s great day sounded like that, and Bruno wanted to know more.
Mirabel told him, and never even got to ask Bruno if he wanted to be involved, because he vaulted right over that question. Of course he was going to be a part of it!
“This could be great!” he exclaimed with crossed fingers. “There’s really only so much you can do with rats and cardboard—I LOVE ALL OF YOU!” Bruno hollered at the walls. “YOU’RE ALL BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT ARTISTS! HECTOR TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH IN THE CONFRONTATION WITH ALEJANDRO, YOU GOTTA HAVE FUEL LEFT IN THE TANK FOR ACT FIVE!”
Mirabel laughed. “See? We’d be idiots not to take advantage of all your experience!”
“Not to mention the combined powers of the family! Imagine the special effects!”
Mirabel coughed. “About that ‘powers of the family,’ thing, I thought maybe we could try another way …” She explained her idea, and Bruno liked that, too. Very much.
“I think it would be good for us,” he said. “And everyone in the Encanto might like it better that way, too.”
“You don’t think the town will be disappointed?”
He considered it. “Before, maybe. Not that we ever could have done something like this before anyway … Can I write and act in it?”
“I don’t see why not! Whatever, uh, ‘it’ turns out to be. I’ll get everything started tomorrow.” She paused as the size of that “everything” made her a little nervous. Even with the whole family pitching in, putting on a play was going to be a lot of work, with so many decisions to make and details to keep track of. And she’d decided to do it in the most difficult way possible, and Abuela had lightened up a lot but still might disapprove … and who was to say, after all the trouble, that the play would even be good? A brief spasm of panic gripped Mirabel.
“Tio Bruno? Uh … I know what I said, but do you think you could maybe just peek into the future and see if this is going to work or not?”
He put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head sadly. “No person can ever foretell success in show business, sobrina,” he said. “Not even me. It is bad luck to even try.”