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“Neil?" the stage manager said gently. "It’s your father, he wants to see you.” Neil pushed out a deep breath, closed his eyes, tried to keep his shoulders from tensing. My father. What is my father doing here? He’s supposed to be in Chicago until the show is done. Blinking away the anxiety, stepping back into the role of the Dutiful Son, Neil walked out into the lobby.
All his friends were clamoring to greet him, but Neil shrugged them off with a quiet “I can’t right now.” After weaving through all the people, Neil stood before his father, trying to look appropriately ashamed and afraid without drawing attention from the crowd. After all, they couldn’t have people starting to talk about how Thomas Perry runs his household. The shame that would be sure to bring to the family, and the consequences dealt behind closed doors would surely kill Neil.
“Come with me, son,” said Mr. Perry, grabbing his son by the shoulder and steering him, propelling him really, out the front door and a little ways down the street to a slightly more secluded area. Neil looked at him expectantly with wide, anxious eyes, but Thomas couldn’t meet his gaze. It was as though he was the one afraid of what he was going to say next. “Neil,” he choked out effortfully, looking up from the ground but past his son and into the distance. “Son. You were…good.” The word good seemed foreign to his tongue, and distasteful, but his tone sounded less venomous than Neil had expected. Instead, he sounded tired. Resigned, almost, like he was done fighting. “You were really good.”
After the initial shock, Neil let the words sink in. Praise from his father, for the first time he could remember. A smile slowly weaseled its way up to the surface, he was nearly glowing with pride. Neil opened his mouth as if to speak, but he should have expected his father would have more to say than just a compliment.
“I am still upset with you. You disobeyed me, and you lied to me. We will talk about this later.” Mr. Perry sighed, seemingly ready to let that be the end of that subject. Neil didn’t like the sound of talking about his disobedience, but he was grateful that his father didn’t want to have that discussion here and now. He was glad to push off worrying about it as long as he could. “You have another show tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir. And one on Sunday, too.”
“Well then. We’ll talk about your behavior when you come home for winter break on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll make sure your mother comes to see you perform.” Mr. Perry almost smiled. There was a pause almost long enough to be awkward, until Mr. Perry saw something over Neil’s shoulder. “Run along now, Neil,” he said, nodding in the direction of the theater entrance, where a group of six boys, a girl, and a man stood outside, trying not to look like they were watching. “Your fans are waiting for you.”
Neil turned around, took one step, then stopped to look back over his shoulder. “Thank you, sir,” he said, with his head bowed respectfully but that smile creeping back onto his face. Mr. Perry smiled a small private smile of his own as he watched Neil run to his friends, crying out a loud “Yawp!” full of triumph, relief, and excitement all in one as he jumped into Todd Anderson’s already-open arms. If either Neil or his father shed a tear as the rest of his classmates enveloped him in a big group hug, well, the other would never need to know.
Maybe Neil was never going to be the man Thomas wanted him to be. Maybe he was his own person, on his own path. And maybe, just maybe, realized Thomas Perry, that was okay .