Applause in the Ribs

The Bow at the Edge of the Stage

Randy’s hands wouldn’t stop trembling. He pressed them to the iron’s handle anyway, forcing creases into a suit that wasn’t his. Steam curled up in pale ghosts. The hotel desk wobbled under the board until he jammed a folded magazine beneath one leg. Josh’s cologne had already seeped into the fabric — sharp as pencil shavings and winter.

“Don’t scorch it,” Josh called from the bathroom, voice bouncing off tile and the hiss of the shower.

“You burn it, you buy it,” Randy muttered. He set the iron on its heel and checked the lapel. Smooth. Obedient. “Besides, this is your only decent jacket.”

Josh’s laugh was muffled by water.

On the dresser, a crumpled sheet of notebook paper waited. Randy picked it up, unraveling the edges. Arrows snaked across it, margins jammed with half-phrases — community is a verb, Mom’s old piano, don’t cry, joke about zoning board?

“Joke about zoning board,” Randy read aloud. “Absolutely not. No one at a gala has ever wanted to laugh about zoning.”

The shower cut off. A moment later Josh cracked the door, hair slicked back and a towel knotted at his waist. “You talking to yourself again?”

“Practicing for your Q&A,” Randy said, holding the page between two fingers. “Is this your speech or a treasure map?”

“Both,” Josh grinned. “X marks the part where you stop worrying.”

Randy smoothed the wrinkled sheet on the desk and pulled a pen from behind his ear. “You’re opening with the founders’ story, then the problem, then the solution. Clear through-line. And you’re cutting the zoning joke.”

Mom's Piano (Flashback)

Randy remembered the way he’d always watched for cracks — it started at their mother’s piano. Her small hands moved steady on the keys, nails short, forearms dusted with flour from the bakery shift. But it was Josh’s fingers that froze halfway through “Minuet in G,” hovering like they no longer belonged to him.

He’d stood, jaw set, and walked off the stage without looking up. The whispers hadn’t been the worst part. Nor the teacher’s pitying smile. It had been the look on their mother’s face — stricken, then forced still in the space of a breath.

Randy had followed, found Josh in the hallway pressing his palms into the cinderblock like he could vanish into it.

“You don’t have to go back in,” Randy said. Something ancient had settled in him as he said it — a cornerstone. “I’ll talk to them.”

He remembered walking back inside, words spilling out about nerves, about wanting something so badly your bones rang with it. He didn’t remember exactly what he said, only the way their mother’s fingers eased on her purse strap. Later, she had coaxed Josh back to the bench like luring a skittish animal from hiding. He’d played it through. No one spoke of the stumble again.

The Ballroom

The hotel ballroom had been alchemized by uplighting and round tables dressed like wedding guests. Renderings of The Foundry stood tall on easels — warm wood, panes of glass, a steel beam threaded through as a spine. In the drawings the old mill’s shell was softened, the brick scrubbed of soot and given a second purpose. Randy’s favorite panel was the interior view of the workshop floor, sunlight puddled on concrete where kids stood around workbenches, goggles on their heads, sawdust floating like pollen.

He circled the room, clipboard in hand, running through details. Barbara, the event director, shot him updates over her headset — “Mics are clean. Teleprompter’s cued. Table eight still cursed, but I hand-wrote the cards.” Guests began to flow in- suits, cocktail dresses, cufflinks, perfume and the smell of florist’s greenery.

Every chair, every place card, every wavering microphone felt like another weak beam only he could brace. He forced a few polite smiles, shook hands, introduced himself as Josh’s brother. Pride lived in him, but quieter — subterranean. Supporting beams didn’t announce themselves; they just kept the structure standing.

He drifted past old acquaintances too- Mr. Littlejohn, their middle school shop teacher, who clapped him on the shoulder and reminded him of the toaster Randy once dismantled; Mrs. Drummonds, who had sold them the mill lot at a loss because, as she said, “dreams should have breathing room.” Each conversation was another thread in the night’s fabric, and Randy kept weaving.

The Speech

At last, the MC took the stage. “Please welcome the architect and founder of the Foundry Community Workshop, Josh McClellan.”

Applause swelled. Randy ducked into the wings, pulse drumming as his brother stepped into light.

For the first seconds, Josh looked brittle, like light might shatter him. Randy’s chest clenched with each pause, as if the silence might collapse. When Josh faltered, Randy tapped his own chest pocket, the folded paper burning there like a second heartbeat.

“Good evening,” Josh began, voice catching but steady. “Thank you for being here — for bringing with you not just your wallets, but your belief.” A ripple of laughter. “And your patience with zoning boards.” The room chuckled. The ice cracked.

Josh spoke of their mother’s piano, of the mill whistle that once timed the town’s days, of the silence after the last shift left. “An empty mill isn’t just a building,” he said. “It’s a story paused mid-sentence. It leaves a town on a comma, not a period. I think it’s our job to finish that sentence.”

Slides shifted behind him- the ruined mill, the renderings of sunlight and sawdust, kids at benches, neighbors collaborating. Randy watched skepticism ease into hunger. Josh grew in stature, voice firm, cadence tightening. He paced his pauses, let silence do work. He had the room.

By the end, Josh folded the paper again but didn’t look at it. “This moment isn’t mine alone. It’s built on the support of every person who believed I could get here. For that, I’ll be grateful forever.”

Applause thundered, some people rising to their feet. Randy felt it reverberate in his ribs, sharp and sweet.

Backstage

Josh found him in the hallway, cheeks flushed, tie crooked. “You were right. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Randy shrugged, though his chest still throbbed with nerves not yet spent. “Told you. Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t trip over your own tongue.”

Josh laughed, grabbed his shoulder. “Both of ours, Ran. Always both.”

And Randy let himself laugh too, the sound unburdened. For a moment it felt like victory belonged to them both.

The After-Party

The ballroom transformed once speeches ended. Music from a jazz trio filled the corners, waiters circulated with champagne and bite-sized desserts, and the crowd loosened into chatter. Donors approached in clusters, eager to shake Josh’s hand, to congratulate him, to say how inspired they felt. Randy stayed close but a half-step back, the invisible scaffolding.

“Mr. McClellan, your words moved me,” said Mrs. Greiner, a banker whose family had lived in town for generations. “I think my father would’ve been proud to see this mill reborn.” She pressed Josh’s hand between hers. Josh smiled, thanked her, said all the right things. But Randy noticed his brother’s gaze flick toward him, as if to ask — Am I doing this right?

Later, a younger couple cornered them by the dessert table. “We’ve been looking for somewhere to volunteer,” the woman said, eyes bright. “Could we help with the youth workshops?” Josh started to answer, but Randy smoothly filled in details about training, insurance, scheduling. The woman nodded, impressed. Josh shot him a grateful glance.

It went like that all evening. Josh dazzled, Randy steadied. Josh spoke vision, Randy translated into logistics. Donors loved the dream, but they trusted the scaffolding.

Even as glasses clinked and laughter filled the air, Randy kept waiting for a stumble — the wrong word, the wrong name, a fault line he’d need to cover. Only when the crowd began to thin did the coil in his chest begin to ease.

Near midnight, Mr. Littlejohn found them again. He popped a peppermint into his mouth and clapped both brothers on the back. “Good show,” he said. “One of you belongs on stage, the other makes sure the stage doesn’t collapse. Don’t ever forget it takes both.”

Josh slung an arm around Randy’s shoulders, pulling him close. “I don’t,” he said firmly.

And Randy, tired but glowing with a pride that finally unspooled the last of his tension, let himself believe it. For the first time in years, he felt not just like the hand steadying someone else’s bow, but like he, too, had taken a bow of his own.