All's Well(105)

I see myself crying beside Grace’s body in the black box. A circle of men torturing me. How I dragged myself across the stage floor toward the medical table like a snake. The bond I felt holding Ellie in my arms. Before I turned away from her. Before I tried to save Grace. And then there was no Grace. Just an empty corner of gray grass. The agony of my heart ripping apart on the stage, taking my breath away.

“Not a good show,” I finish.

She says nothing.

I feel the wound in my chest again. A sadness that rises and falls like a wave. Only a matter of time, then. Only a matter of time, and it will all come screaming back. The concrete, the webs, the chair, the fat man. After the initial shock wears off. To be expected. Surely no bath or tiny purple flowers can save me.

“I’m sorry, Miranda. I wasn’t going to tell you, even though they said to pass it along. That it was very important that you know. I thought, Why? Why would you need to know that? They were a little weird, honestly. They even said they wanted a refund. That they’d be in touch.”

“In touch.” I close my eyes. The cold darkness fills me. “Of course they will be.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Ellie says, “I thought the show was wonderful. Everyone did. And…” She pauses. Takes a breath. “I’m just so grateful to you. For giving me a chance; for giving me Helen. I really can’t thank you enough for… everything.” She squeezes my hand, and it hurts. Hurts everything. But I don’t pull away. I let it hurt. My whole heart. To my surprise, I even smile at her. “You’re welcome, Ellie. You deserved it.”

“And anyway,” she whispers, “I fixed everything.”

“Fixed everything?”

“Didn’t you see? I fixed everything, Miranda, just like I said I would before the show. It worked. Just like the baths, like when I healed you.”

“What do you mean ‘it worked’?”

Just then there’s a playful knock on the door.

“Ellie?” a voice calls in a song.

And I know the voice. Of course I do. The voice whose former shrillness used to make fire of my nerves, concrete of my leg. The voice whose impossible lightness used to mock my authority, my pain. The voice that of late has sounded like a husk of itself, now back to its former full-bodied pitch. Except there’s a new gravity to it. A new richness that I don’t recognize. I turn to look at her there in the doorway, her face no longer sickly but rosy and smiling and framed by her burnished hair. No longer dressed as the King but as herself. But it’s a different self. Not the shrill girl in bell sleeves. Nor the shrunken shell in hospital-gown blue who hissed witch and dragged her dead leg, my dead leg, across the stage while sipping Ellie’s water bottle. This glowing girl, standing straight in the doorway, not breathing through her mouth, smiling at Ellie like they’re actual friends, is someone else.

“Ellie,” Briana says, “there you are.”

She crosses the room toward Ellie like Ellie is her lighthouse, her beacon, her best friend. She doesn’t limp, nor does she move with the thoughtless lightness that would have made my eyes smart to behold in former times. Instead she crosses the room with a new heavy grace. Like she understands what a true gift it is to walk without pain, to walk at all. It is a gift, that’s what her steps say. I must tread carefully, gratefully, I must tread from hereafter with deep thanks.

I watch her come up to Ellie and kiss her on her pallid cheek. She places a hand on Ellie’s shoulder.

“Ellie,” she says, with her new rich voice, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Ellie looks at her like this news does not surprise her. Of course Briana, a girl who never once in three years acknowledged her existence, would be looking for her everywhere.

“Oh,” Ellie says, “I’ve just been sitting with Miranda.”

At last Briana turns to look at me. Her leaf-green eyes have returned to their former brightness but there are shadows among the leaves now. They’ve glimpsed death, the dark precipice. They gaze at my tablecloth toga, the fork in my hair.

“Ms. Fitch,” she says, “that was quite a fall.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I thought for sure you’d die. But you’re alive. I’m glad,” she says hesitantly.

“Thank you,” I say. I look at her standing straight before me. “You look well.”

“Yes.” She looks at Ellie and smiles at her like she is the sun. She puts her arm around Ellie’s pale shoulder, which immediately goes red at her touch.

“Maybe the stage was what I needed after all,” she says to Ellie, who is biting on her grin, who is looking at me like, You see, Miranda? Didn’t I tell you that I would right things? That I would fix things just like I broke them?

“Theater heals, I guess.”

“Yes. Isn’t that what you always say, Miranda?” Ellie prompts. “That theater heals?”

“I do,” I say. I’ve never said that.

I watch Briana tug on Ellie’s hand. “We’re taking off to celebrate. Are you coming with?”

“Oh, I should stay with Miranda. At least until Grace gets back. But I’ll catch up with you, all right?” Briana kisses Ellie again, says an awkward goodbye to me, then leaves. But I don’t hear her words to me or Ellie’s words to her because all I can hear is the word Grace. Echoing in the void of my body. Grace, Grace, Grace.