All's Well(110)

I glance back at the woman beside me. Her eyes appear misty now, fluttering closed and then open. She looks completely lost in reverie. Lost in the blue skies in her blood. Wandering down some sunny, happy road in her mind. Each sip a footstep down the road. A dark road, I remember now. No matter how sunny it may seem in the mind’s eye. No matter the brightness of the flowers that grow on either side. Impossible colors that hypnotize. She’s oblivious to the storm raging all around. Doesn’t seem to feel the floor shuddering beneath us. The glasses rattling in their racks. The amber bottles trembling on the shelves. The headless woman above us swinging wildly from her ropes. Wish I could leave here. Drive to Hugo sitting on my front steps, waiting for me like a dream on the other side of this. But there is no other side of this, Ms. Fitch.

Suddenly the jukebox music dissolves to a drone. Another song starts to play. Still Judy. But not “Me and My Shadow” anymore. She’s singing that other song. About getting happy. About the sun shining. About getting ready for judgment day.

The storm begins to bang its fists on the walls, on the doors. Knock, knock, knock. A pounding and a pounding and a pounding. I grip the bar for dear life, bracing myself. I look at the bartender, but he also seems untroubled. Keeps polishing his glass like all the glasses and bottles aren’t now crashing to the floor. Like the tables and chairs haven’t all turned over and the bar itself isn’t shaking to the foundation. Or if it is, he’s seen this before. Seen it all, all before. He’ll stand there until the end of time in a sea of shattered glass, polishing spots that will never out. And the woman beside me keeps smiling at her reflection in the now cracked mirror behind the bar. She’s still under her blue skies, on the sun-dappled road.

Beside us, the glass window breaks. I want to take cover, but I’m paralyzed. My whole body freezes as the screaming wind comes tearing through the pub like a tentacle of mist. Lifting my hair up all around me. Blasting my bare back like a blow. I look in the cracked mirror and see it surrounding me, the shrieking wind circling me like smoke. This is it. My whole body. Filling with cold dark. Ears, eyes, mouth that’s apparently screaming though I can’t hear the sound. I can only hear their three-pronged voice in my skull. Low and steady as fire under Judy’s happy roar and the storm, which are one song. The wheel, the wheel, Ms. Fitch. Always turning. Coming back around. In the mirror, I see the smoke wrap itself around and around my throat. I see the flowers in my hair light up like tiny embers. Blooming flames encircle my head. I close my eyes and I’m nothing. Everything screaming. Every cell a roaring black.

And then.

Wind stills.

Thunder quiets.

Rain stops.

I hear the music switch. Judy isn’t roaring about getting happy anymore. She’s singing softly again about shadows. Like she never stopped. Just the sad, familiar swell of strings filling the air. It’s gone. Gone from me, gone from the bar. Taking the cold dark with it. And I’m still here. I open my eyes, where there are tears now. There I am in the cracked mirror, sitting in the shattered bar. No blooms of flame around my head or rope of smoke at my throat. Just my sea-straggly hair shimmering with small flowers. Just my hands around my miraculously unspilled Scotch. And my tear-streaked face impossibly smiling. Not the brightly beaming face of the young woman from the old Playbill photo, not anymore. No more eyes like stars, no more blinding eclipse. This face shines another light. This face says I have lived, I’m alive. This face says I’ve known joy and pain, known them both. I’ll know them both again.

The woman beside me is looking at me now. She smiles like she saw nothing at all, like she’s only just now seeing me for the first time.

Something sparks at the base of my spine. A small, familiar fire. I smile at her.

She raises her golden drink to me.

I raise my Scotch with its dead flower. Only the flower doesn’t look so dead anymore. Seems to be blooming now. The whole drink seems aglow with its own rosy light, a dancing shimmer of green. I recall the waves flashing around me when I stood in the sea. Those strange colors shimmering in the black water. Shimmering with god knows what. Maybe actual magic. Maybe something that saved me. Maybe just a trick of the light.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


TO MY PARENTS, James Awad and Nina Milosevic, and to my dearest friends and readers, Rex Baker, Alexandra Dimou, Laura Sims, Chris Boucher, Emily Culliton, Teresa Carmody, Ursula Villarreal-Moura, and McCormick Templeman, for their support. Special thanks to Jess Riley, without whose friendship, faith, and genius, I would be lost.

To my brilliant editor, Marysue Rucci, for making this book better with her insights and artful suggestions. Also to my wonderful Canadian editor and publisher, the one and only Nicole Winstanley at Penguin Canada. So grateful to you both for your excellent feedback, dedication, and support of my work. To Chris White at Scribner UK, for giving All’s Well a dream home across the pond.

To the amazing teams at Simon & Schuster and Penguin Canada: Anne Tate Pearce, Elizabeth Breeden, Zack Knoll, Brittany Adames, Hana Park, Steve Myers, and Meredith Pal.

To my new Syracuse University colleagues, students, and friends. So much thanks to George Saunders, Mary Karr, Dana Spiotta, Jon Dee, and the amazing Dympna Callaghan for reading and for their early and generous support of me and this book. To Jeff Parker and my former MFA students at UMass Amherst for giving me a job I loved while I was writing, and a weekly drive from Boston that helped me dream.