All's Well(34)

It’s death. It’s death at last, I think. He’s somehow killed me with a mere touch of his hand to my wrist. Now he reaches a hand out again and I wince, but he just gently grazes my cheek. Caresses it softly. So softly.

There. There, there. There, there, there. Get happy, Ms. Fitch. All’s well.





CHAPTER 10


BRIGHT BLUE SKY in the window. My window. Afternoon, I can tell by the light. Is this death? A crow goes flying by the window, shrieking. I watch it land on a snow-encrusted branch, shaking its black feathers, making the snow fall all around. I watch clouds drift pass, and I can smell the brine of the nearby sea. I hear cars driving by on the street outside. Not death, then. I’m alive still. I’m in my body, which is my body. Breathing my own breath with my own lungs. No longer filled with that terrible black heaviness. Just my own pain. Familiar aches. Familiar concrete limbs. Familiar fists already tightening. It’s bearable for the moment. At least it’s just mine.

I’d love to show you a trick. Do you like tricks, Ms. Fitch?

How did I get back last night? I can’t remember anything after being on the floor, the fat man caressing my cheek. After that, black. But I’m in my bed, the blankets pulled up to just under my armpits. I’m not in my dress from the night before, but an old nightshirt of dark blue silk. I never sleep in my bed. I never sleep in this nightshirt. I’m always on the floor. Always lying in the sad dress and cardigan I’m too tired to change out of. Was I carried here by the fat man? Surely not. Surely I just found my way home alone, into this shirt, this bed. But I picture the three of them putting me to sleep. The fat man laying me down. The middling man pulling the covers up to my chin. The third man turning out the light. Shhhh.

I shudder.

Who the hell are you? I should have asked the fat man. What did you do to me last night? How did I wind up on the floor full of your pain?

I rise from the bed. Immediately feel the nerves in my legs seethe and hum. The muscles clench themselves into concrete. I recall John, gentle, sweet John, scratching his large head over the fact of my body. Prodding at it with a finger to “Nights in White Satin.” Feel that?

They break whoever they touch, Ms. Fitch. Your bank, your bones, your spirit.

My phone buzzes on my nightstand. Grace texting me from rehearsal. Fuck. I’m missing rehearsal as we speak.

Warming them up. Where are you?

Also, did you okay this???

Then Grace texts me a photo. A picture of a script she’s holding in her hands. I look at the picture of the script, and I burn. The title of the play is center justified. In block letters. The Garamond font. Not the actual name of the play, of course, but the title that is used in superstitious stead, because the name is just too charged for the theater. Bad luck, as the dean said. The Scottish Play. The name relights the fires in me, tightens every muscle in my body.

I think of the middling man looking at me with his bloody eyes, smiling at what the spider has spun. And now this business about Macbeth.



* * *



I drive to campus cursing Briana, January, the afternoon, every red light. I curse her burnished hair, her smirking triumph. Her pushiness that she won’t even bring to her portrayal of Lady M. No way. Not if I have anything to do with it. My hands grip the cold wheel. I am suddenly filled with a Helen-like resolve. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie which we ascribe to heaven. Remember this, remember this.

No parking anywhere on campus. I circle and circle the student lots, spouting obscenities at the windshield. At last, I give up and park illegally in front of the theater. Fuck it. I slip up the icy, endless stairs. I nearly fall a thousand times. No one helps, no one sees. Every smoking student is on their phone, smirking at their small screens, in the throes of their own dramas, their own little theater making.

I run through the halls, and I never run, can’t run, but somehow I’m running. I see Dr. Rainier smiling at me. Ms. Fitch. If you can’t walk, then tell me: How did you get here? I burst through the double doors of the theater. Anticlimax. No one even looks up. I’m too late, of course. Briana is already there on the stage. Wreaking her havoc. Wearing one of her bell-sleeved tops, which she thinks makes her look more Elizabethan. Her gold cross glinting on her chest. Burnished hair ablaze beneath the lights, she stands at the helm of a semicircle of traitors, speaking low words, cradling her illicit script in her hands. She’s smiling as she tells them there’s been a change. She’s enjoying this moment, I know. Being in charge. Having her way. Her hair gleams. Her skin glows. In many ways, Grace is right, she is a perfect Helen.

Grace is sitting up front in the audience, watching, looking a little helpless, a little lost, but ultimately indifferent. She looks at me as if to say, Oh well. Why not let them do it? Why not?

“No!” I shout.

They all turn around now and look at me. Standing there, lopsided before them and huffing from my run. My body a gnarled little fist. When has my voice ever been that desperate, that loud? Not in a long, long time. Like the howl of a pained animal that is about to die.

They look frightened. And young. Terribly, achingly young as they exchange Uh-oh glances. What the fuck?

But Briana’s smile doesn’t even break when she sees me hobbling to the stage toward her. Broken woman. Hag. Unsexed. No charms left. No fashion sense. Wildly unchristian. She can handle this. She can handle me. Her dancer-girl posture says this. The defiant upward tilt of her small, pointed chin. It’s fine. It’s already done. It’s sealed. I’ve been told where things stand, haven’t I? I’ve been put in my place. I’ve been scolded by the higher-ups. I’ve been informed of my rung in the universe, in the scheme of things, in the great chain of being. None of this should be a surprise to you, Miranda, says her entitled chin, her folded arms, as I approach the stage. At all. In fact, I was asking for it. Wasn’t I asking for it? Willfully ignoring their many requests? My drugged-out speeches, my absurd commands from the seats, pills rattling in my pockets like Tic Tacs. Making them, making her, put on a play that no one gives a shit about but me, that everyone agrees is lame, dated, problematic, she could go on. Making her portray “a poor unlearned virgin,” a scheming orphan who is scorned by the only man she deigns to love like he’s a star in her sad sky. When she could be Lady M, a sexy madwoman in a white dress, the blood on her hands bringing out the green in her eyes. I’m willfully destroying her college experience. I’m ruining her CV.