All's Well(39)

Go on. Sit on me, Miranda.

But what if I can’t get back up? I whispered to the couch. There is no husband, remember? And I can’t call the super again. Can’t have her coming in here ripped out of her mind from a day of boxed wine and joints. Talking at me about her miserable life while I lie imprisoned on the floor. Pouring it all into me like emotional Drano. Forgetting she’s supposed to help me.

Try me.

So I walked over to the couch.

I sat down, I braced myself.

Nothing.

No scream of pain down my right leg. No slice of an invisible knife behind my knee.

I held my breath. I stood back up… and?

And nothing. No seizing of the leg. No clenching thigh muscles. No foot drop. No concrete. My back hurt still. Hip hurt still. But the leg was just… fine. I could bend it. I could straighten it. Bend, straighten.

I laughed. I sat down again: nothing. I stood up again: nothing. I sat down, I stood up, sat down stood up sat down stood up, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and oh god I was really laughing now. I laughed and laughed as I sat down and stood up and sat down and stood up, jumping on and off the seat cushions like I was on a trampoline, like I was a child again, my mother watching, clapping, enjoying my performance, how I loved to be center stage, even then. I laughed until tears fell.

Then I saw the lonely man in the apartment across the way. Watching me through the window, in the middle of watering his plants. Plants that defy the laws of nature, of photosynthesis, with their ability to flourish in darkness.

He smiled and kept watering the green glowing leaves. I sat down. I stood up. I sat down. I picked up All’s Well. I read again and again the scene in which the King is miraculously healed, which happens offstage. The lords discuss it as a miracle. It can happen onstage or it can happen off. Depends. Depends entirely on the production.

“Definitely, something’s different,” Hugo says now. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, Miranda.”

The way he says my name, the way he’s looking at me. My body blooms under his gaze. My heart lifts. Alley shadows lightening, dead leaves brightening, whirling wildly now in the gutters.

“We should get together sometime,” Hugo says. Speaking a line right out of my dreams, the ones I used to have drooling on the office floor. “To talk about the play. You know this play much better than I do. I’d love to hear more about your vision, Miranda.”

“My vision,” I say. “Yes.” A bright blue sky shot through with a rainbow. Me and Hugo holding hands onstage. I’ve come back from the dead. He’s gazing at me like I’m everything.

“Why don’t we meet off campus sometime after rehearsal?” he says. “For a drink.”

“A drink?” A drink with Hugo in the evening. Not weak tea in the afternoon. Not Hugo’s eyes distracted by every moving object that passes through his field of vision. I picture Hugo’s face in the bar. A candle between us. He’s holding a glass of wine. No, probably Hugo doesn’t drink wine. Fine, he’s drinking a lager. Seeing only me, my vision.

“Why not?” Hugo says. “There’s the Canny Man, that Irish pub nearby. Or is it Scottish?”

And then my bright blue sky darkens to pitchy night. I see a red-walled bar. A golden-green drink glowing with an unholy light. Three men gazing at me, tapping their black leathered feet. There, there, Ms. Fitch. Get happy.

“No,” I say. “No, no, I don’t think we should go there.”

“Well, you pick the place, then. I’m open. At your disposal. Completely.”

Impossible that Hugo is saying these words to me. But he is. He’s looking forward to it. He can’t wait.



* * *



As I walk down the hall now, I feel my feet clicking along. Briskly, more briskly than usual. Dead leg isn’t so dead, isn’t so heavy today. Hip still hurts of course. Back still aches. But my leg. I’m not dragging it. It clops along. It keeps up. So that I’m walking straighter. Taller. Not so lopsided anymore.

Something’s different about you, Miranda, Hugo said.

Is it? I said. I’m humming a little. Softly. Just to myself. A tune I heard somewhere, can’t remember where from, but it’s lovely. It comes easily to my lips, and I don’t usually sing. My lips are usually pressed together, bearing the weight of myself.

Up ahead, I see a student in the hall. Slumped against the concrete wall, gazing at his phone. My student, I realize. Jacob Fox. He’ll play Parolles, the villain, the vice-like courtier who leads Bertram astray in All’s Well. Probably I would have cast him as King Duncan if we’d done Macbeth. But we’re not doing Macbeth.

Normally when I see a student in the hall, I go the other way, pretending I forgot something in my office. I make a real show of it. I do an I forgot face and then I shake my head angrily at my own decrepit memory. Or else I stay the course, my eyes fixed forward and faraway, professorial, like I see nothing ahead but Shakespeare, the stage. But today I look right at Jacob Fox. I smile.

“Hello, Jacob,” I say. And I wave at Jacob, and he flinches. He says nothing. Maybe I’ve startled him. It’s true that I’ve never until this moment remembered his name.

“How are you?”

Jacob just looks at me. Some students don’t know how to talk to professors, it’s true. But Jacob’s never been intimidated by me before. He’s always yawning in rehearsal. His fucking mouth wide open in my face. But he looks very awake now. Looks the way they all did yesterday as I reached my hand out to see Briana’s script. Better not to mention yesterday. Better to act like all is well. Because all is well. Sure we had a rocky beginning, what with Briana attempting to overthrow me, what with my grasping hand clutching air and then seizing upon her wrist, but we ended on a high note, did we not?