All's Well(41)

And from there? From there it goes swimmingly. No discussion of yesterday. No hesitation. No complaint. No one raises a hand. No one pauses to ask a stupid question.

There’s a brief moment of silence when Helen’s first line comes. That’s when the air where Briana should be sitting starts to crackle. The silence becomes loud then. The silence is a question mark. There is a cough. Now is the time I should ask them. Where is the girl who is never absent? Who is always annoyingly here?

I open my mouth. I take a breath. I look at Ellie seated beside me in her uniform of black, over which she’s thrown some sort of vaguely glittering shawl. “Ellie,” I say, “will you read Helen, please?”

A moment’s pause, only a moment, before Ellie takes a breath and begins to read.

“?‘I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too,’?” Ellie says, not reading from the script. Doesn’t need to. She’s been practicing. For this very moment perhaps.

I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too. Can I tell you how exactly right she says it? Her voice is wavering on the surface, but deep and sure beneath. I hear her knowledge of her lowliness. Her pain and her aspirations both. Her love like an impossible star. I hear it all in her voice—deep, soft, fiery. Looking up at stars from the gutter. And then I see the play. I see it all. It comes wonderfully to me. In all its dark lightness, in all its strange fairy-tale splendor, with the sound of Ellie’s voice.

When they’re finished, I clap. I tell them bravo, well done. I clap and clap, they were so good! I tell them next time, we’re going to plunge deeply into Act One. Get ready. I tell them I’m excited. Aren’t they? They stay frozen on the floor. So I tell them they are dismissed. They gather their things, they leave quietly, so quietly. Saying goodbye to me, as they leave. Goodbye, Professor.



* * *



“Well, that went well, don’t you think, Grace?” I ask her when the last student has gone. We’re alone in the theater now. My voice echoes against the walls and back to me, rich, sure. I forgot the acoustics in this room are quite good.

Grace shrugs. “Sure. It did, I guess.”

“I think it went very, very well.” I turn to look at the empty stage, still lit. Grace wanted to turn the lights off, but I told her, Don’t yet. Please. Because I can’t stop staring at the empty stage, upon which the play is still unfolding. Revealing itself to me in bright colors. Black sky. Bright stars. Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” playing in the background. “I think it went excellently.”

Grace looks at me. Excellently? “They were well-behaved, I’ll give you that. I’ve never seen them so compliant. It was a little weird actually.”

“I don’t think it was weird. I think they’re just finally embracing All’s Well.”

“Maybe.”

“Wasn’t Ellie just wonderful as Helen?”

“She was all right,” Grace says, looking at her phone.

“She was brilliant. She was—”

“Too bad she’s playing the King,” Grace says.

“Yes. Yes, too bad.”

She turns to me, and I immediately avert my gaze.

“I wonder what happened to Briana,” she says.

I see my hand on Briana’s wrist. Her looking at me with wide-open eyes.

“What do you mean ‘what happened’?” I say.

Grace stares at me like what do I mean what do you mean? “I mean she was absent, Miranda. She’s never absent.”

I shrug at the floor. Hideous seventies carpet. Worn bare. We really should tear it out. Replace it with something red. Rich. Blood-colored.

“She seemed a little pale yesterday, when she left,” Grace says. “Did you notice?”

I recall Briana standing defiantly before me, her face draining of color. Burnished hair suddenly dull. I shake my head vigorously. “No. I thought she seemed like her usual self.”

I shrug again. I look at Grace, who’s still staring at me, not smiling.

“I thought she looked unwell,” Grace says.

“Well, it’s flu season,” I say in a singsong voice. Am I really singing? I am a little. “Things are going around. Can’t be too careful, can you, Grace?”

Grace shakes her head. “Strange though. She’s never sick.”

“Well, it was bound to happen at some point,” I snap. My voice sounds shrill now. “She’s not infallible, is she?”

Grace has to concede this. She is, after all, a creature of reason. “I guess not.”

“Anyway,” I say, “it was good to hear the lines read from Helen like that—I mean from Ellie like that. Another perspective. A fresh take. It really opened up Helen for me and I’m sure for the cast too. I saw the play tonight, Grace, I did.”

I realize I’m speaking quickly, and I never speak this quickly. Usually after rehearsal, Grace has to physically shake me from where I’m lying on the floor, drugged and drooling between the seats. Miranda, wake up. Miranda, pub time. Atta girl.

I think Grace is going to smile finally, rejoice with me, but she frowns. “What happened yesterday, Miranda? The dean barging in. Those donors. It was weird, didn’t you think?”

Yes. “No.” The lie leaves my lips before I can think. “Not really. I didn’t think so, no.”