All's Well(59)

I drop the wine bottle. It shatters, pooling redly at our feet.

I look up at Fauve. Triumph. Triumph on her face even though she’s standing in broken glass, the wine flooding her salt-crusted boots. I turn to the cashier, who looks utterly gutted by the fact of me.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to the cashier.

In answer, she picks up the receiver of her work phone. She’s wearing a leopard-print tendonitis brace on her wrist. “Cleanup at register twelve,” she says miserably.

“Oh, look,” Fauve says, “they’ve opened up a line over there. I should run. I want to try and get there while Briana’s still awake.”

She crunches over the broken glass.

“Any words you’d like to pass along to Briana?” she calls over her shoulder.

In my mind’s eye, I see a face full of hate framed by flaming hair. Eyes closed and fluttering. Pale, parched lips mouthing my name.

“Just that she should take all the time she needs to heal. That if anyone understands about that, it’s me.”





CHAPTER 18


DATE NIGHT WITH Hugo. I sit before my triptych mirror, brushing my long, lush hair. The shine is really just incredible. The waves, like a Hollywood starlet’s. Three women gaze back at me. Three Mirandas. Mirandas I hardly recognize. Mirandas from long ago. Before the misery lines. Before the forehead furrow cast its shadow. Before the pallor of death settled deep into our cheeks. I gaze at their faces like old friends. Smiling at me, smiling to themselves. Because we cannot believe this is how we look. Is this how we really look now?

I’m wearing a brand-new dress. White with red poppies. I’ve resurrected the lace from the back of the dead-lingerie drawer. I’ve plucked, waxed, exfoliated. Shaved all the prickly black hairs from my legs. Hairs that, formerly, I had to let grow. No choice. Couldn’t bend to shave. Mark used to tell me not to be ashamed of them.

It’s just the body, Miranda, isn’t it? he’d say gently, rolling up my sweatpants leg, the disposable medical shorts. Tracing the incision scars on my hip with his fingers. Three incisions. Three raised white bumps, like three prongs.

I wonder how Mark is doing these days. SpineWorks called me the other day to let me know that he wouldn’t be available for future appointments, sadly. He was on leave, they said. But another therapist, Brad, would be happy to take me on.

That’s fine, I said. I don’t need an appointment actually. I’m feeling so much better these days. But please give Mark my best, won’t you?

In the mirror now, I see three Marks gazing back at me. Their faces pale. Breathing quickly, shallowly, with their mouths. Clutching their wrists. Eyes widening in fear, in horror. I take a sip of champagne. And then it’s the Mirandas I see again. All seeming to glow from within. Like someone turned on a light right beneath their skins. Eyes literally sparkling. Lips bright as cherries. A smile that seems to smile on its own. I sigh with relief. Shaky, I’m just a little shaky. Nervous, I guess. Big date tonight, that’s all. Haven’t been on one of those in a while. A long, long time.

When was the last time?

I think of the Scotsman’s whiskey mouth on my thigh. Well, that doesn’t count as a date, does it? Not really a date. And then I remember Paul and me. All those heady first dates in Edinburgh after my shows. Sitting across from him in pubs, on the craggy grass of Arthur’s Seat, on the green stretch of the meadows, and feeling electric, alive, lit up. And then later, back in New England, when he’d drive down from Portland to wherever I was working—a production in Boston if it was fall, a festival on the Cape or in the Berkshires if it was summer—and I’d sneak away with him for a night, an afternoon, a day.

And then, years later, there was the other kind of date. The ones we used to try to have after my fall, to reconnect. Sitting at our favorite sushi restaurant in Marblehead, not so very long ago. It was our tradition to go there to celebrate whenever I’d finish a production season. Now I get to have you back for a bit, he would say, smiling at me from across the booth, like he’d missed me so terribly. And I’d feel so happy to be home, to be back, to be his. The last time we went there was different. One of our final attempts to resurrect our romantic life. You pick the place one week; I’ll pick the place next week. It’ll be fun. We have to try something. I’m willing to try something, are you? Yes. Of course. Sitting across from each other at a tiny black table. People to our left and our right talking to each other, leaning in close, holding hands as if to show us how estranged from each other we’d become. Paul drinking his cold sake too quickly. Dead to the fact of me in front of him. Staring at me like his life was on fire. And me, I was the fire. With my colorless face bracing itself, always bracing itself against the threat of pain. With my dead legs and my hunch. With my benzo eyes always on the verge of tears I was too drugged-out to cry. Pretending to listen to him tell a work story when really I was just lost in the gray, twisting corridors of my own misery, my own fear. Staring at the waxy orchid in its thin vase. So unapologetically pink. Its pursed, vaginal mouth so flagrantly ecstatic that I remember I actually envied its life. I watched Paul eat miserably, cologne-spritzed, a shirt he knew I liked tucked into pants he’d ironed, though he knew he’d get no sex later. That I’d retreat to the pullout couch, which was already pulled out, always pulled out. He’d retreat to the bedroom. Are you sure you won’t come to bed? he’d ask me, over his shoulder. Knowing already I’d say no.