The Vanishing Half(63)
She couldn’t afford to miss a night of work in order to sit in a damp theater, enduring three hours of amateur acting in hopes of catching a glimpse of Barry in the chorus line. Still, she agreed, running her fingers through Reese’s hair. They needed a night out, one night where she didn’t think about spring decisions, where he didn’t obsess over money, where they wouldn’t worry about anything at all.
On opening night, she slipped into a purple dress and glided panty hose up her legs as Reese, tying his tie, smiled at her through the mirror. They were overdressed because they never had anywhere nice to go; tonight was an excuse to pretend otherwise. They could pretend to be anything: a young couple on a first date, newlyweds sneaking away from the children, a pair of sophisticated theatergoers who never worried about money, never clipped coupons, never counted change.
“Fancy, fancy,” Luis teased, when they all met up in the lobby with a dozen of the other boys she used to see scrambling around backstage in bustiers. Soon they were all laughing, clambering into the mildewed theater, everyone giddy as the lights dipped.
“This better be good,” Reese stage-whispered, but he was so good natured about it, she could tell he didn’t care. He kissed her as the orchestra began to play a jaunty overture. The curtains parted, and she leaned forward, straining to see Barry. He was high kicking with the other dancers, wearing a fringed leather vest and cowboy hat. She giggled, watching him twirl a redhead. Then the dancers receded and the show lead appeared center stage, a blonde girl in a long, hooped dress. Her singing voice was pretty if plain; still, she was charming enough, delivering her lines with a wryness so familiar that, in the darkness, Jude reached for her Playbill. And there she was, the blonde girl with the violet eyes.
* * *
—
AFTER THE CURTAIN FELL, after a beaming Barry took his bow, after the audience slowly trampled across the fading red carpet into the lobby, dissecting plot holes and glaring miscues, Jude circled with her friends outside the stage door. The group was chatty, debating drink plans while they waited for Barry to emerge so that they could embarrass him with thunderous applause. But she hugged herself, shifting from foot to foot, staring down the alley, expecting, at any moment, her mother’s ghost to appear.
She’d slipped out of the theater during intermission, certain that in the darkness, she had mistaken the girl in the Playbill for the girl at the Beverly Hills party. But there she was, in full light. Born in Brentwood, Kennedy Sanders studied at USC but left early to pursue a career in acting. She recently played Cordelia (King Lear), Jenny (Death of a Salesman) and Laura (The Glass Menagerie). This is her first appearance at the Stardust Theater, though hopefully not her last. In her headshot, the girl smiled, her wavy blonde hair falling angelically to her shoulders. She looked innocent here, nothing like the sassy girl who’d demanded a martini from her at a party, and she might have believed that this was a different white girl altogether if not for those eyes. She could never forget them.
If that girl was in the show, did that mean that the woman in the fur coat was here too? What if it was Stella? What if it wasn’t? She’d wandered around the lobby until the house lights flickered but she never saw a woman who looked like her mother. Now she felt even crazier than before.
“You all right, baby?” Reese asked.
She nodded, trying to smile.
“I’m just cold,” she said. He wrapped his arms around her, warming her up. Then the stage door opened, but instead of Barry wandering out, Kennedy Sanders stepped into the alley, fumbling with a pack of Marlboros. She looked startled to see the crowd waiting, and for a second, she smiled expectantly before realizing that no one was there to see her. Then her eyes flickered to Jude. She smirked.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
She remembered her, three years later. Of course she did. Who would forget a dark girl who’d spilled wine all over an expensive rug?
“My friend’s in this show,” Jude said.
Kennedy shrugged, shaking a cigarette into her palm. She was wearing a tattered Sex Pistols T-shirt that stopped above her navel, jean shorts over ripped fishnet tights, and black leather boots—she looked nothing like the Beverly Hills princess from that party. She started walking down the alley, and Jude scrambled after her.
“Barry,” she said. “He’s in the chorus?”
“Is that your boyfriend?” Kennedy asked.
“Barry?”
“No, silly. Him.” She jerked her head back toward the group. “The one with the curly hair. He’s a doll. Where’d you find him?”
“At school,” she said. “Well, really at this party—”
“You have a light?” Kennedy slid a cigarette into her mouth. When Jude shook her head, she said, “Just as well. Bad for the singing voice, you know.”
“I thought you were amazing tonight,” Jude said. She didn’t really, but she would have to flatter this girl to get anything out of her. “Your folks must be proud.”
Kennedy scoffed. “Please. They hate that I’m doing this.”
“Why?”
“Because they sent me to school to do something practical, you know. Not drop out and throw my life away. At least that’s what my mother says. Hey, do you have a light?” She flagged down a shaggy-haired white man smoking on the corner. “Well, so long!”