The Vanishing Half(69)

He laughed a little but he was gazing at her so seriously, she felt her neck flush.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Torture you, I mean.”

“Do you hate me for telling you all of this?” he said.

His nervousness settled her. She’d gone on a few dates with white men before but never made it past kissing in their cars. She was always afraid that they might be able to read her lie, somehow, on her naked body. Maybe against white sheets, her skin would look darker, or maybe she would just feel different once he was inside of her. If nakedness would not reveal who you were, then what would?

In the hotel room, Blake slowly undressed her. He unzipped her skirt, unclipped her bra, bent to unfurl her nylons. He was straining against his white briefs and she felt embarrassed for him, embarrassed for all men, really, forced to wear their desire so openly. She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted.

She couldn’t have said no to him, she’d since realized, but she didn’t want to. And maybe that was the difference, or maybe, the difference was in thinking that there was one at all.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Peg said.

“Like what?”

“Like your cat just died.” Peg leaned across the desk. “I just hate to see you make yourself small for him. Just because he’ll never see you the way you see yourself.”

Stella glanced away.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “When I think about who I was before him. It’s like being a whole other person.”

“So who were you then?” Peg said.

Sometimes being a twin had felt like living with another version of yourself. That person existed for everyone, probably, an alternative self that lived only in the mind. But hers was real. Stella rolled over in bed each morning and looked into her eyes. Other times it felt like living with a foreigner. Why are you not more like me? she’d think, glancing over at Desiree. How did I become me and you become you? Maybe she was only quiet because Desiree was not. Maybe they’d spent their lives together modulating each other, making up for what the other lacked. Like how at their father’s funeral, Stella barely spoke, and when someone asked her a question, Desiree answered instead. At first it unnerved Stella, a person speaking to her and Desiree responding. Like throwing her own voice. But soon she felt comfortable disappearing. You could say nothing and, in your nothingness, feel free.

She stared out the window at students biking past, then back to the professor.

“I can’t even remember,” she said.





Twelve


By the end of Jude’s first two weeks as the newest usher at the Stardust Theater, she’d already learned two main things about Kennedy Sanders: she wanted to be a Broadway star, and she carried herself like every aggrieved actress, a little prideful, a little wounded. The pride was impossible to miss; she delighted in making others wait for her, sauntering through every held door. She argued with the director over the delivery of lines, often, it seemed, for fun. She parked her red sports car on the far side of the garage because, she claimed, it had once been keyed by a jealous understudy. She liked to invent stories about her life, as if the reality were too dull to repeat. Sometimes she revised herself in the middle of a conversation, like when she told Jude that her car had been a high school graduation gift.

“No, more like a ‘we can’t believe you graduated’ gift,” she said. “I was a little shit in high school. But weren’t we all? I mean, maybe not. You don’t look like a little shit to me.”

“I wasn’t,” Jude said.

“I know you weren’t. See, I can always tell. Who ate their broccoli and listened to daddy and who was a fucking hell-raiser. Hey, be a doll and throw this away, will you?”

In her dressing room, she dropped crumpled candy wrappers into Jude’s waiting hands. For the past two weekends, Jude had ridden the bus downtown to the decrepit theater, where she swept popcorn off the floors, scrubbed the bathroom sinks, and cleaned out the dressing rooms. In time, her supervisor promised, she would work her way up to ticket taking and seat directing. Little did he know, she was exactly where she wanted to be. But of course she didn’t tell him that. She’d only given him the simple story: that she was a recent college graduate looking to earn extra money on the weekends. She could work Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons. The Midnight Marauders shifts. He told her to come back for the Sunday matinee dressed in all black.

“I don’t like it,” Reese said. He leaned against the kitchen countertop, Mr. Song’s worn tool belt still around his waist, looking so worried, she wished she hadn’t said anything in the first place.

“It’s just a little side job,” she said lightly. “We could use the money.”

“It’s not and you know it.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Just go on pretending she ain’t Stella’s daughter? I can’t do that. I have to know her. I have to meet Stella.”

“And how you plan on doin that?”

But she had no plan beyond the Stardust Theater. Before each show, she met Kennedy in her dressing room and helped lift the big dress over her head. She did other little favors for her too: brought her hot water with lemon, fetched her sandwiches from a nearby diner, ran for Cokes from the lobby vending machine. She always felt foolish, standing outside the dressing room holding a steaming mug of tea, until Kennedy whisked in, breathless and unapologetic.