The Vanishing Half(71)

One Friday night, the cast went out for a nightcap. Barry tugged Jude’s arm to convince her to stay, but before she could tell him that she was exhausted, Kennedy jogged out beside her. So of course she’d stayed. She never told her no. She felt desperate around her. The play was nearly over and she’d barely learned anything about Stella. In the dim bar, the pianist found a dusty upright in the back and started picking around chords. Slowly the cast migrated over, a little tipsy and still eager to perform. But Kennedy sat with Jude at the worn end of the table, their knees touching.

“You don’t have many friends like me, do you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

White people, probably, although Kennedy surprised her by saying, “Girlfriends. You were with a whole bunch of boys when I saw you.”

“No,” Jude said. “I don’t have any girlfriends, really.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I never really had any growing up. It’s the place I come from. They don’t like people like me.”

“Blacks, you mean.”

“Dark ones,” she said. “The light ones are fine.”

Kennedy laughed. “Well, that’s silly.”

They both found each other’s lives inscrutable, and wasn’t that the only way it could be? Didn’t Jude wonder what it would be like to care so little about your education, to know that even if the worst happened, you would be all right? Didn’t she hate the loud punk rock screeching out the speakers when Kennedy peeled into the parking garage? Yes, and she rolled her eyes each time Kennedy arrived late. She resented when Kennedy demanded lemon tea. She felt defensive when Barry called her a spoiled brat even though she was one, of course she was. The girl was maddening sometimes, but maybe this was who Jude would have been if her mother hadn’t married a dark man. In this other life, the twins passed over together. Her mother married a white man and now she slipped out of mink coats at fancy parties, not waited tables in a country diner. In this reality, Jude was fair and beautiful, driving a red Camaro around Brentwood, her hand trailing out the window. Each night, she strutted onstage, beaming, tossing back her golden hair while the world applauded.

The boy on the piano started banging out “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and Kennedy shrieked, grabbing Jude by the hand. Jude never sang in front of anybody. But somehow, she found herself singing along with the giddy group, annoying the other patrons, until the bartender kicked them out. She climbed into bed that night after three, her head buzzing, still feeling Kennedy’s arm around her shoulders. They weren’t real family, and they weren’t real friends, but they were something. Weren’t they?

“Where’d you go?” Reese asked. They were kissing in bed but she was distracted, her head still swimming with music.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just thinking.”

“About that white girl?” He sighed. “Baby, you gotta stop. You’re playin a dangerous game.”

“It’s not a game,” she said. “It’s my family.”

“Those people ain’t your family. They don’t wanna be and you can’t make them.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Then why are you sniffin around that girl? You can’t make nobody be what they don’t wanna be. And if your aunt wants to be a white woman, it’s her life.”

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“You’re right,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I don’t understand you at all—”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, but wasn’t it? He hadn’t watched her mother spend years pining after Stella, or Early driving thousands of miles searching for her. He didn’t see the mornings Jude had spent digging through the crates in the back of the closet, sifting through Stella’s things. Junk, mostly, a few old toys or an earring or a sock. She couldn’t tell if her grandmother chose to keep these mementos or if she’d forgotten the boxes were even there. But she’d sort through them, trying to discover what made Stella different. How had she found a way to leave Mallard when her mother only knew how to stay?

All November, she reported to Kennedy Sanders’s dressing room to help lift the big dress over her head. Then each evening, she stood in the wing of the theater, searching the audience for Stella. She did not see her once. Still, she looked for her as the overture faded and Kennedy finally took the stage. Somehow, as soon as the show started, she lost that smart-alecky tone that made the crew roll their eyes. When the lights hit, she was no longer the sarcastic girl chain-smoking in the alley. She became Dolly, the sweet, carefree nobody lost in an abandoned town.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve just always loved the stage. Everyone watching you. Sort of thrilling, isn’t it?”

After a Saturday night show, she’d offered to drive Jude home. She glanced across the car, smiling at her, and Jude, fidgeting, stared out the window. She hated how directly Kennedy looked at her, as if she were daring her to look away.

“No,” Jude said. “I’d hate everyone staring at me like that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It makes me feel . . . exposed, I guess.”

Kennedy laughed.

“Yes, but acting is different,” she said. “You only show people what you want to.”