“No, no,” he said. His voice sounded thick, filmed with mucus. “It’s Halley,” he said. He cleared his throat.
“Is she okay?” I asked. I turned on the light. I’d promised her I’d stop by after work one day this week, but I hadn’t yet.
“No,” he said. “No, she’s not.”
“What is it?”
“Nona, she’s gone.”
“Gone where?” I asked. Halley had run away before, had turned up in all sorts of places: rehab, police stations, Reno, West Virginia. Once Charlie flew to Paris to retrieve her.
Charlie didn’t say a word, just sat on the other end sniffling. That’s when I knew.
“No,” I said. “Are you serious?”
“Why would I—”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How?” It’s the first question we ask in the face of death, as though the manner of death matters, as though we aren’t all born marching toward our end. But my mind couldn’t quite grasp what I was hearing. I wanted details, proof.
“Drugs,” he said. “Pills. Booze, probably, too. She left a note. I’m still learning the details.” We held the line quietly for thirty seconds or thirtyminutes. The whole world felt small, like it could fit through the tiny holes in the phone receiver. Or maybe I was the one who felt small, already perceiving the cosmic shift in my world and my way of knowing it.
“I could have done more for her,” he finally said. “She kept saying the comet was a sign, that everything was connected. She claimed Bertie had it out for her. She and Bertie never saw eye to eye—you know that. She had become more erratic, fanatical, but I never thought…” His voice cracked.
“Charlie,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I took a few breaths to control my emotions, like I’d been taught at the conservatory.I am made of stone.I tried to think of what you’re supposed to say at times like these and how they’re calledtimes like these. I felt an ache in my rib cage, so I pretended I was in scene.I am Stella.What would she say, I asked myself, but then I felt stupid for even thinking that. Then I returned to myself. “You did a lot,” I said to Charlie. The receiver was wet with my breath.
“Not enough.” He sniffled. “She’d gotten worse. After that rehab stint in Paris, we thought she was better, but she got worse. Maybe it was my fault for not being there when she was young. Did she think I was a good father?”
“Of course, Charlie,” I said. “Don’t even ask that.” But I was already asking myself:Had I been a good friend?If I’d stopped by when she’d asked me, we’d have sat on her couch together, and she’d have played an old record, and I’d have held her hand as she told me whatever she’d wanted to say. Halley always laughed when she cried because she felt stupid, so it was difficult to discern which emotion she was actually expressing.
We always make death about ourselves, don’t we? We paralyze ourselves with what-ifs. What if I had gone to her apartment like I told her I would? She wanted to talk, but she refused to have a conversation on the phone. She claimed it wasn’t safe, but Halley could be dramatic sometimes. We called her eccentric to explain away what we didn’t want to see.
Once, she took me to a farm a few miles outside Cincinnati.If you understand what I’m saying, Bessie, then blink!The cow had dewy round eyes and a piece of cud hanging from her mouth. Halley was a vegetarian because she believed one day we’d be able to communicate with animals, and she’d written a song about it called “Cowgirl.” Finally, the wind shifted, and the animal’s lids closed against the cold.Didn’t I tell you?
Halley saw things others didn’t. That’s who she was.
Was.
Halley was gone.
And she wasn’t Stella. She couldn’t come back from the dead. She couldn’t suck water from a tree root, then slowly inch her way toward the light.
After I hung up with Charlie, I turned off the lamp and lay in my bed. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come. I thought of how, as a girl—before I was discovered—I wanted to be a ventriloquist. I’d seen the commercials for Tootsie Roll Fudge with Paul Winchell and his doll, named Jerry Mahoney. Paul was the comedian, but Jerry said all the best lines. My mother had asked me:Have you ever seen a lady ventriloquist? You could be a teacher, she said.Or a nurse.But I begged her for a doll like Jerry, and one day she relented and ordered me aBoys’ Lifebooklet about ventriloquism.
The first step, according to the book, was to stare in the mirror, to smile while allowing your teeth to touch, to wiggle your tongue around in your mouth to get a feel for the space you can work with. Some sounds were easy to say through clenched teeth, but the trickier letters required deft substitutions, aDsound, for instance, in the place of aBsound, which, with practice, can trick the ear.
Doy. Doy. Doy. Boy. Boy. Boy.
I’d use my rag doll with a stitch of yarn for a mouth, but that missed the whole point. The trick was throwing the sound; while my mouth stayed shut, a puppet’s mouth opened. Finally, my mother brought me home a dummy—a real one with a hinged jaw. She’d found it in thebasement of a house she cleaned, and the woman said she’d planned to throw it away, so my mother could keep it. It didn’t even bother me that the doll was someone else’s trash. The paint on its face was chipped. I wrote my name along the spine. I called the doll Sal.
A girl who wants to throw her voice, to give it to Sal to deliver the best lines, strikes me as sad. Maybe we’re always looking for someone who can say what we can’t, what we’re afraid to say. When I cleaned out my mom’s old house after she’d died, I’d given Sal to Halley because she thought it was kitschy and she collected vintage things. For a while, she’d kept Sal on a shelf in her apartment and brought it down from time to time when I’d come over. We’d pass it back and forth between us, using the doll to admit our most private thoughts—secret longings or regrets. Our friendship had no room for judgment, but sometimes it was just easier to have someone else do the talking. If I had Sal again, I’d have the doll say this:I let you down, Halley. I love you. I’m sorry.
1910
Opal hugged her handbag to her body and slipped her fingers beneath the flap to check the contents. Inside, she grazed the edges of Jagr’s formulary. It’s not as though it would have disintegrated since she’d left her apartment. Still, she touched it carefully, like Eve must have first fingered that forbidden fruit. Jagr forbade her from handling his formulary, but now it seemed like the very thing that could set her free.
