She glided her fingers across the woman’s handwriting, feeling the pen’s indentations. Then she read as quickly as she could, devouring each line as though she’d been starved her whole life. And she had been, in a way:
Dearest Opal,
The scientists say Halley’s Comet is already visible in some parts of the world. Can you see it there? They say when the Earth formed, gravity did not draw the comet to its center, that it orbits space, illuminated only by the sun. Do you know it emits no light of its own? You probably do, but I like the idea that an object in darkness can appear so illuminated by something else. That a ball of rock, from a distance, can look to be set on fire. In that way we can see the shape of it. We can know it.
I like to think we are scale models of the universe. I do not claim to be the sun. When I’m communing with the Other Side, I am myself, embodied by a self. Two people at once, two consciousnesses, two sets of desires, but only one body through which to experience it. This is my way of answering that question in your last letter. And your other questions: Did I really sense Oren that night? Do I really want you to come to France? Do I really know a man with a Spirit Machine? I’ll answer now, and simply:
Yes.
I’m sure you read by now about that scientist, Camille Flammarion, who says the world will end May 19. He’s French, you probably know. He says toxic gases from the comet’s tail will impregnate the atmosphere and destroy theworld as we know it. Snuff out life, he says. I don’t believe in science. I trust my own senses. I think the comet will save us, not destroy us, in the end. And, anyway, I am not afraid of death.
—M
Opal thrilled at the woman’s signature on the page, thatM, the intimacy of it. An invitation, but to what? Beneath it, the woman had pressed her inky fingertip, the lines and whorls like a miniature galaxy. Opal fit her own fingerprint to the woman’s. A universe. Then she lifted the paper to her nose. Even on top of her mourning perfume, she could smell cotton and musk.
For a moment, Opal thought she might die—and likeMshe was not afraid of death. She was not afraid at all.
1986
More Like Sisters! Be admired like your daughter for the radiant freshness of your skin.
—SWEETHEART TOILET SOAP
Halley believed in ghosts, but not the Holy One. Still, her funeral took place in a large church downtown. The chapel had vaulted ceilings and brass fixtures and pews, and I couldn’t help but think how much Halley would hate it here, how ridiculous this all was.
I scanned the crowd for Wyatt, and I found him, seated an appropriate distance from the front. Of course he arrived early. I could just see him formulating some relationship-to-pew ratio in his head. He stood and hugged me, then we sat. He put his arm around my shoulder, and I nestled against him. He’d grown a beard, and he smelled like an aftershave I didn’t recognize.
A large crucifix hung over the altar, with the muscular body of Jesus splayed out, the divot of his hip peeking above his loincloth, and I couldn’t help thinking about Wyatt stepping out of the shower, a damp towel wrapped around his waist. What was wrong with me? Itried to think of something more appropriate, but I kept returning to how good it felt to be tucked into Wyatt’s chest, how good it felt to be touched at all.
Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” played over a speaker. Celeste Shadow—Samantha was her real name—paid her respects to Charlie. Halley never liked her, and out of loyalty, I didn’t either. Now, the person in front of me began to sob. Wyatt squeezed my hand. Halley loved music, but I’d never known her to listen to Van Morrison.Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.I tried to conjure tears, but I still couldn’t. I was worried I felt nothing—that I’d become numb to any feeling—but that wasn’t quite it. I was thinking of all the people I knew who had died. My mom of cancer my first year at the conservatory. Wyatt’s dad of a heart attack when we’d been married two years. Our baby who was born at twenty weeks, ofnatural causes. The baby was young enough to be calledstilland notdead. Halley wasstillnow, too.
I recognized another Earthshine Girl in the pew diagonal from me. She looked like me, only younger. Same coffee-colored hair, same slope of the nose. Her name was Edith; she was the actress who’d replaced me in the commercials. In front of her was another replica of me, still younger. Janie. Round eyes, rounder cheeks than mine with dimples beneath each. She’d replaced Edith, once Edith began developing breasts.
In a row near the front, just behind Charlie, sat the current Earthshine Girl. I didn’t know her name, though I’d recently passed her in the studio when production schedules overlapped, and she never acknowledged me or even seemed to know who I was.You’re me, I always wanted to say to her. She had a gap between her teeth, freckles across the bridge of her nose—just like I had at that age. Now she wore a black ribbon tied in a bow atop her hair.
In front of me, a woman turned and whispered: “I see Vincent Glass! And Celeste Shadow!”
“Where’s Bertie?” Wyatt whispered. I shrugged.
Bertie Tuttle’s presence always announced itself by her security detail and, later in life, by her caretakers. It’s rumored she’d received several death threats over the years, and security at the Tuttle mansion rivaled that of the White House: pats down upon arrival, cameras everywhere, a security guard scrutinizing television feeds of the mansion’s hallways and entry points.I have the right enemies, she used to say proudly, which I understood to mean that any woman with power will eventually become a target in a world that wished she had none.
I raked my eyes across each pew, but she wasn’t there.
This shouldn’t have surprised me. Halley’s relationship with Bertie had been strained for as long as I could remember. Once, on set when I was ten, we had hours to kill before call time, and Halley found me a robe and led me down the long hallway that connected the studio to the factory. She plucked a bobby pin from my hair.
“Hey!” I said. The hair and makeup lady always scolded me for messing with her art. Back then I didn’t think hair could be art, but now I think anything can be, really.
“Shhh,” she said, and she picked the lock and unlatched the door. Another series of hallways led us to the factory floor. We climbed some metal stairs and looked out. It seemed like a set from a sci-fi movie. Square steel contraptions burped and churned; conveyor belts zigzagged; the workers wore hairnets and masks and gloves and aprons. To my young eyes, they looked like menacing mad scientists.
“That’s the machine that fills the canisters,” Halley had said, pointing. The machine made a zapping sound, then a cylinder popped out onto a holding tray.
“Look,” she said, pointing to a large machine that resembled a giant mixer, like the kind my mother kept on our counter because when she wasn’t cleaning houses, she was baking pies and cakes to sell at church. When she was done mixing, she’d hand me a wire whisk and let me taste the batter, pretending to elicit my advice.Need anything?she’d ask.More sugar, I’d say. I always said that. At that moment, the giant machine bowl began to spin, and a tube carrying a white powder tilted tofill it. The whole factory burst into the scent of lavender. Halley held up her sleeve to her face, and I did the same.
“Smells awful,” I said, “when you smell it all at once.” My lungs felt dusty, the cage of my chest tightened. I understood now why the workers wore masks.
“Only she knows the formula.”
“Your grandma?” I asked, but it felt strange to call Bertie anyone’s grandma. She’d dined with Eleanor Roosevelt, sipped tea with Queen Elizabeth. She once took a flight with Amelia Earhart. There’s a picture of it inThe Juggernaut—the two of them behind the plane’s propellers, holding them like oars. Sudsy sits at Bertie’s feet.
