Inside, the gray cover was stiff with age. I carefully pulled it out, unsure of what I was holding. An old notebook, bound with twine. The paper had yellowed and was crumbling at the edges. I unbound it.
The pages were lined blue, and the writing was small and neat and tight, from a time when people still cared about penmanship. The ink had faded with time. I thought it was a cookbook at first, except for the numbers that had been scratched out and recalculated, small math equations at the edges. Each page contained a list in compact rows. I recognized some words: turmeric and rosehip and cloves. Other names, like burdock and yarrow, sounded like cities out west. Formula no. 16 for appendicitis. Formula no. 28 for summer colds. Formula no. 37 for sterility. Formula no. 44 forunusual episodes.
When I turned to the final marked page, the photograph fell out, like Halley had been using it as a bookmark.
A photo of us.
In it, I still had the plump skin of my youth, a glow I didn’t recognize. For a joke one Halloween, years after I was let go, I dressed up as the Earthshine Girl from that commercial where she’s getting married. Halley had found a near-replica white dress, the kind that laced up with ribbon. I still had that dress at home, in a box in the basement.
Halley’s costume was made of cardboard and Hula Hoops. She had her artist friend paint a rendering of the package. She’s supposed to be a canister of Earthshine Soap. In the photo, we’re holding both hands, like we’re about to take vows. Wyatt had been with us that night, and some guy named Jerry or Jimmy that Halley was dating; you could see the back of his head in the photo, the little bull’s-eye of a bald spot. Wyatt and I had been dating a couple of years at that point, but all you can see is his elbow and a swath of flannel he wore that night, saying he was Paul Bunyan. I felt homesick for that time.
I am made of stone. I am made of stone.
I saw a shadow pass behind the mirror. A minute later someone knocked on the door. The bank worker poked her head inside.
“A few more minutes,” I said. She disappeared.
I flipped the photo over, thinking Halley may have written something there, but nothing. I examined the page the photo had held. The handwriting was looser and loopy, different from the rest of the pages.At the top, no formula number or designation, only a name: Comet Pills.
Comet Pills sounded like something out ofThe Twilight Zone. I imagined a capsule with a tiny ball of light inside my intestines, like a Dexatrim, only brighter. Beneath the row of ingredients was a jumble of numbers and letters, equations I didn’t understand.
I held the page up, closer to the ceiling light. Near the bottom edge, her name had made an impression deep enough I could feel the pen’s grooves. TheOandDwere dramatically scrawled, and the cross of thetexpanded the length of her name, like a strikethrough made in anger.
Opal Doucet.
I ran my fingers across the name, then I put the photo back in the book and the book back in the envelope.
Just a notebook, I told myself. Nothing sentimental, except Halley wanted me to have it. She loved antiquing and finding little treasures at garage sales and flea markets. Old hats and postcards; mannequin parts and books with funny titles; clocks and figurines. Last year for my birthday, she gave me salt and pepper shakers shaped like a Dutch man and woman that, if set together, appeared to be kissing. Halley believed she was saving these old objects, granting them second lives.
The bank worker led me out. She commented on the weather again, how Punxsutawney Phil would be brought to the White House to visit Reagan. She must have sensed my distraction. She’d probably seen this scene before: a grieving individual, a locked box. She held the door open with her body and said: “You never know what people find valuable, or what secrets they might leave behind.” Looking back, it was the way she said it, the flinty sideways glance she gave me as she held the door open as I brushed past her, my purse now heavy with that notebook.
I kept my eye on my rearview mirror as I circled my way out of the parking garage, my headlights bouncing in slick puddles. It took me several moments to notice the dark sedan behind me, the kind with tinted windows to disguise important people, the kind the Tuttleshire. The car followed me to the highway, and in and out of traffic, and when I signaled to get off at my exit, that car signaled, too.
I thought about what an acting teacher had said about channeling anxiety into performative power. He told us to press our fingers together, to feel the pressure pulse on the tips. Many of my classmates went on to perform on the stages of New York or the screens of Hollywood, but I got married and stayed in Ohio, a word shaped like a tractor, if you look at it.
It’s hard to be taken seriously as an artist in the middle of the country, an area more into the price of corn than aesthetics, an area where everyone is constantly apologizing. Have you ever been grocery shopping in the Midwest? It’s a chorus of “opes” and “pardon me’s” sung by people pushing carts full of ranch dressing and ground beef. It took me years to get through the grocery store without once uttering “I’m sorry” for the simple act of taking up space.
After the conservatory, my agent had suggested I box up all my old photos and tapes from my Earthshine days. She said I was acting the same part in all my auditions, suggested I “display my range” so I don’t seem “trapped in the role.” Agents are like therapists. They help you self-actualize, for a commission. Wyatt dragged the boxes of memorabilia to the basement. Afterward, he unwrapped a Klondike Bar for me because sugar was his way of being gentle.
My agent was right. Soon, I found better roles, no blockbuster hits, but gigs hosting pageants and bit parts on sit-coms, since my contract prohibited me from doing mass-market commercials. I landed a guest spot onWKRP in Cincinnati, the one time it was shot locally and not in a Hollywood studio. In that episode, Les Nessman wanted to compete with news helicopters, but all he could afford was a biplane, and I played the part of the copilot. I handed Les Nessman a clipboard. “All systems ready.” That was my only line. I was listed as a “special guest.”
My agent lobbied to keep my recurring role onStars and Shadows, and I did medical informational videos for things like deviated septumsurgery.Do I still look like me?I asked in one, my nose bound up in surgical tape.
Now I squeezed the steering wheel. I’d never filmed a chase scene. That car zigzagged behind me, in and out of traffic. I’d read too many scripts. I’d seen too many movies. Wyatt and I watchedVanishing Pointin the theater on one of our first dates, and this wasn’t quite that. Besides, nobody was behind me when I pulled into my driveway.
When I got out of the car, I noticed the mess. At first I assumed the toilet papering had been done by harmless teen vandals, but then I saw the sign hammered into my lawn. Heavy cardboard. Metal spikes. Yellow paint. Thick strokes.
EARTHSHINE BITCH,it read.
1910
After the boiler explosion, the factory had closed for two days and all the machines inspected and declared in good working condition. Now, however, the Earthshine Girls startled at every unfamiliar click or clang or hiss. Perhaps that’s the reason Opal jolted when Maria shouted her name. The very utterance of it seemed dangerous.
“Opal Doucet—”
Maria pronounced her name like it was French.Do-say, she said, an invitation to speak, notdo-sit, how Jagr said it, a command to find a chair. She had spotted Opal’s full name on the foreman’s clipboard.
“Opal Doucet,” she said again, loud enough for others to hear. Earthshine Girls always spoke above the noise, and sometimes they found themselves shouting, even outside during breaks. “Can you hear me? I’m talking to you.”
