“Gotta scratch my way out of that ground first,” I said.
“Today,” he said.
The backdrop of the stage was a Gothic cemetery, the kind with gates and marble monuments, trees draped with Spanish moss. Vincent Glass paced the stage in his tuxedo, his hand tucked into his cummerbund, rehearsing his lines. The wardrobe assistant came by and made a few adjustments to my collar, then the makeup girl smudged my cheeks with charcoal and mud.
“Lights. Roll sound,” Elliot said.
I took my place beside a mound of dirt that had been dumped on the stage. The scene involved a close-up, then the popping of my hand above the dirt, but the camera angles were tricky. Elliot instructed me to reach through the dirt and upward to achieve the effect. Vincent Glass, who’d been at my graveside contemplating his love for Celeste, who was dying, would see my hand and grasp it.
“Action!” Elliot yelled. The clapperboard. The close-up. My neck twisted; I rested against the dirt, and it was cold on my skin. I dug, dug, dug with my dagger necklace, with my hands, my fingers, all of me.
I pushed my hand through the dirt, like I was being birthed a single body part at a time. My fingers writhed—undead, unstill. I lived in my character’s head for a moment, but then my mind spiraled. I thought of the latest Jane Doe, her silhouette filmed behind that green screen. When John Dale asked her if she regretted coming forward, she didn’t respond. She sat in silence for a full five seconds, which in television is an eternity. I thought of Halley sitting alone in her coat. I imagined her clapping a handful of pills to her mouth, then swigging some vodka and swallowing. I thought of my baby, my still baby, how when they brought the baby to me, it had been wrapped in a white blanket with footprints on it. The nurse asked me if I wanted to hold her, and I shook my head, didn’t even sayno, and Wyatt lookedaway from me, out the window. The most dramatic scenes have no lines.
Art is not held at time’s mercy, not like our own lives. Art is time, keenly felt. Stella had been underground for several TV weeks, but only a few days of her own life. I blinked dirt from Stella’s eyes, and when I did, the whole world appeared magnified. Since Halley died, I hadn’t been sleeping. Last night I managed only two hours. I blinked at the ceiling, replaying an imagined conversation in my mind, over and over, as though I could will it to alter reality.
We need to talk.
Let’s talk then. I’m listening. I’m here.
So much of acting is stillness, waiting for a moment to arise, then moving toward it without hesitation. I held the scene until I felt Vincent Glass’s hand pulling me to the surface, until he said, “Good gracious, she’s alive,” and I cried real tears and the actor who played Vincent cradled me until Elliot yelled, “Cut. Cut. Perfect. Cut.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I STOPPEDat Dowd’s Drugs to pick up the prescription my doctor called in, birth control pills to help regulate my bleeding, ironic, given the years I’d spent trying to conceive.
Dowd’s was a local pharmacy, not one of those national chains. The place was vintage, a portal to a different time. Inside, a large onyx counter sold old-timey sodas for a dollar, and if you wanted to stay there to drink it, they’d put it in a beveled green soda glass. You could sit at one of the stools and pretend you’re inIt’s a Wonderful Life.
I never cared for that movie title, by the way. I think it’s a lie. Too often we’re willing to live with scarcity, to accept smallness in our lives, to feast on crumbs and pretend we’re full. In the movie, George dreamed of seeing the world, but he never did see it. He never would, probably.
The pharmacist, Gary, nodded when he saw me. He was a nice guy, a cross between a hippie and Santa Claus, which is to say he had longwhite hair and a beard he kept well-trimmed, and he never stared at my breasts. And, like Santa, he knew all my secrets.
Gary himself compounded the fertility medication I’d taken. From Gary, I ordered pregnancy tests by the dozens and basal thermometers and ovulation kits and estrogen patches. Gary knew I’d gotten pregnant because he’d filled prescriptions for pills to help with morning sickness and for prenatal vitamins so big he cut them in half.
He’d counted Klonopin after I lost the baby. It was supposed to help me sleep, but instead I hallucinated that the baby had come home with us. I slept in the nursery, and that’s where Wyatt found me, curled up in the glider next to an empty crib. I switched to Valium. Gary didn’t sayI’m sorry for your lossoreverything happens for a reason. Instead, he stapled my receipt to the bag and reminded me to take the medicine with food. There was comfort in that.
Gary had bagged my prescription by the time I approached the counter.
He rang me up, and we did our exchange.
“Have you ever heard of Comet Pills?” I asked, putting away my billfold.
He laughed like I was playing a prank.
“I don’t even know what I’m asking,” I said. I shoved my wallet back in my purse.
Gary leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter. He wore a wedding ring that he now twisted on his knuckle. “When Halley’s Comet was here last time, people believed the gas in the comet’s tail would eradicateall of mankind.” He rubbed his beard. “Back then, anyone could bottle anything, slap on a label saying it cured this, prevented that. Snake oil salesmen—the world was full of them. There are laws to regulate drugs now, though. The Sherley Amendment. Thank goodness. Now everything is tested.”
“And then the comet came and went,” I said. A bell rang, and someone entered the store.
“Someone will be right with you,” Gary yelled. He turned tome. “Came and went. Dowd’s still has the old inventory books dating back to the 1880s. And Comet Pills, the ones sold at Dowd’s anyway, didn’t have anything to do with the comet.”
I heard someone order a milkshake, and the blender whirred to life.
“So the pills—what did they do?” I asked.
Gary laughed. “Mood enhancers. Happy Pills. All I really know is that they sold well, according to the ledger, and then one day—poof—they disappeared. No more sales recorded. Guess everyone got happy. Inventory gone like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.
The most recent Jane Doe to come forward was a housekeeper, like my mother. She said years of using Earthshine had led to low libido and depression so bad she couldn’t get out of bed for days. She thought of ending her own life. She’d fantasize about how she’d do it, but then she thought of her kids, or she thought of her husband having to explain it to them. Her kids would never recover, and—she didn’t want to be the cause of that kind of trauma, or to be a ghost that haunted them their entire lives. When I’d read the article, I thought of my own mom. I never considered that she might have held secret fantasies of any kind. Her hands wrinkled prematurely, and she rubbed them each night with cold cream, explaining hands are the first place where a woman shows her age.
Someone waited behind me in line now—an old woman with a headscarf tied beneath her chin. She stood with the help of a walker. She could have been Bertie’s age. I wondered if she were alive the last time Halley’s Comet came around. I wondered if she’d ever taken a Comet Pill. She smiled at me. She looked happy enough.
