“Just practice your lines.”
I couldn’t focus. I was cold, and I said so. My nipples had grown hard, becoming little jagged tips poking the fabric of my slip. “Oh, geez,” said the wardrobe assistant. “Someone get me some Band-Aids!” She pulled down my costume and taped the Band-Aids over my nipples. Even then I was being conditioned to hand over my body, to make it pleasing for others. I watched Edith watch me. The wardrobe assistant pulled up my dress and fastened it. “Don’t move or I’ll stick you,” she said as she worked to repin my dress.
The girl in the booth held no expression—no smile, no frown. She sat so still, so restrained, so motionless, I knew she must be an actress. I didn’t know who she was, but I suspected. My growing body was becoming a nuisance on set, my widening hips, my rounding breasts. The production assistant set up a single space heater and pointed it in my direction.
“Take one,” the director yelled. “Roll camera. Roll sound…”
The Earthshine Girl stood at an altar decorated with artificial flowers that smelled skunky. She wore that wedding dress that laced up the back. Her hair was done up in a bun with a little loose curl hanging down each side, and I remember how looking through the veil reminded me of looking through fog: I could see, but only enough to take one step at a time. I didn’t realize this would be the last commercial I’d ever film.
“I’m about to make the biggest commitment of my life!” I’d saidcommitmentin four syllables—I still hadn’t taken elocution classes.
The camera panned to my hands. I wasn’t holding a bouquet, but a canister of soap. I whispered: “I’ll say ‘I do’ to Earthshine Soap. An indispensable part of every union.” I was instructed to wink, and I remembered how I had to do the winking shot in several takes until the director yelled: “You don’t have something in your damn eye!”
Everyone on set had laughed—but not Edith. Her hands were pressed against the glass of the recording booth. That’s the moment I figured out who she was and why she was there. That’s the moment I knew I’d no longer be the Earthshine Girl. I saw myself on the recording screen, and I saw Edith in the booth, and for a single moment I thought I understood something profound about acting, about life, about how a camera captures you, locks you in space and time, and then you’re stuck, trapped as someone else forever.
“Morning,” I said to Edith now. I didn’t resent her—not anymore, though for a long time I had, watching her do those commercials after my contract was terminated, knowing she had taken my place. Over the years, I’d bumped into her a few times at auditions, and it was like running into someone with whom I shared an ex: We were friendly and awkward, at once, with the knowing of what we shared. Now, she handed me a coffee still capped with steam, even though I didn’t really want it, feeling already hyped from my diet pills.
Halley had never mentioned being close with Edith, but I knew they’d spent a lot of time together. That was her job: chaperone to the Earthshine Girl. They’d traveled together to conventions. Once, they flew to Germany for the opening of a new overseas factory. Halley brought me back a souvenir: a coffee mug that readI DON’T GIVE A SCHNITZEL.
“She always talked about you in a way that made me feel I could never fill your shoes,” Edith said.
“Sorry. I mean, thanks,” I said. Grief is awkward. Nobody ever knows what to say. I wondered if Halley had told Edith about the time we snuck into Celeste Shadow’s dressing room and combed her wig with fish oil, or the time Halley gave me my first sip of alcohol,vodka mixed with Hawaiian Punch, that I drank in the studio parking lot between takes.
We waited for Janie.
Janie stopped acting after her short stint as the Earthshine Girl. She married young and had kids. “CEO of my household,” she said when she arrived. “Just until they’re in school.” She was wearing gray sweatpants, moccasins that may have been slippers. On her shoulder hung an oversize bag, the kind all moms carry. She swigged her coffee. “What’s with the reunion?”
“The Jane Does…” I started.
“No. No. Mr. Longworth would have a total cow,” Janie said.
“You said this was about Halley,” Edith said.
“It is. I’ve been called as a witness at that deposition.”
“What’s that have to do with us?” Janie said.
We’d all signed that confidentiality agreement with Earthshine. Mr. Longworth had laid out consequences for breaking the terms of our contract—dire ones—legal action and fines, among other things. None of us could afford that. That’s what legal action really meant to us—the threat of someone with money taking all of ours. The whole legal profession is based on that model. The more you have, the easier it is to take.
“Did you see yesterday’sInquisitor?” I asked.
Earthshine had put out a page-length ad in response to the now class-action lawsuit, a letter signed by Charlie himself. I assumed it was written by his PR firm, since it used phrases like “soap family” and “household cleanliness journey.”
“I saw it,” Janie said. “That stupid photo of a baby holding the soap?”
“What does Halley have to do with the deposition?” Edith asked.
“I need to testify,” I said. “I need to tell them what I know.”
“That’s child abuse, to let a baby play with cleanser like that,” Janie said.
“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Edith said. She leaned against the railing of the gazebo. “Like that. I heard she was wearing her coat.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
Edith shrugged. “What made her want to do it?”
We all got quiet. Janie took the final gulp of her coffee, then crushed the cup and put it in her giant purse.
