As I turned to go, I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror. My face was gaunt, my frosty perm poofed and feathered like Krystle Carrington, but without the look of money. I thought of the myth of Narcissus, not because I was smitten with my own image but because I didn’t recognize myself. And I couldn’t look away. I didn’t understand yet—but I would soon—that a series of events had already been set into motion, a predictable object bound by a gravitational pull, like that comet making its way toward us.
HALLEY WAS DRUNK BY THEtime I arrived at the country club a few hours later, her head resting atop the table. Charlie stood to greet me, kissed each of my cheeks in the way Celeste Shadow kisses Stella. Charlie Tuttle, Bertie’s only child, Halley’s father—though he’d not learned of his daughter’s existence until she was thirteen years old, the product of a brief affair.
Halley raised her head. “I can always count on you,” she said. She’d been crying. Salt spots crusted around her eyes. The waitstaff cleaned up a mess of lettuce and broken china from the floor, trying their best to pretend they hadn’t just witnessed a scene.
“Halley is just leaving, I’m afraid,” Charlie said. He winked at me, like this was all great fun.
“He has his dignity to uphold,” Halley said.
“She needs some rest,” Charlie said to me. “She’s not thinking clearly.”
“I’ve embarrassed him,” Halley said.
“I’m worried about you,” Charlie barked. He turned to me again. “She’s high on something. She’s talking nonsense. She told the waiter—”
“Halley’s Comet, it’s a sign,” she said. There, in that country club restaurant, as her voice slowed and slurred, she explained the Pilgrims followed a comet to the New World. She said the Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all—the three wise men had followed the path of a comet to find baby Jesus in that manger. “History,” she said, “is repeating itself.”
“Halley,” I said, taking the seat next to her. I didn’t want to admit she was getting worse. I rubbed her back, small circles, like one might use to lull a sleepy child. When Wyatt had left, I called Halley first. It was Halley who came over and drank a bottle of wine with me until I had sufficiently numbed my body. She promised sleep would give me perspective. She put me to bed and stayed the night, right there next to me, to make sure I wasn’t alone that first morning. “Listen to your dad. Get some rest.”
“You don’t know Bertie Tuttle,” she said.
“She’s clearly high on something,” Charlie said. “She had only a single glass of wine.” He ran his fingers through his hair, dark and wavy like his daughter’s. When he first met Halley, even Charlie couldn’t dispute the striking resemblance. Same square jaw. Same eyes the color of coal. Same manner of moving stiffly, sitting erect, like their spines were hewn from metal.
“Your head will be much clearer in the morning. Nothing seems asbad after a good night of sleep,” I whispered. “Remember when you told me that?”
“I sound smart,” she said.
“Halley, nobody thinks otherwise,” Charlie said. “I’ll talk to your grandmother. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding.” Bertie had long since retired from the family business, but everyone knew she was still in charge.
“I thought you’d be on my side,” she said. She placed her hands on the table to hoist herself up, but she slumped back into her chair. She turned toward me. “You said we could talk.”
“We will,” I said.
“Come with me?” Her eyelids drooped now.
“I’ve got an early call time,” I said. “Celeste is having flashbacks. A whole montage of us set to ‘Through the Years.’ You’d hate it. Get some sleep. I’ll call you.” I hugged her. I kissed her cheek. I squeezed her shoulders.
Charlie’s driver had to help carry her out, her legs dangling over his arms, one Birkenstock balanced on a toe. Now, Charlie cleared his throat. He was a man of dignity—not prideful, but private. “That girl,” he said.
That girl. Her head dipped back over the arm of Charlie’s driver, her lips parted on the verge of speaking, though she didn’t say anything. She didn’t make a sound. I’ll never forget how she looked, like a child who’d fallen asleep at a dinner party.
Charlie had a conference call with a PR firm—“This Jane Doe nonsense,” he explained—so the driver delivered me back to the Earthshine factory, to my car parked in the studio lot. Everyone says there’s no culture in the Midwest, but we had our own institutions. Earthshine had evolved beyond the brand to become the industry leader in all sorts of domestic products, from tampons to toilet paper, diapers to dusting spray. Midwestern culture is the home and the lives we make inside it.
Windows lined all four stories of the factory, and a hulk of a towerarose from the center bearing a clock and the company name:EARTHSHINE SOAPS. The stump of a chimney looked like a fat cigar, the nameBREMENspelled out in white brick. I drew my eyes to a line near the roof where the walls had been patched with mortar, where char stained the bricks.
A fire had destroyed much of the building in 1910, on the night Halley’s Comet was supposed to be closest to Earth, visible to the naked eye, the same night Charlie was born. I’d read about it inThe Juggernaut, Bertie’s biography; I’d heard Bertie tell the story herself. There’d been an ongoing strike at the factory. The fire had been set by one of the workers. Several of them died. The flames reached up like fingers toward the sky. It was so noisy and hot, and she stood too close to the building, trying to call for help. That was her mistake. She felt the pang of early labor, and she doubled forward, so a group of women—Earthshine workers—dragged her away from the crowd. She could have died that night. Instead, her water broke. Help arrived. Charlie was born two months premature. She named him after his father and after the comet he was born beneath. Charles Halley Tuttle.
The factory was eventually restored.
Years later, after her husband left her a widow, Bertie took over the company. She modernized the factory—brought it into the new age, with the addition of the recording studio. To many, she’s called the Mother of Marketing, the first to shift a brand’s focus from product to consumer. She phased out the old bars of Earthshine Soap and brought a new powder formula to the market. The Soap for Women. I attended the Grand Re-Opening Ceremony wearing a yellow dress with a fur collar and little pompom drawstrings—a gift from Bertie herself—and it was me, the Earthshine Girl, who snipped the ribbon and watched it flutter to the ground as Bertie gave my shoulder a quick pat and said:Soap will never be the same.
Now the driver pulled up near the brick-lined promenade called the Plaza of Dreams that led to the front entrance of the factory. At the center stood that bronze statue of Bertie Tuttle, the one the Women’sEmpowerment Fund had erected in her honor. The statue depicted a young Bertie, her arms crossed, her chin assuredly tilted. At the base of the statue stood a casting of her Saint Bernard, Sudsy, who apparently reincarnated as a puppy every time an old Sudsy died.
“It’s her,” Bertie had said the moment she saw me all those years ago, after my first audition. Her voice was breathy, accented like an old movie star who held her vowels just a bit longer than necessary. I knew she was important because the whole room hushed when she entered, and they pushed themselves against the walls as if Bertie needed the space. In reality, she was petite, short, compact. She marched toward me, past the cameras and the sound equipment and the wall lined with screens that still held my image, moving as I moved. “It’s her,” she said. Bertie was in her late sixties by then, a star in her own right. She knew Rosemary Clooney and Doris Day. She’d dined with Mamie Eisenhower. She knelt down so we were eye level. “My Earthshine Girl.” She took my hand and asked: “Do you want to become someone very important?”
Already at seven, I did. I stood there transfixed, imagining my future. I’d never clean houses like my mother, who spent her days inside, dusting drapes or bent over toilets or on her knees scouring baseboards. It embarrassed me back then to tell friends what my mother did for a living, when most of their mothers didn’t even have to work. “Yes,” I said to Bertie. A portrait artist sketched my rendering, which became the face of the brand, printed on every canister, and, there, in that studio, I was reborn.
Bertie held out her hand, and I took it. Her hand was warm, and her bracelets jangled on her wrist. She smelled like honeysuckle, which reminded me of spring, and at that moment I would have said yes to anything she’d asked of me. That’s the power Bertie had. She painted an entire world before my eyes and invited me to step inside.
