“Amanda,” Maria said. “She’s locked it from the inside.”
“I saw smoke,” Opal said.
“She said it was foolish of us all to fight for some old factory that belonged to his wife. I told her that’s not what we’re fighting for.” Maria gestured toward the building, and if Opal had the powers of clairvoyance, she could see it, what would happen in just a few minutes.
Now the Earthshine workers formed a circle around her. They looked as somber as they did the day Betsy died. A siren blared in the distance. Others must have seen the smoke. Opal strained her neck in the direction of the Colonel’s car, but he was no longer there.
Above her, the stars were a thing of beauty, and she searched for the comet beyond the factory, beyond the large chimney that poked at the black fabric of sky. That’s when she saw movement in a window, a flash of light, but not the electrical kind.
“Look!” Maria shouted.
“What?” Pearl yelled. “What do you see?”
Just then Opal spotted a hand. In the hand was a yardstick and some rags. The window began to glow.
Smoke soon filled the sky again. Maria knocked out a window withher megaphone, threw her cloak over the ledge, and climbed inside. Within seconds, the door swung open. Gilly and Pearl and a few others raced inside. Opal stumbled forward behind them.
Inside, the smell of smoke and soap. Everywhere. Pungent. Above her, she heard footsteps on the walkway, where the floor manager usually stood. Smoke quickly filled the building, greedy for space. She couldn’t see through it. Opal covered her nose and mouth with her shawl. A blur of movement. “Maria! Amanda!” she yelled. She heard Sudsy barking in the distance. She used her hands to guide herself to the stairwell, where she grasped for the railing. Her foot met the first step, and she tried to heave her weight upward, but then a cramp jolted through her body. Her baby. The smoke. She heard footsteps, the quick-ringing sound of boots on metal. “Maria!” Opal yelled again, then more footsteps from above. She remembered Jagr’s formulary tucked in the ceiling tile, and now she imagined it darkening around the edges, curling inward to destroy itself.
“Get out!” Opal’s middle seized. “Get out!” She heaved one last time. She managed to make her way up one single step, but when she tried to lift herself upward again, the weight of her body pulled her back. She slid off the stair, holding tight to her middle. Smoke caught in her throat. She stumbled backward and clung to a wheeled cart full of uncut soap as she made her way toward the door, coughing. She could barely breathe.
She felt the mild sensation of a balloon popping inside her, then wetness between her legs. A stream of fluid ran down into her shoe.
She’d run out of time.
1986
Isn’t it a shame she doesn’t know thislovelier wayto avoid offending?
—CASHMERE BOUQUET SOAP
Weddings always leave someone disappointed, don’t they? The “Bridal Chorus” played, and I watched Celeste Shadow stride confidently toward Vincent Glass. He licked his lips. Celeste was pretend-trying to contain her emotions. Her eyes were glassy, but she didn’t let one tear fall because even stage makeup isn’t totally waterproof. A few feet from the altar, she noticed me. She stopped. The bridal march ground to a halt. She gripped my shoulders and squeezed me so tight I felt the bulge of her mic. “Stella, you’re alive!” she gasped.
Now the audience applauded. A dramatic pause. Celeste covered her mic. “What the hell are you doing? It’s my big scene,” she whispered. Then for the audience: “You must be a ghost. A projection of my desires. We had your ashes scattered in Port Middleton forest, and yet here you stand. Don’t speak. It’s enough that you’ve come.” She turned again to Vincent and reached out her hand. They did what abride and groom do. He lifted her veil. She stood for a moment to be admired before someone yelled: “Fifteen-second commercial break! Hold places!”
Elliot rushed toward me. “Not so much as a sigh. Do you understand? I’ve got the writers redoing the script. You’re an apparition. A hallucination. A side effect of Celeste’s damn medication. I don’t know. You just don’t speak. Don’t say a word.”
All my life, distilled into one frame, and I had not a single line.
The lights flashed for a moment, signaling places, and in the dimness I saw her in the audience. She was sitting in her wheelchair, dressed in a loose sequin pantsuit. Her Saint Bernard, Sudsy, sat next to her, his tongue waggling from his mouth. He looked thirsty, poor dog. Bertie’s hair was dyed, more orange than amber, pinned back with pearl and diamond clips that glimmered in the reflector beams.
What struck me was how old she looked. Her loose skin mapped an atlas of veins and creases. Her wizened, white hand rested on the dog’s neck. Bertie narrowed her eyes on me. She didn’t have to say a word for me to know what she was thinking.
She knew I knew.Something. Her secret. She’d lied. She’d lied and called it history so nobody would question it.
But, still, I didn’t knoweverything—not yet. I hadn’t listened to my acting coaches. I hadn’t fully accessed my character. I hadn’t listened for her pulse, her voice. I hadn’t fully allowed her body to rest in my body. Nervously, I played with that necklace.
“And three, two…” Elliot yelled. We were live again, and I was safe there in the spotlight. Vincent and Celeste gazed into each other’s eyes. Tears streamed down Bianca Dupont’s face, and I wondered if she really had feelings for the actor who played Vincent.
“We are gathered here today,” said Reverend Peacock, Port Middleton’s man of the cloth. He used to be a mercenary. He wore a patch over one eye from an old war wound. In soap operas characters remake themselves all the time. Reverend Peacock continued, “… to watchCeleste and Vincent’s public testament of timeless love as they join together as one.” Again, the audience applauded. I looked toward the crowd, but I couldn’t see anyone, blinded as I was by the stage lights. The reverend continued the speech. “Should anyone present know of any reason why Celeste and Vincent should not be joined in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
The cast looked around at one another, at me, the woman who’d returned from the dead again and again and again and again. “Don’t say a word,” Elliot mouthed from off camera. He put an index finger to his lips, likeSilence, and I thought of her for a moment, standing in that library, like a woman who knows something: secrets.
“‘Would you not have me honest?’” I said. It was a line fromAs You Like It. I was Audrey again. I could imagine Halley and Charlie in the front row. Wyatt was in the audience, too. Onstage as Audrey, I hadn’t known yet I’d sleep with him that night, that we’d date, that we’d marry, that the arc of my life would land me here, on this soundstage.
“She speaks! The apparition speaks,” said Reverend Peacock. “Careful—she could be an instrument of the devil.”
“Of course you should be honest,” Bianca Dupont said. “We should all be. And that’s why I need to tell you, Celeste, I’m still in love with Vincent.”
