She does look at me. She looks at me a long time, how I’m glowing. My impossible lightness, so light my feet barely seem to touch the earth. How I’m always on the verge of laughter, even now. How even now, my lips are close to smiling though I know this is so serious. Can’t help it. Too happy. Blood happy, bones happy, cells always singing.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a ziplock baggie full of craggy pink salt spiked with prickly-looking twigs. Small dried flowers of all colors. Immediately a pungent forest scent rises up.
“I made some adjustments to the recipe this week,” she says gravely.
She hands me the bag, heavy with putrid essential oils and god knows what herbs she grows in some secret campus shade. Dutifully, I slip it into the pocket of my dress and smile.
“Thank you, Ellie,” I say. “Thank you so much.”
* * *
So a couple of hiccups. Just a couple of hiccups, Grace. In short though? In short, we really are doing wonderfully, don’t you think? Another great rehearsal, am I right?
But Grace isn’t here, I remember. I’m by myself in the theater again. Standing on the stage alone after they’ve all shuffled off into the predawn dark. The space beside me where Grace usually stands, holding a giant mug of coffee and smoking an illicit cigarette, is empty, just motes of swirling dust in the light. I recall how I left her, lying on her side in her bedroom with her mouth open, looking up at me from the deep dark wells of her eyes. But then I think of all those lovely flowers waiting on her doorstep, those grinning balloons. It makes me smile to remember that. She’ll have picked them up by now, surely? She hasn’t reached out just yet to say thank you. No answer to the text I sent days ago, a tulip emoji plus a balloon emoji followed by a question mark followed by a winky face. Probably just conserving her energy for healing. Probably my gifts are helping with that, of course they are. I’ll bet they’re cheering her up as we speak.
Now I text her, ?? When she doesn’t respond, I don’t panic at all. Nothing beats its black wings in me. My heart doesn’t pound. Indeed, the place where my heart is is deliriously open as a field, light as air. I’ll text her again, I think. No, I’ll call, that’s much better, isn’t it? A voice is better than a text, am I right? When you’re not well? Remember not being well? I can hardly remember at all. But instead of calling her, I send her another Instacart delivery. I add more restorative items to the cart. Rainier cherries. Dragon fruit. Ginger chews. Steaks for the iron in the blood. Elderflower water. In the morning, I’ll call the flower shop and I’ll ask them to send more balloons. Another cactus, please. I’ll call the liquor store for more champagne.
Really hope you’re getting rest, I text. I’ve got everything covered here.
I’ve got everything covered, Grace. Really, I do.
“Miranda, who are you talking to?”
I look up from my phone. Paul. Standing there in the doorway of the theater. Dressed strangely. Hair longer. Looking slightly afraid of me.
“What are you doing here, Goldfish? Have you come to see the show? You’re early. We don’t open until tomorrow.”
“Miranda, are you all right?”
Hugo. Just Hugo standing there with a coffee in hand. Black Sabbath T-shirt under a weathered plaid shirt. Over that, a worn biker jacket studded with pins.
“Fine,” I say. “Long night. Eyes playing tricks on me.”
“You should go home. Get some rest before tomorrow night. Tonight, I guess, now,” he says, looking at his phone.
“I need to be here. Grace isn’t here, sadly, so I need to be.”
“You need sleep, Miranda.”
“I don’t need sleep; Grace needs sleep. I don’t need anything at all. All’s well and we’re doing wonderfully.”
“You’re bleeding again,” he says.
“Am I?”
He comes over to me and kneels down. Looks at my leg, which is indeed bleeding again. He traces the wound with his finger, tenderly. So tenderly I can’t help but close my eyes. So much tenderness now. Over what? A little cut. A cut that doesn’t even hurt at all. I could drown in this tenderness, suffocate under all these soft words, these soft touches and looks. Where was it all before? Where was all this tenderness when I needed it most, when I was lying on the floor dreaming of a touch like this, of a voice that would say something, anything, kind? Nowhere. Then his face was a shut door. His heart was closed like a fist. His hands stayed at his sides and his eyes observed my weeping like unfortunate weather. Something to be borne until it passed.