“She’s in love,” I say. “It’s a love story.”
Grace snorts. She chugs her beer. “A totally fucked-up one.”
“I think Helen’s love is beautiful,” I say to the table.
“Helen is delusional.”
“Well,” I say, “we’re all entitled to our own readings.”
“Well, that’s my reading,” she says, looking at me.
I gaze down at my spritzer. Is she thinking about my weeping phone calls to my ex-husband, Paul, which I often made drunk in the pub bathroom or post-rehearsal in the theater when I thought I was alone?
Everything okay, Miranda? she’d call from the door.
Fine, just on the phone.
Has she sensed my unreciprocated lust for Hugo? Caught me drugged out and staring fixedly, helplessly, uselessly at his back muscles rippling through his T-shirt as he paints scenery onto a large wooden frame, transforming the blank canvas into the interior of a French court? A paintbrush held tenderly between his white teeth like a rose.
Doesn’t he look just like a Norse god, Grace? Thor maybe?
No, Grace will say.
Hugo will feel that he’s being watched and eventually turn and see my crooked figure lurking in the shadows. Hey, Miranda, he’ll say kindly enough. Didn’t see you there.
Of course you didn’t, I think. You still don’t. You never will. But all I always say is Oh.
Anything I can do for you? he might ask.
See me as I once was. See me at the very least as fuckable. But my lust is a sad, withered thing. The truth is, if Hugo were to turn to me and say, Miranda, I’d love to be intimate with you, I would limp away. My fantasies only involve Hugo being nearby, in vaguely erotic proximity. Smiling at me suggestively, perhaps over candlelight. But Hugo’s usually looking past me at the clock on the wall. I’m taking him away from his work. Or he’s looking at me with pity, like he did tonight.
“Miranda, are you listening to me?” Grace asks me now.
“Yes.”
“Look, you know I’m on board for anything. I love making theater. The students are just pissed that you didn’t go with Mackers is all.”
I picture it. Briana as Lady Macbeth. Covered in fake blood. Flipping her hair onstage. Her white dress showing pale, freckled cleavage. Her shrill wailing about a spot. Drawing from what particular misery and anguish? None. All of it ringing false.
“I have enough pain in my life right now, all right?” I tell Grace.
“Didn’t want to see Briana playing Lady M?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say.
“She’d be terrible, I’ll give you that. And she’s a Helen if there was ever one. Insisting the universe operate as she wishes.”
I close my eyes. I want to tell Grace, You have no idea about Helen. That it takes a depth of soul to understand her. It takes a life of pain. A kind of wisdom only won by time spent in the shadows. Grace is an Oscar Wilde specialist; she really should understand more about these things.
“It has nothing to do with Briana,” I lie. “I actually don’t happen to think she’s a good fit for Helen.”
Grace just looks at me.
“I honestly just thought we’d do something different for a change, that’s all. I really don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“Nothing at all.”
“It’ll be a change of pace. I mean, aren’t you tired of seeing them destroy Hamlet? Or Romeo and Juliet?”
“They are students, Miranda.”
“Exactly.”
“Look, you’re the director. You had your reasons.”
My reasons. I know Grace is very suspicious of my reasons.
How many times has she found me lying on the floor of my office, my laptop by my head, watching my Helen on YouTube? Brilliant production. Poorly taped. The camera being shakily held by some anonymous tweaker in the audience. But I’m so grateful to the tweaker for capturing my performance, the audience, that night. I can even see who I think is Paul in the crowd. The back of his shoulder, a sliver of his spellbound face turned toward me on the stage.
Grace has watched me watch myself with tears in my eyes, mesmerized by my own face, still dumb to its dark future, unlined with sorrow. My ability to walk across the stage like a human person.
What are you doing, Miranda? she’ll ask from the door.
Nothing, I’ll say. Research.
“You had your reasons,” she repeats now. “So you’ll make them come around.”
I recall their dead-eyed faces gazing at me. The defiance in the air so palpable it made a crackling sound. “And what if they don’t come around?”