“Goldfish,” I say. There’s no way it could be Paul, but it is Paul. His smell of baked bread. His smell of home.
Paul smiles. “Sorry, Princess, I was out in the garden,” he says. “She doesn’t usually cry like that, do you, Ellie?”
Ellie. I look at the child kicking and crying in my hands. Which are beginning to tremble. Grow damp with sweat.
He smiles at both of us. The love radiating from his face. He makes a funny face at her that I’ve never seen, and she cackles with laughter. He laughs, and I laugh too, even though I feel tears sliding down my cheeks. Oh god. Oh god, what’s happening?
He touches my back. A dream, a dream. Has to be. But his hand feels so incredibly warm and familiar and real on my skin. I feel the shadows and the weight that I didn’t even know were holding me down lift now. My soul filled. My heart whole again. My feet planted firmly in the soft earth like flowers.
“Probably just knows tonight is her mother’s big opening night, don’t you?” he asks the crying baby I’m holding in my hands. Her eyes somehow my eyes and his eyes. My mouth shape and his mouth shape.
Her mother’s big night. Her mother.
The audience gasps.
Paul smiles. A swell of something rising in my heart. I feel the stage beneath me begin to get softer, softer. The blue lights grow hot on my face. The baby in my arms is suddenly so heavy. She cries harder as she begins to slip from my shaking hands. He takes her from me just as she’s about to fall. She immediately stops crying.
“Don’t worry, Ellie,” he tells her. “Your mother is a born actress. She’s going to light up the stage. Eclipse them all. Like she always does.” He smiles at me warmly, so warmly, and I know that the shadows of our past life never happened in this one, never dogged this life, never darkened this door.
“She knows this role like the back of her hand, doesn’t she?” he tells Ellie. “That’s how I met her. I saw her play Helen in Edinburgh. I didn’t even want to go to a show that night. Talk about kismet, am I right? And she enchanted everyone. She won me over. I’ve been bewitched ever since.”
He looks at me and smiles. Then he frowns suddenly. “Oh, wait, you’re not dressed. We have to get you ready, Princess. This is your big opening night, after all.”
He hands Ellie back to me. She nuzzles herself against my shoulder. He takes the red tablecloth folded on the arm of one of the red chairs and wraps it around my body like a cloak. Then he ties the corners on my free shoulder so that it drapes across me like a toga. I used to do this with my mother’s tablecloth as a child playing dress-up. Did I ever tell Paul that?
Now he takes a step back and considers me in the tablecloth. Still holding my shoulders. Paul’s warm hands on my shoulders. Considering me with kindness.
The audience is holding its breath.
“It’s missing something,” he says at last. He pulls a rose from the basket of flowers on the coffee table. “Your roses are all in bloom, Princess,” he says. “Your gothic garden. Look.” He points to a fake window, through which there appears to be a fake blue outside light. A crude painting of a backyard—green swirls full of red, purple, and dark blue dots.
“See?” he says.
“Yes, I see.”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
He places the rose in my hair. There. “Perfect. You’re going to be an amazing Helen.” He smiles. Takes my hand and kisses it. The feel of his lips on my skin. I thought I’d never feel it again.
Then a spotlight shines on the back of the stage. I see Grace standing behind Paul. Standing in the far corner of the living room. She’s standing barefoot among the flowers.
“Grace!” I say. “Oh my god, Grace, is that you? Grace, you’re alive! You’re awake!”
Grace doesn’t answer. She just stands there on the grass, staring at me. She’s wearing a blue medical gown. Her skin is terribly pale. She looks frail. Her hands hang at her sides. Her eyes are dark and sunken. Watching.
In my arms, Ellie stirs slightly. I look back at Paul, who’s still smiling like he didn’t hear or see a thing. Doesn’t see or hear Grace. Still smiling at me like we’re alone in the room. I, he, and Ellie are the only three on the grass, among these flowers.
“Are you all right, Princess?” He moves in closer to me. Puts a hand on my face. As his hand strokes my cheek, Grace’s breath quickens. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her chest rise and fall, more rapidly now. As if my closeness to Paul and Ellie makes whatever is happening to her worse.