Tuesday, November 3
Her mother opened the door wearing one earring and holding the other in her teeth. She had changed her hair since Willa had last seen her in person, or allowed someone to change it. The front was silver now and swept sideways, putting more of her face on display.
“You look expensive,” Willa said.
Jo took the earring out of her mouth. “I got old. This is where the money goes.”
She embraced Willa without asking. Willa had meant to put her tote between them but was late doing it. Jo smelled of face cream and the onions cooking in the kitchen.
The house looked as it had eighteen months ago. Frank's reading chair was still beside the window, though Jo had moved a lamp onto it. On the sideboard, an award shaped like a glass flame stood next to a half-used roll of packing tape.
“Sit. I've made chicken.”
“You don't have to feed me.”
“Then you won't mind if I do.”
Jo had removed the skin from Willa's portion and left it in a little dish. As a child Willa had refused the skin. As an adult she ate it standing up in her own kitchen, but she didn't say so. Jo put the dish beside her own plate.
“Your sister says you're busy.”
“I am.”
“I asked busy with what and she said, Work, Jo. Apparently I employ a doorman.”
“She's leaving.”
“For six weeks. Everybody tells me. I'm not a dog. I understand time.”
Jo sat, then stood again for the water. Willa caught the pitcher first.
“What time would I go on?”
“Before me, sweetheart. The clue's in opening.”
“Am I opening for you or opening the film?”
Jo stopped smiling quite so broadly.
“Mae likes your work. We record the whole evening. She puts it together afterward and takes it to Lantern. I would like you in it. She won't promise either of us anything she hasn't sold.”
“You wouldn't have asked me ten years ago.”
“You weren't as good ten years ago.”
It was so nearly what Willa wanted that she had to take a drink before answering.
“You saw me?”
“Beth sends me things.”
“Beth records me?”
“No. You put them on the internet. You know, the thing you shout at me about when I type my card number in the wrong hole.”
Willa put down her glass. Jo tore a piece of bread apart, crumbs falling on the tablecloth.
“I liked the driving one. Where you ask the man whether he's signaling his turn or fanning a very small fire.”
“That's old.”
“So am I. May we be liked?”
Outside, a truck's reversing alarm started. Jo tilted her head to its four identical notes.
“Our neighbor gets a delivery every day. I think she's having a third floor sent in pieces. Then she'll marry a tall man and never come downstairs.”
Willa laughed before she could do anything with her face.
They ate. Jo asked about the school, remembered the name of the boss Willa disliked, and confused him with a man who had painted the bathroom. Willa described him carefully enough for Jo to distinguish them.
“That's the trouble with you people who don't stay in show business,” Jo said. “You expect me to remember men without lighting.”
“I am in show business.”
“I know.”
There was no joke attached. Jo pushed the chicken dish toward her.
Willa asked for the six thousand in writing, asked about how much time she would have, and asked if Jo wanted to hear the set first.
“Of course I want to hear it. You can tell me to fuck off. You always have.”
“At dinner it's not usually a professional note.”
“That's why I'm paying.”
Jo's phone rang on the sideboard. She got up, looked at it, and took the call.
“I'm with Willa. No, the actual Willa. She's eating my food.”
She listened, then held the phone away from her face.
“Mae. Wants to know if you've got a recording she hasn't seen.”
“What has she seen?”
Jo gave her the phone.
Mae's voice was lower than Willa expected. They had been in the same room at a festival once, four years earlier, but Mae hadn't known her and Willa had watched her leave with three other people while she wound a microphone cable.
“The seven from Rafi's,” Mae said. “And the longer set from March.”
Willa knew the March set. A woman had stood up in the middle of it to take a call and then shouted, I can't hear you, there's a woman talking. Willa had got four good minutes out of her and thirty more difficult seconds when the woman returned and wanted credit.
“That room was weird.”
“It was a room.”
“There's a better one from June.”
“Send it. Jo's given you my email?”
“No.”
“Ask her. And I'll see you tomorrow.”
Jo was making a give-it-back gesture, her fingers opening and closing over the table.
“Tomorrow?”
“At the theater. Just to meet the room and Denise. I'm glad you're doing it.”
“So am I,” Willa said, before she could make the words less bare.
She handed the phone back. Jo listened, made a note on the back of an envelope, and said she'd be there.
“The room,” Willa said when the call was over.
“What about it?”
“Nothing.”
Jo sat down and picked up a bit of chicken skin from the dish.
“Mae likes you. She's not a woman who wastes a great deal of time on people she doesn't like.”
“Professionally.”
“I'm sure she's very loving at home.”
Willa stacked her knife and fork. She had eaten all the potatoes. She could tell her mother was pleased about that too.
“I can do twenty.”
“I know you can.”
“Of my own material.”
Jo looked up.
“Of course.”
“I don't want to be introduced as a thing that happened to you.”
“Oh, honey.”
“I mean it.”
Jo put down the chicken skin.
“What would you like me to say?”
“Willa Harker.”
Jo waited.
“She's funny. Something like that.”
“Well, that's the evening ruined. I had a whole dance.”
Willa looked at her.
“All right,” Jo said. “Willa Harker. She's funny. There's your introduction.”
The faint sulk in it was familiar enough to feel almost friendly. Willa drank the rest of her water. On the envelope her mother had written the same time twice, once with a circle around it.
Jo took her into the room at the back of the house. Willa hadn't been in there since before the quiet year and a half. Two suitcases lay open under the table, and several boxes had dates on them. Jo had put a wastebasket in the middle of the floor. There were three things in it.
“I'm getting rid,” Jo said.
“Of what?”
“Things.”
She picked up a laminated pass, looked at it, and put it on the desk instead of in the basket.
“You're very good at this.”
“I've just started.”
The boxes held photographs, old head shots, hotel pens, small notebooks, a velvet pouch containing what appeared to be a single brass screw. Jo took that out and held it up.
“That's from a bed in Baltimore.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. It was important enough to pack.”
She put it back in the pouch. Willa sat on the little stool by the bookcase. There was a photograph on top of the nearest box of Jo in a blue dress, holding a microphone with both hands. Frank stood behind her at the edge of the picture, visible from the chest down, holding her coat.
Willa picked it up.
“Look at Dad's trousers.”
“He loved those.”
“Was he going to the moon?”
“He wanted people to know he'd arrived.”
Jo looked over Willa's shoulder. The room became quiet around the two of them. Willa could remember those trousers against her cheek; she must have been small enough to lean there. Her mother took the picture and wiped a speck from the glossy corner with her thumb.
“Keep it,” she said.
“It's your picture.”
“I know what he looked like.”
Willa put it in her tote, between two flat notebooks. Jo stood with her hand on the box for a moment, then opened the one underneath.
“Help me with this.”
It was a dress with a heavy beaded front, black beads on black cloth. Jo held it against herself and tried to find the tag inside the collar.
“You wore that on the thing.”
“The thing. I was very good on that.”
“With the man who had the birds.”
“Ah. The cultural event.”
Willa laughed. She remembered watching it with Beth, both girls lying on their stomachs on the rug while their father tried to get the television bright enough. Jo had come home with a piece of bird seed caught in one of the beads. She had shown it to them as though it were her award.
She turned now, holding the dress against her chest.
“Does the back look cheap?”
“The back's plain.”
“That's why I asked.”
Willa took the dress. It was heavier than it looked. She spread it across her lap and found two loose beads near the hem.
“You could wear it.”
“Not for that long.”
“Just the end?”
Jo thought about it. “Maybe.”
Willa found a small hole in the lining and put her finger through it.
“There's a repair.”
“There's been a repair since 1998.”
“You should get it done.”
“Now I've got you for six thousand dollars, I might as well.”
“That's stage time.”
“You're very particular.”
Willa folded the dress, carefully keeping the beads on the outside of the fold, and put it on the clean chair. Jo looked at the near-empty wastebasket.
“I don't want it all thrown away when I'm dead.”
“Then maybe throw something away while you're alive.”
“Christ. You come for one dinner and immediately it's homework.”
She dropped the brass screw into the basket. It rang against the bottom with a small decisive sound.
They both looked at it.
“I'll want that,” Jo said.
Afterward they washed the dishes because Jo wouldn't put the serving dish in the dishwasher. It had belonged to her mother and was apparently willing to survive a world war but not a rinse cycle. Jo washed; Willa dried. Twice their hips bumped at the narrow space beside the sink.
“I'm done with the travel,” Jo said. “I woke up in a hotel in Cincinnati and the bed was on the wrong side.”
“The wrong side of what?”
“Me. The lamp was where my head should be. I thought, I'm sixty-eight years old and I'm having a fight with a room.”
“You'll miss it.”
“I'll miss going on. The bit before, where a man calls me buddy while he searches my bag, he can have.”
She ran her thumb around the rim of a glass and handed it over. Willa dried it. It was pleasant knowing where the glasses went. She stayed for coffee and missed the early bus she had planned to take.