Tuesday, November 17
The studio door was narrower than Willa expected. She'd imagined a place she'd recognize from television, glass and glowing panels, a room that announced the importance of whatever happened inside. Instead there were two coats hanging beside a microwave and a handwritten sign asking people not to leave food in the refrigerator after Friday.
Owen let them in carrying a mug by its rim.
“Morning.”
“You've moved,” Jo said.
“I have more than one room.”
“Ambitious.”
Willa took off her coat. She was wearing Beth's trousers. The zip had gone up that morning after a short argument, and she had stood looking at herself in the mirror longer than the trousers required. They made her feel like a person with a day booked somewhere.
Mae was already in the recording room, moving a glass of water away from a stack of pages.
“Come in. Sit where you want.”
There were two microphones on movable arms, two chairs, headphones. Jo chose the chair closer to the door. Willa sat opposite, then realized they couldn't look at each other without turning away from the microphones. Owen moved one arm and had them sit at an angle.
“Better?”
Willa nodded.
“Tell me, too,” he said. “I can't hear a nod.”
“Better.”
Her voice came back into her headphones with startling intimacy. Every little sound of her mouth seemed to have been brought closer. She pulled one ear away.
“Too loud?”
“No. Just me.”
“Unfortunately that comes with it.”
Jo laughed. Willa put the headphone back.
They had papers but no complete script. Mae had asked for enough structure to know where they were going and enough room to find something on the way. Willa had made a running order, this time with no asterisks apologizing for the untested things.
At the top she'd written Mother and Daughter. It was not a title. She hadn't wanted a title yet.
Mae sat on the other side of the glass. Owen was beside her. Nobody else. Willa had expected an audience of invisible decision-makers. There was only a red light that didn't care how she felt.
“Just talk a little,” Owen said.
Jo took the opportunity.
“My daughter has dressed up to be heard. Very sweet.”
“I can take the trousers off if the work requires it.”
“Finally. Your grandmother's voice has left the family.”
Mae smiled through the glass. Willa could see it, but she couldn't hear it. The missing sound made the room strange. Jo seemed perfectly comfortable.
They did levels. Jo said a piece of the retirement opening and Willa answered a question about the journey there. Willa could hear her own carefulness. Her mother leaned toward her, making a tiny rolling motion with her fingers: keep it moving.
Mae came through the headphones.
“Let's do the beginning. Don't stop if something isn't funny. It won't become funny because we all stare at it.”
“An unkind thing to say to my generation,” Jo said.
“Start when you're ready.”
Jo adjusted the page she didn't need.
“I have spent my life telling people about my daughter.”
“And I've spent mine finding out which parts.”
The answer came easily. Willa heard the confidence in her own voice and almost lost the next line by admiring it.
“Now she's here to defend herself,” Jo said.
“I asked for a lawyer. They gave me a microphone.”
“Much less expensive.”
“Depends what I say.”
Jo turned toward her, not quite looking into the mic, and Willa saw Owen's hand rise behind the glass. He let them go.
“I thought we'd begin with something nice,” Jo said. “What do you remember about your childhood?”
“Needing a ride.”
“I drove you.”
“Eventually.”
“There was always work.”
“That was the strange thing. My mother had a job where she talked about being a mother, and I couldn't interrupt to ask if she could be one for ten minutes.”
Jo held the pause. Willa felt the edge of the line: too clean, too direct, a real complaint in a comic room without a laugh. She was about to rescue it.
“Ten?” Jo said. “You were never satisfied with ten.”
Willa smiled.
“I had to build in your set.”
“And an encore.”
“We called that the conversation home.”
They kept going. Mae didn't stop them. The red light stayed on.
Jo told a story about driving the girls to school after a late return from a show. The socks had been wrong, she'd said; one daughter had cared, the other hadn't noticed.
“Which was which?” Willa asked.
“You were the one who didn't notice.”
“I noticed. I thought it was a choice you were making.”
“Fashion.”
“Fatigue.”
“Your generation has a diagnosis for everything.”
“Tired isn't a diagnosis.”
“It was for your grandmother.”
“Grandma thought a woman sitting down was a symptom.”
Jo laughed into the microphone, then caught it and leaned back. Owen's hand went up again. This time she nodded at him, acknowledging the distance.
They found a little pocket of talk about women who couldn't sit through a holiday meal because the table would look abandoned. Willa could remember Jo's mother standing behind her own chair with a plate in her hand, everyone asking her to sit, nobody getting up to take the plate. She gave Jo that picture instead of the line she'd written.
Her mother grew quiet for a moment.
“She'd eat by the sink after.”
“I know.”
“You used to go in and talk to her.”
“She'd give me the bits nobody took.”
“The burnt ones.”
“I liked them.”
Jo looked at her over the microphone. “So did she.”
Willa had not known that, or hadn't kept it. She sat with the information while the red light went on being red. Then Jo said, “Neither of you liked my cooking. That's the truth of this heartwarming memory.”
Willa laughed.
“You'd taken the unburnt bits to strangers.”
“Paying strangers. I wasn't reckless.”
They were moving now. Willa stopped watching Mae. The microphone no longer looked like a test she'd been invited to fail. It was a small practical object between her and her mother.
They went into the family business. Jo had expected a pension from motherhood. Willa wanted to know how long she'd been making contributions.
“I gave you my best years.”
“You had excellent management.”
“No agent took ten percent of you.”
“You kept ninety percent?”
“I fed you.”
“We've reached the invoice.”
“Here we are. Breakfast. Coats. Shoes. The school trip with the fungus.”
“It was a nature trip.”
“You came back covered in fungus.”
“It was mud.”
“I was working. I didn't have time to meet every substance personally.”
Willa laughed. Jo looked pleased, then gave her the opening.
“What did you give me?”
“An audience that couldn't leave.”
“Oh, you left.”
“And came back. Poor audience retention.”
“That was your problem. You never stayed for the finish.”
“Your finish was me getting married.”
“And how did that go?”
There it was. Not the hotel routine, not a detail, but the door beside it. Willa could take the laugh and go down the old corridor.
“Very well for the first hour,” she said.
Jo smiled, accepting the turn.
“See? You got my staying power.”
“And Dad's trousers.”
Her mother laughed so suddenly that she turned from the mic. Willa kept the moment by describing the silver trousers in the photograph, the absurd width, the confidence of a man who'd apparently seen his future reflected in his own knees.
“Those were good trousers,” Jo said.
“They looked wipeable.”
“Useful in this family.”
They both laughed. The laughter belonged to a man Willa could remember pressing a hand against her back to move her through a crowd. She didn't mind giving that part away, not just then. Jo wasn't turning him into someone smaller.
Mae stopped them for the first time.
“Good. Keep that ease. Don't make every turn a joke. We can hear when you're actually listening.”
Jo took off one headphone.
“Was it long?”
“No. We have room.”
Willa checked the clock and was surprised. They'd been recording for twenty-three minutes.
They took a break. Owen came in to move a microphone lower and offered cookies from a tin. Jo chose one, broke it, and gave half to Willa without asking.
In the corridor, Willa went to the bathroom and stared at the little red mark the headphones had left against her temple. She had done work she liked. Some of it had been good without anybody having to tell her. The thought made her want to rush back before it changed.
When she returned, Mae was standing with Jo by the pages.
“The ending needs to be simpler,” Mae said.
“It's not written,” Willa said.
“I know. I mean where you go. We can let you fight. But I need to know why people would want to be back in this room next week.”
“Habit?” Jo said.
Mae smiled without taking the diversion.
“You want each other. That's the thing I've heard today. Give it a place to land.”
Willa sat down. Her mother sat opposite, hands folded, waiting.
They tried the softer turn. Jo wanted to know whether she'd got everything wrong. Willa answered with a joke about a school report. It was clever. It shut the door.
“Not that,” Mae said.
Willa nodded.
Jo tried again.
“Was I such a terrible mother?”
Willa looked at her. In the headphones the question didn't have the size of a stage question. It was almost private.
“You stayed.”
Jo breathed in, a sound Willa could hear too clearly.
“I did.”
“Even when you said you'd leave if we didn't get ready.”
“That was a deadline, not a plan.”
“Most of mine are.”
Her mother smiled. Willa heard it in the next line.
“Enough to forgive me?”
Willa could say something true that wouldn't close anything. She could say it depended on the day. She could ask her mother to leave the hotel room out of the show. Mae would let the silence remain for a moment, then they would try again.
“Of course,” Willa said. “Beth's color-coded it for us.”
Jo laughed softly, right on the edge between relief and the next turn.
“Is it complicated?”
“No. You go first. I initial.”
“I always go first.”
“That's why we've got a system.”
Mae didn't interrupt. Jo leaned closer to the mic.
“Your sister's the sensible one.”
“She has to be. We're the examples.”
“She leaves instructions by the kettle.”
“We should read them.”
“I did. One sugar.”
“And constant reassurance.”
They ended together, not on the same words, but on the same small release of breath. Willa looked through the glass. Mae held up one finger: wait. The red light stayed on long enough for the room to become a room again.
Then Owen stopped the recording.
Jo took off her headphones and put them on the table, carefully, cups down. Willa left hers on until she heard the quiet on the other side of the wall without them. Her own ears felt strangely far away.
Mae came in.
“That ending.”
Willa looked at the page.
“It works.”
“I think so.”
Her mother touched the edge of the table, not Willa's hand.
“It does,” Jo said.
They listened to a little of it. Not all. The beginning had too much explanation. There was a place where Jo had spoken off mic and one where Willa hit the table with a ring. Those could be dealt with. The part about the grandmother at the sink made Willa look away. The family's easy turn into Beth's absence sounded smoother than she'd expected.
On the recording, she sounded certain.
Mae turned it off before the last line.
“I'll put a version together. This is something I can take out.”
“Take where?” Willa asked.
“The people we've been talking to. And a couple who haven't seen it coming. Nothing to announce yet.”
Willa nodded. She knew what nothing meant. It did not prevent her from imagining an announcement.
“Send me an invoice for the four,” Mae said. “I'll get that moving.”
“Okay.”
“For the recording. Whatever happens next.”
“I understand.”
Mae looked at her, checking whether she did, then began putting the papers in order. Jo was asking Owen what had happened to the old kind of headphone she liked. He told her those were the old kind, just newer ones.
Outside, the afternoon was bright and cold. Jo had a car coming. Willa had meant to take the bus. Her mother asked whether she wanted to ride along.
“I'm not going your way.”
“That's never stopped us.”
Willa smiled, but shook her head.
“I've got things.”
Jo nodded. Her shoulders had dropped. She leaned against the wall while they waited for the car.
“You were good,” Jo said.
“So were you.”
“I know. I'm telling you.”
Willa let herself receive it.
When Jo's car came, she stood at the curb while her mother got in. Jo rolled the window down.
“Tomorrow?”
“After the morning lessons.”
“I'll be there.”
“You live there.”
“And I make it look easy.”
The car moved away. Willa stood until it turned the corner, then went to the bus stop.
On the bus she wrote the invoice on her phone. Four thousand dollars. Work completed November 17. She checked the number, sent it, and put the phone in her lap.
For a while she watched the city move past the window. Then she put on her headphones, not to listen to anything, only to keep the seat beside her empty until the bus filled.