Friday, November 6, 2026
She arrived carrying two clean copies of her twenty minutes, although Mae hadn't asked for paper. She had put a number at the top of each page and an asterisk beside the two jokes she wanted to try before the night. She had never brought two copies to Rafi's. At Rafi's a spilled drink could improve her paperwork.
Denise met her near the dressing rooms and asked if she had eaten.
“Yes.”
“Good. People forget.”
Willa almost said that her mother didn't, but Denise was already speaking into her headset.
Inside the little room Willa had been given, a hanger had appeared on the bent hook. There was a bottle of water beside the tissues. She set the copies on the table and looked at her own name on the top sheet. She had typed WILLA HARKER in capitals. Underneath, in smaller type: opening twenty. She wasn't sure why she'd needed to put that there.
Her phone buzzed. Luis had sent her next week's times. She checked them against the theater dates and found two lessons she would have to move. She could do it. Nadine would take one. The other student liked early mornings. Willa wrote three possible times in her notebook and sent Luis a message that made the family thing sound much more organized than it was.
In the mirror, the little bulbs made her look like somebody being prepared.
She tried the first sentence of the set, just speaking to herself.
“I teach adults to drive.”
Too flat. She tried it as if answering a question. Better. She put down the paper. She didn't need to explain her job until they had a reason to want to know.
From the passage came her mother's voice.
“Where have you hidden her?”
“Not hidden,” Beth said. “Put. There's a difference.”
Jo appeared in the doorway, with Beth behind her holding a blue garment bag. She looked at Willa in the mirror before turning to the actual Willa.
“It's a lovely room.”
“It is.”
“Did they give you water?”
Willa pointed.
Jo came and stood beside her. For a moment they both looked at their reflections. Her mother's hair was almost the same brightness as the light bulbs. Willa had meant to get her own hair cut, then had thought that was an obvious thing to do because somebody offered you a room.
Jo reached up and smoothed a piece behind Willa's ear.
“That's better.”
“It wasn't doing anything.”
“Now it's doing it neatly.”
Beth laid the garment bag across the spare chair, unzipped it, and lifted out the black beaded dress. The repair near the hem had been done.
“You got it fixed,” Willa said.
“Your sister got it fixed,” Jo said.
“I took it down the block. It was four beads.”
Jo held the dress against her and looked in the mirror. Willa could see her assessing it: not just whether she looked attractive, but what part of herself it would make the room expect.
“Too much for the beginning?” Jo asked.
“For you?” Beth said.
Jo gave her a look.
“End,” Willa said. “You said the end.”
“I didn't decide.”
“Try it on before they start,” Beth said. “Or I'll carry it around all morning for exercise.”
They left Willa's room together, Jo with the dress over one arm, Beth carrying the empty bag. In the corridor a man held the door while they went through; he smiled at Jo and stared at Willa for a second before placing her.
At the table onstage Mae had a paper with the evening laid out in rows. Willa could see her name, printed once, no adjective.
“I brought the set,” she said.
“Great. Want to do it after Jo?”
Willa had expected to hand the pages over and go home.
“Sure.”
“Don't feel you have to fill the twenty if it's still moving. I'd rather hear where you are.”
Jo put down the dress and asked where they were starting. Beth pointed to a paragraph on a page. Jo shook her head and turned it over.
“That's last week's.”
“Then I need this week's.”
“It's in my bag.”
Beth went to get it. Willa watched Mae take a drink of water and wondered whether she'd like the new turn in the driving piece. She had found it on the bus that morning, a line about the instructor becoming the only passenger who actually wanted the driver to get better. It wasn't ready. She could hear where the sentence was too long.
She put her two copies on the table, face down. Then she went to sit in the audience. Her mother didn't need the pages now. She never did once she knew what she was selling.
The Bellwether seats were red, and there were more of them than Willa could hold in her head. From the stage they extended past the pool of work light and up into a balcony with a gold rail. She had stood here on Wednesday, while Denise showed her where to enter, and had pretended to check the height of the microphone so she could remain another few seconds.
Now Jo stood at the microphone and Willa sat six rows back beside Mae Ellis. A lighting technician was eating an apple at the end of their row. Denise had a pencil through her hair and one hand wrapped around a paper cup.
“I'm not doing it to you,” Jo told the handful of people. “I'm finding where it goes.”
“Whenever you're ready,” Denise said.
Jo looked down, smoothed the front of her sweater, looked up, and became larger.
“I have two daughters. The younger one's sensible. I had to do that. After the first one I thought, I should probably have an adult.”
Mae laughed. Willa had heard versions of that since she was eleven. Beth, at the back of the theater on a call, held up a finger and went out through the lobby doors.
“Willa got married. Some of you came. Some of you are still paying for the toaster. On their anniversary, they went to Atlantic City. She called me from the hotel. ‘Mom, I've left my husband.’ I said, ‘Congratulations. Have you checked under the bed?’”
Jo glanced toward Mae. Willa leaned forward.
“She'd asked for an ocean view. They gave her an ocean indication. You had to lean out and ask a seagull. She said, ‘Ben doesn't care.’ I said, ‘Of course he doesn't care. He's a husband. They think a window is a luxury.’”
The technician made a sound through his apple.
“Then room service was forty minutes late. She said, ‘I'm not spending my anniversary waiting for a man to bring me a sandwich.’ So she sent her husband home. Sent him home. That is the confidence of a woman who has never had to get a couch down a staircase.”
Willa could see Jo as clearly as if the light had moved to her face alone. The silver hair, the one hand raised with the palm up, inviting them to be sensible.
“She rang downstairs. ‘I'm alone in my room.’ They said, ‘We're very sorry.’ She said, ‘How sorry? Because I can see the ice machine.’”
Mae's laugh came out suddenly. She pressed two fingers to her mouth.
“A hotel loves an abandoned woman. That's a minibar with a future. You don't even have to restock the nuts. Just bring a spoon for the peanut butter cups and back away.”
Jo took half a step toward the edge of the stage.
“But she got her suite. She lost a husband and gained a bathrobe. I said, ‘Willa, the bathrobe is going to be much harder to get rid of. They have your card.’”
“Jo,” Willa said.
Her mother lifted one finger. Let me finish.
“She called me because she was stuck in her anniversary dress. This was the only thing committed to staying with her.”
The apple stopped halfway to the technician's mouth. Then he laughed, head back, the bite of apple still in his cheek.
Willa's laugh arrived with theirs. A small involuntary breath. She shut her mouth on the rest.
“I had to drive down and get her out. Two hours. For a zipper. I'd have stayed in the marriage. At least until breakfast.”
Jo turned her body, mimed holding something with great delicacy.
“They give you those little hotel scissors. Have you seen those? I said, ‘Don't worry, darling, we'll have you out by your second anniversary.’ My other daughter did the cutting. Beth can undo anything with two moving parts and an expression of disapproval.”
Mae bent her head, smiling, and made a mark on her page. Jo waited.
“Then I washed her hair. She couldn't do anything, this poor baby. She said, ‘He never understood me.’ I said, ‘I washed your hair until you were nine and I don't understand you. Tilt your head.’”
Denise had put down her pencil. She was smiling at the stage, listening now instead of marking. Willa looked at the side of Mae's face. This woman was learning what had happened in that hotel room.
“And she said the chicken was cold. The chicken. I said, ‘You've divorced a man over a delay in potatoes. I think this is the chicken you've earned.’”
Jo lowered the microphone, though it was still in its stand.
“Into the retirement bit from there?” Mae asked.
“I think so.”
“The zipper's great.”
“It really was stuck,” Jo said.
Willa stood. Her knees had been pressed against the seat in front and didn't straighten easily.
“He left me.”
Her voice carried farther than she had expected. Denise looked at her, then at Jo.
“I know, honey. Can we have ten?” Jo asked the room.
People became busy with things. Mae touched Willa's elbow as she passed her.
“Let's get some air,” Jo said.
They went to a short hallway where there were photographs of past productions. A woman in an enormous hat regarded them from over Jo's shoulder. Willa could still hear the technician laughing in the theater; he was telling somebody where Jo had paused.