Sunday, November 15
Rafi looked at the two stools on the stage, then at Willa.
“You've multiplied.”
“Just the one extra.”
“That's how it starts.”
Jo was at the bar, talking to a woman who said she'd seen her in Pittsburgh with her father. The father had died. Willa could tell by the way Jo had put her hand over the woman's, not moving to the next subject. She and Rafi waited.
“You want them both?” he asked.
“The stools? No.”
“Then why'd you make me get them?”
“Mom thought sitting. We tried. It's worse.”
He took one away and left the other by the microphone.
“Put your water there. Let it have a job.”
Willa checked the cable. It ran the wrong way for the turn she'd planned. She moved it, tested the space with one step, and left it alone. The room was filling slowly. This was an early showcase, people still eating, daylight visible at the edges of the blinds. Jo had made it seem like an evening wherever she stood.
At the bar her mother kissed the woman's cheek and came back.
“Ready?”
“Are you?”
“Don't start that.”
Willa smiled. Jo touched the back of her arm, briefly, as if checking she was physically there.
They'd done the set in the dining room that morning. Ten minutes, uneven, a beginning that worked and a middle that didn't know whether it was an argument or a list. Jo had wanted to leave the ending loose. Willa had written it out. Both versions were in her notebook.
From the side passage she could see Rafi collecting his introduction. He'd met Jo years before Willa began playing this room, a fact he brought out only when somebody thought he'd booked her daughter as a favor. Tonight he didn't tell the story. He said their names.
Jo went first. Willa followed, aware of the little shift of attention toward her mother, then back to see what kind of daughter would come out beside her.
“We're trying something,” Jo said. “Don't panic. We've done it in a kitchen.”
“Several kitchens have declined a second performance,” Willa said.
A small laugh. Jo settled at the microphone. Willa stayed half a step farther away, where she could turn without making her mother move.
“I'm retiring from touring.”
“I've checked. The touring agrees.”
Jo looked at her.
“It sent flowers.”
That was new. Willa heard it come out before she saw Jo's pleased little nod.
“I've been on the road for forty years,” Jo said. “You don't just stop.”
“No. In our family you book a theater and make eleven hundred people watch you find your coat.”
They laughed. Jo let it come, then lifted one hand.
“I've given people a lot of happiness.”
“Mostly hotel receptionists who've seen you go.”
“That's not fair.”
“You've complained about the pillows in cities you haven't played yet.”
“Someone has to prepare them.”
The room warmed. Willa could hear the laughter running toward the back, thin near the door, fuller at the little tables. Jo wasn't chasing it. She gave them the next sentence as though she had time to wait all day.
“I'll have a home life. I'll get up when I want.”
“You'll still call somebody to tell them the room's too cold.”
“That's what daughters are for.”
“I'm putting in a thermostat. You'll have to learn another number.”
Jo made a face, the concentrating one that contained Willa's grandmother. Willa looked away from it, not too quickly, and the room caught the relationship without her naming it.
“My mother never wanted me to work in comedy,” Willa said.
“I wanted you to have something steady.”
“I did. A fear of silence.”
Jo laughed. The laugh almost stole the room's; she let it become part of the answer.
“You were a very funny child.”
“I was hungry. You wouldn't put dinner down until it had an ending.”
“I fed you.”
“That's your whole defense.”
“It's a substantial one.”
“Six thousand meals and a short encore.”
Jo put a hand to her chest, mock wounded.
“If dissatisfied, speak to the manufacturer.”
“Grandma's dead.”
“Very convenient of her.”
The laugh was larger than the line deserved because Jo had said it without asking anyone to be shocked. Willa could feel the room making space for both of them. The next turn about inherited objects went better than it had at the table. They cut the vase, kept the ankles, and Jo threw away a little look so Willa could land her answer.
At the back, a chair scraped. Somebody was leaving for the bathroom. Willa waited too long, watching the movement, and lost the next entrance. Jo filled it with a cough and a look at her watch.
“Thirty-nine years,” she said. “Still getting her ready.”
Willa smiled, recovered, and answered, “You shouldn't have stopped packing my bag.”
They got back. Willa was still smiling when she took the next line.
Then the middle sagged. Jo asked whether Willa had given her anything in return. Willa delivered the line they'd written, and it sounded written. The laugh arrived small and dutiful. Jo tried the follow-up. Smaller.
Willa could move to the softer ending. They had one, almost. It didn't have a clean finish yet. Her mother glanced toward the card on the stool, not reading it, just marking where it was.
Willa went to Beth.
“My mother's got another daughter,” she said. “The organized one.”
Jo's shoulders loosened.
“Beth's leaving us.”
“Not dying,” Willa said. “She's arranged transport.”
A laugh. Jo turned to her.
“You'd be terrible at dying.”
“I'm terrible at any event that needs a printed running order.”
“Your sister would have one. She has a plan for everything. My younger daughter doesn't fall in love. She checks whether it fits in the car.”
Willa laughed, partly because Beth had done exactly that yesterday with the cases. She didn't use the cases. She didn't need to.
“And if she's leaving,” Willa said, “she'll make sure you've got all the things you need to cope. Two smoke alarms. In case the first one says, I'm sorry, I can't be responsible for your happiness.”
Jo let the audience have it. Willa looked at the nearest table, a woman holding a napkin over her mouth, and felt the old pressure rise under her ribs.
“I've got the other kind of daughter,” Jo said. “This one leaves and comes back to tell me what I've done.”
“I like to keep you current.”
“I thought I was retiring.”
“From touring. Complaints are still open.”
They found the ending. Not the one Willa had written, not quite Jo's loose version. She came in sooner, her mother went out of the way, and the laugh brought them to the same point at the same time.
“Thank you,” Jo said.
Willa hadn't spoken yet. Jo caught herself, opened a hand toward her, and Willa said thank you too. The room clapped. Willa put her microphone back before she could add something.
In the side passage Jo leaned back against the wall.
“Middle's dead.”
“Half dead,” Willa said.
“All right. We can sell the other half.”
Willa laughed. She was breathless, more than the set should have made her. Jo took the water from her, drank, and handed it back.
“You were quick with the flowers.”
“Just came.”
“Keep it.”
“I was going to.”
Her mother smiled. “Good.”
Rafi found them after introducing the next comic. He had a plate of fries that belonged to somebody else and ate one before setting it down.
“You should have stayed standing,” he told Jo.
“I did.”
“I mean next time. Don't let her talk you into the stools.”
Jo pointed at Willa. “That was me.”
“Then don't let you talk you into it.”
He turned to Willa.
“The middle. You know.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Don't explain it to me. Fix it.”
“Anything else?”
He took another fry.
“I want more.”
“Now?”
“Not now. I've got a list and a room full of people who are about to remember they're not on television. Another Sunday. If you two are doing this.”
Willa looked at Jo. Her mother wasn't doing touring any longer after Friday. But a room like this was not a suitcase, a flight, a man at the airport holding the wrong name.
“We'll see,” Jo said.
Rafi nodded, accepting the actual answer.
“Tell Beth I asked about her.”
Willa looked down at her notebook.
“I will.”
“You'd better. She sent me a replacement cable when that old one went. Didn't even ask me to marry her.”
Jo laughed. Rafi went back toward the bar, where somebody was holding up an empty glass.
Willa sat on a chair in the little storage space and wrote the new order. Jo stood over her, holding the coat Willa hadn't yet put on.
“Don't lose the part where you got it wrong,” Jo said.
“Which part?”
“When you watched the man go out.”
“I lost the line.”
“Yes. Then we did something. It made you belong there.”
Willa looked up.
“I don't want to fake a mistake.”
“Then don't. God knows you'll have real ones.”
Willa smiled. Jo put the coat around her shoulders without making her stand.
They stayed for the next comic. Willa was not much in the habit of staying after her own set; there were buses, early lessons, an evening she wanted to get home to and turn into proof she hadn't failed. Tonight she sat beside her mother and listened. Once Jo's hand moved toward Willa's knee at a good line, then away. Willa caught the hand for a second, squeezed, and let go.
Outside, the daylight was gone. Mae had sent a message asking how it had gone.
Willa typed, Middle needs work. Ending good.
Then she added, We can do it.
She read that twice before sending.