Thursday afternoon, November 19
There were flowers in the passage by Jo's dressing room. Not enough to block it, but enough to turn every arrival into a sideways journey. Denise had put them on two tables and a spare chair. Somebody had sent a plant with a leaf longer than Willa's arm.
“Where does that go?” Willa asked.
“Home,” Jo said.
“Whose?”
“People don't think.”
Her mother bent to read the card. Her face changed.
“Oh. It's from the box-office women.”
Willa took the card while Jo touched the leaf with one finger. There were six names written at different angles, the last one squeezed down the edge.
“We should put it where she can see it,” Willa told Denise.
“That's why it's here.”
Jo looked up, caught by the simple answer.
“Thank you.”
She didn't make a joke. Denise nodded and went back toward the stage.
Inside the dressing room, the little lamp from home stood on the table. It made a pale yellow circle in the harsher mirror light. Willa set the chocolate box of cards beside it. Jo's black dress hung on a rail, the beaded front turned inward so it wouldn't catch on things.
The room wasn't a room until her mother put her own cup down. Then it became a place Jo could leave and return to, a place where she would know how the chair felt without looking.
Willa opened the traveling trunk. One hinge wouldn't stay up. She held it while Jo took out what she needed.
“Do you want all this?”
“Not all.”
“Tell me as you go.”
“You sound like your sister.”
Willa looked up. Jo's face was turned to the trunk. It had been an observation, perhaps. Neither of them made it useful.
A man came to the doorway with a flat package under one arm.
“Am I allowed?”
Jo straightened.
“Martin.”
He was tall and thin in a coat that didn't fit well across the shoulders. Willa had seen photographs of him younger, standing beside her mother on stages with the same brick-wall backdrop. He had once called their house at midnight from a city where it was earlier, never apologizing because that was not how those people told time.
“Look at you,” Jo said.
“Still looking.”
She went to him, put both arms around him, and stayed there a second longer than a greeting required. When she let go, he held the package out.
“Found this.”
“Where?”
“Behind something. Most things are now.”
He had brought a poster from a room Jo had played before Willa was born. Jo's name was not the biggest name. The photograph showed a woman with dark hair and a mouth poised somewhere between laughing and saying something she probably shouldn't.
Willa took the package so her mother could unwrap it. The frame was cheap and a little dusty.
“Don't look at the frame,” Martin said. “I was going to get it done.”
“Then I wouldn't know it was yours.”
He laughed, relief in the sound, and came farther into the room.
They talked about the old venue. It had closed. Someone they both knew had bought the building, then sold it, then claimed not to have lost money. Martin couldn't remember which year. Jo supplied it. He corrected her. She said they were both wrong because Frank had been there and it was before they'd had the girls.
Willa stood with the poster in her hands, listening to a life she'd arrived after the beginning of. The woman in the photograph had wanted things before there were daughters to turn into stories. She had a way of standing Willa recognized in her own body, one hip taking the weight, shoulders loose as if there were nowhere she'd rather be.
Martin looked at her.
“Willa.”
“Yes.”
“You're doing it tomorrow.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
He didn't ask whether she was nervous, didn't tell her how lucky she was. He seemed to have run out of language for the whole evening.
Jo drew a chair out.
“Sit.”
“I won't stay.”
“Then sit for not staying.”
He sat. Willa put the poster on the table and went to get another cup.
By the time she came back, Martin was talking about his garden. A fox had been getting in. He had put something around the fence that hadn't worked.
“Why shouldn't it get in?” Jo asked.
“It eats the things.”
“What things?”
“The things I plant.”
“Very unreasonable.”
He smiled, then rubbed his eyes.
“I didn't think you'd stop.”
“Neither did I.”
“Good for you.”
“Ask me next month.”
He nodded. His cup remained untouched. He loosened the top button of his coat.
Jo didn't fill the space. She sat with him.
After a while he said, “We had some nights.”
“We did.”
“That place in Ohio.”
“Don't make me remember Ohio.”
He smiled, and the conversation started again. Willa took the empty wrapping into the passage and folded it while they talked. She could have left. She didn't want to.
A woman from the house staff came by with a small box of chocolates. Not for Jo, she said, for everybody in the dressing rooms. Willa thanked her and put it on the table near the plant. They opened it together and each took one. The woman told Willa she'd been here the first time Jo played this theater, years earlier, when the heating had failed in the front rows.
“She did ten minutes about the coats,” the woman said. “We didn't get it fixed till intermission.”
Willa laughed.
“I was sitting in the back office with my coat on too. Could hear her through the monitor. I thought, She's going to kill us.”
“Did she?”
“No. Sold the next night out.”
She picked up the box and went on, leaving Willa with the taste of orange cream in her mouth and a ridiculous wish to have been there.
In the room, Martin was standing. Jo had put one hand on his arm, listening while he gave her an address she probably already had.
“I'll call,” she said.
“You don't have to.”
“I'll call.”
Willa held the door. He kissed her mother's cheek, shook Willa's hand, and went slowly down the passage. Jo watched until he turned the corner.
Then she looked at the poster.
“God, I was cheap.”
Willa laughed.
“The frame?”
“The dress. Both.”
She put the poster near the lamp, where she could see it from the chair.
“Hold this,” she said, lifting the hem of the black dress.
Willa held it. Jo bent to inspect a place near the lining.
“The repair?”
“No. The bit that catches my heel.”
“Can you walk?”
“I've been doing it for years.”
“In this.”
“I can walk in this.”
Willa looked at the hem. A little loop of thread had come loose.
“Scissors?”
“Tin in the trunk.”
She fetched it and cut the thread while Jo held the cloth away from her fingers. The small blades were good ones, sharp, no hotel kit. Willa put them back before the memory could claim the whole room.
Jo smoothed the beaded front.
“It's heavy.”
“You don't have to wear it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, Willa. I know I can choose another dress.”
They hung the dress back on the rail. Jo sat to change her shoes. Willa helped with the clasp of a necklace, fingers clumsy against the cool links. Her mother held her hair away from her neck. The bare skin there was softer than Willa expected.
“Too tight?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“It's a necklace, not a horse.”
Willa laughed, let the clasp go, and stepped back.
For a while they had nothing to do. The final duet run was still half an hour away. Jo ate a chocolate, declared it the wrong one, and ate the rest.
Willa sat on the spare chair.
“What's the right one?”
“The one I didn't choose.”
“Family trait.”
“Very strong on your father's side.”
The answer came as easily as breathing. Willa smiled and looked at the lamp.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Beth: Leaving early tomorrow. Going by Mom's at eight. You can come if you want. Don't make it a thing.
Willa read it twice.
“What?” Jo asked.
“Beth. Tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
Willa put the phone down.
“Good.”
Jo looked at her, a little tired.
“We do speak.”
“I know.”
Her mother reached for a tissue, wiped a little chocolate from her thumb, and put the tissue in the bin. The ordinary action steadied Willa more than the invitation had.
Outside the room, the house was filling with people who had work to do. Willa could hear a cart rolling, someone calling a number, the stage door opening to the cold and closing again. She had spent years imagining belonging in this part of a theater. She had not imagined it would smell like flowers, dust, and her mother's hand cream.
Denise appeared at the door.
“Ten minutes.”
Jo stood. Willa picked up the chocolate box with their cards.
At the mirror her mother stopped to check the necklace. She caught Willa watching.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then bring the cards. We might need to earn this.”
They went out together, Willa holding the door for the woman in the old poster.