All's Well(10)

Grace has watched me watch myself with tears in my eyes, mesmerized by my own face, still dumb to its dark future, unlined with sorrow. My ability to walk across the stage like a human person.

What are you doing, Miranda? she’ll ask from the door.

Nothing, I’ll say. Research.

“You had your reasons,” she repeats now. “So you’ll make them come around.”

I recall their dead-eyed faces gazing at me. The defiance in the air so palpable it made a crackling sound. “And what if they don’t come around?”

“You’ll make them. You’re the director.”

“I’m the director,” I whisper.

My legs have grown dead beneath me. I know that when I eventually stand up I’ll have to pay. I shouldn’t sit in a chair for longer than twenty minutes, according to Mark. Of course, therapists will disagree. It’s thirty minutes according to John. So long as you get up every hour or so and walk around you should be fine, said Matt the sadist. Does it really matter, in the end? Luke said. Luke, the fatalistic philosopher. Honestly, just let your pain be your guide, said Dr. Harper, my hip surgeon, giving me a wan smile, a shrug of his sculpted shoulders. He treated my hip surgery like it was a one-night stand he wanted to forget. Every time I sat in his office telling him how I still had pain, reading off my symptoms from the Notes app on my phone, then my list of questions, he’d just mumble about Advil and Mother Nature and not make eye contact. And then there was Dr. Rainier, who didn’t believe I needed to take any such measures at all. I recall his helmet of silver hair glowing dully beneath the fluorescent lights as he gazed at me with such smug certitude. Certain that my pain was not the result of a hip injury followed by an unsuccessful surgery followed by a bad recovery that caused a back injury that then compressed multiple nerves running down my legs. No, no. My pain was my dead mother, my divorce, my failed aspirations for the stage.

Ms. Fitch, I want to perform surgery on everyone in New England. But you? He smiled. Shook his head. You I don’t want to cut. Why would I? he said softly, looking at me. Nothing to cut.

And I suddenly felt like a loose woman who sat with her legs spread wide before him while he politely but firmly refused to fuck me.

To continue to insist like this, Ms. Fitch, would really be undignified, embarrassing for both of us, really.

But I can’t walk, I pleaded. Or sit or stand.

Ms. Fitch, he said, leaning in. If you can’t walk, then tell me: How did you get here?

“I don’t know.”

“What?” Grace says now. “Miranda, did you hear what I just said?”

“You said I’m the director,” I whisper.

“That’s right.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll never get off book.” I observe this fact as though it is a bonfire I’m watching from a great distance.

“It’s still early.” She points at the snow outside the window, heavily falling, then signals to the waiter.

“It always goes fast, you know that. Before you know it, it’ll be here.”

“What?” she says, rifling through her handbag.

“Spring.” I shudder. I never hated spring until I began directing the play. Never dreaded the melting of snow. Never shivered at the sight of green buds on a branch. The smell of plants having sex, the chirping of birds, the scent of wet grass. Briana probably loves it. Welcomes it. Performs some sort of ritual to make it all quicken.

I look at Grace. Her face is suddenly surrounded by a cloudy haze.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Miranda? You seem…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Not here, or something.”

“It’s just”—I rub my leg—“it’s been a lot. All of this.” I try to smile weakly as though I’m smiling through something. A veil of pain. But even though it’s true, I am, it rings false, it’s a bad performance. I’m the woman in the drug commercial. I’m pleading.

She can see through it. She lowers her eyes. Picks at her fries.

“Look, you can always ask for help, you know, Miranda? You do know that, right? I mean, I’m literally just right down the block from you. I can do laundry. Get groceries. Close windows.”

It’s like she doesn’t even ask for help.

It’s like she’s always asking for help.

“I know. Thank you.”

Grace and I used to be closer. Friends? Maybe friends. There was a time, not so long ago, when I’d stop at her place for a drink before I went home most nights. I’d lie on my back on her living room floor while she sat curled on her flowery couch letting her dragon crawl all over her. We’d bitch about the English faculty. Commiserate about the theater program hanging by a thread. She’d ask me to tell her about my stage days. Or I’d just tell her about my stage days. If she was drunk, she’d ask me to tell her again about my summer playing Snow White at Disney World, a job that seemed to fascinate her far more than any of my Shakespeare gigs. Or we might do her rose-petal face mask and watch one of her murder shows. Mask + mystery tonight? she’d text. I’d always text even though I thought the shows were formulaic and her petal mask gave me hives. I was just happy to be with Grace. She always had white wine in her fridge for me. And I always had beer in my fridge for her when she came by. She was sympathetic about my pain in her brisk, efficient way.