All's Well(3)

“Miranda?” says the voice.

I don’t answer.

I feel her consider this. Perhaps she can see my feet poking out from behind the desk.

“Miranda, is that you?” she tries again.

I remain silent. So I am hiding. So what?

At last I hear her retreat. Soft footsteps pattering down the hall, away from my door. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Then another voice follows. Decisive. Brisk. But there is love in there somewhere, or so I tell myself.

“Miranda?”

“Yes?”

Grace. My colleague. My assistant director. My… I hesitate to say friend these days. Both of us the only faculty left in the once flourishing, now decrepit Theater Studies program. Both of us forced to be the bitches of the English department. All of our courses cross-listed. Offering only a minor now. Grace and I share this pain; except, of course, Grace has tenure. As an assistant professor, four years into the job, I am more precariously employed.

“Where are you?” she asks me now.

“Just here,” I say.

I feel her suddenly see me. Firm footsteps approaching. Timberlands, even though we are nowhere near mountains. She’s wearing a hunting vest too, I’m certain. Camouflage, possibly flotational. Grace is always dressed like she is about to shoot prey with a sharp eye and a clear conscience. Or else hike a long and perilously ascending trail. And on this journey, her foot will not stumble, though the terrain will be uneven, treacherous. She will whistle to herself. Her footfall will frighten all predators in the dark woods. Her footfall is the sure stride of health coming my way, and I feel my soul cower slightly at the sound. I keep my eyes closed. I will her away. Can I will her away?

No.

Her boot tips rest at my head, stopping just short of my temple. She could raise her boot and stomp on my face if she wanted to. Probably a small part of her does. Because that’s what you do with the weak, and Grace comes from Puritan stock, a witch-burning ancestry. Women who never get colds. Women who carry on. Women with thick thighs who do not understand the snivelers, the wafflers, people who burn sage. I picture those women in my daymares, the great-great-great-grandmothers of Grace, standing on Plymouth Rock or else a loveless field, donning potato-sack dresses patterned with small faded flowers, holding pitchforks perhaps, their bark-colored hair tied in buns, loose tendrils blowing in an end-of-the-world wind, which they alone will survive.

Now I feel Grace’s small bright eyes assess the situation as surely as I feel her glowing with actual health beside me, a health that is unbronzered, unblushed. Grace does not ask what I am doing lying here with snow on my face beside a dead laptop. This is not the first time she has encountered me in a strange configuration on the floor. Nor does she comment on the absolutely prohibited cigarette.

Instead she walks over to the window. Begins to close it.

“Unless you wanted it open?” she asks, but it isn’t really a question.

“No,” I say.

She closes it easily—I feel how easy, as I lie here, staring at the ceiling—and for a brief, brief moment, I hate her. I hate Grace. I long to slide into Grace’s pockmarked skin and live there instead of here. How easy. How lovely. How lightly I would live.

She takes the dead cigarette from my fingers, the column of ash sprinkling over me like so much fairy dust, and tosses it into the garbage. She hops onto my desk. Pulls a cigarette from my pack and lights it. This is a bond, a small defiance Grace and I silently share, illicit smoking in the office, in the theater. Basically, wherever we can get away with it. I watch her booted foot swing to and fro over my face.

“Well, they’re waiting for you, Miranda.”

“Okay,” I say. “Just trying to give my back a break before rehearsal. Just need a few minutes here.”

Long pause. Should she ask or shouldn’t she? Dare she open that can of worms?

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I lie. “Just you know. The usual.” I try to smile, to put an eye roll in my voice, but I fail miserably. I hate the crack in my tone, the whining simper. If I were Grace, I’d crush my own face.

“Right.” She takes a sip from her water canister and looks down at me, lying on the floor, with my legs on the chair seat and my feet dangling in their holey tights, my bare, unclipped toenails there for her to examine.

“Well, whenever you’re ready,” she says.

“I’m ready,” I say. But I don’t move.

“All right. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then.” She’s about to get up. Panic flutters in me, briefly.

“Grace?”

“Yes?”

“How are they tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do they seem… how do they seem?”

“How do they seem?” she repeats.

“Well… are they… mutinous?”

Grace considers this. “Maybe. They’re down there, at any rate.”

“Miranda, do you want one of us to do the talking today? We can, you know. There is that option. You can give yourself… a break.” This from Fauve, who has apparently been standing silently in the doorway all this time. I look over at Grace. Why didn’t you tell me she was there? Grace merely looks down at me lying on the floor. I can’t help but feel like a deer she has just shot. She’s looking at me to see if I am a clean kill or if she needs to put one more bullet in me for good measure.