On the train, home to David, to George, I can see my reflection in the window by my seat. The fluorescent light in here is harsh but somehow, in the glass, I don’t see that deepening vertical crease between my eyebrows that would indicate I’d done a good deal of frowning in my life. I turn away, look at the program I’m still holding in my lap, not because I continue to save these things but because I unthinkingly kept it in my hand and now I can’t recycle it until I get home. I flip through the pages of head shots and bios, what I always do with these things, even though it undoes the spell of the performance. It’s like they don’t want the spell to last. They draw a line, create a frame around it, that reminds you not to confuse a dream with what is real. Who do I even mean by they?
And what was real? I still have Stella in my phone. Though maybe I don’t, maybe what I have is now a number for someone else. I haven’t tried it in months, I think, and then I realize that those months have turned into more than three years. From time to time—Denise Taylor must have added me to the mailing list before she stepped down or stepped back, retired—I receive a newsletter from the film foundation. Programming notes, updates on educational outreaches, fund-raising events. Stella Dart is listed as the contact for more information. She’s in Boston, in the position that I recommended her for, or some greater, expanded version of it. I might look up one day and see her on the train. I could get in touch with her, but I never do. I’m not sure if she even writes these email communications but I read them that way, as communications from her. They sound like her. Not ironic or glib, but playful somehow. Unassuming but smart. Considered but not mannered. I remember talking to her, whenever I read these dispatches, whether she writes them or not. Conversations return to me. Her voice. Who the fuck has a passion for juices? Oh my god, Alice! How can it not be personal? It’s like, I do my job and I don’t give a shit but I do give a shit. Gimme my shirt, lady. Why though? Why should she?
It was Alice’s voice that I heard in my head yesterday. But mostly, when that summer at Alder comes to me, it comes in images, sensations, movements. One pear, halved, on the cutting board, a shaft of light through the window, hitting the kitchen table. The green aluminum of the dock and the blue-black lake. Rafters and floorboards. Gasoline and cut grass. Laundry drying on a line. Stella pulling a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans off clothespins along with a bedsheet, white and glinting in the sun. We could be women in a Mediterranean country, a century ago, doing the wash, carrying baskets. We just happened to find ourselves here, pulling to the corners of the sheet, coming together and moving back, in a kind of dance, until there’s no more fabric to fold.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Kate Garrick and Jonathan Lee for the extraordinary care and attention you’ve given this book. I’m incredibly fortunate to work with you. I’m grateful to everyone at Catapult for all the tremendous support. Maryse Meijer and Carlene Bauer, I owe you endlessly. Thank you also to Rebecca Shapiro, Rita Zilberman, Carole Obedin, Elizabeth Stigler, and Alison Hart. And to Lewis and Callum, where would I even start?
The Summer Demands Page 17