by Lyndsay Faye
“Who am I?” Lia steps close enough to smell cedar cologne and something darker, like an alley without any end. “Tell me.”
“Ah-ah-ah.” Robin pouts. “Made you an offer, didn’t I? Twice. Don’t be fussed, I’m sure they’ll tell you themselves in another few thousand years.”
Tears crowd behind Lia’s eyes.
“Christ, here’s a dismal sight.” Robin slinks around her, mocking and admiring and cruel. “No home, no friends or family, never going to eat a peach or share a kiss or take a shit or feel the rain again, and you thought what, some divine wise women arrived to nurse you? My sisters collected you, Miss Brahms. Running a Red Cross, are they? Do you even know what happened that night?”
Grief tears at her seams because no: Lia can’t remember. So many of her stories must be narrated by others. Autobiography aped by biography. Forensics pieced together.
I can’t remember.
She’d eaten the last Greek yogurt in their fridge. She’d packed that threadbare Talking Heads T-shirt Ben said was sexier on her than any lingerie. Lights in their apartment were off, the dozen plants watered and misted. She’d been sober while getting ready to leave so they didn’t end up in London needing to visit a Tesco for socks with Ben wearing that face and Lia drowning in shame. Downstairs the snow fell like cherry petals, and she checked their flight wasn’t delayed, and headed for her studio to ensure the seaweed was drying correctly. Once she’d arrived, there was only a quarter left of that bottle of gin, and a quarter bottle would be the perfect amount, and not a drop more.
After that, nothing. Not even static. Spliced tape.
Robin leans forward as if she’s a stupid child. “Here’s one gratis, duckie dearest, even though you fucked me over by not joining my side. Luggage? ’Fraid not. Wallet, keys? Nix. Empty pint of corner-store gin in one hand, MetroCard in the other. God knows how many bars before that. Various unexplained bruises. Took a nap under the park bench, like a moron, so no one saw till far too late. My sisters whisked off this Lia, the one I’m speaking with. The one frozen in the snow of many colors didn’t have an ID, lads in blue had to do some digging, but a few days later . . .”
Robin’s lips nearly touch her ear. “Paul Brahms arrived at the morgue.”
“You bastard!” Lia cries as she slaps him.
And she runs.
Down, down, down to the ballroom. She’s dodging at first, then stops avoiding the patrons and . . . nothing happens. No one collides with her, no one glares.
“Excuse me,” Lia says to a man in an all-white tuxedo.
“Hi, I beg your pardon,” she tries on a woman in a lace gown.
“Can you hear me?” she shouts at a trio of chorus girls in pixie cuts.
“Will somebody help me please!” Lia screams in the middle of the ballroom.
No one helps her. She isn’t there.
* * *
• • •
The instinct to use the ladies’ room to cry is strong, it turns out. Even postmortem. Lia sobs in a stall for half an hour before emerging. She stands before the mirror. On this ephemeral plane or whatever the hell it is, her hair is mussed enough to look runway-worthy, so she embraces entropy and drags her nails through it. She redoes her makeup, stares herself down, remembers who she is.
Who she has become.
Her curls are insane, her lips blood-red, she’s basically wearing grey gauze covered in sparkling blossoms, and the light Robin keeps referring to burns in her dark eyes like a bonfire.
Lia looks, in short, like a witch.
“Nice knowing you,” she says to herself as she exits.
She goes to the other side of the event space and finds a new lookout. It’s so unnerving to think that she’s not physically present. If she even has nerves. She can smell the Wagyu sliders coming out of the kitchen, feel the bounce of the carpet beneath her heels. But she realizes that in the last two years, she only ever eats the food the sisters make, and traverses their rugs. Before having made Jessica’s bouquet, Lia would have fallen apart over this. She’d known her last chance with Ben was gone, but not that she herself was. Alive, Lia was in a tortuous limbo of longing and regret. Dead?
Fucking roll dice.
A series of technical cues cascade. The chandelier dims, the DJ shifts to a theme from The Light in the Piazza, a huge projector screen descends. Lenses tighten and blaze, and where nothing existed, there’s a platform with a podium and a microphone, and Ariel Washington’s buttery voice makes an offstage introduction, and then the space is occupied by Benjamin Jackson Dane.
Lia’s heart stops.
You don’t have one.
Ben smiles sideways, and the crowd erupts in applause. Apparently he ordered Vincentio to find a tux made from grey thistledown, and it looks spectacular. His softly punk blond hair is identical, his weight is a mess, there’s a cuff on his wrist although he never wears jewelry, his eyes are fifty years older, he’s exactly the same.
And a new ink-black pain spills in Lia, because now she remembers the goodbye letter from him that the sisters gave her. Lia thought he’d finally left her. Her friends never contradicted the idea. But it wasn’t a Dear Jane missive at all.
She was reading the eulogy he gave at her services. She knows it the way she’d know his voice in the dark.
I loved you then. I love you now. I love you everywhere, and everywhen, and after what you did this time, I can never be with you again.
How am I ever going to recover from something like that?
Ben squints at the followspot in his eyes, but it’s for charm. “Hey, everyone, hi. My name is Benjamin Jackson Dane. Thank you for supporting the annual New World’s Stage Benefit Gala, which this year is significant to us for so many reasons. Your ticket sales tonight will enable us to keep providing the highest quality art for our community—that’s you, you’re the community, you guys are dropping your cues already. Let’s hear it for our donors!”
Lia’s cheeks ache with pride. He was so different when she met him. Funny and fascinating, tongue-tied and abused. This Benjamin has taken scores of remedial speech courses, taught thousands of philosophy students, studied hundreds of hours of live theatre. Lia wants to strip him down and crown him entirely in laurel, and they aren’t even in the same corner of the universe.
Ben has been speaking. “ . . . they have dedicated their lives to this theatre, and now, ladies and gentlemen, be it known that they’ve dedicated their lives to each other as well. May I present Claude and Trudy Dane . . . man and wife.”
Outright gasps from the crowd. A solid effort at applause. Shock, mainly. Lia can’t believe that Ben just delivered that introduction with so little venom. Unless he’s changed—and he hasn’t, she’s been dreaming him all this time—Benjamin has more private vengeances planned.
“And now,” Ben states, “it’s my sad duty to deliver a short presentation memorializing the life of my late father, Mr. Jackson Jefferson Dane. He was the founder of the old World’s Stage, he pulled up his bootstraps and dragged it from the ashes to unveil the incredible space you all enjoy now, and he was larger than life in every possible sense. But speaking for myself, he was Dad.”
Ben stops. Clears his throat, shuffles notecards. The audience waits, still reeling from the marriage announcement. Lia spies Horatio’s imposing form, with his hair in a low knot and his arms crossed. He looks sick with worry, he looks like the brother she never had, and she badly misses him, and Lia only wishes one of them could go to Ben.
“Right, sorry,” Benjamin gasps, coming out of it. “This, um, this is not easy. I’m going to conduct this tribute to my late father in the form of compare and contrast, which is a pretty venerable rhetorical mode, gotta be one of my faves, and so allow me to present the first slide.”
Jackson Dane, midtwenties. Sweat streams down his bared muscles. Wasteland and derricks in the background, a d
ry sky above. Jackson looks as careless as a man in a cigarette ad. But she knows he hated that life, was even ashamed of it.
When Ben wolf whistles, the crowd relaxes a little. “Right? Let me tell you guys, I have never looked like that. Anyway, here’s my dad back in Texas where our holdings come from, the ones that have helped bring so many unforgettable performances to the public by founding the original World’s Stage. We’re looking at unforgettable abs now, but . . .” Everyone chuckles. “My dad was the hardest worker I knew, and here he is out in the fields. Jackson hated what he called ‘nuts and bolts.’ Fixing things, dealing with hoses and drills. What he wanted to do was make people feel powerful emotions, and . . . well, if you straight ladies feel nothing about this picture, I know a lot of the chorus boys here, and they feel very deeply.”
His audience grins. Broadway Twitter has probably gone off like a nuke, Lia thinks. Hashtags like “Claudy” and “Trude” being explored. But here, it’s a son who loved his dad showing the world his heart, and it’s a room full of kindness.
Until the next slide shows up. Gasps, cackles, an audible what the hell.
“You really can’t understand how much I agree with you.” Ben beams at the heckler.
Present-day Claude is poolside at the Danes’ summer Hamptons residence. Flabby absolutely everywhere, he sports swim trunks with dolphins printed on them, streaks of white sunscreen under his eyes and down his nose, and a floppy hat reading CARP EAT ’EM: SEIZE THE FISH. Hapless and genuine.
“What you just saw was my mom’s first husband, my dad, Jackson. This here is the new guy, Claude Dane, his half-brother. I gotta say, Mom: Mad points for mixing it up. Let’s not leave the buffet till we’ve tried everything on offer, you feel me?”
Cell phone cameras feast voraciously. Somewhere in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, Lia thinks, a Page Six freelance reporter just had an orgasm.
“I’m kidding, Mom, I’m kidding, we need to lighten this up or I wouldn’t live through it otherwise.” Ben crosses and uncrosses his ankles. “Sorry, folks. The evolutionary root of laughter is actually survival, not pleasure, did you know that? Well, I did. Back to Jackson Jefferson Dane.”
Jackson in a full three-piece suit, going over documents with men who look comparatively shrunken. One hand is cocked on his side; the cowboy hasn’t left him entirely. The confidence he exudes must be seeping into the paper fibers.
“This is Dad going over plans for New World’s Stage.” Ben’s voice softens. “As I said, he didn’t want to tinker with physical objects. But he did like to dream them up and make them exist. Which I think is objectively nine hundred times cooler, not to cast any aspersions whatsoever on elevator maintenance employees. I chose this slide because in it, Dad has been doing some dreaming, sure, but he’s willing it into creation. He was a great one for winning allies over, because he loathed even thinking about using family money for an artistic venture. We fought all the time and he didn’t approve of me, but. It didn’t matter. He had me won over from the start.”
Ben swipes at tears. The assembly careens between sympathy, shock, and bizarre glee at witnessing a masterful performance. He didn’t study acting, and he certainly wasn’t talented—but Ben Dane has been beaten to a pulp, taunted, and literally pissed on. Which means that Ben is very very engaging.
“OK, bit too much of this, apologies again.” Ben pockets his handkerchief. “Let’s see who replaced this guy.”
The audience, thoroughly warmed up by now, points, howls, says outright girl he did not and snap that is low and they can’t be in on this joke, can they?
Lia recognizes the ornately carved stones of the Lopburi temple and recalls a rare Dane family outing to Thailand years previous. In the foreground, Claude Dane in a Pepto-Bismol pink polo shirt is being mauled by a monkey. Because of course he is, Lia thinks, groaning. The monkey is either about to munch on Claude’s face or initiate the most passionate kiss since Pretty Woman. Claude’s obscured expression is probably a scream, or maybe his face is just being yanked by a hungry (or horny) monkey.
“So here again we have a subtle contrast to my dad,” Ben continues.
Lia knows this tone.
It has said to her, Lia honey, vomit isn’t so much for inside my backpack, are we on the same page here?
“Credit to my uncle Claude—I took this picture, and he totally had a sense of humor about it. So I knew he wouldn’t mind my showing it tonight! Cool guy. So yeah, what’s next after Uncle Claude, Mom? Because this monkey sure looks ready to go.”
Flashes from the press illuminate every expression of delighted horror imaginable.
What are you doing, Benny? Lia thinks frantically. What have you already done?
“Please, ladies and gentlemen!” he calls. “My word of honor, not one more embarrassing picture of my uncle. I didn’t really think I could get through this sorta surreal experience without some jokes, but it’s a memorial, not a roast. Back to my dad, Jackson Dane.”
Lia’s eyes fill. Trudy, lithe and gorgeous, sits on the white carpet in the townhouse. She is laughing, reaching her hand toward the couch. Jackson holds small Ben easily in his quarterback hands. He’s whooshing his son like an airplane, and Benjamin doesn’t know that things are going to get so much worse after this, for so long, before they get better again. But right now? He’s blissfully happy with two loving parents, and Lia faintly, like an echo, remembers what that felt like, too.
“I was a year and three months, I think, in this picture,” Ben says hoarsely. “Which, like, obviously means I don’t remember it. But I do remember my dad always trying to lift me, even when he was ham-fisted at it. Look at my mom too—you look gorgeous, Mom. You look just as gorgeous tonight. And yeah, it took me a hell of a lot longer to achieve liftoff than is reasonable.” Ben takes a shaking breath. “But my dad, even when he was knocking me, even when it hurt, he did it because he wanted me strong. That’s a legit retro parenting style. But this image—this is what he wanted for me.”
Ben glances out at the crowd. “No more jokes at my uncle Claude’s expense. Just one more family portrait.”
It’s a balcony walkway outside a row of hotel rooms. Trudy, sun-kissed and soft-lipped, gazes at an infatuated Claude. It can’t possibly be less than twenty years ago.
“Congratulations, Trudy and Claude Dane,” Ben declaims, lifting a champagne flute. “Or is it more like Happy Anniversary? Whatever, same-same. Fuck if I care! To the happy couple!”
“Lights! Lights!” Claude Dane’s voice bellows. “For god’s sake, will somebody shut that screen down and turn up the lights!”
The star chandelier blazes to life, the projector disappears, the patrons make no effort to disguise their dark delight or total revulsion or both. Ben vanishes, thank Christ. Lia is mystified that no one shuts down the proceedings. The only return to normalcy is Ariel playing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Then she recalls that this fundraiser is a giant percentage of New World’s Stage’s budget. Trudy’s relentless quest for swag pays off yearly in the form of very real stage furnishings and costumes, fixing the hand dryers, vacuuming the carpets. They cannot permit hundreds of important donors to walk away without their rose crystal–infused water bottles. The horse has already fled the barn, after all—admitting guilt by throwing everyone out is the worst thing they could possibly do.
Meanwhile where the hell is my dad? Lia wonders.
“Hello, our petite chouchou,” says Mam’zelle, approaching the rail. She wears four cakelike tiers of palest pink tulle. “We don’t want to see your Ben like this—my spirit, it was so torn apart.”
Moma passes an arm around her, clad in a black strapless sheath topped by waves of 3D printed lace. “How I’m supposed to look nice tonight when you all dolled up like some kinda fairy queen?”
Maw-maw shuffles over in a couture sack made from crushed metallic copper fabric. “The harves
t is upon us. Ready the scythes and the sickles.”
“That is seriously just sinister, Maw-maw,” Lia says, and Maw-maw winks.
“There’s our Miss Jessica.” Moma nods, leaning on the rail. “Any time now.”
“I was talking to Robin earlier,” Lia begins.
All three sisters roll their eyes.
“Yeah, for real. Anyway . . . so I’m dead? That would have been good to know.”
Moma’s neck arches. “Ha! It would not, baby girl. The kinda state you was in, that would have sizzled your soul to a crisp. You weren’t nohow ready. This Lia right here with us is your mind, and it had its work cut out for it.”
“Rest,” Mam’zelle agrees soothingly. “You needed affection. A change of scene.”
“Hell, when you first woke up, body or no, you coulda still drank the river Jordan and then licked the rock. I had to coax it back to other cravings, me.”
“Us, ma chère sister.”
“All of us and never say otherwise, my sister,” Moma agrees.
Despite the extremity of the situation, Lia is already battling to look severe. “Cards on the table, I’ve been dead well over a year?”
Moma’s braids are piled vertically in a huge headdress and she pats them to check the sturdiness. “Give or take. Year and a half, I’d say.”
“The goodbye letter from Ben.” This time her voice husks. “That was his funeral speech.”
Mam’zelle presses her hand. “We couldn’t tell you, chère. You had to find it out yourself. But we understand why you loved him so. Il est un homme juste, un homme bon.”
Lia nods. She wishes she knew quite where this good, just man is, but at least he’s coming back this way soon. She can feel it.
“So, give it to me plain: Am I your bitch, then?”
“Pardonnez-moi?”
“Robin seems to think that you put me under some sort of binding and have been using me for your servant.”
Maw-maw stomps a foot, Moma guffaws, and Mam’zelle clicks her tongue in disbelief.