Love Comes Calling

by Siri Mitchell

  I held my breath as the curtain opened without a hitch and the play began.

  At the end of the first act, I came off the stage to the applause of the crowd and then, backstage, to the applause of the girls. Most of them, anyway. All of them except for Irene. She was scowling. “It’s easy to act when you’re not really acting.”

  Not acting! I’d given everything I had to be a perfect—if silly—jester. And at least I was making people laugh. When she was on stage she just sat on her throne, looking as if she’d rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. “You should know. You hardly bothered to show up to half the practices. Why did you accept the part if you didn’t want to play it?”

  “To keep you from making a complete fool of yourself. Only it hasn’t worked, has it?”

  “What is it with you? Why are you being like this?”

  “I could have a perfect life, too, if I had parents like yours and money coming out of my ears and—and an adoring boyfriend. You’re just so—so—good sometimes. I could just about scream!”

  Good? Me?

  “Not all of us are as lucky as you. Sometimes you have to figure out what it takes to get ahead and then just do it. Sometimes you have to put your inhibitions aside.”

  What was she talking about?

  “Don’t you ever get tired of doing the right thing all the time?”

  “I’m not like you think I am, Irene! I mean—”

  “Just let me be.”

  A hand on my shoulder stopped me when I would have replied. As she turned away, Griff pulled me to his side and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t let her get to you. She’s just jealous.”

  “Of . . . me?”

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  Who wouldn’t be? Who would be was the better question.

  “Besides, it takes someone really smart to pretend to be so stupid.”

  I didn’t have time to respond because one of the trolls needed a costume repair. I sent him to the costumes girl to have it patched, then helped the stagehands move the scenery. Once everything was in place, I put the actors and actresses in their positions. But then Griff came up to me, his mustache dangling.

  I swiped the jar of spirit gum from the props table and applied some more to the dent above his lip. “Don’t breathe so hard! You’re making the mustache move.”

  His nose had wrinkled. “That smells terrible!”

  Over to my left, one of Griff’s fraternity brothers was pacing behind the curtain, out of glimpse of the audience.

  “Stage right is actually to the left only when you’re looking up at the stage. Remember?”

  “What?” Griff was looking down his nose at me.

  “Not you. I’m talking to Richard.” I pressed my finger to Griff’s lip and motioned for his fraternity brother to go across to the other side. To the real stage right. How on earth did any of them ever catch a football if they couldn’t be in the right place at the right time?

  Beside us, another of his fraternity brothers had been reciting his lines.

  I kicked at what I hoped were his shins as I applied some more spirit gum to Griff’s mustache.

  “Ow! What’d you do that for?”

  “You have the emphasis on the wrong word. Put it on the last one, not the first one.”

  He repeated it. “Like that?”

  “Right.”

  I glanced up at Griff. He seemed so stiff all of a sudden. His face had gone red. Had he been holding his breath that whole time?

  “I didn’t mean for you to go all purple. Just . . . don’t exhale quite so strongly.”

  He let out his pent-up breath with a whoosh of licorice-scented air.

  I sighed as his mustache lifted up and flapped free.

  “Just . . .” I took his hand and lifted it to his lip. “Just hold it there for a while. It should set before you have to go on.”

  As I’d been gluing Griff’s mustache, Irene had peeked out around the edge of the curtain. Now she turned to me, eyes wide. “I have to go.”

  “Not yet. You don’t go on until midway through the scene.” I recited her cue.

  She’d put the crepe-papered whisk she was using as a scepter down on the props table and shrugged out of her fur-tipped cloak. “I mean I have to leave.”

  “Leave? Now? But—but you can’t!”

  She’d found her cloche hat and pocketbook and was touching up her lipstick by the illumination of the flashlight. She regarded herself in the mirror, rubbing her lips together and smiling into her compact mirror. Then she snapped it shut. “It can’t be helped. You’ll have to do without me.”

  “You can’t just leave!” But apparently, she could. I watched as, out behind the audience, she joined a tall beanpole of a man dressed in black tie. She sent one last look over her shoulder toward the stage as he grabbed at her hand and pulled her away.

  “Where’d Irene go?” The props girl was standing there holding Irene’s scepter.

  “She’s . . . gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know.” It didn’t matter. We still had half the play left, and I had to figure out how to make the show go on without her.

  It didn’t take long to realize I was the only one who could fill in for Irene. In the first place, my role as jester wasn’t a very big one. In the second place, I was the only other person who knew her lines. The costume girl helped me don the fur-tipped cloak. I drew it tight around my throat so no one would be able to see the jester costume underneath, but there was really nothing I could do about my hair. Irene’s was black and mine was blond. If I did a good enough job of acting, then I hoped I could make everyone forget I wasn’t her.

  I made it through act two by throwing the cloak on and off behind the tree, hunching when I played the jester and standing regally tall when I was the queen. As I said my lines, I scanned the audience for my parents, but I didn’t see them.

  Act three started with a boom. Quite literally. A tympani drum filled in for cannon fire during the epic battle with the trolls. Though the king handily won the war, the queen, doubting his ability to triumph, had previously betrayed him. She’d gone behind his back with an offer of peace, which the troll prince had accepted. For all intents and purposes, she had turned the king into a dastardly, ruthless murderer, ruining his good name forever.

  The climax of the play occurred as the king confronted the queen, asking her why she’d done it.

  Griff clasped my hand in his. “Did you doubt my strength? Or my courage? I would have fought a thousand battles, I would have died a thousand deaths, knowing you believed in me . . . that you believed in us. Just tell me that you love me still.” And my goodness, but didn’t he draw me close and then dip me right over backward as if he were Rudolph Valentino!

  The play was a tragedy, so the queen was supposed to refuse the king’s love. She was supposed to be mean and evil and wicked, just like Irene had turned out to be. But as he took me into his arms, my knees melted, and I threw an arm around his neck so I wouldn’t dissolve into a puddle right there on the floor.

  His arm tightened around my waist.

  As I looked into his eyes, I wanted to believe every word he said. And I wanted to be forgiven, even though I’d done all the wrong things. Even though I was no good for him and had ruined his reputation, I wanted to believe he loved me still. And so I said, “Yes—I do! I do love you!” before I could remember I wasn’t supposed to.

  He pulled me closer and bent toward my ear. “You’re supposed to say, ‘No.’”

  “ . . . what?” How come I’d never realized before what a truly tragic thing the queen had done?

  “Ellis!” He said it with a hiss. “You’re supposed to say ‘No’!”

  “No?” But . . . I didn’t want to. I’d never immersed myself so fully in a role before. It was so strange and . . . and wonderful. How was it I’d imagined the queen could so glibly refuse his love? Why hadn’t I realized she would have second thoughts? And then third ones after that? Why didn’t
I know how much she’d crave forgiveness and that the worst of it was, she couldn’t manage to forgive herself? It was all so much . . . more . . . so much more complicated, so much more emotional, so much more complex than I’d thought.

  “Ellis?”

  “What?”

  “My back’s really starting to hurt.”

  “Oh!” I put a hand to his chest, straightened, and then turned away from him toward the audience, my other hand at my brow as if I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. And it was true: I couldn’t. There was too much love shining from his eyes, and I couldn’t figure out why because I didn’t deserve him. I mean, she didn’t deserve him.

  “No!” I was supposed to add, “Not for a hundred thousand victories. Not even for one hundred thousand eternities.” But it just seemed a little too cruel. So with that final word ringing through the air, the curtain fell for the last time.

  My parents had never shown up, so Griff offered to walk me back to the dormitory. I’d played two roles. I’d made the audience laugh, and then I’d turned right around and made them cry. I’d become my part so completely I’d all but melted in Griff’s arms and thrown away any chance I had of leaving Boston with no regrets. It was the best work I’d ever done . . . and my parents hadn’t been there to see any of it.

  “Want one?” Griff held his open palm out to me.

  “What?”

  “Licorice. Want one?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  He closed up his fist and jammed it into his trouser pocket. “I’m sure glad that’s over!” He sounded suspiciously happy as he spoke the words.

  “Didn’t you like the play?”

  “I liked it fine—and I still can’t believe you actually wrote it—but acting is a lot of work. I’ve never been good at that sort of thing. I’m not like you.”

  “You wouldn’t want to be me.”

  “No.” He smiled agreeably. “Then I wouldn’t be able to play football.”

  Football! There it was again. Why did everything always have to be about football?

  “So, why do it? Acting in all those plays? Is it for the applause?”

  I felt a blush rise on my cheeks, and it didn’t have anything to do with the way Griff was looking at me. Applause wasn’t why I liked acting. I’d act even if no one was watching. In fact, I did it all the time. “I just—I like being other people.” I liked it much more than being myself. Truth be told, I did a better job at being almost anyone other than myself. “I don’t do it for the applause. I do it because I’m good at it. Do you play football for the applause?”

  He slowed his pace and glanced over at me. “Naw. When I’m playing football, I decide what happens. I call the plays. And when I’m out there on the field, nothing else matters. I don’t have to worry about all those things people say about my being governor someday. I don’t have to worry I’ll maybe end up disappointing them. . . .” His gaze dropped from mine. He shrugged. “I can just . . . throw the ball. And I’m really good at throwing the ball.”

  I knew all about disappointing people. I put my hand on his arm.

  He stopped walking and held it up, pressing our palms together, examining them the same way he’d studied a starfish that had stranded itself on the shore at Buzzards Bay back when we’d been little.

  I’m sure he didn’t mean to make my insides melt away, but as I looked at my hand lying there in his, I honestly couldn’t think of any good reason to pull it away. Except for the fact he’d just said something that wasn’t right. I pulled my hand from his and socked him in the arm. “You shouldn’t worry about those people, Griff.”

  “No?”

  “Do you even want to do all those things everyone wants you to?”

  “I don’t know. I guess . . . maybe . . . I don’t know.” He sighed. “They call me Prince, did you know that? Like I’m some kind of royalty or something.”

  “You are.” He was! “You’re something really special, Griffin Phillips.”

  “But I’m not that.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  He sent me a sidelong glance. “Sometimes I think you’re about the only one who does.”

  That blush started creeping up my cheeks again. If I was any kind of decent actress, you’d think I would have figured out how to stop myself from blushing, but I never had.

  “I think we’re the same, you and I. And I just want you to know, all those things I said at the end, as the king, I really meant them.”

  “Oh, Griff . . .” I was supposed to be stopping him from saying things like that, not giving him opportunities. Panic fluttered in my chest. I needed to keep him from saying something he’d regret. Something I’d have to deny. Why couldn’t life be fair? Why couldn’t I be a girl he could be proud of instead of just dumb old Ellis Eton?

  “I mean, I know it was just supposed to be acting and all, but I need to tell you—if it weren’t for you being here, Ellis—”

  I couldn’t let him finish because it wasn’t fair. I wasn’t going to be in Boston very much longer, and if he knew I was leaving, he wouldn’t be saying things like that. So I kissed him on the cheek and made a dash for the dormitory.

  4

  Friday was moving-out day. We were supposed to pack up everything in the morning so we could move it back home for the summer. And we were to do a thorough cleaning besides. Just the thought of it made me tired, so I lay in bed after waking for a few minutes, repeating the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” One of Louise’s aunts had gone to France for psychoanalysis the summer before and came back with that phrase as her cure. It was supposed to work as long as you repeated it each day and really meant it each time you said it. I always repeated it ten times for good measure, and I always put a lot of feeling into it.

  Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.

  I’d been saying it every day for so long you might have thought it would have started working by now, but I didn’t seem to be getting any better. At much of anything.

  When I couldn’t ignore the banging about of trunks anymore, I got up and started packing, though it seemed like it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did. My shoes were at the bottom of my trunk. I’d found my stack of dance cards from the year, and I was trying to figure out what to do with them. I thought I might tie them up with a ribbon, but a search through my drawers hadn’t turned any up. A chain of bobby pins didn’t really do the trick, so I set them aside and picked up my mah-jongg set instead. It was missing three tiles, so I started a search for them—which led me back to the drawer my dance cards had been sitting in, where I found the most darling rhinestone hair bandeau I hadn’t even remembered I owned. Which was a real shame since I could have used it for a play back in January—I’d had the starring role as a princess, and it would have made a much better garland for my hair than the ratty old ribbon I’d been given to wear. I was trying to remember how I’d come by it when one of the freshmen knocked at the door and poked her head around the doorframe.

  “Your sister’s here to see you.”

  “Julia?”

  She shrugged.

  What was Julia doing here? It was an awfully long way from Brookline early on a Friday morning, and she wasn’t one for visiting. After she’d come back from Europe, she mainly just stayed at home. What if—? Fear gripped my heart. The only reason she’d be here at school was if something bad had happened!

  I dropped the bandeau and sprinted out the door, straight into—“Janie? Where’s Julia?”

  She tottered, reaching out toward me, and then toppled to the floor. “Julia . . . your sister?”

  “Someone said she was here.”

  Janie shrugged, and that’s when I remembered she looked like me. That is, I looked like her. Or . . . we looked like each other. She was our cook’s daughter, and when we were little, people were always mistaking Janie for me. Once, we traded places for a whole day. Nobody missed me, but I got Janie in trouble with all the staff, dirtying up
the house behind them and terrorizing the horses in the stable. Not that I meant to do any of that. But for a month afterward, boy, did I hear about it! “Why can’t you just be good, Ellis, like you were that one day?” That was the last time I ever traded anything with Janie and the last time anyone ever accused me of being good at anything.

  She was staring up at me from the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” I gave her a hand up. We were both blondes with brown eyebrows, although hers were very nearly black. We shared the same wavy hair, although hers always seemed to stay exactly in place while mine did whatever it pleased, which generally meant it formed a sort of fuzzy halo around my head. We were about the same height: short. If someone took all the oomph out of me, Janie is exactly what they would get. And as I peered at her, I realized she looked rather more pale than normal and . . . had she been crying? “Is everything all right?”

  “No . . . it’s—”

  “Wait. Wait just a second. Let me get you a handkerchief.” I had some. I knew I had some somewhere. The trick of it was to remember exactly where I’d put them. I rummaged through my trunk for a few moments before I realized I hadn’t put them anywhere at all. They were right where they’d been all year: in one of my hatboxes. I found one and handed it to her, then sat her down on my bed. “Oops. Wait.” I took her hand and yanked her up to standing and pulled my coverlet up over the pillow. “There.”

  She sat and put the handkerchief to the corner of an eye.

  “Now, what is it? Can you tell me?”

  “It’s my mother. Hadn’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  She wrapped her arms about herself as if she were cold. “She died.”

  “She’s dead?” Mrs. Winslow couldn’t be dead. I would have known if she were dead. Someone would have told me. “She can’t be dead. I know she can’t be dead.”