by Brit Bennett
“Now why you askin about all that?” her mother said.
“I don’t know, I’m just wondering. Can’t I wonder?”
“No use in wonderin,” her mother said. “I stopped wonderin long ago. I don’t think she’s even here anymore.”
“Living?” Jude said. “But what if she is? I mean, what if she’s just out there somewhere?”
“I would feel her,” her mother said quietly, and Jude began to think of Stella as a current running under her mother’s skin. Under her own skin, dormant until that party when she’d locked eyes with Stella across the room. Then a leap, a spark, her arm jolting from her side. Now she was trying to forget that charge. She thought, once or twice, about telling her mother about the woman at the party, but what good would that do? It was Stella, it wasn’t, she was dead, she was alive, she was in Omaha, Lawrence, Honolulu. When Jude stepped outside, she imagined bumping into her. Stella pausing on the sidewalk, admiring a purse through a shop window. Stella on the bus, hanging on to the vinyl strap—no, Stella in a smooth black limousine, hiding behind the tinted glass. Stella everywhere, always, and nowhere at the same time.
* * *
—
IN NOVEMBER 1982, a musical comedy called The Midnight Marauders opened in a nearly abandoned theater in downtown Los Angeles. The playwright, a thirty-year-old still living at home in Encino, was determined to make it in a city where, he claimed to friends, no one valued theater. He’d written The Midnight Marauders as a joke, and of course, the joke always being on him, it was his only success. The play ran at the Stardust Theater for four weekends, was nominated for a local award, and earned tepid praise in the Herald-Examiner. But Jude would have never heard about it if Barry hadn’t landed a spot in the chorus line. For weeks leading up to the audition, he was a nervous wreck, bouncing on his heels as he practiced “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” He had never sung in front of anyone before dressed only as himself.
“I felt naked out there,” he told her after the audition. “I was sweatin like a hog on Easter Sunday.”
She was happy for him when he earned his spot in the company. He sent her tickets for opening night, but she told Reese that she had to work.
“Ask for the night off,” he said. “We gotta support him. And we never go out anymore. We should have a little fun.”
The previous month, his car engine had died and he’d emptied his savings to fix it. All those crumpled bills in his sock drawer, gone. He’d started working the door at Mirage to make extra cash on the weekends. The muscle, technically, although he was mostly just a handsome face greeting the customers. So far, he’d only broken up one drunk fight and earned a cut on that handsome face as gratitude. In the bathroom, he’d winced as Jude dabbed the cut with alcohol, missing those weekends they used to spend chasing sunlight across the marina in search of the perfect shot. Reese biting his lip as the shutter clicked. Now on Friday and Saturday nights, he left in a black T-shirt and black jeans and came home at dawn, his hands flecked with glitter from helping the go-go dancers onto the stage. Then off to the Kodak store, or helping Mr. Song. Some days, she barely saw him at all, only feeling him drop into bed beside her.
She couldn’t afford to miss a night of work in order to sit in a damp theater, enduring three hours of amateur acting in hopes of catching a glimpse of Barry in the chorus line. Still, she agreed, running her fingers through Reese’s hair. They needed a night out, one night where she didn’t think about spring decisions, where he didn’t obsess over money, where they wouldn’t worry about anything at all.
On opening night, she slipped into a purple dress and glided panty hose up her legs as Reese, tying his tie, smiled at her through the mirror. They were overdressed because they never had anywhere nice to go; tonight was an excuse to pretend otherwise. They could pretend to be anything: a young couple on a first date, newlyweds sneaking away from the children, a pair of sophisticated theatergoers who never worried about money, never clipped coupons, never counted change.
“Fancy, fancy,” Luis teased, when they all met up in the lobby with a dozen of the other boys she used to see scrambling around backstage in bustiers. Soon they were all laughing, clambering into the mildewed theater, everyone giddy as the lights dipped.
“This better be good,” Reese stage-whispered, but he was so good natured about it, she could tell he didn’t care. He kissed her as the orchestra began to play a jaunty overture. The curtains parted, and she leaned forward, straining to see Barry. He was high kicking with the other dancers, wearing a fringed leather vest and cowboy hat. She giggled, watching him twirl a redhead. Then the dancers receded and the show lead appeared center stage, a blonde girl in a long, hooped dress. Her singing voice was pretty if plain; still, she was charming enough, delivering her lines with a wryness so familiar that, in the darkness, Jude reached for her Playbill. And there she was, the blonde girl with the violet eyes.
* * *
—
AFTER THE CURTAIN FELL, after a beaming Barry took his bow, after the audience slowly trampled across the fading red carpet into the lobby, dissecting plot holes and glaring miscues, Jude circled with her friends outside the stage door. The group was chatty, debating drink plans while they waited for Barry to emerge so that they could embarrass him with thunderous applause. But she hugged herself, shifting from foot to foot, staring down the alley, expecting, at any moment, her mother’s ghost to appear.
She’d slipped out of the theater during intermission, certain that in the darkness, she had mistaken the girl in the Playbill for the girl at the Beverly Hills party. But there she was, in full light. Born in Brentwood, Kennedy Sanders studied at USC but left early to pursue a career in acting. She recently played Cordelia (King Lear), Jenny (Death of a Salesman) and Laura (The Glass Menagerie). This is her first appearance at the Stardust Theater, though hopefully not her last. In her headshot, the girl smiled, her wavy blonde hair falling angelically to her shoulders. She looked innocent here, nothing like the sassy girl who’d demanded a martini from her at a party, and she might have believed that this was a different white girl altogether if not for those eyes. She could never forget them.
If that girl was in the show, did that mean that the woman in the fur coat was here too? What if it was Stella? What if it wasn’t? She’d wandered around the lobby until the house lights flickered but she never saw a woman who looked like her mother. Now she felt even crazier than before.
“You all right, baby?” Reese asked.
She nodded, trying to smile.
“I’m just cold,” she said. He wrapped his arms around her, warming her up. Then the stage door opened, but instead of Barry wandering out, Kennedy Sanders stepped into the alley, fumbling with a pack of Marlboros. She looked startled to see the crowd waiting, and for a second, she smiled expectantly before realizing that no one was there to see her. Then her eyes flickered to Jude. She smirked.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
She remembered her, three years later. Of course she did. Who would forget a dark girl who’d spilled wine all over an expensive rug?
“My friend’s in this show,” Jude said.
Kennedy shrugged, shaking a cigarette into her palm. She was wearing a tattered Sex Pistols T-shirt that stopped above her navel, jean shorts over ripped fishnet tights, and black leather boots—she looked nothing like the Beverly Hills princess from that party. She started walking down the alley, and Jude scrambled after her.
“Barry,” she said. “He’s in the chorus?”
“Is that your boyfriend?” Kennedy asked.
“Barry?”
“No, silly. Him.” She jerked her head back toward the group. “The one with the curly hair. He’s a doll. Where’d you find him?”
“At school,” she said. “Well, really at this party—”
“You have a light?” Kennedy slid a cigarette into her mouth. When Jude shook her
head, she said, “Just as well. Bad for the singing voice, you know.”
“I thought you were amazing tonight,” Jude said. She didn’t really, but she would have to flatter this girl to get anything out of her. “Your folks must be proud.”
Kennedy scoffed. “Please. They hate that I’m doing this.”
“Why?”
“Because they sent me to school to do something practical, you know. Not drop out and throw my life away. At least that’s what my mother says. Hey, do you have a light?” She flagged down a shaggy-haired white man smoking on the corner. “Well, so long!”
She hurried over to the man on the corner, who smiled as he leaned in to light her cigarette. A flicker in the darkness, then she was gone.
* * *
—
BARRY SAID THAT Kennedy Sanders was a rich bitch.
“You know the type,” he told Jude. “A couple of solos in the high school choir and now she thinks she’s Barbra Streisand.” He was putting on his face in the backstage of Mirage for the Sunday brunch show, the only time slot available now that The Midnight Marauders had taken over his evenings. He hated the early call time and the thinner crowds but he loved being Bianca too much to wait three weeks until the play closed. He gestured behind him and Jude yanked the hairbrush jutting out of his gym bag.
“So what do her parents do?” she asked.
“Who knows?”
“They haven’t been by the theater?”
“Hell, no,” Barry said. “You think they’d come around that dump? No ma’am, she comes from real money. Some hoity-toity folks, big house in the hills, all that. Why you asking about her anyway?”
“No reason,” she said.
But that afternoon, she rode the bus downtown to the Stardust Theater. The Sunday matinee was starting in a half hour; the teenage usher wouldn’t let her inside without a ticket, so she paced on the sidewalk under the green eaves. She already felt foolish riding down in the first place. What would she even say to Kennedy? She tried to think of what Early might do. The key to hunting, he’d told her, is pretending to be someone else. But she’d never been able to be anyone but herself, so when the usher shooed her away, she slunk off to the sidewalk. Of course right then she bumped into Kennedy hustling toward the entrance. She wore jean shorts so short, the pocket flaps were showing, and a pair of worn cowboy boots.
“Sorry,” they both said, then Kennedy laughed.
“Well, goddamn,” she said. “You following me or something?”
“No, no,” Jude said quickly. “I’m looking for my friend but they won’t let me inside. I don’t have a ticket.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Like Fort Knox in here,” she said. Then she told the usher, “She’s with me,” and like that, Jude was fumbling after her through the lobby, past backstage, and into her dressing room. The room was barely bigger than a closet, the yellow paint chipping off the walls.
Under the dim mirror lights, Kennedy plopped into the worn leather chair.
“Donna wanted to skin you alive,” she said.
“What?” Jude said.
“After you ruined her rug. God, you should’ve seen her, running around like you’d slaughtered her firstborn. My rug! My rug! It was a riot. Well, not for you, probably.” She spun in her chair, eyeing herself in the mirror. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Jude.”
“Like the song?”
“Like the Bible.”
“I like it,” Kennedy said. “Hey Jude, not to be a bitch or anything, but I’ve gotta change.”
“Oh,” Jude said. “I’m sorry.”
She started to back out the door but Kennedy said, “Don’t go. You can help me. I can never get into this thing on my own.” She was tugging the big hooped dress from the opening number out of the closet. Jude smoothed the wrinkles out of the orange fabric as Kennedy yanked her T-shirt over her head. She was slender and tan, wearing a matching pink bra and panty set. Jude tried not to watch, staring instead at the cluttered countertop covered in palettes of makeup, a curling iron, gold earrings, a crumpled candy wrapper.
“So where you from, Hey Jude?” Kennedy said. “Bring that over, will you? Jesus, I hate this thing. It always makes me sneeze.” She lifted her arms and Jude stared into the smoothness of her armpits as she helped lift the dress over her head. True to her word, Kennedy let out one dainty sneeze before slipping her arms into the sleeves.
“Louisiana,” Jude said.
“No kidding. So’s my mother. I’m from here. Well, I don’t know if you can say you’re from a place if you’ve never left. Can you? I don’t know how anything works. Zip me?”
She spoke so quickly, Jude felt dizzy following along.
“Which part?” she asked.
“Hey, can you hurry? Curtain’s in twenty and I haven’t done my makeup yet.” She pulled her blonde hair off her shoulder. Jude stepped behind her, tugging the zipper.
“What’s your mother’s last name?” she said. “Maybe I know her people.”
Kennedy laughed. “I doubt that.”
What was she doing? She’d seen a woman who may have looked like her mother and now she’d ended up stalking a white girl and helping her into a ridiculous costume? What did she care, anyway? She’d never even met Stella. Kennedy leaned into the mirror, powdering her face. For the first time, she was quiet and focused, like Barry right before a performance. “I have to get into my zone,” he always said, shooing Jude before his curtain call. Sometimes she lingered in the doorway and watched as a veil seemed to drop before his face. One moment he was Barry, the next, Bianca. She could see a similar moment passing through Kennedy right now. It felt more intimate to witness than seeing the girl in her underwear. She turned to leave.
“You don’t know anyone named Vignes, do you?” Kennedy called after her. “That’s my mother’s name. Or was her name.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Estelle Vignes. But everyone calls her Stella.”
Eleven
Statistically speaking, the likelihood of encountering a niece you’d never met at a Beverly Hills retirement party was improbable but not impossible. Which Stella Sanders might have, at least intellectually, understood. Improbable events happened all the time, she tried to explain to her students, because improbability is an illusion based on our preconceptions. Often it has nothing to do with statistical truth. After all, it’s wildly improbable that any one person is alive. A particular sperm cell fertilizing a particular egg, producing a viable fetus. Twins are more likely to be stillborn, identical twins more vulnerable than fraternal twins, yet here she was, teaching Introduction to Statistics at Santa Monica College. Likely does not mean certain. Improbable does not mean impossible.
She’d discovered statistics unexpectedly in her second year at Loyola Marymount University. She didn’t call herself a sophomore then; she was ten years older than everyone else in the class, so the title felt silly. She didn’t even know what she wanted to study, only that she liked numbers. Statistics entranced her because so many people misunderstood it. In Las Vegas, she’d sat beside Blake in a smoke-filled casino as he lost four hundred dollars at the craps table, staying in the game longer than he should have because he was convinced that he was due. But dice owed you nothing.
“It doesn’t matter what’s already rolled,” she finally told him, exasperated. “Each number is equally likely if the dice are fair. Which they’re not.”
“She takes one class,” Blake told the man sitting next to them.
The man laughed, puffing at his cigar. “I always stay on,” he said. “Rather lose than know I would’ve won if I hadn’t played it safe.”
“Well said.” Blake and the man clinked their glasses. Statistical truth, like any other truth, was difficult to swallow.
For most people, the heart decided, not the mind. Stella was like everyone else in this regard. Hadn’t her decisio
n to follow Blake from New Orleans been an emotional one? Or her choice to stay with him over the years? Or her agreement to, say, attend Bert Hardison’s retirement party, even cajoling her daughter to appear, because, Blake claimed, they needed to show a united front? One big happy family—it mattered to the rest of the partners. Blake was a marketing man who understood the value of his own brand, Stella and Kennedy merely an extension of it. So she’d agreed to go to that party. In spite of everything, she’d whisked around the living room, playing the dutiful wife even as Bert Hardison, smelling like brandy, crowded near her all night, his hand on her waist (as if she wouldn’t notice!). But Blake, of course, didn’t see, huddling in the corner with Rob Garrett and Yancy Smith, while Stella tried to make small talk with Donna Hardison, keeping an eye on her daughter, who kept inching near the bar, and avoiding the red stain on the white rug that a lanky black man was feebly blotting with soda water.
There’d been a disturbance earlier, a black girl spilling wine on the rug, which had, for a few moments, stolen the attention of everyone at the party. Stella had just arrived, so she’d only seen the aftermath. A charcoal girl frantically mopping an expensive merlot out of the even more expensive rug before Donna shrieked that she was only making it worse. Even after the girl was dismissed, the party continued to discuss her.
“I just can’t believe it,” Donna told Stella. “What’s the point of hiring waiters if they can’t hold on to a damn bottle of wine?”
The topic bored Stella, to tell the truth. The type of minor skirmish that people fixated on during a party where there was nothing more interesting to discuss. Unlike the math department mixers, where conversations leapt from one topic to another—inscrutable, pretentious, but never boring. She always felt lucky to be in the presence of such brilliant people. Thinkers. Blake’s colleagues viewed intelligence as a means to an end, and the end was always making more money. But in the mathematics department at Santa Monica College, no one expected to be rich. It was enough to know. She was lucky to spend her days like this, knowing.