The Vanishing Half: A Novel (23 page)

By December,
The
Midnight Marauders
poster outside the Stardust Theater had already been tacked over with an advertisement for
West Side Story
. Jude must have looked so glum that the man changing the marquee glanced down his ladder and said, “Sometimes they bring ’em back for a second run.” But she wasn’t thinking about the show—she was only thinking about Stella, who still had not appeared. Now the play was over and what did she even have to show for it? A few old stories about a woman she would never know.

On the night of the final performance, she stepped into the empty theater to sweep the floors and found Kennedy standing alone on the dim stage. She was never early, so Jude asked if something was wrong. Kennedy laughed.

“I always come early to the last show,” she said. “It’s the one people will remember you by, you know. You’re only as good as your last performance.”

She was wearing ripped jeans and a big floppy purple hat that hid half her face. She always dressed like that, like a child ripping clothes out of a costume chest.

“Why don’t you come on up?” Kennedy said.

Jude laughed, glancing around the empty theater. “What’re you talking about?” she said. “I’m working.”

“So? No one’s here. Just come up for a second, just for fun. I bet you’ve never even been on a stage like this before.”

She hadn’t, although she’d thought about trying out for the school play every year. Her mother had starred in
Romeo and Juliet
—learned all that funny English, had to let Ike Goudeau kiss her in front of the whole school. But what a time she’d had, taking her final bow to thunderous applause. Her mother would have been thrilled to see Jude star in anything. And she’d almost found the nerve to audition, not because she wanted the role but because acting was something her mother once loved. She wanted to prove to herself that they were alike. But she’d barely stepped into the theater for tryouts before she imagined the whole town laughing at her, and she slipped out the wing before the drama teacher called her name.

She propped her broom against the front-row seats.

“I almost tried out for a play once,” she told Kennedy, climbing the steps. “But I chickened out.”

“Well, maybe that’s your problem,” Kennedy said. “You tell yourself no before anyone even says it to you.”

The theater did look different from the stage—the house lights dimmed, so you couldn’t see the faces of all the people watching you. How strange that must be, to not know what the people looking at you were thinking.

“I used to have these terrible nightmares,” Kennedy said. “When I was little. I mean, awful ones.”

“About what?”

“That’s the thing, I could never remember. But when I started acting, they stopped. It was the strangest thing. Like there was something bad inside me trying to get out and I could only get rid of it here.” She tapped the stage floor. “But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? The doctors said that creative people have the most vivid dreams. I don’t know why. Maybe you’ll figure it out when you’re a doctor.”

She didn’t want to be a psychologist, but she was grateful for Kennedy’s confidence. When you’re a doctor. It sounded so easy when she said it.

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe.”

She followed her down off the stage. She could hear the rest of the company arriving, giddy as they raced around backstage, dressing for the final time. She would sweep the theater floor, then take her place in the dark one last time. And after the final curtain, for the first time since she’d realized who Kennedy Sanders was, she had no idea when she might see her again.

“You should come to the cast party,” Kennedy said. “Bring your boyfriend. I bet the theater’ll pay him to take some pictures.”

The suggestion was surprisingly thoughtful; she’d told Kennedy once that Reese was a photographer but she never expected her to remember.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll give him a call.”

Kennedy started toward backstage, then paused. “I don’t know what happens after this.”

“What do you mean?”

Maybe, to an actor, the dark wing of a theater felt as intimate as church; either way, Kennedy began to confess. She didn’t know what she would do tomorrow—no, literally, what she would do when she woke up in the morning, because this play was the only thing that had given her any sense of purpose in months. It was the only thing she was good at, acting. She’d left school because she was shit at it, she was shit at everything else. And maybe her mother was right—maybe she had made a big mistake. Maybe acting was a waste of time. Maybe her parents argued so much because they were splitting up. Maybe her mother would rather grade math assignments than talk to her. Maybe all those things were true. And maybe she had only landed her biggest role yet because the boy she was sleeping with told
her one night, while they were stoned, that his big brother had written a hilariously bad play that some company was putting on downtown. And even though it was bad, she’d wept when she read the script. A lonely girl living in a world surrounded only by ghosts. Nothing reminded her of her own life more.

Maybe the director, Doug, sensed this, or maybe he just liked looking at her tits, or maybe the boy told his brother to pull some strings, to do whatever he had to do to make sure that her name was at the top of the call sheet. Either way, she won the starring role.

“But I could never tell my mother any of this,” she said. “She’d just say that she was right. She cares more about being right than being my mother. Sometimes I don’t even think she likes me very much. Isn’t that something? To think your own mother can’t even stand you.”

She was smiling but her violet eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Jude said.

“Well, you don’t know her, do you?” Kennedy said.

T
HA
T NIGHT
, for the final time, she witnessed Kennedy Sanders transform under the spotlight.

Kennedy strutting out for the opening number in the town square, singing her contemplative solo in the cemetery, high-kicking on the bar during the act-closing dance with a chorus of drunk ghosts. Onstage, you couldn’t tell the girl had just been crying. She became new each time she stepped under the lights. After the first act ended, applause ringing in the theater, Jude waded through the crowd to the concession stand. She was shoveling lukewarm popcorn into a paper bag when she saw, finally, Stella.

Her mother, but not. That’s the only way she could think of her. Like her mother’s face transplanted onto another woman’s body. Stella wore a long green dress, her hair pulled into a low bun. Diamond
earrings, black pumps. She was fiddling with a leather pocketbook as she glided through the lobby, rolling her neck a little before she smiled at a tall man holding open the door. For a second, in that smile, she was Mama. Then the mask slid back on, another woman taking over.

There was no time to think. Jude abandoned the popcorn station and followed, pushing through the crowded lobby to the door. Outside, she found Stella standing under the eaves, fumbling for a cigarette. She glanced over, startled by the sudden intrusion, and Jude froze. Her first stupid thought was that Stella might recognize her. She’d see something familiar in her face—her eyes, or her mouth even—and then she would gape, her pocketbook falling open on the sidewalk. But Stella’s eyes glazed over and she stared moodily into the street. Jude alone with the pounding heart.

“Hi,” Jude said. “I’m friends with your daughter.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Stella paused, then lit her cigarette.

“From school?” she said. Her voice was smoother, softer.

“No, from the play.”

“Oh. Lovely,” Stella said.

It was a word her mother would have never used.
Lovely.
Stella gave a little smile, then she took a drag, glancing up at the eave.

“Did you want a cigarette?” she asked.

Jude almost said yes. At least then she’d have a reason to be standing there.

“No,” she said. “I don’t smoke.”

“Good girl,” Stella said. “They say it’s awful for your health.”

“I know. My mother’s trying to quit.”

Stella glanced at her. “It’s terribly difficult to quit,” she said. “All the best things are.”

Intermission was nearly over; soon Stella would head back inside, disappearing into the darkness of the theater. When the play ended,
she would join the crowd surging out onto the street. She would go home, and maybe later that night, in a quiet moment, she would think about that dark girl who’d interrupted her smoke break, and then she’d never remember the moment again.

“Kennedy said you’re from Louisiana,” Jude finally said. “I am too. I’m from Mallard.”

Stella glanced at her, an eyebrow slightly arched. Nothing in her body changed, nothing suggested that she’d even heard except for that tiny lift of her eyebrow.

“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know it.”

“My mama—” Jude took a breath. “My mama’s name is Desiree Vignes.”

Now Stella turned toward her.

“Who the hell are you?” she said quietly.

“I told you, my mama—”

“Who are you? What’re you doing here? I don’t understand.”

She was partly smiling but she held the cigarette away from her body, warning Jude not to come closer. She was angry—Jude hadn’t expected that. Stella would be confused. Startled, even. But maybe once the surprise wore off, she’d thought, Stella might be glad to meet her. She might even marvel at all the works of chance that had drawn them together. Instead, Stella shook her head, as if trying to wake herself from a nightmare.

“I wanted to meet you,” Jude said.

“No no no, I don’t understand. Who are you really? You look nothing like her.”

Through the window, the lobby lights flickered. She was supposed to be guiding people back to their seats. Her supervisor was probably going crazy, looking for her. And what would he find if he stepped outside right now—a black girl pleading for a white woman to recognize her.

“She told me how you used to hide in the bathroom,” Jude said. “At that laundry place in New Orleans. She said you almost cut your hand off.” She was rambling now, willing to say anything to keep Stella from leaving. Stella took a shaky drag, then stomped out her cigarette on the sidewalk.

“She would never go back to Mallard,” she said.

“Well, we had to. To get away from my daddy. He kept beating on her.”

“Beating on her?” Stella paused, softening. “I mean, is she still—is my mama still—”

“They’re still down there. My mama works at the diner.”

“Lou’s? My God. I haven’t thought about Lou’s in—” Stella stopped. “Well, it must’ve been awful for you.”

Jude glanced away. She hated the thought of Stella pitying her.

“My mama kept looking for you,” she said.

Stella’s mouth curved, like she was going to smile or cry, her face, somehow, caught in between. Like a sun shower. The devil beating his wife, her mother used to say, and Jude imagined it every time she heard her father rage. The devil could love the woman he beat; the sun could burst through a rainstorm. Nothing was as simple as you wanted it to be. Without thinking, she reached toward her aunt but Stella jutted her arm out. Her eyes were shining.

“She shouldn’t have,” Stella said. “She should’ve forgotten all about me.”

“But she didn’t! You can call her. We can call her right now. She would be so glad—”

“I’ve got to go,” Stella said.

“But—”

“It’s too much,” she said. “I can’t go back through that door. It’s another life, you understand?”

Headlights washed over them, and for a second, bathed in yellow
light, Stella looked panicked, as if she might run into the car’s path. Then she clutched her purse tightly and disappeared into the night.

A
T THE CAST PARTY
, all of the actors and musicians gathered around to watch their show lead get hammered and complain, to anyone who might listen, that her mother hadn’t shown. “Can you believe it?” she kept saying. “Closing night and all she gave me is that she would try. Not too hard, apparently!” No one had ever seen her in such a nasty mood. She’d barely lingered onstage past the curtain call, ignored the cast members who tried to congratulate her, dumped the roses the director had given her into the trash. She hadn’t even offered to sign
Playbill
s at the stage door. Now she was spending the first half hour of the cast party pounding tequila alone at the bar.

“My first big show,” she told Jude. “All she had to do was sit through it. And she couldn’t even do that.”

Across the bar, Reese was roving, snapping candid photos of the cast. She should have been happy for him, behind the camera again, but instead, she was standing at the bar beside a surly drunk girl, still shaken. She’d met Stella but Stella didn’t want to know her. It shouldn’t have been surprising. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with the family for decades, so nothing had changed. But why did Jude feel as if she’d lost someone? Again, she saw herself reaching toward Stella, Stella pushing her away. She felt as if she’d reached for her mother and only felt her shove her back.

“I have to go,” she said. She felt too hot in that crowded party, desperate for air.

“What’re you talking about?” Kennedy said. “The party just started.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”

“Come on,” she said. “Just have a drink with me. Please.”

She sounded so vulnerable, Jude nearly said yes. Almost. But she imagined Stella disappearing into the night, glancing over her shoulder, panicked, as if she were being hunted, and she shook her head.

“I really can’t,” she said. “My boyfriend’s ready to go.”

Across the room, Reese was packing up his camera and chatting with Barry. Kennedy glanced over, watching the two for a second.

“You’re really lucky, you know,” she said. She was still smiling but meanness wedged inside her voice.

“What do you mean?” Jude said.

“Nothing. But you know. Nobody really expects someone like him to be with you, do they?” Kennedy laughed. “You know I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just saying. Your men usually like the light girls, don’t they?”