2

The theater on Commerce Street

Intermission, halfway through our penultimate show of Twelfth Night. I’d done well as Viola, Viola-as-Cesario, parading around in my trousers and skirts and kissing both Wesley and Lisette to bawdy hoots and cheers from the audience. At least they were having fun with it. It was fun. It was all just fun.

I could hardly concentrate on anything fully since Wesley told me about Macbeth. I couldn’t quit thinking about it. I’d scratched my arms raw in the wings without even realizing it between my scenes tonight in the first half.

Halfway through smearing a fresh layer of Covermark over the insides of my wrists, mind stuck on Lady Macbeth’s motivations instead of Viola’s, the door to my dressing room swung open. I jammed my hands under the vanity table and looked up through the mirror to find Wesley shutting it again behind him.

“I should have knocked,” he announced. He looked scattered.

I frowned. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head, twitchy with preoccupation. I indicated the sofa with a nod. As he sat, I turned slightly away from him with one shoulder and set back to my arms. I was to have them bare with my final costume.

“Is Ezra wringing you out, too?” I asked without looking up. “I think his latest, that flautist, is spending all his nerves before he gets to us. I give it another week before they’re done.”

I glanced up and found Wesley watching me distantly, as though only halfway conscious of the world moving around him. He didn’t blink for a long time.

“Wesley.”

“Does that hurt? What happened?”

He was peering at my arms, the half-covered scoring standing out red against my skin. My cheeks heated with shame. I scoured the sponge in the makeup pan and painted another heavy smear over my left wrist. “Nothing. I’m allergic to the lace.”

Wesley made a sympathetic sound at the back of his throat, then crammed his thumbnail into his mouth and set to chewing. He’d been late to call today. I hadn’t had a chance to see him offstage.

I let him stew in the privacy of silence until he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He gave a great groan, and I set down the makeup sponge with a clatter.

“What, Wesley.”

“I’m sorry,” he said through his fingers. His voice was wet and miserable. My chest clenched to find the pitch of it only steps away from tearfulness.

I put the sponge aside and took to the sofa beside him. “Tell me.”

“It’s stupid,” he moaned, and then tossed his head. “It’s not stupid, it’s terrible, but it’s— God, do you ever wish you could un-fuck somebody?”

I couldn’t help the laugh that scraped itself out of my mouth even as I raised a hand to hold it in. Wesley turned to look at me with his temple propped on his fist, curled up as though shielding his soft parts. “Yes,” I said as evenly as possible, “I think we all do.”

Wesley shook his head and raked his hair back from his forehead with both hands. Traces of his face powder were stuck to the roots, shimmering pale against the glossy black. “I really fucked up, Jack. I feel like such an idiot.”

So, it was a breakup then. He had a tender spirit. I patted his knee. “Oh, stop. Someone’s heartsick over you, what’s new? Half the Upper East Side—”

Wesley stopped me with a hand collecting mine, pulling it into his lap. I looked down at the join of our fingers in silence as he squeezed with quiet ferocity.

“It’s no one new,” he said very softly. His voice was shaking. “It’s…Andrew. He. Well, I told you he kept me comfortable, close at hand, and I—I thought that was it, I really did, I mean, God, Margaret, the people he knew…”

I let Wesley find himself in the silence of recollection. He stared into the middle distance of the threadbare rug and wrapped his other hand around mine, clinging—I followed suit and held his in return. “Is he in town? What did he do, Wes?”

Wesley gave a warble of stiff laughter. “Do?” Wesley opened a hand at the shabby hovel of the dressing room and hacked another bitter chuckle. He looked more unglued than I’d ever imagined he could be. His chin wobbled. “He backed me into a fucking corner, let me think I was safe with what little he let me keep, that’s what he did, and now I’m going to lose it all!”

“Wesley.” I shifted to face him and took his face in my hands. I turned him to look at me and angled for his eyes until they actually met mine. “Take a breath, slowly: What. Happened.”

Wesley set his jaw and took my hands down from his face. “The Committee is investigating me.”

My stomach dropped. “Fuck, HUAC?”

“Exactly,” he spat, looking away to pinch at the inner corners of his eyes.

“How do you know it’s them? What do they think you’ve done?”

“I got a call last month, felt fishy but I didn’t make anything of it. Then Mrs. Beebe across the hall said two men let themselves into my apartment the other day, and—and if they find anything…” His mouth twisted up with miserable fury. He tossed his head. “I can’t be put on a list, Margot. I can’t.”

“You won’t be. They can’t do that, they—”

“Can’t they? They arrested Frank from the club on Ninth two weeks ago on suspicion. Not a lick of evidence.” Wesley stared hard at me, begging me to refute it. When I couldn’t, he groaned again and dragged a nervy hand down his mouth.

“Well, what could they have on you?” I tried.

“…I may have gone to a Party meeting or two after Andrew and I were done.”

I didn’t want to chide him, but my mouth still drew into a firm line. “Wesley.”

“I know! I was upset, it was a—a stupid fucking rebellion!” He threw a flat hand at the wall as though convincing it of his cause. “But even if I hadn’t, they could muster up anything they want. I have an Equity card; I’m already two steps from—from Bolshevism in their eyes, and if they’ve been watching me, they know the sort of company I keep. I’m done for, Jack. Done.”

I watched him rage at himself and wished I could do anything to help. “He was well-connected then,” I said gently. Wesley snorted.

“Understatement.”

I took his hand again and pulled up close to press our sides together from shoulder to ankle. “I’m sure it will be alright. Lay low. Don’t give them any reason to sniff after you, and they’ll forget about it. You’ll see.”

Wesley shook his head. He seemed to surrender to a very deep and bothersome truth before heaving a sigh and sliding down onto one knee in the space between mine. He brought my hands to his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut, summoning strength.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, speaking directly into my knuckles, “but it’s the only sure way. Could you…Jesus. Would—would you marry me?”

Oh, no.

No. I couldn’t let him do that. It was unfathomable cruelty. To invite him to sew himself to me would be like tossing a kitten into the deep end of a lake.

I had to tell him. He had to know what he was signing up for.

“Wesley,” I blurted—but couldn’t bring myself to say anything more. What was the truth, really? That I was afraid of myself? That being alone without the noise of other people’s poetry as company made my heart race and my gut clench, panicking over nothing but the silence?

My mouth hung open around a blank syllable. He watched me without blinking, expectant and fevered. What was it, really, that was so wrong with me? I couldn’t put it into words. I only knew that it felt wrong to be in my own body sometimes. Was it a disease? Communicable? Would I doom him just as surely as a blacklist would?

“Please.” He gave a damp, desperate chuckle. “I…please. I know I’m asking for too much, but…”

A long silence stretched between us. In the hallway, bright laughter passed the door shut tight.

“You’re—you really are one of my favorite people in this city, and you wear a pair of trousers better than most of the men I’ve known. It would hardly be a—a chore for me,” Wesley tried at teasing, but his eyes were full of misery and his voice broke. A sharp surging inside me rattled—Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty.

I could protect him.

A sense of purpose flooded through me with a shape I’d only known from the middle of a scene. I blinked at him. Protect him. I had never had that role before: protector. I had always been treated as a commodity, fit more for being broken than the careful work of breaking.

I leaned down and ever so gently kissed him on the mouth. “Alright,” I whispered against his painted, chapped lips. “Of course I will.”

He leaned up across my lap and hugged me tightly around the middle. I held him in return, pressing his head to my heart. Protect him.

I could do that.

I would.

When Wesley sat back on his heels, dabbing at the edges of his eyes to keep the stage makeup from slipping, I saw the pallor had retreated somewhat from his gaze. “Thank you,” he rasped. His mouth wobbled into a vigorous smile. “I can’t…You’re a doll. Thank you, Jack.”

The call for five rose through the whalebone halls of backstage. I patted Wesley heartily on the shoulder and nodded at the makeup on my vanity on my way out the door. “Get yourself tidied. You can use my kit.”

I found Ezra scowling at the set from stage right, vulturing by the stage manager’s desk. I snatched the cigar from his mouth and sucked in a punishing, stinking mouthful. He glared at me.

“I heard you’re doing the Scottish play,” I said. Ezra’s glare compounded. He plucked the cheroot back and shook his head.

“This is exactly why I was waiting to say anything until after we closed,” he hissed, leaning in with his voice low. “I knew you were off these last few days, who was it? Who told you?”

His gaze quickened past my shoulder, and I glanced over to see Wesley leaving my dressing room with a fresher face to set himself on the other side of the wings. Ezra grunted and meditated on a slow pull of purple smoke.

“You two are worse than a mated pair of turtledoves,” he sneered, his nostrils pluming.

“Who do you have in mind?”

Peering sidelong at me, Ezra was silent.

“For the Lady,” I insisted. It was hard to keep the fight in me under Ezra’s singular scrutiny, but I managed not to let my voice go small.

“Not Banquo?” He fixed me with a tart look. “Malcolm? Duncan, perhaps?”

I grabbed the cigar from between his fingers and stubbed it out on the exposed brick wall beside the stage manager’s desk—Richard was across the stage, unable to squawk about keeping the ashes away from his precious production book.

“I know you already have it cast,” I said. “I need to know one way or another, Ezra, I—”

“Oh, come off it, Margaret, it’s you. Of course it’s you.”

I stared at him as the air rushed out of my lungs.

Ezra gestured at the side of the stage where Wesley had gone to take his place ahead of curtain. “Turtledoves you may be, but I’d be a fool not to recognize whatever…mess there is between you as certified fucking gold onstage.”

I couldn’t speak. A white fuzz buzzed and bloomed between my ears.

It was me. She was me. I was her. I was finally going to do it.

Ezra looked at me flatly for several long moments. He raised one bushy eyebrow. “Anything else?”

“We’re getting married,” I blurted, and blinked. That’s right. I’d just agreed to marry Wesley. “Wesley and I, we—he asked me to marry him.”

Ezra made a soft, intrigued sound. He drew his hand slowly down his beard and smiled not unkindly. “One thing after another with you two, isn’t it? Never a dull moment.”

---

◆ ◆ ◆

Wesley and I were married with little to-do in a small chapel the following Monday, with only Edie and Ezra along for witnesses. Ezra smoked through the whole thing. Edie insisted on taking us for cocktails afterward, despite it being eleven o’clock in the morning.

That night, the party at the warehouse on Bank Street called for costumes. Wesley tarried on my doorstep with his hat in both hands after walking me home from the bar, his cheeks blushed with the effort of a brisk walk and the briefest chill that was beginning to gnaw at the edges of the air. “I thought we might go as bride and groom,” he said. “But I’ll wear the veil—do you have a tux?”

“Bring me a bow tie,” I said. “I’ll see if Edie has a men’s jacket that fits.”

She had four. I chose one with black silk lapels.

When we showed up at the pier after sunset, Wesley with a tulle veil pinned to his hair, I accepted the glass of champagne his friend passed to me as he opened the doors for us. We surrendered to the hilarity of the night, the first of the rest of our life together, the unseen and glittering future.

I was Margaret Shoard now, and soon to be Lady Macbeth. Everything was exactly as I could have dreamed.

I found Edie holding court by a concrete pillar wrapped with sagging yellow crepe paper left over from some other day’s reason to celebrate. She was dressed as an exotic bird, fuchsia pink and draped in feathers. Starry-eyed women and eager young men surrounded her like colorful petals falling open around the matrix of a budded flower, the familiar look of desperation for success splashed across all of their faces.

“Margot!” She hailed me with a beckoning wave of her hand when I sidled through the crowd to get to her. I ignored the sharp glances.

Her gaze was bright and glittering with drink. She was the sort who held her liquor by way of deepened elegance and wit rather than sloppy dissolution. Edie smiled and excused herself neatly from the crowd with an air of being freed from a particularly uncomfortable bind. Her shoulders relaxed, and she steered me confidently toward the bar with a hand at my upper back.

“Congratulations, luv,” she said at my ear over the roar of the crowd and the music—Wesley had been pulled into the eddying circles of his friends. I would find him later.

“I’m really pleased with the whole thing,” I said. “I am, truly.”

“I’m sure you are. If you’re set on going for a man, he’s the best of them.”

“Did Ezra tell you about Macbeth?”

Edie rolled her eyes and passed me a fizzing glass. She tapped her drink against it. “Take one evening to not think about work, darling. It makes you look peaky.”

She sipped with a smile in her gaze. I mimicked her.

“By the way,” she said, “I’ve got you a wedding gift.”

I made a tetchy sound. “I told you not to.”

“Well, you live in a pit and Wesley has all the wrong eyes on him; I think you newlyweds rather need a place to call your own.”

She dug into her clutch and held something out to me—a set of keys. I frowned.

“Edie, what—”

“Just don’t throw any raucous parties like the last tenant. The fifth floor gets beautiful light around midday.”

I gaped at her, and unable to think of anything else, said again, “What?”

“I’ve covered the first two months of rent and got a damn good rate for you on the rest of it.” Edie pressed the keys into my hand and closed my fist around them. “Ezra’s going to start paying you both a little more with the Scottish flap, so you’ll be fine on your own from there.”

I stared at the keys. This happiness was too much. I wasn’t made to hold so much good in my body at once. An itchy sense of dread seeped in with each foggy heartbeat in my ears—but this was neither the time nor the place nor the reason for any of that. Not tonight.

I threw my arms around Edie’s neck and kissed her square on the mouth. She laughed against my cheek, bright and fragrant. “Thank you,” I said at her ear.

“Go enjoy your evening, poss.” She lifted my arms from her shoulders and kissed my knuckles, leaving a bright print of her lipstick behind. “Don’t let me keep you.”

It was a perfect night. I drank too much and didn’t care. My feet felt lighter than air, and I had a mild headache from so much happiness as I moved through the crush of it. Wesley’s friends crammed us into a cab at midnight and told the driver to take us to the Marlton. We laughed the whole way there, leaning on each other across the middle seat, dizzy with joy.

When we arrived, Wesley carried me over the threshold into a sumptuous hotel room. The bed was an ocean, and the long statements of the windows were garlanded by crisp linen curtains.

Here was the first real step into our lives braided together. Private. Safe. The door latched after Wesley kicked it closed behind him. He spun me in place, my husband, and I clung to his neck, ardent, burying another peal of laughter there.

My husband. The title like a shield, and mirroring my own new identity sitting miter-like on my own head: wife. I leaned back and gazed up at Wesley, looking him full in the face.

“Are you happy?” I asked. He smiled and set me down on my feet. My heels settled into the thick, plush carpet like lawn sod.

“I’m elated, Jack.”

“Good. Help me out of this penguin suit.”

Wesley pushed the jacket from my arms as I unfastened my trousers and kicked them down to my ankles. I reached up to begin plucking pins from my hair. Across the room, a tall mirror above the dresser showed us from a distance—Wesley at work on my shirt buttons, his own suit immaculate, the pinned veil lost to the party.

Wesley turned me with a steering hand on my waist once my shirt hung open and unclipped the bow tie from the back of my neck. As I kept at my hair, already a fistful of pins in one hand and still more to free, he tugged feather-light at the open collar of the shirt and peeled it from my shoulders.

I stood before him in my underthings. He stared at my body as I watched us through our reflection for a long moment—beholding him, beholding me.

Wordlessly, Wesley thumbed at the lace strap over my shoulder. He marveled at it with a shallow frown. I put the hairpins down on the edge of the vanity beside me and helped him finish the work.

Away came the longline clutch of my brassiere. My garter belt slid off with both our hands hunting its closure around my waist. I unhitched the catches on my stockings as Wesley unhooked and shifted the girdle down my hips, and I balanced myself on Wesley’s shoulder with one hand to roll away my last pair of nylons without any runs. I kicked off my shoes, shimmied down my lace briefs, and finally stood naked before him.

Wesley stared at me through a protracted silence with his hands resting on the rounds of my shoulders. He swallowed and roved his fingertips down to stroke with measured, careful curiosity across the small swell of my left breast. His forefinger traced a slow circle over the pink ridge of my nipple. Tears sprang to his eyes.

“I will never have the words,” he rasped, staring at his hand on my body, “to say how grateful I am for you.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” I insisted gently. “I know it. I do.”

Wesley shook his head. “I’d say it six ways to Sunday, but—truly, whatever I’ve done to deserve this, I wish I knew so I could keep doing it. Over and over again, I’d do anything to make you happy, Jack. I swear I would.”

He trailed off and clenched his jaw. I lulled him and reached up to redirect his hand into mine, carding our fingers together. “It makes me happy to keep you safe, Wesley.”

“Does it?” he whispered. His chin wobbled. “God, I—I thought I was stove up, and now here you come, saving me from my own mistakes.”

I wrapped him into an embrace, guided his face down to the dip in my shoulder, and felt his body wrack with the tremor of his first sob. I shut my eyes briefly and murmured tender nothings to Wesley while he came apart in my arms. He clung to the bare skin of my back and pulled me to him. I opened my eyes and found our reflection in the mirror again: The disparate halves of us joined messily, jigsaw edges matching in perfect harmony despite our misalignments—a rude, hysterical punch line.

I could learn to love the humor in it over time, if only to have him. I rested a hand on the back of Wesley’s neck.

“You’re entirely too dressed to be crying so hard,” I muttered into the side of his head. He chuckled wetly into my hair and stepped back to let us divest him as well.

Wesley’s gaze stayed fixed to the carpet as I lifted off his jacket and plucked open his bow tie. He shrugged off his suspenders and unhooked his cummerbund. When he set to his shirt buttons, I paused to tip his chin up and search his expression.

“I know what I’m getting into,” I promised him.

Wesley abandoned his shirt for a moment to take me by both sides of the face and press an ardent kiss to my forehead. “I’m in debt to you, Jack,” he whispered into my skin. “I mean it. You’re saving my life.”

I stroked a hand along the back of his arm. “No debts. It’s a partnership. I’ll protect you,” I murmured, “and you protect me. Easy.”

Wesley sniffed a soft, piteous chuckle into my hair. “You don’t need protecting. You’re a force of nature.”

My heart lurched with a sweet thrill. I angled back to look at him full-on. “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t need you, too.”

“Here’s another vow,” Wesley said gently. He sniffled and drew himself up, blinking quickly. “I will do anything you ever need from me, whenever you need it, to protect you, too. Tit for tat. I swear.”

I smiled.

Both of us undressed, I gathered him up onto the bed. We laid beside each other and finished picking the pins from my hair.

Heavy with drink and revelry and the weight of our new shared life, Wesley drifted off while we daydreamed aloud; the things we wanted most in life, the small specificities we would grow to discover about each other, the fresh start that awaited in the new apartment.

Together, there was so much we could carry in a shared grip.

I traced the slope of Wesley’s shoulder and marked how peaceful he looked when he slept. I counted his breaths, the slow march of them automatic in his body’s drive to live, and swore I would train that same instinct into my own body.

Perhaps standing beside him would teach me how.

Perhaps I would finally want to learn.