Quarter to three in the morning. She’s pulling in Spotify on her cell phone, playing all the Lorde they have. She is at her drawing board. Before she took over the lease, this workshop belonged to a cabinetmaker. He left behind a huge, work-worn table he probably made here, with no thought to ever getting it out through the door. The thick legs are inset deep into the top, further stuck with adhesive and bolts. She added a tilting top for drawing.
Waiting for the heat to kick on, she shrugs into a stray sweater, a shape-shifted maroon cardigan once worn by the evil Cathy Ames in a teen-outreach production of East of Eden. Its current shape is that of a large rag. A tide of designs and models—her own and those of students, also props she hangs on to because the next play won’t have them and she doesn’t want to have to go looking again, the stray piece of some costume—all wash up in this workshop and have to continuously be beaten back, like sand from a desert hut.
She is trying to use work to confine her mind. But her mind is not interested in confinement, not at all. Rather, it wants to leap around madly, go forward, then circle back again to the scene of the crime, to see what more it can pull loose. She pushes aside the small set she is working on, pulls over a notebook with an articulated drawing of Neale’s kitchen, showing where the players were. Laying a grid on chaos.
She is caught between two immovable and large pieces of her life: what happened in Neale’s kitchen and what’s happening in New York. Her worst event and her biggest break. In a reasonable life, these wouldn’t be juxtapositioned. She should be able to have a minute to take a deep breath. In her recent past there have been months-long stretches of underemployment when she could have easily fit in killing someone, then curling into some PTSD fetal position for a while afterward. After the Vita play, she has two shows on her schedule—one in April for Handlebars in Milwaukee, one in Chicago in July when school is out. A reasonable schedule.
(The heat has come on. Wet meets dry, and the memory of carpentry releases a sigh of wood and glue.)
It’s the New York play that’s putting a thumb on the scale. Now is a time she really shouldn’t be away. She called Molly Cracciolo to let her know what had happened and how she needed another week or so at home, to find her footing. And at first, Molly was notionally sympathetic. She returned Cate’s call right away. Then how terrible, she told Cate, she and Lauren had their own experience along these lines, a recent robbery at their summer house in the Hamptons. Their entire collection of nineteenth-century French dolls, precious things, so articulated. Tiny necklaces of real diamonds and lapis lazuli. Lauren cried off and on the whole night they found out.
Fuck your French dolls! Cate screamed internally as she sat silent on her end of the call. But she does not want to lose this job and so she let Molly condescend to her—informing Cate that with the play only weeks off now, there was really no time for anyone involved to have a life, especially not a horrifying one. And so she is looking forward to seeing Cate on Tuesday. The change of scene will do her good.
The drawing of the kitchen suddenly pulls a bad lever and she’s through the trapdoor.
the terrible odor like a bad zoo, a roadside repulsion. neale, squirming under the fat man. “help me here, mama,” he says, and the woman with silver-toe cowboy boots skitters over and places a neat little kick to the side of neale’s head. a thin, dark red seep begins. there’s no time to consider anything, to weigh options. there is no options list.
This is how it goes. No matter how hard she tries, she can neither hold back her memory nor force it. What she gets are short clips like this one. Important chunks are still missing. She doesn’t know what she’s hiding from herself. It can’t be that she’s too frightened to look at these pieces. She’s actually weirdly unfrightened. But she’s another person now. She has been tested and, in a fumbling way, has passed. She has always lived on an easy island. Plenty of bananas, breezes over her hammock. The odds were against her ever having to save someone or, even less likely, kill someone. But she had to, and she did.
The night sky crackles softly with pale, distant lightning. She goes to the front of the shop and opens one of the casement windows to watch. Sailor jumps up beside her, paws on the sill. Together they read the strangely tropical wind. A storm is on its way. Warm weather is smashing into what had been a grim cold snap. Cate is working through this night because all that has happened to her in Chicago this week won’t matter in New York: the machinery of the play is in fourth gear and she has to catch up with it. She puts away the notebook and tries to put her energy to the task at hand.
The play now has a title: Blanks, in reference to a terrific quote by the architect Edwin Lutyens, a friend of Vita’s mother. Cate has the quote push-pinned to her corkboard.
The only thing is to know and realize that Vita has got blanks in herself and these blanks are blank. If I find a blank, I get a plank and bridge it and I don’t look down, lest I get vertigo.
Presumably the blanks were the dead spaces in Vita’s empathy, particularly for those she seduced and abandoned. Cataracts occluding her view of the marriages she wrecked along her way. Damage and collateral damage along a potholed country road, a treacherous garden path.
The work Cate is fiddling with tonight is something small and manageable: drawing the front of the newsstand for the train platform.
Outside, the storm has broken free of the clouds and the rain is hammering down. She Googles the font for British train signage, which turns out to be Gill Sans Light. She types:
SEVENOAKS
then inlays a background of a worn, yellow/gray/white to print on sign stock.
A sweep of light brushes across the surface of the drawing table. Tires crunch through gravel. Sailor rushes to the window. Dana. Cate doesn’t even have to look to know. A text hisses from her phone.
like what, you weren’t going to tell me?
The TV interviews. She’s gotten calls all week. At least it saved her the embarrassment of having to tell the story again and again, to find a posture to take around it. And now, she sees through the open window the air shimmering above the radiator, and beyond that Dana sitting on her car hood draped in a clear plastic, disposable rain poncho. Cate can’t think of a snappy response.
Dana lifts the overhang of the plastic hood and peers up at Cate, then puts her head down and they restart the conversation.
are you alone in there?
no
are you counting that dog as company?
fuck you, Cate texts, then goes to open the door.
Sailor gets there before her, poised at the threshold, shuffling his butt on the floor, getting ready. It’s always a good time for company as far as he’s concerned.
“You stay. No jumping.” As Cate opens the door, he jumps up on Dana, then licks her face on both cheeks, as though he’s French. Then, to make a further impression, he does his “spin,” his easiest, default trick. He has only ever seen Dana that one time at the dog beach, so he can’t have a scrapbook of fond memories of her. Then he’s back for some more kissing. It’s becoming clear he’s not going to be much of a guard dog.
“Graham and I are trying to train him to not do this,” Cate says, pulling him off. But then he’s standing again, paws on Dana’s shoulders. She can’t remember if she told Dana about Graham and Sailor staying with her. Dana rubs her cheek along the side of his head, thumbs the inside of an ear. “Who are you, the make-out king?” She laughs in a way that’s particular to her, a rollout of delight. Always appealing.
A serious shot of lightning crashes and bleaches the sky. Sailor rushes into a corner. Dana turns to look outside, then turns back to Cate. “Shouldn’t it be, like, snowing?” She brushes the water from the poncho in sweeping gestures that cause droplets to stipple Cate’s jeans. “The thing is, I knew before. I knew that afternoon. I knew something bad was going down.” The crazy thing is that Cate believes her. Because this is how they see their connection. Like a deserted power station, mysterious and huge; darkened, but always active, sudden orange running sparks skittering through the air inside. This example will be tacitly added to the Myth of Them. Since this turned out to be a belief system of extremely limited value, Cate doesn’t think it warrants any acknowledgment. She goes into the small bathroom to get a hand towel, then gives it to Dana, who wipes her face only a little. She can’t help this.
“How are you here? Shouldn’t you be slinging your hash?”
“I can’t stay long, but I had to come by.” Dana spins around. “Where’d the couch go?”
“I got rid of it when I stopped seeing you. Now all I do here is work.”
“I always fucked you on the table. You should’ve gotten rid of that instead.”
Cate opens the mini-fridge and pulls out a couple of beers, pops them open. Dana takes one, then sets it on the windowsill as she rubs her wet hair with the towel. She has such thick hair that any gesture involving it carries a small erotic payload.
“I just had to see you. See that you’re all right. And Neale. Is she a mess?”
Although they only met twice—when Cate brought Neale to Toaster for breakfast—they clicked right off the bat. Of course they did, because Neale could see how perfect she and Cate were for each other. Although really, she’d probably like any girlfriend of Cate’s who was politically progressive, with a blue-collar background, a degree from a culinary academy instead of a college.
“They did a scan, to see if the concussion was serious. It wasn’t. But the woman kicked her in the face and her cheek is broken. There’s going to be a surgery around that. She also has a sprained wrist. And the guy was trying to rape her. So of course she’s flipped.”
“Jesus. I guess I figured that was probably in the mix. How long is she going to be in the hospital?”
“Two more midnights. I got that off the wall chart in her room. I guess that’s how they measure time in the hospital. Regular night and day must get mixed up inside. I have to tell you something else. Today I looked at the menu on her tray table. She’s on soft foods because of the broken cheek. For breakfast she can have pureed waffle. I hate to say this, but I’m kind of glad you came by so I could tell you about the waffle.”
“That’s hilarious. But you can tell me the bad stuff, too. Your bad stuff. Maybe that’d help?”
“So. The thing is, I don’t have a solid memory of a lot of it. I don’t have a full picture. I was just operating on impulse. You know. Something bad happening. Stop it. Smash smash smash. I can see this part all over again if I want to. And then when he stopped moving, I rolled him and his flopping dick off Neale. Jesus. I can see any information about this is kind of TMI. But also NEI, not enough information about the whole thing. Patches are still blacked out, like with a Sharpie. I supposedly whooshed a rather large amount of spray from the extinguisher at the woman, got her in the eyes. But then what? Where did she go and how did I get to the guy while he was still gettable? I think I’m censoring my own mind.”
Cate’s cell buzzes its way across the table. She looks to see who it is, then lets it buzz on. “Private caller. No idea. I mean, I always thought it was you. But you, as you can see, are here.”
“It did used to be me. Are you in something new? I thought you were seeing someone on the up-and-up.”
“I am. And it’s something I’m hoping goes somewhere. It has a lot of promise.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen her. Very presentable.”
“Where’d you see her? You mean from half a mile off at the beach?”
Dana doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, please don’t be stalking me.”
“I’m not stalking. That would imply hiding. I want you to know I’m still close by. Walking the perimeter.” She pulls Cate in by the front of her sweater. “Especially now.” Cate feels her shoulder getting damp with tears. Dana is an easy crier, but even so, Cate’s moved. She stands still, but inside is trying to back up. Really trying.
“You have to remember we’ve entered a new time frame. We’re not close anymore. We’re supposed to be going on with our lives without each other. Shouldn’t you and Jody be getting married? Now that it’s legal?”
“I don’t want to talk about weddings.” This is exactly the part of conversations with Dana that she hates. Sidesteps out of the way of pointed questions. Like now. Does Dana mean she hates flowers and dresses with trains? Handel? Or the weddings of friends, how corny they can be? Or is she saying she and Jody, on the other side of an opaque barrier from Cate, have already gotten married? Cate doesn’t want to ask, because that would indicate she cares about the answer, and she does not want to indicate that. She’d like to keep her distance from Dana’s real life, as though it’s a play and she has a seat in the last row of the balcony. Between scenes, she can hear the shushing of pieces being pushed around while the stage is dark and the events to come are fine shadows made of dust, reassembled into new, colorful items, already in place when the lights come up again. But still, far, far away. She tries again to get this across.
“Every time I see you, you seem to be operating on the assumption that I’m still waiting for you, that nothing has changed with us. When in fact everything has.”
“Unfortunately, for me anyway, not enough has changed. I still think about you way too much. You, too, maybe? Your hand is shaking. Your little half-hand.” Dana takes it gently, by its two fingers. “Oh, baby.”
“I’ve got too much going on now. In my life and in my head. I can’t get back into it with you.”
“Maybe now is exactly when you need me. To understand where you are.” And then she’s pushing Cate against a wall, wiping her wet hands through Cate’s hair, holding her head as if it needs protection. Then, instead of saying any of the things anyone else would say—how sorry she is that this has happened, how traumatized Cate must be, how brave she was—she puts her mouth over Cate’s ear and says, “You must feel so fucking powerful.”
No one else has guessed this.