Prologue: Meet the players
Margaret
Smallest of small towns. No diner, no gas station. No light to stop at.
A plot of petunias near the welcome sign. Planted by my mother. It was her calling to keep flowers alive even in the worst soil.
She bulges with my pregnancy. Sweat rolls off her all the time now. Within the hour Mother will be forced to put down her shovel and drive to the hospital. And she will pray all the way there. Hail Mary, Our Father, punctuated by a gasp as her water breaks all over the inside of her beloved Chrysler.
She curses my absent father, curses the sky above, curses the exact change she doesn’t have for the tollbooth to the interstate.
Later, heaving herself into a wheelchair outside the hospital, she waits for someone to take her inside. Giving up, she finally rolls herself toward the automatic door, when it slides open, cool air blends into the heat.
She grunts as I tear my way out. Can’t wait to leave her water. Slipping like a flopping fish toward the floor. The custodian takes one look at my bloody mess and throws up into the flip top garbage can.
They wrap us both in starchy flannel, unnamed woman, unnamed child. She has fainted, I am howling. The nurses plug their ears with cotton as I go on and on.
I have caused her immeasurable pain. There is no doubt that I am my father’s daughter.
#
Nora
Cut out dolls in fancy dresses. I made them myself. This one’s name is Invincible Girl. She protects children all over the world. I picked up this molted reddish-brown feather on the way home from school. It was for her, my favorite paper doll; the finishing touch on a construction paper hat.
I believed she could protect anyone. Nothing was strong enough to stop Invincible Girl. Evil would run away at the sight of her.
Now she’s in a box, sent with all my old things from Father’s apartment. There’s an arrowhead, a coin from 1883. My father’s lighter, complete with flints. He gave up smoking years ago, but that didn’t save him.
YOU ARE READING
The Show
General FictionAmerica is fascinated with the cult of celebrity. In the world of theater and film, a public face can hide almost any secret. Yet, what if we could ease inside the minds of four very successful artists as they prepared a new Broadway show for eager...
