Sweet Revenge

outgrow her love of greasepaint and curtain calls.
    At fifteen Celeste decided she was born to be blond and had tinted her tame brown hair to a golden halo that would become her trademark. Her mother had shrieked, her father had lectured. Celeste’s hair had stayed blond. And she had won the part of Marion in her high school’s production of
The Music Man.
    Once Nancy had complained to Andrew that she might have been able to handle it better if Celeste had been involved with boys and liquor rather than Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams.
    The day after she received her high school diploma, Celeste moved from the cozy New Jersey suburb of her childhood to Manhattan. Her parents saw her off on the train with a mixture of relief and bafflement.
    She auditioned, scrounging up enough to pay for her acting lessons and the rent on her fourth-floor walkup byflipping hamburgers and frying eggs at a greasy spoon. She married at twenty, a relationship that began with a bang and ended with a whimper a year later. By then Celeste had stopped looking back.
    Just over ten years later she was the reigning lady of theater with a trail of hits behind her, a trio of Tonys, and a penthouse on Central Park West. She’d sent her parents a Lincoln for their last anniversary, but they still believed she’d come back to New Jersey when acting was out of her system and settle down with some nice Methodist boy.
    Just now, pacing the airport lounge, she welcomed the relative anonymity of the theater actress. If people noticed her, they saw an attractive blonde, sturdily built and of average height. They didn’t see the sultry Maggie the Cat or the ambitious Lady Macbeth. Not unless Celeste wanted them to.
    She checked her watch and wondered again if Phoebe would be on the plane.
    Nearly ten years, she thought as she took a seat and searched through her bag for a cigarette. They had become close friends quickly when Phoebe had come to New York to film on location for her first movie. Celeste had just ended her marriage and had been feeling a bit rough around the edges. Phoebe had been like a breath of fresh air, so funny and sweet. Each had become the sister to the other that neither had been born with, visiting coast to coast when possible, piling up huge long distance phone bills when it wasn’t.
    No one had been more thrilled when Phoebe had been nominated for an Oscar. No one had cheered more loudly when Celeste had won her first Tony.
    They were opposites in many ways. Celeste was tough and driven, Phoebe malleable and trusting. Without realizing it, they had given each other a balance, and a friendship each would always cherish.
    Then Phoebe had married and flown off to her desert kingdom. Correspondence had become sporadic after the first year, then almost nonexistent. It had hurt. Celeste would never have admitted it to anyone, but Phoebe’s gradual termination of their friendship had hurt very much. On the surface she’d taken it philosophically. Her life was full and rich and progressing along the route she had mapped out as a girl in New Jersey. But there was a place in her heart thathad grieved. Over the years Celeste had continued to send gifts to the girl she considered her godchild, and had been amused by the quaint and formal notes of acknowledgment Adrianne had sent back to her.
    She was ready to love the child. In part because she was married to the theater, arid that love affair would never produce children. And in part because Adrianne was Phoebe’s.
    Celeste tapped out her cigarette before reaching into a shopping bag and taking out a red-haired china doll. It was dressed in blue velvet trimmed in white. Celeste had chosen it because she thought the little girl would enjoy having a doll with the same color hair as her mother. And she didn’t have any idea of what to say to the child, or to Phoebe.
    When she heard the flight announced, she was up and pacing again. It wouldn’t be long now. The deplaning, the trip through customs. There was no reason for the nagging worry at the base of her skull.
    Except that the cablegram had said so little.
    Celeste remembered each word, and, like a good actress, put her own inflection on them.
    CELESTE. I NEED YOUR HELP. PLEASE HAVE TWO TICKETS FOR NEW YORK AT THE PAN AMERICAN COUNTER AT ORLY. THE TWO O’CLOCK FLIGHT TOMORROW. MEET ME IF YOU CAN. I HAVE NO ONE ELSE. PHOEBE.
    She saw them the moment they passed through the doors, the tall, striking redhead and the doll-like