The Rehearsal

her hair the dwindling number of days until she becomes her own self, the day when her body becomes her own, the day when her body becomes his own. He is probably stroking her with the callused heel of his weathered adult hand.”
    She looks at the mothers.
    “And you wish you were there,” Julia says softly. “You wish you were there.”
    Saturday
    Isolde and Julia are alone against the black cloth of the stage. There is no set or scenery. They are both wearing their school uniform, but differently: Isolde’s is clean and pressed, and Julia’s is limp and darned and grubby and artful. They look across at each other.
    Isolde says, “Is it because I didn’t learn to love myself that I chose to bury myself instead in the reassuring strangeness of a body that was without that essential similarity which would force me to compare ? With you I would have been doubled, intensified, mirrored back. With him our differences canceled out to nothing.”
    “Yes,” Julia says. “But that’s only part of it.”
    Isolde says, “Is it because I was scared, then? Is it because there wasn’t a template for it, and the unexpected hugeness of my innocence, the sheer and terrible abyss of my unknowing, was simply too alien, too frightening? It was just too big for me—too big for me to hold inside myself, like something perfect or tragic or sublime.”
    “Yes,” Julia says.
    “I’ve never felt like that before, Julia,” Isolde says. “Scared like that.”
    “Don’t worry,” Julia says. “You never will again.”
    The lights change.
    “I remember being in your car outside my house,” Isolde says, “both of us sitting there in the pale gray of the streetlight with our seat belts holding us apart, our seat belts crossed over our chests, strapping us against the crocodile vinyl, holding us flat. And you turned to look at me and gave a little bit of a laugh, like you were really nervous, and you bit your lip and let some of your hair fall across your face and you didn’t tuck it back. And then you said, Can I just…? and you let the question die and you reached up your hand to cup underneath my chin, reaching right over, straining against your seat belt that was pulling you back, reining you in, holding you there. I was so scared. I remember licking my lip. I remember my mouth was dry. I remember you kissed me.”
    “A one-off,” Julia says.
    “My fall.”
    And Julia says, “My fall.”
    Isolde says, “What will happen to you now?”
    Julia pulls her gaze away from the other girl and looks out over the wraith-faces of the audience. She doesn’t speak for a moment. Then she says, “All I can expect, I guess. Slow fade to black.”
    October
    “It’s too easy,” Stanley’s father says as he steps from the taxi. “Oh, Stanley, it’s too easy, and I’m going to say it anyway.”
    He steps over the gutter and spreads his arms for a hug, wrapping Stanley up tightly. Stanley can smell the familiar blush of cologne on his father’s shirt.
    “What’s too easy?” Stanley says when they have separated, and the taxi has turned the corner and disappeared.
    “You’ve improved on my own methods,” Stanley’s father says. “You’ve taken my ideas and run with them, turned them into something I couldn’t have dreamed up myself. I’m flattered and impressed and a little ashamed that you don’t have more sense.”
    “Are you talking about the insurance thing?” Stanley says.
    “Absolutely I am.”
    “Because I rang up the insurance companies,” Stanley says. “I rang up a few. I asked them about your idea to make a million, and it won’t work.”
    “Of course it won’t work. I was just having a tease, and shame on you for following through, by the way,” Stanley’s father says. “But this —”
    He laughs and spreads out his arms. Above the double doors of the foyer an enormous glossy banner, Opening Night! , snaps in the wind and strains fatly convex against the roped eyelets fixed along the balcony rail. Posters showing a girl in a school uniform coyly sliding a playing card into the pocket of her dress are taped to both doors of the foyer.
    “This is brilliant,” Stanley’s father says. “And it’s hilarious. But I’ll be surprised if you last a week in performance. They’ll shut you down tomorrow night probably.”
    “That might not be such a bad thing,” Stanley says.
    “Are you in trouble?”
    “Yes.”
    “Need some help?” his father says, for once not using his therapy