“Nineteen ninety-eight, R.C. Nineteen ninety-eight.”
“Well, make like it’s 1998, Miss Min. Put your proper singing voice on.”
It turned out R.C. had talent for something besides mischief. His tenor was clear as crystal, unwavering like the man Min had stood next to in the church choir. “I’m tired and out of juice and yet from head to toe, my body’s feeling loose and warm and kind of supple . . . Nothing to do but waltz . . . Naw, that don’t sound right. I skipped a verse or two, didn’t I, Miss Min?”
“I’m tired of playing this game now, R.C. I’m not going to speak to you again until you untie her.”
“Min, please,” Gussie whispered.
Min could see that her partner was petrified, the proof of which had gathered around the heels of her new slippers in a neon-yellow pool. “R.C.! You untie Gussie right this instant!” Then she reached across the table and grabbed the gun.
R.C. gave Gussie’s chair a mighty kick, sending her down to the floor in a crash.
The narrator pauses here—’cause Min would want it—to say that no one should ever come to know what it feels like when the shadow of many years of togetherness descends and you’re looking dead at the person shutting off the light.
Gussie’s tears couldn’t be stopped; she trembled horribly watching her wife dial 911 with a steady hand.
“This is Minrose Andrade at 28 Larch Street. I’ve just shot Robert Calvin Rutherford . . .”
PART II
WHAT CHEER
ONCE, AT TRINITY REP
BY ELIZABETH STROUT
Trinity Repertory Company
There it stands, on the corner of Washington Street, the pride of Providence. Trinity Rep has been in that old building for almost fifty years. Before that, the theater was used for vaudeville shows. I am an old lady, and my father used to speak of them; and I think that for a long time almost everyone who entered the place seemed to feel the history of past performances, the excitement of the unknown. Even with the beginning of Trinity Rep, how it did so well with the old chestnuts, or new unknown pieces, or the annual rendition of A Christmas Carol, the theater itself offered what theatergoers wanted: a promise of emotion. But after what happened, happened, it took people awhile to get back that feeling enough to abandon their guard, I think, and just enjoy the show. Season ticket subscriptions were down for years. And I’ve noticed, though no one mentions it anymore, that they have never staged an Ibsen play since, and this is no small thing in the life of a regional theater.
Let me say this: the lead in A Doll’s House was a darling girl. That is how she was described later, by her mother: “A darling girl, with a heart of gold.” The poor mother was a mere sixteen years older than her daughter Lena, and Lena was an only child, so they were more like sisters. A number of people who knew them agreed with this. I knew them myself, and I agree with it too; they were as close as twins. Whatever living arrangements Trinity had made for Lena Lochsheldrake fell through at the last minute, and the directors approached me, knowing my rooming house—later I would call it a bed-and-breakfast—had few guests; people know things in a small town, which Providence is.
So Lena Lochsheldrake and her mother stayed with me; they’d sit at my breakfast table for hours—they both loved to talk—and I would leave something in the refrigerator for Lena when she came in late at night, and I served her breakfast any time she wanted, and made snacks for her to take to the theater.
“Oh, thank you,” she always said, her brown eyes sparkling. “Thank you. Look at this, Mother, what she’s done”—holding out the custard, wrapped in foil. “Oh, you’re just the best.”
Lena did not have those perfect teeth you see on all the young people today; her teeth were slightly indented and crooked, and this was very endearing somehow, her smile. And yet I often could not help but see those teeth and think of the word rabid. I assume because they were pointed and made me think of a fox. But she was a darling girl, really, just as her mother said.