Chapter Nine #4
It mean money for Kyle and the troupe, it meant ample time to rehearse their Midsummer Nights for Aspen, and since Gray Dylan seemed to have vanished into the West with the suddenness that he’d come out of it, it also meant Hannah was free to go about her business all day without interruption.
The fact that her nights were shaken by memories of him—and if she was lucky enough to fall asleep at last, splintered by dreams of him—was another story.
An old one, and one she hoped she’d forget with time, as she’d forgotten all her other old hurts.
But the problem wasn’t that he brought all the old pain back along with the physical pleasure she’d found in his arms. It was that she’d felt that pleasure; that was what kept her awake almost as much as the memory of his words did.
There’d been a great deal of pain as well as shame in her marriage, but at the beginning there had been pleasure, too.
Not the kind of searing, aching, terrifying pleasure she’d discovered at Gray Dylan’s hands and lips, but something very like, something that had promised that.
She’d managed to forget that by remembering the worst of her times in her marriage bed.
She’d hugged the memories of John’s blaming her, his curses, his bruising hands, and then, the slap that had finally ended it all.
Because, she saw now, however bad it was, it had obscured the other part, the best part: the early days when he’d kissed her gently and most of all, had held her close and handled her tenderly.
It was only toward the end, when he’d tried his hardest to “have” her in the way he told her he’d had so many others he’d loved less or not at all before, and not succeeded, of course, that he’d grown brutal.
He’d only slapped her the once, that last time, when he’d tried and failed again to make her his wife.
But she’d used his words to beat herself with ever since: “You’re not a real woman,” he said.
“How am I ever going to have children?” he’d asked her.
When she hadn’t answered, but only laid there, shaking, after pulling her nightgown down again to cover herself decently, he’d staggered off the bed and cried, “The doctor said you were imperfect when I told him about us, but I didn’t want to believe him, oh damnation, what am I going to do?
” And so even if he hadn’t slapped her in that drunken flurry, she’d have left him, if he hadn’t left her then.
He’d just made it simpler—if the death and burial of all her hopes for a normal life could be called simple.
Gray Dylan had brought it all back again.
Now he was gone, and she saw he was right.
Sometimes there was pleasure in wallowing in pain, especially if it made you forget unattainable pleasures.
But this was more than enjoying a good cry, it went beyond tears and never seemed to end.
Days and nights passed, and yet it still kept her up and cast her down.
The worst of it was that there was no use to it.
Because even if she got him to like her more than he obviously desired her when he saw her again, it wouldn’t change a thing.
She ought never to have gone along with him for more than the look of it for Peggy’s sake, she knew that.
She should be delighted at this chance to resolve things with dignity, and not the embarrassing confession she’d have to make if she’d led him on any further.
That was perhaps the worst of it, because she knew she had led him on, despite all her best intentions.
She had no control when he touched her. Twice now, his lips had silenced her good sense.
There couldn’t be a third time, so she should be pleased at this reprieve.
She knew that, too. But just as she’d told him: knowing a thing wasn’t the same as feeling it.
Still, things could end well. The way it looked, with Royal constantly writing notes to Peggy from wherever he went—notes that fired her face and her eyes— Thanksgiving in Aspen would see the troupe’s triumphant farewell, and Peggy’s, too.
Hannah would see Gray once more then, and then no more.
The memories would fade. She’d been granted a reprieve.
She ought to be grateful, she chided herself.
As it was, she was tired and chilled and felt age and the residue of too many long lonely nights in every one of her young bones. She gazed out the train window at the mountains fading into early dusk, and drew her cloak closer about herself. November was not so kind as October had been.
“Not ‘…thoid part of a minute,’ ” she said now, wearily, “ ‘third’—roll the r as in ‘bird.’ ‘Er,’ ‘Er,’ ‘third.’ ”
“ ‘Third,’ ” Lottie trilled, before her eyes narrowed and she frowned at Hannah. “Who cares? You think any of them’s gonna know the diff’rence? Gawd. Them pigs in Leadville hardly spoke English. You think anyone’s going to know Shakespeare?”
“I care,” Hannah said, “and Kyle cares, and Aspen is important. The opening of The Jerome will draw everyone. The newspapers will be there. Harper’s Weekly will be there.
There will be rich men, very famous, very important men in the audience there.
We are doing a truncated, diced, sliced, and expurgated version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a shortened version,” she paused to explain, seeing Lottie’s blank expression, “because of time limitations, and the fact that we’ve lost more than a third of the company already.
Good heavens, do you think Peggy and I would sit onstage, encased in gauze, pretending to be part of your fairy court if we could help it?
The least you can do is learn to speak the part you have.
It’s the biggest one now. Lillian Russell couldn’t want better.
But Kyle’s right. Titania can’t just be killingly lovely, she has got to sound good, too. ”
“Then, for the third part of a minute, hence:” Lottie quoted, her wide blue eyes holding the dreamy expression they had held since she’d heard Hannah say, rich, very important men, “Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, some war with rere-mice for their leathern winguz…”
“No,” Hannah said patiently, and as Lottie snapped, “What? What? I got the stupid ‘rere-mice’ right this time.” Hannah said, “Wing-sss. Wing-sss. Not wingguz.”
“I dunno why we didn’t stick with Under The Gaslight,” Lottie muttered.
“Because Kyle found out that the most elite ladies club in Aspen did it last winter. We cannot compete with amateurs,” Hannah explained—because they might win, she thought sadly—before she went on with enthusiasm she didn’t feel, trying to emulate Kyle’s highest style.
“Just think, Lottie, you’ll be the most beautiful Titania ever seen—your golden hair flowing behind you, your gown covered with sparkling jewels—you, the epitome of grace and feminine beauty, with everyone onstage in love with you—Nelson and Frank and even Lester in his donkey mask.
Not to mention the audience. Wouldn’t it be grand to have your photograph taken that way for The Theatre Magazine?
or The Dramatic Mirror? Or even,” she said with sudden inspiration, remembering Lottie’s favorite, “The Police Gazette? Anything can happen if you’re good enough.
Because the world’s eyes will be upon you.
“Because Aspen,” Hannah said with prayer and hope and a sudden, terrible premonition of despair, “will be our triumph. Kyle promised…” she said, before she stopped, and shuddered, hearing her own words.