Chapter 8
Priscilla
Marlowe screams.
It’s quick. More of a shriek. She told me not to move, but what kind of person would I be if I didn’t react to a scream?
There could be a mouse, and I don’t want her to squash it.
Or there could be something fun happening.
Maybe her students are surprising her with a performance.
Call it the millennial in me, but I’ve always been partial to a flash mob.
Dallas’s voice plays in my head the same way it always has. The way I just heard it in the Memory Machine, cueing me in with his “Five, four, three, two, one. Action.”
I put one platform boot in front of the other, wrap my fluffy leopard coat tight around my waist as if a breeze has come through, and become Cilla Cove—actress, Angeleno, occasional vegan in a non-overbearing way—ready to see what’s got Marlowe so worked up.
It’s…Dallas?
Sitting in the front row of the audience, wearing a high-necked gown and a fluffy wig, he’s positioned with one leg crossed over the other and his index finger and thumb shaped into a shelf, holding up the side of his face.
I’ll give it to Marlowe. It’s a genuine shock to see him, though I know better than to scream.
That got trained out of me at a very young age.
Everything works out much better for everyone if I take things in stride.
Being a good sport is the first role I ever learned in life, and it’s the one I know best of all, though I’d argue it’s also the role for which I receive the least acclaim.
Just like they say—no one ever sees the real work.
Dallas looks relaxed. In his element. In any other circumstance, this would be expected.
This stage is his home. I’d have thought forcing all of Garden Meadows, Iowa, to conduct a search for him would’ve perhaps brought on an air of regret or maybe even embarrassment.
Unfamiliar emotions for him, but necessary, considering the whole missing person search I was on the cusp of asking Erik to post about on my social media in the hopes of turning it into national news.
Upon seeing me, Dallas opens his arms for a hug. “What a surprise! Our doctor is here!”
“The one and only!” I hop off the stage to greet him.
I only play a doctor on TV, and the show’s not even filming anymore, but it’s fine if that’s how he wants to address me.
We have more important things to discuss, such as where he went for the last day and a half, or why he’s sitting here acting like it isn’t strange that he’s returned outfitted in his costume like it’s a regular day of dress rehearsal.
“It’s a big deal to get you out here,” he says as he squeezes me.
“Only someone like you could do it,” I tell him, pulling back to kiss both of his cheeks.
“You must be the reason Marlowe’s screaming,” he says. “Some things never do change, do they?”
“Like your handsome face,” I say.
He preens.
“And your perfect skin,” I continue. “And your youthful spirit. And your effortless humor.”
He waves me onward, directing more compliments his way. I steal a glance at Marlowe up on the stage, attempting to share in the weirdness with her.
Marlowe won’t make eye contact. She’s looking beyond me, zoned out into the middle distance.
It’s the same blank expression I remember from our junior year fall play, Arsenic and Old Lace.
On opening night, in the middle of our first scene together, she not only forgot a line, but she forgot how to exist altogether.
Thinking on my feet, I covered for her by improvising, asking her a series of leading questions until she finally jerked back to reality. For a moment, her eyes softened. Her smile relaxed. She had so much relief and gratitude. For me.
When we got offstage, she told me in the wings that her mind had gone blank. She couldn’t even remember her own name. And for the first and possibly only time, she thanked me for being there. For saving her.
“Hello! Earth to Marlowe,” I say, trying for reasons beyond my own understanding to save her again.
“She’s been getting like this recently,” Dallas tells me. Now this is intel. Marlowe stares off into space a lot? She gets despondent? She ignores people on purpose?
“Has she, now?” I ask.
“Oh yes.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “She’s scared to run the program without me. She will be great, but she doesn’t seem to believe that. You know how serious she is about everything. She wants to get it right. She thinks she can’t take risks without me around to oversee them.”
Since when is Marlowe Jenkins scared of anything to do with risky theater?
Dallas repositions himself so he’s facing the teenagers scattered throughout the seats. “Cast! This is the fabulous Dr. Covington-French,” he announces. “She was class of 2010 with Ms. Jenkins. She came here all the way from Utah to see you!”
There’s a lot to unpack in what he’s said, but the Utah of it all takes top priority.
If he’s making some kind of sideways joke, I’m struggling to figure it out.
Does my hair look like the Utah TikTok moms who are always getting extensions?
I feel mine are tastefully done, but perhaps I’ve lost my ability to discern an appropriate amount of extra hair?
The dark red dye I’ve got going on has an undeniably artificial quality to it, but it doesn’t scream Utah to me.
Maybe it’s the leopard print coat? Do women in Utah like leopard print?
Marlowe’s earlier warning for me to hide was—to put it mildly—pointless. These teenagers would be more interested in watching paint dry than they are to see me here in person.
“Hello!” I say enthusiastically. It’s not the first time I’ve walked out to a freezing-cold reception, and it won’t be the last. Dallas going missing for a day must have sucked the air out of the excitement they had for me when I announced their show back in December.
“I came a little early for your final dress!”
One kid puts the final nail in the coffin of my hopes by saying a low, scathing “Cool,” eliciting snickers from her friends, who are all sharing a bag of hot chips covered in what looks like nacho cheese.
My stomach gives a sympathetic gurgle as I think of the days I subsisted on nothing more than three stolen fries from my friends’ lunch plates and a packet of M&M’s from the vending machine.
The resilient digestive system of a high schooler is the eighth wonder of this world.
“Forgive them,” Dallas tells me in a conspiratorial whisper. “They’re still heathens. I’m sure you remember what being a teen was like. Especially the two of you. Lord, the way you used to fight. They should’ve stuck a camera in here and filmed you for reality television.”
“We sure had our moments.” My skin starts to itch underneath my coat, which is way too thick for May.
It was supposed to be a power move—power in what?
I ask myself—now it’s only heavy and hot and wrong.
I move through my rising discomfort, offering Dallas a shoulder nudge and a “What on earth have you been up to the last few days?”
“Whew,” Dallas says in his favorite world-weary way. “What haven’t I been doing?”
He looks back at Marlowe. She’s got her arms glued to her sides now, like one of those memes about little kids who throw up in the middle of the night and stand waiting at the edge of their parents’ bed to tell them the bad news. I’d love it if she came and joined me back on Earth.
“We should send the kids straight to the dressing room,” Dallas says to her. “I don’t really need to give another pre-dress speech anyway.” He tilts his head toward me again. “Did she tell you we cut the nudity from the show? I worry everyone thinks I’d make actual teenagers do that.”
“She didn’t share that yet,” I say. “But that’s good. I don’t do nudity myself.”
Dallas lets out his best wall-shaking laugh. “I’d imagine that would cause a lot of problems with the patients.”
“Not many opportunities to undress when I’m busy saving lives,” I reply. “Though I guess more than you’d think. But I still won’t show boob, even implied. Better to leave a little mystery.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Oh, how the two of us can laugh. We could go like this forever. On another day, I’d love nothing more than this. Today, I think I could use a few real answers.
“Seriously, where were you earlier?” I ask him.
“Honey, I was right here,” he says.
“Even when the police searched the school?”
Dallas’s smile fades. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my darling, but that’s okay. I don’t think I need to.”
The truth is like a too-small ring stuck on a finger. It is not sliding out of Dallas, no matter how smooth I am or how direct with my pressure.
“Okay,” Marlowe says to him, her first words since her scream. It’s more of a blurt. I guess it’s a response to what he said to her a moment ago about sending the kids to the dressing room, but her timing is so off it jams the conversational rhythm.
Dallas says, “See?” like this strange behavior is more proof she’s scared of taking over his job.
Not, you know, her very understandable confusion about how it is he’s casually reappeared after being missing for more than twenty-four hours.
He directs his attention back to the students.
“Cast, let’s get changed and put on an unforgettable show for our doctor. ”
I give the students another friendly wave, better known as offering them one last opportunity to snicker at me as they file out of the auditorium.
Marlowe still doesn’t move.
“Darling, would you mind coming along?” Dallas asks me. “I have something I want you to check out.”
“Of course,” I say brightly. “Just give me one sec to chat with Marlowe.”
An invisible line has been drawn, where Marlowe and I seem to be the only two people aware of Dallas’s recent missing person status. It’s the kind of thing we have to address, if only to confirm we have not both lost our minds at the exact same time.