Chapter 25
Marlowe
When we return to Wilbur, he’s standing in the middle of the road. One of the women from the buggy has joined him.
It’s Estelle.
His wife.
An oil portrait of them hangs in the front hallway of the school.
I’ve seen that painting thousands of times in my life.
They look so much like the portrait, it’s like they’ve crawled out of the frame, Estelle in her poufy cream-colored dress and matching toque hat, and Wilbur in his casual three-piece suit and top hat.
“This is my wife, Estelle,” Wilbur confirms. “We would like to see your play.”
“Oh, no. It’s not ready yet,” I tell him.
“No matter,” Wilbur says.
“We are dedicated patrons of the arts,” Estelle explains. “We love to see works in progress.”
My mind charges through so many thoughts at once that I can’t decide which one matters the most. We’ve made it back in time.
What will it do to their well-being if we get into our magical box and disappear?
Does the Memory Machine stay behind after we go?
Does it duplicate or travel with us? The Memory Machine can do so much.
Dallas is a literal genius. Dead people were once alive.
I am a lesbian millennial untapping her possible gender fluidity while wearing a muscle tank in 1893.
Priscilla has the kind of face that poets write sonnets about. How did we ever hate each other?
No. Scratch that.
Does our past matter when our present is constantly rewriting it?
Priscilla steps forward. “That’s so lovely, but we are of such modest talent. I shan’t embarrass my family with such a paltry display of disgrace.” In her quest to land on an appropriate voice for the era, she’s ended up in a space that’s somehow British mixed with a little bit of transatlantic.
“It would be of no embarrassment,” Estelle assures her.
“No embarrassment, you say?” she asks. Only she’s not looking at Estelle. She’s looking at me. “Then we shall perform a scene from Hedda Gabler for you.”
Wilbur does not recognize it. And he wouldn’t, considering when and where we are.
“It was written by our dear friend Henrik Ibsen just”—I pause to calculate—“three short years ago. He is such a talented writer. I would recommend you seek his stories whenever possible.”
“I’m his ex,” Priscilla adds.
This confuses Wilbur, which only compounds the layers of madness, so I say, “It was when he went on sabbatical with Suzannah, his beloved wife. Times were complicated. But let us not dwell!” I give Priscilla a look of warning.
She winks.
Wilbur announces that he intends to gather a humble crowd for our impending performance, which allows me some time to pull aside Priscilla and discuss what part of the play we did our senior year she thinks we can perform now with zero notice.
When we’re alone among the waving wheat, Priscilla informs me that Hedda Gabler is the star of so many of her stress dreams that she rereads the play at least twice a year as a way to mitigate her anxiety.
“Do you remember any of it?” she asks me.
“It’s not about whether I remember it; it’s about whether I can perform it,” I say.
She grabs my shoulders. “You said yourself you think about acting again. What could be a better practice audience than a bunch of dead strangers in 1893?”
I try my best to hold it back, but a smile breaks through. “Let’s do the start of act 3, right after Berta leaves,” I say. “It’s a nice showcase of Hedda and Mrs. Elvsted.”
The Memory Machine is right there. Only a few feet from where we stand.
It would be easy to climb inside and be done with this.
But there’s something even more exciting about the challenge of sticking this out.
Like Estelle said, it would be of no embarrassment.
And Priscilla is right—I will never have a safer test audience than this.
“Do you want to run it before we do this?” I ask Priscilla.
“Of course not,” she says. “Let’s just wing it and see what happens.”
In what world would I ever want to do that?
This one, apparently.
We start the scene. In all my life, and every alternate life that exists alongside it, I never thought I’d have a chance to perform with Priscilla again.
It would be a lie to say the scene goes perfectly. It might even be a lie to say it goes well. It’s me who messes up first, sending us veering toward the land of improvisation way too early, with no destination in sight.
Somehow, a scene where Hedda and Thea discuss how tired Thea is turns into a performance about…
well, frankly, it’s about repressed queer yearning.
But hopefully that’s flying over the heads of our audience of Victorian ghosts.
Or maybe it’s inspiring some of them. There has to be at least one closeted queer person among us.
By the end, Priscilla stalks off into the wheat field with great dramatic flair, her eyes rimmed with tears, her hair mussed from agonized grabbing. I howl at her, yelling something about disappointment, and then I look to the audience and say, “Aaaand scene.”
A few tentative claps start up.
I don’t even mind their lukewarm reception, or the fact that we have desecrated the original text. I’m too buzzy with the thrill of the cat-and-mouse game we just played.
How did I forget this? Performing doesn’t have to be weighty or self-serious. It doesn’t have to change anyone else’s life but my own. It can just be fun. That can be enough.
Priscilla returns to grab my hand for a joint bow, and the applause grows into something respectable.
They liked her better, but I don’t feel a single ounce of jealousy.
She was better. Impulsive and alive and free of reservations.
A true star. She trusted me without question.
She followed me when I led us off script.
She’s the one who made this whole scene work.
“We’re a good team,” she whispers in my ear as the audience continues clapping.
“We are,” I say.
“Now how the hell do we get to a world with our Dallas?” she asks through smiling teeth, initiating yet another bow so the audience is forced to keep applauding, buying us more time to talk. “We sure can’t stick around for more of April 27, 1893.”
My mind has always attached memories to their exact dates.
There’s a running calendar in my head where birthdays and anniversaries and other significant events all gather into their respective positions.
I know that now I will always see ???? and think of Cilla and me in a wheat field in 1893, performing a scene from Hedda Gabler in our street clothes, the kind of personal holiday no one else could ever understand.
“Oh my god,” I say.
“What? What?” Priscilla asks, matching my energy with desperate interest.
“4-2-7-9-3,” I say.
“Is that your phone passcode or something?”
“It’s today’s date. Today here, in the past.”
“Okay…”
“In the last reality, just before Dallas got too choked up to continue talking about Teddy, he mentioned Labor Day weekend. And when does Labor Day usually fall?”
“The first week of September?” Priscilla’s eyes flit back and forth, running the same mental math I’ve just completed. “9-2-9-5! A potential sequence for the padlock!” she says. “Oh my god! Marlowe!”
“We can set an intention to reach September 2, 1995,” I say, getting excited jitters in my hands and feet. “And maybe we can also intend to find our Dallas there?”
Priscilla holds up a stop hand to our still-applauding audience.
“Guys, I’m so sorry, we have to go,” she says.
“We are time travelers. Well, more technically, we’re actually universe hoppers, but we hopped into one that’s also back in time.
It’s a whole thing. If only you had access to the Reddit threads I’ve read.
Whew. Anyway, I don’t know how any of you will ever make sense of this, but we’re about to go through that coffin’s door and disappear forever.
We hope you have a lovely life. Thank you for supporting the arts! ”
“Losers,” I whisper, only loud enough for Priscilla to hear.
She leads me to the Memory Machine by hand. Before we step inside, she turns to look back one last time at the crowd. “Also, we kiss girls. And we love it.”
To really sell it, she kisses me.
“Memory Machine,” I say, “take us to the version of September 2, 1995, that holds our Dallas.”