Telma had been practicing, you could hear her through her closed bedroom door, and all through the house. Gwen would stop whatever she was doing and listen, and it was nightmarish, almost more than she could bear.
Smile tho yr
is aching
☺ even tho it’s breaking…
Where was Phoebe? She called to say she was stuck in traffic, but that was half an hour ago. She didn’t know how much more she could endure—————————
. .
Mother and daughter in the kitchen. Telma starving, ladling peanut butter & jelly onto rye bread, her favorite. Bag of giant marshmallows out, her favorite. A big bowl of Hawaiian Sweet Maui onion chips, her favorite. Big open thermos of crushed ice/pink lemonade, her favorite.
She was going to sing Smile for her mom but since Phoebe was coming (supposedly) she decides to wait.
Picks up Gwen’s energy.
“Mom, are you having problems?”
Gwen says no but her denials are becoming frayed. Old soul Telma continues to be respectful, thinking it’s to do with Daddy, they’re right around the anni of his death, so she leaves it alone. The child is the mother of the woman.
And all that.
Telephone rings.
Gwen grabs it, certain Phoebe’s calling with another update from LA traffic hell. Hoping she’ll say she was in a wreck: engine blew up, hit a pedestrian, got shot by a road rager — anything but “Be there soon.”
But it isn’t Phoebe, it’s Jesselle, the gal who’s coordinating talent for the Courage Ball…
Right then something occurs to her that is so obvious, so blatant, it unhinges. How could she have even entertained having The Conversation with her daughter before, before the Courage Ball? The recklessness of it, the lack of a sensible, coordinated plan, the flight from rational was suddenly disturbing, mostly because Phoebe hadn’t come to the same glaring conclusion independently; it was a terrible idea, cruel and unworkable, and Phoebe should have shot it down the moment Gwen voiced it. The woman she was desperately relying on was in way over her personal & professional head. Gwen shivered with the cosmic aloneness of her realization; no cavalry to her calvary would come.
Telma made a joyous leap toward the phone, pressing SPEAKER.
“Hi Jesselle!!!!!!!”
“Is that my Telma-girl?”
“Queen Telma speaking.” (A not-so-great English accent)
“Hello Your Highness! Hello Gwen.”
“Hi Jesselle.”
“You know I always have to say hello to Her Highness first, that’s the protocol. Now, you can’t see it, Telma, but I curtsied too, same as I would to Queen Elizabeth.”
“You better,” said Telma comically. “I can’t see it but my knaves are there, & they report back to me.”
“You’re scaring me! Gwen, she’s scaring me! I want my Telma-girl back!”
“Jesselle,” said Telma. “When are we going to have dress rehearsal at the hotel?”
“Well that’s one of the reasons I’m calling, guys. Sweetheart, you’re not going to be too happy with me, but we need you to sing another song.”
“Why?” (Crestfallen not hopeless — yet)
“You’re doing ‘Smile,’ aren’t you?”
“You know I am.”
“Jesselle, what’s going on?”
“Our problem is that ‘Smile’ is the only song the little girl Aleisha knows.”
“She’s not even supposed to be singing!” said Telma.
“I know, I know, darling, but she sang ‘Smile’ for Marcy and now Marcy insists that she sing it at the gala.”
“But that isn’t fair!”
“I know it isn’t, baby. I know.”
“Darling,” said Gwen. “Can’t you sing ‘Over the Rainbow’?”
“‘Over the Rainbow’ isn’t ready, Mama! And I sing ‘Smile’ so much better, you know I do! Tobey Maguire & Mrs. Biden sent me flowers. People brought bouquets to the stage. They never did that for ‘Over the Rainbow’—”
“Honey,” said Jesselle. “You are a rockstar. ‘Over the Rainbow’ is so much more of a big person song. There’s still a few days, you can nail it.”
“Of course she can.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” said Gwen.
In the last handful of years, cheering Telma to walk on with hope in her heart had become an involuntary reflex. But now, the sickening absurdity of it hit Gwen hard. Here she was, dreaming the impossible dream, tilting at (nonfatal) cancerous windmills for her baby, grotesquely dreaming of permanent remission — a remission at least from something! Willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause…
To right the unrightable wrong—
“Jesselle, we’ll work this out. Telma will steal the show like she always does. We’ll regroup. She just wasn’t expecting it.”
Hearing her own voice ground Gwen down.
A Judas mom, leading her only one to slaughter…
“Your mother’s right, Telma, listen to her. You always steal the show. Gwen, can you take me off speaker?”
Gwen held the phone to her ear and listened, saying nothing. Then, “Oh,” “Uh huh,” “OK,” “That’s definite?”
The doorbell rang.
“Uh huh… OK right, yes, I’ll convey that. But I have to go now, we have company.”
She hung up and opened the door. Phoebe stood there like the priest in The Exorcist. Instead of the usual effusive greeting, Telma ignored her, still in process.
“Mama, what did Jesselle say?”
“Nothing.”
“Is what definite? Is what definite?”
Phoebe didn’t interfere; she could see she’d walked into a little tempest that need be take its course.
“Not now, Telma—”
“What did she say, what did she say!”
“She said that — that Aleisha — the little girl — she said that the little girl was going to be the last performer, that Marcy wanted her to go on last. That you had to sing before.”
Telma blinked at her mother like a robot on the fritz.
That was when she gave Phoebe a proper if stormy greeting, running tearfully into her arms.
~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
Evening is the time of the merging of Man and Woman: the Unknowable