A Borrowed Life

by Kerry Anne King

“Yes, you, young lady. And, Lance, why don’t you get yourself up here since you’re an old hand at this. Not that I’m calling you old, mind, har har.”

  The man behind me gets to his feet. Bernie whistles, and he turns toward her and bows, laughing, then skips the stairs and vaults up onto the stage.

  I squeeze Val’s hand. “Go on. They’re waiting.”

  “I can’t. I’m literally paralyzed.” Her face beneath her makeup has gone white, her eyes are wide. I have a spark of fear that she’s going to tip over sideways and I’ll be compelled to try another round of fruitless CPR.

  “Well?” Bill calls down. “Are you here to audition, or is this a spectator sport?”

  “Yes. I—I just don’t want to go first.”

  “Fair enough.” His eyes slide over Val and rest on me. “I guess you’re up. What’s your name?”

  “This is Liz,” Val supplies when I don’t answer.

  I gaze up at him in dismay. I can’t say no right after Val. Everybody is staring my way. Lance grins at me conspiratorially as if the two of us share a secret.

  “Don’t be shy,” Bill booms. “We’re all friends here. Come on up.”

  “Well, go on.” Val’s face is a study in innocence, but I have my doubts. This is not her first encounter with this theater crowd, and I suspect she knew exactly how this was going to play out.

  “You and I are going to have a long talk later,” I whisper.

  She laughs. “Go on. You’ll be great.”

  It’s just an audition, I tell myself. I’m not going to actually get or take a part. Tomorrow I’ll go back to my regularly scheduled life. I feel a shift and transformation as I climb the steps. My spine straightens, my head comes up. I feel my gait smooth and lengthen into a forgotten confidence.

  Lance meets me at center stage, and reaches out to shake my hand. “Welcome to bedlam.”

  Up close, his eyes are blue. His hand is warm, calloused, and he shakes mine with conviction, as if I’m an equal.

  “Okay, you two, let’s get started.” Bill hands us each a dog-eared script, open to act 1, scene 2. “Take a minute to scan the lines and start when you’re ready.”

  I feel like I’ve developed super senses. I hear the once-familiar rustling and whispering from the theater seats. The buzz of overhead lights. Bill is in my peripheral vision, just off to my right.

  “Ready?” Lance asks.

  I glance up from the paper. He’s relaxed, easy, and I nod.

  Let’s get this over with, Elizabeth says.

  Bring it on, I’m ready, Inner Liz counters.

  Lance takes a step toward me, bringing him inside my comfort bubble, front and center and dominating my senses. Bill fades from my peripheral vision. My awareness of whispers and buzzing lights goes with him. I breathe in the scent of clean sweat and fabric softener and a hint of cologne. My eyes travel up from the page and encounter a broad chest, the shirt open at the collar revealing a sunbrowned neck. His eyes gaze into mine with an intensity that flutters my breath and brings blood rushing to my cheeks. An almost-forgotten sensation whispers awake, low in my belly.

  Guilt follows hard on its heels, and I twist the wedding band on my finger. What is wrong with me? I should not be feeling this, not toward a stranger, not so soon after Thomas’s death. It’s not proper.

  “I don’t see what propriety has to do with anything,” Lance says, his voice passionate, intense.

  My eyes widen. My lips part. It’s as if he’s read my mind, and I’m desperately searching for something to say when he continues, “We’re here now. We’ve met. Neither one of us is getting any younger.”

  All of the breath leaves my body in a sharp exhale of relief and embarrassment. I am an idiot. He is only reading lines from the play. I take a small step back and put a hand over my heart.

  “Are you telling me I’m old?”

  “You’re not young.”

  “And you’re an ass.” I turn half away from him, take a step to the side. He intercepts me, puts a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Lacey. Don’t be that way. I’m only saying—”

  “What? Please. Enlighten me.” I infuse years of pent-up sarcasm into my voice.

  Lance’s tone shifts to pleading. “Don’t be like that. I’m saying that you will be old. Someday. And maybe you’ll wish, when you’re rocking in a nursing home chair, that you’d said yes to something. Anything.” Lance takes a step closer so we are separated by no more than a breath. My eyes are drawn up again to meet his. “Say yes to me. That’s a start.”

  I can see the dark stubble of whiskers along his jaw, a shaving nick on his chin. Can feel his breath on my face, warm, coffee scented. His eyes have tiny flecks of amber mixed into the blue, and they look startled, as if something about me has surprised him.

  The moment shatters in a burst of applause.

  “Nicely done, Lacey,” Lance says, bowing. He swings down off the stage with a flair, once again bypassing the stairs, to applause from the seats below.

  Acting. It was all just acting. So why are my knees trembling, and why can’t I catch my breath? I manage to make it down the stairs and back to the safety of my seat. Val hugs me, laughing. “That was amazing! How am I supposed to follow that performance? Fess up. You’ve been in plays before!”

  “It’s been so long, Val. In another life.”

  “Total chemistry between you two,” Tara says. “That was awesome!”

  “Will it burn if we touch you?” Bernie reaches behind Val and Tara and pokes at my shoulder, then shakes her fingers while making sizzling noises.

  I press my palms against my hot cheeks, embarrassed but exhilarated, loving the easy camaraderie.

  “You ready now, Val?” Bill booms from the stage.

  “After that? Totally wishing I’d gone first.” But she gets up, laughing, and takes center stage together with a soft-bellied, balding guy named Geoff.

  Val does well, although Geoff stumbles over his lines and has nowhere near the stage presence of Lance. When everybody has had a chance to read, Bill leads us through some choral singing and simple choreography. All of it is familiar, easy, except for my husband’s voice, which is ever present in my head.

  “You don’t belong here, Elizabeth. This is not the Lord’s work.”

  Just this one time, I answer back, over and over. Just tonight.

  “Ladies, gentleman,” Bill says when the last notes of music fade away. “That is it for tonight’s festivities. Thank you for coming out to audition. Parts will be listed on the website by Saturday night. If you don’t get a role, please help us out backstage. We can use everybody somewhere.”

  Outside it’s cold and moving into dark, the last colors of sunset vivid in the west. It feels like it’s going to freeze tonight. I get in the car, snuggling into my jacket.

  “You were so awesome!” Val says, starting the engine and turning up the heat. “You are totally landing a role!”

  “And you set me up! You knew they’d ask me to audition.”

  She giggles. “I can neither confirm nor deny the truth of that allegation.”

  “Look, Val. I see what you’re trying to do. It was fun. But you know I can’t really be in the play.”

  “You can if you want to.”

  I feel tired, all at once, all of the excitement evaporating and leaving me with the heaviness of my same old life.

  “The rehearsal schedule is impossible. To run off for one night is one thing. But it’s not just the knitting circle. There’s the women’s prayer meeting, and the nursing home singing group, and hospital visitation, and—”

  “Do you really like doing all that shit?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I like.”

  I watch the colors leach out of the sky as night rolls in. My time to play around with theater is over and gone. I’m not Lacey, the character in the play, shaking up her world by saying yes to everything. If there was a time to break out of this life I’m living, I missed the turnoff. It’s too late for
me.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday morning, Val shows up at my door with fresh doughnuts, lattes, and another plan.

  “Let’s go shopping,” she says, licking sugar off her fingers.

  I know she doesn’t mean groceries. I also know she hasn’t given up on dragging me into the theater production. My mouth is full, and I chew slowly, following it up with a swallow of coffee to buy me time for the right response.

  “Not in the budget,” I say.

  “Come on, Liz,” Val persists. “We’re not talking a complete new wardrobe. You need a pair of jeans. A new shirt. How long has it been since you bought something for yourself just because?”

  Temptation stirs.

  “Beware vanity,” Thomas warns. “You have plenty of clothes.”

  A visual of his closet jolts me. The row of quality suits. The multiple pairs of mirror-gloss shoes. “I represent God,” he’d said once when I remonstrated about the price of a shirt and tie. “It’s important to look my best.”

  My job was to represent humility and sacrifice, to look neat and practical but never beautiful. I have two pairs of perfectly serviceable shoes and a wardrobe designed to mix and match, all in sober shades of brown, gray, and black. All boring. All old.

  I feel my inner Liz stir and perk up her ears at the idea of buying new clothes. The audition caper woke her up, and she’s been restless ever since. Let’s do it, she whispers. Every woman deserves new clothes once in a while.

  The truth is that our house and car are paid for, and I have no other debt. With the widow pension I get from Social Security, along with the funds from a life insurance policy Thomas bought years ago, I’ve been able to pay all of my bills and put a little bit aside. The only reason clothes aren’t in the budget is because they’ve never been in the budget.

  “All right,” I hear myself saying, shocked at my own words. “Let’s go shopping.”

  “This is one time I wish we lived in Spokane,” Val laments as soon as she gets me in the car. “Our choices here are so limited.”

  “Our choices here are Walmart. And no, I am not letting you drag me off to Spokane.”

  “Fine. But we are not going to Walmart, either.” She drives into the parking lot of North 40, and I stare at her, confused.

  “Are we buying farming supplies?”

  “Oh my God! You’ve never even been in here. Come on.” She drags me into the store, and I’m surprised to discover jeans, shirts, even a few casual dresses hanging on racks at the far end of the store.

  I don’t know what size I am, but Val looks me over, grabs up an armful of jeans and shirts, and herds me into a changing room.

  A few minutes later, I’m looking in the mirror at a woman who resembles the long-ago Liz more than I ever thought possible. Faded jeans rest low on my hips, paired with a soft plaid shirt, open at the throat, rolled up at the cuffs. My fingers reach to fasten the top button, but Val pulls my hands away. “Even you are allowed to reveal your throat. Well, what do you think?”

  “You look like a floozy, Elizabeth.”

  It’s growing increasingly easy to ignore Thomas’s commentary.

  I don’t look like a floozy at all. I look . . . free. Unfettered. About twenty years younger.

  “I can’t possibly wear this,” I say, but I can’t take my eyes off my image in the mirror.

  “You keep saying that. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

  We both laugh, and then Val says, “Either you buy these, or I’m buying them for you. You need a change.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “People wear jeans, Liz. Even that Earlene woman from your church wears jeans.”

  “Not this kind of jeans.”

  “You want mom jeans? I mean, you could, but you don’t need to. You have a body people twenty years younger would be happy for.”

  The woman in the mirror looks alive, awake. Inner Liz has become Outer Liz. The thought of changing back into my skirt and blouse fills me with loathing and a hot rebellion. I don’t want to lose that self again.

  “Can I wear this home?”

  “Of course you can! People do it all the time.”

  I buy two pairs of jeans. The plaid shirt and another flowered one. Two T-shirts.

  When we walk out of the store, I feel different. Stronger, more adventurous. When Val suggests a detour into the hair salon right next door, I agree to that, too. I let the stylist chop my hair off so that it just grazes my shoulders.

  “Feels good, right?” Val asks in the car.

  I run my fingers through my silky new curls. My head feels so light, like I might float up out of my seat if the belt weren’t anchoring me.

  “It’s not about what I love. It’s about—”

  “Duty and sacrifice and self-immolation. Only it’s not, Liz. You don’t have to do any of that shit if you don’t want to.”

  I shift in my seat and study her profile. I know she works long hours, that the ends barely meet. This car is probably twenty years old. But she seems so fully alive, so very much Val. As if she knows who she is and is happy being that woman.

  “What’s your story?” I ask, breaking my rule of never pushing into other people’s business.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You sound like you know something about duty and sacrifice.”

  Val grimaces. “Oh, that. Yeah. When I was young, I married a guy who believed he was the center of the universe. He didn’t think much of women. All the clichés. Come when I call, do what I tell you, and don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

  “And?”

  “Oh—I left him. I was tired of him giving me something to cry about. And Lenny was in the middle of it. One day, when he was about four, my sweet little boy looked up at me with his chubby cheeks and his innocent face and said, ‘Give me a cookie now, woman. Or else.’ His father laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. But I cried. I could see the kind of man Lenny was going to be if I stayed. I packed us both up, moved us out. I couldn’t get full custody, but I did what I could, and the boy respects me. And now he respects his wife.”

  I’m silent, absorbing this.

  Val shoots me a sideways glance. “I know your church isn’t big on divorce. I hope you don’t think less of me.”

  “Val! Of course not.”

  “I’ve overheard some of your friends and what they think of me.” A tinge of bitterness darkens her tone.

  “They are not my friends. Honestly? I was just thinking how strong you are, and how much I admire you.”

  “You? Admire me? That’s crazy, Liz. I’m a nobody.”

  A strong, resilient nobody. Thomas preached against divorce, exhorting women to stand by their men and their marriages because it was the godly thing to do. So many weeping women came to him for guidance, some with black eyes and swollen lips. He sent them home to their husbands, advising them to pray for a better marriage. I disagreed with him, willed them to run away, far and fast. But I said nothing. Did nothing.

  What would my relationship with Abigail be like if I’d walked away from my marriage? Would she have grown to respect me? Or would we be worse off than we already are?

  As if I’ve somehow summoned her, Abigail’s car is parked in the driveway. A rush of joy shifts immediately to dark foreboding. She calls nearly every day to check on me, to ask how I am eating and about my health, but I haven’t seen her in a month.

  “Think about the play,” Val calls after me as I run toward the house. I wave, but my mind is on anything but a drama production. Abigail here, today, means something terrible has happened.

  Chapter Seven

  I burst through the door with words already escaping my lips.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  My eyes scan my daughter, looking for the hurt. She’s too thin, but then, she always has been. Her hair, darker than mine, is neatly braided as usual. She looks tired, but other than that, I don’t see a mark on her. W
hile I’m looking her over, she’s also assessing me. Her lips tighten in disapproval.

  “You’ve changed your hair.”

  I touch a guilty hand to my head. “You like?”

  “I liked it the old way. Where have you been?”

  “Getting my hair cut.” I turn away to hide my hurt at her criticism and the defensive anger that rises with it, setting down my shopping bags in the hope she won’t ask to see what’s in them. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have been here. Did your schedule shift? I thought you were working this weekend.”

  Abigail has been cleaning. The afghan I left rumpled on the couch is precisely folded. My novel has disappeared, along with all evidence of doughnuts and latte cups. And the ugly vase that I tucked into the corner of the bookcase has been moved back to its place at the precise center of the coffee table.

  More criticism, but at least of the silent variety. I wait for her to tell me why she is here, but she maintains her silence, and I finally am the one to break it. “What’s going on? How long are you staying?”

  “Earlene called. She was worried.”

  “You came to check on me because of Earlene?” Laughter bubbles up but fizzles out before it reaches my lips. Thursday evening. Auditions. The abandoned knitting circle. “Oh, honey. I’m perfectly fine. You know how Earlene is.”

  “In this case, she seems to have a point.”

  “Really? Enlighten me.”

  Inner Liz is closer to the surface than she used to be, and I turn to face my daughter, long-dormant defiance stiffening my spine. I can pretty much guess what is about to come. She’ll lead off with one of her father’s favorites, consorting with unbelievers, followed by commentary on my hair and my inappropriate new clothes, and end with my irresponsible behavior around the knitting circle.

  Abigail hesitates, which is completely unlike her, and I brace myself. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it won’t be the usual lecture at all, but something worse, something I can’t see coming.

  “There are pickles in the refrigerator,” she says in a scathing tone.

  “Earlene called you about pickles?” I was prepared to defend myself, but I’m disarmed by bewilderment.