Echo After Echo

by Amy Rose Capetta

  There it is. The ex-girlfriend, the outing, all at once. Eli can’t always tell how much people guess. How much they assume.

  Zara nods and swallows. The brightness of her cheeks does not escape Eli. Is she embarrassed? Flustered? Does thinking about girls that way, together, make her confused or excited? “Was she pretty?” Zara asks.

  “Sure,” Eli says. “She was pretty and then we broke up.” She doesn’t mean to add more, but she’s terrible at keeping her mouth shut around Zara Evans. “It was a big deal when I moved away from my family, to the city. To be with her. It was for her as much as the work. That’s ridiculous, right?”

  She waits for Zara to agree, but instead Zara shakes her head emphatically.

  “I couldn’t go home after Hannah broke up with me. I loved it here too much. So I asked my family to give me a year to make it work. And to put away money for school. That was always part of the plan. But the thing that made it all harder was Hannah never wanting to see me again. You’d think, in a city this big, it wouldn’t be a problem. But we’d been living together. I worked at her theaters. I hung out with her friends. That was . . .” Eli uses her fingers to scatter imaginary dust. “Gone. I went six months without a gig. I didn’t have anything saved up for school, and I was sneaking into theater classes at NYU just to get that feeling.”

  Now Zara’s nodding. Because here’s the thing: once you start doing theater, it’s impossible to stop. Once you make room for it, there’s this empty, echoing space inside you that absolutely needs to be filled with late-night rehearsals and sweat and motion and lights and people.

  “One of the kids there hooked me up with a bottom-feeder job. Echo and Ariston at an experimental theater. Doing the world’s most heartbreaking play while I lived through my own love-shaped catastrophe. I was crashing with people I didn’t know, sleeping on Ikea futons, living from ramen to ramen. That’s when Roscoe found me.” She still remembers the day she met him. How he showed up at the stage door with his heavy-lidded eyes and his fairy-godmother plan.

  “Light-board operators kept quitting on him,” she says. “But it wasn’t because he was mean. Just hard to figure out. Talking to Roscoe was like learning another language.” Zara cocks her head. More words come out. “I’ve always had to do that. Change how I talk to people. English or Spanish, electrical wiring or artsy art stuff. Queer, not queer.” She cuts her eyes to Zara. “How am I doing with Zara-speak?”

  Zara laughs, looking down at her shoes. “Ummmm.” Her straight brown hair waterfalls over the side of her face. “You’re almost fluent.”

  Eli has always been good with colors, so it’s easy to name the one that quick-blooms inside her: red.

  Bright red.

  “When I was having a hard time with Echo, I would visit her.” She nods up at the statue. “Watch the sunlight move across her body.”

  That wasn’t what Eli meant to say, but Zara doesn’t seem to notice. She stands up and circles the statue. Takes a deep breath — and starts to change. Her chest strains forward, her feet searching out the right places.

  “What are you doing?” Eli asks.

  “Playing the statue game,” Zara says, like it’s a thing everybody knows about. “When I was little, I thought it would turn me into someone else, but only if I got it just right.” Zara checks the statue, makes adjustments. The clenched fist. The proud cast of her mouth. She closes her eyes, because that’s what Echo’s doing.

  Eli lifts a hand and lets it hover for a second. “Is it okay if I . . .” Zara seems to understand, because she gives a tiny nod. Her eyelashes are so dark, her eyelids so delicate. Eli puts a finger to Zara’s chin, tilts it a fraction of an inch. “There.”

  A smile spreads across Zara’s lips. They’re covered in clear gloss, which lets the true color, a brownish pink, shine through. She has a little freckle trapped inside her top lip, just left of center.

  “You’re almost making me like this play again,” Eli says.

  Zara’s eyes snap open. “How can you dislike Echo and Ariston?”

  Eli knows that this play is Zara’s life. But that doesn’t mean she can hold back her own truth. “Look at those waves.” She nods at the water rising to cover the statue girl’s feet.

  “So?” Zara asks, looking full-on betrayed. As if Eli has the power to hurt her that deeply.

  “Why does Echo have to die?” Eli asks, reaching for her Leatherman, stopping just short of flicking the blades. “Because she fell in love with the wrong person? Because she did it on her own terms?” Eli’s hands feel dangerously empty, but playing with knives would be a good way to get kicked out of the museum.

  Zara stays quiet, like maybe Eli asked her something she’s never asked herself before.

  “I don’t hate the play,” Eli admits. “I hate the ending.”

  The next day, costume fittings begin. Cosima dreads this part, because it means she needs to see them up close — the actresses, the ones who remind her.

  The red-haired girl comes into the shop first. Two seasons ago, her hair was dull brown with only a hint of copper, but the girl is trying to make herself stand out. It only makes her harder to dress. She tries to argue about the circumference of her chest, and leaves with a scowl. She has been in plays here since she was a small thing. Cosima knew her name once.

  She has decided not to remember.

  The new girl enters next, a curious bird, her head peeking forward, then tilting. She’s looking at the papers. Cosima’s designs are everywhere in the costume shop, on loose pages in vivid colors of ink. When she draws, it’s as if the characters are coming alive. But the sketches on the tables and the floor are old — leaves shed in some other season.

  Cosima has a difficult time getting rid of things.

  The new girl alights on the edge of the table, which is covered in thick, pale wood for drafting and cutting and tacking down pins. “We met at the read-through,” the girl says. “I’m Zara Eva —”

  “Arms out,” Cosima says. Her voice used to be soft — she remembers that. But she doesn’t care if it seems harsh now.

  Better this way.

  She takes the measurements — around the bust, the waist. Bad numbers mean costumes that sag or pinch. Bad costumes mean a show that no one believes in. A show that no one believes in means that the one thing Cosima still cares about is ripped away.

  Around the hips now.

  She cannot help but notice how broad this girl is, how soft. It sets a small fear to flaming in her chest.

  There was another girl, years ago. A girl like family. That is what people do in this place, in theaters. They choose who to call their own.

  Hat size next. For this girl, who is playing the lead, Cosima takes twelve extra measurements. Echo’s costumes must be perfect above all others. If a button is out of place, Leopold Henneman will smell it.

  Cosima summons fabrics from all corners of the room and drapes them around the girl. She tries Mediterranean-blue chiffon and the white organza that Leopold demanded. She adds gold braid and flicks it away. Black makes the girl look sallow — what to use for the death scene? Deepest purple? Yes, that will complement the ocean water.

  The girl watches Cosima work with too much admiration. Against all of her rules, a warning leaps out.

  “You look wrong,” Cosima says.

  She drops the fabric on the table. The girl is left standing in her blue underwear with the minuscule border of lace. She doesn’t clutch to cover herself. The bird-girl stays perfectly still.

  Her bones will prove brittle. Easily snapped.

  Even though they’re alone in the shop, Cosima waits until her work brings her close to the girl’s ear to mutter, “He says that you are beautiful. He says everyone will love you. Don’t listen.”

  This actress has eyes that are wide and ever growing. Her lashes are dark and long, the perfect accent to her emotions.

  That, too, is just like Vivi.

  That name, that name. Cosima hasn’t gotten rid of it, even tho
ugh she should. She picks it up, turns it around in her mind. Puts it back in a drawer, like some pretty fabric that will never be used again.

  The girl in front of Cosima swallows, a lump trailing down her long throat. Cosima has measured it — she knows how many inches from the point of the chin to the soft hollow between the bones.

  The girl stands up and pulls on her clothes, looking as if she wants to stay awhile. Even Cosima’s assistants know they are not welcome in the shop. Not during this play. But this girl is new.

  Cosima calls her back for one final measurement.

  She takes hold of some muslin and slings it over the girl’s shoulder, and when it’s in just the right place, she stabs it with a pin. A thin line of silver, through fabric and skin, to keep her from getting too comfortable.

  The second week of rehearsals starts, and Zara can’t look away from Leopold.

  He moves through the studio as if he is on a mission to find all the air in the room and breathe it before anyone else can. He wears a gray suit, which feels strangely formal for the rehearsal process, but Zara has seen him in it so often that by now she has a hard time imagining him in anything else.

  He smiles at her. There is nothing in the rest of his face or body that agrees with the smile.

  “Shall we?” he asks.

  Zara walks away from Carl and Enna, the actors playing Echo’s father and mother. Today is a family rehearsal. On the floor, red tape outlines a space the same size and shape as the one they’ll have to work with onstage.

  Red tape spells out Echo’s home.

  The stage manager measured and laid out the tape before rehearsal. She sits patiently now, taking notes. Meg is next to her, watching Zara’s every move.

  Zara shakes out her shoulders, trying to rid herself of the worries that are piling up, making this worse. She feels the ghost of Leopold’s hands on her waist. His voice, telling her again. All she has to do is get through a blocking scene. She closes her eyes and tries to find neutral. But neutral isn’t enough anymore. She has to find Echo, the way she did with Eli at the Met.

  You are not Zara Evans.

  Enna flutters from Carl’s side to the edge of the red tape. Echo’s mother is a nervous, ragged butterfly in a dress that looks more like a dirty nightgown. Carl tosses out Echo’s cue and she starts across the hardwood floor.

  Leopold rushes to cut her off. He blocks her path with his body. “Walk,” he says.

  Zara can’t.

  Leopold flourishes both palms, inviting her. “Walk.”

  Zara takes a step, her chin up, stride deliberate. Leopold doesn’t budge. Zara catches herself a few inches from him, holding her entire body like a breath.

  “Why aren’t you walking?” he asks.

  Anger charges her in a sudden wave. Zara pushes into him. It’s a mess of sweat and muscles. “This is Echo,” Leopold says. “Stopped by her parents at every turn. Trapped but fighting.”

  Zara knows this feeling — what it means to be stuck in a small box that someone else labeled home. She never even tried to tell her parents about that kiss at the Peter Pan cast party. Maybe not the kiss, specifically, but what it meant. She could see how they would react as if it were already happening. They would nod and look at her with thin, concerned mouths. They wouldn’t push her out of their red-tape-defined home. They would continue to love her, of course. But it would be one more thing they couldn’t get their minds around, mostly because they wouldn’t try.

  Like theater.

  Like abandoning her senior year of high school.

  Zara can’t even think about going back to their tiny world without suffocating.

  In a final rush, she breaks past Leopold and into the red-tape box with Carl and Enna. Panting. Pushing. Alive in her own body.

  “Yes!” Leopold says. But the approval is gone in a blink. “Now. We can’t have every entrance take this long to block, can we?” He snatches the small victory away from Zara so fast that it makes her dizzy.

  “You know how little time we have to rehearse,” he says in a voice that is louder, meant for all the actors, not just her this time. “That means we must push against our own boundaries. Safety is not a word that has a place here. Life is not safe, therefore our theater cannot be.”

  Meg is looking at Zara exclusively. Enna is staring out the window as if she’s seeing something other than the skyline. Carl is staring at Enna.

  The scene moves on.

  Zara may need Leopold to teach her how to walk, but at least she can show him how well she knows her lines. These are the same words that carried her away from the too-small box she was raised in. They wrenched the world open. Wrenched her open. “I have done your bidding these many —”

  “That sounds memorized.” Leopold treats the word like mouthwash, rolling it around, spitting it out.

  Zara doesn’t know what to say. “. . . It is memorized.”

  Leopold throws his hands into the air. He waves at Meg, who rushes to fill in the charged silence. “Echo doesn’t know what she’s going to say until the moment she says it. She’s not reciting lines. You have to feel what she’s feeling first, and let that lead you to the words.”

  Meg is so precise, so prompt, that it slows Zara’s runaway heartbeat. “Okay,” she says.

  Zara goes back to her mark and starts again, not even waiting for a nod from Leopold. She’s going to show him how well she understands. Zara doesn’t have to reach far to find a girl who knows love is important enough that she’s willing to trade her life for it. It’s always there, just under the surface of her minutes, her days. She’s wanted to fall in love like that ever since she found this play. Or maybe the wanting came first, and the words gave it form.

  “I have done your bidding these many years,

  But this I will not do.”

  The scene speeds on and soon Zara forgets that she’s in a studio, forgets that she’s in a play. She lets herself think — maybe this is it. The moment when she turns from a normal girl into a true actress.

  And that’s when Leopold takes her by the wrists and guides her gently to the floor. He doesn’t hurt her — he doesn’t push. Still, he makes it clear that he wants her to lie down, and then he sets his own body over hers so that it blocks out the lights coming from above. Zara doesn’t know what to feel, so she doesn’t feel anything.

  “Yes,” he mutters. “This should work.”

  He gets up. Zara waits there — afraid to move, afraid to stay.

  Leopold snaps his fingers at Carl and then points to Zara.

  Carl doesn’t budge. From her strange angle on the floor, Zara can see him cross his arms. “Is this really —”

  “Necessary?” Leopold asks. “Yes. I need you to help a fellow actor.”

  Carl frowns as he takes Leopold’s place. His body is even larger than Leopold’s, and his face looms over hers like an eclipse. She can see his stubble, a hundred tiny points of darkness. There is a minty aftershave layered over the harsh smell of his body, which is covered in the kind of sweat that comes from rehearsal. From exertion.

  “Lower,” Leopold says. “Get close to her.”

  Carl holds himself over Zara. She wants to close her eyes, but she knows that Leopold will take it as a sign of weakness. She wants to scream, or stop breathing. But that’s what an amateur would do.

  That would get Zara sent back to her red-tape box.

  Home.

  It would help if Carl looked at Zara instead of focusing his livid blue eyes on a point just to the left of her face. It might help if she felt like they were in this together. Actors working on a scene. If she could find some connection there, it might feel safe. But then she remembers that it’s not supposed to feel safe. That’s the whole point.

  Leopold crouches down next to Zara’s head. He drops his voice low. “Now you are trapped. Say the lines again.”

  “I have done your bidding these many years,

  But this I will not do.”

  Carl’s body over hers changes
how the words come out of her mouth. There are only two choices. When she stays perfectly still, she feels panicked and desperate. When she moves, Carl moves to contain her. Cages her body with his. Zara’s voice fractures and then builds into strength.

  “I have no reason to stay here

  And a world of reasons to go.”

  The emotions coming out of her are strong and true. With a tight ball of sickness at the back of her throat, Zara realizes — Leopold’s technique worked.

  Enna pulls the ingenue aside after rehearsal.

  The hallway outside the studio smells like feet and chalk — has always smelled like feet and chalk. It’s one of Enna’s least favorite parts of the Aurelia, tucked in the back, one floor up from the theater offices. Every time the elevator carries her past those offices, a reminder prickles. Theater is a business. And she’s not young or fresh or bankable anymore.

  “We should talk,” Enna says to the ingenue. Her grip on the girl’s arm might not be strong, but it is commanding.

  The ingenue looks up at her with an enormous stare. She still appears to be shaken by what happened in the studio. By the weight of the director and Enna’s ex-husband. Or perhaps she is just shaken in general. Enna remembers her first production at the Aurelia. Hamlet. Ophelia. It felt like every time she took a step, every time she spoke, the world was about to tremble and change.

  By the time she played Gertrude, twenty years later, it was a very different story.

  Enna sizes the girl up and finds only one real mark against her. “Do people really think those are pants?” she asks, pointing to the stretchy black things on Zara’s legs.

  “You’re wearing a nightgown,” the girl answers, a touch too quickly.