The Lavender List

by Meg Harrington

  Everyone involved with the play tells her she’s gonna be a star. They push her into interviews meant for the lead and try to book her on the radio. It’s all so hurried, different, and new, and she forgets.

  One day, she realizes it’s been two days since she thought about Laura.

  It happens to be at a Sunday family dinner when she’s stepped out into the front garden for a smoke. She can see the family through the window, and they all look so happy. Picturesque. She’s out between a tree and a lamppost, and there’s a nice breeze making its way off the water a half mile away.

  She thinks Laura would have liked it. She would have sat on the bench with her ankles crossed and leaned back to take a gander at the sky. Amelia would have stared at the long exposed expanse of Laura’s neck, and it would have been just about the most content Amelia could have ever been.

  She sits on the bench alone, and it’s cold enough to send a chill up her backside.

  Her uncle comes out after a while, and when he sits next to her it’s with a little grunt. As if he’s old, and the sitting on a hard concrete bench takes it out of him.

  He lights his own cigar and offers her one wordlessly. He’s never done that before. Cigars are supposed to be for the fellas.

  But she puts out her cigarette and takes it. Lets him light it with a match. The flames flicker, and the skin of his hand has never looked so old.

  They puff on their cigars in silence. Music from the house filters out, but it’s too soft to hum to.

  “I hear your play is going well.”

  “It’s not going well until we open and get a few good reviews, but yeah, people seem excited.”

  “Your ma says it’s the only thing you’re cheerful about.”

  She tries to blow a smoke ring, but it comes out all wrong.

  “I take it you haven’t told her why you’ve been upset.”

  “And from this nice uncle act, I’m guessing you know?”

  He nods. The smoke ring he blows is perfect. “I was sorry to hear it too.”

  She chuckles because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Yeah,” she says. “That makes two of us.”

  “You know, the day of the fire, she came by my house? Wanted me to ‘protect’ you. Insisted on it.”

  Cigars taste different than cigarettes. The smoke’s heavier, and it settles around her head like a thick fog.

  “I never really understood your… predilections, but that woman? She loved you enough that I don’t think I have to.”

  Sort of like that knot in the back of her throat. Maybe it never left. Maybe it just grew a little looser every day until she learned to live with the ache.

  But now, it’s insistent and painful, and Amelia’s hand flies to her mouth to keep it all in. Her uncle’s arm comes around her shoulders and pulls her close, and the knot’s so tight, it almost chokes her.

  She cries, and it’s hot and shameful and does nothing to fix the hurt.

  “It’s okay,” her uncle says. He presses a gentle kiss to her temple. “You’ll learn to live with it.”

  “When?”

  She can see his ring on his finger. She never knew the woman he wears it for. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

  It’ll never be okay.

  Amelia learns to live with that knot.

  But the night her play opens, they get a standing ovation, and she gets a cheer bigger than the leads. They smile and pull her forward to bask in the glow of all that praise.

  She can’t see much with the lights shining in her eyes, but she thinks she sees Laura in the back of the crowd. Smiling as if she never died. Beaming with pride that’s balanced only by the melancholy of distance.

  And Amelia bows, and when she rights herself the visage is gone.

  The knot in her throat doesn’t hurt so bad.

  The knot in her throat never leaves.

  CHAPTER 14

  Six years later

  Amelia’s sitting on a bench that cost more than a month’s rent at the Sebastian and staring into a mirror with an honest-to-God gilded frame. Her hair’s done up. Years on Broadway has her able to do a twist without thinking.

  Classy. That’s what the rags call it. Especially paired with all the pearls and sapphires and satin gowns.

  Classy Amelia Maldonado. Only they don’t call her that anymore.

  She got the call from Hollywood, and the suits—dressed just as fancy as those fellows who’d once tried to kill her—told her to lighten her hair and wear more powder to cover her “tan” and change her name to something less “ethnic.” She thought of Laura again. All WASP and reserved and a “right bastard” if ever there was one.

  “Amelia Wright,” she said immediately.

  So now, she is Amelia Wright, and she’s getting ready for a big movie premiere. Her first since that Oscar three months ago.

  Someone knocks on the door. It’s Tab, the good looking kid they said she needs on her arm for the premiere.

  “People will talk,” her agent said very politely.

  “They’ll think you’re queer,” the studio suit said, not so politely.

  So, she steps out into the hall of the hotel with Tab on her arm and smiles.

  “You ready, Miss Wright?”

  After pistols and tommy guns aimed at her head, flash bulbs and screaming fans are a piece of cake. Amelia walks the red carpet real smooth, signing autographs and gamely tackling questions.

  The epitome of grace.

  Until she sees a face in the crowd. Standing in a throng of teens and housewives. Red dress that brings out the brassiness of her blonde hair and pairs like a good wine with the unfashionable tan on her skin. Red lips, too. Painted red lips curled up into a smile.

  Laura.

  She shakes her head. Focuses on the person with the pen and pad in front of her. Someone asks when she and Tab are getting married. He blushes, and she laughs.

  It’s a cultured laugh.

  She learned that when she came to Hollywood. “This isn’t the sticks.” As if Broadway and her Tony award were all done in some barn in Pennsylvania. “It’s the real thing, Wright. So laugh again.”

  She did. She laughed. She cried. She worked with diction coaches who worked the New York out of her like wrinkles in a dress.

  A fan thrusts an autograph pad in her face, and she signs. Again, she sees Laura, this time talking to a cop at the edge of the red carpet.

  Again Amelia shakes her head.

  “Maybe,” she says to the next kid who asks if she’s getting married.

  At the end of the red carpet, Laura—who can’t be there—smiles as if she heard what Amelia said.

  Tab takes her by the elbow. “You okay,” he asks. His breath smells like cigarettes.

  “Fine.”

  “We’re almost through.” He has to lean down to say it into her ear. Can’t let the cameras catch it. They can read lips if they want to.

  America’s embroiled in a non-war with the USSR, and it’d be done in half a day if they put entertainment rags on the case.

  They go inside, and there she is again, climbing the staircase. No one else must see her. No one’s saying anything. No one’s gasping and pointing.

  “There’s a lady war hero!”

  “A spy!”

  “Supposed to be dead!”

  “She went down on Amelia Wright for twenty minutes and didn’t even stop for air!”

  Nothing.

  As if Laura’s a ghost. Haunting Amelia all alone.

  Someone takes her hand and pumps it up and down as if water’s gonna spout out of her mouth, and she has to smile and be gracious.

  The way to their seats takes at least an hour. There’s pause after pause. Smiles and jokes and never letti
ng her voice get too loud. They don’t like it when she’s loud. “Makes you sound coarse.”

  She’ll show ’em coarse.

  Tab smiles, too.

  And glances at her.

  A lot.

  Usually when she thinks she sees Laura moving through the crowd.

  When they’re finally settling into their seats, he speaks to her, his voice is real low. “What’s going on with you?”

  “That new war picture they’re hot to have me in.”

  “That French Resistance flick,” he asks, surprised. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

  It’s gotta be.

  Now that she’s said it, it makes sense.

  They want her playing a gross caricature of a woman she loved. So, she’s seeing her ghost.

  Some kind of guilt thing.

  Like a heart beatin’ under the floorboards.

  “It’s an awful script,” she says.

  “But this one’s good, right?” He means the premiere. It’s a western. Her obligatory one.

  “Yeah.” She pats his knee and smiles.

  A quarter of the way through the movie, someone starts coughing, and it isn’t the good kind.

  The good kind is phlegm. It’s something in the throat, trying to get out.

  This is the fake kind that rankles her as bad as talking while she’s up on the stage.

  She tries to ignore it.

  Fidgets.

  Bounces.

  Finally, she turns to tell the cougher to shove it where the sun don’t shine.

  Laura grins, hand falling away from her lips—which are still red as sin. The people around her are glaring as if she’s Satan, but Laura is definitely smiling just for her.

  So Amelia turns around and tries to watch the movie.

  Up on screen, she’s covered in dust and chasing after Stewart Granger as he goes off to slaughter someone in order to save her life. They can’t be together, though.

  They think they’re brother and sister.

  She’d hoot about how awful it all is, but a ghost just razzed her movie by coughing.

  So, she stares real hard at the screen. Her dress is too tight, and she wonders how they got it past the censors. She’s pretty sure, if she squints, she can see the outline of a nipple.

  Behind her, people grumble, and there’s shuffling and rustling.

  When she glances back again, Laura’s seat is empty.

  She’s not gonna say she’s frantic, but Amelia does look hurriedly around the rest of the theater until—there. The ghost is standing at the exit and staring straight through Amelia as if she’s made of glass.

  She gulps and turns back around.

  Waits.

  Stewart Granger’s been hurt, and she’s got his head in her lap, stroking his hair.

  “Excuse me,” she says to Tab.

  He’s confused when she has to swish past. So’s the director. And the suits. And Stewart.

  “You should use the little-ladies’ room before you come,” Stewart says as she slides past him.

  She moves quickly toward the exit, bottom of her dress in her hands, head down.

  No one mumbles or mutters. As bad as the film is—and it’s a doozy—it’s still entertaining.

  The lobby is less entertaining. It’s empty.

  Not even an usher with a flashlight.

  A door closes somewhere, so she heads toward the noise.

  Of course. The women’s restroom.

  Only inside is empty. No Laura. No one looking to relieve herself. Not even a bathroom attendant. She walks all the way through to be sure. Even peers under the doors like a creep. Nothing.

  Which is how she finds herself looking into another mirror. Glaring at her own damn face. She leans on the sink and tries to get her bearings.

  It’s got to be the stupid war movie. It’s got her thinking about a woman dead since forty-six. She’s got Laura on the mind.

  She turns on the faucet and stares at the water.

  Wouldn’t be good to splash her face. Her makeup would run, and people would talk.

  She laughs.

  God, she’s going crazy.

  She pulls water into her hands and sips it.

  Completely nuts.

  She sniffs.

  Aw jeeze.

  She’s gonna cry. She can feel it.

  It’s the stupid knot in the back of her throat. It’s gotten to be a comfort. A pain she relishes on lonely nights.

  Now it’s got her about to cry.

  Big crazy tears that’ll get her carted off to the loony bin. She tries to laugh it off, and that makes the threat of sobs even worse.

  The door opens, and she straightens up and schools her face into something neutral. “Sorry,” she immediately says. “I just had a…”

  “Successful film premiere by the looks of it.”

  Laura smiles as if she’s not dead. When she steps closer, her heels clack on the tile like real heels. Her red dress is tasteful up close. All of her is. Hair down. Makeup perfect.

  Older.

  Because time isn’t gonna wait around.

  But Laura.

  A sob bursts out of Amelia, and she has to cover her mouth.

  “I believe,” Laura’s real careful, as if Amelia’s a skittish animal, “you once likened us to a disaster. Which makes sense. Our careers. Our ‘proclivities.’ Disastrous.” There’s that smirk of Laura’s that will always do things to the inside of Amelia.

  She mutters between her fingers. “End of the world.” She’s not quite sure she’s existing in reality.

  “When I left, I had hoped it would keep you safe. And I wanted…I didn’t want a disaster.”

  “Good for you.”

  It must sting, because Laura winces. “But I’ve…I’ve lived a life that’s more appropriate for my line of work, and I’ve watched you be extraordinary and…”

  Amelia takes a step toward her. “What?”

  She shrugs. “A world I can’t share with you is miserable.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “And I’m tired of being miserable.” Laura’s not the only one.

  “So what then?”

  It’s that crooked smile.

  “End the world with me, Amelia Maldonado?”

  CHAPTER 15

  He is a dear man, and Laura loves her children. Their home is very nice, and the neighborhood is very beautiful.

  But she is positively, irritatingly, bored.

  Michel sits across from her reading the paper. He looks up. Smiles. Sips his juice.

  Laura is just utterly bored.

  “Exciting day,” he asks.

  Work discussions can be… trying sometimes. She works as an agent for one of the fastest growing intelligence agencies in the world and regularly travels across said world to shiv enemy agents. He’s a diplomat and spends his evenings in white tie and tails, dining with other diplomats. The jobs aren’t comparable.

  At his dinner parties, everyone assumes she’s a nice girl from Connecticut, happy to be the diplomat’s wife who spends her days raising their children—with the aid of a lovely nanny, of course. At her—rare—dinner parties, people talk to Michel slowly. As if he is simple.

  So, in addition to being bored, Laura is also, perhaps, wrapped up in a marriage full of contentiousness.

  They do sleep in separate beds, after all.

  She smiles at her husband and sips her tea. “Lovely, I hope.”

  He nods. Tilts his head. Continues drinking his juice as he stares at his paper. “Hey, you used to know this one, yes?”

  He turns the newspaper around to show her a picture of a stunning woman who was alw
ays rather addictively ordinary, but never ever boring. Amelia Maldonado.

  Last name’s different now.

  Because she’s changed. She’s not the girl working at the diner, going over her lines in a mutter, and beating on Laura’s door for late night gab sessions.

  Now she’s Amelia—

  Amelia Wright.

  Her new film is premiering in New York, and according to the headline, people are anticipating the announcement of a proposal. Could it Be Love is splayed over the top of the photo. Apparently, much of the country wants Amelia to marry some idiot actor named Tab.

  Oh. She squints. There is actually a bland-looking, skinny boy in a tux standing by Amelia.

  It makes something unexpected clinch up inside of Laura.

  Which isn’t fair. Amelia is free to live her life however she chooses. Laura gave up any right to comment when she let Amelia think she was dead.

  “You remember her?” Laura is surprised by Michel’s question.

  “How could I forget you drugging a girl and leaving her on my father’s couch?”

  “She had more gumption than sense.”

  “And you fiercely told her you wouldn’t lose anyone else.” He says it evenly. There’s no frustration there—even though Michel can clearly guess why she cared so deeply.

  They’ve very carefully never discussed it.

  She dips her ridged spoon into the flesh of the grapefruit in front of her. Eats sans sugar. The tartness claws at her tongue and tries to draw her cheeks together.

  She says simply, “She was the first friend I had after the war. I wasn’t about to have her killed.”

  She takes the paper from him and studies Amelia. She’s done away with the girlish curls she wore when Laura knew her. Her hair is sleek and styled. In the photo, it’s in a twist. No doubt to show off the expensive earrings and necklace she’s wearing.

  But.

  But Amelia doesn’t look happy. Laura can see that. She’s a spy. Her training—her very life—is devoted to reading other people. So she can look at this innocent picture of Amelia Maldonado and know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Amelia is not happy.