by Ally Condie
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll ask my mom.”
“We could watch it on Friday,” he said. “That’s my mom’s day off so she’ll be home. If that makes your mom feel better.”
“It will. But I still don’t know if she’ll let me come.”
“Tell her it’s The Tempest starring Lisette Chamberlain as Miranda,” he said. “I got it from the festival archives.”
“It sounds boring.”
“It’s not. I promise.”
14.
“Leo invited me over to watch a movie,” I said Friday after work. I shoved my sandals into the basket my mom kept by the front door for shoes and pulled on my flip-flops. They felt great. I felt sorry for all the people who had lived in England.
“A movie,” Mom said.
“Yes,” I said.
“That sounds like a date.”
My mother had a very firm NO DATES rule. Not until we were much, much older than twelve. Which was why I’d waited until the last possible minute to ask her. I was sure she’d say no.
“It’s not a date,” I said. “His mom will be home. And it’s with Leo.”
“What movie are you watching?”
“An old production of The Tempest,” I said. “Leo rented it from the Summerlost Festival library archives. It’s a classic.”
“You can go if Miles goes with you,” Mom said.
“Mom,” I said. “He’s going to be so bored.”
“I’m going to be so bored,” Miles confirmed from the couch. He didn’t look up from his library book.
“Leo’s mom will be home,” I said again. “It’s during the day. He’s a friend. Please.”
My mom relented. “All right.”
I couldn’t believe it. Maybe staying up late working on the deck was making her too tired to argue.
When I got to Leo’s house, his mom answered the door. She had short black hair. Her eyes were like Leo’s, crinkly with laughter. She was beautiful. “Hello!” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you, Cedar.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
“I need to come by and say hello to your mother again,” Mrs. Bishop said. “I always think summer won’t be as busy as the school year, and then of course it always is.”
“We still have your pan, I think,” I said.
“Oh, that’s all right.” She waved her hand. “You should keep it. You probably didn’t want to bring all your own cooking things down for the summer.”
She was right. We hadn’t. We’d brought three pots, six plates, six bowls, six cups, six sets of cutlery. A couple of knives for chopping. A can opener. A cookie sheet. One pitcher. That was it. Everything else, my mom said, was too much hassle. We didn’t even use the dishwasher very much. We mostly washed things right after we used them and put them back in the cupboard. Even Miles.
“Leo’s downstairs,” Mrs. Bishop said, “getting everything all set up. Do you want anything to eat? Or drink?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“You can head on down, ” she said. “But I’ll peek in on you now and then to make sure you don’t need anything.”
When I got downstairs, Leo showed me the T-shirts he’d had made for us for the tour. They were black and had Lisette’s face on them in white, kind of pop-arty, like that picture of Marilyn Monroe you see on towels and cheap blankets and T-shirts.
“Don’t let anyone in my family see it,” he said, and I nodded. None of his family or mine knew about the tour.
“They look really good. Are you going to print up extra for us to sell?”
“I’m worried about liability,” he said. “Plus if people wear them around, other people might ask where they got them. Which would be great publicity, but also increases the chances that the festival finds out what we’re doing and tells us to stop.”
“I still don’t see why they would care.”
“We’re using their grounds for part of the tour,” Leo said. “And whenever you want to do something and you’re not an adult, people tell you to stop. Even when there’s no real reason.”
That was true.
I sat down on the couch. It felt funny to not be watching Times of Our Seasons. “So,” I said, “The Tempest.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. He cued up the film.
“I haven’t read it before. Will I still know what’s going on?”
“Yeah. If you don’t, ask me. I’ve watched it a bunch of times.”
“I’m sure you have,” I said.
Leo shot me a look then, one that I hadn’t seen before. It was a look that seemed hurt. I felt bad.
So I didn’t say anything when the play started and it was kind of funny and old. I didn’t crack a single joke about the outfits the people in the audience wore or the actors running around onstage, pretending they were on a ship that was sinking. The seats surrounded the stage on three sides, so the actors were right in the middle of their audience.
And then a woman came onstage, wearing a cream-colored dress, tattered but beautiful. You couldn’t yet see her face but the dress stood out against the dark beams, under the dim lights, like a butterfly at night, a white fish in a deep ocean.
I bet Meg made that dress, I thought.
The camera went right to Lisette Chamberlain and a light bloomed around her on the stage as she spoke. Over her white dress she wore a military coat that was too big, like it had been her dad’s and he’d given it to her to keep her warm. The coat was frayed and made of blue-gray velvet. She had bare feet, long red hair, beautiful eyes.
She was alive again, for now.
You could tell right away how good she was. The other actors were good too—how they’d memorized those long complicated lines, how they projected their voices out and moved their bodies—but it seemed like they were talking to us all, speaking out to the audience at large. Lisette seemed like she was talking to you. And you. And you. It felt like she spoke to everyone individually, even though she couldn’t possibly look each person in the eye.
The old man playing her father, Prospero, looked familiar too. I realized it was the guy from the King Lear portrait. The way he and Lisette interacted made me think They could really be a father and his daughter even though I didn’t understand everything they were saying. I got most of it though. Somehow, he had the power to create a storm, and she wanted him to stop it because she worried about the people on the boat.
Lisette’s character might be trapped on an island, but at least she had her dad, and he was magic.
Leo stopped the play right as a dark-haired man came onto the scene, a handsome guy staggering around as more fake wind and rain sounds hammered the stage.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I’d been getting into it.
“So the interesting thing about this play,” Leo said, “besides the fact that it’s Lisette Chamberlain’s final performance, is this guy. The actor playing Ferdinand, who’s the love interest for Miranda.”
I leaned in to look at the man on the stage.
“Roger Marin,” Leo said.
“Whoa,” I said. “Roger Marin.” I knew the name from the tour. “The guy who was her second husband?”
“Yes.”
“And this is after they broke up?”
“Yeah, one year later,” Leo said. “Roger Marin never got as famous as Lisette did. He worked at Summerlost every summer, for the whole season. And that last year, when she came back, she starred opposite him one more time. In this performance. On the stage where they’d met years before.”
“Wow,” I said. “So she saw her ex-husband onstage the night she died.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “And he visited her at the hotel that night too.”
“What?”
Leo nodded. “The police report says that two people visited her that night after th
e performance. The person with the room next to Lisette’s told the police that she heard knocking and the door open and close and then voices. Twice. She admitted peeking out to see who the second person was.”
“And it was . . .”
“Roger Marin,” he said. “The lady next door heard them talking, but she couldn’t tell what they said. Then she heard him leave. She peeked out then too. She was nosy. Back then all the rumors were that Lisette had never stopped loving Roger Marin. It was a big deal that they were performing together. That woman had actually been to the play. So she couldn’t help herself when she recognized the voices. Her name was Melissa Wells and she had come all the way from New York City to see the performance.”
“So Roger Marin visited Lisette at the hotel,” I said. “The very night she died.”
“Yup.”
“But there was no evidence of foul play.”
“Right,” Leo said.
“But maybe Roger Marin literally broke her heart. I mean, she did die of a heart attack.”
“Right again,” Leo said.
“Why don’t you include any of this information on the tour?” I asked.
“The superfans know all of this already,” Leo said. “And they’ve got their own theories about her death. And if they get talking, they could go on for hours. Trust me. We don’t want that.”
“How did you get a copy of the police report?”
“It’s public information,” Leo said. “Anyone can ask for it. Plus it was printed in the newspapers back when she died. That’s where I found it. Do you want to see?”
“Not really,” I said. And I think Leo could tell from my voice that I meant Absolutely not. I knew there was a police report written up about the accident with Dad and Ben. I had never read it. And I never would. I knew the bits and pieces my mom told me back when it happened and that was more than enough.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “We don’t have to talk about it. I wasn’t thinking.” He sounded awkward and I could tell he had remembered about my family. He reached for the remote to start up the play again but I stopped him.
“What did Roger Marin say about that night?” I asked. “Was that in the police report too?” I didn’t want to read it. But I wanted to know more.
“He said that Lisette hadn’t been feeling great after the performance so he came over to check on her,” Leo said. “And that she seemed fine when he left. She was going to go to sleep.”
“Can we talk to Roger Marin?” I asked.
Leo shook his head. “He died two years ago. In Las Vegas. He worked in a show there for a long time after he stopped doing the plays at Summerlost.”
The play started up again. We watched for a while. “She doesn’t have a very big part,” I said. “Considering it’s her final performance.”
“She didn’t know it was her final performance,” Leo said.
“Right.”
“I guess that during the last few years she liked having smaller parts so she didn’t have to memorize too much,” Leo said. “Since she was only coming for one night.”
The camera zoomed closer on Lisette, so you could see only her. I looked at that dress again, at the way they’d done her hair, loose and wavy and beautiful. And then I noticed something else.
“That’s weird,” I said.
“What is?” Leo asked.
“Pause it,” I said.
Leo did.
“Lisette’s character, Miranda, isn’t married,” I said. “But she’s wearing a wedding ring.” I pointed at her hand, which she’d lifted up. Her mouth was frozen in a funny position, like she was yowling.
“How on earth did you notice that?” Leo asked.
“I guess because of the labels,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Leo leaned in so that his face was comically close to the screen. “I don’t see any labels.”
“I’m talking about the labels I made in the costume shop,” I said. “For the different boxes. The people in costume design pay attention to every little thing. They care about all the details. Look at this Miranda costume. It’s perfect. I mean, you sort of take it for granted because it’s so good, but it’s exactly what Miranda would be wearing. And I know they wouldn’t have given her a wedding ring to wear if her character wasn’t married.”
“So it’s probably Lisette’s own ring,” Leo said.
“But Lisette wasn’t married then. Right?”
“Right.”
We both stared at the screen.
“So why is she wearing the ring?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was hard to see on the screen, but we could make out that it was a gold ring with three pale stones.
“It’s the same ring she’s wearing in the portrait,” I said. “I’m sure of it. It’s on her left hand.”
“That’s her wedding ring from Roger Marin,” Leo said. “It’s in tons of the paparazzi photographs from when she was married to him. She wore it all the time.”
“Was that painting done when she was married to Roger?”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I know from the costume she’s wearing in the painting. It’s from the year she played Desdemona in Othello. But it makes sense for her to have a wedding ring on in that picture, because Desdemona is married from the beginning of the play. So they must have let her leave it on for the painting because it fits the character. And it was an old ring, the biography said. Vintage. She and Roger found it in an antiques shop in Italy when they were on vacation.”
Leo really did know almost everything about Lisette Chamberlain.
“Maybe she wanted Roger to see her wearing it that last night,” I said. “Maybe she did still care about him. Or something.”
“Her character sort of gets married later in The Tempest,” Leo said. “But she’s definitely not married yet.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Huh.” Leo reached for the remote to start up the play again but then he set it down. He frowned and scooted closer to the screen. I noticed, not for the first time, that even though his hair was very thick there were always a few strands sticking up in the back, a cowlick. It made me think of Ben.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Leo.
“This ring thing is really weird,” Leo said. “So. She’s wearing the ring the night she died. But it’s not listed with the items that were found in her room with her the next morning. She wasn’t wearing it then.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Almost positive,” Leo said. He ran out of the room and came back with some papers. “It’s in the copy I made of the police report.”
“Maybe they wrote down ring and weren’t specific,” I said.
“No,” he said. “They mention a necklace and earrings. A suitcase and the contents. Shoes. Nylons. Clothing. All of that. But no ring.”
I held out my hand. Leo hesitated. But I took it from him and read the list. I didn’t let my eyes wander to anything else on the report.
“They were really thorough,” I said.
“They were probably worried because they couldn’t tell right off how she died. Plus she was famous. They wanted to do a good job.”
The ring on the screen was the same one that was in her portrait. I was sure of it. Plain gold band, three pale stones.
“Rings don’t fall off,” I said. “Earrings, yeah. All the time. And necklaces, maybe. If the clasp breaks. But not rings. Not if they fit right. And I bet hers did. I mean, she’d worn it for all that time when she was married.”
“Weird,” Leo said. “All of it. Why was she wearing it that night? Where did it go?”
“Maybe she hid it,” I said.
“But why would she hide it?” Leo asked. “She had a heart attack. She didn’t know she was going to die.”
“Maybe she gave it to
one of the people who came to see her at the hotel,” I said.
“Roger Marin,” Leo said.
“Right.”
“But why would she give it back?” Leo asked. “If she’d kept it that whole time.”
It didn’t seem likely to me either. If she cared about it enough to keep wearing it, she wouldn’t hand it over to her ex-husband. And my mom still wore the rings my dad had given her, the diamond engagement ring and the wedding band. Of course, she and my dad hadn’t gotten divorced. He died.
But maybe getting divorced didn’t mean you stopped loving someone either.
“Lisette could also have given the ring to the first person who came to visit her at the hotel,” I pointed out. “The person before Roger Marin.”
“Maybe,” Leo said. “But it’s not very likely. In the police report the hotel maid said she came up around that time with some fresh towels that Lisette wanted. So the maid thinks she was the first person.”
“It’s all pretty interesting,” I admitted.
“I know,” Leo said.
15.
At the end of the play I cried.
Because Lisette Chamberlain was dead?
Yes.
For the first time, she felt real to me. The play had made her real.
And I cried because of other things.
At the end Miranda’s dad, Prospero, talked about how our lives are little. How they’re rounded out with a sleep. And then, at the very end of the play, he was by himself. The audience was all, all around him, watching him, but he was alone on the stage and he walked off alone.
It was like he was saying good-bye to us. To the world.
“Sorry,” Leo said when he noticed me crying. “Are you okay?”
“The ending is sad,” I said. “How it’s about dying.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. He sounded uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.” His mouth went down and his eyes went sad. I could tell that he felt bad for me.
But he didn’t look away from me the way most people do when they say I’m sorry. I felt like I could say I’m okay or I could say something else. I felt like Leo was waiting for whatever came next.
