A Story by Gayle Highpine
This story won the Fan Q Award for Best STARMAN Story of 1996.
The announcement had been on TV all morning, and since there usually wasn't all that much to talk about at Sunrise House, and since it was exciting to hear Lindero Hospital - from which nearly all of the residents at Sunrise House had come - actually mentioned in the news, all morning the only thing anyone talked about was this Jenny Hayden person and who she was.
Thelma and some of her loudmouth friends were insisting that this Jenny Hayden had been moved into their wing just before they had left the hospital. Anybody would know better than to argue with that bunch, but, sure enough, Sherry and Marty had contradicted them on some point, and the whole dining room had erupted into one of those stupid shouting matches.
Angela tried to calm the shouters down, but they were having too much fun with their pointless debates. As an actress, Angela could control herself perfectly when she was upset, but many of the other residents were disturbed when there was arguing. No matter how often Angela tried to reassure them, they would become frightened, when that dining room gang broke into its yelling games.
Angela stepped out onto the porch. "Are you all right, Mr. Keller?" she asked.
"Thelma is mad again," whispered the old man. He was shaking. He was afraid to go into the house when there was yelling, and, since he never ventured out farther than the porch, he was a trapped creature, cornered by the noise, uncomprehending fright in his eyes.
"It's all right, it's all right," Angela murmured, adjusting the blanket over his frail, trembling legs.
The shouting was like sandpaper on her nerves, too; that bunch was too much like the outside world, where the people were truly mean and insensitive.
But she couldn't allow herself to show her irritation. The others depended on her, her soothing yet authoritative manner. She reached out like a mother to them when things got too frightening, or when the ancient sorrows they all carried within them flared into tears. She would stroke their hands and murmur soothingly and say whatever words would salve their pain. She would tell that that everything was going to be all right: that tomorrow the letter from Frieda's daughter would come; that Rosario's mother had not really abandoned her, as a toddler, in a littered alley; that Marcella's parents had not really intended the things that they said to a vulnerable child.
When she said that things were going to be all right, and when she could make herself even believe it, it became real to them, too, however briefly.
Angela looked through the trees at the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill. She thought about Jenny Hayden, the woman in the TV announcement. Had Jenny been brought to this town by the same shining dreams that had drawn Angela? Was Jenny an actress, too?
The announcement had said that Jenny had had a child. No, that she said that she had had a child - "by an alien being." Had her child been taken away from her? There were so many women at Lindero who had been torn from their children - their husbands grabbing custody (after having been the cause of the breakdown in the first place), or their mothers, or sometimes not even their relatives but the child welfare people; and they cried for their children all the time, inside if not outside. Sometimes the tears were like glass over their Thorazined eyes.
Some of these women, the doctors claimed, had never had children in the first place. Who knows? Does it matter? If you are in pain, if you have lost, the pain, the love are what is real. The love is always real. Some of the women cradled children who were invisible to everyone else - but the children were real to them, absorbing their love and returning their need. And Angela could make herself see those invisible babies, too, because she believed in them. She believed in the world of magic and love and softness, the world of happy endings, the world in which we can make everything right.
A child fathered by an alien being. Where was that child? Had he or she been taken from her? What difference did it make who you thought the father of your child was? Isn't love the only thing that matters?
"She appears normal," the announcement had said. Then why couldn't they leave her alone - her and her child? Had she left the hospital in order to search for her child? Was she that gaunt young woman who one night had whispered to Angela her vow to get out and find the child the welfare people had stolen from her when she was a teenager in flight from an abusive home?
Had that been Jenny? Was she on the trail of her child at this very moment? Was there some light that only she could follow that would guide her to where the child was? A light that could penetrate the fog of distance, the way a bright light could penetrate the one - way mirrors that adorned the stark walls at Lindero?
Then Angela noticed two people on the sidewalk. Staring at Sunrise House.
Waiting. Looking. A man and a boy. Passers - by? Curiosity seekers? Someone's relatives? Angela adjusted Mr. Keller's blankets with a few more soothing murmurs. Then she stepped off the porch to meet them.
"We're looking for this woman," they said. And they showed her a small, worn copy of the same photo that had been on the television announcement. "Do you know her?"
A flash of anger flared in Angela, and a determination to protect Jenny. She was frightened, too, but she was an actress, and knew how to project herself. "Where are you from? Do you have some sort of identification?" she said sternly.
"I'm Paul Forrester. This is my son, Scott."
"Please, lady, she's my mom."
"She's important to both of us."
"Yes, I see." Angela remained stern, as befitted her responsibility, but her fear and anger were beginning to subside. These two were not a threat to Jenny. These were lonely people, searching people, people in pain. "My name is Angela," she began, offering her friendship to them.
"Lady, do you know her or don't you?" the boy snapped.
Looking into those longing brown eyes, eyes that had seen so much betrayal and disappointment - yet were hopeful and determined and defiant - she knew that these people needed her. She could feel their need. She couldn't betray them with yet another disappointment. She felt Jenny's pain and theirs throbbing through her, pleading with her to bring them all back together again.
"Yes," Angela said with assurance. "Yes, I know Jenny Hayden."
And instantly she knew that that had been the right answer, because the boy, Scott, could not hold back the tears. Angela cradled him in her arms. "Oh, my goodness. It's okay. It's all right."
They needed her. They followed her. She suggested lunch at the burger place two blocks down. Their attention clung to her. They asked her lots of questions about Jenny. It was difficult to tune Jenny clearly into her mind. But they needed her so much, and she could not disappoint them.
Then, between bites of burger, Paul said, "On television they talked about a man from another world, and the child she had with him."
Did they understand that it shouldn't matter what Jenny thought or said? That inside she was still Jenny and still needed them? Would they turn away from Jenny in disgust because she talked of things like aliens? "Every woman has a romantic fantasy," Angela tried to explain. "Jenny believes that because... to her, it's the truth."
Well, where is Jenny? they asked Angela.
Where is she? Right now? The pictures dissolved. "I don't know where she is..."
Their eyes filled with pain. They needed her, she couldn't disappoint them. Angela thought about her favorite places. Yes, she could see Jenny there. They would go to those places and search until they found Jenny.
The three of them walked from coffee shop to thrift store to Oriental market to Mexican grocery. Paul and Scott shared in Angela's memories of these places as she relived them - Jenny's presence in those memories made the memories real to the two of them as well. Yes, it had to have been Jenny who had sat at this table with Angela, drinking hot cocoa while the rain gushed outside, exchanging stories about the tribulations of trying to make it in Hollywood... It was Jenny, yes, it was Jenny who had found this tiny antique store and brought Angela to it. It must have been Jenny, because Angela could scarcely remember the other friends she had had in the days before Lindero - she never heard anything from or about them.
Angela saw Jenny - at least for an instant - in almost every place they entered. A dark - brown - haired woman. Face lined with sorrow, eyes liquid with love, she would turn her dulled glance in their direction and stop with amazement... would whisper, "Paul...? Scott...? Is it really you...?" Scott would whisper, "Mom...?" and Jenny would turn into the light, slowly, hesitantly, but with her actress grace. "I knew you would come. I could feel it. I never lost hope." Paul: "My one true love, my darling, I have been looking for you so long..." Jenny: "Thank you, Angela, thank you, thank you..."
But everywhere they went, no one was Jenny. The Jenny - reunion scene began to lose its interest for Angela. However, it wasn't losing a bit of interest or freshness to Paul and Scott. They kept asking her, isn't there another place? Where do we try next? They looked into every doorway they passed, down every alley. They peered at the faces of all the street people, men as well as women, as though someone's face must hold a clue. Angela's part was just a supporting role, but she was working as hard as anyone.
... "Angela, I have to talk to you... Stop, listen to me... What has been happening to you? You've missed three important rehearsals in the last two weeks - okay, so you've had emergencies, but the last time you didn't even call first. This may be just community theater, but it takes hard work and commitment and teamwork like any other production... Angela, opening night is next week, and instead of your performance improving over the last month, it's been going downhill. It's like you're losing interest in the part. You were super in audition. You have a gift, a gift for theater. You really get into your characters. You seem to feel your characters from the inside. But you don't seem to listen to me when I am directing you. It's like you're in your own world - a butterfly one minute, a sunbeam the next. I don't know, I don't want to give the part of Regan to somebody else, but... Are you listening to me, Angela? ... Angela... Angela, are you listening?..."
Afternoon was turning into evening, and Angela wondered where Paul was planning to sleep. And, of course, Scott too. He would probably want to stay with his father. The sleeping room they rented was but a single room. That could create a privacy problem - but she wouldn't worry about that now. Let things build slowly...
Angela looked at the boy, already fallen asleep on the couch. She couldn't believe how he had grown; his body stretched the full length of the sofa. Though he was sleeping, it seemed that she could detect his lips quivering. The child inside that young man's body, hurting to be cradled by his mother... When he had skinned his small knees, had Jenny, somewhere, heard his cries? Had she felt his pain when the world scraped him bloody and he had no mother to hug him? In her mind she caressed his cheek just as she had done when he was a baby.
Scott was asleep. Now was their chance to be alone. "There are places near here..." she whispered, touching his arm, feeling the currents pass between them. "Chances are she'd be drawn to a familiar place, you know?" He knew. Wordlessly close, they slipped down the stairs and into the night.
The warm darkness seemed to caress them, as soft and electric as a kitten's fur. The stars seemed so close, like spheres of light that could be cupped in one's palm. The leaves rustled, and the sky - somehow, magically, free of smog - seemed to invite them to fly away among the stars.
Their need drew them into each other's memories. She talked about Jenny. "Sometimes she would cry," Angela remembered. "And I would just hold her for the longest time... Were you the one who made her so unhappy?"
"I don't know," he said, his innocence as wide as the sky. "I believe it made her unhappy when I left."
"Why did you leave her?"
"What did she tell you?"
What did she tell her? Angela struggled to remember what Jenny had said. But there was only one thing that was important, only one thing that had mattered to Jenny as she cried. "Only that you left."
"I had to. We couldn't be together any more... But I took her with me" - he touched his chest - "here."
Poor Jenny. Poor Paul. Poor Angela...
They came within sight of the stage. The magic place. The sight filled Angela with surprise, as though she hadn't even known that their path was leading them to there. As she ascended the stage, she felt the magic rise within her. It was as though Paul's intent gaze were the light of a new spring sun, calling the flower of her soul to rise and bloom.
"I am made of that self metal as my sister... " she said, feeling the words float from her and gently alight on him like petals from a flowering tree. "...and prize me at her worth..." She could feel the hundreds, the thousands of eyes on her, opening night of KING LEAR, the night that she would have played the princess Regan; thousands of eyes were upon her, astonished, adoring, but only one pair of eyes that mattered.
"In my true heart..." and what heart ever was truer than Angela's own, "... I find she names my very deed of love; only she comes too short." Far too short - Angela's love was truly beyond comparison with that of any other who had ever loved him. And he saw it. "I am alone felicitate in your dear Highness' love."
A pair of hands floated in applause. A pair of eyes shone upon her.
"Is that what you do, up on the stage?"
He knew; he understood. They shared an understanding beyond words. Their souls were linked.
He touched her to help her descend from the stage, and the currents of his touch ran across her skin and down her body. The world shimmered with life and beauty and happiness.
She took his arm as they walked, and the warmth of the gentle male energy washed over her. She had never before known gentle male energy, yet in him the gentleness was so natural, and yet so truly male. There was a sense of recognition and rightness between them. There was no defensiveness in him, no manipulation, no covert battle with her for control. It was not as though he had gone beyond those things; it was as though he had never known them. There was nothing hidden here... he was just - himself.
She had a sense of freedom, of lightness, of transparency that she had never felt from a man. This was a man who would accept her for herself - who knew that she was not simply "Angela," a name, a little box that her mother and teachers and doctors had kept trying to lock her into. She was a soul, beyond names, identities, values. The world would crunch that soul into pieces if it could. But something about this man was different from the world. Something told her that he could understand her soul.
This was the man she should have been searching for all these years, and would have been, if she had only known he existed. If she had only remembered that he existed. Something about him was so new and yet so familiar, she must have known him forever...
She remembered his gaze at her up upon the stage - his eyes shining with revelation, with the newness of someone who has never seen a theatrical performance before. Of someone to whom the theater was the same miracle as it was to her - the miracle of a creating new world out of thin air, out of sheer believing. A world where we can have happy endings if we like, or can share sorrow with others. The wonder of acting - a single soul can assume different identities, different personalities. The freedom of being a soul not locked in just a single personality.
Oh, without make - believe, the world would just dry up and blow away. With it, they could walk on the clouds, fly away among the stars. Fly out of the little cages the world put on them, the cages that kept people separate and lonely.
She saw herself on the stage. Not in sweatshirt and jeans, but as the princess Regan, second of King Lear's daughters. The perfect princess grace of her movements, the liquid lilt of her voice, the glow in her eyes as the magic came through her... "I have a gift, they told me," she remembered, "a gift for theater."
"And Jenny - did she also like the stage?"
"Who?"
The humiliation caught around her throat.
She had ruined everything.
But she was an actress, and she laughed lightly, musically, as though she had merely made a slip of the tongue. "Oh, my. Shame on me. I was just having such a wonderful close moment with you that I... You don't hate me, do you?"
"No!" he laughed.
From the way he laughed, she could tell that he was beginning to fall in love with her. "I didn't really know her so well," he mused. "I don't know how strong the love is."
He gazed deeply into Angela's eyes, and in the warmth of his gaze, Angela could see that Jenny was already beginning to fade from the stage set of his mind. "I think I'll know that when I see her."
Angela couldn't hold back, even though she might be saying too much too soon. "I haven't felt this way for someone in - maybe it was fourteen years - maybe longer - " She looked deeply, deeply into his eyes. "Would you be unhappy if...if I left?"
"Angela..." he murmured passionately.
And then their love surged so strongly, so uncontrollably, that before they knew what was happening they were locked in a kiss. In their passion and forgetfulness, they fell back together against a parked car. The wailing car alarm abruptly broke the spell, and they hurried inside and upstairs.
Scott was gone.
He had left a note: "Mom's back in the hospital..."
Mom
Jenny
Paul and Jenny.
A rip of jealousy tore across Angela's heart. And she hated herself for the things she suddenly wished would have happened to Jenny on the outside.
Maybe Jenny die before they got there? What if she suddenly had a heart attack and died at the moment of entering Lindero's doors? Better yet, she had died of an overdose of sleeping pills that that had somehow escaped detection in the body searches. An overdose of despair because this last desperate attempt to find her long - lost lover and her son had failed. Jenny dies just minutes before Paul and Scott reached her - never knowing that they were so near... Or better yet, they reach Jenny just at the moment that she was releasing her last breath... Their faces come into her misted view just as her eyes begin to glaze over... "Paul... Scott..." Jenny gasps with her last strength... A single tear runs slowly from the corner of her eye and leaves a darkened spot on the hospital - blue pillowcase... a smile on her lifeless features... Paul stroking her tousled hair... burying his face in her throat... "Jenny... Oh, Jenny... My darling..."
Jenny thus having died, Paul would turn to Angela, and she would comfort him, unselfishly asking no comfort for herself... He would pour out his heart to her, his handsome sorrowful face resting against her breasts, his tears moistening her skin... And then he would look up... look into her eyes, his eyes filled with gratitude - and something more... She began to shiver, her skin tingling as she felt his hands - so gentle, but so full of need - running down her shoulders, down her arms... "Oh, Paul... I need you too, Paul..." "Angela... my darling Angela..."
They kissed tenderly, on the lips. "I'll never forget you," Paul murmured.
But then they were on their way to the hospital, because Jenny was there.
Maybe Jenny would have found someone else, in this fourteen years?... Not likely, not in Lindero - land of rejects and incompetents, the chronic cry - babies, the aliens, the weirdos, the ground - up remains of human beings. Good place for Angela, all right. Nobody loved each other at Lindero - nobody cared about anybody else. They uncaringly kicked each other's bruised spots, or they just shut each other out to play their own games.
And if Jenny had found someone on the outside who truly loved her, he wouldn't have allowed her to be carted off to Lindero to be stored like so much toxic waste. He would take care of her.
No - Jenny was surely alone there at Lindero, still waiting, still dreaming of her son and her one true love.
Maybe... as Paul suggested... maybe when he saw her, he would discover the love was gone?
But even the world of make - believe has rules, and the story of two lovers, searching for each other for years, reunited at last, does not end with the reunited lovers shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Guess it just isn't there any more."
Not half an hour before, Paul had been in her arms, his lips on hers. But Paul belonged with Jenny. Paul and Jenny belonged together. Fourteen years could not dim their passion or diminish their love.
It was a beautiful, inspiring story. Yet a certain dullness had dampened Angela by the time they reached the hospital grounds. Paul had nearly seduced her; and now his barely awakened passion for her was quickly fading, forgotten at the thought of seeing Jenny. Angela would be forgotten - forgotten by Paul, forgotten probably even by Jenny, whom she had comforted so many times and who probably would never even know or care how Angela had been the one to bring them back together. Forgotten by everyone - even by those who had once needed her. Forgotten by everyone.
She was just Angela - too ugly and boring for any man to want, abused by everyone she had ever depended on, an embarrassment to her family, a failure at theater, a failure at suicide, a failure at everything - a nutcase, a reject, an alien. Even before she had committed herself to Lindero, her family had practically disowned her; her friendships had long since vanished; and even her so - called "friends" at Sunrise House - sure, she imagined that they needed her, that they depended on her, that she mattered there. But that was just more make - believe. If she never showed up back at Sunrise House, she would scarcely be missed. The residents would gossip about her for a week or so, and then she would be forgotten there, too.
They had reached the hospital, and Angela was sullenly debating with herself about whether to accompany Paul inside. She knew the admitting staff by now, from the times she had recommitted herself - why, she could just recommit herself now with a minimum of fuss; her paperwork was permanently on file. The nurses would let her take some things from the trunk full of cast - off dresses and old theater costumes with which Angela endlessly amused herself during those long Lindero days. That was Angela, a cast - off in the midst of cast - offs. Then she would be led up to her room. Her old room would still be waiting for her, as usual.
And suddenly Paul grabbed her, and jerked her into the bushes beside him.
For an instant she thought that he - - But then she saw what he had seen. Dark - clad men, a dark van concealed in the bushes over on the far side of the building.
A thrill of danger shot through her. They were after him! They wanted to harm her Paul!!! He needed her help! He needed her. And she would do anything for him.
And then another thrill went through her - the alien being! - - "It's true, isn't it?" she said excitedly. "What Jenny said, about you and about Scott?"
"Jenny and I learned to trust each other. Can we trust each other?"
"Yes! Yes!"
He needed her, to help him get by his pursuers - just as he had needed Jenny those fourteen years before. He needed to get into the building without being seen, and he had Angela to help him - survivor, spy, messenger for the underground resistance.
Paul disappeared under the grating.
For a moment, Angela gazed after him, but all below was darkness.
She looked through the fence at the dimly lit main building, then straightened up and walked around the building into the front door. The admittance staff greeted her with bored lack of surprise, and soon she was in her room with her picks from the trunk of dresses and dreams.
She struggled to recall the events of fourteen years before. How had she looked back then? We all change, a little bit.
Her heart pounded. There was no way that she could possibly know that they were coming - right now, at this moment - after fourteen longing years... and yet, somehow, she knew it. She felt it. She knew it. She felt them coming to her.
Fourteen years of waiting were never as long as these silent minutes. The only sounds were the occasional hissing of the radiator and the muted taps of footsteps passing her door. Each time she heard footsteps, her breath caught. But the footsteps would always echo past her door and fade.
After long minutes of no radiator hisses and no footsteps, suddenly her lock chattered and her door opened. She didn't see them; her back was to them.. And yet - she knew.
"Mom?..."
"Scott? ... Is that really you? Oh, Scott, come here, let me look at you!"
She turned, a graceful movement from the shadows into the light.
"Angela," Paul said.
"Don't be silly, Angela's gone," she said impatiently. She always got a little impatient with people who forgot their lines. "You know her - a butterfly one minute, a sunbeam the next."
But the perfect flow of events was upset. Instead of gliding toward her, falling sobbing into her arms, Paul and Scott got into some kind of argument. It ruined the scene, the climactic scene.
But she kept her poise.
"I didn't want to say goodbye. I had to, don't you see?"
They had to go again. They couldn't be together any more. Just like before, she had to give them up so they would be safe. And it hurt as much this time as it did before.
"Take me with you," she pleaded to Paul, showing her heart. "In here."
"I will," he said with assurance.
She was in his heart, he carried her with him. He would hold her forever within his heart as she cried, never again alone. You could never be alone if you lived within the heart of someone.
They kissed tenderly, a beautiful kiss. She turned to hug her son. The anger in him was as strong as it had been the first time. Could he ever forgive him for leaving her? Would he ever really understand? Did he know that she loved him as no mother had ever loved a son? It was for love that she made this sacrifice. She hugged him, and his pain and anger soaked through her as though a knife had cut through his chest to soak her with his blood.
And then Paul looked at her, one more time, and touched her arm - and she realized that he really did love her - not for the name she might have or the role she might be playing - but for the real her that no one had ever cared to see. He cared about her. She squirmed. Many men had loved her - - as they termed it... But the thought of someone - a man, or anyone - caring about her, caring about her, was strange and very uncomfortable.
Angela was alone in the hissing boiler room. For a moment she wondered if they had really been there, or if she had fantasized it all.
She walked back toward the stairwell, and Jenny began to fade like a dream.
THE END
Written by Gayle Highpine. If you have any comments on this story please E-mail them.