Page 74 of In What World

“It would be of no embarrassment,” Estelle assures her.

“No embarrassment, you say?” she asks. Only she’s not looking at Estelle. She’s looking at me. “Then we shall perform a scene fromHedda Gablerfor you.”

Wilbur does not recognize it. And he wouldn’t, considering when and where we are.

“It was written by our dear friend Henrik Ibsen just”—I pause to calculate—“three short years ago. He is such a talented writer. I would recommend you seek his stories whenever possible.”

“I’m his ex,” Priscilla adds.

This confuses Wilbur, which only compounds the layers of madness, so I say, “It was when he went on sabbatical with Suzannah, his beloved wife. Times were complicated. But let us not dwell!” I give Priscilla a look of warning.

She winks.

Wilbur announces that he intends to gather a humble crowd for our impending performance, which allows me some time to pull aside Priscilla and discuss what part of the play we did our senior year she thinks we can perform now with zero notice.

When we’re alone among the waving wheat, Priscilla informs me thatHedda Gableris the star of so many of her stress dreams that she rereads the play at least twice a year as a way to mitigate her anxiety.

“Do you remember any of it?” she asks me.

“It’s not about whether I remember it; it’s about whether I can perform it,” I say.

She grabs my shoulders. “You said yourself you think about acting again. What could be a better practice audience than a bunch of dead strangers in 1893?”

I try my best to hold it back, but a smile breaks through. “Let’s do the start of act 3, right after Berta leaves,” I say. “It’s a nice showcase of Hedda and Mrs. Elvsted.”

The Memory Machine isright there. Only a few feet from where we stand. It would be easy to climb inside and be done with this. But there’s something even more exciting about the challenge of sticking this out. Like Estelle said, it would be of no embarrassment. And Priscilla is right—I will never have a safer test audience than this.

“Do you want to run it before we do this?” I ask Priscilla.

“Of course not,” she says. “Let’s just wing it and see what happens.”

In what world would I ever want to do that?

This one, apparently.

We start the scene. In all my life, and every alternate life that exists alongside it, I never thought I’d have a chance to perform with Priscilla again.

It would be a lie to say the scene goes perfectly. It might even be a lie to say it goes well. It’s me who messes up first, sending us veering toward the land of improvisation way too early, with no destination in sight.

Somehow, a scene where Hedda and Thea discuss how tired Thea is turns into a performance about…well, frankly, it’s about repressed queer yearning. But hopefully that’s flying over the heads of our audience of Victorian ghosts. Or maybe it’s inspiring some of them. There has to be at least one closeted queer person among us.

By the end, Priscilla stalks off into the wheat field with great dramatic flair, her eyes rimmed with tears, her hair mussed from agonized grabbing. I howl at her, yelling something about disappointment, and then I look to the audience and say, “Aaaandscene.”

A few tentative claps start up.

I don’t even mind their lukewarm reception, or the fact that we have desecrated the original text. I’m too buzzy with the thrill of the cat-and-mouse game we just played.

How did I forget this? Performing doesn’t have to be weighty or self-serious. It doesn’t have to change anyone else’s life but my own. It can just be fun. That can be enough.

Priscilla returns to grab my hand for a joint bow, and the applause grows into something respectable. They liked her better, but I don’t feel a single ounce of jealousy. Shewasbetter. Impulsive and alive and free of reservations. A true star. She trusted me without question. She followed me when I led us off script. She’s the one who made this whole scene work.

“We’re a good team,” she whispers in my ear as the audience continues clapping.

“We are,” I say.

“Now how the hell do we get to a world with our Dallas?”she asks through smiling teeth, initiating yet another bow so the audience is forced to keep applauding, buying us more time to talk. “We sure can’t stick around for more of April 27, 1893.”

My mind has always attached memories to their exact dates. There’s a running calendar in my head where birthdays and anniversaries and other significant events all gather into their respective positions. I know that now I will always see 4⁄27 and think of Cilla and me in a wheat field in 1893, performing a scene fromHedda Gablerin our street clothes, the kind of personal holiday no one else could ever understand.