Work Text:
Year Twenty-One is odd, which means the Symphony is due for a tragedy.
Yet they’ve now done two in a row — Macbeth and then Hamlet — and there is a feeling among some of the musicians and particularly the actors that the time has arrived for a comedy.
“It’s time!” Vlad says. “It’s obviously time! What are we going to do, Troilus and Cressida? Who’s going to score it?”
“It’s an odd year,” Sayid argues. “That’s what we’ve always done.”
“With Gil and Sarah,” August adds, which could be agreement or disagreement.
Things are different without Gil and Sarah both; they have twenty symphonies and who knows if there will ever be more. It’s just barely over half of the output that had survived into Kirsten’s early childhood, let alone those lost during Shakespeare’s own lifetime. But it’s still a lot more than most other playwrights have.
In the winter the older actors recite what they can remember. They do scenes from Oedipus Rex, The Importance of being Earnest, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which S has been arguing for the inclusion of once they perform all of Shakespeare, rather than starting over. It had been the first play they’d ever seen in a theater, before the flu. Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, which Kirsten hated. Angels in America, A Raisin in the Sun, Our Town. A lot of fragmented television, a lot of piecemeal movies.
All of it concerns a world so recently lost, but which Kirsten hardly remembers. Shakespeare is truer, for all he’s older. Shakespeare survived a plague of his own.
Kirsten is tired of the argument, though she’s holding out for a tragedy. She likes tragedies; they make more sense than comedies, and the Symphony doesn’t do many of the historical ones. Sarah scored Richard II and said that was enough.
“Let’s just put it to a vote,” Kirsten breaks in. People listen to her.
Dieter holds out his hand and bows, a little sarcastically. “Who’s for a comedy?”
Hands go up; Chrysanthemum, Vlad, Sayid. Half the orchestra.
When Dieter finishes his own count, Kirsten asks, “And a tragedy?”
Fewer hands.
“Let’s just break things up for a bit.” Chrysanthemum voices the winning sentiment.
“Well, at least that’s settled,” Dieter says. “Now. Which play?”
There’s sixteen to pick from. Nine if they’re only choosing from what they’ve done before.
S suggests Twelfth Night, which Kirsten agrees with. The costumes for that had been particularly wonderful, since so much of the play relied on a resemblance they couldn’t otherwise produce. Vlad wants The Tempest. Dieter wants As You Like It.
“We just did that,” Kirsten says. “Like, five years ago. Everyone’s going to remember.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” says August. “It was Sarah’s favorite.”
It was. Kirsten glares at the ground. She doesn’t like talking about Sarah, who is gone and yet so present because everyone else remembers her too. It isn’t like losing her parents or Frank or Jeevan. Kirsten isn’t alone. The fabric of their life has been ripped through but the frame remains. What is it like for Alex, off with Tyler and Elizabeth and all the former Undersea kids? Does anyone there think to care about it? They’ve all got their own losses.
“We haven’t done that since Year Two,” Dieter says into the pause the reminder brings with it. “Hands for Midsummer?”
Kirsten looks down, like they’re pre-pan kids playing Heads Up Seven Up, and stretches her arm against the warmth of the sun, into the sky. Her fingers spread.
In Year One, the Symphony had, by happenstance or fate, performed King Lear. At the same time Arthur had fallen and Kirsten had been reading Station Eleven over and over, they had started without her. First it had been Sarah scratching out the symphony in her living room, going crazy with Gil until people stopped dying and the world was silent. Then they’d started wandering, picked up August and Dieter, and kept it going. So Kirsten had done every play the Symphony had, in the end, and always would.
The next year, in Midsummer, Kirsten had been Tom Snout and the wall, then Theseus, and finally Puck when she proved she could do it. That had been the first time she’d ever been a main character in a real performance. The Symphony didn’t care that she was nine and she was dangerous and she was almost silent off stage. She acted. That was what mattered.
“We’re decided, then. Talk to Kirsten about roles; S, you’re conducting. We’ll start rehearsals tomorrow.”
“Alright,” Kirsten says, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get started, people!”
Puck is a role that Alex should be playing.
Kirsten thinks about her a lot as they rehearse. The snow melts. The world turns green. They head out towards St. Deb’s and the wheel turns again. It’s the first time Kirsten’s ever walked it without Alex.
Puck is a hard role. It makes Kirsten feel not quite herself. She can’t land the balance instinctively; she’s too cruel or too flighty or too indifferent. Fun is hard. Energy is hard. She does it, because she’s a good fucking actor, but it seems so fitting for Alex.
If Alex was here, and if she was Puck, Kirsten would see what an excellent job she was doing. She would recognize, deep down inside herself, that the role wasn’t made for her anymore. Then the next year it would have been easier to cede the main role and let Alex have the full shine of the spotlight. That was all she would have needed. Alex would have been ecstatic about it before Tyler. She would have lived on it like bread.
In Devil’s Corner, halfway through the summer, Kirsten thinks her wanting has become so fierce that it’s stepped outside her body and become a person. Alex is watching from the crowd. Kirsten is magnificent.
She approaches Kirsten after the show, slipping backstage. Everyone lets her through; everyone is pleased to see her, even Vlad.
Alex looks different. Her hair is a little shorter. Her clothes aren’t the same style; the Symphony tends to salvage garments whole, but Kirsten had noticed the Undersea didn’t and neither did the folks at the airport. She doesn’t remember Elizabeth well. Just enough that it makes Kirsten realize Alex is wearing something like her now. She looks like she’s growing up.
All of these are things that Kirsten realizes after she’s pulled Alex into a breath-squeezing, rib-aching hug. Alex holds her just as tightly. Kirsten’s eyes burn, but Alex is sniffling, so that’s alright.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Alex says when they pull apart, full of fey cheer. “It’s an odd year.”
“Things change,” Kirsten says. That sums it all up neatly: everything changes except the Symphony and the wheel; except last year altered both. “Vlad is thinking we should do them in a twenty-year cycle.”
“Always looking to the past.”
“Does he treat you good?” Kirsten asks. She can hear the urgency in her own voice. She smoothes the feathery ends of Alex’s hair down.
“Yes, and Elizabeth’s with us too. You know she hadn’t left the airport in twenty years? She’d never seen Michigan, really. And there’s so many other kids my age! Crystal and Maggie are here with me, too. And nobody talks down to me.”
“I never talked down to you.”
Alex makes a humming little sound, and Kirsten drives over the speedbump of her feelings.
“You should be Puck.”
“You really think so?” Alex asks. Her eyes are hungry, and Kirsten wonders if she’s had enough time away. She might be ready to come home.
“I really do. Stay with us until the next stop. Show us how good you’ve gotten.”
“Okay,” Alex says.
“Okay?”
“Maggie wants to see the play again.” And Alex wants to be Puck, Kirsten thinks, looking at her. She wants Kirsten to see her.
They go to join the party. Kirsten meets Maggie and Crystal, and hates them, but makes nice to their faces. Alex hangs around Kirsten and the rest of the Symphony a lot, and it’s almost like old times.
The Oneida Nation’s not all that far away from Devil’s Corner. Alex isn’t riding the same horse she’d left on — neither is Maggie or Crystal — so maybe the former-Undersea is stealing horses, too. The three of them are clumping together on the road. Not in a way that’s dangerous, much to Kirsten’s regret, but in a way where they’re all being kids together. But Alex comes over and rides with Kirsten in Sarah’s wagon, too.
“I miss her,” Alex says, looking at the row of CDs. She runs her fingernail along the edge of the jewel case; the zipping is the only sound she’s ever heard from them. Kirsten can understand why the Museum of Civilization hung on to the trash. She can understand why Tyler blew it up, too. Whatever’s on the discs is Sarah’s voice from twenty years ago, before the flu and before the Symphony and before she ever met Kirsten. It’s not magic. She’s not still alive in the rainbow on the shiny side. It’s just data.
Kirsten pulls Alex into her arms. She’s gained muscle over the last year, but she’s still Kirsten’s baby. She hooks her chin over Alex’s shoulder and says, “I miss her too.”
“Is that what it’s like for all of you guys?”
“No,” Kirsten says, though her voice wobbles through the reassurance. She kisses Alex’s head and they watch the chunks of asphalt that make up the road pass by.
Before the play, she does Alex’s makeup. A lot of rehearsal during the fall was wanting to think about a different play for once, so for all Alex was a baby last time the Symphony performed Midsummer, she knows the lines. She’s been Puck before, even, in soliloquies and sonnets, brief snatches of boredom while overwintering. Her face is warm and lightly pockmarked with acne. Kirsten draws thick detail into it, white greasepaint under green eyelids and a sharp mouth.
Kirsten sits this performance out — not in the audience but backstage. She never belongs to the audience and never will. She haunts the stage; she makes it her own.
Alex is good. She’s fiery and wicked and playful; she makes the audience laugh and chide her. Alex belongs here, Kirsten knows. The Symphony is in her blood as surely as it is in Kirsten’s.
“Come with us,” Kirsten offers in the morning; begs. She can’t bear to see Alex leave again. It’s not any easier this time, and no more necessary. “Just to Escanaba.”
“Not for all thy fairy kingdom,” Alex says. The reins are wound around her hands. Crystal’s horse stamps its feet.
“You’ve had time. Why don’t you come home?”
“I like it out there.” Alex’s voice is light but threatening a rainstorm. “I don’t want to fight my last night.”
“Then don’t fight!”
Alex doesn’t say C’mon, Kirsten or Let it go, Kirsten or I’m not staying and you can’t make me. She doesn’t even threaten to never come back if Kirsten tries to trick her into staying. She just leans down to tap the crown of Kirsten’s head. “I’ll see you again next year. Bye.”
“Bye,” Kirsten says, a miserable sound ripped from her. It’s not fair that it’s still this hard. It’s not fair that it’s this easy for Alex.
With a wave, Alex peels away from the outskirts of the Oneida Nation, going north.