"Enter Stage Left" by Lindsey James

By the time Marian reaches the exclamation point, the felt cone rubs only a dry, stuttery line across the paper. Irritation grinds up her spine. Ruined. All ruined. Pulling up a gob of spit, she runs the marker tip along the crease of her tongue to juice it back up. Bitterness bleeds, tingling, toward the edges and into her tonsils. She scrubs the itch of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the backs of her teeth, then folds herself back over the paper. At first, the ink runs thin and too watery, but soon enough it flows into the gaps, and discouragement seeps away as, letter by letter, she retraces her work. 

“What do you think?” she asks, holding up the sign. 

Sophie looks up from rummaging through the tub of dress-up clothes. “You look like an okapi,” she murmurs, voice warm with admiration. 

Marian sticks out her tongue, looking cross-eyed to see where the streak of black down the center fades to blue in an inky gradient. She rolls her eyes at her sister and sticks her tongue out further. “Okay, but what do you think?” she asks again, shaking the paper. 

LIMMITED RUN!

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

While she waits for Sophie’s response, Marian plays it all out in her mind: they’ll stage the performance in the living room, the coffee table shoved to one side. Their parents, captivated by the drama, will forget the icy edges of their distance and be drawn together, their shoulders kissing. 

“You misspelled ‘limited,’” says Sophie. “There’s only supposed to be one ‘m’.”

Marian’s mirage evaporates. “Oh, how do you know?” 

“It’s the wrong shape.” Sophie shrugs and scoops up an armful of costumes, letting them waterfall over her wrists and back into the tub. “What play are we doing? Robin Hood?” 

Ever since Marian discovered her name twin in the pages, it’s been her favorite form of pretend. She’s made Sophie spend hours dashing through their backyard Sherwood Forest with an imaginary bow and arrow, saving Maid Marian. “Not this time. We need something original for this occasion.” 

Sophie nods. She doesn’t ask what the occasion is. Instead, she asks what costumes she should be looking for, anyway. 

“I’ll need something elegant. Oh, and I think we should have a bear.”

“A bear?”

“Miss Meadows says that the most compelling stage direction of all time is exit, pursued by bear.”

“But what does that mean?” Sophie asks. 

“Stage directions tell the actors where to move and how to deliver their lines.”

“Yeah, but–”

“It means the actor has to leave the stage, chased by a bear. It’s dramatic.” Marian rolls her eyes. Her little sister might be a genius speller, but she has no grasp of the theatrical. A bear, properly placed, will heighten the emotional stakes of the play. She reaches past Sophie and digs through the box, pulling a fur pillbox hat from the depths. “Voila,” she declares, setting it on her sister’s head and tugging it down over her ears.

“Grrr.” Sophie swipes a flat-fisted paw across the air and twists her mouth into a snarl, but her growl disintegrates instantly to giggles.

From downstairs, a cupboard door hits its frame with a sharp report and double-bang aftershock. The laughter slips off Sophie’s face. Marian rubs the soles of her feet against her shins, right and then left and right again, scraping off the prickle from the vibrating floorboards. “I think we should perform tomorrow,” says Marian over their parents’ raised voices. “We’ll have to rehearse hard, but we can be ready.” And then, low enough that she can imagine Sophie won’t hear: “We’re running out of time.”

#

By dinner, their parents have yelled themselves out and retreated to opposite sides of the table. They shoot glances, furtive and furious and calculating and despairing, across four feet of shellacked wood, toward anything but each other. Sophie and Marian trade okapi facts and acting tips, pretending their way toward normalcy. Reminding their parents they’re still there. 

“Did you ever notice that in a play, characters never face each other directly? They tilt themselves out a bit so the audience can see their expressions,” says Marian, a strand of spaghetti trailing from her fork. 

“Speaking of plays, I see that we’re in for a performance tomorrow night,” says their dad, focusing on her for the first time. 

Marian blushes and nods, clamping down her smile at the corners. 

“Well, what’s it called?”

“Exit–”

“Yes, Exit,” Marian says, cutting Sophie off with a glare. For maximum dramatic impact, the bear needs to be a surprise. 

“Intriguing,” says their father, looking between them before fixing his gaze back on the salt shaker. 

“Yes.” Their mom’s voice sounds clogged and higher-pitched than normal. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”

“Tragedy,” Marian says. She imagines her own body sprawled across the stage, dead or dying or grievously injured, transmitting the pain directly into her parents. Into her mother, who would be forced to look, finally, at the stage. And at her. 

“Comedy,” says Sophie at the same time, looking at their dad. 

Marian sees the look. She, too, has noticed how even her dad’s laugh lines look forlorn, drooping down, fleeing the concentration groove deepening between his eyebrows. 

“Well, whatever it ends up being, we can’t wait,” says their mom, marching a smile onto her face. 

Finally, they’ll understand the pain they’re causing, thinks Marian. 

A wooly-thick silence settles between them, different somehow from the old ones when they chewed bites of food and mined their days for stories. “So where are we going?” asks Sophie, just when the humming tension builds up so high that Marian is afraid her bones might rattle apart with the force of it. 

“Going?”

The pressure ratchets higher. Marian thinks her sister looks stricken, like a deer caught in headlights. Or an okapi. 

“Earlier. You said something about a hotel.” Sophie mumbles into the tangled nest of noodles on her plate. 

So it’s Marian who sees what Sophie does not: their mom’s white-knuckled grip on her fork, the flush of mottled red across their dad’s neck. 

“No one’s going anywhere,” their mom says evenly.  

“Actually,” says their dad, his words smothered under the scrape of chair legs as he drags himself back from the table, “I’m going out to the garage.”

#

“Stage right. You have to enter from stage right!” says Marian, gesturing to the other side of the room. All morning, she’s been trying to get Sophie to remember the blocking. Her scattered sister keeps making it through a scene only to go for a costume change and miss her cue entirely, staring blankly at the closed door of Marian’s bedroom.

“I thought I did.” She scowls. 

A hot prickle of shame washed over Marian. All morning, she’s been barking commands. Sophie’s playing a wicked witch, a guard, a daring prince (and a bear, of course) opposite Marian’s damsel in distress in a play that’s something like Robin Hood meets Snow White meets whatever Shakespeare play has the bear. Sophie can’t remember who she’s supposed to be next, never mind what side of the room she’s supposed to enter from. And while she can remember that she’s not supposed to laugh when Marian collapses in a faint, fends off an attack, and dies a flailing, gruesome death, giggles keep sneaking out anyway. Marian’s temper has worn thin, and they aren’t any more ready than they were yesterday. 

Sophie tugs the fur hat lower and drops her lip into a pout. “I’m never going to get this in time.”

“Well, that scary bear face is on point.” Marian sighs. “Think of it this way–you have to sneak up behind me. If you enter from stage left, I would be able to see you coming and run away. It would ruin the effect entirely.”

Flopping her head back, Sophie trudges across the room and takes her position on the stage right side of the rug. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter, anyway, Marian tells herself: she could try to run away if she saw a bear coming, but bears are fast. Besides, the scariest things are the ones you can see coming. The ones you still can’t escape. 

#

When their mom walks in for the performance, she takes one look at the empty chair beside their dad and tugs the ottoman out from the corner for herself. Peering out from the hall closet-turned-dressing-room, Marian watches her perch on the edge, angled forward and tensed like she’s about to take a test. Or take off. 

The jolt in Marian’s ribs catches her off guard; she looks down, ready to chew out Sophie for running into her, but there’s nothing there. Nothing but dismay that her plan is already failing. 

“Mom, could you . . .?” Marian gestures toward the chairs, but lets her sentence fizzle into nothing at the sight of her mom’s glazed face. 

“Hmm? Oh, of course, honey,” says her mom vaguely, getting up and opening the door. 

The breeze, cool in the wake of the June afternoon, sweeps the skin on Marian’s forearms into goosebumps. Her mom settles back on her cushion, even further from their father than before. Marian clenches her molars, clamping down on the rising despair. 

Their parents laugh just like Sophie when Marian faints at the sight of the wicked witch, although they hide it better. Sophie, clearly elated by their amusement, lets loose her wickedest cackle and takes a second lap around Marian’s slumped form before flying off the stage and behind the couch for a costume change. 

When Sophie, dressed as the guard, patrols the perimeter, Marian chances a glance up and sees her mom’s glassy-eyed stare somewhere left of the action. 

It’s hopeless. This time, when Marian feels the grip on her chest, she recognizes it. But the show must go on, she thinks, and she channels her anguish into her next line: “I will not be so easily pushed aside. I will never lose hope with so worthy a task.”

In her bear costume, standing on a chair with tree branches threaded through the rungs, Sophie cups her hand over her eyes like a visor and sweeps her gaze back and forth across the stage. Their dad’s face is still stiff, but with a half smile that pushes his laugh lines closer to where they belong. Sophie’s growl is ferocious. 

The gasp is almost inaudible. 

Marian, seeing her mom’s genuine, unforced surprise, feels a thrill shiver up her backbone. It’s working, she thinks. 

Sophie turns at the half-sound, just in time to see the shadow flap wildly through the door, cartwheeling haphazardly before crash landing downstage from her tree-chair. She jumps down to get a closer look at the bat. Like the okapi with its horse face and zebra-striped butt, the bat is a mishmash of parts: the soft-furred torso and sleek-rubbery wings like a tiny teddy bear in a leather jacket. She drops to a crouch beside it and breathes in rapid time with its crumpled, heaving body. 

“Don’t touch it. It’s probably ill.” Their father’s voice is a wire strung tight. 

“I won’t,” their mom replies. Her sleeve brushes up against Sophie’s arm as she reaches toward it anyway. “But we can’t leave it here. We have to get it outside. Get me something to scoop it up.”

Marian darts into the kitchen. She slides back into the room with a Tupperware in one hand and the lid in the other, presenting them like an offering. 

Their mom tips the bowl over the bat. 

“Now what?” asks Sophie, resting her chin on the floor. The scuffed plastic blurs the body, turning the creature into a warped illustration of itself. 

“I don’t know. Let me think.” 

The wings whisper and rap against the sides. Marian jumps back.  

“Can you slide something underneath to scoop it up?” asks their dad. 

The lid only shoves the bat to one side, smooshing it against the far wall of its suffocating cage. 

“I need something thinner,” says their mom. 

Marian runs out to the stoop and pulls a circular from the newspaper. 

“Perfect.” Their dad lifts his laugh lines, but there’s no smile underneath. “Okay, hold it steady . . .” As their mom lifts the edge of the Tupperware, he slides the tagboard underneath. 

The flapping inside turns to thrashing, and a wing slips out, protruding from the gap. “Careful!” Sophie gasps. 

Crepey, leathery skin stretches over impossibly delicate bones. Marian can see the unnatural angle of the wing, hear the bat’s ultrasonic cries as the plastic scrapes its tissue. 

Their mom lifts the bowl and recaptures the wing. Their dad slips his hand under the campaign flier, and together they lift it off the floor, a captive in flight. 

Together, their parents walk the creature outside. Marian gulps air into suddenly clotted lungs and follows, her skirt trailing in the grass, her hands clenched in desperate fists. She blinks back tears, watching them cradle between them a thing already half dead. 

Sophie trails behind. Nudging up against Marian’s side, she grips her hand. Marian squeezes back. Together, they watch their parents work shoulder to shoulder, voices gentled, as they slide the injured animal into the shade of the hydrangea, looking for signs of life. 

A native of the Pacific Northwest and a recovering English teacher, Lindsey James draws inspiration for her writing from the people and landscapes of eastern Washington State. Her previous work appears or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Necessary Fiction, Heavy Feather Review, Vast Chasm, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and elsewhere.