Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

“Elsa, I think it’s time to go in now; I’m feeling a bit tired.” Katherine pats Elsa on the head. “We’ll leave Madam Maureen’s tent until later, shall we?”

Elsa smiles at her mother and nods her head, fixing the gray woolen throw around her.

“Let’s go,” says Katherine.

As they rise from the back steps, Katherine lifts her head. She notices a line of dirty orange light across the city, like the glow of a distant furnace, and feels the heavy fall of her heart.

H OW HEAVILY IT RAINED. It was as though the weather could not stop itself. Rain fell from a liquid sky like pellets of broken silver, battering against the buildings and the pavements, falling so suddenly and heavily that the earth did not have time to drink it in. Water spilled off the streets and the gardens, running in long and furious ropes into the rivers and the sea. As Katherine closed the door of the church hall behind her, the rain hammered on it as though it wanted to get in.

It was Friday. Tonight, George and her family would come to the church hall to see her perform Carmen. All day at work, Katherine had not been able to concentrate on her accounting duties. A large portion of her day was spent checking and rechecking the entries in her ledger. A colleague had kindly pointed out three mistakes that she had made within the first hour of starting work. But even as she brought her mind to follow the figures in her ledger with as much rigor as she could muster, she still found herself pressing the wrong keys on her accounting machine. By half past five, she was exhausted. She had left the Ulster Bank offices and had run the short distance to St. Anne’s church hall in the pouring rain. The cheese and pickle sandwich that she had made for herself that morning to have before the show, she had thrown in the bin as she entered the hall; the thought of eating it had made her feel queasy.

She made her way to the small dressing room upstairs, towel-dried and pinned up her hair, and changed into her costume. Twenty minutes later, she was ready to join the rest of the cast backstage, all of whom were warming up for the performance that evening. Charlie Copeland was rocking back and forth as usual on his wooden stool, Rosemary Wylie was complaining to the Cigarette Factory Girls as they practiced their dance routine about the ugly, tight shoes she had been given, and Hugh Drummond could be overheard telling James McCauley a joke. “So he says to her, ‘Drinkin’ makes you look very bonnie,’ and she says, ‘But I haven’t been drinkin’,’ and he says, ‘No, but I have. .!’”

Just before “curtain up,” Cissie McGee swung around to Katherine from her prompt table.

“I can see your mother and sister in the fourth row, Katherine. Is that George with them?” Katherine looked out through a gap in the curtain.

“No, that’s my brother, Frank. I wonder where George is?”

“Who’s George?”

Katherine pulled back from the curtain and turned around. It was Tom. Hearing him say George’s name like that shocked her to the core.

Tom kissed Katherine. But this time, she pulled away. Cissie McGee gave an embarrassed cough.

And then it happened. Katherine heard herself saying flatly to Tom, “George is my fiancé.”

Tom started laughing. “George is what — who?”

“My fiancé,” she continued. “I’m engaged to be married.”

Tom’s face froze. “I don’t understand, he said slowly. “I don’t understand, Katherine.”

Katherine could not bear to return Tom’s gaze. She continued with her head bowed. “I didn’t know that we would — I had no idea that we — I didn’t mean this to happen.” She stopped, then lifting her head she said solemnly, “Oh my God, Tom. I’m so sorry.”

“No, Katherine,” Tom was shaking his head, trying to reason this through. “No, no, no — if we need to talk about this, Katherine, we can.”

Katherine raised her eyes. Her voice became charged as she suddenly ripped through Tom’s words. “No we can’t! We can’t talk about anything! There’s nothing to talk about! I’m engaged to be married to someone else! And I have been since the first time I met you! It’s not right! Do you hear me? It’s just not right!”

The Cigarette Factory Girls stopped dancing and Charlie Copeland stopped rocking back and forth on his little wooden stool. They all turned to look at Katherine and Tom. In the awkward silence, the rumble of rain on the roof grew more intense.

Tom shook his head again. “No, Katherine, no, please don’t do this to me. I love you.” He stood staring at Katherine. She could see the boy in him again, innocent, pure, just like on the night she had first met him, the night when she had woken him from his sleep in the tailors’ rooms.

Cissie McGee broke the silence by calling out a verbal “Stand by” to the performers waiting stage right, waved furiously to indicate the same to those stage left, and then cast a nervous look toward Katherine and Tom.

Katherine and Tom stood motionless in the dark.

At that moment, Katherine realized how she had not calculated anything. How these dreams of hers had blinded her. How she had rashly and foolishly ignored the obvious until now. She had blatantly refused to consider who would be betrayed and how long afterward guilt might remain. And, instead of facing the consequence of the situation, she had buckled like a frightened child and had clung instead to what she knew, or at least clung to what she thought she knew.

“I think you should leave now. Go,” Katherine said abruptly, her eyes filling with tears.

Tom’s eyes held on hers. “No Katherine, no, please, I beg you, don’t do this, please don’t do this.” The sincerity in his voice chilled her to her core. He looked at her, his eyes deep as chasms, frightened, desperate. “Why did you keep that from me? Why did you not tell me?”

Katherine looked at Tom. She was speechless. Then she dropped her head and covered her face with her hands, as though to make herself disappear in the darkness. As though to hide in her shame.

Time seemed to stand still.

Then, through her fingers she said softly, “We have nothing more to say to each other. It’s over, don’t you understand? Go. I never want to see you again.”

“I can’t live without you, Katherine.”

Katherine dropped her hands from her face and looked straight into Tom’s eyes. “Go,” she said.

Is it just the way she remembers it or did she really see the light leave his eyes, dark though it was behind the scenery flats? Did she really see something extinguish within him? Is that how it happened? Is that what she did to him? A slipping away, at once awful and unremarkable.

She stood in the dark, her cold blood coursing through her veins. She tried to make out Tom’s shape in the dark as he moved away. Then he was gone. She wanted to change her mind. She wanted to call him back.

“This letter was just delivered to the stage door.” Cissie McGee was in a state of panic.

“Sorry?” Katherine lifted her head.

“This letter just arrived for you. Just handed in. But we’re almost ready to start! You’ll have to read it later.” With that, Cissie McGee barreled at high speed back to the prompt corner.

In a daze, Katherine slowly opened the letter and by the faint light on the prop table beside her began to read it. Her hands were shaking. “Katherine. Can’t make it to the performance tonight. Called out unexpectedly on duty. I’m sorry I’m going to miss your performance. Will telephone tomorrow. Good luck. George.”

She stood at the side of the stage, behind the scenery flats, waiting for the performance to begin. She folded George’s letter in two and pushed it against her mouth to take the excess of lipstick. Then she slipped it into the pocket of her costume, smoothing the fabric with her hand, taking a deep breath to calm herself in the midst of all the commotion happening around her backstage. She stood like a strange, gormless creature, as though on the brink of extinction.