Seven

An old, umbrellaed woman comes, wobbling on the uneven wood chips beneath her feet. She grows blurrier as she moves, less and less distinct from the pouring rain around her.

Near the slide, she bends stockinged knees, leans on her cane while left hand reaches for the ground. She folds her legs, twists a little to sit. Hands behind her shift her back, along the rough mulch, underneath the slide.

Rain pelts the aluminum, gathers its splashing self into drops, runs gullies down the corners of the slide. Beside it, the woman has left the umbrella, open and up, catching rain, pooling water, reflecting dimpled gray. There were dimples in Grammadame's cheeks.

Greta, swinging, up, down, stomach dropping beneath wet shirt. Rain hits harder when you move. Watching, staring, wet, red eyes.

Beneath the slide, the shape , rocking, slowing like breath. Slow. Slow. Rhythmic. Slow. Wind whips as breath dies. Death coming, pooling in an umbrella, preparing to tip.

The woman stops rocking, stretches prostrate in the slide strip of dry, almost invisible. Blurry like memories, wet, uncomfortable. Still. Still.

Had her grammadame crawled beneath a slide? Had anybody seen? Could the man from L'Royale feel it pelt like rain when you move, sink in, soak?

Greta flew, jumped from the swing, walked, bent beneath the slide. This was the face on the poster in the lobby of the apartment building. A teller of fortunes, future, future, what would come, future. So old, past, past, future with past.

Greta bent to kiss her.

Six

The woman I called Grammadame never hinted that she knew I wasn't cut out for the stage. In every way, she treated me like a star. She called me "dahling" and the scripts I wrote "mahvelous."

Behind a vinyl curtain strung between lamps with chairs in front, I cast her as the lead, and spent most of the show watching. I never guessed that she knew I belonged behind the stage or in front, not on.

She took the scripts I wrote and threw herself at them. I saw her as an icon on a nineteen-forties poster: perfect in blocks of color with bold words surrounding her. There was war everywhere but L'Royale Theater.

Five

In one hand, Greta held the phone. She continued the story, pretending she was telling about someone else. That was the best way to lie.

"No. Haven't met the neighbors," Greta answered.

In the other hand, there was the picture of her grandmother in front of L'Royale.

Another question. Greta answered. "Lot's of places -- dinner, grocery store."

There was an old cashier at the grocery. She wondered if he'd been here long enough, had ever gone to L'Royale to see a show, a petite woman on stage called Miss Emerson.

The man at the theater had just called her Emerson. His voice failed when he said the word. He blamed smoking, not the word.

Greta listened to her mother's voice again. "I forgot the camera. Sorry, mom."

She looked like the woman in the phone, not the one in the snapshot, Greta thought. Not the one she'd always wanted to be. She lacked the stage presence, the charisma. This was why she'd always cast her grandmother as the lead.

The man never asked if she was dead, how she'd died, where she'd gone when she left his life, who the father of her kids was, why Greta had come.

Words babbled in the telephone. Greta thought of the man's gravelly voice. "Emerson," he'd said, "had a voice for telling stories. I recognized your voice before the name. Before the picture. Just like she were calling me. You put words together like she did. I wish I could keep those somehow."

"I wish you would write," her mother said.

She'd started, Greta thought, but her words had failed her. Maybe if they weren't her words, she could do it. Maybe if they were her grandmother's.