The theater was an altogether different place than it had been the night before. It was daytime and the day and night before had felt like the continuation of one long nightmare. Somehow walking into the theater and its row of windows just under the ceiling sending channels of yellow morning light into the small space, gave me a sense of hope. As soon as we entered the assistant director waved to Matt. The actors turned around and stopped reading their lines. I saw coffee cups here and there on the stage, and even the velvety burgundy curtains looked beautiful in the light where as the night before they looked to me the color of blood.

Matt turned to me. He handed me the key to the office. "You can grab a cup of coffee before you call, if you want. Don't worry. If you want to stay with me or Eileen tonight that's fine."

I smiled at him. "OK. Thank you. You're such a good friend."

He kissed me on the cheek before he walked down the aisle and up on to the stage. It caused a warmth, a longing to feel him that close. The assistant director handed him a script that had been sitting on a table nearby. He stood under the flood lights reading to himself. Orienting himself to the scene—into that frame of mind. I walked around the side of the stage and fixed myself a cup of coffee, then around the back of the stage and before I went up the stairs to call Jeff I watched Matt and the actors. I'd always liked rehearsals and shows at Matt's black box theater. I especially loved standing back stage during shows and seeing the actors under the hot white lights, the audience barely visible. The pretend world always gave e comfort. In that moment I wished I were up there, holding a script, reading words instead of living my life. In that moment I felt as though I hated my life. It dawned on me –not in a melodramatic sense but in a matter-of-fact one-- maybe it would be all right if I were to die, whether it was at Jeff's hands or behind the wheel driving home.

A black phone sat on Matt's messy desk. He had piles of scripts on one side, the pages of most of them curled and worn from all of the rehearsals. How many plays had he written? I considered what a wonderful job it must be, to tell a story and use people as your agents, to have them up on stage in a completely artificially constructed reality and make an audience believe what they're saying—true or not. I felt myself starting to cry and I wasn't sure what about that free associative thinking was upsetting to me. It was relevant to my problem I was sure but I wouldn't' have been able to articulate it. It seemed just as real as it did unreal. If I were to put it into a script what would it be? That a ghost comes to visit me? She tells me the truth but her words are rambling? Instead of a conversation with words, she speaks in visceral truths that are unintelligible. I thought of Cassandra the Greek mythological figure. She could see the truth, the future but no one would believe her. That was her irony. What was mine?

I picked up the phone and dialed the house. It rang several times and Jeff picked up. His voice was so familiar to me. In an instant I felt guilty for all of it. For my ridiculous fears.

"It's me." I said.

Where are you?

"I stayed at Joanie's."

"You're not at Joanie's. Would you come home and talk to me?"

"No."

"Eve I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow. If you won't come home, will you meet me somewhere then? Can I meet you for a drink or lunch?"

"It's good that you're leaving for a few days. I need some time." I started to cry. "I'm going crazy. I whispered.

"You're not going crazy Eve. For Christ sake you're always going crazy and you never do. You're the most emotional person I've ever met."

"Is that right?" I'd come back to myself. "That's an insensitive way to put it." I covered my eyes for a moment. The phone receiver was warm against my face. It was heavy and it gave weight to my conversation with him. It gave me comfort. I didn't want to leave him, holding the phone with him on the other end reminded me that we were still together. He was talking to me. My thoughts turned to Anna. How I had been so jealous all those years. That she was the one who went on vacations with him, who talked to him. I was sure they'd never had phone conversations like the one we were having. He always said that what we have is passion. That's why things went so crazy back then. When my mind wandered through the thoughts of Anna, it landed back on Margaret's diary entry.

"Were you with Anna before we were married?"

"No."

"That's not true." I whispered. "How do you lie to me so easily?"

"All right. I was with her."

I felt my heart sink because if any of the threads were the truth then there was a stitch that runs through all of it and if I gave the one a little tug, the rest would loosen, my life would fall apart. Her words came back to me. She was haunting me. He tells me, as soon as I'm dead, he'll fetch her. She'll take care of his children and he and Anna can be together.

"And you continued to see her while we were married. Then, you married her once I left."

"No. That's not how it was."

She'll take care of his children and he and Anna can be together.

"No? You hadn't planned for me to come to Chicago to take care of your children while you left and took up with Anna?"

"Jesus. Eve stop reading that crazy woman's diaries. You know I'm in love with you. You knew I was crazy about you and that's why I wanted you to marry me."

"I raised your children and you spent their entire childhood with her."

"So you did. I'm glad for it. I would have done them more harm than good." I heard him let out a deep breath. "Are you over there with that guy?"

"What difference does it make?"

"What difference does it make? It makes a hell of a lot of difference if my wife has just spent the night with another man—or is that unreasonable too Eve? Why don't you tell me which rules you're playing by? The ones where you can read a mad woman's diary and then sleep with whomever you damned well please?"

"What am I supposed to think when half of what she says is true? When she says that you had me sent to an asylum where I was tortured? When she said that you called me to Chicago to take care of your children?" I started crying, "so you could marry another woman and that was exactly what ended up happening. That was the truth."

His voice softened. "Jesus I feel like I'm on trial with a dead woman. Eve you can't take one or two events that punctuate a lifetime together. I was with you for five years. I was not with Anna during that time. After you left me. You left me. I did go back to her. The first year of our separation I asked you over and over to try again. When you were ready to be with me I left her."

"That's true. I know that's true." I ran my fingers through my hair. "I should go. What time do you leave tomorrow?"

"In the morning. Ten"

"OK."

"Please come home. I love you, Eve. I want to help you. I'm worried about you. I have been since Christmas."

I didn't answer.

I looked around at all the playbills and posters. I wanted what was there in front of me. I really did. It didn't seem like I had a chance of fitting in a normal life any more, nor that I ever would. What I wanted for my children was something I knew was not available to me. I was damaged. It was probably untrue, but I'd always thought that Jeff was the only one who could make me better. "All right." I said softly. "I'll come home."

After I hung up the phone I felt so utterly lost. I didn't even feel like crying. I looked over at my overnight bag; the diary was inside of it. In those few preceding days I 'd grown accustomed to having it with me despite how haunting and scary it was. It had become a puzzle to me. And even though the truth in my life was obvious to everyone else, it wasn't to me. I felt Margaret's words from the grave would lead me somewhere. I knew it and Jeff knew it.

I had my vulnerability and complicity in the lies that constructed our existence together. I just didn't know why I was so drawn to him. I wished things could have returned to how they had been over the past five years. I looked up at the chalkboard on one side of the room. It took up half of that wall. Matt, the assistant director, and house manager had written out dates and activities for the upcoming show. I was only half attending to it, giving my vision a place to anchor while my thoughts went wild.

I put my hands over my eyes. The hospital descended on me again. This time it was a set, just like the one below me where Matt directed actors to bring his words to life. One wall after another appeared around me, until I was completely locked into the memory. I could feel myself shaking, just as I had, under the scratchy wool blanket. Metal beds in rows, eight of us had been in that one rectangular room only darkness through the windows covered in a screen mesh. The hallway had been illuminated but that light was foreign, sinister because the corridor led to places that were far worse that the pit in which I slept for a month. Back then, I lay there in the liquid darkness so full of anguish but disoriented. Every time I woke from a medicated, restless slumber it would start. It was faint at first, barely audible but as I returned to consciousness it grew louder. My baby's cries. I couldn't ignore it, tell my mind to stop hallucinating. It was my baby's cry. I could hear him and it increased in pitch until I'd screamed his name into the darkness, begins God alone to return me to him so I could comfort him back into a peaceful sleep. I'd screamed he had been all I wanted. In that place, the darkness I couldn't bear the thought of him somewhere else, crying for me and my inability to comfort him.

But then they'd enter—the long needle picking up the light from the white hallways. "please give me my baby. He's crying." They'd pushed me down hard and tell me to keep quiet so I wouldn't wake the others. But of course I always had. My cries had unleashed the cacophony of moans and gibberish and filled the dank dungeon. Then, when my thoughts had eased up, the sound of my baby crying became a small vessel floating silently away from me. I'd drifted too, fluttering about in narcotic open fields—springtime somewhere in a life I'd once lived.

I let out a breath. I stood but was shaky on my feet. Why was I going to get into my car and drive back to him? What was the power he had over me? What had he said on the telephone that had fanned the ember? He said he wanted to be with me more than he had Anna but he'd also admitted that he had been with her before he wrote for me to come and marry him. There was truth in what Margaret had written in her diaries. She had conveyed second hand something about me too. She'd seen what he thought of me; that I was simple, foolish and ignorant. I had been laughable. I remembered myself differently back then. I'd loved being a mother and a good wife. Really he'd known I'd come to him, despite what he'd done to me. Had me sent to the hospital, ripped from my infant child.

I started to cry again. Had he ever even apologized for that one act, never mind the others. The affairs, the violence? No. The closest he'd ever come was pulling me close to him during moments of seduction, looking into my eyes, whispering "what have I done to you?" as if I were a piece of clay he'd tried to mold but had failed. His critique of his work was that I'd been damaged by him. He pitying me.

I picked up my little suitcase and walked down the stairs. As I approached the stage where the stairwell ended I heard an actress's voice rehearsing her lines.

"By chance?" she was saying in a loud, projected sarcasm. "There's no chance. I want it all back. Everything you've taken from me."

A male actor cut in "I don't have it and you know it. What difference does it make now anyway?"

I tiptoed down to the back of the stage. Matt was holding a script. He didn't notice me. "Hold up," he said to the male actor. "You are going to walk towards her. Ellen you back away a step or two." Both of the actors wrote something in their scripts. The male actor slipped the pencil back behind his ear.

Matt turned to me and smiled when he saw me. "Let's take a break. I'm going to talk to Eve for a minute," He said to hem. He came over to me. I remembered the years we'd dated. I still found him so attractive and I wished we had stayed together. He stood tall a white t-shirt hanging out of a pair of dark pants. He had stubble and wore a navy baseball cap.

"I like watching you work." I said.

"Thanks."

We held each other's gaze for a moment. "is everything all right?" he asked.

"I'm going over there to talk with him. He's leaving for California in the morning."

Matt nodded. "Are things OK? Do you feel safe?"

"You think it's a bad idea?"

He shrugged. "Eve I'm not going to judge you. I haven't ever. I respect you."

"All right." I put my arms around him. "I'll call you tomorrow once he leaves." I pulled away and touched his face. I leaned closer to him and pressed my lips against his. He pulled away a little. "I miss you," I whispered. "I wish things were different."

"Me too." He said. His eyes retained a look of worry and that superseded his expressions of love for me. "Call me ok?"

I walked out of the theater and as I was leaving I heard the actors start rehearsing their lines again. "OK Ellen, start again with by chance..." I pulled the heavy metal door and walked out of the building. After being in the darkened theater, the light outside seemed harsh—the world was quiet and it felt like the aftermath of a nuclear war. The snow was melting and I could see the asphalt of the road, sprinkled with brown sand for traction. I got into my car and turned on the ignition to warm it up. I retrieved the ice scraper from the glove box and then started pushing the snow off the windshield. There was no need for scraping but still a couple of inches of wet snow still sat on the car. It slipped off easily with the snow having melted underneath. I saw Matt come outside through the red metal door. He wasn't wearing a coat just his white t-shirt, black pants, and boat shoes. I stopped when he got close.

"Did I forget something?"

He looked worried. He kept his eyes on me, "Eve. I've never wanted to intrude or tell you what to do."

"I know that."

"I have a bad feeling and I don't want you to go home today."

"I'm all right. Really."

"Eve." He paused for a moment. "Let me help you out of this."

"I don't understand. Help me out? What do you mean?"

"Lt me help you out of your marriage. Not for my sake. Let's get you out."

I didn't know what to say.

"Not for me, Eve."

"I can't." I whispered and started to cry.

He came closer and took my hand. "Why, Eve? I never understood. Why?"

I looked at the ground then back at him. "Because. The largest part of me feels that I was born for this."

"Eve. Please stay here. I don't like how fatalistic you sound."

"He'd just come here and hurt you."

Matt shook his head. There was a line between us. Sanity was on the side with him. Even though he was so close, I was on the other side. I was crazy. "He's not going to hurt me—you're his sole focus. You are the one he hurts."

It was a dagger into my chest. How he saw it was more evidence of my foolishness.

"I have to go. I'll call you."

The car was warm by the time I got in. It was so comforting to be sealed in the with the cold and the problems on the outside. I backed out of the parking lot and started driving to the house. It had crossed my mind many times on the way home – I could just pulled the car over, stuff the exhaust pipe with my scarf. Then, I could get back into the front seat, turn the heat up and fall asleep in that warm, comforting little place. Didn't I deserve peace?

I never stopped. I just kept driving back. Back to him. Before I turned down the road that led to our little neighborhood, I pulled over. I removed Margaret's diary from my bag and slipped it under the passenger's seat. I leaned down to make sure it was hard to detect and it was. The brown, warn leather was indistinguishable from the car floor. I got back in and drove the short distance, the rest of the way home.