Page 31 of Potion Sickness

The Costume Department seems to be comprised of Ms. Pelham, Jackie Chambers, and Tiffany gathered around a few card tables. They’re having their weekly meeting, making last-minute adjustments and putting finishing touches on the costume designs. I’m here to observe, for blog material.

“Sit down and don’t touch anything,” Ms. Pelham says as soon as I walk in.

The wardrobe for the Duskboro Community Theater’s inaugural production comes from eleven households, two church basements, and some estate sales. The lords wear tunics cut from blankets. Banquo’s jerkin was a barn coat belonging to Jackie’s father until July. Duncan’s burgundy velvet is drapery out of the old Blackwood dining room, donated by the Mayor himself.

“He asked me if it could be let out,” Ms. Pelham says, feeding a hem into her needle without slowing down. “Twice. I’m running out of fabric. It’s a curtain, and he’s already the whole window.”

Tiffany has claimed the third table. Ms. Pelham’s wig sits in the middle of it, atop an upturned mixing bowl. There’s a spool of picture wire by her elbow.

“Don’t write about the wire,” she says, taking the comb out of her teeth. “Write that it’s a custom piece.”

“A custom piece with internal structure,” I concur.

Vivian arrives shortly after I do. She’s here to approve things.

“The lords looked wonderful last night,” she says.

“The lords look like a moving company,” Tiffany says.

“The lords look like a semi-unified ensemble, and that’s all I can ask. Where are we on the witches?”

“Black,” Jackie says. “All three of them. That’s basically the whole design.”

“As it should be,” Vivian says with a nod.

Dana comes through with a label maker and starts putting names on the inside of collars. Ms. Pelham objects because she doesn’t want adhesive in a garment she intends to return to her sister-in-law, but ultimately acquiesces.

“What’s going on with Damien’s cape?” Dana says, pulling it from a garment bag.

“Well. He’s not going to be in it,” Ms. Pelham says.

“Somebody’s going to be in it,” Jackie says.

“The hem’s wrong for Gabe,” she says. “He’s got two inches on Damien. He’ll be showing far too much ankle.”

Ms. Pelham considers the cape over the top of her glasses. “It’s got a false hem. Bring it here.”

She lets out the hem, then it goes back in the bag, then the bag goes back on the end of the rack where it’s been hanging since the night Damien went down.

“For when he wakes up,” Ms. Pelham says, to nobody in particular, and threads her needle again.

* * *

The drive to rehearsal that night is a struggle.

Englebert wanted Maude. He was serious about that. He explained, in the car, at a volume that open windows did nothing to reduce, that a production of this caliber could not open without training Macbeth with a ‘ghost of genuine stillness’, and that he had discovered such a stillness under his own roof, and that I was throttling the show in its cradle by refusing to transport a second cat.

“Maude is not coming to the Community Center,” I say. “And I thought you were feuding.”

“He is a generational talent. The perfect stand-in for the role.”

“If Vivian wants a silent presence that stares at Gabe until he comes apart, she can use a folding chair.”

Englebert goes quiet, sulking for the rest of the ride. “A folding chair has no interiority,” he says upon our arrival, and then, thankfully, lets the matter rest.

Inside, Damien’s absence has a surprising weight. His cape is hanging, unworn. The front row, where Skye usually sets up with her phone at-the-ready, is empty, because she’s at his bedside, holding his hand. The company has gathered anyway, in a loose horseshoe of folding chairs, waiting to be told the plan.

Vivian tells them.