I began to wonder how much of Harlan Voss’s reputation belonged to Harlan Voss and how much belonged to people who disliked being told no by a man with enough money to make no permanent.
On Friday afternoon, I met Mr. Luis Alvarez.
He was seventy-two and had worked backstage at the Meridian for thirty-four years.
He had silver hair, suspenders, and the habit of calling every object in the building “she.”
“She leaks over there.”
“She sings over here.”
“She does not like cheap paint.”
I liked him immediately.
He showed me the old dressing rooms.
Then a small rehearsal hall on the third floor.
“This was your mother’s favorite room.”
I stopped.
“You knew her?”
“Everybody knew June.”
Apparently I had been the last person in Detroit to learn my mother had once possessed an entire second life.
Mr. Alvarez pointed toward a wall.
“You see that?”
Faded beneath layers of paint was a mural.
Children’s handprints.
Dozens of them.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Red.
Near the bottom was one tiny purple hand.
Beneath it someone had written:
RUE C. — AGE 5
I stared.
“That’s mine?”
Mr. Alvarez smiled.
“June brought you on Saturdays.”
A memory surfaced.
Paint on my fingers.
Popcorn.
A huge dark room full of red chairs.
A woman with silver earrings kneeling to tie my shoe.
I had always thought it was a dream.
“Eleanor,” I whispered.
Mr. Alvarez nodded.
“She adored you.”
Something in my chest shifted.
My mother had not erased this place completely.
She had given me pieces.
I had simply been too young to know where they belonged.
Mr. Alvarez leaned against the wall.
“What do you think of the plans?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Good.”
“You don’t want me to approve them?”
“I want you to think.”
He nodded toward the mural.
“Your mother thought. Eleanor thought. Harlan thinks too much.”
I laughed.
“That seems to be the consensus.”
“Buildings are easy compared with people,” he said. “A building tells you when something is wrong. Crack. Leak. Bad wire. People hide their damage behind nice coats.”
I thought of Harlan pacing fourteen steps across a hospital waiting room.
“What does he hide?”
Mr. Alvarez smiled.
“That is not my story to tell.”
Belle came to the Meridian on Saturday.
Her doctors had cleared her to return to normal activity, though Mara watched her with the focus of an air-traffic controller.
Belle wore both shoes.
I pointed this out.
She looked offended.
“I usually wear two.”
“I’ve only known you a week. I don’t have enough data.”
She considered that.
“Fair.”
Harlan stood nearby.
He had brought her to watch the children’s choir rehearse for the reopening.
When the music started, Belle sat beside me.
“Dad says you get to decide something important.”
“Harlan talks to you about theater governance?”
“What’s governance?”
“That answers my question.”
She swung her feet.
“He said your mom helped his mom.”
“Apparently.”
“My grandma Eleanor is in pictures everywhere.”
“I noticed.”
“She liked hats.”
“She did?”
“Dad says she had too many.”
From behind us, Harlan said, “She had a room for them.”
Belle whispered loudly, “He hated the hats.”
“I could hear that.”
“I know.”
I smiled.
There was nothing remarkable about the moment.
And that was what made it remarkable.
The feared Harlan Voss being teased by his six-year-old daughter.
Mara carrying juice boxes.
Children singing off-key on the Meridian stage.
Maybe power was not the most interesting thing about people after all.
Maybe what they did when no one was impressed mattered more.
My eviction problem did not disappear.
On Monday morning, I woke to another notice taped to my door.
I sat on the floor and stared at it.
Five days.
Tasha found me there.
“Oh, Rue.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sitting on the floor.”
“The floor is free.”
She sat beside me.
We remained there for a while.
Then she asked, “Are you going to tell Harlan?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m voting on his project.”
“You can need help and still think.”
“My mother literally wrote that.”
“Then maybe listen to her.”
I did.
Just not in the way Tasha expected.
That afternoon I called Detroit’s tenant assistance office.
They reviewed the notice.
My landlord had followed the rules.
I owed six weeks of rent.
No villain.
No conspiracy.
Just arithmetic.
The caseworker helped me work out a repayment proposal.
My landlord agreed to give me thirty days if I could make a partial payment by Friday.
