Dearly Departed by David Housewright Page B

university,” Marie confided in a throaty, sensual voice—yeah, I could see why people would pay her serious money to speak eloquently about detergent and fax machines. “She was like my little sister, which is kind of funny when you think about it. She was eighteen and I was twenty-two, but she was a senior and I was only a junior. God, she was smart. She could have been a great actress. She had this ability to totally immerse herself into a role, to actually become the character she was playing. Like Meryl Streep … Well, maybe not quite like Streep.”
    “I have a photograph of the two of you,” I told her. “You’re in costume. European, I think.”
    “ The Cherry Orchard? ”
    I shrugged my ignorance.
    “We did Chekhov for the university theater company. She was Anya to my Varya. She was wonderful; great reviews. The critic from the Star Tribune said Alison was, quote, ‘an actor to watch.’”
    “Why did she give it up?”
    “I don’t think it was important enough to her. We often spoke about acting, fantasizing about our careers. She told me she was going to change her name to Rosalind Colletti; it was going to be her stage name. But acting is an extremely punishing profession, and I don’t think she was willing to take the rejection, the hammering we often get from agents, from casting directors, from critics. You know what her goal was? It wasn’t the Oscar or the Tony. It was independence. She wanted to take only those parts that genuinely interested her and nothing else. Show me an actor with that attitude who gets work. Jack Nicholson, maybe, but first he had to pay his dues like everyone else. Ever see Hell’s Angels On Wheels? ”
    “So she gave it up,” I volunteered.
    “We went to a few auditions together, then fewer and fewer until she stopped going altogether. It’s too bad. I’m doing The Merchant of Venice for The Acting Company; Alison would have made a great Jessica. Would you like a couple of tickets? On the house?”
    “That would be very nice, thank you,” I answered without hesitation. I used to glom onto freebies when I was a cop, too.
    “Thursday night? I already gave away my weekend tickets.”
    “That’d be great,” I said as she made a note to herself on a small pad.
    “I write everything down,” she told me.
    “So do I,” I replied, making a notation on my own pad. “When did Alison begin working for the health-care organization?” I asked.
    “About a year after she earned her master’s. First, though, she took a job with an advertising agency that had a public relations department. She was a junior account executive—or something like that—and the health-care company was her primary client. A year later she left the agency and began working full time for the health-care place. It upset a lot of people, too.”
    “How so?”
    “First thing she did was fire the ad agency and hire someone else.”
    “Burning bridges,” I suggested.
    “She was like that.”
    “How did your relationship hold up?”
    “Fine,” Marie answered, shrugging. “We started to drift apart; she was doing her thing and I was doing mine. We stayed in touch, though; met a couple times a month for lunch.”
    “When was the last time you saw her?”
    “About a month before she disappeared.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    “I can’t even remember, it was so unimportant. She certainly didn’t confide in me about what was happening in her life if that’s what you’re asking,” Marie shook her head sadly. “I was supposed to be her friend—one of her best friends—yet she didn’t confide in me. Now I wonder if we were friends at all. Sometimes it seems to me that we were only two people who knew each other for a long time.”
    I appreciated Marie’s confusion. I am continually impressed by how little we truly know about each other, by how much we conceal. We often remain strangers even to those we’re the most intimate with. I’ve known widows who learn more about