This Body by Laurel Doud

one will ever love me like that. My own husband
couldn't even wait a year before he married someone else. I am twice dead.
    Katharine bolted upright, knocking the chair over behind her. She felt as if she were going to be sick, her dinner detaching
itself from the lining of her stomach. She ran upstairs, leaving the babble of voices behind her. She made it as far as Thisby's
bed and collapsed on it, holding down her threatening stomach. The sounds of sobbing that seemed to belong to someone else
filled her ears. Over and over, again and again.
    The door to the room was suddenly flung open. Katharine lifted herself up on her arms, and Puck seemed to explode into the
room, slamming the door behind him. He was yelling as he came in, “You goddamned, self-centered bitch. I'm almost tempted
to —” He focused on his sister's blotched face. “Jesus.” He stopped a pace or two from her.
    Katharine couldn't stop to say anything. The sobs wracked her body with a godlike hand.
    “You weren't playacting.” He sat down on the edge of the bed but didn't touch her. “Jesus, Thiz. I haven't seen you cry since
you were fifteen.”
    He waited until Katharine could control some of the sobs. “Remember what you told me?” He didn't wait for her to answer. She
couldn't have, anyway. “'I have good reason for crying, but this heart shall break before I'll cry again.' You misquoted it,
of course. Butchered it, actually. God, that drove Dad nuts. You were his little chip off the old block, but you couldn't
get a quote right for your life.” He shifted his weight on the mattress, and Katharine's sobs softened. “Maybe you have changed.
You're crying, at least.”
    Katharine could feel herself fading, like disappearing ink on paper.
    “Sleep. Let sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, steal you a while from thine own company,” he commanded softly.
    In her receding mind, Katharine thought she heard him add, “Bless thee, Thisby. Bless thee. Thou art translated.”

Act 1, Scene 6
    Was I part of this curious dream?
    — F RANK P ETTINGELL ,
Gaslight
(1940)
    The moon hung framed in the window seat of Thisby's bedroom like a huge klieg light suspended from the sky. Katharine felt
reamed.
Again
. She wondered how many times she would have to go through this process. It was like trying to stay nourished during a vicious
bout of the flu, hoping to keep something down — anything — crackers, 7-Up, clear soup.
    It's just a matter of finding out what you can stomach
.
    For a long, melodramatic moment, she mentally swallowed all the pills in the plastic vials back in Thisby's apartment.
I can always finish what Thisby started
, but then she remembered Puck's last line before she fell asleep, “Thisby, thou art translated.” The way he had said it made
her wonder if, as opposed to having been translated into a more understandable form, he meant that she was somehow different
— as in changed.
He would have meant Thisby has changed, of course, but so have I. I am no longer just Katharine
.
    So what's the Plan now? What do I want? I know what I don't want. I don't want a Plan. I want to just be for a while. I want
to find the right pabulum to stomach
.
    And if I die again, then how will I find out how this megillah ends
?
    Despite her aching head, she got up and leaned against the pillows in the window seat. She looked down on the side yard off
the kitchen to the tennis court beyond. The moon struck wicked shadows; it seemed otherworldly. She noticed a hedge that separated
the house from the pool area. It had a shape to it. It was a beast. It reared up on hind legs, and its head roared as it cast
a giant shadow, long and eager on the grass. Had it been shaped, this hedge, with just this purpose in mind — to be best seen
when the moon was full and bright?
I wouldn't put anything past this family
.
    There was a small reading light on the wall above her head, and Katharine reached up and turned it on. Its narrow beam highlighted
the