Free Juno's Daughters by Lise Saffran

any main parts,” continued Lilly. “I’m talking about a smaller role that a girl could play.” She was silent for a moment and, perhaps reflecting on the marijuana that had made her last year in high school so challenging, she added, “with not too many lines.”
    â€œYou’re persistent,” sighed Dale, “but would you be reliable ?”
    Persistent was a very good word for Lilly, Jenny thought, and it was unsurprising that Dale should find just the right one to describe her.
    Ariel padded back over to the couch and leaned his pelvis against the back of it, looking down at Frankie and Lilly with interest. “Iris? Ceres?” He shifted his gaze to Jenny. “Juno?”
    Dale straightened his back against the chair. His eyes traveled from the girls on the couch, one sleeping, the other tousled and eager, to Jenny and then back again. He tugged at his beard like an Old World rabbi. “Iris, Ceres, and Juno,” he repeated. “ This is a most majestic vision, and harmonious, charmingly. May I be bold to think thee Spirits ?”
    Peg came to stand by Dale’s chair. Her sari was coming undone and she had a small twig clinging to her hair. She said, “ Spirits, which by mine art I have from their confines call’d to enact My present fancies .” There was more than a spark of interest in her eyes. “All three of them?”
    â€œOh, yes,” said Dale, “absolutely.” He reached for his wife’s hand and drew her close.
    Jenny was suddenly wide awake. They were talking about putting them in the play? Jenny and her daughters?
    â€œYou should only give Lilly the part if Jenny and Frankie will be players, too,” said Dale to Peg emphatically. “We want all three.”
    â€œPlease, Mom?” The cool that Lilly cultivated so assiduously was gone. She wanted this. Badly.
    It didn’t help that Jenny wanted to be in the play, too. Even without the blue-eyed Trinculo, in years past she had longed to burrow deep down into the center of the theater magic. To be one of the players.
    Miranda tucked her hair behind her ears and looked at Jenny with curiosity. “Will you do it?”
    In answer, Jenny found herself looking square in the face of Ariel, who gazed back with curiosity and perhaps, if she was not mistaken, a touch of naughtiness. Did he have any idea of the mischief his suggestion might have set in motion, she wondered. She narrowed her eyes at him, not in an unfriendly way, but her scrutiny was clear. He glanced demurely to the side and began a new round of stretches, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Jenny chewed the inside of her cheek and sighed. She suspected he knew quite well.

CHAPTER 5
    Opportunities. Challenges. Ideas.
    T he last school bus of the year was due in ten minutes and Frankie was still in the bathroom. She stuck her head out of the door. “Maybe there’s a part for Phoenix?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Jenny. “Maybe.”
    â€œI’ll ask Dale tonight at the . . . what was it called?”
    â€œThe table reading.”
    â€œThe table reading.” Frankie nodded with satisfaction and closed the door.
    Jenny stirred the honey in her tea and closed her eyes to take her first sip. Now that the actors were on the island, she mused, the most ordinary places, the post office, the bowling alley, the Whale Museum, all crackled with new possibility. She would have allowed herself to be drawn and quartered before admitting to Lilly that she scanned the avenues of Friday Harbor for one particular sandy-haired man. The northern light always gave her a touch of insomnia in late spring and early summer, but this year it was worse than usual. Though it was past eight in the morning, she would have liked nothing better than to climb back under the covers and listen through the window for geese and ospreys, hawks and oystercatchers.
    â€œHurry up, Franks,” Jenny