Free The Tell by Hester Kaplan Page B

stopped acting.”
    â€œBut you were good at it.”
    â€œLots of people are good at things they don’t want to do.”
    Owen paused to let the roar and exhaust of a bus pass. “Actually, most people want to do things they’re not very good at. But most, if they had a talent like you do, they’d run with it.” He would have liked a talent himself but accepted the aptitude for living.
    â€œTalent doesn’t mean purpose and work, which are much more important,” Wilton said. “Talent is just a trait, like my thin fingers or your height, the luck of the genetic draw. You have purpose, Mira has purpose, you’ve both found your way to something important. And what I did was just television. Meaningless stuff. Is there anything of less value, less purpose than a sitcom? I don’t regret what I did all those years, but I understand exactly what it was. I’m under no illusions anymore that I matter.” He made an exploding motion with his hands and followed the fallout as if looking for what might be left. “I was at the drugstore yesterday,” he continued, “and this woman, all hair and huge, scary teeth, was gawking at me.” He imitated her hawkish lean, still an expert mimic to make Owen laugh. “It happens all the time. People know they’ve seen me, but they don’t know from where. They don’t know my name or if I’m someone they should remember. That’s not impact—that’s not even a tiny dent.”
    â€œBut that’s because you’re out of context. It happens to everyone. Who would think you’d be hanging out in the toothpaste aisle in Providence?”
    â€œBut in real life, I’m always out of context. No television screen, no context. In which place am I the real person? In which do I really exist? I can see the entire thought process run through these people who recognize me. Is he someone from high school? Did I used to work with him? And why does he make me feel a little funny?” He forced a full body shiver. “There was a time when people knew exactly who I was. They knew I made them laugh.” The line of his mouth grew straight. “But that’s long over.”
    â€œDo you miss it?”
    â€œThat part I miss very much. You stand in front of your students and know exactly who you are.”
    Owen looked down the long stretch of Hope Street that dipped and then rose again in the distance. The stoplights were out of sync. “Has there been anyone for you, someone you’ve loved?” he asked. Wasn’t this what the man was really talking about, the agency of love to pull you back from that kind of confusion? “Someone who’s loved you?”
    â€œLoved? Not in a long, long time.”
    â€œTell me about your daughter.” Owen hadn’t intended to ask—though the daughter was something he and Mira speculated about all the time—but the moment seemed right. Wilton was all about his daughter, Owen suspected, the central piece of his story, and yet the man told a story entirely empty of her.
    Wilton stood. “Another day. Time for your swim. I don’t want to hold you up anymore than I already have.”
    The sun revealed the two tones of his hair, still brassy on top but now gray-brown at the scalp. After only a few months, Wilton had lost some of that shine he’d had when he first arrived, and his time in Providence could be measured in the strata of fading vanity.
    By midafternoon of Brindle’s fundraiser day, a quilt of humidity hung low over the city. The metallic river had stopped flowing. Mira, in a black silk dress that clung to her like an anxious child, was spooked that her prediction of rain was about to be borne out in exaggerated fashion. Deluge was only minutes away, she said as she and Owen stood in the doorway and the steamy air contracted around them. It would pour, and her guests, her patrons, her aging donors,