Her eyes missed him the moment they opened: the space on their bed where he should have been was empty. She smoothed her hand over the sheets. He had taken his warmth with him, but not his love: she felt it coupled to his scent that still remained. Wriggling over to his side of the bed, she lay her head down and remained still for a few moments, breathing him in.
A slow smile crept over her face.
This time, there had been no overwhelming sense of abandonment. Instead, Rachel felt privileged. She was in love with a man so epically in love with her that he had literally risked his life to let her know he was alive. When he told her, in the library so long ago, that he would have done anything for one more kiss, he had meant it, but she had no idea then what he had been prepared to do for her. Even at the train station. It was humbling.
He had come back to her from the dead. It was strange to think about that, after four years having to keep telling herself that Finn was gone. The guilt over things left unsaid, the sadness, the fear of relegating him to the vagaries of memory, the slow regression into the person she had been before, defined only by her ambition; all of it had done its share of damage. It came as a shock to realize that, in a sense, she had died with him. At least, the person he had made possible for her to become, the fully-realized woman she had wanted to be all along. Despite seemingly having managed to slow the downward slide with her sweet, yet ultimately sad relationship with Judah, Rachel felt she had let Finn down, somehow. But now? Maybe his return (even if, ultimately, they could not be together) might be a reboot for her life. A chance to do it right. Not just for her, but for him, too.
She could still feel him inside her, and curled into a ball, pressing her thighs together, grateful for that one last night, where they both could wish the other happiness with open eyes and absolute honesty.
The source of the pain, this time, was external, beyond the control of either of them.
He had left her a note on the table. Rachel read it before her shower, standing naked at the table, pressing her lips to the paper when she finished, and carefully tucking it in her purse.
Andrew was waiting for her downstairs, drinking tea in the dining area. One other couple sat at a table on the opposite side of the room. It was early for her on a Monday: eight o'clock. She ordered coffee and oatmeal, and sat down.
"Did he get off okay?" she asked, just to say something, but careful not to use his name.
"My colleague Trevor got him to JFK on time for his six o'clock flight." He gave her a kind look. "He looked better than we first met him."
"Good." A small smile. "Thank you for everything."
"It's our pleasure."
The oatmeal and coffee were absolutely delicious. Rachel looked over and ordered some toast as well. "With real butter."
"My parents always used real butter," Andrew said. "After the war, each swore never to touch margarine again."
"He always liked—I mean, likes—real butter." Being able to speak of him in the present tense again felt empowering, and her look of delight at the realization made Andrew smile.
In the car Andrew reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box, offering it to her.
"What's this?"
"In case you need to get in touch with us." Inside was an untraceable burner phone.
Rachel raised her eyebrows, but Andrew's expression was impassive, unreadable. She closed the box and tucked it into her purse without comment.
At her apartment building, Rachel stepped out of the car and turned towards Andrew.
"Thanks again, Andrew. Tell Ian I will be forever in his debt."
"You're welcome, Ms Berry. Take care."
She called Judah when she got inside.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I guess." Her sigh was genuine; the bittersweet nature of what happened masked any joy she felt, sufficiently to make the lie she had to tell him sound believable. "It was a weird fan behind the text. He had been searching some old fan blogs and found one that mentioned Finn. And he found my phone number somehow. Because I wasn't dating when I debuted on Broadway, there was a rumor that I was a closeted lesbian. I never responded to any of it, anywhere, but some fan blogger dug into my past and found out about Finn and posted it to counter the rumor. My manager was able to find out about this new fan and who he was, and asked me over his place to let me know how he was taking care of it."
"So what are you going to do? Get a restraining order?" Judah sounded concerned.
"No, no…Fred and I went over to his house—he lives in Brooklyn—and we spent an hour in his living room, talking. He's actually sweet—in his mind he was trying to make me feel better- but promised to stop when I signed a playbill for him."
"Wow. Door-to-door fan service! You are awesome! "
She chuckled, glad to get that over with.
"Let me take you to dinner tonight, to celebrate solving the mystery."
"Sounds good," she said. "A good dinner and an early night to face the week." She paused a moment, suddenly feeling the enormity of not seeing Finn ever again. "And Judah?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you for being there when I need it."
"You do the same for me. You're quite welcome."
She got up and made some more coffee, so that she could sit quietly on her couch, and absorb this new reality. She wondered where Finn was, right at that moment, while at the same time being grateful not knowing: her ignorance was her contribution to his safety, she thought. She would embrace that as much as she wanted to embrace him.
XXXxxxxx
Something was different in her Friday performance. Everyone in the cast could tell. Sally Jones had undergone a subtle, but important change.
The moment when Sally Jones realizes she loves Herman Lonsdale- when she ceases to see him as just an idle conquest- was one of the pivotal scenes in the show, portrayed in the song, "Uncovering My Eyes". On Tuesday night, Rachel had an epiphany while singing the following lines:
With him I feel the power of connection
A steely band, this bond between two souls
He is the keystone to my resurrection;
The fear I must control.
During development and rehearsals, Rachel had taken hers and Finn's tether concept as a template for her interpretation of the song. Several discussions over dinner with Erik and Tom cemented that approach. They all agreed it gave Sally a deeply human aspect to which the audience could relate. But that Tuesday night, Rachel realized that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't given enough weight to those last two lines. She called Tom after the performance.
"Listen, Tom, I had an insight into Sally tonight that I need to talk about with you and Erik."
At lunch the next day she explained her idea.
"I know in the beginning we had talked about Sally's 'resurrection' as her coming to recognize this connection with Herman instead of looking at him as just some notch on her bedpost. But what if that resurrection was something deeper, darker?"
"It's not dark enough as it is?" Erik looked skeptical, but interested.
"I'm starting to think that darkness isn't well-enough expressed," Rachel said. "She didn't just discover this tether; her whole life was practically…" She rooted around for the right word and her thoughts upon waking up on Sunday came to her. "...rebooted. Only this time, her focus was stripped down to one thing. I think we've been looking at her love for Herman as some partial return of her humanity, you know, springing from her loneliness or something. What if it wasn't? What if her reboot broke her even further, and her obsessive love for Herman was now the only human relationship she could maintain? "
Tom sat up abruptly. "And the rift with her mother is more a casualty of that than just her disapproval of the affair?" She saw him running the ramifications through his head. He looked intrigued.
"Would this take major changes?" Erik piped up, sipping his coffee. Changes made him nervous.
"I don't think so," Rachel said. "Most of it can be just changes in inflection and expression on my part. And reactions to it from Bill."
Tom and Erik chuckled.
"I'll tell him." Erik said. Her relationship with her lead was still frosty. She didn't tell them that it was because he had tried coming on to her and she had refused. Rachel was young and inexperienced, yes, but not stupid. She thought she had let him down easy, but apparently his thirty-three-but-more-like fifteen-year-old ego needed more stroking than she was willing to provide.
"Thanks, Erik. So does that mean you guys like the idea?"
Tom shrugged. "I'm intrigued. Especially since you don't think we have to rewrite anything. You know how I hate that." He winked. Everyone knew he was a notorious rewriter.
"It doesn't sound like a big change. But we'll have to watch for reaction to see if we keep it." Erik had to answer to the producers, despite his insistence that he had full artistic control. Sure you do, Erik.
"Of course. Thank you." She sipped her coffee, smiling .
"What brought this…epiphany on, Rachel?"
She didn't tell them that it was because her life had been rebooted, but only in a far more positive way, and that, up to now, she hadn't fully been the artist Finn had heard her promise to be, so long ago.
"I don't know," she said. "But I wish I had seen it when we started."
She ordered more coffee. There was an urgency now. She had things to be before what she had to do.
XXXxxxx
Some critics picked up on the change. Harold Bellamy, in The Village Voice, noted:
In these pages I have expressed great admiration for "Mount Olympus Blues", most notably Rachel Berry's portrayal of the tortured Sally Jones. Last Friday, however, I saw Ms Berry give us a different take on what I maintain will become one of the great Broadway characters. Gone was the subtle sense of delicacy in Sally's self-destruction, that sense of her coming to terms with her humanity through loving Herman Lonsdale, before having to destroy him in order to get what she wants. That was a flaw in the character of Sally, as I pointed out in my original review. It was a delicacy that made no sense in such a woman, one who so completely and knowingly lays a fellow human's soul to waste. On Friday night, Ms Berry revealed the true Sally Jones to her audience, possessed of a self-absorption so complete that redemption simply wasn't possible, a narcissism so pure it could qualify as one of Plato's ideal forms. The audience felt it was well. It was remarkable to experience Ms Berry drag a theater full of people slowly into hell, unable to even scream. This feat was all the more remarkable because, as far as I could tell, no changes had been made to either libretto or score—it was done almost entirely through Ms Berry's inflection and facial expression. A Tony Award-worthy tour de force.
The public seemed to embrace the change as well, and when the Tony nominations came out in April, Rachel found herself the favorite for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, while Tom was nominated for Best Original Score, and his wife, Emily Lauder, for Best Choreography.
Rachel found herself throwing everything into her work as before, but somehow, she felt more grateful for the opportunity to meet fans, and began enjoying her perks, especially when the producers told her that she had a permanent reservation at Sardi's.
"I don't understand why you turned down the car," Judah said one night, as they both enjoyed supper after their respective second shows one Sunday.
"I got one for Funny Girl," Rachel said, "And I let it get to my head." She was almost inhaling her salad—she was committing even more energy than usual into her singing: louder, more supple, and found herself needing serious refueling .
Judah just grinned; he'd heard the diva stories from Kurt.
"I had only just lost Finn, and found myself really, really struggling with it all. I was thrown into stardom, had Santana possibly Showgirling me…Hell, I hadn't been laid in I didn't know how long." A saucy grin. "I was tough to deal with. I don't want to be that way. The car reminds me of some of the worst."
And she didn't want to let Finn down. Especially now.
They talked about the show.
"How long do they think it's going to run?"
"It's hard to say. In financial terms, it's been very successful—we recouped the money two months ago—so everything now is gravy. . We'll have to see if we pick up any Tony's. That always helps."
Judah toyed with his chicken. "I hope The Moon Garden lasts. I could use some real stability."
"You're great in it, Judah—trust me. The audience loved it when Kurt and I went." They had both taken a matinee off one Sunday to see Judah. All three of them laughed at how difficult it was for any of them to arrange seeing a show these days. Fortunately, all of them had excellent understudies.
As she sat with Judah, Rachel wondered about the nature of success. Once she had believed she wanted everything too much. How much success was too much?
And, as she sipped her coffee, Rachel began pondering an even more important question: how much was enough?
XXXxxx
On a warm June night, with her dads , Tom and Emily, Kurt and Judah, and a sea of celebrities before her, Rachel accepted her Tony Award from Neil Patrick Harris and Sutton Foster.
So far, so good, she thought. I didn't trip on the stairs. I didn't drop the award. It's time:
"Just like no man is an island, no Broadway star gets this honor without a lot of help from a long list of people. I cannot thank everyone who has helped me get to where I am today, up here before you, so if I don't mention your name, please know it's because of a time limit. I hope I've acknowledged you in some way outside of this auditorium for your support. Just know I am thanking you from the bottom of my heart.
"To my producers, George Armstrong and Phineas Barlow, thank you for letting Tom Foley's amazing show make it to the stage, and to Erik Strong, my director, you'll never know how much I appreciate your letting me follow my artistic instincts—I'm humbled that what I saw in Sally Jones also fit within your vision."
She looked down at Tom and Emily.
"Getting to work with Tom Foley and Emily Lauder, probably the most talented artistic partnership in theater and two of my dearest friends, has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my career.
"And to my fathers, Hiram and Leroy Berry," she waved to them, tears in her eyes shining through her broadest smile, "You've loved and supported me from my very first breath. I love you both, so much."
And then, her face took on a serene, transcendent smile. She was back in her old room in Lima, practicing this speech, and Finn was there too, blushing when she introduced him as her husband and love of her life. I'm sorry I have to modify it, baby. Forgive me.
"There's one more person I have to thank." She was trying to hold back tears, but failing spectacularly. "He was the most unselfish person I've ever met. He loved me before all of this, back when I was the nobody that everyone made fun of. And he sacrificed his own happiness so that I could achieve my dream, a dream he never lived to actually see come true. So I'd like to dedicate this award to Finn Hudson." She swallowed hard, and raised the award, looking up. "You see, baby? I made it, just like you said. I hope I made you proud."
She had to be quick, before the tears overcame her.
"I love you," she said, hoping he was watching. "And I'll meet you at the end."
A/N: Thanks to all who have hung in this far. Reviews are welcome!
