On Friday afternoon, I met Mr. Luis Alvarez.
He was seventy-two and had worked backstage at the Meridian for thirty-four years.
He had silver hair, suspenders, and the habit of calling every object in the building “she.”
“She leaks over there.”
“She sings over here.”
“She does not like cheap paint.”
I liked him immediately.
He showed me the old dressing rooms.
Then a small rehearsal hall on the third floor.
“This was your mother’s favorite room.”
I stopped.
“You knew her?”
“Everybody knew June.”
Apparently I had been the last person in Detroit to learn my mother had once possessed an entire second life.
Mr. Alvarez pointed toward a wall.
“You see that?”
Faded beneath layers of paint was a mural.
Children’s handprints.
Dozens of them.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Red.
Near the bottom was one tiny purple hand.
Beneath it someone had written:
RUE C. — AGE 5
I stared.
