𝗧𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸

𝗧𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘆-𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 | 𝗔 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲

𝙒𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧'𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙖𝙢𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙮 seemed exacerbated by the continuance of the tour despite the year's slow fade into springtime. Days were short, making Mallorie's alone time with Michael feel like mere minutes and rehearsals feel like a scramble. Nights were long and feverish, and they were often spent reminiscing the bittersweet few postnuptial weeks they'd spent attached like velcro that started as soon as they made their sneaky, premature departure from her graduation party—at least by Mallorie. Michael's nights were spent rehearsing.

For the early half of February, the stadium Michael performed in was empty aside from a handful of nights that invited celebrity acquaintances and a children's charity to watch the revised show run-through. And Mallorie was thankful for that. Pensacola's air was constantly thick with humidity, dampening everything with a brackish-scented stickiness. Imagining a ten thousand count audience overwhelming the steel stage gates, shrieking, fainting, and emananting more heat into the atmosphere made her lightheaded herself. It also brought to mind the challenging climate of Japan and subsequently, the completely separate life she'd seemed to been living back then.

In a particularly worrisome way, so did her husband's appearance.

Through brutal weeks of rehearsal, Michael had whittled himself back down to the more frail version of his frame. Both all at once and gradually, the changes became more apparent, though they'd happened right under Mallorie's nose. A striking tendon when he pulled a door open, a deeper hollow to his cheeks, a more noticeable valley in his collarbones. An awful feeling of doom started to come and go in waves of nausea when Mallorie began to notice. Guilt followed not far behind it, and the attacks happened with enough frequency that she was prepared to diagnose herself with anxiety-induced gastroparesis.

To keep her self-reproach from affecting her worse, she gave herself the grace of remembering that Michael was exceptionally good at hiding. He hid his disdain for the press with gracious waves and smiles into their cameras, the pain from his childhood in his remarkable sense of philanthropy, and there was no doubt he was at least unintentionally hiding his condition.

Around her, Michael ate fairly normally. Mallorie knew it because she kept a mental track of his meals every day. She saw the way he started to pick at his food or skip dinner to go straight to sleep because he was "too tired," then she did her best to combat it. She encouraged him to take her on "dates" which were little more than a large room service meal by candlelight. She brought him extra snacks. She'd hunt him down in the hotel ballroom as early as 1 AM to end his solo rehearsals. But she'd feared that against his obstinate commitment to his artistry, her efforts were futile.

On one particularly memorable night, that fear was realized. Michael's opening show of the North American leg was met with critical acclaim. His fans welcomed him with palpable, overwhelming enthusiasm. Every news outlet, national and local, boasted his return to his home country and his spectacular performance in Kansas City. Mallorie was also a fan of the revised show and setlist, which she'd watched alone and from a tiny television in his dressing room. His new tour outfit, a sexy, silver satin zip-up jacket, didn't cling to him the way it had months ago during fittings. And although she thought Michael looked absolutely magnetic in the piece, the way excess fabric bunched above his large statement belt and around his biceps bode her more concern about his health.

Watching him perform was also a disturbing clash of emotions. The stage was where he appeared happiest. When he sang and danced how he always did, with every hypnotizing motion and note brimming with an uncontested passion, anyone could see that he was happy. But all Mallorie saw was her own failures in keeping him healthy, all right along with four weeks of exhaustive back-to-back rehearsals compressed into one magnificent yet utterly restless performer.