Lady Madonna pinned the audition flyer to the inside of the cupboard door, where the children would not see it. The cupboard held one tin of beans, a heel of bread, and a jar with three coins. She had found the flyer nailed to a tree at the edge of the wood a week ago. Swirling paint, bold letters: AUDITION: COMING SOON. Coming soon meant tomorrow. Tomorrow meant a singer's wage, if she was chosen, and food that lasted past Sunday. She had practiced every night after the children were asleep, humming low at the sink so the floorboards would not carry. Her husband had left months ago. Before that, the only kind thing he had ever said about her voice was that she sounded pretty, and then he had gone back to his newspaper. Now she sang for a wage instead of a compliment. The problem was simple and unsolvable: she had many children and no one to watch them. She knocked on three doors that morning. A neighbor said she was sorry. Another did not open. The third only looked at the children behind Lady Madonna's skirt and shook her head. Lady Madonna walked back along the path with the twins skipping ahead in matching brown jackets. The audition was in the morning. She had until dark to find an answer or feed her children boiled water and pride. A woman was waiting on the wooden bench outside her gate. Dark hair, white dress, a small daisy pinned above one ear. The woman watched the twins climb up beside her and settle on either side of her without being asked. "You're the one who hums at the sink," the woman said. Lady Madonna stopped on the path. The woman went still in a way that did not look like stillness so much as listening. "I'm Lucy. I read people. I came because I felt you deciding something." She nodded at the twins on the bench. "I can sit with them tomorrow. All of them. I won't take money." Lady Madonna opened her mouth to ask why. Lucy said, "Because you're going to say yes, and you already know it." That night Lady Madonna laid out her cleanest dress and the white apron. She counted the children in their beds twice. Her oldest daughter watched her from the doorway without speaking, the way she always did, and then nodded once and went to sleep. In the morning Lucy arrived before sunrise. Lady Madonna kissed each child, set the twins on the bench in the yard with the others gathered around, and walked toward the wood with the flyer folded in her apron pocket. The cupboard was still nearly empty. But for the first time, the door was open behind her, and she was walking through it.

Lady Madonna walked into the wood with the flyer in her apron pocket. She stopped at the edge of the clearing where the audition stage stood. Painted swirls covered its columns. Circles inside circles pulsed on the backdrop. A line of women waited near the steps. One wore silk. One wore beads down to her waist. Lady Madonna looked down at her plain dress and the apron she had scrubbed clean the night before. Her hands smelled of soap. Her hem was stained where a child had gripped it. She stepped back into the trees before anyone saw her. She knew one door left to knock on. Eleanor Rigby lived in a small house near the chapel. Lady Madonna had passed the house for years and seen the same lamp in the window at the same hour. She knocked. Eleanor opened the door already dressed, pearls at her throat, cardigan buttoned. "I heard there was an audition," Eleanor said. "I wondered who would come." Lady Madonna showed her the flyer. She said she could not stand on that stage in an apron. She had no money. She had until morning. Eleanor let her in. The front room was warm and smelled of tea. A dress form stood by the window with a half-finished floral print pinned to it. Eleanor took a measuring tape from a drawer and went to work without speaking. She pulled a bolt of gold cloth from a trunk beneath the stairs. "I bought this a long time ago," she said. "For a wedding that did not happen." She held the cloth to Lady Madonna's shoulder. "It will suit you better than it ever suited me." She cut. She pinned. Lady Madonna stood still while the light moved across the floor. Eleanor sewed through the afternoon and past dark. She stitched a bodice of gold and a skirt that caught every lamp in the room. When she was done she stepped back and looked at Lady Madonna for a long moment. "There," she said. "Now they will have to listen." Lady Madonna could not pay her. Eleanor waved the offer away. "Come back and tell me if you got it," she said. "That is the payment." Lady Madonna carried the folded dress home through the wood. She hung it on the back of her door and did not touch it again that night. In the morning she put it on. It fit. The apron stayed on the hook. She walked back to the clearing and gave her name to the woman with the list. The woman looked up, took in the gold, and marked her down for a slot. Lady Madonna waited her turn at the foot of the painted stage, hands quiet at her sides, no longer invisible.