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Does the name sound familiar to you? Don’t be surprised if not. Henrietta spent the first few years of her life in the small city of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. A quiet child in her initial  years of schooling, she first garnered attention with superior academic test scores. It wasn’t long before she turned heads again by demonstrating an unnaturally adept flair for the arts. But neither of those are how anyone in Fergus Falls remembers Henrietta. The people of this city remember the night a young woman turned in a tear-inducing performance as the lead in the school’s production of the Broadway hit Kneejerk, and was then never heard from or seen again.

Only in recently meeting Henrietta did I become privy to her past. But as with anyone, their past is crucial to their present, and often informs their future. What you’ll be surprised to find out is you know Henrietta Hawthorne, and you know exactly what became of her. What follows is an unedited, word-for-word account of our one hour interaction.

Robert Dean: Should I call you Henrietta?

Henrietta Hawthorne: That will work just fine, dear.

RD: I guess the first question I have for you is- why me?

HH: You mean, why did I choose you for this interview?

RD: Yes, ma’am.

HH: I read a sentence of yours not too long ago that has stuck with me. It was at the end of an interview in which I felt your opinion was in ardent contrast to the interviewee. 

RD: I know the interview you’re referring to… I regret not being able to better mask that.

HH: Not at all, you wrote beautifully and objectively. It was a personally formed feeling. And now you’ve confirmed I was correct. But anyway, that is the reason. You are able to convey feeling through written word, and that is how I have conducted my life- through feeling.

RD: I guess we should start from the beginning, can you tell us what happened all those years ago after the opening night of Kneejerk, back in Minnesota?

HH: I simply drove away.

RD: Away from the school? Away from… everything?

HH: Precisely. I remember it in perfect detail. I was stopped at a light, the thunderous applause still ringing in my ears. The performance had been so big, so exciting, all of my emotions were running at full speed for the first time in my life. I felt alive. And then I saw her. In my rearview mirror, my stage makeup still applied, I saw myself. Time slowed to a pace impossible to measure. I witnessed my entire life unfold. Years. All the things I would go on to do, all the things I would experience, achieve, overcome. I was watching a highlight reel.

RD: You mean all the things you could do? The possibilities? 

HH: No, I don’t think so. I’ve tried to understand it for years, but when I tell you that in the mere seconds it takes a light to turn from red to green, I watched the future unfold. I saw the careers, I saw the work, the places I would live, the people I would meet. I observed the most infamous thing I would do, until now that is. Then, all of the sudden, I was looking out the windshield again and a horn honked behind me. I recall recognizing the car as that of  the hardware store owner’s wife. In those few seconds I aged. I changed completely. Be it the chicken or the egg, if I envisioned things and then chased them, or if I in fact saw my future- it’s irrelevant. I didn’t want to waste another second of my life before becoming that woman in the mirror. 

RD: That’s a striking account. Almost as striking, if I’ve done my math correctly, as the virtually nonexistent amount of time between that school play and when you were cast in your breakout film. 

HH: It was quite quick. 

RD: How do you account for that success? Especially in the face of performing in a single high school play, whose reception was immediately eclipsed by the story of your disappearance? 

HH: Singular focus. Only when you know exactly what you want can your plan come into focus. In my case, my focus was crystal clear, through the confidence of knowing I was going to be a movie star.

RD: Because you saw it in the mirror that night?

HH: Correct.

RD: I only get so many questions to ask you before my readers learn your name and it won’t be long after that the whole world knows of your return. So before I ask you where you’ve been, and why, I’ll ask why you felt the need to change your name from Henrietta Hawthorne?

HH: The truth is I knew I was running toward something, but everyone would perceive it as running away. So in partiality, it was to hide. But the larger side is it was the first time in my life I was taking complete control. The woman I looked at in the mirror, she was me, but her name was not mine. I wanted to assume a name that fit her, that fit who I would be.

RD: And so we got Vivien Knox?

HH: Yes, yes you did.

RD: I assume I’ll be able to hear the collective jaw-dropping of our entire readership after this goes to print, because of course we all know Vivien Knox. You’re internationally known for your illustrious and barrier-breaking acting and singing careers. Not to mention your highly awarded golf and tennis endeavors. But even with all of that, you’re certainly more well known for your disappearance. At the height of everything, you vanished. Until now. Where did you go? And why, after seventeen years, have you returned?  

It was at this point in the interview that Henrietta, or Vivien, calmly rose from her chair and walked out of the room. She had agreed to meet me at an undisclosed hotel room outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Prior to our meeting, thorough proof of her identity was provided to me via the only other people in the room at the time of this interview- her lawyer and a private investigator. Upon arrival at the hotel, I met the pair in the lobby and they escorted me to the room Henrietta had just left. Neither of them seemed bothered by her  abrupt departure. After eleven minutes she returned. 

RD: Is everything okay?

HH: No. And yes. I’m not going to tell you where I was all those years.

RD: That’s something I think almost everyone is going to be curious about.

HH: I don’t care. Look, I’ll offer one bit of explanation as to why I went- I just wanted.. I just wanted to meet everyone truly.

RD: And Vivien Knox couldn’t do that.

HH: Assuredly not.

RD: Can I ask again why it is that you’ve returned?

HH: There is something I have to remind everyone of. I know the headlines this interview will garner, but hopefully my life up to now will act as a testament to what I want to convey. Perhaps it will get lost in the shuffle, but as I said, I’ve conducted myself through feeling and I felt I had to do this. Not too long ago I was passing through the outskirts of a large city and I saw a little girl having trouble with, well, it’s not important what she was attempting to do. What’s important is that she had made her mind up, she was going to achieve it. It was certainly an effort far beyond her. Just as I moved to help her, something in my gut stopped me. I stood in place and watched her accomplish it. Her small hands shouldn’t have been able to do what they did, but there’s the problem. With my lived life and experience, all my reason said she wouldn’t be able to do that thing. But no one had ever told her she could not. So she found a way. She simply tried.

RD: So we should learn to quiet our doubts?

HH: Yes darling; behave as if you will succeed.

With that, Henrietta Hawthorne, Vivien Knox, and whoever she had been in the interim years, smiled at me with eyes I can only describe as full of truth. She then shaded them with glasses synonymous with her screen persona, stood to her full height, and walked out the door of a dusty, faded teal and salmon motel room. Specific instructions were expressed by one of the two men, under legal penalty, I wait six months before sending this story to publication. Half a year ago I sat, for one hour, with one of the most notoriously famous women in history. Where she is now, I’m no more wiser than you. But wherever it is, I do know she’s behaving as if she’ll succeed.