Frances O'Connor

            On Wednesday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where the old tape had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and caught several bedbugs. I went to bed around 1:48 and pretty much slept until the alarm went off at 5:00. After yoga I found several bedbugs caught on the tape on the floor at the head of my bed. I also caught one on the curtain.

            I translated about half of “Les bienfaits de la pratique” (The Benefits of Practice) by Boris Vian.

            I worked out the chords for the instrumental intro and some of the first line of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.35 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 15. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time. I took several photos and dead and alive bedbugs and sent some of them by email to the city bylaw officer Jamal Logan. He got back to me in the late afternoon and said, “Thank you for providing me with this. I’ve moved forward with issuing a property standards order that will be mailed out the following day, allowing 30 days for compliance from the property owner.” 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 91.2 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped New Zealand grass fed beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 2, episode 6 of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. 

            The show opens with Wednesday putting on makeup and donning a bright coloured outfit with a mini-skirt, then dances happily through the Nevermore campus while posing for smart phone cameras. I said to Astrid this extremely uncharacteristic display of brightness and exuberance must be a dream. She thought it might be a shape shifter posing as Wednesday, but we would find out later that we were both wrong. 

            13 hours and 16 minutes earlier, Wednesday is in Principal Dort’s office with Sherrif Santiago, Enid, and Wednesday’s parents Morticia and Gomez Addams. The issue being addressed is the attack by Tyler Galpin in his Hyde form during the Day of the Dead celebration. Wednesday reminds Dort that she warned him about Tyler. Francoise Galpin, Tyler’s mother, had also appeared in her Hyde form but Morticia talked her out of attacking and made her promise to leave Jericho with Tyler. She assures Dort and Santiago that the Hydes are now gone from Jericho. Dort institutes a school curfew. 

            Wednesday is still without her psychic powers. The ghost of former Principal Weems is Wednesday’s spirit guide and she tells Wednesday she won’t get her powers back until she resolves her issues with her mother and with her own emotions. 

            Wednesday learns from Professor Orloff that Francoise had a brother named Isaac who was a DaVinci and who designed Orloff’s robotic life support system. He tells her that Isaac died in a lab explosion and is said to be buried under the Skull Tree. Wednesday realizes that Isaac is the corpse that her brother Pugsley accidentally brought back to life with his electrical powers and took as his pet zombie, Slurp.

            Francoise and Tyler are hiding out in an underground bunker. She has Tyler chained to his bed and plans to become his new master. But she is coughing blood sometimes and reveals that Hydes do not live long. 

            Professor Capri visits Enid and addresses the phenomenon of her having turned into her werewolf side when there was no full moon. She explains that she could be that rare type of werewolf known as an Alpha. 

            Wednesday visits her Grandmama and asks for a way to get her powers back. She tells her to the grave of former Nevermore Professor Rosaline Rotwood and if she reads aloud the inscription she will be granted temporary psychic powers. Wednesday breaks curfew to find the headstone but while she is there, Enid learns that Professor Capri is doing dorm checks. If Wednesday is discovered missing then Enid will also be punished and she’ll miss the gala, so she goes after Wednesday. Meanwhile Wednesday reads the inscription and is transported in her mind to the spirit realm where she meets Rotwood (played stiffly by Lady Gaga). Rotwood shows her a candle flame and tells her if she can keep her hand on it for a certain time she will be granted temporary sight. She is baring the flame without flinching when suddenly Enid arrives and grabs her, cutting her contact with the flame. Both Wednesday and Enid collapse on the graveyard grass and wake up in each other’s bodies. 

            Wednesday goes out in Enid’s body and is grabbed from behind by Enid’s lover Bruno but Wednesday flips him with a judo toss and sternly warns him not to try it again. 

            Enid, in Wednesday’s body tries to continue with her colourful life but breaks out in hives because Wednesday is literally allergic to colour. Morticia notices this and provides her with the remedy she is supposed to be taking for her affliction. Enid has to agree to come to an Addams Family dinner.

            Meanwhile Isaac finds the underground bunker where his sister and nephew are hiding. He tells Francoise he can cure her of being a Hyde but needs the right equipment. 

            Enid, in Wednesday’s body discovers Wednesdays novel and discovers that a character in the book is based on her and made ridiculous. She is offended and decides to get revenge by humiliating Wednesday in public and that’s where we came in. 

            Wednesday, in Enid’s body discovers that Bruno is cheating on her and breaks up with him.

            Thinking Wednesday is Enid, Professor Capri tells her that she has to spend the night at the Lupin Cages so she can safely transform into a werewolf. 

            Thing attends a support group for separated appendages. He says he doesn’t know where he came from. He was found by the Addams Family with the only key to his past being a signet ring. 

            At the Addams Family dinner, the ghost of Weems appears to Morticia and reveals that it is Enid and not her daughter sitting at the table. 

            Isaac enters Orloff’s lab and reclaims the power source from Orloff’s robot body. He then eats Orloff’s brain so a great mind will not go to waste. He takes the power source and goes with Francoise and Tyler back to Willow Hill to reactivate the burned out machinery, while Agnes invisibly follows them. 

            Enid in Wednesday’s body finds Wednesday in her body at the Lupin Cages and tells her that she’s learned that if they don’t switch back by dawn then they will both die. Agnes calls Wednesday to tell her that Isaac, Francoise, and Tyler have gone to Willow Hill. Tyler detects Agnes, captures her and locks her in a cell. When the switched Wednesday and Enid arrive, Tyler captures the one he thinks is Enid and places her in a cell. But Wednesday transforms into a gigantic black Alpha werewolf and smashes free of the cell and even Tyler is no match for her. She doesn’t have time to do harm to Tyler because the lab is about to explode and so everyone escapes. 

            The switched Wednesday and Enid return to Rotwood’s grave. They touch it together and share the things they’ve learned about each other while in each other’s bodies. Enid admires Wednesday’s fearlessness but also realizes that she fears she is too dark for even her mother to bear and fears being rejected by Morticia like she did her sister Ophelia. 

            Wednesday says she admires Enid’s quiet strength. She knows Enid fears being an Alpha will render her solitary but Wednesday vows she won’t let that happen. The girls collapse and wake up back in their own bodies. 

            Weems appears before Wednesday and tells her that the premonition of her causing Enid’s death has been broken but in her place an Addams must die. 

            Francoise is played by Frances O’Connor, who earned a BA in Literature from Curtin University in Western Australia and graduated from the Western Australia Performing Arts Academy. She made her TV debut in the Australian series Law of the Land in 1992. She made her film debut in Love and Other Catastrophes in 1996. She starred in Kiss Or Kill, Thank God He Met Lizzie, Mercy, She co-starred in A Little Bit of Soul, About Adam, The Lazarus Child, Picadilly Jim, Go, Mansfield Park, Bedazzled (her first Hollywood film), A.I., The Importance of Being Earnest, Timeline, Book of Love, Iron Jawed Angels, Blessed, Jayne Mansfield’s Car, Little Red Wagon, The Truth About Emanuel, Three Dollars, The Hunter, The Conjuring 2, She co-starred in the series Cashmere Mafia, She co-starred in the BBC series Mr. Selfridge, The Missing. She made her film directorial debut in 1922 with Emily, which she also wrote.