| "Grace Note" | |
|---|---|
| The Twilight Zone episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 23b |
| Directed by | Peter Medak |
| Written by | Patrice Messina |
| Production code | 56 |
| Original air date | April 4, 1986 |
| Guest appearances | |
| |
"Grace Note" is the second segment of the twenty-third episode of the first season of the television series The Twilight Zone. In this segment, an opera singer gains a glimpse of her future with a wish from her dying sister.
Plot
It is March 1966. Rosemarie Miletti is taking singing lessons with aspirations of becoming a professional opera singer. However, she struggles to keep up with her studies as she is the eldest child and must care for her family, in particular her sister Mary, who is ill with leukemia. Mary makes Rosemarie promise that when she becomes a big opera star that she won't forget her. Rosemarie denies she'll become an opera star but Mary is insistent. That night, Mary sees a shooting star and makes a wish for Rosemarie.
After grocery shopping, Rosemarie finds the house empty and a note telling her that Mary is in the hospital. There, Mary tells Rosemarie to follow the music and she'll see something. Rosemarie heads down the hall, which becomes a different hospital hall as she proceeds. She walks outside and sees a newspaper, which reads March 22, 1986! She hails a cab and asks to go to the Met. The performance, starring herself in La traviata, is sold-out.
After the performance, Rosemarie gets backstage by telling the guard she's Mary Miletti. Rosemarie stands at the dressing room door and listens to her future self talk with her sister Dorothy. Rosemarie's future self instructs Dorothy to leave the door open when she leaves. As she puts on a locket necklace with Mary's picture in it, Rosemarie looks back at the open door and remembers her past self. Then the 1966 Rosemarie in the doorway hears Mary's voice calling to her from the hospital in 1966 and Rosemarie hurries back to her own time. Mary, gravely ill in a hospital bed, gives Rosemarie a locket necklace with Mary's picture in it. Mary tells her older sister, Rosemarie, that it was her wish that Rosemarie would one day become a big opera star. Mary dies and Rosemarie mourns with the rest of the family, but now knows that her destiny as an opera star awaits.