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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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Elizabeth shook her head. “It's not Aunt Harriet's fault. It's my fault for ever having asked for this summer in the first place. I can't give her anything in return—if I make a success in the theatre it will pain her and not please her—so why should I expect her to help me in something she dislikes so intensely? I shouldn't have let my wanting it so much make me want or hope for help from her. Well, the world won't come to an end just because I have to go back to Jordan, Virginia, where Aunt Harriet thinks I belong. I'll see you in New York anyhow.”
“Did you tell Mr. Price?” John Peter asked.
Elizabeth nodded. “I did.”
“How did he take it?”
“He was really—filthy—about it. I don't know why he had to be so horrible when sometimes he can seem so understanding. He made me feel as though I were committing some unspeakable crime by leaving in the middle of the season.”
“He doesn't want to lose you,” Jane told her. “You're the most useful apprentice he has. You do twice as much work as the rest of us put together.”
“I can't be too useful,” Elizabeth said. “He didn't suggest that I stay on without paying my twenty bucks a week.”
“That man's tighter than a wad,” John Peter said with disgust. “I don't see why he doesn't take you on for props or something. When the paying apprentices do props—with a few exceptions, such as Ditta—they never get anything right.”
Downstairs they could hear Mrs. Browden ringing the bell
for lunch. “Come on,” John Peter said, “we're having hamburgers and it's going to be nice and quiet. Ben just took a big box of grub over to the theatre for the professional company.”
Elizabeth put her hairbrush down on the bureau, carefully in line with Jane's. “It's a pity one must eat to live. I'd much rather go for a swim than eat. I haven't had a chance to get in the ocean for days.”
“Don't tell me you've lost your appetite,” John Peter said. “There are no classes tomorrow morning, so we can all swim before you go.”
Jane put her arm affectionately about Elizabeth's waist. “We're going to miss you. Life will be very drab around this dump. And it seems awfully peculiar to me. Why'd she send for you all of a sudden like this?”
Elizabeth sighed wearily. “I told you, Jane. I never should have asked it of her anyhow, the way she feels about the theatre.”
Jane persisted. “But
why
does she hate the theatre so?”
“Honestly, Jane!” Elizabeth's voice was exasperated. “Lots of people hate the theatre!”
“Now don't be mad at me, Liz,” Jane said, grinning at her ingratiatingly.
“I'm not mad at you, idiot. Come on. Let's eat.”
 
After lunch Ben came back from the theatre and found Elizabeth. “Joe is letting me off for a few hours. I'll help you clear and then we can set the table for tonight and get it over with. I'll be able to rehearse
The Seagull
with you guys after all.”
“Great,” Elizabeth said.
They worked quickly and in silence, Ben pausing every once in a while to stare with anxious affection at Elizabeth. Apprentices and members of the company who were not at rehearsal moved in and out of the living room, but there was little noise. The quiet of a hot summer afternoon pressed over them; only the ocean talked incessantly with restless insistence. When they were finished, Ben watched Elizabeth pour herself a glass of water from a huge pitcher, and then nudged her, causing her to spill water on the floor. He jerked his head at Dottie, who was in the living room. Elizabeth followed his gaze and grinned.
Dottie was sitting on the couch she had occupied with Huntley Haskell the night before, writing a letter, with an intent and rather idiotic look on her pretty face. Her long blond hair, which she dyed to get the same color that Jane's was naturally, swirled over her bare shoulders, covering her with much more modesty than the man's silk handkerchief she had tied around her bosom.
“Why is it that when people bleach their hair it always makes their faces look hard?” Elizabeth asked Ben. “But when it's natural, like Jane's, it doesn't at all. Jane looks—well, as easily bruised as lily of the valley, but Dottie looks like a sharp little paring knife.”
Ben strolled over to Dottie, lifted the veil of hair, and dropped it so that it hung over her eyes. “The sun's gone in, Dottie,” he said.
Dottie swept her hair back impatiently, but didn't look up. “Quiet, child. I'm writing home.”
“Home for delinquent females?”
Dottie said, still without looking up, “I know you don't think much of me, but Courtmont's going to have dinner in the Cottage tonight. You'd better curb your saucy tongue around her. She's a star and she's used to being treated like one.”
A wild look came into Ben's eyes. “And how would
you
treat a star, my angel?”
“With more respect than you would,” Dottie said, pulling her hair over her shoulders as a slight breeze came in the window behind her.
“Don't you want my sweater, my fair maid of Perth?” Ben asked her. “You'll have gooseflesh in another minute, and think how unattractive those cozy arms of yours would look with little goose pimples all over them.”
“You're disgusting,” Dottie said.
“If Courtmont is rude to me when I'm serving her supper tonight, I shall throw the potatoes in her face,” Ben said.
“You should be grateful,” Dottie told him sententiously. “She's only coming because of you apprentices.”
“It's a lovely idea of the Pricelesses, having the stars eat with us the Saturday night of their last performance. Too bad they aren't allowed to sit with us and we can't talk to them. I wish Courtmont'd bleary well stay at her ritzy thirty-dollar-a-day hotel and leave us to our squalid peace.”
Elizabeth grinned and thought, I can't leave tomorrow. I can't. Ben and all his idiotic yammering. I'll miss him. I'll miss him almost as much as I'll miss Kurt.
At the thought of leaving Kurt, a cold stone of misery settled in her.
“Why this venom?” Dottie asked with curiosity.
Ben's voice quivered with indignation. “Courtmont called me a ‘sweet little boy'!”
“Well, you are.” Dottie combed her long red nails through her hair.
Ben glared at her. Then he turned to Elizabeth. “Thank God Courtmont's going home tomorrow.” He flung himself down and lay flat on the floor. “Hey, it's nice and cool here.”
“She's going home tonight,” Dottie said, never averse to any tidbits of gossip, no matter how slight. “Looks like she doesn't like being here any better than you like having her.”
“The thing that gets me”—Ben began doing the exercises the apprentices were taught in body movement classes—“is that the woman can be such a damn good actress when she wants to. I've always had kind of a thing about her and then she comes up here and disillusions me. She's been rude and upstagey offstage and all she's done
on
stage is admire herself and her position in the Theatah. If Valborg Andersen disillusions me too, I'll want to puke, but she's been here almost a week and my allegiance has certainly switched.”
“Ever hear of the famous Andersen temper?” Dottie asked. “We may see it in action yet.”
“I like a temper when there's a reason for it,” Ben said. “And there's always a reason around here.” It didn't seem to occur to him that this was logic nohow contrariwise. Satisfied that he had put Dottie in her place, he turned around just in time to see Sophie slinking down the stairs in a dark suit and an elaborate fur piece, and, what was even more striking, carrying two large suitcases.
“My sainted hat, Soapie,” he said. “Where are you going?”
Sophie got very red. “I wish you wouldn't call me Soapie, Ben. And I'm going home.”
“Home!”
“Yes.”
“Whatever for?”
“I'm sick and tired of paying a large tuition and then some more for room and board every week and not getting one thing out of it. Old Mariella Hedeman gives us those silly voice lessons and Marian Hatfield gives us body movement and she's always mean to me and you scholarship kids always get the best parts in the scenes with Huntley Haskell and it isn't fair and we're told we might get a walk-on with the company but I can't see that one maybe walk-on's worth wasting the rest of the summer to wait for. So I'm going to find another theatre where the paying apprentices get better treatment.”
Ben whistled. “You really are upset, aren't you, Soapie? That's the most impassioned speech I've ever heard you make. When did you pack?”
“After lunch.”
“We asked you to work with us in the afternoons,” Elizabeth reminded Sophie, “but you said you'd rather stay out on the beach and get a tan.”
“I don't want to work on your silly old plays,” Sophie said, “but none of the professional company ever pays any attention to me in their classes and we've never even
had
makeup classes yet.”
“I can't blame you for leaving.” Ben clambered up onto the
newel post and perched there, trying to posture like a statue as he looked down at Sophie. “Is J. P. Price refunding your tuition?”
“No,” Sophie said, “and I'd already paid room and board through next week.”
Ben whistled again. “Throw it around, girl!”
But Elizabeth turned on Sophie eagerly. “You've paid room and board for next week?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Sophie, please, you could do me the most wonderful favor if only you would!”
“What?” Sophie asked suspiciously.
“Sophie,” Elizabeth clasped her hands in her intensity. “Tell J. P. Price you want me to have it, will you?”
“Why?”
“Listen, Sophie, I don't expect you to understand such sordid things, but I'm broke. I haven't got twenty dollars to pay my room and board next week, and if I can't get it I have to leave. If I could stay on the twenty dollars you've already paid, it would mean another whole week here.”
“I don't want to speak to Mr. Price,” Sophie said. “I've already said goodbye to him and he was real mean to me.”
“Then let me tell him you said I could stay on your twenty dollars.” It was the first time Ben had ever heard Elizabeth ask for anything, and the effort it cost her was painfully apparent.
Sophie looked at Elizabeth with unfriendly eyes. “I don't see why I should do you any favors, Elizabeth Jerrold. You and Jane and your gang are always all over the room and sit on my bed and you tease me and call me Soapie.”
“We haven't teased you to be mean,” Elizabeth said. “I'm awfully sorry if we've hurt your feelings. Truly. And we only called you Soapie for fun, the way we tease Ditta about being a schoolmarm or John Peter about having a nose like a hawk.”
“I don't see why I should do you any favors,” Sophie repeated.
Elizabeth looked at Sophie and then said flatly, “As a matter of fact, neither do I. I never should have mentioned it. Forget it.”
But Ben climbed down from his newel post and advanced menacingly toward Sophie. “Shut up, Liz,” he said. “Now listen to me, Sophie Sherman. Are you going to let Liz tell Price you want her to stay on your room and board next week or not?”
Sophie looked at Ben's angrily flashing eyes and then down at her feet in high-heeled suede pumps. “I don't care what she tells him,” she said sulkily.
“Okay.”
“Soapie, it's terribly nice of you,” Elizabeth said.
“Don't call me Soapie!”
Elizabeth laughed apologetically. “Sorry.”
The screen door with its torn rusty screening was pushed open, and Joe McGill, the stage manager, stuck part of his huge bulk through and said, “There's a taxi over at the theatre for a Miss Sherman. That you, by any chance, Sophie?”
“Oh, yes, Joe,” Sophie said. “Tell it to come over here.”
“If you want to go anywhere, I advise you to go over there, see. Where you going?”
“Home.”
“Couldn't take it, huh? Can't say I blame you. Okay, I'll
take your bags over to the taxi for you.” He turned to Dottie, who was again engrossed in her correspondence. “Just a word of warning to the wise, Dorothy Toujours L'Amour. I'd amble over to the theatre if I were you, see. Andersen's about to call your scene, and she won't like it if you're not around.”
“She's not going to call my scene this afternoon, Grandpa.” Dottie folded her letter and put it carefully in a lilac envelope, then licked the flap, transferring thereon a considerable quantity of the red from her lips. Her lips were naturally full, and she painted well over the original line so that Ben was not far wrong when he referred to Dottie's mouth as an overblown rose with the petals about to fall.

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