Take a Lemon

As it turned out, the plan had not been for Lee Ann and I to hang out together, at least not alone, as Lisa, Sheila, and Susie came over after dinner. I was surprised to see Susie; apparently she hadn’t made as much progress with Phil as she had hoped.

“Is Terry joining us?” Lisa asked. “I didn’t see her at dinner.”

I actually hadn’t seen her since breakfast, but she hadn’t told me if she was going anywhere, and I didn’t want to show my ignorance if Marsha was supposed to know. Fortunately, Lee Ann did know.

“The team has an away game tomorrow, and it’s pretty far, so they left at noon.”

“Oh. Is she going to go every week?” Susie asked.

“Probably.”

I tried to look as though I knew what was going on, but I definitely didn’t. I was positive basketball season hadn’t started yet, so I didn’t know what team they could have been discussing. So chalk up one more mystery for me.

We waited for a bit, but nobody else showed up, so the five of “us” girls trooped over to the Dade Hall lecture room, where they were showing Nights In Rodanthe, which I had actually seen with Jackie. Now, I am not a real fan of movie dates in general, at least for the first few dates. I’ve always believed that if you are trying to get a girl to fall in love with you, you’re better off on a date where you’re actually doing something. Dancing and skating are probably the best, since they combine activity with closeness, but even bowling, as dismal as that sounds, can be more effective than just sitting still for two hours. But if you’re going to take a girl to the movies, Nights In Rodanthe isn’t bad. Jackie had come out of the movie misty-eyed and maybe just a bit cuddlier than she had been on our previous dates.

I wasn’t sure how many of my new friends had seen it before, but they definitely had some of the same reactions that Jackie had, and I rushed to emulate them. I certainly didn’t want to be an outlier here, even though I wasn’t feeling whatever they were. At this point, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to be getting more lessons in acting from trying to improvise my way through Marsha’s life than acting on stage under Alvin’s direction.

“The girls” decided that we would go over to the Student Grill, next. I had the money I had earned from my first two sewing jobs, so I could afford to buy myself a soda, although I felt a bit guilty about it. After all, I was supposed to be saving up to pay my college expenses, and it wasn’t clear just how much money I was going to be able to make at this. But once again, I figured that this was what Marsha would have done. She probably would also have been more active in the conversation, but I just didn’t know enough yet to know what to say. Until they started mentioning me.

“So, Susie,” Lisa asked. “How are things going with Phil?”

“Slowly,” Susie admitted. “He’s still talking about Marsha. I’m not sure if he’s ignoring me, or what.”

“He probably hasn’t figured out that you’re interested in him,” suggested Lee Ann.

“Or maybe he’s just pretending not to notice, because he’s not interested in you,” Sheila added, which I thought was kind of mean.

It felt as if it was my turn to speak, and it seemed safe to suggest, “You probably just need to give him more time.” That might have been a mistake, as it drew attention to me, at a time when I would have been quite happy to be overlooked.

Lisa looked at me, puzzled. “I can’t believe you’re just giving up on him that easily, Marsh.”

“I… “ I shrugged as casually as I could, “I just don’t really have time to date right now.”

“But you’re out with us,” Sheila pointed out. “You could have been out with Phil instead, and it wouldn’t have taken any more time.”

I flushed. “Oh – well, that’s just one night. Usually, you know… if you’re dating a guy… it’s going to be more than the occasional night out…”

“How would you know?” Sheila muttered. “Have you even dated since you came to school?”

“She had that date with David… um, I don’t remember his last name, at the beginning of the year,” Lee Ann said, coming to my rescue. I gave her a grateful smile, filing away the information. I’d have to look this guy up on Facebook, just so that I’d know to be wary of him in the future.

“Oh great,” Sheila went on. “So you’ve gone out once.”

Susie looked at her. “What’s the problem? If Marsh isn’t dating, that’s more chances for the rest of us, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but then we have to hear her whining about not having a date.”

“Why does this suddenly have to be about me?” I complained.

“It doesn’t,” Lee Ann put in, glaring at the other girls, especially Sheila. “Drop it.”

Lisa immediately jumped in to change the subject. “So, what’s the story with the new guy that Chandra is seeing?” I perked up; I was very curious about that myself, and wasn’t really surprised that Lee Ann knew more about it.

“It’s a fix up,” she explained. “I’m not completely clear on all the details, but apparently Chandra’s parents went looking for a guy for her from some kind of matchmaker, and one of the guys they found was a Piques student.”

“Wait,” Sheila exclaimed, “are you talking about, like an arranged marriage?”

“Apparently.”

“Aren’t they kind of young for that?” asked Lisa, surprised.

“I have no idea how old he is,” Lee Ann responded.

“He just turned twenty,” I answered without thinking.

“How do you know that?” Susie asked.

Oops.

“Uh…” I started, as all the girls stared at me. “I… um… he mentioned it when he tried to help me with my suitcase.”

“Sounds as though you guys talked more than a little bit,” Sheila suggested, eyeing me a bit suspiciously.

“And he seemed pretty happy to see you at lunch,” Lisa pointed out.

Lee Ann gave me a worried look. “Marsh, I hope you’re not… I mean, please don’t mess things up for Chandra. She seemed really taken with Rajiv. I mean, I don’t know about getting married, but she hasn’t dated a guy seriously in a while.”

“I’m not interested in him, Lee Ann,” I protested. “Really. I told you I’m not interested in dating anybody right now, but even if I were, I’m not attracted to the guy. He was just being nice, that’s all. And he probably smiled because he recognized me. I don’t suppose he knew anybody else at lunch. He didn’t even remember my name, right?”

“OK,” Lee Ann answered, mollified. “OK, I just… I was just a bit worried, that’s all.”

After that, the conversation turned to safer subjects and I managed to fade a bit more into the background. I was really going to have to pay more attention to what Marsha was supposed to know and what she wasn’t.

The next morning was my first Saturday back at school since this thing had happened to me, and I was at a loss. Usually I had taken advantage of Saturday mornings just to play my guitar for hours, assuming that I was all caught up on my school work, which I was, aside from my Lit paper. Now, of course, I didn’t have a guitar and my fingers lacked the calluses of a guitarist. I consoled myself that when this was all reversed after Christmas break, that all would be restored to me, or close enough for all purposes. I was slightly concerned about being rusty after not playing for a few months, but that was fixable.

In the meantime, I had sewing to learn and a paper to write. I found Nikki’s email address in Marsha’s email program and sent her a message, asking when she was available to teach me more, although I wouldn’t be surprised if she was just going to spend the entire weekend with Alvin.

I was very fortunate. Nikki came over after lunch, carrying several garments needing what she called “simple repairs.” Two had broken zippers, one was missing a button, and one had a torn seam. She’d also brought along some more scraps of cloth, on which she had me practice making seams until she judged that I was capable of repairing the blouse that needed it. This was a lot more difficult than the button had been, but in the end she guided me through the repair and left the others for me. The zipper repairs would have to wait for another lesson, but I could replace the button on my own now. It is possible that I had gotten a bit overconfident from the first lesson. I was now starting to understand why Nikki had taken some away from me. It was clearly going to take a while before I could tackle them, although my mentor was effusive in her praise of the progress I had already made.

“One more thing,” I said as Nikki turned to leave. “My roommate bought a gown and expects me to alter it for her. How do I-?”

“Not just your roommate,” she interrupted me. “You have ads out around campus advertising your services as a seamstress, and more students are going to bring you their clothes. You’re going to need to know how to deal with them. I think we can examine the structure of clothing next – you’ll need that in order to know how to mark garments for alterations. Let’s start that next week.”

“Nikki, you are absolutely incredible. I don’t know how to thank you enough. Isn’t this going to cost you business, helping a competitor?”

Her laughter was wonderful. “Competitor? Marsh, we’re friends. Friends help each other. And… I realize that you don’t remember this, but there is more sewing available than you and I together have time for, if we don’t want to give up our studies and theater. I only took those alterations because you’re never going to get through backlog without some help, now. Take care.”

After she left, I returned to my EuroLit paper. Whether it was the excuse to re-read Shakespeare, or the idea of women dressing like men, or whatever, I was actually starting to enjoy working on this paper. Why had I worked so hard to avoid them? It was an opportunity to play with ideas on an even broader scale than I had had in the logic course. The parallels were practically jumping out at me. Like Zinevra in Bernabò of Genoa (the nineteenth story in The Decameron), Rosalind from As You Like It had fled for her life in male disguise and gone to another land, where she had an opportunity to resolve the problem of the story.

Viola in Twelfth Night uses a disguise as well in a foreign place, although she is not in any danger. I had no idea what the professor was looking for, but I thought I could write a fair bit, just expanding on those points. I would probably have to fill it in with some discussion of why the disguises were necessary, of course. In the modern day, women presumably would be able to accomplish whatever they needed to be able to do, but not at the time of these stories. Hmm. I might have a bit more research ahead of me…