Take a Lemon

There wasn’t a lot of point in trying to outguess Alvin; I simply didn’t know his techniques. All I knew was that he had a good reputation and he’d been pretty kind to me. But now I did have a new concern – learning my lines. Usually I had been used to having a few weeks before I was expected to know them, plus I’d never had this many to learn. But we only had about six weeks total, so I guess he had to accelerate the schedule a bit.

I took my script with me to class the next day, and in the break between Orgo and EuroLit (I didn’t have Spanish on Tuesdays), I found an empty classroom and started reading scene one over and over, walking through the blocking by myself as I did so. The idea was to learn the lines together with the movement. Normally, I would have hoped to do this during rehearsals, but we didn’t have enough time. This was cutting into my lecture review time, of course, but I hoped to make it up in the afternoon somehow. By the time I the period was over, the lines were getting to be reasonably familiar; I could see a cue and pretty much know most of my next line without looking. I didn’t have much in the way of long speeches, which helped.

I practiced some more after my last class, which made me late for lunch. By the time I got there, the only people at our usual table were Jay and one of the boys, whose name I still had not managed to learn. If he was listed on Marsha’s Facebook page, I hadn’t recognized him yet.

“Afternoon, Marsh,” the unnamed boy greeted me. “You’re kind of late today, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been working on lines. We’re supposed to be off-book for act one by Sunday.”

“So… what? You have to sit and memorize half the script this week?”

“Well, it’s not really memorizing,” I explained. “You do them over and over again until you just kind of know them.”

“Sounds like memorizing to me,” Jay commented. And the two of them, obviously not particularly interested in the subject, returned to their original conversation, which seemed to be about the Phillies’ chances in the playoff this year.

I would have loved to join in; I hadn’t had a chance to talk sports in weeks, but dithered over whether it would actually be in character for Marsha to know much about baseball. Nothing in her rooms or Facebook profile or my conversations with “Daddy” had suggested that Marsha was in to sports. By the time I decided to venture a comment about the pitching rotation, which I thought was weaker than a contender should have, the two of them had finished eating and rose from the table, leaving me to finish alone. I was generally used to doing things on my own, but somehow I wished that there had been somebody to talk to at lunch.

When I got back to the room, Terry was just coming out of the bathroom. “Hey, Marsh!” she said. “How’s your workload coming along?”

Workload? Oh, right. I had told her that I was too busy to pin up her gown; and now it had been over two weeks. Well, Nikki had promised to start teaching me this week, hadn’t she?

“Getting through it,” I told her, opening the door to my bedroom. “I hope to be able to fit you in another week or so.”

“Great!” she said, following me in. “That’s what I’ve been telling the girls who came by this week. That they should come back in a couple of weeks.”

Girls?

“But I put the things that didn’t need to be measured on your rack. It looks like you’re making some pretty good progress.”

I wasn’t able to keep myself from looking at the garment rack in surprise. It had never occurred to me that Marsha’s roommates might be taking in work for her. I hadn’t looked at it since I had been certain that I had done everything on it that I knew how to do, but there were definitely more items there than I remembered. Fortunately, Terry misunderstood my reaction.

“Didn’t I label them correctly? I know Lee Ann is usually more careful about getting the details, but I took down the names, addresses, phone numbers and what they said needed to be done.”

I made a show of inspecting the rack. I didn’t know my roommates’ handwriting, so I couldn’t tell who had marked what, but everything that she mentioned was there, and it should be enough.

“No, it’s great,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do first.” I was really in luck – there was another loose button and a couple of split seams; that made three items that were well within my meager abilities. I decided to start with the button, since that was easiest.

I assumed that Terry was going to leave when I did so, but she just settled comfortably on my bed and kept talking. “I don’t know how you manage such detail work, Marsh. I’m so clumsy when it comes to little things like that.”

“Clumsy?” I said in surprise, as I threaded a needle. “That’s kind of odd to hear an athlete say.”

“Oh, I don’t mean on the court. But basketballs are great big things and they fit really well in my oversized hands. It’s when I try to work with something really small like needles and pins that I have problems. Sometimes I wish I could be petite, like you.”

Now that was a strange idea. I was still getting used to being a shrimp compared to, well, most people I knew. The idea that some girls might actually see something positive about my height – or lack thereof – was a revelation.

“See, that’s what I mean,” she commented. “You didn’t even look at what you were doing. You just went zoop with your fingers and started sewing. You remember what happened when you tried to teach me to sew on a button?”

Obviously, I didn’t, but her meaning was obvious, so I gave a small chuckle as if sharing the joke with her. At the same time, I had surprised myself. I had been so focused on what Terry was saying that I didn’t even notice that I had tied the knot in the thread and had the button already in position. How had that become a reflex so quickly, when I had only done a few buttons since Nikki taught me?

I finished the button and then had an idea. “Terry, I’m working on my lines; could you help me?”

“Sure,” she answered. “What do you need me to do?”

“Well, I need to learn them without looking.” I gave her my script. “My lines are marked. Could you read the line before each one and then correct me when I try to say my lines from memory?”

As before, I tried to move through my blocking as well as I remembered it. Terry was a big help once I pointed out how I had written it into the script as well, and I managed to remember a lot of the scene one lines, even though I wasn’t quite word-perfect, but with her coaching me, I was able to improve a lot.

She left after that, and I had time to contemplate what had happened. It was the first time Terry and I had spent time together, and we had gotten along a lot better than I had expected. To be sure, she no doubt remembered spending similar times with Marsha, but no matter how hard I worked at portraying my sister-who-might-have-been, we weren’t the same person, and I didn’t really expect to get along with all of her friends, but I’d been lucky so far.

I was in a pretty good mood at this point, so I decided to finish the easier repair jobs. Sewing – or at least the simple stuff Nikki had taught me – was starting to feel relaxing rather than stressful. I was using my hands to create something, to make an improvement in the world. There was something really satisfying about that; and of course, I was earning money. Given that I couldn’t do that with my guitar, sewing at least helped me feel as though I had some tiny bit of control over my life.

Still, I really missed my guitar. Sewing was silent, and new, and interesting, but the guitar was a part of me. For years, whenever things got tough, or when I was in a particularly good mood, or simply had some idle time, the first thing I did was to pick up that Les Paul and make some music. Music, the saying goes, has charms to soothe the savage breast. Well, I had two breasts now, and neither looked particularly savage, but I sure did need some soothing. Unable to make my own music, I did the next best thing. I called up iTunes, and set it to shuffle through Marsha’s classic rock selections and rocked on until dinner. I didn’t hear Lee Ann knock to see if I was going to join her and she wound up opening my door and saw me air-guitaring my way around the room. It was a bit embarrassing, but I felt a lot better.