“I already have people in my life who will be helpful to my venture,” I reminded the dean. “I have”—I counted on my fingers, so she could see and understand—“my father and my brother, Sherwood, and also Dolly. And, additionally, Philip.”
The dean said what she had no business saying. “Your father wants you to have an education, too.”
Nellie, perhaps because she’d been omitted from my list, had to have the last word. She said, “You just want to keep your options open, that’s all, Francie. You want to have options.”
I remembered my proposal of marriage from Gideon Hup, which naturally I had long since stopped considering, and yet I would have liked to add that offer to my talking points. Nellie Lombard, I didn’t say to the dean, had little idea how many options for her venture a girl such as MF had at her disposal.
21.
MF Lombard’s Fears, Part Two
Another slow blink and time passed. I went to drama camp for a second summer when I was sixteen. It was my decision. I wanted to go. The jar of lake water from my previous year, the jar sitting on my desk, spoke to me. To my surprise I was cast as Rosalind in As You Like It, even though I was not your typical ingénue type. But I’d gotten tall and gamine-like, I guess. I was complimented on the quality of my skin, the typical adjectives, poreless, porcelain, and a greeting, Oh Milkmaid! Fine, I had lovely skin, which was not an accomplishment. Some people in the show were not in favor of my being the lead, including the boy who played Orlando, a person with pillowy lips that he believed were irresistible. It required all of my skills to pretend I was in love with him, and he made it clear that he, too, had to muster his forces. Coral was not in my cabin and was involved in Annie Get Your Gun. And so I very much felt on my own, trapped in the Forest of Arden, no one but a character for my friend, Rosalind the person I spoke to and drew comfort from.
When my parents and William drove up for the performance I couldn’t let them know how miserable I was. It made me unbearably sad, their driving seven hours one way in order to see me. They probably thought I was having the most wonderful experience, that I’d gathered a few campers to my heart for lifetime friends. That’s what my mother wanted more than anything, and as we walked the wooded paths she kept asking in a hushed way, “Who was that girl? What’s that boy’s name?” I was almost too sad to be angry with her. She supposed that because I had the lead I was popular, but no, my only real friend in the cast was an imaginary person.
My father said, “It’s amazing you learned all those lines, Marlene. It’s something to think of, having that heroine in your bloodstream.”
William said, “You were prettier up there than I remembered, Imp.”
My mother laughed.
Each Lombard made other nice comments about my talents and then Mother, Father, and William got in the car and drove away, leaving me for one more week, one last show, The Miracle Worker, MF Lombard a blind girl with one short scene. When I got home I was more than happy to have that Four Rivers Camp session dissolve as soon as possible into nearly nothing.