I really hated Glenda. I stood on aching legs in front of the microphone in the studio and glared at her. She glared back through the window of the control booth. She was as tired as I was. Her puffy face was streaked with orange remnants of pancake make up and dotted with stray mascara. One thin, arched eyebrow was still penciled on, while the other was nearly smudged away. Recently she'd acquired a stylish short hairdo, copied after Mary Martin's in South Pacific. It didn't look stylish now. Her unwashed hair was a frizzy mess. Typical of Glenda. To invest in an expensive haircut and permanent and then not bother to maintain it. Like the New Look wardrobe she'd bought at Henri Bendel's that never got a trip to the cleaners. She pushed a button and talked into the studio.

        “Do it again,” she ordered hoarsely.

        “What's the use – ” I began.

         “Do it again.”

         I sighed, looked at the script, and launched into the monologue once more. I felt like a kid whose teacher was making her write I will not throw spitballs in the classroom a hundred times on the blackboard. Well, I wasn't a kid any more, and Glenda wasn't going to be my teacher any more. Several hours ago I'd resigned my job as gal Friday and general drudge. I'd given two weeks’ notice and I’d withdrawn from acting classes.

        Okay, so it wasn't the first time. Usually the Great Man talked me out of it, but this afternoon he'd just thrown up his hands. Surprisingly, it was Glenda who'd taken it upon herself to persuade me to give it one more try. This had led to one of those exhausting round and round discussions, lasting hours after everyone else had gone home, and finally ending with her pushing me into the studio with a script and saying, “Let's find out what you have –  once and for all.”

        Well, I knew what I had – nothing. That was the point! But like an obedient schoolgirl, I stood there and read the script again and again at her command. Why was I doing it? Because I was too tired to fight it. Why she was doing it was another question.

        Glenda had disliked me from the beginning, but then she disliked many people, especially females – and especially if the Great Man showed any fondness for them. Her paranoia didn't interfere with her teaching. She was positive and supportive in class, but she had a way of making snide remarks afterwards, behind the students' backs. I suspected that in my case, the remarks were very snide indeed, because there was a basic animosity between us.
 
        There were times when she went out of her way to make my job unpleasant, sending me all over town to do her personal errands when she knew I was up to my ears in work, or waiting till closing time to hand me scripts that had to be typed on stencil paper and mimeographed before the next morning's nine a.m. class.

        She often held unscheduled sessions with students late into the evening and didn't allow the cleaning crew into the studio. I always arrived at work an hour or two early in case I had to clean the place before classes. Four mornings out of five, I did. The stench of stale smoke would overwhelm me when I opened the studio door; there would be cigarettes smashed into the floor, or floating in cold coffee in paper cups. Worst of all, smeared, dog-eared pages of scripts would be scattered everywhere. I had to salvage what I could of the scripts and put them back together. It was not a great way to begin a day's work.

        Then sometimes Glenda would be unexpectedly friendly with me. We'd been known to take in an occasional movie together, or to share drugstore sandwiches and coffee after hours. Then it would be back to the same old stuff, mean little digs delivered with a smile, the knife twisting delicately into my back. I got really sick of her Jekyll and Hyde act.

         Glenda was twenty seven. Two years earlier, when I first met her, she'd just become one of the teachers, after a few years of holding the job I now had. She was a fresh, slender, vivacious girl then, and, according to the Great Man, was about to burst upon the New York firmament as an instant star.

        “Glenda doesn't have to make rounds,” he boasted.             “When the time’s right, they'll come to her.” 

        The time was never right. While the other actors were making rounds, auditioning, and getting occasional parts, Glenda went on teaching with the GM, sleeping with the GM, and growing boozy and frazzled with the GM. The producers did not come knocking at her door. Surprise, surprise.

        She was actually a gifted actress. But contrary to what I'd once believed, that was no guarantee of anything. When I first started working there – green, eighteen years old, and newly hatched from drama school – I was awed by how good everybody was. The students weren't the starry-eyed drama students I'd known, but professional actors. A lot of them were men who'd been in the service, and were enrolled under the GI Bill.

        One of the benefits of working there was getting two free classes a week. It was exciting to read with real actors, but it was also intimidating. As kind and helpful to me as they were, their skill and self assurance made me feel gauche and frustrated.

        It was a different situation when I was behind my desk in the office. The students tended to drop by to shoot the breeze whether they had a class scheduled or not, and invariably ended up in that chair facing me. There was something about that chair! No matter how much savoir faire they exhibited out in the greenroom, when they plopped into that chair they turned into crybabies.
 
        I just don't know what I'm going to do! I heard that a dozen times a day. Then their various tales of woe would spill out. Sally's pregnant again and she's putting the pressure on me to go to work for my father-in-law . . . or . . . I gave up this good job at Macy's and the play closed after the first night . . . or . . . So now he wants to marry me, but I just landed this swell commercial and he says . . .

        Most of the actors, even those who managed to get an occasional part, had to eke out a living doing other things. They waited tables, ushered in theaters, worked in department stores. But even the lucky ones who supported themselves in the profession – more or less – had something to complain about.

        Ellen Pry had starred on Broadway in the thirties; now she worked in radio and her specialty was dog barks. “Whenever they need a dog, they say, Get Pry,” she'd moan. “Oh, sweetie, it pays the bills, but it's so . . . it's so . . . cruddy.”

        Warren Hobbs had a running part as the second leading man on a radio soap called Laura’s Other Love. One day he came into my office twirling something in his hand.

        “What's that, Warren?” I asked.

        “That, love, is my hair, ” he said, showing me his brand new toupee. “Laura's going TV. Now where do you think that leaves me? A forty year old schlump with the velvet voice of a lover and the face of a sick basset hound!” And he sat there, woefully regarding the hairpiece and looking for all the world like his own description of himself.

        “Look at this dumb thing! Think it'll make me handsome? Tell me, love, is this a profession for grownups? Why do we do it, huh? Know why?” He leaned over the desk and gazed intently into my eyes. “Because we're NUTS, that's why! Certifiable, ga-ga, over the edge! You've got to be nuts to go through this crap!”

        What I dished out to Warren and Ellen and the others was my own improvised recipe of sympathy and encouragement tempered with wisecracks. Thanks to Warren, I acquired a special nickname. It happened on a particularly hectic day when a bill collector came thundering in looking for the GM, who had prudently locked himself in the script closet. After a noisy and fruitless search, the man wheeled on me and demanded, “And – you –  just what is your title?”

        Before I could reply, Warren, who happened to be hanging around and watching the scene with some amusement, supplied the answer. “Chaplain,” he said with a sweet smile.

        After that, when the GM wanted to brush off any student trying to capture a moment of his elusive attention, he’d say, “Tell it to the Chaplain.” They did.
 
        But the Chaplain was having problems of her own. Something was beginning to happen to me. Before I recognized what it was, it had gone too far and I couldn't seem to control it. The GM had an expression, “Don't get it on you.” It was his standard advice to actors who complained about bad scripts, effete directors, or life in general. It was his advice to anyone in the throes of an unhappy love affair – “Don't get it on you.”

        I was getting it on me. The discouragement, the cynicism, and especially, the sadness. I went on as usual, jollying everyone along and listening to their tales of woe, but more and more I was troubled by that creeping sadness. It was there when I woke up in the mornings, and it was there all through the day, just below the surface, beneath the wisecracks; it was with me when I sank into a heavy sleep at night.

        Nobody had been sad back in drama school. We'd all been excited novices, dreaming of fantastic futures. I had a memory from those days that was precious to me. My class had been taken to see Katherine Cornell and Marlon Brando in Candida at the Music Box Theater, and after the performance we were invited backstage to meet Miss Cornell. While the others were gathering around her asking respectful questions, I wandered out on the stage alone. Surprised and thrilled by how small and cozy the set was, I looked out on the empty seats in the theater and thought, This is where I belong. For this I would give up everything.

        That had been four years ago, when I was sixteen. Nothing had happened since to match that moment of pure happiness, and I knew I could never have that innocence back again. Because reality wasn't like that. Reality came down to accepting I was not a good actor and never would be. Reality was being around people who were good, and still couldn't make it.



        Reality was standing, exhausted, in a dirty studio that smelled of stale coffee and cigarettes and having Glenda glower at me from the booth.

        “Again,” she croaked.

        I took a deep breath and glanced at the script. A voice too mature to be mine began to speak the familiar words, She didn't change, not for a long time . . .

        I saw Glenda look up.

        The voice continued; I listened to it rise and fall, I listened to the pauses; I heard it halt abruptly, change direction; I listened to the pattern of words and sounds it was weaving in the air. I was aware of a curious sensation I’d had before –  when I learned to post on an English saddle; that surprised, heady feeling when the horse and I were suddenly moving together in easy harmony.

        The voice stopped speaking. A pause – and it was over. I let the script fall. After a few seconds, Glenda pushed a button and said, “Now you know.”

        I switched out the light in the studio and joined her in the booth.

        “Listen,” she said, and she played back my brief performance.

        I shrugged. “Just a fluke. I was tired.”
 
        “Oh, yes, it was a fluke, ” she said. “But it’s what we've been pounding into your head for two years. When you finally let your defenses down, you fell back on it. You can't turn it on at will yet. That takes a hell of a lot more work than you've been doing. But it's there if you really want it. Well? Are you staying?”

        I stood there a minute, all my muscles gone limp, wishing I were home asleep. She was waiting for an answer. Glenda was daring me to stay! Strange. We couldn't stand each other. But suddenly I felt I could tell her anything in the world.

        “I had this Shirley Temple doll,” I began.

        Her ruined face looked puzzled. “What?”

        “Never mind. Let's go. I'm about to collapse.”

         We shuffled into our coats, and with a last resigned look at the mess I would have to clean up in the morning, I turned off the lights and we left the building together. The cold air felt good, healing.

        “I'm going to walk,” I said.

        “Thirty blocks? We could share a cab . . . Okay, let's walk.”

        I needed that walk, to clear my head and lungs of the stale air of the studio and to make me feel tired in the right way.

        “We should do this,” Glenda said. “We both live in the same direction. We could walk home every night. We should do this.”

        “Um m,” I said, dimly recalling last year when we'd resolved to swim together twice a week at the Y. That had lasted a week.

         The wind had a bite in it. We walked briskly in step, and it occurred to me that we must look a surreal pair – Glenda, with her harlequin face and failed hairdo, her black cashmere coat with a smear of mustard on the collar, high heels, sheer black stockings with runs; and me – ratty kid with stringy hair, coat too short and too thin, scuffed ballet shoes. But not yet a wreck. Oh, no, not yet a wreck. I could still walk away unscathed. Except for the sadness.

        At 68th and Columbus we halted. It was Glenda's block. I had nine to go.

        “Well?” she asked.

        “I'm not sure,” I said. “We'll talk tomorrow.”

         “Okay. I guess we'll both sleep tonight.” She walked a few steps down 68th Street, then turned. “What did you start to say back in the studio? Something about a doll?”

        “Nothing,” I said. “Goodnight.”

        I continued up Columbus Avenue. From here on, it was unlighted and deserted, the store fronts locked up and dark. It might have been scary, if I'd had the energy to be scared. I shivered and ducked my head against the wind.

        I had this Shirley Temple doll.
 
        I'd dreamed of having one when I was little, wanted one desperately for a really long time, and when I finally got her, I was eleven. There she was, standing under the Christmas tree in front of her little cardboard wardrobe trunk with its tiny coat hangers. She was perfect. Golden curls, dimples. Eyes that opened and closed. Frilly Alice blue dress, soft white Mary Janes and ruffled socks. I stood and looked at her, and something seemed to sink inside me.

        Because I didn't want her anymore. I was eleven. No one had noticed that I'd stopped playing with dolls. I set her beside the others, the well loved and well worn comrades of earlier years, and she looked pristine and lifeless. Once I would have loved her so much, given her a name of her own, and she would have come alive in my pretend games. I tried with all my heart to wish back the longing I'd had for a doll like that, but it was gone. I could never look at her without a vague sense of guilt and loss.

        Back there in the studio – I was posting, sailing, flying! How I'd once prayed for a moment like that, just a moment, a tiny breakthrough, something to hang a little hope on!

        “You've got to be nuts,” Warren had said. Oh, I was nuts, all right, just not nuts enough. Not enough for the abuse, the doubts and the humiliation. To see it through all that took something more than just being nuts. It took passion. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost it, and the terrible sadness had stolen into the void it left.

        I was shivering and half sick, and the dark blocks ahead seemed empty and interminable. I almost wished I could just curl up in a doorway like the derelicts I passed.

        I hugged my coat closer around me and kept on walking.

*     *     *