The Plain Girl

In between her freshman and her sophomore year of college, Maggie did a season of summer-stock theatre at a barn playhouse in Vermont. She had never gone away from home before without her parents, at least not for that long, and so she was spectacularly on her own, surrounded by actors and dancers from New York City, a wild crew who drank copious amounts of alcohol, had an inordinate amount of sex with one another, and, in general, behaved like raving lunatics. They all liked to play charades and card games, and they took on, as a group, putting together a tremendously complex jigsaw puzzle that they found in the house, a feat which took them all summer to accomplish. Someone also initiated a “movie night”: everyone had to write a #1 favorite movie onto a slip of paper and put it into a hat. And every Wednesday night, one of the slips was drawn, that movie was rented, and the entire cast convened to watch. The gypsies accepted Maggie, the virginal college girl from Rhode Island, into their clan, and within two days of rehearsals, the entire cast had become one cyclonic organism. The camaraderie of theatre.

They were put up in a huge clapboard house, with a wrap-around porch, a cavernous yard where cast members played drunken volleyball deep into the night. Rehearsals went on all day, and were grueling. The season included California Suite, 1776, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Maggie, plain Maggie, became a chorus girl. She wore wigs. She sang. She danced.

Within a week, romances began to break out in the cast. Intrigues blossomed. Girls cried backstage. Couples had furious whispered fights in the dressing room during the overture. People had affairs, although “affair” is perhaps not quite the right word for infidelity amongst “couples” who had only hooked up three weeks before.

Summer-stock was a pressure-cooker atmosphere, a time outside of time. Normal rules of everyday life grew pale, less important, personalities disintegrated. Even for Maggie. She too had an adventure that summer, an adventure that she managed to keep secret from the entire wild-world of the clapboard house, a house where gossip was a way of life, a given. Not much of the gossip was mean-spirited, but it was certainly incessant. The fact that Maggie could have an entire life-changing adventure without anyone catching on was a testament to Maggie’s self-protective ability. The deeps had been stirred. But nothing on the outside changed.

She met a young man her first time going to the local church, a 10-minute walk away from her sprawling gypsy-house. The young man’s name was Bobby, and he was home from George Washington University for the summer. They met at the coffee and donuts reception in the rectory after mass; he had come over and started talking to her. He was fascinated that she was an actress, a concept foreign to him, at least in terms of it being a “job” that you could “have”. He was funny. He made her laugh. He asked if he could give her a call sometime, seeing as she would be in town for the whole summer. She said No, she really needed to focus on doing a good job this summer, she didn’t have time. He took this relatively philosophically.

The next Sunday, they met at mass again, had coffee and donuts again, and again he made her laugh. He asked her again if he could take her out sometime. And again, she said no, but she recognized suddenly that the entire thing was a game, and that he would keep asking her out, and that eventually she would say Yes. She could feel the “Yes” impulse in her. He didn’t seem like a sex-freak. He had a sunny face, light eyes, and a mop of blonde hair. He was addicted to Ultimate Frisbee. He looked like a very good-natured Heat Miser. Again, the Heat-Miser took the rejection philosophically, and said, “All right. See you next week.”

The next week, he asked her again, and she, mouth full of stale sugary donut, said Yes.

She didn’t tell anyone in the house. She feared that they would pounce like vultures on her little experience, and ruin it by talking about it too much. Or try to analyze it. Or pump it up beforehand. But there was some anxiety. She was 19. She’d never been kissed. How was some random Heat Miser supposed to deal with all of that?

So she put in a call to Constance, who was also doing summer-stock at a small theatre in Ohio, and having a terrible terrible time involving embarrassing costumes, bitchy dancers, competitive queens, and vain uninteresting leading men. “The plays aren’t even good,” Constance hissed under her breath to Maggie on the public phone in the duplex she was sharing with the rest of the horrible cast, “We’re doing some unknown Gothic melodrama. And you know what? It’s unknown for a reason, do you hear what I’m saying? It should have stayed unknown. I hate my life.” Constance lived for calls from Maggie, so that she could experience vicariously the carefree scenes of volleyball, jigsaw puzzles, and good-natured gossip. When Maggie first described the concept of “movie night” to Constance, she was greeted by a gloomy silence, and then came Constance’s flat voice, “Fuck you.” But still, Constance wanted to hear more, and more. “So tell me– any cute guys? All of mine are either gay or dickheads who are straight.”

Maggie told Constance about “this guy from church.” “He’s asked me out three times now. I keep saying no.”

“Why? Is he ugly? A psycho?”

“No, I just – That’s not what I’m here for.”

“But how do you know, Maggie? How do you know exactly what it is you’re there for?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean – can’t you do two things at once? Maybe you’re also there so that you could meet him. If he’s nice and all.”

“Yeah. He seems nice.”

“So? You believe in God and everything.”

“Yeah?”

“God works in mysterious ways—” Constance suddenly snapped over her shoulder, “Brandon, I am gonna kick your ass if you don’t stop tapping your foot at me. I am ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW.”