Free The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle

understandable in her case, Ben. I don’t mean to make her sound like an ogre—she isn’t. She’s truly tried to do the best she knows how for me. But she can’t bear anything to do with the theatre because of my mother.”
    â€œWhat about your mother?” Ben asked.
    â€œThis the box office?” a voice behind Ben said. “Is this where I buy tickets for the Valborg Andersen play next week?”
    â€œYes, right here, sir,” Elizabeth said, and Ben stepped aside.
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    When Elizabeth was relieved at the box office, there was about an hour until lunch. Mr. Price was back in the office so she told him the awful news from Aunt Harriet. When he grumbled about it being a “damn inconvenience,” she hoped that he would offer to keep her on without paying the twenty dollars room and board. She held her breath, but he kept grumbling and stormed back into the theatre. Crushed, she went to see if Ben was through with rehearsal; as assistant stage manager he was the only one of Elizabeth’s particular friends who actually had the opportunity to work daily with the professional company. He was standing by one of the open side doors talking to Valborg Andersen. Elizabeth watched them for a moment—Ben, tall and lanky with a lock of heavy dark hair falling across his forehead, and the smallish woman, dressed in a simple blue cotton dress, drinking coffee out of a paper cup and laughing
heartily at something he was saying. Standing there in the shadows, rather wistfully looking at them, Elizabeth remembered very well the first time she had seen Valborg Andersen.
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    Almost every year during the Christmas holidays, Elizabeth’s father would leave the small house across the street from the school where he taught English literature and go to New York to see as much theatre as he could, sending an unwilling Elizabeth off to Jordan to spend Christmas with Aunt Harriet. But when Elizabeth was ten her father started taking her with him, and the first Saturday evening they went to see Valborg Andersen in Romeo and Juliet . Never would Elizabeth forget the excitement and glamour of that evening. Perhaps Aunt Harriet’s disapproval lent it an added charm.
    Elizabeth had sat beside her father in the balcony, first row center (“My favorite place to see a play,” he told her), holding his hand, half listening as he talked about the play, half looking about her at the audience, at the privileged glamorous people who were accustomed to going to plays, who sat there so calmly, talking to each other or glancing casually at their programs.
    When the lights began to dim, Elizabeth clutched her father’s arm in anticipation as the footlights came up and the red velvet curtain began to rise. At intermission her father said, “Are you enjoying it, dear? Andersen is giving a magnificent performance. It’s a wonderful introduction to the theatre for you.”
    As usual when she was tremendously moved, Elizabeth could not speak. She knew only that the question of the future
had been finally and definitely decided for her; she was going to be an actress. She nodded solemnly and waited for the curtain to rise again.
    After that she went with her father to New York each Christmas until he died. Then there was no more theatre, except in her imagination, until she went to college. At college, in spite of chemistry, there was the Dramatic Association, and the Theatre Workshop, where she managed to take a few elective courses for credit. And occasionally a professional company came to the old Academy Theatre in Northampton where Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse had once played, or to one of the auditoriums in nearby Springfield.
    Valborg Andersen came to Springfield to the high school auditorium as Portia in The Merchant of Venice the same year that she published her Shakespeare Prefaces . She came on a Saturday and played both a matinee and an evening performance. Elizabeth left