A House Like a Lotus

by Madeleine L'engle

  “And where did you get all this magnificent experience?” Mr. Price asked her. “Why, after all this, have I never heard of you?”

  “At college,” Elizabeth said, looking down at her feet.

  “My dear young lady.” Mr. Price sounded half bored, half amused. “Perhaps you do not realize, but I am running a professional theatre. I am sure you were very charming and very highly acclaimed at college, but I am really not contemplating producing Macbeth or Magda or even The Infernal Machine. So what do I have to offer you?”

  “All I want,” Elizabeth said desperately, “is—anything.”

  “Anything what?”

  “Maids, walk-ons, working in the box office. Anything.”

  “I take a certain number of apprentices,” Mr. Price said. “They take classes from the company actors. We use the star system. We do a new play every week and the company professionals rehearse all week in bit parts. Then the star arrives on Sunday. The stars have one rehearsal with the company before the show. Although one or two of them will direct the plays they are starring in, and those actors will be there longer. If I can, I use the apprentices in at least one walk-on part during the summer. The fee is three hundred dollars.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. When she spoke her voice trembled. “I—borrowed the money to come to New York to see you today. I—I—”

  “And I suppose if I didn’t give you a job you’ll jump off the Empire State Building? Or into the Hudson River? Or perhaps the East River would suit you better.”

  “That’s not funny,” Elizabeth said with a sudden flare of anger. “Would you really laugh if you were responsible for someone’s death?”

  “If you did anything so foolish as to kill yourself, I wouldn’t be responsible. You would.” Mr. Price’s voice was calm and reasonable.

  “As it happens,” Elizabeth said, anger still directing her words, “I agree with you. And I do not approve of suicide under any conditions. However, a weaker character in my circumstances might.”

  Mr. Price smiled. “Are your circumstances so very particular?”

  “To me they are. You never know what people’s circumstances are.”

  “Perhaps I can guess some of yours. You go to a good college and major in drama. Your family has a thoroughly adequate income.”

  “Wrong,” Elizabeth said. “I go to a good college but I major in chemistry and I am on scholarship and I have no parents. I was president of the Dramatic Association and took some theatre courses in Theatre Workshop at school. I graduate later this spring.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  Elizabeth looked at him, tried to smile, and said, “And now, since you haven’t a job to offer me, I’ll say goodbye and go throw myself under a Fifth Avenue bus.”

  The door to the office opened and Sadie thrust her head in. “Say, Mr. Price, I almost forgot. Mr. Canitz left me a note to give you.”

  Mr. Price read the note and handed it to Elizabeth. Kurt Canitz had written, “Give the tall girl with glasses a scholarship. I have a hunch about her.”

  Mr. Price looked at Elizabeth. “You are tall—rather tall for an actress, incidentally—and you wear glasses, so I assume Kurt means you. By the way, how does it happen that you don’t take off your glasses for an interview?”

  “I forgot,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t always wear them, but I really can’t see well without them. I never wear them onstage, of course.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to answer to Kurt if I don’t at least have you read for me. All right. Read for me.”

  “If you like me, will you give me a scholarship?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’m known for—shall we kindly call it being shrewd?—about money, but as far as the theatre is concerned I also have a conscience,” Mr. Price said. “I collect as many three-hundred-dollar tuitions from the apprentices as I can. If a girl can afford it, why shouldn’t I take it? However, if I think a kid has possibilities, and they can’t afford the tuition, I give them a scholarship for the summer and I work her—or him, as the case may be—like a dog. There are usually two scholarships for young men and two for women. I have both my men set and one of my women. You might possibly fit the other scholarship. The apprentices and most of the resident company live at a cottage a few blocks from the theatre. Of course the scholarship apprentices pay twenty dollars a week for room and board. Could you manage that?”

  “I’ll have to,” Elizabeth said.

  “I have a feeling that you are a hard worker,” Mr. Price told her. “Also, believe it or not, I have a healthy regard for Kurt Canitz’s hunches—and also for his dollars, which help finance the theatre. More of a respect for his hunches and his dollars than I have for his acting, I might add, though I could pick a worse director. Okay, now read something for me.” He picked up a dog-eared copy of The Voice of the Turtle. “This is pretty much a classic in its own way,” he said. “Maybe you won’t feel too much above it.”

  Elizabeth stood up. “Mr. Price, I know you’re laughing at me, and I know you have a perfect right to. Maybe the parts I’ve played are silly. I didn’t do them because I expected to repeat my college triumphs on Broadway, but because they’re parts anyone who really cares about being an actress ought to study, and because it was my one real opportunity to work on them—until I’m an established actress and can really do them if I want to. I have learned a lot from them that I can apply to anything I do.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Mr. Price asked.

  “No. But I have to talk as though I were.”

  Mr. Price sighed. “Darling Miss Jerrold—it is Jerrold, isn’t it?—there are so many like you. So many who believe in themselves as potential great ones—and many who don’t have the handicap of being tall and wearing glasses—so many who have real talent. Do you know that with ten young women of equal talent only one of them can possibly succeed?”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” Elizabeth said.

  Mr. Price sighed again. “All right. Read for me.”

  “What shall I read?” Elizabeth took the book from him.

  “Just hunt for a longish passage. One of Sally’s. Are you familiar with the play?”

  “We did it in college. I directed it, though; I didn’t act in it.”

  “Good. That means you ought to know it pretty well but you won’t be giving me a rehash of an old performance. Found something?”

  “Yes. Here’s a speech of Sally’s.” Elizabeth read the speech slowly, not trying to force a quick characterization. She made her voice low and pleasant, her words clear and well-defined, but she felt that she was failing thoroughly, that Mr. Price expected a performance. When she had finished the speech she said, “I’m sorry it was so bad. I can’t plunge into a character right away.”

  “No, and you had sense enough not to try,” Mr. Price told her, and for the first time his smile was for her and not at her. “One of the greatest banes of my existence is the radio actor who gives a magnificent first reading and then deteriorates until his performance is thoroughly mediocre. Each time I cast a show I say that I won’t be fooled, and each time I am fooled. Okay, Miss Jerrold. If you want to come under the terms I’ve outlined—as a scholarship apprentice—you may.”

  Elizabeth sat down abruptly. “Yes. I want to,” she said, and her voice sounded as though Mr. Price had punched her in the stomach.

  “Good. Give Sadie your address and she will drop you a line about trains and when to arrive and so forth. Also I will have her send you a note confirming all this so that once you get back to that good college of yours you won’t worry about my forgetting you. Goodbye, Miss Jerrold. I’ll look forward to seeing you at the end of June, and you, in the meanwhile, may look forward to a summer of hard work.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” Elizabeth said, still sounding winded.

  Mr. Price smiled at her again. “And one more thing. I hope you realize that I am offering you this opportunity not because of your reading, which, as you were aware, was barely adequate
, but because of Mr. Canitz’s hunch and my own whim. The theatre is not a reasonable place. You may as well learn that now.” He held out his hand to her.

  Elizabeth shook it and then, after giving Sadie her address, left the office. She almost missed Jane Gardiner, who was standing in the dim hallway leaning against a fire extinguisher.

  “Hello, how’d you make out?” Jane asked her. “Thought I’d wait and see.”

  “I’ve got a scholarship,” Elizabeth told her, beaming, and very pleased at Jane’s friendly interest.

  “Oh, good, I’m awfully glad. Look, let’s go have a cup of coffee at the Automat to celebrate.”

  Elizabeth hesitated, then said, “I don’t think I want any cof fee, but I’d love to come while you have yours.”

  “Fine.”

  They went down in the elevator, both smiling with a vague and dreamy happiness at the prospect of the summer ahead of them. And to Elizabeth New York was no longer frightening but suddenly full of excitement and glamour, and the starkness of the Automat was vested in glory because Elizabeth Jerrold and Jane Gardiner were going there and perhaps one day other struggling young actresses would say, “Do you know, the great and famous Elizabeth Jerrold and Jane Gardiner used to come here!”

  Elizabeth sat down at one of the tables and waited until Jane came back with two cups of coffee. “Just thought you might have changed your mind,” she said casually. “If you don’t want it, I’ll drink it. Or, if you’re broke or something at the moment—and heaven knows almost everybody in the theatre is—you can pay me back sometime.”

  “But that’s just the trouble. I probably can’t,” Elizabeth said. Her voice sounded rather desperate.

  Jane looked at her with friendly curiosity, then said lightly, “What’s a cup of coffee between friends? Anyhow, I was referring to the golden future when we’re both rich and famous and have our names in lights. Look, let’s get to know each other. I’ll give you my autobiography and you can give me yours. Though as for me, I’m a lot more exciting than my autobiography.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Me, too.”

  “I’m just a damn good actress,” Jane said. “How about you?”

  “I’m a damn good actress, too.”

  “Good. Now we know the most important thing about each other. As for the unimportant details, I was born in New York and I’ve lived here most of my life. My father teaches higher mathematics at Columbia and I can’t count up to ten. Neither can my mother, who is terribly beautiful but has never made me feel like an ugly duckling. I graduated from Columbia against my will and on my parents’ insistence, though they’re both very nice about my wanting to be an actress, and last winter I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and fell madly in love with a great young actor named John Peter Toller who also—and for this I got down on my knees and begged and it’s why I took this scholarship rather than a job anywhere else though I did honestly and truly try to get a job; I told you I’d been to dozens of other offices today—anyhow where was I? Oh, yes, John Peter has a scholarship with Price this summer, too. He’s been away for two weeks visiting his parents and during these fourteen days my life has been blighted. I feel as though I’m not breathing when I’m out of his presence. He’s the oxygen in my air, the sun in my universe, the staff of my life. From this you may gather that he means a great deal to me, but please don’t tell him because he knows it far too well already. Now tell me about you.”

  A sober, rather sad look came over Elizabeth’s face. Then she said lightly, “There isn’t much to tell. My parents are dead and when I’m not in college in Northampton, I live with my aunt in Virginia. She doesn’t approve of the theatre. I graduate this year. As for men, I’m footloose and fancy-free, and I’ve no idea of letting an emotional entanglement hamper my career.”

  Jane laughed. “Now if that doesn’t sound like a college student. My emotional entanglement, if you want to call it that, hasn’t hampered my career a bit. It’s helped it. I know more about life and humanity and understanding and compassion and knowledge—and therefore about acting too—since I’ve known my darling John Peter than I ever dreamed of knowing before. Just you wait, my girl. You’ll see.” Jane pushed back her chair. “I’ve got to dash now, I promised my mother that I’d meet her. Maybe we’ll room together this summer. I do hope so. Anyhow, I’ll be seeing you at the end of June.”

  “Right,” Elizabeth said. “Good luck till then.”

  “And good luck to you, too.”

  They shook hands. Elizabeth watched Jane walk swiftly out of the Automat, erect, graceful, assured, and somehow more alive than anyone else in the restaurant. Elizabeth realized that Jane was probably well in advance of her as an actress, and then thought happily, But I’ll learn! Now I’m being given my chance to really learn with a professional company!

  A HOUSE LIKE A LOTUS. Copyright © 1984 by Crosswicks Ltd.

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  Originally published in the United States by Farrar Straus Giroux

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  eISBN 9781466814134

  First eBook Edition : February 2012

  Library of Congress catalog card number: 84-48471

  First Square Fish Edition: February 2012