table in the front hall, but often people forgot or didn’t bother. It was a summer of rushed letters, quick postcards, a few phone calls in which I shouted my “I miss you” while checking my watch. He always managed to call just when I was due down at the theater.
I packed my one suitcase with my shorts and dresses, silly presents for Da and Jamie and Muddie, everything crammed in so that I had to sit on the suitcase to close it. It was an old one of Da’s, the one we’d used so many years ago on our summer tours of county fairs, and one of the latches wouldn’t latch. I pinched my finger wrestling it shut.
I carried it down the stairs. When I walked into the kitchen, one of the actresses was still there, a girl with the improbable name of Daisy Meadows. Out of the company, she was the one I watched the closest. She wasn’t the prettiest of the actresses but she had an arresting face, startlingly clear blue eyes with dark lashes, and thick black hair that curled in the humidity and couldn’t be tamed with a comb. Every performance of hers was slightly different— not enough to throw off her fellow actors, but enough to shade the performance. She lived in New York and studied with Stella Adler, who I now knew was one of the best acting teachers anywhere. Daisy was part of a world I couldn’t imagine — late nights in Greenwich Village jazz clubs, hard study with tough teachers, a tribe of actors searching for truth in a gesture.
She greeted me by raising her coffee cup. She was still dressed in her nightgown. “Looks like we’re the holdouts,” she said. “Everybody left for New York already. I’m taking off in a bit to crash in on my parents. Need a ride, honey? I can drop you in Providence.”
“Maybe.”
Daisy shrugged her shoulders.
I heard the sound of a car, and I went to the kitchen door and peered out. Billy got out of the car. “I might have a ride.”
Daisy took a sip of coffee and watched as Billy stood uncertainly, looking at the house. Dressed in a white shirt and khakis, tanned and lean, he made me catch my breath.
“Catnip,” she purred. “Is he an actor?”
“No, he goes to Brown.”
“College boy. Lucky you.” I swung open the screen door and stepped out. “I came to surprise you last night,” he said. “I saw you dancing.”
“I know. It was Jeff Toland,” I said. “You should have stayed. We were just dancing.”
“Just dancing. Is that what you call it? I couldn’t slip a piece of paper between the two of you.”
“We were just putting on a show for the others.”
“Some show.”
I took a few steps closer. He wasn’t angry, I saw, just hurt and confused.
“What’s been going on this summer, Kit? Is this why I can’t call you, can’t come up?”
“You could have come up anytime,” I said.
“Why would I, when I couldn’t see you? I thought I’d surprise you last night —”
“It was our last night, we had a party —”
“— and I was standing there, watching you, and I thought, this is how it is. I’m right here. She’s right there. And I can’t have her, I can’t get to her.” He shook his head. “Listen, anytime you want me to walk away, I’ll go. I can do it. I can walk away.”
“I don’t! I just want you to trust me.” I spread out my arms. “I want you to understand this — the theater, what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter to you!”
“That’s not true.” He reached into the car and took out an envelope. He handed it to me. “I made you a present.”
It was full of photographs of me, duplicates of a shot he’d taken last spring. He’d set up the shot with lights, just like a professional. In it I looked fresh and dreamy-eyed, because I was looking through the lens right at him.
“Head shots,” he said. “For you to take around to auditions. I do take you seriously.”
I looked down at the pictures. They showed a girl who looked like me, just happier.
“One of the things I love about you,” he said, “is that you really don’t know how beautiful you are.”
He took a step toward me, and I was in his arms.
He held me against him. Slowly, our breaths came together. There were nights in his car that I felt this way, so close, heartbeat to