The Story of B

This is a story I’ve been meaning to recount for years. It’s a bit hazy anymore, though I recall some aspects of it vividly.

I first met B at a summer theatre workshop. I was a Theatre major at Temple U. but returned to my first college, York College (where I had been a Speech Comm major before the theatre bug bit) in the summer to direct some one acts. While my main professor, Richard, keep saying, “We’ll see” when I asked about directing—and the lack of commitment there sent me to another school and a full Theatre program—the summer instructor, Beth Reilly, had no trouble letting me direct.

B was one of the actors, and my Intro to Theatre students never realized it, but they saw her when I showed a production photo of Samuel Beckett’s Come & Go. C&G is a 90 second play, by the way, and the audience was first surprised, then amused by the sudden curtain call and bows. Confused applause turned into resounding approval. Again: brevity is the soul of wit.

Early on it was clear that B had some problems, physically for sure, and she was likely poorly socialized since, with her health issues, she would have been less accepted by her peers. But Theatre people are very accepting of pretty much everyone (my late wife used to assert, “If the Theatre people reject you, you’ve got nowhere else to go”). So B found a home in the summer workshop, and I felt a bit sorry for her and so two years later when I came back from OSU, I asked her if she wanted to be my assistant director at the York Little Theatre studio production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

She eventually stepped away but for a while she attended rehearsals. Due, once again, to her health issues, she didn’t drive, and so I would pick her up for rehearsals and take her home.

So, two recollections. One evening, we arrived in the parking lot, and I turned off the car, stepped out, pulled my director’s prompt book from the back seat, and closed that door. I then looked over the roof of the car to the other side, but saw no one standing there. She wasn’t that short… A hunch suggested I look under the car, and so I did. I saw feet, so that meant she was vertical…right? So I walked around to the other side of the car and she’s holding her bloody right hand with her left.

“Are you all right?” I asked with sincere panic.

“Oh. Yes. I just closed the car door on my hand.”

“Do we need to take you to the hospital?” (In that time before urgent care centers.)

“No, I just need to wash it off.” And she entered the theater to disappear into the ladies room for an extended period of time, eventually emerging with paper towels still wrapped around her hand.

The other key memory comes from a drive home after rehearsal. At some point she said, “I have a question.” “Yes?” “If you like someone, can you assume they automatically like you back?”

In the moment I panicked, fearing she meant me. While I tried to say, “Well, no, you can’t make that assumption” with as much nonchalance as I could muster, I began driving much faster to get her home as quickly as possible.

On reflection, she probably meant one of the actors in the show. One was tall and blonde with chiseled features, likely the object of her desire. I calmed down when I returned home and mused on this.

Shortly thereafter she had some sort of health flare-up, and said she couldn’t continue as AD. I don’t remember if I ever saw her after that, and over the years have wondered whatever became of her.