58
A LONG DAY AT THE THEATER
Megan Lange
Sometimes the days feel shorter than they are long, and I am in the unfortunate position of having to determine for myself and my family which it is. A short day or a long day. Calvin encourages me not to worry so much about this, but it’s difficult not to worry about something as important as the length of a day. When I was a girl, I liked to go to the theater. So, when I was a woman, I became an actress. I could play anything. The directors told me I had the perfect face, the perfect voice to be anyone. I could metamorphose; I could become whatever I wished to be. I met Calvin in the theater. I was eighteen and he was twenty-five, the director of a small play his friend wrote. I didn’t believe he was twenty-five when he told me he was, and he didn’t believe me when I told him I was eighteen. “It’s a short one,” I told him sadly, sitting in front of the bay window and watching the birds outside on the feeders. He hummed, setting down his newspaper. “Every day is long,” he said. He sounded grumpy like he was upset with me. I started to cry, and he didn’t like this. He stood up and began to shout at me, but I was already in the throes of it. Each tear made the day last a bit longer. My last day on stage was when I was twenty-three. I was pregnant and Calvin and I were soon to be married and I couldn’t very well be trouncing around on stage every day with a baby on my hip. Those last days in the theater were woefully short. Calvin and I were married, and he got a job at the cannery in town with other men. These men had rough hands when I shook them at company parties. These men had known nothing but work since they
