Born with Teeth: A Memoir by Kate Mulgrew Read Free Book Online

quiet.
    “Get out,” she said to the young man, “and don’t come back. You’re in the banker’s way!”
    The “banker’s way” meant that you were not fit for acting, not able to channel passion, not sensitive to the subtleties of human nature. In other words, you were a creature of the material world and therefore neither welcomed nor suited to this life, where money was regarded with disdain and personal sacrifice was the order of the day. By Stella’s decree, our mettle was tempered in her classroom, and those who lacked the spine simply disappeared.
    Stella was not sympathetic. “Who’s ready?” were the words that opened the day. Heart in my throat, I raised my hand and took the stage. To show Stella that I was a fearless contender andhere to stay, I chose Maggie’s opening monologue from
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Perhaps three lines escaped my lips before she called out, “Stop!” Then she rose to her full, imperious height and, approaching me, asked, “Where are you from, sweetheart?”
    “Dubuque, Iowa, Miss Adler.”
    Pause. “Well, that’s not your fault.” Laughter. “And don’t call me Miss Adler, my name is Stella. Tennessee Williams understood the meaning and the power in that name, and in every line he wrote.” She took ahold of my ponytail and shook it. “Maggie the Cat is fighting for her life. Her
life!
She isn’t sweet, she isn’t cute—she’s dangerous, and she’s on fire. No Iowa in Maggie, and by the time you find out who she is, why she is, and what she is, there won’t be any Iowa left in you, either.” She dropped my ponytail and took my chin in her hand. “Bring it back next week and get out of the Midwest, I never want to see it in you again.”
    I had my small band of comrades-in-arms at the acting studio, but ours was an uncertain intimacy, one in which we viewed one another as fellow survivors on a life raft. When we weren’t sharing a common bowl of lentil soup at the hole-in-the-wall across from the studio, I would take my meals in the mess hall at Samuel Rubin. With a book propped in front of my face, I could observe the room at leisure. Who were these young women and what were they studying at New York University, what great passion inspired them, what greatness did they hope to achieve? I observed, and I learned. The vast majority of the girls living in this dormitory were upper middle class, Jewish, and good-looking. They all had a common interest and one that absorbed their every thought: men. In particular, young men pursuing pre-med or pre-law degrees. It was a marriage market, full of chatter, perfectly manicured nails, and Louis Vuitton bags of every shape and size, all placed smack in the middle of tables that were, of course, devoid of food.
    I watched all of this from the vantage point of my hiding place, in which I was made all the more invisible by virtue of my books, my plate of fried chicken, and my freckles. Freckles were not widely on display, and so I was caught off guard one night when my eye fell on a face that was full of them. She sat a few tables away from me, lost in a manual of some kind, a cloud of black hair framing a face that I recognized, on some primitive level.
    When the crowd had thinned out and she and I were pretty much alone in the room, I lifted my hand in greeting and called out, “You’re Irish, aren’t you?”
    She looked up, bright blue eyes full of mischief, and said, “You guessed it. You too, huh?”
    We both laughed, and then I proposed the most natural thing in the world. “Drink?”
    She smiled and gathered her books. “I thought you’d never ask.”
    Her name was Beth Kehoe, she was from the South Side of Chicago, the oldest of five in an Irish-Catholic family, and she wanted to become a doctor. We spent the entire night comparing notes until, hesitant but hopeful, she asked me to recite something for her. A monologue, she said, or a poem. We were in my cramped room on the fourth floor of the dormitory, and