Emma Who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhardt Page A

something I wasn’t quite right for. If it paid off then it was one of those gutsy moves you hear about, one of those audacious famous auditions, like Brando’s. I acted my little heart out, I gave them anger, rage, hurt, pride—
    â€œ Excuse me,” said the director, clapping his hand on the back of his clipboard, now standing, looking angry. I suspect I’ve done something wrong here and so I quit acting.
    â€œYou’re answering the ad in Backstage ?”
    Uh, yes sir, I—
    â€œYou don’t look thirty-five with ten years of marriage under your belt.”
    Well I think I could play—
    â€œLittle boy, you can’t convince me you’re SIXTEEN—you’ve got a baby face, anyone ever tell you that? If there was a role up for a fourteen-year-old I’d be happy to see you … How old are you?”
    Uh twenty-five, I lie, adding four years.
    â€œOh great, twenty-five!” said the director, laughing a he-is-not-really-amused laugh. “What’s your name?”
    Gil Freeman, sir and I—
    â€œYou are wasting our time, Gil Freeman, and we don’t have a lot of time. We said thirty-five, we meant thirty-five. Do you know how to read? Learning how to read will help you in this business…” And he went on, sarcastic, grouchy, tired at the end of his long day, not abusive enough to make me dismiss him as a jerk, but just abusive enough to make me dismiss me as a jerk for being there. I just wanted to die and be quietly buried back in Oak Park.
    On the way home on the subway I dealt with the major issue of the moment: was I going to cry about this? Before I got home, was I going to get all my frustration out of my system and cry like a five-year-old? Yes, I decided I would and slunk off to a corner of the Christopher Street station and did so.
    The only place I was happy was back in the apartment. But that didn’t stop me from taking all my misery out on Lisa and Emma:
    â€œC’mon, c’mon,” said Lisa, bouncing about in front of me as I tried my hardest to be Byronic and morose, “I’m not leaving until I make you laugh.” She made a silly face like she might for an infant. “Oh geez, Gil, c’mon, you’ve only been at this for … for not even a year yet. You’ll get a break. Cheer up!”
    I’m out of cash.
    â€œLook,” said Lisa, “just get any kind of job. Lesson One in New York is have no pride. Do anything for rent money.”
    Do you know what anything is in New York? It’s going to a temporary help agency and volunteering to file note cards, account slips, that kind of thing. You go in and the people running the agency look at you with disdain: Can you type? No. Can you work any kind of computer? No, since I can’t type. Can you do stenography? No, since this is 1975 and I’m a guy. Do you do light accounting? If you saw my checkbook you wouldn’t ask stupid questions. What could I do? I could file things in alphabetical order.
    â€œCan you alphabetize?” asked the fat, immobile woman with the slicked-down hair at the temporary agency, and I said yes (mind you, I got dressed up in my suit for this), and then I was ushered into an inner sanctum to take a test. The assignment is to alphabetize the following ten things: wheelbarrow, lemon, toy, Albert Jones, baseball, Kansas …
    â€œWell done, Mr. Freeman! You got them all right!”
    Two fifteen an hour. And I took it. That spring morale was not high. I came home one day to pass a fleeing, crying Oriental woman in our hall. When I got inside our apartment Emma explained:
    â€œThat’s Kim Li. A friend of Mandy’s. She’s from Vietnam. I met her last night at Mandy’s and I thought I’d be noble and ask her around for coffee today.” Emma stood up and walked over to the TV. “Saigon is falling and the TV was on and she got upset.”
    I watched the TV showing the