Siddy's first gift to me that I can remember) and
chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my
eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: "Columbus Circle, Times
Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street...."

* * * * *

But you don't ever get _really_ frightened in the costumery. Not
exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled
and your tummy chilled from time to time--because you know it's all
make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It
gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as _pleasant_ places and
not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you
forever. It's always safe, always _just in the theatre, just on the
stage_, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam ... and the best
sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts
and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one single
thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can't ever
push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except
to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the
fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at _the
audience_ gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the two
times I _did_ peek, and I have to come scuttling back.

The costumery's good occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked
and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or
darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are
so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the
racks extend into the fourth dimension--not to mention the boxes of
props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books,
including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of
Furness's _Variorum Shakespeare_, which as Sid had guessed I'd been
boning up on. Oh, and I've sponged and pressed enough costumes, too,
and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up and
resewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials.

In a less sloppily organized company I'd be called wardrobe mistress,
I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests a
crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around
her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm not
that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody
outranks me, ev