Margot Tremont Had an Itch

Margot Tremont had an itch.

For the last few miles, it had tickled her ankle and right foot. She scrunched her bare toes on the gas pedal of her dusty old Cabriolet, so cute and trendy when she bought it in college, now running only; it seemed, on the blood, sweat, and tears of her mechanic back in New Castle, Delaware.

Way back in Delaware. How many states back was that, now? Margot tried to count, to distract herself from the urge to reach down and scratch. One for Delaware, where she’d spent her entire life, growing up in a quaint old historic town, then studying at the university nearby, begging her parents to let her room in the dorms to distinguish herself from the other townies, wanting to be an actress. She’d hung on the tales of the only actress she’d ever heard of from Delaware, the blond girl who’d played Ben Stiller’s wife-to-be in Meet the Parents, as she tried on Shakespeare and Sondheim in student theater, and dreamed of getting away. 

Pennsylvania had been next, she remembered. Only a few short miles from where she’d grown up, and the place to which she and her theater friends had escaped to see real shows—in Philly—Broadway tours and such that would have no reason to stop in tiny Delaware. She’d passed through Paradise, and hoped the real thing was better than the dingy burb that it appeared to be by the light of the dashboard.

After PA, Margot detoured through Ohio to visit Helen, stopping for an uncomfortable meal as she watched her former college roommate juggle the demands of her one-year-old and the contractor who was helping with the renovations on her split-level colonial. Margot remembered late nights talking with Helen in the student center, both of them washed out under the glow of the fluorescents, as they planned to move to Hollywood and become famous. Hollywood had seemed very far from Columbus, Ohio—and so she got back on the road.

She tried using the toes of her left foot to scratch her right, but after a moment of bliss, the attempt just left her wanting more.