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Copyright © 2014 by William W. Demastes

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Published in 2014 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Best Monologues from The Best American Short Plays / edited by William W. Demastes.
volumes cm. — (The Applause Acting Series)
ISBN 978-1-4803-3155-6 (volume 1) — ISBN 978-1-4803-8548-1 (volume 2)
1. Monologues, American. 2. American drama—20th century. 3. American drama—21st century. I. Demastes, William W., editor of compilation.
PS627.M63B47 2014
812'.04508—dc23
2013041949

www.applausebooks.com
contents

Introduction: Public Reflections of a Personal Nature by William W. Demastes

Part I: Monologues for Men

Theodore Mann Excerpt from G.C.

Willy Holtzman Excerpts from San Antonio Sunset

Victor Bumbalo Excerpt from Show

Steve Feffer Excerpts from And Yet . . .

Bruce Bonafede Excerpt from Advice to the Players

Billy Aronson Excerpt from Reunions

Donald Margulies Excerpts from Pitching to the Star

Michael Roderick Excerpt from I'll Do It Tomorrow . . .

Susan Miller Excerpts from It's Our Town, Too

Michael Roderick Excerpts from Props

Carey Pepper Excerpts from Small Things

Murray Schisgal The Hunchback of Central Park West

Clay MacLeod Chapman Undertow

Lavonne Mueller The Confession of Many Strangers

Daniel Gallant Determined to Prove

Part II: Monologues for Women

Dano Madden Excerpt from Ella

Lavonne Mueller Excerpts from American Dreamer

Paul Kuritz Excerpts from The Yellow Wallpaper

Yussef El Guindi Excerpt from Such a Beautiful Voice Is Sayeda's

Marla Del Collins Excerpts from The Lovers and Others of Eugene O'Neill

Yussef El Guindi Excerpts from Karima's City

Madeleine George Excerpts from The Most Massive Woman Wins

Michael Roderick Excerpts from Props

Murray Schisgal Excerpt from First Love

Catherine Filloux Excerpt from The Beauty Inside

Joe Pintauro Excerpts from Ten-Dollar Drinks

Joyce Carol Oates When I Was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn't Want Me

Neil LaBute Totally

Paul Selig Mystery School

Nicky Silver Claire

Credits and Permissions
introduction

Public Reflections of a Personal Nature

Spalding Gray (1941–2004) was of course one of the great monologists of the American stage, a man who captured our collective imaginations as a performance artist, storyteller, stand-up (or sit-down) comic, and consummate confessionalist. In the 1986 preface to his monologue Sex and Death to the Age 14, he tells us why the monologue is so much more than a way to pass the time:

We exist in a fabric of personal stories. All culture, all civilization is an artful web, a human puzzle, a colorful quilt patched together to lay over raw indifferent nature. So I never wonder whether, if a tree falls in the woods, will anyone hear it. Rather, who will tell about it?

Monologues—storytelling by a single engaging voice—forces us to interact with the world around us, involving reader/viewer and teller alike in a creative act of explaining and interpreting our surroundings. Monologues at their best are far more than journalistic enterprises, those newsy accountings dedicated to recording reality through exercises in objectivity. What good is that? Simply reporting on this stuff leads to little more than a newsprint catalogue of random objects and events. As Gray points out, the artful web he spent his life creating is something that actively makes sense of the world by imaginatively organizing and ordering "raw indifferent nature" into something we can understand. To make sense of the world takes personal involvement and welcomes unique perspectives—because, frankly, all perspectives are unique, despite claims by journalists to be doing something otherwise. Everything is subjective, everything reported carries with it a bit of personal bias, and everything we describe or talk about has something of us in it. Put another way, in order to appreciate that fallen tree, we need to make ourselves part of the scenery—and make it part of us. That's what we do when we tell stories. All that our attempts at cold objectivity will see is just another piece of dead timber suitable for burning, confirming perhaps little more than we and it are dead—though perhaps still breathing. Getting to know the world around us means getting involved with the world. That's where things get interesting.

And then there's the pure pleasure of sharing our experiences with others, that act of telling stories. For Gray, "who will tell about it" is as important as what is being told. This is a point that I think makes this Best Monologues volume worth reading. What is being told is clearly something that should occupy any good storyteller. But in the best of cases how something is told becomes more engaging than what's being told. The monologues in this book are widely varied in content. But because they have reduced the storytelling to a performer's single voice, what truly captures and intrigues are how the words create the quilted patterns through which the playwright uniquely sees the world—and then how he or she reveals to us that most rare point of view as seen through that unique quilt-work. So, following Gray's lead, it's who tells the story—and how that person uniquely tells it—that makes monologues so engaging and pushes them beyond being merely lively diversions. Through these monologues, we can come a little closer to understanding how others see raw indifferent nature. Through these monologues, we may discover that maybe we have something in common. And through these monologues, maybe we have something to learn.

Like the first volume, this second volume of Best Monologues is a collection drawn from the popular Best American Short Plays series, an archive of works from many of the best playwrights active today. Many of the included pieces are excerpted from the plays of this series while others are by design full and complete monologues. Long or short, serious or not, excerpts or otherwise, this collection includes works that capture much of what it means to be human, particularly that urge to stand out and share the fruits of our many unique and varied ways of seeing the world.

—William W. Demastes

Louisiana State University
Part I

Monologues for Men
Theodore Mann

excerpt from

G.C.

from

The Best American Short Plays 2007–2008

time

11:30 a.m., May, 1973

place

Ted Mann's office, Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway

[At curtain TED MANN is seen standing behind his desk, tie askew, cradling the telephone on his shoulder while working on a poster on his desk. The walls behind him are cluttered with posters and photographs from past productions.]

MANN [On the phone, voice on edge.] Tony, we have to have those costumes!

[Listening.]

Rehearsals are tomorrow at two o'clock. And make sure the waist is tighter for Julie. And Nicole's Vanya clothes have to be distressed. You know: sloppy, dirty—just like him. . . .

[Listening.]

But, Mr. Scott has very strong feelings about what Astrov wears, he needs to feel natural. George told me he spoke to you. And believe me, Tony, if he's not comfortable, you'll know about it and you better duck when he raises his arm. And I mean, DUCK—FAST!

[Listening.]

You are laughing, Tony, it's not funny. I don't want to set him off. You know how actors get tense when it comes to costume fittings. Up until now, George has been calm and so have the other actors.

[Listening.]

Tony, I'll call you later. Please get it done!

[Slowly emphasizing.]

George has to be comfortable in his costume or he won't wear it. You don't want him playing in street clothes.

[Hangs up phone. He dials another call. He calls out stage left to his assistant.]

Lorraine! Get me Don Josephson.

[Pause. He continues to work on the poster. MANN mumbles to himself. Then to LORRAINE, offstage.]

The ad agency. . . .

[Pause, the phone rings.]

Donald, when do I see the ad? Okay? What about the billing? No. No. George doesn't want to be on the top. No, no, if the billing is not right, he'll be very upset. Remember the time with that reporter? He almost strangled him, and would have if Paul hadn't stared him down eyeball to eyeball. George can be a pussycat if you don't twist his tail. What he wants is alphabetical! I know he's the star of this star cast, Cathleen Nesbit, Lillian Gish, Nicole Williamson, no that's not a woman, he's a big tall actor, Julie Christie, and wants it alphabetical, that's right. So it's Julie,

[With each name, he gives DON time to write it down.]

Lillian, Barnard, Kathleen, and the last name, just before the bottom, George C. Scott. All in the same size type. I know, yes. George is a star but he doesn't have to prove it in the New York Times. It's a full page, right? Uncle Vanya 100%, Directed by Mike Nicoles 50%, Anton Chekov 50%, Donald, I know, but he is just as important. He's the playwright, don't tell anybody but he's the most important thing we've got. What do you mean—of course everyone knows Uncle Vanya, it is as popular as The Christmas Carol.

[MANN laughs.]

Actors 50%, yeah, yeah.

[Slowly.]

George had agreed to that. Paul and myself above the title 25%, and don't forget the Circle logo down at the bottom. I gotta see a layout by five o'clock. I know you love music, Donald, remember the song,

[MANN sings.]

"How come you do me like you do, do, do." Hey, how'd you like the ad for Patricia's recital? That's right, Lincoln Center, June 15th. Oh, you're going to buy a ticket, great. No, no, there's no discount, Donald. I don't get a discount from you. Wonderful. She's my darling.

[Hangs up the phone, goes to work, mumbling.]

George C. Scott, what a guy.

[Phone rings.]

Yeah, Lorraine, what is it? Ms. Gaultier? Who's that? She's writing an article? For what paper? Oh yeah, the Figaro in Paris, I forgot all about it, send her right in.
Willy Holtzman

excerpts from

San Antonio Sunset

from

The Best American Short Plays 1989

STONE I'm not looking. I'm not looking for shit. Put two dollars together. And two more to that. And make the dollars add up to a day. A day to a week to a month to a year. And more than that, I do not know. Do not want to know.

[A beat.]

I was in Philadelphia. No place to be. A place to do. Business. I do my business, and I'm looking at the road. The road—I don't have to tell you—it gets to where it's looking back. And about this time you get thirsty. Find a joint. Rough joint? Who gives a shit? The rougher the better. You only want a few. And, fuck it, you close the place.

[Beat.]

And the weather . . . is . . . hot. Not Texas hot, but hot enough. The type of weather where dogs fall over on the street; the neighbor comes at you with a bread knife. What I mean to say is—no buck-a-throw sweatbox fleabag tonight. No, sir. Got to be moving. Get the air running past you. Push the poison through the pores. Moving . . . to . . . music. But the radio, weather like that . . . the radio finds things . . . things you didn't set out to find.

[Beat.]

And that night, the radio . . . how do you figure? . . . the radio waves had to be jumping like a june bug . . . because, because I'm in the car, on the road, and I'm doing the knobs, looking for my music. Something out of New York. And Jesus Christ, next thing I know, I'm listening to a station in Mississippi, a place so small, I never heard, and I've been to the smallest . . . and, what am I hearing? What am I hearing? Because my hands on the damn knob . . . and what's coming out . . . my hand just falls away . . . because the music coming out, it's washing over me like the hot night air. I'm . . . surrounded . . . filled with it.

[Beat.]

And what comes at me . . . right at me . . . right between the goddamn eyes is . . . slide guitar. Ride hard on the high notes. Tickle the lows with the thumb. And the voice . . . like nothing I ever heard before . . . like somebody big had ahold of him.

[Beat.]

Like somebody big had a hold of you.

[Beat.]

What was I thinking? I never should've come back. What was I thinking?

• • • •

JOHNSON Do if you the devil. See, the devil like to keep us down. Makes us think this life is all there is. And mostly we go on thinkin' just that. But ever' once in a while, somebody dig down into that part o' hisself where the devil can't get. The music part. That fill the devil with envy. That make the devil unhappy. And when he unhappy, he the unhappiest son of a bitch in creation.

[Beat.]

It's blackness. [. . .] It's all that blackness, ain't it? Oh, the devil, he's a craft one. Get folks to thinkin' soul's a white thing, all air and alabaster. But we know better, you and me. We know that's how the devil holds on to folks—get them to thinkin' they movin' closer to heaven, when all they doin' is stayin' bodily longer. Get folks to lookin' up find God, when all the time God's right here underfoot.

[Stomps the floor.]

But you and me [. . .], we know better. It's all that blackness. All my days, been told it's a' ugly thing, a whippin' thing, a hatin' thing, a hangin' thing, till it sends you inside yourself. Deep inside. And what you find, well, black ain't the color o' hate. Black the color of the soul. You, me, ever'body. You [. . .], it's a black piece. Hid. Hid real good. But not so good you didn't find it. And find it again. First bad. Then good. And, good Lord, with me, it's a little closer to the surface. The skin itself. All that blackness. Sometimes think if I was to prick my finger, soul'd come runnin' out the hole, so close it's to the surface.

[Pause.]

All that blackness. The soul itself. And it passes out, don't need no body no more, it don't float up like a damn balloon. Hell that's the devil's foolery. No sir. The soul runs into the earth. The black earth. 'Cause that's where God is. That's where heaven is. Why there's more heaven in one lump of mud than in a mile of sky. But we know that, you and me.
Victor Bumbalo

excerpt from

Show

from

The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993

scene

An institution.

time

Present.

[MICHAEL is dressed as a priest. He is a nervous man who speaks rapidly and at moments with desperation.]

MICHAEL I'm waiting for Joey. He's late. Maybe he's not coming. I wish I had more money. They pay him so little here and work him so hard. If he doesn't get here before I have to go to chapel, I won't get to see him until tomorrow. I hope he's all right. They don't treat him so good here. They should. But they don't. That's because they're all jealous. Beauty intimidates. Youth frightens. It's all that tight skin. It makes them evil around here. Someday, after I fool them, they'll let me leave. When I'm out of here, then I know I can find God. I just know it. All I have to do is fool them. Where is he? If I don't get to see him, how will I get through the night?

[Music.]

This is a bed. This is a chair. This is a cross. This is Michael. This is a crazy house. I know it. That makes me not crazy. It's a crazy house for priests. They call it a rest home. Isn't that a fabulous euphemism? A rest home. Nobody rests here. A rest home for the lunatics working in the profession. I'm the youngest loony in this joint. They better start collecting more during mass. They're going to have to build more of these places. There are so many of us out there. So many loonies. Excuse me. I mean priests under duress. I mean under stress. I mean in distress. I mean bonkers. Joey just left. I only had five dollars this week. He only let me feel it. It wasn't God. I know that. But it was fun. As he was leaving, I wanted to be held. Snuggled like a little puppy. Joey held me. He kissed me on the neck. He did it for free. I didn't even have to beg. Do you think Joey comes from God?

[Music.]

I want to get out of here. I hate it here. I'm so alone. But I have to fool Father Mancuso. If they ever let me out, have to fool him. He's like so many of them. He doesn't know God. I'm beginning to think he comes from the devil. He's one of those cheery types. You know the kind of guy. The God he talks about is the instant gratification, fast food kind of God. Father Mancuso is so butch. Too bad he's so ugly. He believes we wouldn't be crazy if we played sports. He has this poor old priest, Father Crowe—who's here recovering from too much booze—doing high-impact walking. Well, the poor old guy nearly dropped dead the first week. He actually cried when Father Mancuso gave him his walking sneakers. Now the dear geezer loves it. He does it six days a week. Not on Sunday. Father Mancuso is so proud. Our dear Father Crowe found a liquor store down the road with a very understanding salesman. Father Mancuso's assistant is Father Bums. He's—let's just say—a client of Joey's. I know this because Joey told me. Father Burns is round. He looks like a bowling ball.

That's what I call him and Joey laughs. He doesn't appreciate Joey like I do. He treats him like help. But I'm going to tell you something, Joey makes a bundle from that ass. Excuse me, I don't like using words like that. But that's what he is. An ass. The type that thinks that when he goes to the bathroom he makes Faberge eggs. For the "bowling ball" to taste it, it's a hundred bucks. I only pay twenty. For a rub, it's fifty. I give my ten and I can rub until the fabric on his jeans qualifies as museum quality. I know about the "bowling ball" because Joey told me. The "howling ball" doesn't know about me, because Joey has principles. I advise Joey on his prices. Can you imagine? It's fifty—just to rub it.

[He laughs. Music.]

I only had two dollars this week. Joey took off his shoes and socks. I kissed his toes. Joey is so generous.

[Music.] [. . .]

I guess I should clue you in. Isn't that a manly expression? "Clue you in." Men all over this universe are using that expression—right now—at this moment. Determining our fates and cluing each other in. But they're not really cluing anybody in. They're doing what they do best. Lying. That's what I'm trying to learn how to do. But I'm not going to lie to you. So I'll clue you in.

[. . .]

I'm sorry I was so rude. I was supposed to clue you in. But I almost saw God. Isn't that the best excuse for bad manners? How I got here? I was on my search. I believe in God the Father Almighty. And I'm human. Young. I love God. I love life. I love people. And Our Lord always knew I love men. I have a spot. A small purple spot.

[MICHAEL begins to undress.]

I'll show you. Here under my robes. With all its powerful meaning. It was there then. It's there now. I wore it under my cassock. Thought about the love of God. The Crucifixion. And wondered if my spot would lead me to any wisdom. But I'm weak. Sometimes I cursed. Scream—Jesus H. Christ. Do you know what the "H" stands for?

[MICHAEL stops undressing. Music. Without his cassock. In a T-shirt and pants.]

I'm cluing you in, right? I'm a young priest. I believe in and look for God, the Father Almighty everywhere I go. I work in a hospital. I see so many men with spots. I'm their priest. Their brother. I hold their hands. When they need breath, I breathe into them. If they need a kiss, I brush their lips with mine. And I wonder? Where is He? Where is our God? Maybe He's in the spots. I kiss as many as I can. I lick them. Maybe I'm tasting God. Are you getting clued in?

[Music.]

I was saying Mass. I held up the Eucharist—the body—the blood of Christ—and I felt it. My spot burning. Wanting air. Wanting to be free of my robes. So I freed it. I freed my spot. I tore my robes off. Ripped them from my body. "Wait," I said. "Wait." "Look." "Let me show you. Please. Let me show you something."

[MICHAEL suddenly rips off his T-shirt, lowers his pants a bit, turns his back to the audience, and points to a lesion on his lower left hip.]

I said, "See the spot. Help me. Help me see God in it."

[Music. MICHAEL puts on his cassock.]

Where is he? He hasn't been here for a while. I need to see him. Touch him. Oh God, I wish I had more money. My spot. I was talking about my spot. I said, "See my spot." Well, Mrs. Fazio passed out. Mrs. Cunnings also fainted. But the lucky bitch hit her head on the pew, landed in the hospital, and sued St. Agnes. No one saw any meaning in my lesson. They only saw it as "show and tell." And I interrupted the Mass. Perhaps, I should have showed my spot during the coffee hour. Then maybe I wouldn't be here.

[After a moment.]

It's been awhile. I haven't seen him. Do you know where he is?

[Music. On his knees.]

Oh dear Jesus, help me. Where is he? I need . . .

[Suddenly spotting the audience.]

Mrs. Cunnings . . . I was talking about Mrs. Cunnings. She was awarded $10,000 out of court. The scar on her forehead is smaller than my spot. Is there any justice? Mrs. Fazio is furious she didn't hit her head. I don't blame the sweet thing. I was interviewed. Well, questioned. Did I know my name? The date? Where I lived? Never a question about God. They brainwashed my family. Had them sign papers. Now I have to stay here until the authorities agree I'm sane. So I have to pretend this is God's house. That the Devil doesn't exist here. Pretend until I get out of here. Then I can begin my daily search. Have to pretend real fast and real good. Before my spots double, triple. Before they devour me. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm seeing the Devil. So there has to be a God. I have a dime. One dime. Joey's late. He was supposed be here already. He says he needs my dime. So he'll let me touch his skin. Trace that skin with these hands. Just for one dime.

[MICHAEL mimes tracing JOEY's face. Music.]
Steve Feffer

excerpts from

And Yet . . .

from

The Best American Short Plays 2010–2011

SAM It's like the blues edict: Slinging espresso on Saturday night. And playing harp at a brunch on Sunday morning.

[The lights change. The harp playing continues, as the image on the television screen changes to an image of a female cheek. SAM addresses the audience. A weather map appears behind him. It's a local map. It has a cartoonish picture of an impending snowstorm bearing down on its center. There is a place on the map marked "The Radisson."]

We met at a reception for the town's annual meteorological awards. She was playing the reception. I thought she looked familiar. She had served me my latte every morning and then there she was playing harp in the Radisson.

[SAM points to the weather map.]

I had won the award for our town's best new meteorologist. And I guess I was drunk and a little full of myself, but I got up the courage to talk to her. And I asked if she remembered me, and she said, oh yes, I get dressed to you every morning. And we laughed. And then at one point Robert Daley sat in her harp chair and wouldn't get up. I mean, Daley has been the big meteorologist in this town since . . . I don't know . . . there first was weather on TV. And I told him to get out of her chair. Actually, I said, this is the harpist's chair, motherfucker. And he got up. I asked what she was doing after work, and if she needed help pushing her harp home. And we slept together that night.

[Beat.]

Today there is a massive winter low approaching.

[SAM points to the weather map.]

It will either be what I am calling a "Winter Wallop" or a "Winter Whimper." But I can't decide. I can't seem to call it, and I go on the air any moment now.

[SAM puts his pointer down and takes a picture out of his wallet. The picture then appears where the weather map was. It is the same idealized image of a female cheek we see on the television.]

We really have the most wonderful time. And I have been without someone for so long. We are getting married in June. I'm very excited. I'm thrilled. Today she is with her mother trying on wedding dresses. I know she is going to look so beautiful.

[SAM looks at the picture in his wallet for a moment. He uses his pointer to point to the female cheek that has replaced the weather map.]

Hmm. I have seen damask'd roses, red and white, but no such roses do I see in her cheeks.

[SAM looks again at the picture and returns it to his wallet. The weather map returns. The cartoonish snowstorm is closer.]

• • • •

SAM You should look into that. And the harp thing.

[The image on the television screen changes to an image of female hair. Again, the hair is moving and lively. But all we see is hair. The television screen is across from SAM.]

Mmmm. You are such a great cook. This pasta is delicious. These mushrooms. How?

[Beat.]

You make great espresso drinks. You play awesome harp. And this fungi. Ridiculous.

[SAM stops eating for a moment. There is a hair in his pasta.]

What? It's nothing. Just a hair. No. It happens. What do I care if I have one of your hairs in my pasta. Like I've never had one of your hairs in my mouth before.

[SAM examines the hair.]

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

[SAM stares at the hair.]

Actually, I'm full. I don't want a new bowl. Fine, if you'd feel better. But it really doesn't matter to me. I'll just have some more wine . . . lotsa wine.

[SAM crosses . . . to the bed as the lights change. The image on the screen changes to an image of a female breast. SAM sits on the corner of a bed.]

I just want you to be satisfied. That's my whole thing. If you got off, then I'm okay with that. I have been under a great deal of stress at work lately. One doesn't think of being a meteorologist as stressful, but it is. It's a lot of blame. And this particular storm is very confusing to me. I actually called it a "zone of uncertainty" on the air today. I mean, what the hell does that mean? It means: I don't know. It means: I don't have a pithy phrase for it like "Winter Wallop" or "Winter Whimper" or some fucking thing. I come home from the meteorological center and I drink myself into oblivion. And all night long my weather radio is waking me up with advisories and warnings—and I'm haunted by them because I couldn't see them coming. Your body is still very exciting to me. I love your body. [. . .] I mean, granted, if snow be white, then your breasts are dun. Dun. No, not "finished" dun. Dun. Dunnish. It's a color. A brownish gray color. Bad? Why would that be bad? White is sickly. White breasts are like so sixteenth century.

[Snow falls throughout the scene.]

It's a "Winter Wallop." Oh, it's a "wallop" all right. I said "whimper" and it's a "wallop." I shoulda just stuck with "zone of uncertainty" and let people look out their goddamn windows. Shit. We're going to be late to Dave's wedding. Oh my God, you're freezing. You're dressed for a "whimper." I let you down. Again. It's you I think of when I'm forecasting and I let you down. Here . . . Let me hold you.

[SAM turns his back to the audience. . . . He steps back for a moment.]

In some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

[Beat.]

Have you started smoking again? No? Lotsa coffee at the store? Interesting. Well, we better get you inside. You're freezing. Here. Put my scarf around your mouth. It will keep you warm.
Bruce Bonafede

excerpt from

Advice to the Players

from

The Best American Short Plays 1986

ROBERT No, Oliver. She's right. It's still up to us, no matter what she does. . . . You know, in my last year in prison I was most of the time alone. But once, for a while, I had a man with me. I never knew who he was. He couldn't tell me his name because when they first threw him into my cell his jaw was already so badly broken he couldn't speak. And it never healed. They made sure they beat him often enough so it wouldn't.

[Pause.]

One night they brought him back, and I listened to him die. It took hours.

[Pause.]

In the morning, when they brought that shit they fed us, I ate his too. When they came for him again, I dared them to take me instead. They were happy to oblige. Anyway, I kept them from finding out for a few days. I even dragged his body around the cell so when they looked in they'd think he was moving.

[Pause.]

But then he started to smell, and . . .

[Shrugs.]

They thought I'd gone crazy when I refused to give him up. They stood in the door with their guns on me, cursing and shouting their lungs out . . . faces all red. I pulled him with me back against the wall, and I waited for them to shoot.

[Pause.]

And nothing happened.

[Laughs ]

I started to laugh at them standing there, watching me holding this dead man in my arms. The thing was . . . they were waiting, waiting for me, waiting to see what I would do. I still had choices, Oliver.

[Pause.]

I could come to my senses, be a good Kaffir, and say "Ja . . . baas," and give him up. Or I could hold on to him until they came in and beat me. Or . . . I could walk straight into their guns. I could make them be the monsters they were threatening to be.

[Pause.]

Whatever happened would be because of the choice I made. Whatever they did would be in reaction to me. They were as bound by me as I by them because we were men in confrontation.

[Pause.]

I was still a human being, and that was something all their laws and prisons and guns and power could not take away. Could never take away.

[A pause.]

And I knew this was something our people needed to sec. Something that would help them live, whether they got this . . . freedom they wanted or not.
Billy Aronson

excerpt from

Reunions

from

The Best American Short Plays 2002–2003

BRANDON Always knew I had something. Through all the crap I endured. The winking and whispering at those cliquey drinking parties. Anthony Oaks and Sally Bottini. Or Little Miss Muppet and her brainless cronies in the back of the lecture hall saving four seats with an apple so they could point at me and giggle. Or the marching-band-lacrossegang with their esoteric handshakes and midnight singsongs, which they always topped off with the obligatory run down the hallway to howl their lewd nicknames and puke in my shoes. I wanted to jump off the tower, but I buried myself in the library, found this book about spells and my God that was me. I could pull toads out of people's ears. I could turn those toads into snakes, and make the snakes disappear in a burst of flame. I knew could do it, and now: I do. And it has this effect. A power. Not just on my parents. Total strangers come up to me, with this look, you can see it. They open their mouths, not a damn sound comes out, because they're speechless.
Donald Margulies

excerpts from

Pitching to the Star

from

The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993

scene

The office of DICK FELDMAN at his home in Sherman Oaks, California. The present.

[Primarily, the office furnishings are white. Cans of Diet Coke are on the Santa Fe–style coffee table. A voice-activated intercom/speaker is prominently placed on the rear wall.]

DICK You're ours, not hers. Remember that. You don't have to deal with her, let me deal with her. You just be nice. Be pleasant. Be cute. You are cute. She'll like you. Just be cute, you'll see. Be yourself. She'll love you. It's not what you say (you understand?), it's not what you pitch. Let her think we care what she thinks. She says something? Go: "Uh huh, let me think about that." She'll love you for life. Don't write it down even, just: "Uh huh." Like: "What an interesting idea. Gee. Gee, I must give that some thought, Dena, thank you." Guarantee she won't remember what she said thirty seconds later but you made a friend for life. You were pleasant. You didn't show an attitude. You don't want to be her friend. Remember that. I'm talking purposes of the show solely. She's the star. You don't fuck with a star, so to speak. She, in her mind, is apart from the rest of the world. She's a star. Stars don't know how to be a friend. They don't have friends. They're suspicious of everyone. They don't like people. They're ambivalent about their success. They don't know what they did to deserve it, which makes them very suspicious of people. With good reason when you think about it: People want things from stars. So, consequently, as a result, they're suspicious, lonely, deeply fucked-up people. Remember: you don't want to be her friend. You don't need her. She needs you. Fuck her.

[Calls.]

Jennifer? Jen?

• • • •

DICK I don't have time for irony. Give me a story. Tell me a good story, I'm happy. That's all I ask. Whatever happened to stories? Hm? Remember stories? Bubbeleh, this is what I'm telling you. We gotta clear your brain of that shit. We gotta vacuum it out. Simple stories, Peter. Where a cow is a cow for a change. Boy meets girl. Yeah. No symbols. No irony. One thing doesn't mean another. Who wants to sit there (no really now) who wants to have to sit there and work and figure it out? "Oh, I get it: the so-and-so really means the Holocaust." "Child abuse." Fill in the blank. Fuck it. Life is too short for irony. Please. Tell me the fucking story. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, so on and so forth. People after a hard day, they do not want to have to put on their thinking caps.

[Getting up, unzipping his fly.]

These are important lessons in this town, pal. . . . I swear one day you're gonna thank me.

[To LAURI.]

Look at him, he hates me.

[LAURI laughs.]

Fucking Diet Cokes. . . .

• • • •

PETER You know, Dick? I'm sitting here thinking, "What am I doing here? I don't need this." And then I realize, "Well, yeah, I do, I do need this. I need the money." And think, "That's a lousy reason to subject yourself to something like this." But then I think, "Well, tough, you've got to survive; hell, even Faulkner did this, this is what a writer has to do, just take the money and run." Okay, well, then I ask myself: "Shit, is it really worth the humiliation? Is it really worth feeling so scuzzy? Is it worth this constant burning sensation in my stomach?" And the answer comes back: "Yeah. It is. Just do it and stop caring about it so much. Stop thinking so much." But I can't stop thinking. I can't stop thinking how I could get by for two months on what it cost you guys to fly me out here. And I can't stop thinking, What is this "unique voice" shit when you can't even bear to let me finish a sentence?
Michael Roderick

excerpt from

I'll Do It Tomorrow . . .

from

The Best American Short Plays 2004–2005

KENNETH Be be! It worked. I did what you said and went to see a business partner of mine. We were working on a big project and on the day we were supposed to present it, I slept in and told him I'd send my half that afternoon. I never sent the other half and we never got the company to sign on. I went to him and told him I was sorry. I never thought that it would be that big of a deal. I always thought he'd get back on his feet, but it hit him really hard. I didn't realize how much he was counting on me and I let him down. I told him all of this and he didn't want to hear it. Finally, I took the plans for the project out of my briefcase and handed them to him signed. I told him I didn't care about the money. He could have everything. I just wanted to know that we were square after I let him down. I realized at that moment that the project didn't matter! It was the fact that I almost ruined someone else's life that mattered. It was like a revelation or something. You should have seen it, Be be! Then, just as I'm leaving, I feel something in my pocket and . . .

[Takes out the shell.]

I did it! I got him to give up something bad, probably his hatred for me. The important thing is I did it!
Susan Miller

excerpts from

It's Our Town, Too

from

The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993

STAGE MANAGER This play is called It's Our Town, Too and all you need to know about who wrote it is she's still here and constantly wondering.

[Beat.]

This first scene is called "An Ordinary Afternoon" and you'll see two of our main characters, Emily and Elizabeth.

[A train whistle is heard.]

It's 4 p.m. in our town. Last night the stars were out like a promise and someone kissed someone they'd never thought of kissing before. Teachers doubted their lessons and Mrs. Kim could be heard singing the overture to "Carousel." If you were passing through our town, and you happened to stop at the general store for some of Terese Rivera's peach pie, you might be lulled into thinking that people here were small and narrow and wouldn't give a rightful place to the world's concerns. But we're no different from anyone else, trying to grasp the meaning of things. We're mean and lost and fragile and shrewd. We're lonely and aiming too high, bitter and good. We come up thinking the world is sweet but it's every human's experience to meet disappointment.

[Sound of a bird.]

Sometimes there's a commotion that sets in over a new possibility. Like the summer three entire families swore they spotted a UFO when it turned out to be Emily Rosen's hopes making themselves known in a burst of light.

[Beat.]

Which brings me to Emily and Elizabeth. I suppose there aren't any two people on the planet put together in one place for very long, who don't have their disagreements who don't feel sometimes like maybe they made the worst mistake of their lives or wish the person they thought was so sweet just a few hours before would pack up and leave. There isn't anybody who hasn't looked across the dinner table and thought, I don't know if I love you anymore. And it can drive good people to saying cold words. But it's not really the fact. It's no more true than the first day when you looked at somebody and thought, "She's the one." Thought, "I'm saved." We're just scared is all, every one of us.

[School bell, sound of young people.]

Now we're going to go back to the day two of our kind really saw each other for the first time. And knew that there was some future in it.

[Beat.]

Oh, this is high school and well, you all remember what that was like. In your heart of hearts aren't you still standing by your locker waiting for that certain one to walk by and maybe, just maybe stop to say your name?

• • • •

STAGE MANAGER Excuse me, you're interrupting a wedding.

[To audience.]

There's never any lack of trouble for what ought be a person's own business. George's father never spoke to him again after he found out. Emily's mother, well, she kept in touch but wouldn't look Elizabeth in the eye. It's a hard thing when your own turn away. It's a powerful hold they've got on our hearts and minds—Mother. Father. The world is unforgiving enough without the people who brought us up in it taking the other side. So, let's not allow that part of the world in today. Just for a little while, let's give these families a break.

[Beat.]

It seems to me we'd all sleep better at night knowing our children had someone decent to worry over them each and every day, each and every time they laid their head down to rest from the day's struggle. What does it matter, all the rest of it?

[Music starts again. STAGE MANAGER turns her back to the audience and toward the couples.]

I now pronounce you part of the human race that has the good fortune and the daily struggle of being married.

[Turns her head back to the audience.]

We wish them all the best, don't we?

[The lights shift, as the couples move out. STAGE MANAGER rearranges the boxes or chairs onstage.]

Well now, this is the hard part. This last scene, if you haven't already figured it out, is called "The End of Things." Of course, that's only one way of seeing it. Once you've known someone, they never stop being a part of how you look at the world. That goes for the living as well as the dead. And who knows but that we're being watched over somehow or carried out into the eternal universe, by every soul we ever mattered to or mattered to us.

[Beat.]

But our sad friends don't know any of this today. So bear with them.
Michael Roderick

excerpts from

Props

from

The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006

[Lights fade up on ANDREW sitting in a chair directly across from KERRI. Her back is to the audience. He appears to be putting makeup on her.]

ANDREW I'm not sure why I talk to you. I think maybe it's because I feel safe with you. At home somehow. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about all of this. There is no clear-cut answer to this sort of thing. I mean, how do you let go of something that you know is bad for you but has been your life? How is it that you can ignore it when someone says things to you that really hurt? How can you just accept that pain and hope things will change?

[Laughs.]

Why am I asking you all these questions? It's not like you can answer.

[Looks at his watch.]

It's three o'clock in the morning and I'm still working. Well, I guess that's the price one pays for perfection, right? Shit, I need some sleep.

[Moves over to her and puts his hands on her shoulders. She slumps over against his chest.]

Whoa. Don't get fresh now.

[As he props her up, it now becomes clear to those watching that KERRI is a puppet.]

Why would anybody ever ask someone to create a replica of another human being, huh? When I signed on for this job, I thought they just wanted a mannequin, but no. They asked me for the most life-like prop I could make and that my dear is how you were born. God, I'm tired. Who talks to inanimate objects in the middle of the night?

[Puts up his hand with a slight giggle.]

Guilty. Seriously, though, I really must be going. Thanks again for listening to my woes and soon enough you'll be ready to go onstage and you won't have to listen to my boring stories anymore.

[Pause.]

Wow. This is really sad. I almost looked at you as a real person there for a minute. I guess it's because I talk to you. Maybe I need help. Oh, I don't know.

[Sits back down.]

Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse not to go home to an empty bed. That's so terrible. I shouldn't try to stay at work all night, just because I can't face being alone. I'm such a loser.

[Laughs.]

That would be why I'm still in the woodshop at this time of morning. Oh well. Good night, Kerri. You debut in a few days.

[ANDREW sits in the chair looking at his creation. His eyes grow heavy until he falls asleep.]

[Slow fade down.]

• • • •

ANDREW SHUT UP, SUSAN! I am not a failed experiment. I was able to create all of this myself? I don't consider that failure. As long as I can remember I have wanted to do things for others. Help others! Maybe it's part of this programming you've been describing or maybe it's something else, but I have never once thought about myself. I have had this constant need to make sure someone else was happy. Namely, you Susan. I made you happy and I refuse to believe that I didn't. There's a difference between my love and yours. You wanted to make something for yourself that would serve only you and then toss it aside when you were done. That's not love, that's greed. You created the piece but had no respect for the piece itself! I am the artist. I have respect for the entire process, including the raw material and whatever I create . . . I accept. If you don't respect your work, it will turn on you. When you sculpt clay on a wheel, if you push too hard, the entire thing folds and you have to start over. Is it the clay's fault? Or is it that the artist didn't understand how delicate it was? Was it that the artist had no respect for the clay and tried to make it do something it didn't want to do? I clung to you for so long, because I thought you would eventually come to respect me and that one day you would be an artist instead of a goddamn carpenter. I am your day, but it is not my fault that this fell apart, it's yours. You've never, ever been able to admit that YOU ARE WRONG! THIS IS WRONG! I DO NOT NEED YOU TO EXIST! EXIST! I EXIST! And I am no longer yours. You say you made me? You say you created me? You're my fairy godmother? You put the pieces together and left! You just expected the pieces, this fucking prop, to find love and being real on his own. And I've finally found love and it is in the things I create. It is not with the person who I was never good enough for! I am the best day, and you are a lousy artist! I don't need to replace you because, because I will not become you. I love myself and there is nothing you can do about it. You can light the match again! You can destroy everything in this shop including me and I will still exist. There is nothing that says that you are not a construct of my mind. There's nothing that says that you are not the failed experiment. That my love, no matter how good it was, could ever make you real. It's over, Susan, and whether you want to accept this or not, I EXIST!

• • • •

ANDREW Love? Love! Susan, I thought that's what I had, what I felt, but I don't know what's happening to me. I mean, do we connect? Am I worth anything to you? Or is this another one of your famous silent moments? The time when you hold back so you won't hurt me? Well, it hurts more when you don't say anything! When you leave me alone with the silence and my own mind. Don't give me time to think, Susan. I'm begging you! The worst thing in the world is to give me time to think. I would never do this to you! I would at least try to talk. Can't you at least try? Please? God. . . . Fine. Don't say anything. You know exactly what you said to me and why I'm so hurt and you know exactly why I left you. You can't say it for yourself, and you know what? That gives me hope. It means that maybe somewhere you have some semblance of a conscience about all of this. I miss you more than I can stand, Susan. I wake up in the morning and bury my head in the pillow until I can stop coughing up tears and face the day. I walk through the streets looking at every girl who looks even remotely like you. I taste your kisses in the food I eat, but I cannot get beyond what you've done. You screwed up! Not me! You can't admit to it but you screwed up! It tears at every waking moment I spend on this earth but I need to rip you out of my life. As messed up as that is I WILL NOT PLAY THIS FUCKING ROLE ANYMORE! I do not belong to you! I'm learning what it's like to stop loving you. And until you can admit to what you've done, you do not belong in this shop or in my life.
Cary Pepper

excerpts from

Small Things

from

The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006

DREW I started thinking about it . . . I started thinking!

All these years, I'm getting the message, this is the one true religion. But I'm also getting another message: I'm no good. At first I accept that, because I think maybe I am no good. Like, I've got . . . this affliction . . . or this . . . bad gene . . . or a disease.

Maybe it's a test. And I'm always being told that if you have enough faith, any test can be met. So if you're sinful . . . or you have sinful thoughts . . . or do bad things . . . you have to have more faith . . . pray harder . . . go to more meetings . . . work harder for the Assembly . . . and it'll be okay. But the older I get, I begin to realize . . . I'm not hurting anybody. I don't kill. I don't steal. I don't wish anyone evil. I don't lie. Except about one thing, and I only do that because of them. But except for that, as far as I can tell, I don't sin at all. But . . . according to them, I'm bad. And I begin to think, "What is wrong with me?" And I realize . . . nothing. So why do they say I'm bad? I begin to ask more questions. . . . And they tell me, have more faith. It's in the one true book. It's the will of the one true god. But those answers don't work for me anymore. And I'm just beginning to really question everything, when it's time to begin my year of mission work. [. . .] They tell you you're doing something important. Spreading the one true word. Bringing people to the one true god. . . . So why was it that every time someone opened the door, as soon as they realized why I was there, what I wanted, there was That Look on their face? They tell you it's because people don't know how much they need help. Everyone's walking around in darkness, unable to see the one true light, so when you come to the door, they think you're just another one of those other groups that does missionary work. And they react that way out of their own ignorance. So it's all the more important that you keep doing it, because people really need to hear about the one true faith. So, okay . . . that makes sense. But not for very long. Because you keep seeing That Look. And no one wants to hear what you have to say. And everyone is always doing something when you ring the bell. And I begin to think . . . is this really helping anyone? Or is it just bothering people?

Six months into it, I decide it's just bothering people. I mean, if people really needed help . . . wouldn't they be out getting it? Wouldn't they be somewhere, talking to someone, instead of sitting around the house, as if they were hoping someone would ring the bell and save them? Or, if they are home, maybe they're on the phone, talking to someone who can help them. And I come along and interrupt them! So I'm stopping them from getting help! So the whole thing just isn't working for me at all. It just doesn't mean anything.

Unless . . . Unless you happen to ring someone's bell just when they're in the middle of a crisis. And you happen to be the exact person they need, because what you have to say helps them. If that happens. . . . If you come along just at the right moment, and you make a difference in someone's life . . . then it means something. [. . .] And for a while that works. It keeps me going. Until I realize that I'm terrified it might happen. Because . . . I'm eighteen! I don't know anything! How can I help anyone?! "But you're not supposed to know," I tell myself. . . . It's the one true religion that has the answers. The one true god, and his one true book. So just tell them about that, and it'll be okay.

Except, according to Them . . . that religion . . . that book . . . I'm no good. So I'm their messenger, spreading the one true word, but, according to that word, I'm . . . what? . . . The one true evil? And everything starts to fall apart. I'm walking around in a daze. I'm the one who needs help, and even I'm not turning to the one true faith!

So now when I ring bells, I'm glad no one's home. And I'm hoping that anyone who is, won't let me in. And somehow, I get through my year.

Today's my last day of service. . . . It ends at five o'clock. With any luck, yours is the last bell I have to ring. And what do you mean I've hit the jackpot.

• • • •

DREW I did it. Tried it . . . a couple of years ago, it got so terrible . . . I knew who I was. . . . And They were telling me that was bad. And I believed them. . . . I couldn't live with it anymore. I decided to use pills, and I lay down with a bottle, and put it on my chest and stared at it. And nothing happened. No one rang the bell. So I took the pills. And I'm lying there, waiting for them to kick in. . . . And . . . a song gets into my head. And I can't get it out. I can't stop thinking this song. And it's got words and sometimes just the music's in my head, and sometimes it's the words, too. And it's . . . the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies.

And no matter what I do, what else I think of . . . it won't go away! And I start thinking . . . How fucking stupid is this? My last fully conscious moments, and this is the best I can do? What—is—wrong—with—me?

At first, that did it. I mean, talk about signs. If this is the best you can do with your last moments. . . . Absolutely, pull the trigger, kick the chair out from under you, pour the bottle down your throat. But then I start to laugh. . . . And . . . I don't know exactly what happened next. . . . I lost consciousness or something. But not from the pills. But next thing I know, I'm laughing. I mean, really, really, really laughing. Like, when you're laughing with everything you've got. . . . You're laughing so much it hurts. . . . It completely, totally, fills you. You are laughter.

And . . . I didn't want to die anymore.

And . . . that's when the pills kicked in.

I started to go all hazy, and I knew that if l didn't get off the bed, soon, it'd be too late. But . . . I didn't want to die anymore.
Murray Schisgal

The Hunchback of Central Park West

from

The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006

scene

At the rear of the stage, through a panoramic window, a lush, verdant view of Central Park from an apartment on Central Park West.

Mid-stage, a bare, unfurnished living room except for a cordovan, leather armchair. Beside it, a side table with several worn hardcover books, yellow legal memo-pads, pens and pencils planted in a cup. Upstage, a glass-shelved portable bar.

time

Spring; mid-afternoon. It's a sunless day with soggy puffs of clouds dotting the sky.

sound

Mozart's Church Sonata 12 in C Major, K.263.

[At rise: Lights up. The periphery of the living room is lost in darkness. THE PLAYWRIGHT is a fastidiously groomed man of mature years. He stands at the bar, his back to the audience, dropping ice cubes into a rocks glass. He is wearing an imported paisley dressing gown, an ascot, black pleated trousers, linen socks, and patent leather loafers. Burgeoning out from beneath his dressing gown is a prominent hunchback. He pours Irish whiskey, no more than a scrupulously estimated inch, from a liter bottle into the glass. THE PLAYWRIGHT suddenly appears to have heard something; his body stiffens; his head turns to look at offstage entrance door. He listens intently for a beat, putting down the glass on the bar. Then, as if he's satisfied with what he's heard (we've heard nothing), he calls, loudly.]

THE PLAYWRIGHT Yes, who is it?

[Listens a beat.]

One second. I'll be right with you.

[Taking remote from his dressing gown's pocket, he clicks off CD player. He moves to the offstage entrance door. Offstage.]

Come in, come in. So glad to see you. Kurt Sternheim of the New York Times, isn't it?

[Listens a beat.]

My pleasure, I assure you. I haven't been interviewed by an American newspaper for . . . Oh, it must be at least a dozen years; quite a surprise hearing from you, I must say. But I am not ungrateful.

[A beat.]

I'd better take this with me. Come in, do come in.

[THE PLAYWRIGHT enters, carrying in a wood-framed, cane-seated chair, which he places a few yards opposite the upholstered armchair. He continues talking to his imaginary guest, who stands at the rim of the living room.]

Do forgive the appearance of my apartment. My domestic deserted me and to date I haven't been able to find a reliable replacement. Do sit down. I just poured myself an Irish whiskey, would you care to join me?

[Listens a beat.]

Of course, you're working, how thoughtless of me. You wouldn't mind if I . . . ?

[Listens a beat.]

How kind of you. Do sit down. It's somewhat surprising to note that as we age, we gradually modify our daily routine without taking any particular notice of it.

[He retrieves his glass of whiskey from the bar, talking to his imaginary guest, who is now seated in the cane-seated chair.]

Not too long ago I wouldn't have dreamt of having a drink before five, a self-imposed prohibition that I adhered to for decades. But like all my resolutions, this one, too, has fallen by the wayside. I am, unfortunately, suffering from a period of excruciating, creative . . . What is the correct word?

[A thoughtful beat.]

Impotency! Yes, let's grab the bull by the horns and call it for what it is, impotency! And I choose that word with due deliberation, noting that it is not a reflection of any physical deficiency of my own!

[He chuckles, sits in the armchair, setting his drink on the side table; he fastidiously crosses his leg, folding his dressing gown over his lap.]

You've arrived by happenstance at a rather critical period of my professional life. Incidentally, you do look rather young for a New York Times journalist. Without meaning to be rude, how old are you?

[Listens a beat.]

What? Twenty-seven? Heavens to Betsy, that is young. Your mother must be inordinately proud of you.

[Listens a beat.]

Come again? Oh, yes. The fact is, Mr. Sternheim, that after a career of some thirty years as a professional playwright, I find myself at the end of my tether. Who . . . Who in the world would have believed that my once fertile, prolific, and capacious imagination has finally exhausted itself, or, if you will, flown the coop, vanished into thin air like the bubbling effervescence from a bottle of cheap champagne.

[A wistful beat after each sentence.]

Gone. Evaporated. Fizzled to extinction. Not leaving behind the wispiest trace of memory for one to dwell on.

[Normal discourse.]

There's no escaping it, for the last six months . . . precisely one hundred and seventy-two days, I haven't been able to come up with a single viable idea for a new play that's worth putting on paper. Oh, that's not to say I haven't written anything. I've written, ad infinitum, summaries, outlines, titles, possible adaptations, possible characters, possible scenes, possible pages of dialogue, all of which, I confess with embarrassment, terminated in a cri de coeur of frustration and failure. What I find, however, completely incomprehensible is that I'm not merely speaking here of an inability to come up with an idea for a full-length play. Oh, no. I'm speaking here of an idea for any kind of play, a one-act play, a ten-minute play, a monologue, an aphorism, a parable, anything, anything worth putting on paper that has a modicum of interest for whatever audience remains out there. And . . . And, beyond and above that, what's so ironic, what's so out of left field, is for you to phone and ask for an interview at the most impoverished creative period of my professional life. That . . . That to me is shockingly ironic!

[He picks up his glass, drinks.]

Well, so be it. Life proceeds at its steady pace in spite of gaps, gullies, and assorted calamities. To your health, Mr. Sternheim. I promise you'll have ample opportunity to ask whatever questions you wish. I have no plans for the rest of the day, nor, for that matter, for the rest of the week.

[He finishes his drink.]

[Glass in band, without interrupting his conversation, rises to put the glass on the bar. He picks up a second glass, fills it with fresh ice cubes, and once again scrupulously measures an inch of Irish whiskey as he pours it into the glass. He moves to sit in the armchair; puts glass on side table and crosses his leg, folding his dressing gown over his lap.]

I believe my . . . creative impotency is commonly referred to as writer's block, two words that haven't passed through my lips until this very moment. Writer's block. Definition? The infectious, systemic disease that, at one time or another, invades and destroys a writer's ability to write. This can be attributed to a gradual depletion of imagination or a chronic illness or a psychological malfunction. So the question arises, what does a playwright do when he suffers from writer's block?

[He remains seated.]

Well, he sits . . . he stands . . . hands clasped behind his back he paces . . . he looks out the window . . . he turns away from the window . . . he scratches an itch . . . he fixes himself a drink, ice cubes and a scrupulously estimated inch of Irish whiskey, but he doesn't drink it, not yet, he waits several minutes so that the melting ice cubes will blend with the whiskey and increase the contents in his glass . . . he picks up a book . . . he glances at a page in the book . . . he puts down the book . . . hands clasped behind his back he paces . . . he blinks . . . he thinks: What's in my head? What was that idea I had last month, last year, the year before last year that I thought would make a powerful, prizewinning play? Was it last month? Last year? The year before last year? The playwright is befuddled. He admonishes himself: An idea for a play that's worth writing isn't forgotten that easily, lame brain! And how many times do I have to tell you to write down your ideas! You don't just let them rot in your head until they're indecipherable. Worthwhile ideas are serendipitous. They come from the labyrinth of memory, from a fragrance scented, a cookie ingested, a photograph, a quotation, an observation, an experience. Any one of those when planted in the fertile soil of imagination, grows and blossoms into compelling characters and riveting scenes that may, God willing, be of interest to whatever audience remains out there.

[A beat.]

The playwright continues to admonish himself. He remembers how it felt to be lost in another reality, a pretend reality of one's own choice, of one's own making. He remembers how it felt to spend hours and hours playing with words, locutions, nuances, alliterations, writing hour after hour, forgetting lunch, sleep, appointments, time, blight, and death itself! The playwright is lost, felicitously, in the private gardens and chambers of his imagination. He remembers, lame brain, he remembers how glorious it all was.

[He stares off into space for a nostalgic beat, then picks up glass and finishes off his drink. Glass in hand, without interrupting his conversation, he rises to put the glass on the bar. He picks up a second glass, fills it with fresh ice cubes and the obligatory inch of whiskey. He moves to sit in armchair, puts glass on side table, and crosses his leg, folding dressing gown over his lap.]

What you should know is that when I'm writing, when I'm engaged wholeheartedly in the act of writing, I'm entirely indifferent to my health, my appearance, my commitments, my phobias. You see, Mr. Sternheim, my wife, my second wife, that is, left me some weeks ago, and I find myself somewhat disoriented, at least for the present. By the way, she took nearly all of my furniture and persuaded my domestic to go along with her; for that I will never forgive her.

[Listens a beat.]

What? What is it?

[Listens a beat.]

Oh, I don't believe her leaving me prolonged my writer's block. Our marriage, to be polite, was ill advised. We both feel enormously relieved that our divorce is proceeding expeditiously, but enough, enough of my personal problems. As I said, I'd be happy to answer any questions. . . .

[Listens a beat.]

Ah, the article you're writing is for the Sunday entertainment section of the Times. Go on.

[Listens a beat.]

The article is to be called "Eminent". . .

[Interrupts himself.]

I can't understand a word you're saying. Start again. Slowly.

[Repeats what he hears.]

The article is to be called "Eminent Playwrights of the Past: Where Are They?"

[Listens a beat.]

That's the title of the article? "Eminent Playwrights of the Past: Where Are They?" You're not in earnest.

[Listens a beat.]

You are in earnest.

[He rises, clearly upset by what he has just learned. He moves toward his imaginary guest, stares directly at him, gestures, and speaks in a sonorous voice.]

What do I think? I think it's an abomination. You're categorizing me as a writer of the past? How damn audacious of you! If I had known that was to be the subject of your article, I would never have consented to this interview!

[Listens a beat.]

Why? You have the gall to ask me why?

[Disparaging his imaginary guest's surname.]

First of all, Mr. Sternheim, if you had been half the gentleman you pretend to be, you would have informed me of the content of your article when you phoned asking for this interview. That would have been the decent, ethical thing for you to do. Second of all, Mr. Sternheim, I am not, nor have I ever been a playwright of the past! Although I haven't had a play produced in New York City for . . .

[Sweats it a beat.]

some time now, I have been produced, continually and without interruption, throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe! In fact, Mr. Sternheim, three original full-length plays of mine were produced in Europe and have not been produced in this city, my birthplace and residence for over half a century! And furthermore, Mr. Sternheim, for your further enlightenment, New York City is by no means the be-all and end-all of theater in our country or any other county. Au contraire! Au contraire! And I am speaking here from personal experience accumulated over a period of innumerable years and not from the weekly entertainment pages of the New York Times!

[He paces, speaking with increased agitation, giving vent to emotions that have long simmered within him.]

For that matter, and with rare exception, it is my unbiased opinion that theater in New York City has deteriorated to such an extent during the past few decades that it has become the absolute pits! The dregs of banality and vulgarity! It consists primarily of kitsch musicals and television melodramas to satisfy the intellectual cravings of nitwits and nincompoops!

[Listens a beat.]

You're mumbling again, Mr. Sternheim. Please do me the courtesy of taking a deep breath and speaking slow-ly and suc-cinct-ly.

[Repeats what he hears.]

You wrote down . . . the questions you wanted to ask me. Your first question is: What . . . What is the state of my health?

[Normal voice.]

I'm sorry. You lost me on that one.

[Listens for a beat; forthright.]

What has the state of my health have to do with "Eminent Playwrights of the Past: Where Are They?" Are you taking a medical assessment of my health as well as updating my biography? Or are you inquiring about the state of my hunchback? Is that what you're driving at, the state of my hunchback? Is that the purpose of your question?

[Listens a beat.]

There's no need to apologize. I have no qualms about discussing my hunchback or, as you so delicately put it, my "congenital disability." You don't think that after all these years I'm embarrassed by the use of the word hunchback, do you?

[Listens a beat.]

No, no, I am not saying there wasn't a time when I would crawl under a rock at the mere thought of being called a hunchback, but that was during childhood and adolescence. It might be of interest to you to know that my parents never used that word. They were in complete denial, clinging to the delusion that my . . . kyphotic spine, my . . .

[Sardonically.]

"congenital disability" didn't exist, that I was as robust and carefree as the next child. Grant you, my mother did scold me, repeatedly: "Stop slouching!" "Stand straight!" "Raise your head!" "Pull back your shoulders!" "Look at me when I talk to you!" And from behind his newspaper my father murmured, so softly one could barely hear him, "Leave the boy alone. He'll grow out of it, God willing." But obviously I didn't grow out of it, "God willing." I remember once, when I was on my way home from elementary school, a cross-eyed, scowling kid I had never seen before came up to me and said . . .

[Mimics his voice.]

"Hey, what's that bump y'got growin' outta y'ur back? Y'u gotta pillow in y'ur shirt?" Crawl under a rock? You bet I would, if I could have found a rock to crawl under. I always assumed that the principals of the schools I attended informed the teachers and the teachers in turn informed the students that the word hunchback was never to be spoken in my presence. Still, this prohibition was occasionally ignored. In my sophomore year of high school, during assembly in the auditorium, I remember being tapped on the shoulder from someone seated behind me. I turned around to see this very attractive young girl, not a classmate of mine, but someone I had frequently seen in the hallways, someone whose physical attributes I borrowed to give a tad of inspiration to my nocturnal indulgences.

[Mimics her voice.]

"May I touch it for good luck?"

[Normal voice.]

She whispered in my ear, glancing at her girlfriends who sat beside her. I nodded, dumbly, not having the courage to refuse her. I turned to face forward, toward the auditorium's platform, where the principal was speaking on the virtues of tolerance for the less fortunate, while the girl seated behind me placed both her hands on the hump of my back and vigorously crunched it, as if she were kneading a bowl full of baker's dough. She didn't hurt me . . . physically . . . and yet . . . I was in pain . . . humiliated by the coarseness of what she was doing . . . in public . . . for everyone to see. I thought of pulling away from her invasive, spindly fingers or asking her to stop it, stop it, stop it instantly, but once again I lacked the courage to do so. And as she continued kneading the hump on my back, she started giggling and her girlfriends joined in and . . . the three of them were giggling. The students around us stirred in their seats, pointed at me, and they . . . they too started giggling.

[Horrified by the memory.]

Insult added to injury. Salt exacerbating the wound. Ridicule heaped on humiliation. And soon . . . soon the auditorium rumbled, shuddered, and howled in a delirium of laughter. I . . . I panicked. Perspiration sprouted on my face. My heart pounded wildly. I jumped to my feet, pushed my legs through to the end of the row, bumping into knees, thighs, books, apologizing . . . "Excuse me. Pardon me. If you'll please let me through. . . ." Once I reached the aisle I ran toward the doors at the rear of the auditorium and I was out of there, out on the street . . .

[Breathlessly.]

running for all I was worth, running up the stairs of the twostoried, shingled house where I lived . . . throwing open the door and racing into the bathroom where I locked the door, pressed my head against the wall, and I cried my heart out until . . . until I had no tears left . . . until . . . until I had no heart left.

[He lowers his head for a long beat; staring at floor. Softly.]

It came to me many years later. If I hadn't been born a hunchback . . . I would never have become a playwright. I would never have had the need to become a playwright, and for that . . . I am infinitely grateful.

[Glass in hand, without interrupting his conversation, he rises to put the glass on the bar. He picks up a fourth glass, fills it with fresh ice cubes and the obligatory inch of whiskey. He moves to sit in armchair. He doesn't put glass on side table. He doesn't cross his leg. He doesn't fold dressing gown over his lap. He shortly finishes his drink. His imaginary guest says something.]

Will you repeat that? I didn't hear you.

[Listens a beat.]

Yes, I was married twice, the first time for love, the second for revenge. The gist of what I'm about to tell you has already been published, so I see no reason to withhold anything from you. In any event, I met my first wife, Loretta Breen, partner in the law firm of McMillan and Breen, at an evening performance of As You Like It, a Shakespeare in the Park production at the Delacorte Theatre. And as luck would have it Loretta was seated beside me, unaccompanied, wearing khaki slacks, red-strapped sandals, and a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. As soon as I saw her I was in love with her. It took a while longer for her to reciprocate. We were married in Atlantic City and we lived happily together as man and wife. I'd like to repeat that line. We were married in Atlantic City and we lived happily together as man and wife. After our fifth year of marriage we planned to adopt a child since we appeared incapable of conceiving one. And, of course, no sooner had we reached that conclusion, in consultation with a Park Avenue obstetrician, we learned from Loretta's dermatologist that she was pregnant. And not only was she pregnant, she was pregnant twofold with a pair of twins, a girl and a boy. I'd like to repeat part of that: "She was pregnant twofold with a pair of twins, a girl and a boy."

[Ebulliently.]

God in heaven, talk about happiness, talk about whether or not life is worth living! Who are those wailing doomsayers, those sterile, silver-spoon-fed literati who stare up at the stars and see nothing but darkness? What pestilence buried them in dunghills of cynicism and morbidity!

[A beat.]

I felt none of that. Au contraire. Au contraire. I felt . . . happy. Ah, there's that glorious word again. I had it all, Mr. Sternheim, I had it all for some ten years. A wife I loved, a daughter I loved, a son I loved, a career I loved. Wife, children, career, life dancing on a blank page of adversities. I was God's favorite, no doubt about that.

[A beat.]

Where, you may ask, is Loretta today? Where are my children today? The answer? I have no idea. I haven't seen them in years. The last time . . . let's see. They were living in Japan, Tokyo, to be precise.

[Listens a beat.]

What went wrong? How in the world did they end up in Tokyo? I went wrong, Mr. Sternheim. I went wrong.

[He paces.]

I was working on a screenplay from a play of mine in Los Angeles, compliments of Warner Brothers. Several script meetings had been arranged with the director and the producers. I, of course, missed my family, but I felt footloose and fancy-free. I rarely let an evening get by me without a drink or two; on notable occasions, three or four, which led, inevitably, to a liaison between a young, pretty, amply scented and abundantly stacked assistant editor and yours truly. My reasoning was irrefutable: what value success and name recognition for a hardworking, generous, decent hunchback, if he can't avail himself of the more sumptuous delicacies of life? And who may I ask was more deserving of these social amenities than a family-friendly hunchback? After several drinks, it all seemed obvious to me.

[A meditative beat.]

Somehow, no doubt from a concerned friend of ours, my sweet Loretta got wind of it, and being a no-nonsense, up-front kind of a girl, unbeknownst to me, she flew out to L.A. Here's where being married to a lawyer does have its disadvantages. A few short months later we were divorced. A few short months after that she met a Japanese businessman at a fund-raising event for the Metropolitan Museum. A few short months after that they were married and moved to Tokyo. With my children, of course. Visitation rights required that I fly halfway around the world to spend a weekend and a month's summer vacation to see my children, which I did, dutifully, if not on weekends, certainly on the month's summer vacation. Those occasions, however, were not very fulfilling, whether I traveled to Tokyo or they came to Central Park West. The reason was simple. They fell into the habit . . .

[With difficulty.]

of speaking to each other in Japanese, as if they were sharing a secret, as if I wasn't with them. Or . . . was it that they didn't want me to understand what they were saying? Or . . . were they mocking me? Laughing at me because of my . . .

[Sardonically.]

"congenital disability"? My own children? Is that possible? Preposterous! Where did that horrible thought come from?

[Dismissing it.]

Whatever. It was their secret, not mine. In time even our summer vacations waned. It wasn't fun being together . . . with my own children . . . twins, a girl and a boy. I haven't seen them in years.

[A beat.]

As for my second wife, Bridget Henley, that was a horse of a different disposition.

[Struck by a thought.]

Come to think of it, you know her. Quite well. Can you guess who she is?

[Listens a beat.]

But you do know her. I mentioned her to you only a few minutes ago. Give it a try. Who do you...?

[Listens a beat.]

That's right! The girl who sat behind me in the high school auditorium! Yes, yes, the giggler and her three friends!

[Slaps his thigh; laughs.]

That's her! My haute masseuse! Wait. Wait till you hear how it started. After I had my first success off-Broadway, I received a letter from her at the theater, congratulating me and writing that I should congratulate her for being happily married and an executive at an advertising agency. I didn't hear from her for a good number of years after that, but one day, from out of nowhere, I received another letter from her addressed to my agent, saying she had heard of my divorce and since she was divorced and I was divorced, why didn't we have a drink one evening? Which we did. A dozen or so times, the last with a bottle of Dom Perignon and, from me, a proposal of marriage. The first year was fun. Surprised? So was I. I actually enjoyed being married again. Especially on those sweaty, lascivious nights when I straddled my new wife and felt her crunch her invasive, spindly fingers into the hump on my back, only now gasping and whimpering and begging me to stay the course!

[Laughing.]

What wild and woolly rides they were. In the throes of fornication I'd shout: "Beauty and the Beast! United at last! Whoopeeeee! Whoopeeeee!"

[Laughing.]

I would laugh so loud and so long that on reaching orgasm, I'd rumble off the bed, landing flat on my roly-poly, crunchy hump!

[Laughing; recuperates.]

Evidently Bridget didn't share my sense of humor. We were divorced before our second anniversary. And once again I was left to reflect on the tentativeness of marital relationships.

[Wistful silence.]

You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Sternheim. I seem to have run out of steam. An exhausting day of doing nothing. How wasteful it's all been.

[A beat; softly.]

Please let yourself out. And feel free to call me if anything comes up that you would like to clarify or discuss further. Do close the door on your way out. Thank you.

[He waits in vain to hear the entrance door open and close.]

[Taking remote from his dressing gown pocket, be clicks on CD player. Sound: Mozart's Church Sonata. With effort, wearily, he stands . . . hands clasped behind his back he paces . . . he looks out the window . . . he turns away from the window . . . he scratches an itch . . . he pours himself fifth drink, no ice cubes, no estimated inch . . . he knocks it off in one swallow, leaves empty glass on the bar . . . he moves to pick up a book from the side table . . . glances at a page in the book . . . he puts down the book . . . hands clasped behind his back he paces . . . he blinks . . . he thinks: What's in my head? What was that idea I had last month, last year, the year before last year that I thought would make a powerful, prizewinning play? Was it last month? Last year? The year before last year? Somewhere during the above or afterwards . . . lights and music fade out.]
Clay MacLeod Chapman

Undertow

from

The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010

one of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw

character

NARRATOR male, early 30s

NARRATOR You got to keep up with me better than this, bartender. With as many sorrows as I've got to drown, I'm gonna be stuck on this stool all night. Hey, how long's a guy got to wait for a refill around here? I don't want to see the bottom of that glass for the rest of this crisp twenty-dollar bill.

We're going to let Mr. Jackson decide when I've had enough to drink. Today was payday, so I'm showing the ol' Andrew here a night on the town. Tell you what. Next round's on me. How about that, everybody? Andrew Jackson here is up for re-election and he needs your votes. He's hired me to personally run his campaign. We're hitting all the bars along the highway, mustering up the drunkards to get behind the wheel. 'Cause on this highway—I'm the worst vulture there is. After the police and paramedics peck through a car wreck, I swoop down for the scraps. This road would be lumping over with rotten automobiles if it weren't for me towing them away—so don't you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about here. This highway's my office. You're the ones walking into my work the second you stumble outside the bar. I've seen what a steering wheel can do to your chest when you hit the brakes at eighty miles an hour. It pushes past your abdomen—your body slams against it so hard. Your ribs grip the wheel, trying to steer—your heart honking the horn every time it beats. Honk, honk. Honk, honk. You want to tell me I don't deserve a drink after working around that all day? I've got two kids at home and I can't even hug them. Feel like my fingers are going to tear right through. My hands don't deserve to know what that feels like. I can't trust the touch of things anymore. None of you know how flimsy your skin really is. Look at you. You've all soaked yourselves up in enough alcohol, a simple pinch between your seat and the steering wheel could tear right through you. But hell. I figure I owe you. All of you here.

You boys keep me in business, you know that? Half the calls I get are car wrecks coming from drunk drivers. Makes me wish I was working on a commission. I'd stop in here every night, personally buying each and every one of you a drink with the money from my own pocket. I'd earn it all back right after happy hour. Tonight, I guarantee you—I'll be towing one of your cars out from some ditch. I just figured I'd come down here first. Pay you a visit before the accident. I wanted to see what you all looked like in one piece. Bartender. . . . Is this a self-service station here or what? Fill her up, man! My hands are still shaking. I want to hold my children tonight. Hug them tight. Not think about their seat belts sawing their heads off. Can you do that for me, please? Can you wash my day away? I bet you've had to listen through every sad sack's story that's come in here—haven't you? They all line up along the bar and just start sobbing away, don't they? Bet you think you've heard it all by now. Am I right? Well . . . I got one for you. You fill up that glass and I'll tell you a story you've never heard before. I towed away my wife tonight. It's true. I'm not lying. Got the call about three hours ago. The highway patrol radioed in and said they had a wreck down on Route 27, right where the river starts running alongside the road. I was the nearest truck around, so I called the dispatcher and said I'd take it.

My shift was winding down, but I was near enough to tow it in no time. Once I pulled up, I see this wine-bibber sitting in the road. Man was so drunk, he didn't even realize he'd already been in an accident. He's got this whole entourage of officers surrounding him, asking questions. You could smell the alcohol on his answers—No, no, officer, I only had a little nip. Nothing to fuss over, I swear. . . . He'd lost control of the wheel, skidding over into the oncoming traffic. There was a station wagon heading in the other direction, both sets of headlights staring each other down. To miss kissing fenders, that station wagon had to take a sharp turn, running right off the road and through the guardrail—hitting the river at fifty, sixty miles an hour. You could see how heavy the brakes had been laid on. Half the tires had rubbed off over the asphalt. I was told to drive towards the water, this officer motioning for me to back the winch up along the shore. You can't think about the people who'd been behind the wheel when you're on the job. You tow those cars in and you try not to look inside, see what's still caked onto the car. You drop them off at the junkyard and you go home and you kiss your kids good night and you hold on to your wife until you finally fall asleep, thanking God you've got a family to come home to night after night. And you hope that you don't have dreams about all the people on the road, imagining what would happen if it'd been someone you loved. Someone who mattered to you. You pray for a smooth ride through your sleep. No nightmares about finding your family on the highway. Took me almost two hours to tug that station wagon out from the water. The winch kept winding in, the car getting closer.

The numbers on the license plate are starting to look real familiar to me, like I've seen them before. But I'm not saying anything to anybody. I figure my nerves are just stretched. I'm seeing things—that's all. I could go home and find my wife already in bed, curled up underneath the sheets and sleeping. Not right there in front of me. Whose wife was this? Not mine—not with her hands frozen into fists from hammering against the window, trying to punch through the glass as the river swept in. No—my wife was at home. She wasn't out buying ice cream for the family. It had all melted fogging up the water. It took a police officer to wipe his finger down her arm to realize what she was covered in, the entire inside of the car coated with a gallon's worth of vanilla skin. Licking his finger, he said—My favorite flavor. Mine, too. Instead of towing the station wagon down to the pound, I took it home. Parked it right in front of our house. What water was still caught inside was dribbling out onto the road. And I went inside, right up to my children's room. Found them sound asleep. Let me ask you something. How would you go about telling your kids all this, if something like this happened to you? Would you wake them up, sit one on each knee? Would you wait for the police to ring your doorbell? Or would you pile what was left of your family into the station wagon and go for a little ride? Maybe head down to your local watering hole, let the kids sleep in the backseat while you stepped out for a little drink? I want to know what you boys would do. I want you all to have a drink on me with the money I made towing my own wife—and think about how happy I'm going to be when I pry your car off of some tree, yanking your fender from its trunk. Me and the kids are going to be waiting in the parking lot here, with the radio on—just waiting for the dispatcher to call in with a car wreck. 'Cause I think it's time they see what their daddy does for a living, see what I've got to deal with almost every night—so that when we hug each other, we'll all know just what it is that we're holding on to. How precious that feeling is. Tonight, I'm the designated driver. We can all car-pool down to the pound together. But first—how about another round? What do you say, everybody? One for the road?
Lavonne Mueller

The Confession of Many Strangers

from

The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998

place

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., August 1995.

[Light up on a chair over on its side. After a beat, we see the PILOT strut proudly onto the stage. He is wearing full military dress with medals including the distinguished service cross.]

PILOT [He looks all around him and then sees his airplane.] My . . . Enola Gay.

[Turns to see spectators in the museum looking at the Enola Gay.]

Glad to see some patriotic folks here. That's right. I'm the pilot. The one who flew her over Hiroshima. The uniform's the same, a little tight under the arms, but that's about all. Come on, stand a little closer. It's all right to gawk at the Enola. She's named after my mother. Yah, my mother.

[A beat.]

Quite a smooth nose on her. And slim. Gently curved tail section. Two wings like bosoms.

[A beat.]

It never bothers me that people know Mom's name and not mine. She did all the work. Raised me. Gave me faith to fly.

[To museum spectator.]

I know it will surprise you, but that historic mission was so ordinary it was almost boring. Except . . . except . . . after the bomb dropped. Then things changed. The Enola took shock waves slamming us from nine miles away. I thought we were hit. It was like a huge giant had slapped us with a two-by-four. All we could do was hold on. I didn't know if the windows of our pressurized cabin would blow. On top of that, we got an "echo wave" coming off the first blast. We were rocking like there was artillery coming at us from everywhere. For one split second, I thought the atmosphere had exploded. Remember, we didn't exactly know what to expect. We'd never dropped an A-bomb from a plane—the test bomb at Trinity was dropped from a tower. We were all working in the dark.

[A beat.]

I'll tell you straight out, when just a few people knew what I did that day, right after I got back, I felt in control. Because I could go and have a beer and talk to each one of those people and tell them how I saved a lot of lives. Now . . . what I did is everybody's story. People just think and say whatever they want about me. I'm here to give you the truth.

[He turns the chair over and sits on it. He takes a blank sheet of paper out of his pocket and makes an airplane. He sails the paper plane out into the audience.]

I was supposed to be a doctor. But being up next to somebody . . . getting so close you could see their cells . . . that felt kinda disrespectful. I like distance. There's dignity in seeing the long view. You don't get the warts. What I do I wanna do at least 10,000 feet up.

[A beat.]

I read somewhere that I supposedly learned to fly when I was five. On the knee of an old farmer who took me up in his homemade crate. Hell, how stupid can you get? Five! I didn't fly till I was ten.

[To the audience.]

You see, I had just met Earl Ebberly over in Paw Paw, Illinois. Earl had himself an old biplane called Wilma with wooden propellers and an open cockpit. The lift-strut on the Wilma was a headboard from his mother's bed.

[A beat.]

Earl let me do little jobs for him like picking up oil rags. One day he let me sit in the open cockpit just so I could get the feel of things. Earl saw me smiling and posing like somebody out of Battle Aces, and that's when he said he had this contract with the Army to test tropical chocolate bars by dropping them over state fairs and racetracks to see how they'd hold up. And he needed somebody to do the dropping while he did the flying. Was I interested?

[A beat.]

Was I interested!

[To the audience.]

Instead of going to school where we were studying "percents," I left a note for the teacher. "Dear Miss Tidewalker, have gone flying."

[A beat.]

Flying was pretty primitive in those days. Earl made a flight line on the ground with the twig from a spruce tree. He lined up some flour sacks on two sides for the runway. And then he just picked up that plane by the tail and pulled it along behind him and came right up to where I was standing. And I thought then and there . . . nothing . . . nothing in this whole world could be more grand than . . .

[He drags the chair by the back across the stage.]

. . . walking across a dirt patch in the middle of Illinois pulling your own airplane behind you.

[A beat.]

That first day Earl and me went up, we took off into low, broken cloud layers with a clear blue sky. I could smell gasoline. Oil was lashing back all over us. The air pounded my face, but I just put out my arms

[He does this.]

and let the wind blow them back like I was part of that plane.

[To the audience.]

Each candy bar was attached to a little parachute. I'd lean over real careful and take two handfuls of them candy bars and make a precision aim . . . and I swear they all floated down smooth and straight right on target.

[To EARL.]

Earl, what if you get sick or pass out or something up here. What will I do?

[Speaking as EARL.]

Kid, lean on the stick and pump hard on the rudder pedals. If you don't have any hands left to drop the candy, do a slow roll all the way over and let them just fall out.

[To EARL.]

Sure, Earl, guess I can do that.

[To the audience.]

We flew over fairs, rodeos, firemen, picnics, and baseball games. Even over a pig-calling contest in Shabbona, Illinois.

[In the airplane dropping candy bars.]

Look at everybody run to get our chocolate bars, Earl. They're laughing. Pushing and shoving. Screaming. Okay . . . okay . . . more coming. These . . . are going . . . right over the Tilt-a-Whirl.

[He drops more candy bars. To the audience.]

Earl taught me to fly. Course I learned to fly officially when I enlisted and became a second looie in the Army Air Corps.

[A beat.]

I guess everybody remembers where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. I was at a party at the Officers Club. A good buddy and his wife invited a single woman friend of theirs to make a foursome. I had dated off and on over the years, but one look at Jenny, and I knew it was serious.

[A beat.]

I was pretty cocky then. We were out on the dance floor. Sammy Kaye was playing something smooth but with a swing. "Why Don't We Do This More Often."

[He does the two-step and sings. Then to JENNY.]

Courting a girl is like being on a runway—ready for flight.

[He does a little motion with his right hands to twirl her around as he sings. Then:]

First, you're clear for takeoff with a flower.

[He gives JENNY a flower. To JENNY.]

Next . . . dinner and dancing, honey. That will taxi us out. One kiss. Gets us up 5,000 feet. A little lover's quarrel. That brings on a stall. Hug and make up, baby. Engagement ring. Landed.

[He takes her into a large dip. Coming up from the dip. To the audience.]

Jenny just went back to the table and kind of moved closer to my buddy's wife and got real quiet. Being so young and innocent, I figured she was awed by it all. She asked to go home early, and I took her back. I could feel the strong glare of the porch light her parents left on.

[To JENNY.]

Jenny, I'm a man who wants to know where he's at all the time. What's my altitude?

[To the audience.]

And she said: "Check your attitude not your altitude." She went in, slammed the door shut, and snapped off the porch light.

[A beat.]

It was like being in thunderheads that you can't fly around or above. I walked back slowly to the car. I don't know why I turned on the radio. Maybe I needed to hear something besides my own heart pounding. Suddenly, H. V. Kaltenborn's voice was announcing that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

[A beat.]

My God. We're at war!

[To JENNY. He pounds on the seat of the chair.]

Jenny! You got to come out! Right now! We're at war. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor and they're headed straight for us. I have to take care of you, honey. I have to take care of your folks. And mine. And all of America.

[To the audience]

That's the way we all felt when we heard about Pearl. I won't lie to you and say we weren't scared. 'Cause we were. Some people were glad. I know that's a strange thing to say. But the war suddenly shook all the loose pieces together in this country. We weren't drifting anymore. There was a unity now. War gave us a common cause, and that was exciting.

[A beat.]

Jenny and I were married one month later.

[To museum spectator.]

What was that? Am I still a "hawk"? What school do you go to, kid? University of Denver? Well, Denver, we didn't have words like that in those days. I only knew of one conscientious objector during the whole war. They put him in the same detention camp in Oregon where that actor Lew Ayres was sent. Everybody wanted to get in on the fight. You'd see long lines in front of court houses and recruiting offices all across the country. There was a man in Moline who was nearly blind and even he joined up—memorized all the Army's eye charts and nearly made it through basic training. And don't forget Pearl Harbor! It was a massacre. Sunken ships, burned hangars, aircraft hulks everywhere. The ground was littered with body parts. The only way the Army could handle the dead was in a mass burial. American women were each given a grave number and a Hawaiian lei. That's all they had left of their husbands, their boyfriends, their sons.

[A beat.]

You young people today never had to sit through blackouts in your own living room not knowing if your hometown would go up in flames.

[To audience.]

The Army was throwing every available kid at me. Farm boys who had their heads full of glory and John Wayne movies and nothing else. I trained young pilots day after day. I had this one guy who flew over Florida and said: "That's not Florida—it ain't purple." Florida's purple on our official Army map. That's what I was dealing with. . . .

[To audience.]

I'm not squeamish. Being a small-town boy, I've helped our neighboring farmers birth a lot of cattle. Once I struggled inside a cow for hours trying to pull out her dead calf. Working up to my elbows like that—inside her—I never had to see the mother's eyes. But you come to terms with how you deal with death, especially if you're in the military. I believe a soldier like me is honorably anonymous. Or at least, that's the way it should be. My personal name doesn't matter. What do we know of the ordinary foot soldier in the Civil War or of the lonely infantryman in the trenches of WWI. I'm proud of being the pilot who dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, but I can hardly remember that man. I go to the library and see my name in the history books, and all I'm looking at is a couple of words strung together.

[To the audience.]

I'll tell you a secret about flying. I guess it's one of those "contradictions" of theory that Oppenheimer always liked to tell me about.

[A beat.]

All the wrong things make you a pilot. The wrong weather, the wrong takeoff, the wrong landing speed. We live by the mistakes that can kill us. Our task is to turn misfortune into dreams. Everybody and everything since the beginning of time: the Chinese, the Greeks. You see it carved on caves and walls—winged bulls, winged lions, men with wings strapped on them. Everybody wants the dream. The Wright Brothers—they were just tinkering. With 12 seconds . . . 40 yards . . . they changed the world. What would those bicycle makers think now? 'Cause the sky is not a place where you can live. The atmosphere is just a trick. Every time I take off, I fly into something worse. All flight consists of feeling the astonishment of air after leaving the ordinary things of land.

[A beat.]

I first learned something secret and powerful might be going on after lunch with an old school buddy of mine, Curt. 'Cause at the University of Chicago where he was teaching, something about atoms was going on under the bleachers of old Stagg Field.

[A beat.]

That the first time I ever heard of a chain reaction.

[A beat.]

Jenny was very pregnant about this time. We were both having trouble sleeping at night. I was worrying about the air war getting bloodier in Europe. We'd drink lots of cocoa—cocoa wasn't rationed—and play Tommy Dorsey records.

[To audience.]

When Jimmy was born we gave him Orville for a middle name.

[He cradles his infant son in his arms and talks to him.]

Jimmy Orville, your daddy is going to ease out all the turbulence in your life.

[He sings a lullaby to his infant son that is part "Air Force Song" and "All Through the Night." Singing softly.]

Off we go

into the wild blue yonder . . . all through the night.

Pilot angels

God will lend thee,

all through the night.

Flying high into the sun love alone

my watch is keeping all through the night.

[To the audience.]

Jenny couldn't buy diapers since all the cotton was going for bandages. That left cutting up some of my old white shirts. But before she had a chance to cut up all of them, I got orders to fly General Eisenhower to Africa. It was 1942.

[A beat.]

The day I met Ike to fly him out on a B-17, the weather was a solid wall of muck. Not a spot of reality anywhere. Ike was on his way to open the new front in North Africa.

[He sits in the chair now piloting IKE.]

Sir. There's so much soup out there, even the birds are on foot.

[To the audience.]

Silence.

[To IKE.]

Sir. It's so thick out there, you can't even read the Burma Shave signs.

[To the audience.]

Silence.

[A beat.]

Suddenly, we skulked into some bright sunlight. The General relaxed and began chanting:

[IKE chanting.]

No German likes the spacious sky when our B-l7s happen by. Burma Shave.

[To the audience.]

And I answered the man who was to be president of the United States.

[To IKE.]

Into the sky lickety-split! It's a Messerschmitt SPLAT wasn't it.

Burma Shave.

Sir.

[To the audience.]

We laughed and ate Nabisco cookies Jenny had packed for us and Ike said to me:

[IKE speaking.]

Colonel, mom Eisenhower just made Mother of the Year in Kansas. Greatest award I ever received in my life. Better than making general.

[PILOT speaking.]

Sir . . .

[IKE speaking.]

It broke mother Eisenhower's heart when I went to West Point. She's a pacifist, you know.

[PILOT speaking.]

General Eisenhower, sir . . .

[IKE speaking.]

Over the years, I told her: Mom, don't be sorry, your son Ike is a pacifist lots of times.

[PILOT speaking.]

General Eisenhower, sir, we just got us an escort of ten American planes. We're about to land on African soil.

[To the audience.]

That was the last time I was ever to pilot the B-17 as a chauffeur.

[A beat.]

I prepared Jenny for my new combat orders. Then had to tell Mom.

[To MOM.]

Mom, will you sit down? I don't want any eggs. I just came by to tell you . . . I got my combat orders. Probably at the end of this month. Germany. I just want you to know . . . I'm a good pilot. I learned self-reliance and bravery from you. Watching you pull a hot pie from the oven with your bare hands.

[A beat.]

Remember what that gypsy told you at the Mendota State Fair? That right. Your son's never going to come to any harm in an airplane!

[Repeating to himself.]

I'm never going to come to any harm in an airplane.

[He sits straight in the chair at the controls of his plane. To audience.]

Combat! I was leading the formation in Red Gremlin with my favorite crew. Tail gunner, Cleve "Boo" Beckahazy, was a Bing Crosby fan and I could hear him singing as usual.

[TAIL GUNNER singing.]

I can't take this tension boo boo boo . . . it too much boo boo boo to mention. I can't boo boo boo. . . .

[To TAIL GUNNER.]

Pilot to tail gunner. Over. You know another song? Out.

[TAIL GUNNER singing.]

God boo boo boo bless A-mer-a-ca. boo boo boo. . . .

[To the audience.]

As Boo sang, the steady drone of the engines gave him some loud harmony.

[To TAIL GUNNER.] Pilot to tail gunner. Over. Cut the screeching, Boo. We're approaching Germany. Out.

[To audience.]

Three miles up sun, I could see the Messerschmitts. My wingman hadn't seen them. He was a kid of twenty right out of flight school. Now they were on us.

[To crew.]

Break! Break! Enemy off the port wing, firing. After him . . . yah, we're closing in . . . that a way . . . fire! Fire! We torched him! He's rolling . . . showing belly . . . look, you can see the Black Cross on his tail.

[To the audience.]

Then I saw the canopy open and the German pilot hit the silk. His parachute floated right by our cockpit . . . so close I could see two little rivers of blood pouring from his mouth and down on his jacket. I'd done most of my military training banging away at shapeless black silhouettes on the rifle range. I never visualized my target as having eyes, nose, and mouth.

[A beat.]

Suddenly the Kraut put one finger lengthwise under his nose in a Hitler mustache. His way of telling us that the Fuhrer was escaping. Wounded but alive. That's when I took my logbook pencil and held it out from my mouth like a cigarette holder—like victorious old Roosevelt. My crew cheered, but the Kraut didn't see me. He was falling gently and silently below us while his plane streamed black smoke and went straight to the ground, flaming. Sometimes after those aerial dogfights, I'd have nightmares. Once, I dreamed a black horse was kicking the hell out of my machine. Nightmares have no meaning. They're senseless. Those things always go away, finally, if you don't make a big deal out of them.

[A beat.]

I was called to Washington and then to Wendover on the Nevada border to begin my B-29 assignment. A test pilot and IO technicians had just crashed in a B-29 test flight. The project was in chaos.

[To crew.]

I'm damn sick and tired of you guys griping about the B-29 and refusing to join her crews.

[A beat.]

So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to prove it to each and every one of you.

[To the audience.]

One day I just burst into the lounge of the women barracks at Eglin AAFB in Florida.

[To women in the barracks.]

You WASPs have some four-engine time? You . . . what's your name? De-De what? Johnson. Okay, Johnson, you say you're a radio-control pilot? Good. I'm here to get two women to check out in the B-29. Interested?

[A beat.]

You're on. Me? Am I Charles Lindbergh? Sure, I'm Lindbergh. Who else? Dora Dougherty? Okay? If you've been up in an A-20, a 1,600-horsepower twin-engine attack plane, that's good enough. Both of you be ready at 0600 tomorrow.

[A beat.]

I took De-De and Dora to Anniston, Alabama, and gave them a high-powered concentrated three-day briefing.

[To the women on each side of him as he sits in the chair that becomes the plane. He lets DE-DE pilot the aircraft.]

De-De, dear, now you need to taxi up to the runway quickly, then get it up. 'Cause, babe, these engines sometimes explode if they go through regulated warm-up time. The 29 is a sweet temperamental female, so you're flying her woman to woman and you can think of that as an advantage. Okay . . . check above and behind to see if anybody moving in our clearance. That's it, now . . . away we go. Easy. Skip the bumps and grinds and take it off! That it . . . up . . . up—yah. Good.

[A beat.]

Okay, now it's Dora's turn. Dora, sweetheart, let's practice some stalls at 3,000 feet.

[He settles back comfortably, humming "I'll Be Seeing You." Suddenly, his head dives down near the floor and then sharply goes back up again. We can see that he is winded. To DORA.]

Dora, where the hell did you learn Hammerhead Stalls? You sure put some strain on the 29

[Looking at controls.]

. . . but she's just fine.

[To audience.]

On May 20, 1943, a Superfortress B-29 now named Ladybird was approaching Tinker Field for the showdown. Crowds of men were gawking along the flight line. The whole crew of a B-17 was standing on top of the wings watching. I was on the ground watching, too. There for a few minutes, I felt lonely. That plane up there was my whole world, and now it was under the controls of two women. I was jealous.

[Looking up at the women flying the B-29.]

Okay, girls, do it right. Come on.

[A beat.]

Sure, I see you rocking your wings at me.

[He waves to their plane.]

That-a-way. Come on. Now enter the pattern. Easy. Easy. You're pulling a sweet greased on landing.

[To audience.]

The women climbed down from the bomber, took off their helmets, and shook out their long hair. A navigator walked up to them and said: "Golly, you both are just little bitty things." DeDe shot back: "It's only 'cause we're standing next to a 29 that's three stories tall."

[A beat.]

After that, I had no trouble signing up crews. But, unfortunately, Congressman John Rankin heard about my experiment and called the AAF headquarters yelling: "Get those women out of my airplane." There was engine grease under their fingernails. When they did square loops and snap rolls, they were guys. But couldn't use them.

[A beat.]

But shortly I had my own private Air Force and was working eighteen hours a day training crews. I didn't know I was really preparing for something called the A-bomb.

[A beat.]

I met Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer at a party one spring day in 1944. Both Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, were heavy drinkers and the early recruitment for the Manhattan Project was usually done over cocktails. You were asked to work with him on the war effort. That's all.

[A beat.]

When I first walked up to Oppenheimer, he handed me a martini and asked: You know how to "free pour" a Martini without a shot glass, son? Yes, Dr. Oppenheimer, I do know we're in a life-and-death struggle with the Germans and the Japanese. I'm drinking up . . . I'm drinking up. You most certainly can count on me to be a part of any effort that cuts this whole business short. Report where? 109 East Palace Avenue. In Santa Fe.

[He holds out the glass.]

A-one Martini.

[To the audience.]

First I was sent to a special top-secret committee in the Pentagon. Two generals explained to me how I was to organize a combat force to carry a new bomb so powerful that nobody even knew what its exact force was. This bomb—estimated to be around 9,000 or 10,000 pounds—was presently being developed. The bomb bays of the B-29s under my command would have special modifications to take it on.

[To the audience.]

I made many visits to the City of Secrets in Lost Alamos where this pumpkin-shaped gimmick was being developed. It was part mountain resort and part scientific laboratory. Never in the history of the world had so many brilliant minds all come together in one place at one time. I'd leisurely walk around this shantytown of eggheads. The roads and footpaths were either mud holes or dust bowls.

[A beat.]

Nothing was ordinary in the Secret City. Infants were born with certificates listing place of birth as just Box 1663. Kids went to school with only first names. And everybody had a lot of college degrees.

[To audience.]

Late at night, I'd hear a piano. Oppenheimer was deflowering a new ditty he had composed, flooring the pedal. He could never sleep.

[A beat.]

And getting something to eat in the City of Secrets was always an event.

[To customers in a sandwich shop.]

This little shack serves hamburgers? Good.

[To waiter.] I'll have a Coke and burger. Well done. Hold the onions.

[Looks to his fellow customers sitting beside him.]

How are the burgers here. Greasy? Sounds good. You guys always eat here? What did you say your names were? Fermi . . . Teller . . . Hans Bethe. Oh. Would you Laureates mind passing the catsup?

[To the audience.]

There was always excitement at Los Alamos. It was like a summer camp. People there all considered it an adventure since they were in a place that wasn't even supposed to exist. All mail and phone calls were censored. Visits to the outside were restricted to once a month. Residents were encouraged to cut off their families. The laboratory of the physicists on the hill was the true focal point although there were stores, movie houses, and recreation centers all around it. There was also a nineteen-piece band, a choir, an orchestra, and a radio station. The first year of its existence, out of a population of 6,000, one thousand babies were born.

[To OPPENHEIMER.]

Dr. Oppenheimer. You wanted to see me? I know you want me to wear civilian clothes when I come to Los Alamos. But why? The scientists may be nervous about military men but just who do they think is going to drop their little "pumpkin"? They're quite willing to make it, but they don't like to think of it being used . . . not on people, anyway. Just how the hell are we going to pull that off? And while we're at it, those damn construction crews you got around here just dragged lumber through that stream by the lab. Now all the fish in there are dead 'cause you stirred up the mud. I was raised on a farm, Oppenheimer, and we don't do things like that to the land. And no, I will not stop wearing my uniform!

[To audience.]

I continued my vigorous training of the B-29 crews at Wendover and the Los Alamos crowd worked night and day on their gimmick. Then one morning, I got an urgent call from Oppenheimer. We met in a deserted hangar next to my office.

[To OPPENHEIMER.]

So, some of the scientists are getting cold feet? Don't they know Germany's working on some kind of bomb, too? A Laureate like yourself should lay down the law . . . oh, sorry . . . ! I didn't know you aren't a Nobel winner . . . no . . . no, it wasn't meant as a sarcastic slur. What's spooking everybody? Dr. Szilard found something disturbing? How disturbing? The gimmick could explode the air or the sea? In which case the earth would go . . .

[Snaps his fingers.]

You said yourself that the calculations were safe. Congress is all for it. Truman just inherited the bomb? He sure as hell isn't interfering with us.

[To the audience.]

Oppenheimer did finally convince the others of his calculations, and work on the bomb continued and moved forward quickly. Now it was my job to find a way to deliver the gimmick without destroying my plane and crew.

[A beat.]

How to accurately drop this bomb and quickly pull away from the explosion? My worry was the weight of the bomb and the weight of the fuel for the fourteen-hour round-trip flight. I decided to strip the 29 of all armament but the tail gun. That would save me 7,000 pounds. At 30,000 feet, we would be out of the range of any flak.

[A beat.]

I flew to Los Alamos to talk over my strategy with Oppenheimer. I landed at 0600, and he was waiting for me at the airstrip. It was chilly and he was holding out a steaming, welcoming cup of coffee.

[To OPPENHEIMER.]

Dr. Oppenheimer . . . how did you know I'd need coffee right now more than anything in the world.

[He holds out his hand to take the coffee.]

Coffee is coffee? Yes, I sure agree with that. I'll just take it . . . the Hegelian philosophy says this cup of coffee is really beans? Sure . . . anything you say. But the Berkeleyan holds that coffee only exists as dreams exists? Well, I'd really like some of that "dream" while it's hot. The Pragmatist says forget it's even coffee and only remember the stirring? No, I haven't read much Thomas Aquinas. He's a philosopher of common sense? Coffee is coffee? Right.

[To the audience.]

I finally got Oppenheimer away from Thomas Aquinas and onto the B-29. But my coffee was cold.

[To OPPENHEIMER.]

Okay, after the bomb hits, the minimum distance my plane can be safe is at eight miles. The shock wave will come at me at about l,000 feet a second . . . the speed of sound. I think the way for me to get away from the detonation is to do a quick turn of 155 degrees as soon as my bombardier lets go. Yes . . . yes . . . it does put a heavy strain on the 29. But she can take it. How do I know? A little lady named Dora whispered it in my ear.

[A beat.]

I realize that some of the scientists are spooked. But staging a demonstration of the bomb is out of the question. Drop it on a Japanese city after everybody's been evacuated? Are they crazy!? The Japanese would take all their people out and put in every American prisoner of war they have. What about dropping it on some deserted island? Show them our real power? What if it duds out on us! Then what? Those Japanese militarists would get worse. Who? Szilard sent a letter of protest to Truman? Who in the hell is Szilard? He first conceived the nuclear chain reaction? And now he's backing out? He's making a moral issue? A moral issue! When the Japanese are breathing down our necks. Let me see his letter.

[He takes the letter from OPPENHEIMER and reads it.]

"A nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale." —Leo Szilard.

[To OPPENHEIMER.]

Why are people getting gun-shy all of a sudden, Dr. Oppenheimer? Well, I'm glad to know you're one hundred percent behind this project. What? Just because you're saying yes doesn't mean you really mean yes. Since if you answer no, it wouldn't be a beginning but an end to the thousand steps of thought? Is this still coffee is coffee? Got you!

[To JENNY.]

I am not ignoring you, Jenny. You know what you're really mad about? Flying. Flying is leaving. Every time I go up, you feel I reject you. Honey, when I'm flying through the clouds, I'm not hot for anything beyond the skin of my plane. And if you can't accept that, this marriage won't last. And leave Jimmy out of this. My son and I do just fine.

[To JIMMY, age three.]

Jimmy Orville, we're planting a garden 'cause the president wants us to. Why? 'Cause everybody's got to help out.

[A beat.]

You got that bag of potatoes your mother gave us? Good. Take them out and pick off all the eyes. Potato-eyes are seeds that will grow us more potatoes. That's right . . . put them in the holes. Now, next to this row of potato-eyes, we're going to plant carrot seeds. And next to the carrots—onions. The carrots are going to make the potato-eyes real strong, and the onions are going to make the potato-eyes water, and that way you and me don't have to stand out here and throw on fertilizer or run the hose all day long.

[A beat.]

Remember, son, a garden is a wonderful thing. Saints have gardens.

[A beat.]

Now . . . what's that on your face? . . . Just a little dirt. Hey, you've got yourself a "victory face."

[To museum spectators.]

What did you say? How could I play with my little boy like that when I was getting ready to drop the bomb? I was thinking of Jimmy Orville and every American kid when I flew over Hiroshima. And for those guys sitting on ships waiting to invade Japan, too. I have never—for one moment—ever been sorry for what I did. On the contrary, I stopped the war!

[He continues his story.]

Final preparations began on Tinian. We won that island back from the Japanese, and now it was our atomic launching pad. Sometimes we called Tinian—Manhattan. We named our streets Broadway . . . Forty-second Street . . . Central Park West . . . Riverside Drive . . . I had many long briefings with the Tinian Joint Chiefs on Park Avenue.

[To the TINIAN JOINT CHIEFS.]

Sirs. I don't think it's a good idea to send up the Enola Gay with a large escort and fly into Japan in formation. That will just alert their military. We can't afford to take any heavy-duty anti-aircraft fire. Not with the "pumpkin" on board.

[A beat.]

I suggest we just kinda go in alone. Like we were a reconnaissance plane.

[A beat.]

My crew and I have my breakaway maneuver well rehearsed. Heavy turbulence? Could that set off the bomb? The "pumpkin" can't be triggered unless there's a firing of an explosive inside it. What if the Enola cracks up during takeoff? Or catches fire? I've got that figured out, sirs. We make the final assembly of the bomb during flight. Can I do that? Hell, yes. We'll get us a good ordnance man to insert one of the uranium slugs and the explosive charge into the gimmick's casing when we're in the air. Sure, it'll be difficult in that cramped space. I'm not saying it's easy. But we'll do it.

[To the audience.]

The USS Indianapolis arrived off Tinian with the first atomic bomb. There was only one way we could load it. The bomb called "Little Boy"—covered in tarpaulin—had to be put into a hole in the ground. We taxied the plane—then jacked "Little Boy" right up into the Enola's belly. . . . Our A-bomb was twelve feet long and 9,000 pounds.

[A beat.]

Three weather planes—Straight Flush, Full House, Jabbitt III—were to precede me by one hour and fly over the primary and secondary targets. The Great Artiste would follow and drop instruments by parachute to record the blast and measure radio activity.

[A beat.]

August 6, 12:30 a.m., 1945. We of the 509th Composite Group picked up our gear and headed for the airstrip. We were designated Special Bombing Mission #13. None of us were superstitious about that. Hell, the bad luck of 13 was for the other guys. When we got to the flight line, the Enola Gay was lustrous with all the spotlights shining on her. The press was everywhere. Enola was like a movie star at a world premiere. I had come a long way from that little town in Illinois where Mom ironed a newspaper for my kites.

[To a museum spectator.]

I don't know why so many Americans treat me like I'm Frankenstein or something. The Japanese never do that. When I went to Asia after the war, those people didn't run away from me, screaming. In a way, they respect me more than most of you do. I see Japanese folks here in the States; they don't consider me any big deal. I'm just somebody who did his job. That's all.

[A beat.]

Isn't that a Japanese woman over there? Yah, sure it is.

[He takes a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. He mimes making it into a paper plane.]

Little lady, come closer. Where you from? Won't you look up at me?

[He makes as if to sail the paper plane in the air. He then hands her the plane.]

Just a plane with silent wings. Come on, don't be shy.

[A beat as she hands him something, her face still downward.]

What are you giving me?

[He takes a paper crane from her.]

A crane?

[He pulls the crane apart like an accordion and many paper cranes unfold.]

So many cranes. For me?

[A beat.]

Won't you give me a smile, little mama-san?

[A beat as he watches her slowly lift her face to him. He slowly backs away from her.]

Oh, God! What happened to you! What's wrong with your face? God!

[He throws the cranes down on the floor.]

Who told you to do this? Who put you up to this? I didn't do that to your face? Stay away from me. Stay away! All I did was stop a war. I don't regret anything!

[He kicks the cranes away from him as if they were alive. He turns his back to the audience. After a beat, we see him stoop over at the waist, slowly. After a pause, we hear him talk into the plane interphone softly, still stooped with his back turned. To the crew of the Enola Gay.]

Men, years from now, the citizens of our great country will be watching a movie about what we do today. So . . . no cussing. No spitting. No scratching. Remain calm but alert.

[He stands and turns to the audience and faces his crew.]

I'll be passing out special goggles to each crew member before takeoff. Have them ready to use when I give the order.

[A beat.]

Now, let's go have a good breakfast before we move out.

[To the audience.]

August 5. 1 a.m. Mess Sergeant Elliott Easterly had decorated the Quonset mess with cardboard pumpkins. We all took one off the wall for a good-luck charm.

[A beat.]

2 a.m. Our weather planes had already left. Eleven crew members entered the B-29 ahead of me. I was ready to hop on when Dr. Don Young pulled me aside.

[To DR. YOUNG.]

Whaddya got for me, Doc? Twelve cyanide pills? One for each of us? No pain with these, huh? You're right . . . something goes wrong, sure as hell don't wanna hit the silk. Guys I've known who got captured by the Japanese were tortured pretty bad. Especially after the fire-bombings in Tokyo. I know. I know . . . this isn't easy for you. But, Doc, I'm planning on success. We just got a big send-off prayer from the chaplain. We'll do the job. You'll see.

[To the audience.]

On board, I settled into the left seat. Bob Lewis was my copilot. We had crew from all around the U.S.—New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, California, and my states, Iowa and Illinois.

[Speaking from the captain's seat of the Enola Gay.]

Crew, synchronize watches. 0230.

[A beat.]

Auxiliary power turned on.

[A beat.]

Electrical system—check. Start-up engines.

[A beat.]

All engines go.

[A beat.]

Oil pressure—check. Fuel pressure—check. Brakes set—check.

[A beat.]

Remove the wheel chocks.

[A beat.]

Great Artiste behind us—Roger. Ready to taxi out.

[He puts both thumbs up. To the audience.]

Every takeoff is different. It's a crucial time. But now it was important beyond anything I had ever done before. With 7,000 gallons of gas and a 9,000-pound atomic bomb, we were loaded well beyond normal capacity. I was determined to remain calm. After all, hadn't I taken off hundreds of times before? I pretended I was with old Earl Ebberly and we were winging our way to Bettendorf, Iowa, to drop candy.

[To the tower.]

Redbird six three to North Tinian Tower. Ready for takeoff on Runway Able.

[A beat.]

Cleared for takeoff. Roger.

[To crew.]

Release breaks.

[A beat.]

We're rolling now . . . two miles of runway and we're just gonna take it slow . . . we're doing 50 miles an hour . . . 70 miles an hour . . . 90 . . . 120 . . . end of runway approaching. I'm holding her for 10 more miles an hour . . . I need all the power I can get for lift-off. Hold tight . . . hang on . . . we're just about there . . . ahhhhhh—and up . . . at 140 miles per hour. Nice and smooth.

[A beat.]

Takeoff time—0245. Cameras roll.

[To the audience.]

Eight minutes airborne, and Parsons began to plug the uranium into the core of "Little Boy."

[A beat.]

Behind us was Top Secret, the airplane that would follow us all the way to Iwo Jima in case the Enola had some kind of mechanical problem and we needed a spare plane.

[To crew on interphone.]

Hey, you guys in isolation, I'm coming back there for a little visit. Yah, I know I gotta crawl 30 feet through a stinking tunnel that's only 20 inches wide. I don't have the belly on me like some of you boozers. I can make it in nothing flat.

[He takes off his shirt and his shoes and socks and crawls back to them. He is in his undershirt, trousers, and barefoot.]

Coming through . . . coming through. What did I tell you? Slipped right through.

[A beat.]

Nice place you got here. Who's got the hot chocolate? How about hitting me with a cup. Thanks.

[He drinks.]

You guys wanna guess what we have on board? You know it's gotta be important if we were served real eggs, not powdered, for chow. Hey, don't be afraid to speak up. All security's off. This is it. The secret's going to be out pretty damn quick.

[A beat.]

Well, I'll just have to tell you. We're carrying the first atomic bomb. Yah! How about that! No kidding. You'll be able to see this bomb from anywhere. Even Paw Paw, Illinois, will see this one. So . . . what are you guys thinking about right now? Sitting here beside the world's first A-incendiary?

[A beat.]

Buttermilk pancakes! That's what you're thinking about on the most important day of your life? I'll tell you what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking of the word "atom." How it's not going to be a secret or a mystery anymore. One of the scientists—Oppenheimer—explained that a philosopher named Spinoza said a stone falling could think: "I want to fall." I figure that bomb knows it wants to fall, too.

[He crawls back to the captain's seat.]

Altitude 15,000 feet. Wind from the south.

[On interphone.]

Pilot to navigator, keep me posted on any changes in radar wind runs. Over.

[To copilot.]

Bob, I think I'll just take a little catnap. Look after the automatic pilot. And wake me up when we're ready to begin our climb over Iwo Jima.

[To the audience.]

I don't think I really slept. At a time like that, your past comes at you in crazy little flashes. The smell of lemon oil furniture polish Mom used on holidays. The wallpaper of fading cabbage roses in the parlor. Of course I couldn't get old man Ebberly out of my mind and how he always said I had to "watch the ground." And . . . I thought about that last time I saw Oppie. Yah, I sometimes called Oppenheimer that like all his science buddies. I think he got to like me 'cause the first thing I said every time I saw him was—coffee is coffee. Not that I ever really understood what the hell that meant. I figure it was like our guys saying "on a wing and a prayer." Anyway, Oppie came to Tinian that day we loaded "Little Boy" on the Enola. He watched the whole thing in silence and with a very sad face. His depression shocked me. This was supposed to be the high point of all his hard work. But all he could think about was how the bomb would throw us back into the crude stone age of reason. Because now theory had lost its core. In the final analysis, we should not understand. Science is fantasy. For an equation to be true, Oppie reasoned, it was necessary that at least on one level it had to be false. That is why physics was an art. Contradictions. "Little Boy" eliminated what couldn't be solved. There was nothing left for him anymore.

[A beat.]

Oppenheimer's words wouldn't get out of my head. In some strange way I felt implicated in his depression. But I couldn't understand why. I was doing what he wanted me to do. I was doing what they all wanted me to do . . . the scientists, Truman . . . Stimson . . . Congress . . . the dead at Pearl if they could speak for themselves.

[A beat.]

It was just beginning to get light. I broke open a little pack of Zinnia seeds Mom gave me and tossed them under my seat for luck. Everything was smooth and steady. When we came to Iwo Jima, I took the controls. Our standby plane swerved away from us and landed.

[A beat.]

We were now three hours away from our possible targets—either Hiroshima, Kokura, or Nagasaki. We were proceeding smoothly, waiting anxiously for instructions from the three weather planes. What would be our target? Oppenheimer said Hiroshima was the best because it had flat terrain that would allow the bomb to "run out." I climbed to 30,700 feet, our bombing altitude. Orders were for a visual drop only. No radar sighting. If we suddenly got bad weather, we were to return to Tinian with Parsons disarming the bomb on the way home.

[A beat.]

People always want to know what I was thinking when I was only moments away from dropping the first A-bomb. What were my deepest, innermost thoughts? It's hard to remember. In a sense, that man is an illusion to me. He is many illusions. Looking back, which one do I remember? I don't wish to change the thoughts of somebody who is no longer here to defend himself. After all, who I am now is not that pilot who has disappeared into history. I was probably thinking about the flights of WWI, and how opposing pilots could lean out of their wood-and-rag planes and fire revolvers at each other. A flying surface was once as human as the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights. Now everything is precision and electronic navigation.

[A beat.]

When the target was in range, it was procedure at that time for the pilot to remove his hands from the controls and turn the ship over to the bombardier. Technically, I wasn't even at the helm when the pneumatic bomb-bay doors opened and "Little Boy" dropped. I felt cheated. The only human experience was the explosion and the victims. The days of Earl Ebberly and the Wilma when a man hunched down inside the cockpit and let the plane get inside of him were long gone. Now, a pilot simply stepped up and climbs inside the plane. Spots used to talk about his farmer friend, Sig Mosley, who got up one morning and drove his tractor all the way to the coast, then pushed that tractor into the ocean. Said he wanted things to get back to the way they were.

[Into radio.]

Straight flush. Come in. This is Enola Gay.

[A beat.]

Y-3, B-2, C-1. Code received. Roger and out.

[A beat.]

Attention, crew.

[A beat.]

The name of our target has just been transmitted from Straight Flush.

[A beat.]

It . . . Hiroshima!

[On interphone.]

Pilot to Bombardier. What is the status of "Little Boy?" Bomb is alive. Roger.

[To crew.]

The city is coming into view. Be prepared for Initial Point, 15 miles east of target. Sighted—eight large ships in the harbor below. No flak visible.

[A beat.]

We are approaching our primary. Secure your goggles on your forehead and prepare to use them at bomb release. Do not look into the flash.

[A beat.]

All crew, if you agree, please verify by saying after me: "This . . . is Hiroshima."

[A beat.]

Hiroshima. Check.

[A beat.]

9:15 and 17 seconds. Hiroshima time: 8:15 and 17 seconds.

[A beat.]

Bombardier, take over the aircraft.

[He holds up his hands away from the controls and moves back in his chair. A beat.]

Bomb-bay doors opening. "Little Boy" . . . falling.

[After a brief pause, he takes over the controls again.]

Prepare for breakaway dive!

[Now stripped to his trousers and sleeveless khaki undershirt and bare feet. He holds up the chair and turns it sharply to the right in the breakaway dive.]

[He speaks the following monologue while he holds the plane in the breakaway dive.]

A mushroom foams up at me in a curling mass of spiking mauve gray. Buds of raw green illuminate on every side. The earth's history blooms and exaggerates itself into the atmosphere: Stalks of lamp black and coal tar, stems of sienna, plants of brittle skin gold . . . shimmering black leaves . . . yellow arsenic blossoms. I hear Oppie quoting Montaigne: "And if you have lived one day, you have seen everything. One day is equal to all days. There is no other light, there is no other darkness. The whole disposition of the heavens is the same." Now Montaigne is wrong. It's Oppenheimer's science rotting to the knowable. Today will never be like another day. I have made another light. I have made another darkness. I've changed the Heavens.

[He now begins shaking from the plane's turbulence.]

A fierce boiling red orb, five miles wide, rages towards me at a hundred million degrees. I throw the sun!
Daniel Gallant

Determined to Prove

from

The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010

one of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw

NARRATOR One of the monologues most loved by high school actors is the opening speech of Shakespeare's Richard III. It begins "Now is the winter of our discontent" and includes the boastfully immoral line "I am determined to prove a villain." I was one of four in my high school Shakespeare class to memorize and perform the opening monologue from Richard III, but unlike my classmates, I used the speech as a mantra. I ran it through my head to pump up adrenaline or cool my nerves before a piano recital or a soccer game, when energy and focus were most needed. I suffered horrendous migraine headaches in high school. First I tried aspirin, then extra-strength aspirin, then heavier prescription pills that went under the tongue and tasted rancid. When all of those remedies failed, a doctor nudged me toward a process called biofeedback. During biofeedback, sensors monitored my most stress-affected body parts—forehead, shoulders, palms—and then displayed my stress levels cheerfully on a monitor. One display showed a cartoon character in a Robin Hood outfit who was stuck at the bottom of a mountain. The more I managed to relax my body—through breathing exercises, visualization, or boredom—the more progress Robin Hood would make up his Sisyphean hill, the less the veins in my head would constrict, and the shorter the migraines would last. The tireless biofeedback technician gave me soothing poems, statistics, song lyrics—but only one relaxation technique ultimately worked. And it worked like magic: Richard III. Richard came to my rescue then, and a hundred times after. Reciting that monologue brought a different personality into my body, and that new personality could confront a trying set of circumstances like my baseline personality could not. When I recited the words of a Shakespeare character who was confident and cool as ice, I could handle stressful situations with success and ease.

Summoning the Richard III monologue from memory before a first date or an interview was like bringing forth a bodyguard, or the world's best wingman.

[Beat; lights change.]

Many first dates after high school, I met a girl named Josephine. And Josephine had never met a blouse low-cut enough to suit her needs, or a pocket that she couldn't pick. It took me barely a week to learn the downsides of having Josephine on speed dial: they included phone calls at 3 a.m. insisting I escort her to South Jersey to nab raw materials for the construction of a hydrofoil sneaker. Every week, she'd launch new schemes. And I love schemes, because they're stories told in the present tense, with real-life humans as protagonists, heightened emotions, limited time frames, and uncertain outcomes. Josephine would scheme about creating the shoe of the future, the car of the past, an exercise regimen that allowed humans the swiftness of antelopes, while surviving on cantaloupes, and something about drinkable marijuana. A good 10 percent of her schemes came close enough to success to subsidize the other 90 percent. A few years back, my phone woke me with a call from Josephine at 4:15 a.m. I pick up the phone and I say "No" with great sincerity. However, she's already started in on the monologue portion of her scheme. By the time I'd woken up enough to follow the logic, I heard her say: "The police are closing in. They have my prints on file, matched 'em to the gun—and I am still repaying college loans, so I need capital to start up in another city. And perhaps to pay for an attorney." "How much cash are we talking?" I ask. "I would love two hundred fifty thousand," she says. So I hang up, and back she calls, and she starts in again. "You didn't let me finish," she says in that husky voice that brings all parts of me to rapt attention, "I just want your help in . . . netting all that cash. You get the same amount if we're successful" and so then I was intrigued. See, on a business level, I can interact with anyone—I've negotiated deals with brutal felons, entered into contracts with notorious offenders, shaken hands with colleagues whose throats I'd prefer to wring. And this lady tells some memorable tales. Her plan involved a swanky club in wooded and serene Connecticut, a club whose common room held court to careless, moneyed gentlemen with great enthusiasm for expensive wagers. She assured me that the clientele loved gambling, and that they would love her for reasons she would temporarily augment with several makeovers. She had a guest pass she had swindled from a partner in a previous scheme. The guest pass specified a brief time period for us to make our presence known within the club and plead our case for membership. Josephine said that this scam was tailored to the dramatic skills I'd honed in school. I was unemployed and bored at that point, so I thought, what the hell.

[Lights change to indicate a country club.]

We left that afternoon. I changed into a ritzy outfit in the car. Once at the club, she took the lead; I meditated in the men's room, shifting my behavior and my personality into a drunken, old-boy swagger. I breathed out my scrappiness and desperation, and I breathed in manners of the overprivileged upper crust. I made my way to one round table circled by six comfy armchairs. Josephine had draped herself already on a plaid suit-panted, crew-sweatered man with husky shoulders. . . . I crammed myself between two cohorts of her new friend, and I said, "So sorry to intrude, but I was trying to find out how much the Jets are up." "The Jets aren't up,'' the fatty athlete said. They can't play football." "I know, man, that's why I'm drinking." He guffawed. "And by the way, don't use the sink," I said, all smiles, "don't use it, fellas, do not use the men's room sink." "You pissed in it?" the wrestler said. "It's all just water, right?" They snickered.

Not that I stood any chance of garnering club membership now, but this crowd seemed to hardly care if I defaced dub property, so long as it was done the honorable way. "You all aren't, uh . . . interested in wagers, are you?" It happened that they were. "You betting on the Jets?" somebody asked me. "There is no right answer to that question, not in this club. I will bet a little on the Jets, man, just a token." "Fucking coward." "No," I said, reproving him with buoyant humor, "I'm just being realistic with the team I love. A little for them, out of sympathy, or a little bit against them and I'm not a traitor. Where I will put money, honest money," I said, swagger now intensifying, "is on some sport I know not a thing about. Where I am fucking clueless. Gut instinct. So, women's basketball." "It's out of season," he said. "So you see how much I know. How 'bout canoeing." "Dude, that's not on cable. You don't bet canoeing." "I don't know, so give a sport to me," I said. "Man, we don't know what sports you know." I paused for drunk effect. "I wager half a fucking million greenbacks, from my pocket, in a check, to split between you all, gents, on whatever sports-related challenge that the next one of you utters. If I'm right, you pay me half a million, all of you together." "Bullshit," they said in a single voice. "Write the check."

"Okay," I said. "I'm writing out a check . . . for half a million . . . with no name. Now you all gotta write your checks where I can see 'em too." Imaginary vodka really flooded through my veins now. My hand shivered as I scribbled numerals my bank account had never dreamed of. My small audience was scared, but proud, but drunk, but interested. We each wrote out our checks. "The first sports bet you all can throw my way," I said.

[Beat.]

"Hey! Acting! Ha!"

This came from Josephine, who dangled fetchingly on someone's lap. "Ha! Acting is a sport! Acting and theater." They all stared back at her like she was splintered down the middle. I pretended even huger shock. My bottom lip danced with precarious aplomb against the downward tug of gravity. "Acting . . . isn't sports," I said with fever. They all began to laugh. One at a crusty time. They laughed at me, they laughed at her, they stuffed their checkbooks back inside their coats. "Looks like tonight is on the house. Big man is paying for my cab ride home." "It's not a sport," I said again. "It is," they said as one. They laughed. "She said it is, it is." They slapped their sweaty palms together. "I don't know theater," I said. "That's right, you fucking jock," said Josephine. "You don't; I do. I do know theater. And it's competitive. And it's a sport." She cackled, and her new friends took it up. "You made the bet. You gave the word." They smiled with glee, and all fell silent. Predatory glances on me. Sleeves inched up as muscles flexed. "We're all men of our word. Here, we respect the fucking honor code." "You, my friend, you," said Josephine to me, with pinching cruelty, "you must recite"—(she laughed)—"a monologue, the whole thing, from whatever play I choose. Whatever play." "You're gonna let her do this to me?" I appealed to sweaty, hungry, overstuffed goliaths. "You made the call, my friend," they said. "Don't run away, unless you leave the check." "You, sir," said Josephine to me. "You must recite the first speech, man, from fucking Shakespeare's" and they howled, "from fucking Shakespeare's fucking Richard fucking III. Richard the Third. The first speech in the first act." They all broke out cackling scandalously. One guy's whisky sour shattered in his hand; the livid, raunchy mess of them just curled up in hysterics. "You have gotta do it," Josephine said, almost unable to speak out between the tremors of her giggling comic frenzy, "in just sixty seconds. You have sixty seconds." "Sixty seconds?" The crowd laughed far above my auditory range. I did fret suddenly; I worried that perhaps Josephine had chosen to ally herself with wealthy lechers who would keep her in good money and away from prying legal eyes.

Maybe she'd misjudged the situation or betrayed me, as revenge for my past mockery of all her crackpot schemes. Perhaps I was mere seconds from a mauling at the hands of human bulldogs on their precious turf. . . . But she'd said Richard three, first act, first speech. She gave me sixty seconds. I breathed extra deep, and someone clicked his watch. I stared down at the man whose lap played host to Josephine, I said: "I don't like the position you have put me in, but I should tell you that

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag'd War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

[Deep breath.]

But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deform'd, unftnish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me when I halt by them—

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sum

And descant upon my own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain

And to hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To place my brother Clarence and the King

In deadly hate the one against the other;

And if King Edward prove as true and just

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up

About a prophesy, which says that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. . . .

[The final three words are delivered slowly, as though there's all the time in the world.]

Here . . . Clarence . . . comes!

The watch clicked off. According to the wall clock, I had finished with nine seconds left to spare, and I was greeted by much heavy breathing and some bitter looks . . . but Josephine played up her part with admirable intensity—"Fuck! Who the fuck are you?" Her huge friend said, "You missed the line about the horse," but Josephine, "reluctantly," gave way and handed me her check . . . and after that, the rest of them had little choice. When liquor and unthinking pride butt heads, the consequences tend to be expensive. They knew I was underhanded, but Ms. Josephine could imitate call girls and mindless floozies with admirable accuracy, so our victims did not give her credit for intelligence. They didn't smell conspiracy. The dumb broad lost their cash, and by tomorrow, they might very well forget. But we moved fast. I collected checks and narrowly escaped a showdown with the club's executor. Josephine and I left separately. She fell out of the women's bathroom window and I caught her, and we kissed, but that was habit or mistake, and I vowed never to let our lips interact again. The drive back was lovely and surreal. Halfway home, my cell phone rang. The club invited me to join. Josephine laughed till she passed out. The bumper on the car in front of us had one large, faded sticker. And I talk back to bumper stickers. I rolled down the window, and I shouted at that car in front, "Jesus may be your copilot, but Shakespeare is my fucking wingman."

[Lights down.]
Part II

Monologues for Women
Dano Madden

excerpt from

Ella

from

The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010

CUTTER My daddy. I seen the way he lookin' at the ladies. My momma's his third wife. I seen him. Lookin' at the ladies. Speakin' to the ladies like he a real nice man. Lots a things bad in what my daddy does, but that's the one that bother me the most. That's why my momma tells me to leave. She seen me lookin' at him. She knows the look. The way I stared at my daddy sometimes.

[Beat.]

Like I wanna put a bullet 'tween his eyes.

[Beat.]

My momma saw the look in my eyes. And, one time, my daddy, he saw it too. He saw me lookin' at him, at him speakin' to my momma's sister. The way he's laughin' and treatin' her so nice. My daddy saw me. Didn't say nothin'. I knowed he saw me. He looked right at me.

Middle of the night, he kickin' me to wake me up. He and my brothers. They all kickin' me. "Get up, Cutter, get up." And they cursin', ma'am. Things I'd rather not say to you. No one in the world awake at this hour of the night. So I get up and they shove me outside. And we in the truck, drivin'. Humid night. Hotter than usual. I asked where we goin' and Daddy says we goin' out gator huntin'. We drive and we drive out to Lake Okeechobee. It's a real big lake. Daddy park the truck and my brothers throw me in the boat. They real strong, my brothers. Muscles from farmin'. My daddy steers us out, real near where he like to hunt gators. And he stops the boat. The night is so quiet. I never heard a night this quiet.

My brothers pick me up and hold me over the water. And Daddy says,

Pardon me, ma'am, but . . .

"Who the f— do you think you are? You gotta a problem with your daddy gettin' a little action? Your brothers don't mind."

And they still holdin' me out over the lake.

"No woman gonna tell me what to do. Not your momma. No one. You look at me like you think you so good. You look at me like I'm a," he used the "n" word, ma'am. He use that word a lot. I'm sorry for that, ma'am.

He told me I looking at him like he were a "n."

And my brothers throw me in the water. In the lake. Can't see nothin'. Started cryin' like a girl. Thinkin' about what's in the water with me. I try to swim to the boat, and my brothers push me away, kick at me.

My daddy says to me, yells, "You gonna look at me like a 'n' again?"

And I yell, "No, Daddy! Please let me back in the boat." And I out in the water, feels like a long, long time. Forever.

Finally, my brothers, they grab me up out the water and throw me back in the boat.

My daddy says, "You look at me like that again and I leave you out here." And that's the end a that.
Lavonne Mueller

excerpts from

American Dreamer

from

The Best American Short Plays 1995–1996

MARILYN People are always so curious about what it's like to be dead. It's surprising considering how easy it is to imagine. What's it like to be Nikita or Fidel or Doc, that's the real mystery. But to be dead . . . I only close my eyes and "picture" things and places around me.

[She closes her eyes.]

I picture . . . the bed as nothing. The closet door . . . is nothing. The air-conditioner . . . is nothing. They're all nothing to me, as real as the light picking up their rays. I've fallen into enough darkness to know my mortal limits.

[She stands and goes to the map and sweeps away the pins on the map with her arm.]

I can even imagine the world dead.

[Beat.]

Cut a notch in the windpipe of United States . . . to relax the muscles binding the organ sack.

[She slashes at the United States with her shoe heel and bits of paper fly.]

Slide my index and forefingers under the hide of Moscow, letting out the carnal stink of grass and sage.

[She slashes at Moscow with her shoe and bits of paper from the map fall away.]

Saw down the belly of China, Africa, South America—toward the genitals of Europe.

[She slashes at China, Africa, South America, and Europe and bits of paper fall from the map.]

I part the cavity and expose the bloodless gray-green organs of the sea.

• • • •

MARILYN Most of his childhood was spent in the infirmary of boarding schools. He showed me the pictures. Those infirmaries looked like my orphanage. He slept on musty mattresses. Ate bad food. His parents never came to visit him. Only the books came . . . Tolstoy . . . Dickens . . . Flaubert . . . Mann. He said he could grasp the head-bars of his sick bed and feel the presence of all the people who had ever slept in his bed before him . . . telling the short from the tall, the dark from the fair. He could perceive the murmuring of their hearts, the pulse from their weak wrist, the flutter of their breath struggling for air, the movement of listless legs. He could encounter the very character of all those who were sick before him. He could endure their moods: anger, joy, sadness. He knew their hesitancy, their deliberateness. He was experiencing the sensation of the Western Indians who could smell campfires that they were unable to see. That's how he got to sleep at night putting his arms over his head and holding on to the metal bed-bars and feeling those invisible suffering souls before him. He could always tell who believed in God and who did not. He knew what part of the country they were from. There were as many cities and towns as philosophies. He knew what food they liked, what flowers they loved, whether they were fond of horses. He said holding on to those bars day after day made him understand human pain and human hope.
Paul Kuritz

excerpts from

The Yellow Wallpaper

from

The Best American Short Plays 2001–2002

SHE I wish I could get well faster. [. . .] But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

[Seeing it for the first time, a major discovery. Perhaps SHE begins to project onto the paper the feelings for JOHN she can't or won't admit.]

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern looks like a broken neck.

And two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

The impertinence of it!

And the everlastingness!

Up and down and sideways they crawl.

And those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.

[Discovers a particular wallpaper seam for the first time and inspects it.]

There is one place where tow breadths don't match.

The eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate object before.

[Backs away from it toward bed. Lies on bed.]

I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.

I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have.

There

[Notices her writing chair.]

was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

[SHE does so. Pause. SHE notices the paper beside her.]

This wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots.

It sticks closer than a brother.

[Noticing the floor for the first time.]

The floor is scratched

[Walking and examining each thing SHE notices emphatically.]

and gouged and splintered.

[Looking at the ceiling.]

The plaster is dug out here and there.

[At her bed.]

And this great heavy bed looks as if it had been through the wars.

But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.

[Offstage sounds of trays of dishes being dropped.]

There comes John's sister.

[Sarcastically.]

Such a dear girl.

I must not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, who hopes for no better profession.

She probably thinks the writing made me sick!

But I write when she is out,

[Crossing to her writing desk.]

and see her a long way off from these windows.

[Crossing to window.]

This is one that commands the road.

[Noticing the wallpaper, as if discovering something very important about it for the first time.]

This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one. You can only see it in certain lights.

[Gets candle, lights it, and uses it to examine the wallpaper more closely.]

And not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so—

I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure.

It seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

[Sound of a tray of dishes dropped.]

There's sister on the stairs!

[Lights down and up. SHE has a small American flag to wave.]

Well, the Fourth of July is over!

The people are all gone.

And I

[Sits on the bed.]

John thought it might do me good to see a little company.

So we just had Mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

Of course I didn't do a thing.

[Bitterly.]

Jennie sees to everything now. But it tired me all the same. [. . .] But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once. [. . .]

And she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

I don't feel that it is worth it.

[Fighting back tears.]

I cry at nothing. And cry most of the time.

Of course I don't when John is here or anybody else.

But when I am alone . . .

And I am alone a good deal just now.

John is kept in town very often by "serious cases."

And Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.

[Trying to talk herself into believing it to be true.]

I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.

Perhaps because of the wallpaper. It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour.

It is as good as gymnastics.

I start at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time to follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally.

And the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too. At least it seems so.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.

[Lights fade and up.]

I don't know why I should say this.

[Starts, but decides against it.]

I don't want to.

[Again starts, but can't.]

I don't feel able.

And I know John would think it absurd.

[Tries again, fails again.]

The effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much. [. . .]

He has me take cod liver oil.

And lots of tonics and things.

To say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

Dear John!

He loves me very dearly.

He hates to have me sick.

I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day:

Let me go and visit Cousin Henry and Julia.

• • • •

SHE I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night. I watch—developments.

There is something else about that paper—the smell!

I noticed it the moment we came into the room. But with so much air and sun it was not bad. And whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house. It gets into my hair.

Such a peculiar odor, too!

It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. It used to disturb me at first. I thought of burning the house.

But now I am used to it.

The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper!

A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mop-board. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture.

Except the bed.

A long, straight, even smooch. As if it had been rubbed over and over.

I wonder how it was done. Who did it. What they did it for. Round and round and round and round and round and round. . . .

[Dizzy, falls into the bed. Lights fade and up.]

[JOHN is now himself the gossamer figure moving around the room's perimeter.]

I discovered something. I found out.

The front pattern moves!

The woman behind shakes it!

Sometimes I see many women behind.

Sometimes only one.

She crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.

She is all the time trying to climb through.

But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so.

If that head were only covered or cut . . .

[Lights fade and up.]

I think she leaves in the daytime!

I've seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman.

[Looking at one window.]

I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down.

[Looking at the other window.]

I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.

[Back at the first window.]

I see her on that long road under three trees, creeping along.

I don't blame her a bit. I always lock the door when I creep. I don't do it at night. John would suspect something.

And John is so queer now. I don't want to irritate him.

I wish he would take another room!

Besides, I don't want anybody else to get that woman but myself!

[Lights fade and up.]

I have found out another funny thing.

But I won't tell you this time!

I can't trust you with too much.

There are only two more days to get this paper off.

John is beginning to notice.

I don't like the look in his eyes.

John knows I don't sleep very well at night.

He asks me all sorts of questions, too, and pretends to be very loving and kind.

As if I can't see through him!

[Lights fade and up.]

Hurrah! This is the last day.

John is staying in town overnight, and won't be out until this evening.

Last evening, as soon as it was moonlight, that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern.

I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled, she shook. I shook, she pulled.

Before morning we had peeled off yards of this paper.

[SHE reveals a bucket of yellow strips of paper.]

And when the sun came that awful pattern began to laugh at me—

[Laughs at the paper in the bucket.]

I will finish you today!

We are going away tomorrow.

Jennie was amazed, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite.

She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself.

[To the bucket of paper.]

But nobody touches you but me! Not alive, anyway.

She tried to get me out of the room.

[Lies down on bed.]

But I said that I believe I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner. I would call when I woke.

Now she's gone.

The servants are gone.

The things are gone. And there is nothing left. But must get to work.

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

I don't want to go out, And I don't want anybody to come in. Till John comes.

I want to astonish him.

[SHE takes rope with noose from a secret place, perhaps the rope used to manipulate the gossamer figure.]

I've got a rope that even Jennie did not find.

If this woman does get out, and tries to get away, can tie her!

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not.

"People don't do such things!"

I don't even like to look out of the windows—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of you as I did?

[Ties end of rope to bed leg and puts noose around her neck.]

But I am securely fastened now. You won't get me out in the road there!

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern tonight.

That is hard!

It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

I don't want to go outside.

[Sits on floor.]

I won't.

[Hears something we can't hear.]

Why there's John at the door! Calling and pounding!

Now he's crying for an axe.

It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

"John dear, the key is down by the front steps."

[Listens again.]

That silenced him for a few moments.

[. . .]

The key is down by the front door.

[SHE repeats it again, several times, very gently and slowly.]

[. . .]

I'll just keep on creeping.

I've got out at last.

In spite of you.

And I've pulled off most of the paper. So you can't put me back in!

[Listens. Then to audience.]

Did he faint?

So now I have to creep over him!

[Blackout as SHE creeps up and out.]
Yussef El Guindi

excerpt from

Such a Beautiful Voice Is Sayeda's

from

The Best American Short Plays 2004–2005

SAYEDA It's not a joke. It happened after you left for work this morning. It's . . . I don't know where to begin. [. . .] As soon as you left and I—I sent the children off to school. . . . I went about my usual routine: I prepared dinner, cleaned the house and all those other household chores that never seem to end. And then when I heard the noon call to prayer, I thought, why not take a bath. I deserved a break. So I did.

[Lights up on the bathtub. "SAYEDA"—or SAYEDA 2—is in the tub.]

I got a bucket of water. I washed my hair, and I, as I sometimes do, I began to sing, to amuse myself. You know how I do sometimes. But as I was singing and scrubbing myself, I experienced the strangest thing.

[SAYEDA looks at SAYEDA 2.]

You see—the voice that was singing . . . it wasn't my own. At least it wasn't my normal voice and nothing I recognized. It was like someone else had stepped into the room and was singing instead.

[SAYEDA approaches the bathtub.—We hear this other voice singing faintly over the speakers.]

And it was so beautiful. This voice. That felt like it might be coming out of my mouth but that wasn't mine. Well, beautiful or not, you can imagine how I reacted. I thought someone had come into the room. But when I washed the soap from my eyes and looked around—there was no one there. Everything was as it should be. I was so scared. I muttered a prayer to God to protect me . . . and went back to cleaning myself. . . . And I started to sing again.

[The beautiful voice is heard again. At some point, also, the light breeze causes the sheets to stir.]

And again this voice rang out more powerful—and serene and intense, rising and falling like perfect dunes—and bubbling up like water in a spring. Well, I was ready to run. You know I don't believe in ifrits, or jinns. But right then I called on God to protect me from the devil and any and everything He doesn't sanction. Abdel Hamid, my heart was pounding so strong it felt like each heartbeat was a punch in my chest. I was scared to open my mouth. . . . But . . . but again I calmed down and I . . . this time I called out my name. [. . .] Then I thought, what if the neighbors heard me? Or you came back and heard me call my name? You'd think I'd gone crazy. Who in their right mind calls out their name with such amazement and wonder? And it was wonderful. Not because of my name but because of this voice that was pronouncing it.

[SAYEDA 2 hurriedly puts on her galabeya, looking around as if still not convinced she's alone.]

I know this all sounds like craziness and I thought so too. Worse, I thought there might be some truth to those stories of spirits that haunt us and make us their playthings, and I uttered the prayer—[. . .] Once I looked out the window and saw people going about their business I relaxed. . . . I breathed again. I finished drying. . . . And I started to comb my hair.

[The two SAYEDAs turn to each other.]

And in front of the mirror . . .

[The beautiful voice is heard singing.]

Can you believe it, my love . . . my voice was even more beautiful than before. I felt no fear now. And without that fear, my voice rose higher than ever before and played in the air like a bird enchanted with its own wings and flight and knowing it was free to fly wherever it willed. And I knew then for sure this was no genie. It couldn't be. This was a human voice. This was my voice. And I was singing. It was me. . . . It was me. . . . Listen. Listen, Abdel Hamid, I'll show you.
Marla Del Collins

excerpts from

The Lovers and Others of Eugene O'Neill

from

The Best American Short Plays 2008–2009

AGNES BOULTON (Eugene O'Neill's second wife)

[Masked.]

"And if you've suffered all these years, imagine how I've suffered? All this time . . . I loved. I've lain awake nights longing for you and knowing that you hated me and knowing that if I told the truth . . . and set you free—that you'd go . . . and I'd never see you again!"

[The bell rings; the simple white mask is removed. AGNES is a tall, lithe, and an exotically attractive woman in her mid-30s. She is O'Neill's second wife and the mother of his children. She is fashionably dressed in a rimless hat from the 1920s that hugs her pale aquiline face. She holds a short cigarette holder with an unlit cigarette at the end. She is a bit nervous . . . hesitant . . . perhaps slightly high-strung. There is, however, a pragmatic steadiness in her voice that comes from dealing with or escaping from the realities of life. Agnes is intelligent, articulate, and a writer in her own right. She seems flustered, a bit confused in not knowing where she is, or how she got here.]

[Unmasked.]

Well, I do feel a little awkward.

[She shrugs.]

I mean, here I am . . . Agnes Bolton, the wife who failed the great Eugene O'Neill!

[AGNES walks over to the table where stand five candles. Four are burning. Carlotta has already snuffed out her own before AGNES entered. The lit candles are part of what seems to be a makeshift shrine to the playwright who is represented by a large, 8" × 10" black-and-white photo that grimly stares out at the audience. Four of the candles represent the spirit and potential in the predominant women in his life—Carlotta, Agnes, Sarah, and Ella, and the fifth one is reserved for Eugene O'Neill. Puzzled by this display, AGNES is about to light her cigarette with one of them, then thinking better of it, returns to her chair the second one stage right—next to the first and most important one belonging to his mother and closest to the shrine; her cigarette remains unlit. She absentmindedly attempts to puff on it during her monologue.]

You know, it took me many years to realize that our failed marriage was not entirely my fault, if in fact it was my fault at all! No, I think Eugene and I would have parted company with or without Carlotta in the picture. Well, let me see . . .

[Pause.]

what can I tell you about him . . . I mean, that's why you've come, isn't it? Well, I can begin with the first time we met. It was at a little bar somewhere in the West Village, Bleecker Street, I think. I knew who he was—everyone did. But on this particular evening he walked in, sat down at my table, and proceeded to stare at me for the longest time. Well, I was young enough to feel flattered. I thought he was intoxicated with my very presence until I realized that he was not staring at me, but at his own reflection in the mirror directly behind me! "Mr. O'Neill," I said, "why are you staring at yourself, people will think you're conceited." To which he indignantly replied, "I am not conceited. I stare at myself to make sure I'm still there!" Well, it was always my innocent questions, my candid remarks that would get me into trouble with Gene. He hated having anyone challenge his well-rehearsed public persona . . . "thee Poet!" As a matter of fact, I don't think he ever liked me very much. He was jealous. Oh yes, he was! He could grow jealous just watching me smoke!

[She attempts to draw on her unlit cigarette, glances with frustration at the burning candles.]

He was jealous of the fact that I too was a writer, with a personality and an ego of my own. He hated my innocence, my sense of fun, my human fallibility . . . and on many an occasion he would strike out at me with his fists. His inner rage would strike out at my vulnerability.

[She pauses.]

You see, my vulnerability reminded him of his own. He was in love with his own tragic concept of life, so you mustn't pity him. He loved being tortured! And I cannot think of a more supreme torture than for him to have married Carlotta, that actress! Well, I have to admit, I was taken a bit by surprise. . . . I mean, after all, just between you and me, Carlotta was no intellectual genius. I thought he'd grow bored with her after a time . . . but apparently his need for a mother and caretaker far outweighed his need for a lover and intellectual companion. Oh, don't get me wrong we did have our good times, you know. Lying on the beach . . . watching the seagulls gliding overhead. Gene used to imagine himself a seagull . . . free from domestic care and responsibility. But inevitably one of my irreverent remarks would bring him plummeting back down to earth again. "Gene," I'd say, "seagulls must land eventually, you know . . . dirty diapers, children's vomit on the backseat." That is the one thing I shall never forgive him for . . . the way he treated our children. It would have been better if he had abandoned them altogether, but he enjoyed holding power over them even from a distance. There was no pleasing him, no matter how hard they tried. No one could please him. I certainly couldn't please him . . . so I gave my "artist" husband the freedom he said he so desperately needed. The illusion of freedom so often maintained by the male sex . . . and what does he do with it? He walks right through the open door and into captivity . . . into the waiting arms of Carlotta, his beloved jailer!

[Looking over at the photo of O'Neill.]

Well, I'm sorry, Gene, but I do believe in telling it as I see it. You know I've always been that way.

[She walks confidently over to the burning candles, lights her cigarette with one of them, and takes a satisfying puff, then turns again to the audience.]

You see I knew him better than anyone; I knew him better than he knew himself.

[She blows out her candle; the bell rings.]

• • • •

SARAH SANDY (Eugene O'Neill's Nanny)

[Masked.]

"I hope I know him better than you . . . sleepin' like a baby—so innocent-looking. You'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It all goes to show—you never can tell by appearances."

[Bell rings; her simple white mask is removed. SARA SANDY is a tight, compact, top-heavy little woman in her early sixties. When Eugene O'Neill was a small boy, she was hired to serve as his nanny. Her outward appearance is one of a jovial, friendly woman, but her words reveal a frustrated, dualistic thinking alcoholic whose twisted sense of humor bordering on sadism, belies a penchant for abuse. She sits in the third chair farthest from the O'Neill shrine.]

[Unmasked.]

Now you're goin' to hear it from the horse's mouth; and anyone who knows me can tell ye I'm not one to exaggerate. Master Gene was the dearest, sweetest little boy that ever a nanny could love. I used to call him me little sailor lad, that's 'cause he loved the sea, see.

[Opens a small flask of brandy, pours some into the cap.]

Oh, he loved the sea, he did . . . loved the sea. Must a'been the Irish in him . . . give 'em a little boat to bob about in, and they're as happy as clams!

[Takes a discreet sip from the cap, then screws it back on the bottle.]

Now that I have your undivided attention, I'm goin' to set an ugly rumor straight once and for all. Contrary to what you may have heard, I did not scare the livin' bejesus' out of him with horror stories. I did not! I told him little fairy tales as any good nanny would. Ah, sure, you don't think I'd frighten the lad, do ye? And even if I did, wasn't I there to comfort him? That's more than I can say for his family. Now take his mother . . . there was a tragic hoot. Missed her callin' to be a nun, no doubt o' that. And she be weepin' and wailin' about her lot in life . . . blamin' her husband and the like— and sure why not? Father and sons alike drinkin' and shoutin' night and day, why it'd be enough to drive a saint mad! Then again, who wouldn't be driven to drink with a spook of a mother like that? Now I'm not sayin' that Gene didn't do his share of drinkin' and shoutin' when he was a man, but when he was a boy, he was the dearest sweetest little boy you'd ever want to know. Why, I remember one day he comes up to me, couldn't a' been more than that high . . .

[Indicates height of a four-year-old child.]

the tears rollin' down his cheeks, and he says to me, he says, "Nanny Sarie"— that's what he used to call me see, Nanny, or Sarie, or Nanny Sarie . . . he comes up to me and he says, "Nanny Sarie, I seen dead seagull on the beach."

"Did ye now?" says I. "Well, we'll just have to go and take a look at it then, won't we?" And so off we did trot through the sand, until we come upon a dead seagull, and sure enough it was dead . . . as dead as dead as ever I'd seen dead; and it'd been dead for some time, no doubt o' that!

[She pinches her nose recalling the stench.]

"Yes, Master Gene," says I, "that is indeed a dead seagull." And then he says to me, "Nanny Sarie, will the seagull go to heaven?" "Of course, my little lad, the seagull will go to heaven. It will go to seagull heaven."

[Directed to the audience.]

Now I wasn't sure about that, mind ye', but I'm thinkin' to meself, where the hell else would a seagull go? Yes, my lad, the seagull will go to seagull heaven. "Should we give it a Christian burial then?" asks he.

[Directed to the audience.]

A Christian burial for a seagull? A seagull is no Christian! Now I don't know much about much, but I do know that much! "No, Master Gene," says I, "a seagull should be buried out to sea like one o' them heathen Vikings and the like, see . . . and when the tide comes up, a great wave will roll over the little seagull, and gently carry its body out into the deep blue sea . . . and there it will be rocked to and fro, to and fro, to sleep in peace for ever more. But if it's not been a good little seagull, the sharks will tear it to pieces bit by bit!"

[She laughs gleefully.]

Well, he seemed quite content with that answer I can tell ye!

[Bell rings; she stands.]

Oh, there's the bell—ringy-dingy-dingy, how time goes by when you're havin' fun! I just want to pay me last respects to Master Gene . . .

[She walks over to the photo of Eugene O'Neill surrounded by the remaining lit candles and addresses the photo.]

Master Gene darlin', you know your Nanny loved you best. She loved ye loved ye loved ye to death, she did!

[The bell rings again.]

Alright, alright! I'm leavin' for Christ's sakes!

[She extinguishes her candle leaving three out of five lit, and the bell rings.]

• • • •

ELLA O'NEILL (Eugene O'Neill's mother)

[Masked.]

"It's not the fog I mind. I love the fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. No one can see you or touch you anymore."

[The bell rings, and the simple white mask is removed. A pale, delicately built woman stands before the audience. Despite her spent look, it's obvious she had once been an attractive debutant, and at one time an accomplished classical pianist. ELLA is dressed in mourning black—with a black Victorian bonnet and cape trimmed in ermine. She is the mother of Eugene O'Neill. Her twisted, arthritic hands are hidden inside snow-white gloves. She appears frightened and anxious. Her nervous energy is frenetic and agitated. All her concentration is focused on staying in control. Her thoughts are scattered and fragmented. She seems to have a dual personality—one is a good little girl, obedient and self-effacing—a model of social acceptability; the other is raging against her restricted life. She is the pure embodiment of "lover" and "other," and represents the dualism between the "authentic self" and her socially inherited feminine mystique. She has been a morphine addict for many years, and although her unbalanced state of mind can be attributed to this addiction, her agony over not being a whole and independent human being manifested long before her introduction to this drug. She begins to speak in a soft, girlish voice falsely animated and carefree.]

[Unmasked.]

Eugene was my very special boy . . . my gift from God. I so wanted him to join the priesthood— he was so delicate and frail. He would have been safe there you see. He would have been my gift to God, my salvation for all the sins I have committed. Perhaps if I had told him that heaven was the sea and the Holy Ghost a free flying gull, perhaps then I should have persuaded him.

[She hesitates, not knowing where to go or what to do, like an actor who has forgotten her lines and is struck with stage fright. Carlotta's voice (O'Neill's third and last wife) speaks through ELLA and addressing her, "Oh, sit down for God's sake, we don't have all night!" ELLA looks about to see who has spoken, then recognizes and addresses the audience.]

Oh, yes! Of course . . . thank you.

[She sits, arranges herself primly in her chair—the one closest to the O'Neill shrine—and speaks with childish glee.]

I think he takes after his father, James! James O'Neill the great, handsome actor who swept me away, and beguiled me into marriage when I was just a girl. Oh, how I loved him so . . . as he loves me, as he loves me, as he . . .

[ELLA drifts away from her thoughts, looks down at her gnarled gloved hands and in so doing, transforms from a sweet and retiring girl-like countenance to a bitter old woman who has been betrayed by life. Her voice deepens.]

It's not my fault, you know, the way the boys turned out—all that drinking and carousing. They have their father to blame for that! I come from a respectable family, not James. What is he anyway . . . just a two-bit matinee idol, dragging his family from theater to theater, living out of suitcases, hotel rooms, or staring down at the barroom floors! If the boys had been raised in a proper home everything would have been different. That's all I ever wanted, you know, a real home . . . a home of my own with friends and neighbors to talk to.

[Her voice grows louder, strident and more desperate.]

No, I never should have married so young—never, never, never, should have . . . !

[She claps her gloved hands over her mouth to regain her composure. She enters a morphine-induced "other world" . . . a dream state. She speaks in the plaintive voice of a lost child.]

I wonder what it would have been like if I had never married? Perhaps I should have devoted my life to God. Oh yes! I should have been happy then. Or perhaps I should have been a great musician. Everyone said I played the piano beautifully.

[She begins to play the imaginary keys of a piano with her twisted, arthritic fingers while humming the song "Gene O'Dreams"—the melody originating with the plaintive folk song "John O'Dreams."]

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

[Upon seeing her own deformed hands, she quickly draws them to her breast and with obvious embarrassment, hides them in her lap. Gaining composure, she begins to speak in a controlled monotone, as if reciting a mantra.]

You can't undo the past. What's done is done. Things are as they are, and will end, as they must.

[She regains her composure and resumes speaking again with child-like enthusiasm.]

We were not expecting Eugene to come along. That is why he is my special boy, my gift from God. My husband James always wanted a large family . . . a great theatrical family, he used to say, like the Booths or the Jeffersons. My husband James loved children . . . as I loved him . . . as he loved me . . . as I loved him. . . .

[Her voice lowers as rage and bitterness swell up once more.]

I never should have had another child! My health was never the same after Eugene was born.

I suffered! The doctors gave me morphine for the pain. . . .

[Looks at her crippled hands.]

I still take my cure for the pain. No I never should have had another child. I didn't want another child. I tried very hard not to have another child. . . . No, I never, never, never should have had another . . .

[Reverts to the morphine-induced trance and the plaintive voice of a lost child.]

I wonder what it would have been like had I never, never . . . Perhaps I could have been . . .

[She begins to play the imaginary piano as the flute plays the melody. ELLA sings the first stanza of "John O'Dreams" as "la, la, la, la, la, la—." She sings it repeatedly while the flute continues to play the full melody. The noisy discord that results is a metaphor for the confusion that is taking place in ELLA's mind. She rises from her imaginary piano and begins to dances in circles like a little girl, her arms extended, her face lifted skyward obviously in another world, another time and place. She makes her way over to the candles, snuffs out her own, the one of two that remains, and slowly twirls over to her chair. On the chair there sits a tremendously oversized rosary. She hangs the rosary over her left arm still singing "la, la, la, la, la—" still in discord with the flute accompaniment. With her back to the audience she stretches out her arms in the form of a cross symbolizing her own crucifixion. The rosary is still swaying from her arm as she dances slowly at first then faster and more frenetically; all the while, her voice growing louder and more shrilly. With her back to the audience, she symbolically injects her right arm with morphine in a slow and larger-than-life stylized movement. Her injected arm jerks upward and with that sudden movement, the noisy discord of her singing "la, la, la, la, la—" and the flute music stops abruptly. With arms stretched out in front of her, her face lifted to the heavens, she recites the Hail Mary.]

Hail Mary full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women . . .

[She laughs incredulously.]

Blessed art thou among women? Blessed art thou among women?

[She laughs hysterically and then collapses to her knees and begins weeping; she buries her head in the seat of her chair in a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.]

Oh, please, God take me home—please, please. . . . Oh, please take me home.

1. The role of Cora from Agnes Boulton's (pen name: Elinor Rand) play The Guilty One, act 4.

2. Mrs. Miller, from Eugene O'Neill's play Ah Wilderness!

3. "I remember a sweet strange girl. . . ." [Dion reminiscing about his mother in O'Neill's The Great God Brown.] "It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen . . . ," says Mary, from O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.
Yussef El Guindi

excerpts from

Karima's City

from

The Best American Short Plays 2004–2005

KARIMA Yes.

[Remembering what she wrote.]

"Up to this moment as I sit down to write, I feel radiant with joy." . . . Thank you, I'll take it from here.

[The stagehands/actors exit.]

I loved my street.—It made me proud to live in this city. This mess of a wonderful city with its bright colors and little shops nestled next to each other like a bunch of women at a loud party; sharing gossip and compliments, and this one shop that had this shiny blue and orange awning that looked like it might have been the parachute of a spaceman, but really quite charming all the same. And this other one that shaded the Star of Liberty store, which sold chickpeas and seeds and all sorts of nuts. [. . .] As the changes began, this street that was so dear to me started to lose its spirit—I don't know what happened. . . . It was like a funeral pall had descended and we were all mute before the death of something we couldn't name. . . . And beyond my street, over the awnings, huge structures started appearing. Buildings rising like scarecrows to scare away everything beautiful. And on top of them the size of houses were these neon signs—that spelt nonsensical words telling you to buy things you didn't need; and somehow if you didn't have these things you didn't want you wouldn't be a complete human being. A complete moron more likely. But I don't want to talk about that just now either. I still haven't told you about the best thing on my street. [Lights up on the trees.] The thirty-one beautiful trees. Lining the street from my house to my work. And they too greeted me each day. I'm not saying they talked to me, okay. I'm saying they were so alive with their own beauty, they spoke to me that way. They sang. Through their leaves. In the clear sounds of something that has no doubt about what it is. That simply delights in what it is. All of them: the camphor trees. The Indian ficus. And this really special one. Right next to the water company. I never knew its name, but when it blossomed, my God, it was as if the entire street was at a festival. Large violet flowers up and down its long limbs. Looking like a choir of petals singing their colors and making the whole street pay attention. And we did. And then one day walking to work, I found the tree lying on the street.

[Suggestion: This "special tree" could be one she sees out in the direction of the audience, and might be suggested by a change in lighting.]

At first I didn't know what it was doing there; and felt it somehow unseemly, as if I'd caught it doing something it shouldn't. Then I saw it had been uprooted. Completely torn out. It looked like the carcass of an innocent bird, slaughtered. And no act of nature had done this but a human act. . . . In the next weeks, other trees followed. One by one—that's when I began to feel the changes in me. . . . Little headaches at first. Then big ones. Then cramps that wouldn't go away. Then a sensation under my skin that felt like spiders crawling around my nerve ends. After a month these pains became excruciating, and when breathing began to feel like something I had to attend to or it would stop, I went to a doctor.

• • • •

KARIMA How could I forget?

[She starts off in one direction, then stops.]

You can't go back, you'll be late. They'll demote you if you show up late again.

[She looks down at her breasts.]

It's okay. It's not bad. I have to go back for it.

[She starts off but stops again.]

Karima, stop. You can't be this spineless. You've forgotten your bra, not your mind. They require your mind, and your mind on time, not a bra. Your breasts in a bra is optional. They don't hang down, or make a spectacle of themselves. They're fine. No one will notice.

[Starts walking again.]

It's all in your head.

[Walks in the opposite direction.]

Don't kid yourself. This isn't a thought you can hide, these are breasts.

[Ticked off.]

Oh, for God's sake!

[She stops again.]

Who invented these stupid bras in the first place! How absolutely ridiculous.

[Perhaps three mannequins are brought on by the stagehands. Each mannequin sports a bra. Note: This could also be done with one mannequin or with the stagehand/actors wearing the bras themselves.]

I mean, look at them. What kind of monstrous mind came up with that?

[She goes up to the bras on the mannequins.]

They look like shackles. Handcuffs for the breasts. Breastcuffs. For the crime of puberty I sentence your breasts to a lifetime of confinement in these—these—I mean, look at them. And what is so embarrassing about breasts? Really. I mean, let's look at what we're talking about here.

[She looks at her breasts.]

Are they that dangerous? Of grave national concern? And if they're supposedly that erotic to some, is that my fault? I should be punished for other people not having control? Everyone needs to grow up and let go of this nonsense.

[Stagehands bring on a desk. Either she picks up papers from them, or papers are handed to her.]

Sometimes I think we all agree on something and then forget how silly that agreement was in the first place. We just keep on with a practice that should have been dropped ages ago. And to think this is a modem invention. This was a sign of progress. Imagine. [. . .] Besides, it's conceited on my part to think anyone's going to notice. People are too busy and a lot more mature.

• • • •

KARIMA Yes.

[Beat.]

Yes. . . . You're right.

[Beat.]

You should have cut it out as you wanted to, Mummy. . . . All those years ago. . . . Do you remember. . . ? When I told on my brother. . . . For breaking the vase. . . . And you came at me with scissors. Ordering me to stick out my tongue so you could slice it off. So I would never let out another secret.

[Beat.]

My poor tongue. You don't know how to behave. . . . You live in such a big mouth, no wonder you're lost.

[Beat.]

What have I accomplished by speaking out . . . ?

[Beat.]

Nothing.

[Beat.]

Who have I helped by speaking up . . . ?

[Beat.]

No one.

[Beat.]

What good have my opinions done me?

[Beat.]

You don't have the courage to end it. But a tongue. . . . Cutting it out will not make you die. . . . I would not be committing a sin. . . . I may prevent future sins by doing so—I would stop hurting people. Myself—the cause of my miseries would end. One snip.

[A hand slides a pair of scissors from the wings towards KARIMA. Or it can also be handed to her by a stagehand. She sees it. Beat.]

It doesn't even feel like it belongs to me half the time.

[Beat.]

Come.

[Picks up scissors.]

The pain will only last a little while. A little blood and it's done. This is not a punishment. It's that piece of flesh that punishes you. Miseries greater than any knife could inflict. This is no different than your circumcision and you survived that. This one will do you more good.

[She sticks out her tongue. . . . She opens the scissors. . . . She positions her tongue between the blades. She stands there, tongue between scissor blades. . . . She lowers the scissors from her mouth.]

Karima, please. . . . For once in your life listen to me. I'm trying to save you. You won't lose anything. . . . We'll still be able to talk. . . . We'll just make sure no one will hear us.

[Beat. Once again she places her· tongue between the blades. . . . She wills herself to complete the act. A strangled, tongueless sound is heard: a scream building up. Then a garbled:]

DO IT!

[Her mother (. . .) screams. KARIMA at this point perhaps turns her back to the audience. (. . .) A stagehand will hand her her manuscript.]

My mother's screams gathered the neighbors and I was brought here. To this cell. . . . This—place. Where I have stayed ever since. . . . I have lost count how many years.

[At some point, KARIMA turns to face the audience.]

My mother visited me regularly. Then stopped. My brother came once and said nothing. I have told my story to the doctors and nurses but they don't listen. I explained why I tried to do what I did. That it was with the best interests of everyone in mind. But when you're considered a little cracked, it's hard to convince anyone of anything.

[Beat.]

My mother should have let me finish the job.

[Beat.]

But since she didn't—here I am. . . . My big mouth still open and my tongue still flapping.

[Beat.]

Don't you wish now she hadn't interrupted me. . . . And I'm also writing. In the hope some of this will make sense to me one day. And because—I'd like to get out. If just for an hour. . . . I have noticed the white in my hair. . . . And my city is moving on too. I would like to see it again. . . . Walk down the street I loved. . . . See the vendors. Smell the scents of what they're selling. . . . Wave to people.

[Beat.]

How I wish I could see those thirty-one beautiful green trees again.

[Fade to blackout.]
Madeleine George

excerpts from

The Most Massive Woman Wins

from

The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998

CARLY No, my mama was not always right. No, you shoulda seen her when he'd come home nights, the whole place'd get quiet like the grave, I swear, she'd be pussyfootin' around him jumping like a sick kitten every time he made a move . . . all you could hear was him chewing with his mouth open and his silverware hitting the plastic plate.

It's too late for my mama, it's too late for me now. But the day my kid was born I made it a promise that she was gonna know who she was. No one was gonna walk all over my kid. No one was gonna give her a goddamned blank check.

Then the other day I come home from work and there she is, my stupid kid, sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the tub, and her long blond hair is dyed pitch-black, I swear, black as tar, and it's dripping black rivers all down her face and her neck . . . I could have killed her right then and there, I wanted to knock her head off of her skinny little neck.

Instead of killing her I say, Jesus Christ, what the hell did you do to your hair, and she's crying and choking and she goes, Ma! and points at the counter. I looked and I swear I thought I was going to toss my cookies. She has got one of these EPT plus pregnancy tests laid out there, you know, the little stick kind? Pink, pregnant, white, not pregnant . . . there's that little stick leaning up against the box it came in and the end is as bright pink as an Easter egg, pink as all fuck, pardon my French, pink like a baby's butt is pink. Talk about history repeating itself. Suddenly I'm sixteen again with that sinking feeling in my stomach looking at the little test tube, holding it up against the light bulb in the upstairs closet. . . .

So I'm trying to figure out what exactly the black hair has got to do with the pink stick. I say, Is that or is that not an EPT plus pregnancy test? and she nods, so I say, Is that or is that not a pink stick you got there? and she says, It's pink. I say, So you're pregnant, so you dyed your hair black? She starts sobbing and wailing and she goes, I knew you wouldn't understand, you never understand anything about me! She bangs past me and stomps down the hall and slams the bedroom door behind her. I'm thinking, what's to understand? You're totally nuts!

I'm standing there alone in the bathroom. The place looks like a tornado hit, there's little bottles and vials and tubes all over, with that little pink baby-positive stick lying right in the middle like the eye of the hurricane, the evil eye, more like, still and pink and sticking its tongue out at me. Ha. You lost. You fucked up. I'm thinking, what happened? I thought only fat girls didn't know what they were doing. My kid's a beauty, gorgeous, skinny, tall, why the hell didn't she stand up for herself? How could she let this happen? She's got no goddam spine!

Then I'm back to the time when she was just two years old, the first time I saw her throw a tantrum. It was in the kitchen, over a purple popsicle. I was so surprised at the force inside her little body. She stamped her bare feet on the kitchen floor and balled up her fists and bared her tiny white teeth at me, and when I said, No, and shut the refrigerator door with the toe of my shoe she looked up into my face and squinted, she wasn't three feet tall, and her mouth got tiny like the . . . head of a nail, and I knew I had someone to contend with then.

So I go into the bedroom, sit down on the edge of the bed, and pat her on the back. Stacey, sweets, hey, hey, it's alright. You gotta be strong and make your own choice, but whatever decision you want to make, I'm behind you, okay? We'll do whatever you choose. She stops sniffing. She breathes in and out. I say, So, listen . . . have you talked to the guy about this yet? And she says, nasty, No, Ma, God. Boys don't like girls who boss them around.

• • • •

SABINE Like my friend Michael. Michael and I, we are best friends. We go for sushi and foxtrot once a month at the full moon. The thing is, all our conversations go like this: Michael tells me about his love life, I support him. Michael whines about his girlfriend, I console him. Michael moans about the horrors of latex, I sympathize, I hug him, I make him tea, and recently I have found myself possessed with rage absolutely every time I lay eyes on him. Because I am so very tired of being everyone's warm and fuzzy sounding board. I want to be a full-blown sexual threat right now. I want to get down on my hands and knees and do it, sweaty, hot, savage, wrong, morally rep-re-hensi-ble. . . . If my mother could hear me now . . . she wasn't out of her foundation garments long enough to have sex. I was an immaculate conception. My father stuck his tongue in her ear and bang, there I was, I appeared just like that on the kitchen counter in an attractive presentation basket. That how we fat women do it, you know. We just close our eyes and think beautiful thoughts and our offspring arrive with the afternoon mail.

In undergrad psychology we learned about these people, they were called split-brain patients, and each hemisphere of their brain could work on a task without the other half knowing. In the films they showed us they taught this one guy to build blocks into towers with his left hand only. Then separately they taught his right hand to tear block towers down. On the last day of the experiment they let both the hands work together—the guy actually fought with himself in this film—his left hand tried to build a tower while his right hand constantly wrecked whatever he made. The hands started slapping each other and wrestling with the same block. . . . The one half of me, see, won't take no for an answer. This me's gonna go out there and take the corporate world by storm, if that's what I decide I want to do, or climb mountains, or pump gas, or write for TV, or . . . become a stock broker if I happen to feel like it. I do not need male approval to achieve my life goals. Like a fish needs a bicycle, and so on and so on.

But I just can't ignore my pathetic other side—it's so whiny and "needy" inside of me. I yearn for . . . human touch, God, it's embarrassing, sometimes all I want is to be looked at, admired, soothed, and caressed. I still want the power, I still want to make money and go mountaineering. But the thing I want most right now, God, Santa, Gloria Steinem, is some person to love me and sleep in my bed.

First I hate myself for it, then I forgive myself lovingly, then I yell at myself for going soft on myself. Then I cry, usually, and then I get sullen and scowl. Stomp around the place dropping dishes and breaking bric-a-brac. Backlash! I scream, backlash, Sabine! You're contributing to the undeclared war against women! How could you! How dare you! You ought to be shot! Then I usually have a marshmallow sundae to calm myself down.

The saddest thing is, I've got no one to blame. Goddamn, I wrote my dissertation on this, I know the eight key symptoms and the ten warning signs and the twelve-step recovery program like the back of my hand. How can I be so smart and so stupid?

So I've made a very adult decision. If I can't change the world, I have to change myself. I'm gonna lay on my back and suck up the gas and fall into a deep sleep, and when the prince kisses me I'm gonna wake up and be beautiful. And then I'm gonna flush all my feminist morals down the can and I'm gonna sashay my butt out into the glittering suburban night and I'm gonna get laid, goddamnit. Like my mom used to say—you've made your cake, now you have to eat it. I hear you, Ma. Ain't it the truth.

• • • •

RENNIE The first picture of me is at my first birthday party. In this one I am screaming with laughter and holding my hands up to show the camera that I am covered with chocolate cake. My face is smeared with it. It is all over the front of my pretty pink dress. Apparently I was quite verbally advanced, and my parents were showing me off when my uncle Jalee said, Oh yeah? How smart is she? She's a genius, says my mother, she understands everything. Try it. She'll do anything you say.

So . . . Rennie, says my uncle Jake, smush that chocolate cake all over your face, sweetheart. Will you do that for me?

And I did it of course because I was just that smart and I ruined my dress and they took a picture of me humiliating myself when I was twelve months old.

[Flashbulb pops.]

This one is my mother's favorite. It's of her and me on one of our mother-daughter days, we're on the steps of the Met looking very close and what you don't see is Mother boring her knuckles into the small of my back saying Straighten up, sweetheart, it lengthens your neck. Now glow, come on, glow. We want this one to glow.

For a while there is an absence of photos—when tummies are no longer little-girl cute. Mother hides me at family gatherings and I seem always to end up behind pieces of furniture. So we have no extant record of the long years of wanting, of wanting and wanting and being denied.

Reaching for bread and peanut butter and having Slimfast thrust into my twelve-yearold fist. Mother says, No, I am putting my foot down. She is putting her foot down, I see, and I see that to want and demand things is bad.

And when I finally want nothing, nothing at all, when I finally want so little I can barely get up in the morning, my head feels like a ten-ton brick on my shoulders, my knees buckle walking from class to class, when I want so little the gentlest sounds scrape my ears and my skin is sore and my hair falls out, finally my mother pulls me out from behind the chaise longue—and says This is my daughter Rennie! This is my wonderful, beautiful daughter. Out comes the camera!

[Flashbulb pops.]

The pictures reappear. All the while Mother says, Sweetheart, you're beautiful. You really do glow.

[Flashbulb pops.]

In this one I am standing outside my own house, in a hideous dress I do not recall choosing, it is blue and it feels like a garbage bag next to my skin. I am wearing a floppy white orchid on my wrist and man, am I glowing. I am really fucking glowing. My smile is about this wide on my face though I don't know what I am smiling about because Andrew Marino has his hand on my back. We haven't even left the house yet, my mother is still snapping pictures and there he is, slinking his hand up my dress. Later we are in the dark and he is breathing so hard he is fogging the windshield and I say to him, Andrew. No. No. And he says to me, Rennie, you're beautiful. Please, Rennie, please, will you do it for me? I am saying, No, I am saying, Stop, but he does not hear me, I am not loud enough. I am so—weak. I am just . . . too . . . weak.

[Flashbulb pops.]

In this one my mother is getting remarried. She is a vision in indigo organdy, she looks half her age, her husband's in real estate. But heavens, where's Rennie? Rennie's not in this one. Rennie is wearing an attractive off-white linen pants suit, but she is not in her place at her mother's side because she is in the parish hall kitchen, devouring the three-foot-tall wedding cake meant to serve one hundred and eighty guests. It was just so pristine, floating there, with no one to guard it, no one to witness. . . . I ate and I ate and I ate it all up until there wasn't one crumb left, not a single frosted rosette, and I held that whole cake inside my body, I had it all to myself. And then I threw it all up on the kitchen floor and I walked out the back door into the night.

• • • •

CEL It starts with a girl maybe six, maybe seven, looking down at herself seeing how—horrible she was! How gross like a monster. She didn't look anything like the other kids from 4-H, they were all skinny as rats from dragging goats through the mud and bending over fields in the blazing hot sun. In summer all kids' legs were scabby—but nobody had marks on them like I did, like Cel, Cel had some scars.

The first one came when I was six. I had split open my knee climbing through barbed wire and Mama drove me to the hospital to get the thing stitched up with ugly dark thread, that's how deep it was. But I took those stitches out with scissors when I got home. I told my mama they came out in the bath but I could tell by the way she looked at me sidewise frying the eggs that she didn't believe it. All that summer I worked on my knee and by the time Labor Day rolled around my leg looked like it had been caught in a thresher, maybe.

After that she just seemed to find them, Cel, these cuts in her skin, these holes. They seemed to pop up without her even noticing. Some she put in there herself with the kitchen knives for killing the chickens or shears for the garden or the awl Daddy used for punching holes in saddles.

Mama didn't know what to do with her girl. At first she didn't say anything, just folded her hands like so across her chest. What's happened to the backs of your feet, she asked. You're picking those cuts of yours apart, aren't you? What are you doing to yourself, Celie? Why do you want to do such a thing to yourself? So she started buying extra boxes of Band-Aids and leaving them about the house in places she thought I might be likely to come across them. But I wanted to take myself completely apart. I had dreams of my body parts spread out in the yard for everyone, even the neighbors, to see.

All the way through high school I did it at night when no one was looking. After my shower, when the skin was still soft. It was my thing to know. Then one day my husband found me on the floor of the bathroom, busted in without knocking. After that he kept watching me, keeping track where I went. I tried to lay still. I forgot things . . . left them to burn on the stove. My husband paced around and slammed the door on his way out. He accused me of letting the heat out in winter, letting animals in, stray cats and birds.

So I needed a final solution. Get rid of all of the flesh at once. I was poking a roaster chicken full of cloves getting ready for Sunday dinner and I went to light the broiler with a hard wooden match. Then it came to me. My body—I wanted to light it on fire. Hear the fat sizzle into smoke. With all the fat gone I could dance—more than that, I could run and jump and fly maybe even, just me and my bones running naked through the meadows feeling the breeze. It seemed so obvious—why hadn't I thought of this before? I struck one of the matches, stroked it smooth across the rough edge of the box and I could feel the flame sparking and growing and swallowing the match head. I held it in front of my face. It flickered in my own breath. My thighs would go up first, I thought, then the rest of me would catch on quick. I lifted my leg and dropped the match onto my pants. For a moment—nothing, then—warm hot my leg started to jump—my skin was on fire. I screamed without meaning to, Oh my God. I reeled around to face the counter, my hands out in front of me reaching—desperate—something—anything. Towel potholder glass of water. . . . In my mind I heard Miss Moser from in front of the black board—stop, drop, and roll, she said, if you ever catch fire just stop, drop, and . . .

Later I went to the phone to call 911, shivering, numb. I caught fire, I said calmly into the phone. I was cooking a chicken. It escaped.
Michael Roderick

excerpts from

Props

from

The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006

DENISE Well, you did and what you said to me got me all confused. It was like I was hearing the you I fell . . . Damn. Please, don't think about me, Andrew. Don't dream about me. Not now. When we had a chance you threw it away and now I'm happy. I've moved on. You need to stop thinking about me and move on. Replace me, Andrew. It's not hard. You're a wonderful guy and I wish you nothing but happiness, but please replace me and stop torturing yourself. I'm smoke, Andrew. You know all about smoke. It's what remains after the fire. There's only you now. . . . Only you. Timing was never our strong suit. You were pining for someone when all I wanted was you and I fell in love when all you wanted was me. I think that we need to spend some time away from each other. I think that you need to get out of this shop and stop talking to toys. I think you need to talk to Susan because it's obvious you're not over her. [. . .] I don't want to be the one to bring this up, but you chose Susan over me, remember? I would have waited for you, but she took you away from me. We didn't talk for an entire year. Do you know what that's like? Having a best friend and losing him for a year? Having the person who you value more than anything turn their back on you? I had to find some comfort, Andrew, and I did. It's not with you. I'm sorry. Talk to Susan and stop obsessing over this job. I worry about you all the time. You've been working nonstop for the entire week. You actually gave the puppet a name and refer to it as her. Look at me. I know you need a friend, but you can't test the boundaries of our friendship. I can only be your friend, Andrew. No matter how much you're willing to give. I can't give the same.

• • • •

SUSAN You want me to say it again, Andrew? It hurt you so bad the first time, what makes you think the second will be better? I am sorry for what I said, but I also remember you provoking it. You asked me to tell you what was wrong and I refused. You pushed me and you pushed me until I finally told you why I was so upset. I told you how I felt at that moment. It had nothing to do with how I truly feel about you. I got caught up in the moment. I was so angry with you I just said those things. I never meant them. I don't see why we can't get past all of this. Why you can't just come back to me.

[She moves towards him.]

You know you belong with me. Why push me away? I said I'm sorry. I miss you. Please.

[Her arms are now around him and she kisses his neck.]

I can change. I'll never say anything that horrible again. I promise. Come home with me. Come to bed. You don't have to wake up alone tomorrow, Andrew. It can all be so much better. Come on . . .

[She unbuttons her top.]

don't you miss me?

• • • •

SUSAN This will all be over soon. I spent years on you, Andrew. I wanted you to feel like you had a life. All of the others before you were too obsessed with my life. They wanted to follow me everywhere. My goal was to create someone who could be entirely independent. So I made you an artist with real goals in life. I provided you with a history and a degree. Select memories from your childhood that would fuel an individualistic spirit were implanted. I gave you a first love. Denise worked well and the stuff about her drawing circles in the mud with her foot was very cute. I then allowed you to create your own world. You chose to make Melissa, who was an excellent best friend, but the flaw with her was that she was against me. In fact, she's one of the reasons that you broke up with me. The one thing I never counted on, though, was that you wouldn't come back. I had no idea that you were making her. I knew that you were moving away from me but I thought it was just one of the other two. They posed no threat, because they could never actually love you while I was around. I hadn't planned on you being able to tum me down, though. I guess that comes with making you such an individual. In essence, making you believe that you existed. You're a puppet, Andrew. A prop. And I still to this day haven't been able to make you real. What makes you think that you can do that for her? And more importantly, what makes you think that I'll let you try? It ends here. I love you. But you are a failed experiment and there is only one thing to do with a failed experiment. Good-bye.

[The stage goes completely dark and we see SUSAN light a single match. All of a sudden we see the match go out as if something has snuffed it. The lights fade back up to discover ANDREW standing directly across from SUSAN.]
Murray Schisgal

excerpt from

First Love

from

The Best American Short Plays 1990–2000

LUCY [Rises, turns on light.] When I woke up that morning . . . and you weren't in the apartment . . . I thought you must have gone down to buy croissants or those delicious cinnamon sweet rolls we used to like, so I decided, while you were gone, to prepare for you the most splendiferous breakfast in the whole wide world. So I put out the eggs and the butter and the bacon. . . . And you have to believe me, Mike, I prepared for you the most extravagant, the most absolutely splendiferous breakfast conceived by the human imagination.

[Melodramatically.]

But . . . what's going on here? You were nowhere in sight! You were tardy, late, delinquent! The king is lost in the realm! Did you not go to the bakery? I looked in the closet. There were your clothes, the one suit, the one baseball jacket, the sweater, the pairs of pants, one brown, one blue. . . .

[Acting panicky.]

What is going on here? An hour gone by. An hour and ten minutes. An hour and twenty minutes. An hour and . . . what could possibly have happened to that man? Heavens to Betsy, this is a frightening occurrence! I ran out towards the West Side Highway. I ran into the bakery and the stores we shopped at. "Did you, perchance, see my husband? Was my husband in here? You know my husband, don't you? The dark-haired, handsome man with the eyes that sparkle and a smile that could break your heart? Did you perchance see him. . . ? No, no, we didn't see him. We know your husband, Mrs. Orkin. He's the best. He's the tops. He was in here yesterday and sang for us "Che gelida manina" and he was so funny he had us all in stitches, he had us doubled over with cramps! Oh, we wouldn't forget it if we saw your husband, Mrs. Orkin. There's no one like him. "No one . . . in the . . . in the whole . . . wide . . . world."
Catherine Filloux

excerpt from

The Beauty Inside

from

The Best American Short Plays 2002–2003

LATIFE My name's Latife Inan. [. . .] There are other girls. Perhaps in your village you heard rumors. . . . A girl who died because she brought dishonor on her husband, not getting permission to go to the movies. Another's throat cut because a love song was dedicated to her on the radio.

I will return to the city to prepare your case. We'll place you under security protection. We'll send you somewhere where you'll be safe. When you're better you must agree to testify.

Let me get the doctor. . . .

[. . .]

When I was a little girl my own mother died. She died in a car crash—if you ever go to Istanbul, you'll see that traffic lights are only there for decoration. They say my mother was the type to stop at them. So . . . I was raised by men. My father, two brothers taught me how to excel, study hard, debate at the dinner table, defend my honor. I went to the best university, was lauded by my teachers, lauded especially by my father and my brothers, who always seemed giddy that I, a woman, their creation, succeeded so well, worked out so right.

[LATIFE speaks with self-deprecation.]

Now I am a senior lawyer, but there is no place to debate at the dinner table about people like you. Your fate is unthinkable to those who raised me. These men would never understand how in your belly will be your life, yourself; how that woman who walked out the door is still your heroine; how the canal you traveled down is both your road to freedom and the rope to hang you. That silvery mirage you speak of, just out of reach. . . . I will fight with what I have been given by those men who honor me so highly. For them it's all for common markets, but that's not what it is for me. I will have to fight this their way, the way my own father taught me, for you, Yalova. Now let me go get the doctor.
Joe Pintauro

excerpts from

Ten-Dollar Drinks

from

The Best American Short Plays 2003–2004

STAR You know what fame is? Multiply all the people you don't wanna know by two hundred million. That's fame. Fame . . . is the drink that comes to your table from that dark corner of the restaurant and it could be from either a deranged stalker or your future lover. Either way if you don't drink the shit they'll hate you till they die. There is nothing spiritual about fame. Fame is prostitution without body contact. I know only one person who believed she was a true goddess. She refused to go to the bathroom because it would destroy her status and she wound up exploding in a Los Angeles emergency room. That's fame, honey.

• • • •

BETE You know what a star is? You piece of shit? A star is one of those gorgeous goddamn glittering things in the heavens that mankind has been staring at for millions of years. It's a fucking sun, a giant, burning eternal glory that gives more life than all our little fat heads put together cannot imagine. The kind of star you are is the paper kind, with glue on the back, the kind you buy by the hundreds in a little box for a buck.
Joyce Carol Oates

When I Was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn't Want Me

from

The Best American Short Plays 2001–2002

[Lights up. An elderly woman speaks. Her voice alternates between urgency and bemusement, emotion and reflection.]

My father was killed and I never knew why.

Then I was given away. By my mother.

I was so little . . . six months.

There were too many of us, nine of us, my mother gave me away.

When I was old enough to know . . . I cried a lot. My father was killed and I never knew why.

No one would tell me.

Now there's no one I can ask. "Why? Why?"

It happened in a fight, in a tavern, he was only forty-four years old.

My father I never knew. Forty-four! Now, he could be my son.

I wasn't always an . . . old woman. Eighty-one.

I was a girl for so long. I was a little girl for so long. I was six months old when my father died.

And there were too many of us to feed, and my mother . . . gave me away.

There were nine children. I was the baby. I was born late, I was the baby.

My mother gave me to her sister Lena who didn't have children.

This was in 1918.

This was in the Black Rock section of Buffalo, the waterfront on the Niagara River.

Germans, Poles, Hungarians . . . immigrants.

We were Hungarians. We were called "Hunkies."

I don't know why people hated us. . . .

[WOMAN pauses; decides not to explore this.]

Uncle John and Aunt Lena were my "parents."

We moved to a farm far away in the country.

And my real mother and my brothers and sisters moved to a farm a few miles away.

Uncle John and Aunt Lena were good to me.

I don't know if I loved them . . . I think I loved them. I think . . .

I think they loved me.

They wanted children but couldn't have them, so it was right, I think, that my mother gave me to them. . . .

[Pause.]

It was a, a good thing, it was a . . . necessary thing.

I would learn one day that it happened often.

In immigrant families in those days.

In poor immigrant families.

My father was killed and I never knew why.

They said he was a bad drinker, he got drunk and was always in fights.

The Hungarians were the worst, they said—the drinking and the fighting.

They said he was so handsome, my father.

My mother, Elizabeth, was so pretty.

Curly hair like mine.

They said he had a temper "like the devil."

In the tavern there was a fight, and he died.

A man took up a poker and beat my father to death.

I never knew why, I never knew who it had been.

Yet this was how my life was decided.

There is the moment of conception—you don't know.

There is the moment of birth—you don't know.

There is the moment your life is decided—you don't know.

Yet you say, "This is my life."

You say, "This is me."

[WOMAN regards herself in wonder like a stroke victim regaining some of her awareness.]

When I was a little girl and my mother didn't want me I hid away to cry.

I felt so bad and I felt so ashamed.

When I was old enough I would walk to the other farm.

There was a bridge over the Tonawanda Creek a few miles away.

They didn't really want to see me I guess.

My name was Carolina, but they didn't call me that.

I don't remember if there was a name they called me.

They weren't very nice to me I guess.

They didn't want me, I guess. I was a reminder of . . . something.

Elizabeth, my mother, never learned English.

She spoke Hungarian all her life.

She never learned to read. She never learned to drive a car.

My aunt Lena never learned to drive, so the sisters didn't see much of each other.

They lived only a few miles apart, and were the only sisters of their family in America, but they didn't see much of each other.

That was how women were in the old days.

She was a short, plump woman.

Curly brown hair like mine.

People would say, "You look just like your momma!"

Then they would be surprised, I'd start to cry.

My mother scolded me in Hungarian—

"Go away, go home where you belong. You have a home. Your home is not here."

I loved my big brothers and sisters.

There was Leslie, he was the oldest.

He took over when my father died.

There was Mary, I didn't get to know real well.

They were born in Budapest.

There was Steve, who'd been kicked and trampled by a horse. His brain was injured, he would never leave home.

There was Elsie who was my "big sister."

There was Frank who was my "big brother."

There was Johnny . . . and Edith. . . .

There was George, I wasn't too close with George.

There was Joseph, I wasn't too close with.

[Pause.]

They are all dead now.

I loved them, but . . .

I am the only one remaining.

Sometimes I think: The soul is just a burning match!

It burns a while and then . . . And then that's all.

It's a long time ago now, but I remember hiding away to cry.

When I was a little girl and my mother didn't want me.
Neil LaBute

Totally

from

The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010

one of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw

[Silence. Darkness. Lights up on a GIRL. Lovely. Standing there. Waiting.]

GIRL Oh, hey, hi, how's it going? Really? Yeah? Really? That's awesome. . . .

[Beat.]

Hmmmm? Me? Oh, you know, I've been . . . I dunno, it's been interesting. Uh-huh. Totally. Very interesting. I'm not really feeling so—I mean, I'm supposed to meet someone so I can't stand around and, but okay, lemme just . . . I'll tell you the highlights. How's that? If I just skim it for now and then maybe we'll catch up at some other, whenever. Maybe I can text you or we can Skype or, or—yeah. We can do that another time. Cool. Great.

[Beat.]

So. My birthday, right? In January—and yes, you missed it, bitch, thanks, I even sent you an e-vite for it, you never responded—well, ends up being this huge day for me but, I mean, like, starting out, when I'm waking up that morning, how could I ever even know that? You know? So yes, it's a big deal, party that I throw myself every year; it's worth it, I get to see people, and the presents—not why I do it but it doesn't suck—and just a chance to, you know, keep in touch with everybody, for us to keep it real. Nice. So, yeah, that happens and I drink too much, and Douglas, you know him right, of course you do . . . everyone knows Douglas apparently, that's what I find out that night. He gets me a necklace from Tiffany's, which is lovely, it is, very whatever, lovely, and they've put the gift receipt in there so I pull it out, just to get it out of the way so I can admire the jewelry—seriously, I'm not at all studying it or anything like he starts accusing me of—and it's tucked in there, right? It's just his receipt to the present, but on it is charges for, I mean, like, two other necklaces. Two more of these things.

Exact same ones. And so you know how that goes, it blows up into this whole . . . shit, whatever you'd expect, with all the lying about they're for his mom and, and his sister for their upcoming birthdays—yeah, right, in April and November—and then it just spills out of him. Like, plop, wham, on the table. . . . Yeah. He's been messing around and he's seeing someone—one does turn out to be for his sister, which is whatever—why he has to buy it during a trip to get me my gift, I don't know, but still, it's his family, at least—but yes, there's this girl and "it's over," he promises, just bought her this as a good-bye thing. I'm, you can imagine, I am knocked out. Flat. I'm planning to marry this guy, make a life with him and this is going on? All this time, however long? With packages and shit, too, not just fucking her and stuff, like guys sometimes do because of all that excess energy, but really. . . . I'm dead inside. Suddenly I feel like I went outside and ate up all the dog shit that I'm able to find out there on the street. That's how I feel.

[Beat.]

Because, see . . . I had a gift for him that night, too. I'm ready to tell him, yeah—I have something all prepared for the evening and now he's gone and, like, ruined it. You think I'm gonna tell him I'm pregnant now? Are you crazy? Huh?

That's—I mean, I dunno, and maybe some girls even would, what better time to get him back on the straight and whatever, but see, he's always so worried about that, he is, he's this Mr. Protection freak with the, like, double condoms and making sure I'm caught up on my pills and whatever.

Yeah. Like, insane about it to a point where I'm already nervous that he'll deny it or won't even believe it's his, and plus there's this other part of me that I get from my dad, this sort of deep-rooted stubborn streak—one whole side of me is now thinking, "Screw you, Douglas, you don't get to know this! No, it's my secret now, bitch, and you're out in the cold!"

[Beat.]

Do you need to go? No? Okay, cool. Yeah, so, anyhow, that's what I'm feeling inside, up in my head . . . but see, in the moment, I get all soft. I go ahead and cry and beg him to come back and we make up and all that shit—I do really believe he's done with this girl, this "Melody" something and he even has the nerve to call her up and put us on the phone together! Wants her to say it to me, that they're done and she does, whether she believes it or not, she did say it, so—and on the surface, I mean, as far as he can tell, we're fine. We are totally good and all is well in the bell tower. But—

[Phone rings.]

Wait, lemme just check, see if this is . . .

[Answers.]

Hello? Yeah, I'm at the, no, I'm already here. Yep. I'm just standing here, so . . . okay.

Yes, okay, alright, got it. I'll meet you here . . . bye.

[Puts her phone away.]

Sorry. I hate it when someone else does that but it really was important. I told you, I think, that I'm meeting somebody. Didn't I? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it.

[Beat.]

And so that's been me, for, like, the last few months, I've just been wandering around with this, this, like . . . knowledge in my head and I'm wanting to, I guess, maybe, do something. To risk it all, everything I have or expect to get, my happiness, to pay it back to him. To let him have it. A taste, right? Of his own whatever . . . medicine and shit, or however that saying goes. What's that thing they used to say, way back when to people who were, you know, avenging loved ones or fighting those mythical animals and all that? Hmmmm? Oh, come on, you know! It's . . . "Payback's a bitch!" That's the one. And hey, it's so fucking true: Payback is a bad-ass bitch.

[Beat.]

And, so, yeah, that's what I'm doing. I mean, in life. And now. Right now, that's what I am doing here in about a few minutes . . . yep. See, what I did—and this is wrong, I know that, and normally, you could put your purse down right there . . . go off to the bathroom all day long and I would not think of touching it. Looking inside. And the same for my boyfriend. Totally true. He used to leave his computer open and on the, like, Swimsuit Edition page and I'd stroll right past, couldn't care, Jess, my show's on. Seriously. But now—shit, now it's a war, with me slinking around and digging through his sock drawer or his wallet if he's stupid enough to leave it around and . . . just a bunch of crazy shit like that.

Looking for names or, or, or dues or something. Somebody that I can blame all this stuff on, march up to their door and pound on it, make some big fucking scene out there on their porch for the neighbors to see. That's where my head is at because of a little Tiffany's necklace—not even any diamonds in it or anything—but that's how I'm feeling as I'm sitting there in a panic with his address book open in my lap, me trying to decipher every name or set of initials like I'm some . . . and then it strikes me. Like a bolt, blazing down from the sky above—maybe not heaven but someplace up there—and zapping me right in the fucking face. Burn! Zap! You know? Oww! Shit. Stupid ol' me. It's been right here, staring at me, the whole damn time. The solution to what I'm feeling here and needing. You know. To make things right, I mean.

[Beat.]

It's not her I care about. It's him. My Douglas. He's the one needs to pay for this shit, true? Not any girls I spoke to for five seconds on the phone one night—I don't care about them. Nope. It's Douglas. So I decide, Okay, so you're so worried about us using protection—not right now, though, 'cause I did tell him about the baby and, surprise, he's, like, completely excited about it. Yeah, he is. Totally. So he's treating me like a tiny little fragile thing, opening doors for me and lifting shit and whatever, I don't mind, it's new to me—but this is how I figure it's all gotta go, so that by the time the kid comes we'll be even.

[Beat.]

I copied all the numbers in his little book there—we have one of those faxes that also do the copies, it's nice—and I'm going down the list, guy by guy, in pretty much alphabetical order, I mean, unless I know for sure that he's an ugly person or fat or whatever, a hairy back, maybe—and I'm fucking them. Once each. Name by name. And you know what, what's really shocking to me but actually not that much because you know why? Guys are pretty much whores, they really are—women are the ones who get that word thrown at 'em but it's really guys who're mostly that way—for being his "friends" or so they say, it's amazing how many of them are totally into what I'm doing. I mean, as long as you promise there's no strings and it's just a fuck and that's all—most of 'em say "Hell yeah!" and are in my pants before I finish explaining it to 'em! It's pretty . . . well, I find it all kinda amusing. I do. Totally.

[Beat.]

And that's what I'm up to. Meeting one of my guys here in a minute. Yeah. It's only my fourth month and I'm already into the Ks. So. I mean, I've had to pick the pace up a little because it was hard in the first trimester with all the . . .

[She makes a puking sound.]

but I've kicked it into gear and it's going really good. Fast. Not sure I'll get through the whole thing but I'm gonna go for it, trying to finish it off before the kid comes. It's a boy, we already know, so there's that.

[Beat.]

Oh, God, should I not've—is this something you didn't wanna know? Sorry. You okay? Because I sometimes have a real big mouth and probably should've said something first before getting all . . . Oh. Oh, shit, wait. No. Sorry! I know, I get it. Don't even say anything. Your fiancé, his last name starts with . . . honestly and I mean totally honest here: I never, and I mean ever, even considered him. I did not. I mean, hey, it's me, I'm not gonna suddenly get all—I know who's off-limits and who's not. I promise. Promise. Yeah. Totally.

[She looks away, checking watch.]

Anyway, I should get . . . right. I've still got some errands to run after this and wanna be home to cook Douglas dinner. He puts in a long day over at the Nissan so he's—that probably seems weird, right, with what I'm doing, but it works in my head so, screw it, you know, I just keep going with it! Whatever, right? Totally. Yeah, so . . . oh, think see him coming now, over there, by the . . .

[She waves.]

I gotta go but we should do something! Little spa action or, you know, before the kid comes. And I wanna hear about you, too. I do! Here am, going on and on and on but am dying to know what you've been up to. Okay? So call me, we'll grab a bite or, or . . . whatever, go tanning, if you want. Wait, maybe that's bad for the baby? Shit, I'm not even sure—I've been, like, six times since got pregnant, so . . . maybe we just do lunch for now, 'kay? Great! Perfect. I'm . . .

[Waving.]

I'll be right there!

[To us again.]

Don't tell anybody, it's Doug's cousin, Tommy, who I've always had this little thing for. I didn't even call him. I swear! I guess he just heard from somebody: he sent me a text and here we are. Go figure. Anyway! I'm off, let's keep in touch or something—God I love what you did to your hair. Honestly, the bangs! I mean, they look awesome. So cute. Really.

[Smiles.]

Alright, I'm really leaving this time but let's do it, get together and . . . you pick. And next time, it's all you, I promise. My mouth is—[Pretends to zip her lips.]—no I mean that! Totally. I do!

[Smiles.]

You shut up, I honestly do! Bitch.

[Beat.]

Okay, wish me luck, 'cause I hear he's . . . totally! What's that saying? "Men: they're hell on the forearms, tough on the knees!"

[Laughs.]

Maybe it's not a saying, I dunno, maybe that was just my mom going on about—anyway, who knows? We shall see, right?

[Beat.]

What? This?

[She points to her neck.]

Yeah, it's nice, huh? Pretty. No, you're right. I mean, as necklaces go.

[Beat.]

Anyhoo! I'm outta here. Call me. And your hair's . . . I love it. No, I do. I do! God, I really do! Bitch.

[Beat.]

I totally do. Yeah. Totally!

[A last smile. She stands and waves offstage. Only now do we see just how big her belly is. Noticeably great with child. She trots off and disappears into the shadows.]

[Silence. Darkness.]
Paul Selig

Mystery School

from

The Best American Short Plays 1995–1996

TONGUES

[A woman in a church pew. Pantsuit, scarf, heavy makeup, cheap gold jewelry. The sound of a revival meeting in progress fades as she turns to face the audience.]

WOMAN I am beginning to suspect that some people think that the gift of tongues is given out as freely as rejections to the Four Oaks Country Club. Eunice Blakey, she don't get tongues. She's fakin' it. Last week I was walkin' home from the motel an' I passed by her garage, an' there she was, waxin' her Pinto an' practicin' for Sunday. She the first one struck down every service. First one passed out in the aisles with her dress up over her head an' her panties wavin' in the face of that cute new usher from Arkansas. First one to confess about pluggin' the milkman when her husband's away, first one to get redeemed every damn week, and don't you just know that it's to let old Arkansas know she's still available for another fall. Last week I got so fed up that as soon as her eyes started rollin' back in her head jumped outa my pew an' started screamin', "FAKER! FAKER! THE HOLY SPIRIT DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU!"

That shut her up.

She was waitin' for me, sure enough, in the parkin' lot after, like she meant some kinda trouble, an' she said, "I do too get the gift of tongues." An' I said, "Yeah, every damn night over at the Motel 6 in every orifice you got. I get to clean up after your messes, case you didn't know, so you best watch your ass with me."

And she said, "Well, my Lord forgives me seventy times upon seventy."

An' I said, "Well, I been counting the condoms in your wastebasket for the past three years an' you done hit that mark some time ago. Even Jesus got his limits. You best get your privates fireproofed, Eunice, 'cause where you're goin' you're gonna need another kinda protection."

An' she said, "My God is a God of forgiveness." An' I said, "Not my Lord. Not my Lord."

How dare she pretend to know the Language of the End Times? And Mary Alice Johnson over there? Her son left the fold to be a tap dancer in Las Vegas. He'd send back pictures of his self with Lola Falana and Debbie Reynolds, and I will tell you which one looked like they had more paint on their faces. She buried him last year. Now she's over at the hospital every week spoonin' out her home-baked goods to others like him. Who's just gonna be damned anyway. I don't know what she's thinkin'. Might as well send 'em to hell on a full stomach. Burn with powdered sugar on their lips. . . .

I was over there one day when my nephew got his hand caught in the disposal, an' saw her comin' outa the Sin Ward with all her Tupperware.

An' I said, "Mary Alice, don't you come too close. Who do you think you're foolin'? You know why nobody never buys your damn fool pies at the bake sale? We know where your pots have been. Don't you just think you're bein' noble?"

An' you know what she had the nerve to tell me? She said, "I thought I was bein' Christian. . . ."

You'll burn in hell with the rest of them. See if I care. You can go bake for the pansies in the ninth circle of hell. Put your Betty Crocker over a flame down there an' see how fast your dough rises, Miss Mary Alice. . . .

You know what's comin'. You know what's comin'. An' won't it be fine. . . .

Let your cakes rise, Mary Alice, for I too will be rising. . . .

Trudy Wilson what holds the Avon parties had us all in, an' I told her the first trumpet was gettin' ready to blow, an' I wanted to look my best for it, an' to give me the works. . . .

An' she told me not to hold my breath because the trumpets and the breakin' of the seals was all symbolic. She'd seen it on 60 Minutes where some Chinaman was tellin' about the seven seals bein' the same as the seven centers in the body used for stickin' needles in acupuncture.

She said, "It ain't somethin' from the outside that's comin', it's comin' from the inside."

An' I told her that if she was listenin' to some Buddhist crap I would buy my face paint somewhere else. Dina Parks got a Mary Kaye outlet outa her guest room, an' she's been saved. An' Trudy says, "The scriptures say Our Father, not Our Father if you happen to agree with me."

An' I thought, you pitiful fool, you pitiful fool. . . .

An' Sheila? She's callin' her psychic friend from work so many times they decided to dock her pay an' put a block on the 900 numbers.

I said, ''What did your psychic friend tell you?"

An' she said she got told it was gonna be a big year for her, an' I thought, yeah, well, burnin' in hell for an eternity ain't exactly a little event, an' that's where you're gonna go for listenin' to false prophets. . . .

Every Friday at Bingo, each time somebody wins big, I think, take your money, take your money, you ain't gonna even have time to enjoy it.

All them people here. All them people who's goin' off smilin' an shakin' hands at the end of every service. Them people what's chaperoning the youth groups and sending money to the starvin' children every month and standin' in line like hucksters to ladle out soup for the homeless, who do they think they kiddin'? Who do they think is payin' attention to their works?

"It makes me feel so good," they testify. "It makes me feel so good to be of service."

An' I think then, come over to my house an' scrub my floors, an' come over to the motel with me an' you change the filth on the sheets an' you scrub out the toilets an' you peel the spunk off the walls that got shot there the night before by your husbands, your good neighbors, and your children. . . .

You come and take this life that has been defiled and you fix it right. I'll take your money. I'll go over to the photo booth at the five and ten and send you pictures of me smiling and write you all a letter every six months tellin' you what I really think of you. It would be my damned pleasure. . . .

You ain't saved. You will no more enter in my Father's house than I will be allowed entrance into your country club. You don't even know the language. And when it comes, you don't even understand. . . .

The right way is narrow. Narrow is the path. I walk into this temple of Pharisees and I know that I am the only one that's leaving. I am the only one here that will not suffer the years of trepidation to come.

Politicians gonna get it. Take my money, give my jobs to wetbacks. Take the prayer outta the schools and teachin' them kids they was mutated outa fungus. I know whose image I am created in.

I told my brother Larry, "You keep your guns out, Larry. You keep your rifles cleaned, because you ain't gonna be allowed where I'm a goin', an' you're gonna be left here when the locusts come and the Angels of Philadelphia and Smyrna break open their seals of pain upon this world. I will be long gone, but you keep your guns clean so you can shoot to kill. You watch who comes knockin' on your door on the dark night. You watch."

The darkness is real. Each time I kneel in prayer, I see my words moving into it. And it becomes stronger and stronger, and it is a force to be reckoned with. And each time I pray for the end, I see it gettin' bigger an' stronger an' more an' more ready to come. More and more ready to topple the cities and smite the unfaithful and bring the glory of the kingdom through the wrath of my God.

Do they all think that He's sittin' up there on His cloud playin' Parcheesi with His only begotten Son? Don't you think that the two of them got their maps spread out across the backs of the martyrs and they're stickin' their own black pins in an' plannin out what will be next? Don't you think that they have waited for this time and are glad?

Don't you think it's not comin'. It's comin' faster than a Cuban refugee can paddle. In the twinkling of an eye. Swifter than the rain and bigger than a nation and louder than a bomb blast.

For I know the language of the end. It comes to me. It speaks through me.

[Body tremor.]

And the governments will tumble, for they are not in truth. . . .

[Body tremor.]

And the mighty will perish, for they are not in truth. . . .

[Body tremor, almost speaking in tongues.]

It's a comin' it's a comin' it's a comin' it's a comin'. It's a comin' it's a comin' it's a comin' it's a comin'.

And the years of waiting. All the years of prayin' without an answer will be because of this. When the fires come and the path is too narrow for any of you to follow, when I have been lifted out of my pew and through the roof of this temple, and when I am rising in the clouds and I am lookin' down upon the pitiable masses who have denied my Lord, who have given themselves over to the ways of sin, when my pantyhose is makin' runs in themselves because I am risin' so high and fine above you, and I look at your country clubs burn and I see your buildings tumble, and your children, poor things, run screamin' on fire from the schoolhouse, while my hair turns into angel hair and my gold necklace melts and rises to become a halo around my head, I will be vindicated and my words will be finally understood. . . .

[Her body begins to shake wildly as she breaks out into tongues. She rises in her pew, triumphantly, gloriously, for all her congregation to see and hear.]

• • • •

AMELIA'S SECOND STEP

[AMELIA sits smoking on a folding chair before a shade bearing the twelve steps of A.A. She is in her fifties, has a gray pageboy haircut, and wears a sweatshirt that reads "Serenity Sucks." Her hand is raised defiantly in the air as she glowers at the floor. She responds, as if called on.]

AMELIA My name is Amelia and you know what I am.

First, I would like to make an amends to the group. It was I who put the dead cat in the collection basket during last Thursday's Promises Meeting.

It was an anniversary gift for my former partner, Ingrid, who, as you may know, has since resigned her post as treasurer of this group and has moved on in search of bigger livers to fry over at the Salvation Army Meeting on 14th Street.

Thank you for calling on me, Billy T. I was quite struck by your saying that maybe God gave us all two arms to reach for Him. It was almost as startling as Heidi M's triumph last week when she described herself as a little sober daisy cross-pollinating the drunken fields of humanity.

Now, I know what step we're on today, which is why I have taken this opportunity to raise my little pink-nailed hand for the first and last time in nine dry months to ask you all a question that has been burning itself into my detoxifying skull ever since I first got shanghaied into this rat cellar of Our Lady of Perpetual Thirst Church.

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO DO IT?

YOU PEOPLE ALL SPEAK OF COMING TO BELIEVE IN SOME HIGHER

POWER AS IF IT WERE AS NATURAL AS A BODILY FUNCTION.

Ingrid farts and she calls it a spiritual awakening! Ingrid! The love of my life and the bane of my existence, with whom I shared for fourteen years a room the size of a colostomy bag on Greenwich Avenue. And it was some kinda marriage and some kinda honeymoon. You coulda tied the beer cans to our butts and sent us rattling down Seventh, if you could ever get us out the door.

"Did you take out the garbage?" "Last week."

"Did you feed the cats?" "Last week."

And so we lived in alcoholic bliss, surrounded by the multiple corpses of dead felines and enough trash to start a landfill in New Jersey.

And I honestly thought we were happy.

And then one day she shows up in the hole in the wall we called home and she has purchased a vacuum cleaner, with what should have been our beer money for the month. And she picks up the remains of Fluffy and Hiawatha and plops them into a Hefty bag, and continues to ravage through the debris of our lives until she gets to me. And she gets to me, and she says, "Things are gonna change, Amelia. Things are gonna change, Amelia. Things are gonna change."

And, like a dutiful fool, I follow her here into folding-chair hell, and we count our days in tandem, and we snigger at the personal revelations that are shared daily with the uniformity of a Geraldo broadcast. And I do the crosswords in the back, and Ingrid pretends to listen, and we keep each other away from the Schlitz and the barroom, and I thought we were still pretty tight, but something musta got by me.

Because one day old Ingrid comes home and announces that she's found God. "I've got it,'' she says.

And I said, "Is it contagious?"

And Ingrid the Marxist, and one of the five most intelligent women I have ever known in my life, is standing there before me in her lederhosen telling me she has seen the proverbial Light.

"Where is it?" I said. "Underneath that stack of Life magazines in the hallway? Behind that fermenting cat box in the kitchen? Did the Tooth Fairy come and slam it under your dentures while you were sleeping?"

I would like to believe in fairies, Ingrid. I would like to believe in angels. I would like to believe that Shirley McClaine did not accidentally high kick herself in the head during rehearsals for Can Can but is actually saying something of possible relevance."

And six months later, prayin' Ingrid's packing her rucksack to follow this light, which, for some reason I cannot fathom, has told her to detach herself from toxic, co-dependent, farting old me, who, unlike her, CANNOT SEEM TO KEEP HERSELF OFF THE SAUCE FOR MORE THAN THREE DAYS, NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE TRIES!

WHERE? WHERE DO I LOOK, INGRID? AFTER YOU? YOUR FUTURE'S WRITTEN ON THE WALLS. SIX MONTHS FROM NOW YOU'RE GONNA BE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE SALVATION ARMY WITH YOUR LIPS WRAPPED AROUND A TUBA NOZZLE LIKE SOME REJECT FROM THE DAUGHTERS OF BILITIS PRODUCTION OF GUYS AND DOLLS!

[Bringing attention back into room, attempting to regain composure.]

I heard you say while you were speaking that you didn't believe in coincidence anymore. That, perhaps, coincidence was your Higher Power's way of remaining anonymous. I found that very interesting. I will have to put that in my little sober thinking cap and let it ferment. But I had a coincidence today. I ran into Ingrid.

Well, it was actually planned, as I had been up all night having a heated debate with an unopened bottle of scotch, which was making an irrefutable argument as to why I shouldn't just drink up, get it over with, and die. And in an absolute panic, I find myself tearing at the Life magazines, and lifting up the cat box, and running, running outa the apartment like a dry drunk outa hell.

And I am waiting, breathless, when Ingrid comes twelve-stepping her way down the stairs of the morning meeting.

And I say, "Ingrid, I am not going to make it, and I don't understand. . . ."

And she looks at me in all seriousness, and she starts talking about monkeys. . . .

It seems there are these monkeys, see, on these little honey islands that polka-dot the South Seas, and they are starving. And one day, these scientists go and dump all these sweet potatoes in the water, and they gather on the beach of this first island to receive the miracle of the yams.

Now, a yam is not native cuisine to these creatures. In fact, they had never seen one before. But these little simians, out of sheer hunger and desperation, begin to go through the painful process of learning how to peel and eat a yam. And first one does it, and then another. And when the hundredth monkey on this one little rock chip finally triumphs and heaves the thing into his gullet, all at once, all the other monkeys on all the neighboring islands, without having to go through the abject pain and humiliation of trial and error, without having to slam their yams against their foreheads in frustration, without screeching to the bloody skies that the food which has finally been offered them is inedible, suddenly and miraculously begin to eat them, too.

For, Ingrid is telling me, the new information had been picked up by the race mind. That the species had been permanently altered and filled, but that others had to go before them.

And that it didn't matter to her what I chose to believe in, so long as it was tough enough to keep me from killing myself one fucking day at a time.

And as she is walking away, Ingrid, the Diane Fossey of the A.A. Congo, turns and says: "For all you know, Amelia, you may be the hundredth monkey, and when you come to believe, what might happen then will be too beautiful for words. . . ."

AM I TO TRUST THAT WHILE MY WHOLE LIFE IS TUMBLING THROUGH THE AIR LIKE A FLYING KARAMAZOV BROTHER, I HAVE ONLY TO REACH FOR THIS THING YOU SAY AND SOMEHOW TRUST THAT I WILL BE CAUGHT?

Because I fear things. I fear change, and I fear that there may indeed be some kind of peace to be found which eludes me. That I have encumbered myself with too many farting belief systems which preclude the simple state of willingness that you describe as the only prerequisite for faith. That I have maligned a truth in ignorance because I am constitutionally incapable of grasping the simplicity behind it. And that you people, who are kind to me no matter what I say and do, really have found some way.

Don't you think I would like to believe in something? Don't you think I would like to believe that the Red Sea did split in two like a dropped cheesecake? Or that a Buddha did find enlightenment under a bodhi tree, or that some messiah did trod the earth two thousand years ago and still does in the hearts of those who've embraced him? Don't you think that even after crawling past the world religions on my distended belly, I would still like to believe that this thing you've found can fill me, too?

And despite the fact that this action defies all rationality, despite the fact that it poses a terrific threat to all I have ever trusted and held dear, and despite the fact that it may be what is needed to save this cranky old life . . . my arms, as if of their own volition . . . they are reaching.

[Lights dim on AMELIA, her expression is sad, yet hopeful.]

• • • •

DR. EDIE GIVES A COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

[DR. EDIE, a happily disheveled woman in her fifties, takes her place at a podium festooned with flowers. She wears a ratty fur coat and a corsage. She looks out at her audience with what can only be described as love.]

DR. EDIE I have been told that today is a special occasion, so I have worn my rat.

All occasions are special to Dr. Edie Kelvin, but I am especially honored because I have been told that I am here to address a room full of people who hear voices.

I have not felt moved to don the skins of a dead animal since the last time I took on a room, which was last Thursday, when I was escorted bodily from a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, of which I am not a member, on the use of prescription drugs in medicating those suffering from auditory hallucinations.

There, I was heard to scream loudly, "JOAN OF ARC WOULDA BEEN ON PROZAC, MILTON WOULDA BEEN ON THORAZINE, AND YOU COCKSUCKERS WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE CANDLES AWAY FROM DICKENSON SO'S SHE COULDN'T BURN AT ALL."

I myself was born hearing voices. And I consider it to be quite a privilege to be invited to share my story with you, who not only hear them, but have the courage to follow what they say.

One winter, many years ago, when Dr. Edie was but a mite, her voices guided her to the bus stop outside the Yeshiva to lie in wait for her current beau, Morty Shine, the sexiest nine-year-old in Bensonhurst. When Morty arrived, as the voices promised he would, little Edie was horrified. For Morty appeared before her for the very first time wearing glasses. Thick, ugly, bottle-busters with horned rims that lifted the hairs from the sides of his head so's he looked like the Hassidic Pippi Longstocking.

Edie surveyed her ruined boyfriend, and a strange question began to form in her mind. "Morty?'' she said, "How did you know you needed them?"

And Morty reported the following: He hadn't known he needed them. It wasn't until the Festival of Lights, when he had reached to ignite the candles and instead sent his sister up in flames, that his parents wondered if there might not actually be something physically wrong. Because little Shula Shine, though spindly in frame, did not in the least bit resemble their menorah.

Morty Shine, it was revealed, was nearly blind. He had been his whole life. He had actually managed to survive for nine years on a planet firmly believing that there were nothing but shadows beyond him. And what shocked Edie even more was that up until that day, he had honestly thought that everyone else in the world saw that way, too.

To say that this bit of information confused little Edie would be an understatement. For she had never before conceived of the notion of a "subjective" reality. She had assumed, like Morty, that everyone else thought exactly as she did. And she began to mistrust herself, worrying that perhaps she, too, was wrong, and deceived by what she saw . . . and heard . . . around her.

And, as if enraged by her refusal to bear witness to her truth, the voices that had always accompanied her through her days began to turn. . . .

And became cruel.

As Dr. Edie aged, they got louder. Harsh and horrible. They spoke of Dr. Edie's mistakes. Her failed marriage. Her unfinished dissertation. The child miscarried one night after an evening of ballroom dancing with a husband who was no longer hers. The voices told her that she was not enough, and Dr. Edie, frightened and alone, agreed.

In those days, Gawd spoke to her in different ways than he does now. He spoke to her in instances, unable to be heard through the clamor and din inside Dr. Edie's unprescribed head. And the instances began to lead her, slowly, as she pulled herself through the thickness of days and the darkness of nights to a hotel room on West 72nd Street. Where the transients lived. Other women without settlements. Those whose voices had been silenced, by themselves, and by a world that no longer believes that simply being a human being is cause enough for respect.

For some people are born with less skin than others. Some people are born with almost none at all. They bleed through their clothing as they walk down the street, and their eyes shine brightly in the anticipation of being struck.

Gawd spoke to Dr. Edie in instances then. Through signs. Through symbols. Through the changing of a streetlight that might lead her down an alley, that might lead her to a stranger who might smile in passing, with a kindness in the eyes. . . .

And then one day, when she was lookin' to get in outa the rain, she found herself standing in the doorway of Teachers College. And Gawd spoke to her directly, saying, "Enter, Edie Kelvin, for I have made you for this love. . . ."

"You made me for what?" I said. "Gawd, you made me for this love?" And I said to him, "What is in it for me? Because being a cheerleader ain't my idea of success, and being kind ain't my idea of strength, and teaching the young five days a week ain't my idea of a high time, so's ya know."

Well, Gawd come back to me an' he said, "Edie, you have been created for this because you got the passion to prove me right. You got the knowledge of the night scares to make it better for them in the day, and they will recognize it. They will know it in your smile and see it in your eyes that the pain of being can be mellowed into compassion."

And I screamed, "Gawd, you got the wrong chickie here. You got the wrong bird."

And he said, "Who are you to tell me such things? You will do fine."

And so he sent me to Herbert Lehman High School in the Bronx, where the chairs in the faculty lounge ain't been upholstered since the WPA, and the water fountain sends up blisters for fluid. He sent me to Herbert Lehman High School, where the students are black, and much to Dr. Edie's horror, all looked alike.

At first.

And then one day from her chalkboard she looked out across the sea of hope, and she began to notice how many shades of brown there were before her, and how much light was in the eyes of those she addressed, and how their potential radiated from them, like a flame threatening to devour her.

And she was humbled by this. She was humbled by their potential, and she was deeply ashamed at what she had done with her own. She had cried herself to sleep too many nights with what might have been, and there she was now, confronted with the possibilities of what could be, might be, with a little bit of encouragement.

And she began to teach to their potential as if it was the most holy thing ever created. Because in Dr. Edie's mind it was holy. And she saw in each of them the tree that might grow from the seed, and she never once let that vision slip from her mind. And every day her innocence was reborn. Every day, she saw the potential in them, the beauty that was created in them come forth, she was reminded of her own.

Because for all she had been through, and for all the wrinkles on her skin, she was not so different.

And suddenly, the flame that had lain dormant and hidden inside her own bosom began to burn, and the voices that had always been there, censoring her, demanding her silence, one by one, began to sing. . . .

"WEND YOUR WAY, BABIES," I say now, and I watch them stumble forward into their lives, and they are so very brave. They have such expectation on their faces. They have such hope in their hearts.

And I see myself standing on a mountain screaming out, "WEND YOUR WAY, BABIES." And I wave, and I clap, and I applaud for 'em all, because they are righteous in their being, and they are noble in their efforts, and they are loved, LOVED by Dr. Edie Kelvin. Because they are making their way back into the forest and she knows what lays ahead. And still they go. Still they go because they are young, and because they must. And perhaps when the nights are dark and cold, and the brambles on the path try to tear at their precious skins, they will remember old Edie, and what she said, and that someone once looked at them with the kindness in their eyes. And if they choose to, they have each other, and that is a fine and righteous thing.

SO WEND YOUR WAY, BABIES. WEND YOUR WAY. And you're gonna cry sometimes, but that's part of it. Because this is a Big School and you grade yourself, so you might as well be generous in your assessment. And if you don't do it, somebody else is gonna do it for you, and they might not be. Because in the long run, babies, what does it matter? What does it matter what they think and what they say? What does it matter what they do to ya? 'Cause you got yourself two feet made by Gawd, and you keep asking them to take you to the next fight place, and there you gonna be, babies. There you gonna be.

And if Dr. Edie could, she would walk before you. And she would bat away the terrors with the umbrella she carries with her always. She would beat away the monsters on the trail and she would make sweet beds of moss and leaves for her babies to lie in when they are tired.

But then she would not be a good teacher. Then she would not be wise and honor all the wisdom that she sees in her young. So she prays at night for them. Loudly. And she celebrates them. Each and every mistake that is made along the way she applauds as loudly as the victories, because Dr. Edie knows how learning occurs. And she says, "Lord, make their paths wide. No narrow paths for my young. Make their paths wide, and let them know all there is to know. And let them suffer, and rejoice and grow wild in their own ways. But let them stay gentle. For gentleness is not weakness. It's an act of cowardice to be cruel, because you never gotta see the repercussions. People tend to cry in private, and by then you have turned away. . . .

And those nights, when they come home from the jobs they said they'd never take, and they lay on their beds and think they are not enough, Dr. Edie will travel to them, travel through time and space with her rat flying and her umbrella beatin' at the wind, and say, "Oh, yes you are. Oh, yes you are."

And you practice your tuba on the subway. And you finish your novel in the attic room when the kids have gone to bed and the husband's had his fill. And you paint your pictures in grease on the skillet of the fast food if you have to, but then invite all the customers in to see.

And you tell your stories on the street corner, and at the tables in your twelve-step meetings, and to the cop who gives you the ticket, and to the doctor who threatens to put you away. But you are never silent.

And you pray at night for the courage to continue expressing your truth, and know that Gawd always answers a prayer like that. And know that your truth may change, as Dr. Edie's has, before she remembered who she was. Because Dr. Edie divorced herself many years ago, and has paid alimony for it ever since. But she is not paying anymore.

And she will not be silenced.

And she will continue shouting her truth, until the men in white come and carry her off screaming and hollering, and she will wear her rat proudly from this day forth. For hers is a Holy War, and she will always honor the voices that tell her where to turn. . . .

And if you could accuse Dr. Edie Kelvin of being an idealist, just think for a moment, and know that you are the kind of person who believes that having an ideal is something to be accused of.

Because in the final analysis, babies, it's your own voices you gotta follow. Not old Dr. Edie's. She hears her own. . . .

Let yours be kind ones.
Nicky Silver

Claire

from

The Best American Short Plays 1999–2000

[CLAIRE is seated at her armoire, powdering her face. She is gracious in the extreme.]

CLAIRE I have, for a long time, been a person who tries to see the best in others. I have, always, tried to see the beauty in all things. No matter how grotesque.

And I find, more and more, I live in a grotesque world. Isn't everything ugly all of a sudden? I do not understand, I must admit, what passes for music in this age. But then, I force myself to remember that my mother did not understand my music, and I try to see the beauty in giving in, giving way, like a weeping willow bending gracefully in the inevitable face of gravity.

[She glances into the mirror and is momentarily sidetracked.]

My mother was a sad woman to begin with, and then, when I was eight years old, she lost a baby. And her sadness became exaggerated to the point of farce.

[Returning to her point.]

This morning, I went to the dressmaker to be fitted for a dress. I walked to the shop. It's not very far and I enjoy what's left of the fresh air. And I enjoy seeing people. Or I did. You see, more and more people seem to feel it all right to behave anyway they choose. For instance, more and more people seem to be—how shall I put this?—spitting. I do not approve of this. Sometimes they walk over to the curb and spit into the street, as if this were so much better than spitting in the middle of the pavement. It's not. And apparently plenty of people feel as I do and they spit right where they are. And not just men, but women too! With hairdos and skirts. Now, I want to see the beauty in all of this, but it's very hard. It is eight blocks from my door to the dressmaker's and I must've passed thirty-five people spitting in the first three. Is it something in the air? Is it a by-product of auto exhaust that has everyone spitting so continually? Now, I am willing to blame an awful lot on the industrial revolution, but not this, this sudden spitting frenzy. No.

[She glances at her bed and loses her train of thought.]

When my sister died in my mother's womb, my father buried his head in bottles and, I suspect, under the covers of strange beds.

[Returning.]

At any rate, after the third block of my walk, I started counting these people who committed what I considered were affronts against civilization. Have we learned nothing in the past five thousand years? Don't these people, these spitters, realize that we all have to live together, and I would no sooner want to see their expectorations as I would their bowel movements? You may think me silly, but I believe that all the wars and suffering and prejudice and hate come down to nothing more than an unwillingness to understand each other. If we would only allow each other the space of our dignity, we would save so much time and trouble, and the money that we spend on nuclear weapons could be given to the New York City Ballet, who really do lovely work, that no one could find fault with!

As I was saying, I started counting "spitters." And within the next three blocks, I counted thirteen more—well, actually I counted fourteen. But I allowed for one man who was also muttering to himself, and barking, from time to time, like a dog. I believe this man was suffering from, the once little-known, suddenly fashionable, disease called Tourette's syndrome. I saw a story all about it on a television news magazine, and I was, therefore, in a position to be sympathetic. My aesthetic is not so rigid that it doesn't allow for legitimate illness. I have never been sick a day in my life—but when I was eighteen, my father developed cancer of the pancreas and died. And he left me a great deal of money.

I don't know why my mind keeps wondering back to my parents.

It's not what I intended, because something happened this morning, and I'm trying to get to that. But my mind keeps wondering off in tangents. A dear friend of mine once told me I spoke in a baroque fashion. I've no idea what she meant, but I'm sure it wasn't a compliment. Oh well, I never liked her anyway!

Oh, I'll get to my point, the thing that happened. I will. But right now I can't help remembering my mother's face at my father's funeral. It was long. She had a long face. Like a Modigliani painting. I've never liked Modigliani, although I found the Off-Broadway play about him, several seasons back, mildly entertaining. Still, I thought Mother was lovely. She had more dimension than his paintings. And she moved. Slowly. She possessed the grace of a ballet dancer and the alacrity of a pachyderm—I'm using sarcasm to make a point. She was languid in an era when things considered beautiful actually were. Before minimalism crept into our landscape, when we could see farther and were unhindered by the cataract of modernism. I seem to see her all the time as a ballet dancer, in a Degas painting. I've always liked Degas, and I feel badly that they never made a play about him. But Mother was lovely. And before "the baby," as we euphemistically referred to her miscarriage, she was melancholy but serene. Her hands were white, and she never wore nail polish. Every year at Christmas she would tie bows on handmade presents, her fingers dancing round the ribbons. And she worshipped my father, who was enormous. He had to be six and a half feet tall, with feet as big as tennis rackets. He scared me, truth be told. He would be very quiet, but inside there was an anger, building up, building over something, it could be anything. And then all of a sudden he would explode! And fists went flying and plates and tempers. But he never swore. Which is odd. And makes him seem, somehow, less masculine, in my mind. But after "the baby," things changed drastically.

Mother, whom I mentioned was laconic to begin with, became absolutely inert. I don't mean the days immediately following, which, of course, she spent in bed. But the days became weeks and she wouldn't budge. She never got out of bed of her own accord. After about three weeks, we, my father and I, foisted her into a sitting position and put a book in her lap. We tilted her head so she was in a position to read. But she didn't! I sat there and stared and stared, and her eyes never touched a word! I said to her, "Mother, why don't you read?"

. . . I do not care to. She responded. Resolutely.

Oh. Well. If she didn't care to, she didn't care to. There was little arguing. So at day's end, we put the book on her nightstand and turned out her lamp. In the morning, we tried again. "Why don't you read, Mother? You might enjoy it." "I do not care to."

Hmmm. After about a week of "the book game," I went with my father into her room. We tried to interest her in getting up, getting dressed. "I do not care to." This was a woman of definite likes and dislikes. But my father had decided this "bed-rest thing" had gone on long enough. Perhaps, being a woman himself and only recently having had an unborn baby die in his belly, he felt he was the best judge. I'm using sarcasm to make a point. So we lifted her out of bed. This was easy. He was big. She was small. And he held her up, rather like a marionette, while I dressed her. Now I was eight, and naturally jealous that I'd been replaced as the center of the house, so I put her in a very ugly outfit! Plaid skin, floral sweater, two different earrings and so on. "We're going for a walk!" my father informed her. And she responded—exactly right! "I do not care to." But out we went and, flanked on either side, she greeted the fresh air. We looked like Oscar Levant, Fred Astaire, and a drug-ridden Nanette Fabray, three strong in strides from The Bandwagon!

Now don't misunderstand me. She was not catatonic. No. She was not a zombie. She just chose not to. From that day on, she chose not to. We pretty much had to prop her up all over the place. We'd stand her at the stove, and she'd cook something—although her disinterest in the project usually resulted in dinners of pudding and peas. Or my favorite: Aspirin! She just reached up, into the cupboard and cooked what she grabbed.

[She is really enjoying herself.]

Oh, we'd prop her up in front of the radio. We'd put a vacuum in her hand and she's clean the same spot, over and over again . . . until it was immaculate! At first, I didn't mind at all. It was like having this huge doll that really did wet herself. And I'd have my friends over after school to play with her. But, before long, I grew bored . . . the way children do. And as the years passed, my father came home later and later, leaving her to me. And he never yelled anymore. And he never threw things.

By the time he died he seemed very sad. That was a terrible time, the time he died. I was eighteen—Oh, I said that. And although he left me ample money to have someone take care of her, I didn't feel I could leave my mother. Besides, I was still in high school, where I was considered very pretty and everyone liked my stories. I was always charming, even then. And in an era where chastity was vogue, I was liberal with my favors. I was very popular with any number of young men attending NYU and Columbia, and even as far away as Princeton. It wasn't that I liked sex so much. Because I didn't. Then. I don't know. I was too giggly to really dictate what I wanted. And besides, that was unheard of then.

[With authority.]

Women today are very lucky that it's become fashionable to actually indicate to their bed partners the location of their clitoris—excuse me, excuse me, but it's true. But I was never stupid. And I saw my peccadilloes as escape routes. Remember, I was still propping her up and picking her clothes and cooking for her, unless I was willing to dine on Ajax, which she took to incorporating into her recipes the way homemakers on a budget work with tuna.

The point is, I quickly became pregnant. I never took precautions, knowing little about them, and wouldn't if I'd known more. I didn't see a doctor. I didn't have to. I knew it. I could feel it. So I spent the next week dating the seven candidates who might be my baby's father. A couple, I was sure, would softly hold my hand all the way to their Park Avenue doctors to have my ticket to freedom scraped from inside me. But Philip was, then, a gentle man. And I could tell when he looked at me that he adored me. Even if I couldn't tell when we made love. So the following week, I informed him that I was carrying his child, and true to form, he asked me to marry him.

Three months later, my mother, who'd really deserted me ten years earlier, deserted me finally. She died of a stroke in mid-afternoon. She should have been dressed. She could have been up and doing things. But I assume . . . she did not care to. I thought of leaving Philip, since I'd married him to escape my life, which now escaped me. But I was pregnant and he was wealthy and solicitous. In time, I had Philip, whom I loved. And Amy, whom I did not. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because she's such a graceful and delicate flower—I use sarcasm to illustrate myself.

Children are an odd phenomenon, don't you find? I have to say, I've never really understood them. It seems so irrational to me. You create something. You carry something around, inside of you, for what seems an eternity, and then you are delivered a person. A stranger. And you can tell me otherwise, but from the minute we're born, we are people. My children had likes and dislikes from day one. Philip adored music and art and emulated me. While Amy, on the other hand, turned her nose up at my breast and never really came around!

[Lecturing.]

I see young mothers in the park walking their children, like poodles on leashes. I am aghast! They treat their children as if they were objects. I claim no expertise. But it has been my experience that children are not dogs. Were they dogs, I'm afraid, I'd've been tempted to put Amy to sleep several times by now. I don't mean to be hard about Amy. I'm sure she has many fine qualities—which are not apparent to me. All people have goodness inside of them! Only some people have very little, and it's very, very, very deep down. And she is a stranger! That's what it comes down to. I know she came from me, but she's not part of—oh, God. I must sound awful. But it's true. My feet are part of me. My hands are part of me. My children are people I know. I do love them. Don't mistake my objectivity for indifference. I love my children very much. I just see that they are other people. And, if you ask me, we'd have a great deal less crime and drug addiction if mothers and fathers realized their children are not their pets. And this understanding would lead to happier children, healthier adults, less crime, lower taxes, a thriving economy, prettier architecture, less television, more theater, less litigation, more understanding, less alienation, more love, less hate, and a calmer humanity who felt less of a need to spit all the time in public! Because that's what it is, really. All this spitting in public, is just a thinly veiled hostility for me, my taste, my aesthetic, and the common consensus of what is generally considered socially acceptable! And isn't it wonderful how I have come full circle and can now continue with my story in a natural, logical fashion!

Everything goes in circles really. Except things that go in straight lines. Hmmm.

I was counting spitters, vile, angry, lost souls who felt impotent to change their lives in view of what they think is fate. Well, after about a hundred of these spitting villains, I could take no more. I was in a rage! What has happened to my lovely city! What has happened to it? The buildings are suddenly eyesores. There are placards everywhere, for so-called bands I've never heard of with fascist-sounding names and illustrations of women so wanton as to degrade women everywhere.

Finally, I could take no more. So I started following this one young woman, who looked reasonably sane—except for the fact that she was wearing a tweed skirt with sneakers, but I allowed for a foot condition. She had on a blazer. Her light brown hair was piled high on her head with a tortoise dip. She looked fine. She looked normal. I thought to myself, "I will just stare at this young woman. I will not look to her right. I will not look to her left. I will see only her. And I will convince myself, that I am surrounded by similarly sane young women. I won't look, so I'll assume everyone around me is just as polite and normal as she. . . ." And it was working. I had myself believing it. Everything was lovely . . . and then she veered over to the curb.

[A real panic builds inside of her.]

I said a silent prayer. This woman had become, to me, a symbol: the last great kindness in a once kind world. My breathing changed. I felt my hands grow tense and saw my knuckles whiten in my clenched fists. She walked along the curb for a few feet. I thought, "Thank you, God, thank you. She's just walking along the curb. She's a little erratic, but she's not one of them, she's one of us!" And then slowly, it seemed as if everything was in slow motion . . . she leaned over. I hoped, I prayed she was going to faint!

I hoped she was ill and going to die! "Let her die a martyr to beauty, but please, God, please, don't let her spit! Let her fall over, into the street, into the traffic, let her be canonized the patron saint of civilization, but please God, don't let her spit!"

And she made a small coughing noise. "She's coughing—you're coughing—she's coughing—aren't you?—please don't be clearing your throat—just be coughing!" If I shut my eyes, I'll miss whatever happens and I can pretend that nothing happened and I can go on, continue to live and hope! But they would not close! I couldn't shut them! I wanted to! I tried to! But I couldn't! I was hypnotized! I just stared and stared and the seconds became hours and the hours weeks and the weeks millennia! And then it happened!

SHE SPIT!

And the world went black and the sun fell out of the sky, burning the earth and sending the building tumbling, bricks flying, people crushed in the rain of debris and humanity, which had only recently learned to walk was smashed into oblivion for all time! "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?" I found my hand on her sleeve. "Don't you understand what you've done?!" She spun around with such a look of utter horror and disgust on her face that I was only spurred to continue. "The world is decomposing! Humanity is rotting away! We're reverting to the behavior of apes and YOU'RE TO BLAME!" "Let go of me!" She shouted, very loudly, much more loudly than was called for. "I had to spit. What's it to you?!"And with that she shoved me, hard, and I fell onto the pavement.

All I could think about was how sad, how sorry, I was, that I'd chosen badly, chosen someone who didn't care, couldn't be convinced, didn't see that we are all just withering, dying, crumbling in on ourselves. . . . I looked around from my position on the sidewalk and I was the center of quite a crowd. And I thought, "Oh no. I'm sitting in it. She's gone, and I am sitting in her expectoration!"

[Sad and shaken.]

And. Then. I shut my eyes and I hurried to the dressmaker. I was late of course and she was already on her next client, my old friend, Phoebe Potter. We were girls in school together. She looked so old, and I was so distraught from my experience that I mistook her for a mirror. It broke me completely, to see myself in her eyes and the folds of her flesh. "I'll come back tomorrow." "No, no. Mrs. Potter's almost finished." And so I waited. And, soon, it was my turn.

I looked into the mirror as I was pinned. And I was me again. I was shaken, but I was myself. I heard music in my head while she worked. And. As soon as I could, I rushed home. To Tony.

[Quite still, forgetting herself.]

I did not speak. I unbuttoned his shirt and he wrapped his arms around my waist, mumbling something into my ear, which I couldn't or didn't understand. Didn't care. And I filled up the palms of my hands with his shoulders. He pulled my blouse from my skirt in the back and I pressed my hips against his genitals and felt his erection, under his jeans. I kicked off my shoes and unbuttoned his pants, holding him, hardened, in my right hand and pulling his hair with my left, while he penetrated my mouth with his tongue. He unbuttoned my blouse down the back and pulled it off, lowering himself to take my nipples in his mouth, while I stroked his eyelids with my fingertips. How late in life I came to understand sex, how much time I wasted. He unfastened my skirt and it fell to the ground. I bent over and licked his ears and the back of his neck. He licked my thighs and in between. And I led him to my bed. My baby. My baby boy. And he stood over me, making me want him, and understanding that I wanted to be made to want. And we made love with the violent passion of children and animals ripping at each other, biting and hurting beautifully. . . . And from my bed, the window views the river and the city beyond, and as he held me, as I had him, I became a child again, the years dripping away and falling off of me, until I was a girl. And the river flowed and the city on the other side changed from what it is to what it was: the sharp angry teeth of the building, the glass angles and steel knives became rounded. Until he finished. And I finished. And I threw my head back and the sun was setting on a city of the past, where everything was beautiful, and we were children, and more . . . easily pleased.

[She looks around and realizes that she has exposed more than she intended.]

So you see, sex, it seems, is very important, when it comes to seeing the beauty of things.

[She crosses to her dressing table and slowly lets her hair down. The lights fade slowly.]
credits and permissions

Aronson, Billy. Reunions (excerpt). Copyright © 2001 by Billy Aronson. From The Best American Short Plays 2002–2003.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to www.billyaronson.com.

Bonafede, Bruce. Advice to the Players (excerpt). Copyright © 1984, 1985 by Bruce Bonafede. From The Best American Short Plays 1986.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to www.brucebonafede.com.

Bumbalo, Victor. Show (excerpt). Copyright © 1992 by Victor Bumbalo. From The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to vgb828@gmail.com.

Chapman, Clay McLeod. Undertow. One of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Gallant, Clay McLeod Chapman, John Guare, Neil LaBute, Daniel Frederick Levin, Quincy Long, and Laura Shaine. From The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to cmcpumpkinpie@gmail.com.

Del Collins, Marla. The Lovers and Others of Eugene O'Neill (excerpts). Copyright © 2008 by Marla Del Collins. From The Best American Short Plays 2008–2009.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to marladel.collins@liu.edu.

El Guindi, Yussef. Karima's City (excerpts). Copyright © 2006 by Yussef El Guindi. Such a Beautiful Voice Is Sayeda's (excerpt). Copyright © 2006 by Yussef El Guindi. From The Best American Short Plays 2004–2005.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Leah Hamos, Abrams Artists Agency, 275 Seventh Avenue, 26th Floor, New York, NY 10001, or leah.hamos@abramsartny.com.

Feffer, Steve. And Yet . . . (excerpts). Copyright © 2012 by Steve Feffer. From The Best American Short Plays 2010–2011.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Steve Feffer, Creative Writing Program, Western Michigan University, 909 Sprau Tower, Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331, or steve.feffer@wmich.edu.

Filloux, Catherine. The Beauty Inside. Copyright © 2004 by Catherine Filloux. From The Best American Short Plays 2002–2003.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Elaine Devlin Literary, Inc., 917-623-9273, or edevlinlit@aol.com.

Gallant, Daniel. Determined to Prove. One of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Gallant, Clay McLeod Chapman, John Guare, Neil LaBute, Daniel Frederick Levin, Quincy Long, and Laura Shaine. From The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Daniel Gallant, P.O. Box 503, New York, NY 10159-0503, or gallant.arts@gmail.com.

George, Madeleine. The Most Massive Woman Wins (excerpts). Copyright © 1998 by Madeleine George. From The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Seth Glewen, The Gersh Agency, Inc., 212-634-8158, or sglewen@gershny.com.

Holtzman, Willy. San Antonio Sunset (excerpts). Copyright © 1987 by Willy Holtzman. From The Best American Short Plays 1989.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Mary Hardin, Bret Adams, Ltd., 448 West 44th St., New York, NY 10036.

Kuritz, Paul. The Yellow Wallpaper (excerpts). Copyright © 2002 by Paul Kuritz. From The Best American Short Plays 2001–2002.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Paul Kuritz, 100 West Chestnut Street, Apartment 2204, Chicago, IL 60610.

LaBute, Neil. Totally. One of seven works collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Seven Card Draw. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Gallant, Clay McLeod Chapman, John Guare, Neil LaBute, Daniel Frederick Levin, Quincy Long, and Laura Shaine. From The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Joyce Ketay, The Gersh Agency, Inc., 41 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10010, 212-997-1818.

Madden, Dano. Ella (excerpt). Copyright © 2010 by Dano Madden. From The Best American Short Plays 2009–2010.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Dano Madden, P.O. Box 3766, New York, NY 10163, or danomadden@gmail.com.

Mann, Theodore. G.C. (excerpt). Copyright © 2008 by Theodore Mann. From The Best American Short Plays 2007–2008.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Jonathan Mann, Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Margulies, Donald. Pitching to the Star (excerpts). Copyright © 1993 by Donald Margulies. From The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Derek Zasky, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, 212-903-1396, or dsz@wmeentertainment.com.

Miller, Susan. It's Our Town, Too (excerpts). Copyright © 1993 by Susan Miller. From The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to susanmillernyc@gmail.com.

Mueller, Lavonne. American Dreamer (excerpts). Copyright © 1995 by Lavonne Mueller. From The Best American Short Plays 1995–1996. The Confession of Many Strangers. Copyright © 1998 by Lavonne Mueller. From The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to lavonnemueller@cyberport.net.

Oates, Joyce Carol. When I Was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn't Want Me. Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Carol Oates. From The Best American Short Plays 2001–2002. No part of this material may be reprinted in whole or in part without the express written permission of Gersh, attention: Phyllis Wender, agent for Joyce Carol Oates.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Phyllis Wender, The Gersh Agency, Inc., 41 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10010.

Pepper, Cary. Small Things (excerpts). Copyright © 2006 by Cary Pepper. From The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to carypepper@aol.com.

Pintauro, Joe. Ten-Dollar Drinks (excerpts). Copyright © 1998 by Joe Pintauro. From The Best American Short Plays 2003–2004.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to David Williams Management, LLC, 9416 Olympic Boulevard, Suite F, Beverley Hills, CA 90212, 310-595-6268.

Roderick, Michael. I'll Do It Tomorrow . . . (excerpt). Copyright © 2005 by Michael Roderick. From The Best American Short Plays 2004–2005. Props (excerpts). Copyright © 2005 by Michael Roderick. From The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to michael@smallpondenterprises.com.

Schisgal, Murray. First Love (excerpt). Copyright © 1998 by Murray Schisgal. From The Best American Short Plays 1999–2000. The Hunchback of Central Park West. Copyright © 2006 by Murray Schisgal. From The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006. Used by permission.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Zachary Schisgal, zach@theschisgalagency.com.

Selig, Paul. Mystery School. Copyright © 1996 by Paul Selig. From The Best American Short Plays 1995–1996.

Silver, Nicky. Claire. Copyright © 1999 by Nicky Silver. From The Best American Short Plays 1999–2000. Claire is from a collection of three short, thematically related pieces, The Eros Trilogy by Nicky Silver. The Eros Trilogy received its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre, New York City, January, 1999.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to John Buzzetti, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

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