by Will Eno
Jennifer’s teacher says, Jennifer?
Somewhere somewhere else, the blue shirt and sunglasses are clearing customs, nothing to declare, smiling or crying or neither, how would I know. Hard to know. When the person who speaks to your soul doesn’t talk to you anymore. And there you are, left not knowing what to say, stripped of your previous meanings. Maybe you touch your hair. You don’t know what to do. Leaving you like Jennifer, who moves to the front of the room.
And what have you brought in for us, today?, the teacher asks.
This, Jennifer says, holding nothing.
The children sit there, like you, and she takes off her black shoes. It was nice to be held, to not feel alone. She takes off her socks. The children, like you, say nothing. Like my weakling, the town crier, now departed. For my thing, I brought in this, she says, and takes off her dress, her underwear. She is naked before them. He said nice things, sometimes, when he spoke. I thought he was fewer people. This is my arms. This is from where I fell once. The teacher is slowly hyperventilating. These are my little feet, she says, pointing. This is for being a girl. I like running. A pet dog someone brought in barks. Hands slowly go up. Where did you get it, one boy asks. It’s mine, she says. Can we touch it, a boy with asthma asks, breathing wrong. Jennifer stands still. He told me I was beautiful. I started thinking I was beautiful. Some of the children cried. I don’t have anything. I have a house and some family and people I know and toys and I don’t have anything. She stands there. I stand here. Naked and controlling the shaking. Trying to fall in love with breathing. Everyone looking and seeing. I’ve disappointed you, I can tell, my dress still on. Try to understand. I’m cold. She says. We were quite a pair. Back in the day. It’s a big ocean, the Atlantic. Fuck it. To be loved and held. That’s all, she says. Love. Keep high watch. Your time is coming. This is all that’s left of me. This, she says. Look at lucky you. All so beautiful, so countable, and inconsolable. (Brief pause.) Have we lost anyone? (She quickly scans the audience.) Of course we have. And all stare straight ahead. As she puts on her clothes and stands there, clothed, hoping they saw her or understood, wanting everything to be different, or over. That’s all. And what a lovely ending– all of us here, no longer waiting, the pretty light leaving all the pretty eyes. Look at you all. Ghost-white with life and your own terrible secret. Live with it and never tell anyone. Good night.
And now to bed. The End, yes?
Lights fade to black, as she begins to undress.
End.
MR THEATRE COMES HOME DIFFERENT
1998
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
MR THEATRE
Setting: The stage set of a living room. A table with a telephone and a vase of flowers on it.
MR THEATRE
He enters with an open umbrella. He shakes the rain off of it and places it in a stand. He checks his watch, takes his coat off, looks around as if expecting someone. He ponders over the set and, then, he sees the audience. He stares. He stands. He starts to leave and then turns around. He flips the table out of his way, kicks the chairs over.
Strike the set! Strike the world! My former life, gone! Everything stricken, struck, gotten rid of. Now, set the stage again for something nothing less than me: some man, a wound; an animal, with English. Here I am. I am come! Born from the wings, or somewhere in the back of the theatre. Alone. (He sees the telephone.) But whom have we here? Someone? (He picks up the telephone.) Hello? No one? Prop. (He throws the telephone aside. He notices a flower on the floor.) Speaking of nature– which I was, and still am, and always will be– here is some that someone planted here. (He picks it up.) Good evening, flower. Did you grow today? Get some sun? Look at you, you lovely fresh cut dying thing. Have you come to upstage me? (He eats the flower.) That tasted the way you would think a flower should. (He chews.) This last, I find a terribly suggestive remark. But I meant for it to suggest or augur nothing; beyond that of my darker purpose, which is, in fact, dark. Is, in deed, darker. But, between you, me and the lighting, I should tell you, in an aside: whisper, whisper, whisper.
Gentle’s none, my name is blank. And I have come and kicked things over. I have breathed badly. I will act quickly, entertain myself, and then leave. This is my character, as I would have you have it; and this, my interior life, as I would, for you, outwardly live it. (He kicks a chair off stage. Laughing.) But I– I would like you to know– I yearn.
Witness me yearn.
(On bended knee.) My love! my love! if you are out there: why don’t you love me, and why aren’t you out there? I should look up your old address. So as for us to enact the love scene that is coming. That is here. Now! Kiss my moving mouth. I am all afire, burning. (He purses his lips as if to kiss, closes his eyes, and rises to stand on the tips of his toes. He stands, so, and then opens his eyes and unpurses his lips.) By the way, the fire exits are located here and here, and in the event of a fire, or should you hear a fire alarm, or should you see someone run screaming past you in flames, or simply should you panic, anxious, and seek to suffer alone, like an injured thing does, please use the doors, either there or there, and peaceably remove yourself. But not now, stay seated now, for the climax– if I can make it come– is coming. Something climactic is nigh.
Here cometh the storm scene! Shaken by a teenage stagehand from a box up in the flies! Rise! Rain your fake rain and drown the fake world! Make the paint peel and the floorboards buckle! Come sideways, hail, sleet, serious weather, rain! Ruin every wedding and parade! Mess up my hair, make my bones ache! Wrack, weather! Wrack!
But first, stop.
Not so fast.
Here comes the calm. The calm during the storm. Do you hear birds singing? I don’t. And it’s for me that they’re not singing. No explanation is needed. But as for exposition: you should see certain parts of my anatomy. You should see the mess of bed I rise from in the afternoon, looking in a mirror to see the damage done in the night, checking myself for some rare infection and or new sore having come. Making sure– ensuring– that my hair and gums and face are all receding, leaving me left with only eyes left left to stare from. And I stare. Hands in lap, I think of one Easter, one spring; me in a suit, clean; the world sparkling; hunting scenes on the dishes; the feet beneath the table. But enough talk of mirrors and of reflections of what once was but now is no longer.
Where were we? I believe, over here. And in love, wasn’t it? It was sweet, wasn’t it? But now it’s over, is it not? When I’m gone, I’ll be gone. I wish the little life I lived tonight were different. Were more lived. But I am glad I ate that flower. Would that the world entire were a flower for me to eat. And would that my faked feelings could make Yours Truly genuine. But the death scene! I almost forgot. Not surprising. But, here, now: the end, at last.
Pretend I am dying. (He begins to die. He drops to a knee.) Pretend my life was wasted. (He dies more.) That I spent my time in this body on this earth dumbly. (He stops.) Pretend you loved me. (He stands.) I smell bad, and I am in a hospital. I am your mother. (He carries the table off-stage. Throughout the remainder of this paragraph he is striking the set.) Pretend I am your mother; that you loved me when little, that then you then stopped for some time, but have started up again, in time for me to die. Pretend it’s hard to look. My eyes and breasts, nothing on my body looks the way it’s supposed to look. You mother me. You stand there, pretend, and you mother your mother, who is dying. Or I’m your child, and I cannot breathe, as you stand above me, breathing. Or, I am– pretend– you. Whoever– I am dying. Pretend this: that this is not pretend. Pretend you are sitting there. And that this was good. Pretend I’m crying. That you’re crying. And that this is the end. I start to go. I don’t look at you. It seems familiar. It seems resolved. (He picks up his umbrella, holds it as if a cane.) Pretend that this is over. That it will not go on, interminably, The End. People coming and going. Entering and exiting. Forever. (He comes downstage.)
Give yourselves a big hand.
You were lovely.
I
die.
Snow starts to fall. We are in rapture. A bloodhound crouches near, there, by a freezing river, in a darkening wood. And your hands are cold. And our happy world is ended. Pretend.
He shakes umbrella, repeats opening gestures, as lights fade.
End.