Triptych and Iphigenia

by Edna O'Brien

  MISTRESS Of course you do.

  WIFE Let me tell you a cautionary story … one of his ex-whores sent him a list at Christmas, a list of what she wanted … Krug champagne, claret, Sèvres china … A French harlot … and at the very bottom she put in large capitals “A BABY.”

  MISTRESS I don’t need a baby, thank you very much.

  WIFE Aren’t you curious to know how I found out about you, your existence, your invasion of my home? Dishes. He had actually washed up, he who never washed a cup in his life, and I said “You’ve had some whore in here, in my house …” I could smell you … he denied it of course … some big spiel about reading in a magazine on how to be a better husband (bossy) remember to wash up … buy flowers … don’t forget her birthday, etc. … (gleeful) and I let him have it and we had one of our feisty fights and then we fucked (pause) not too long after you and he had fucked … something … some guardian angel told me to come back early from the country … so you better know what you are letting yourself in for … women, women throw themselves at him and I am always there in the ring for the last round.

  MISTRESS I have no intention of throwing myself at anyone.

  WIFE Oh yes you have. I found the note in his pocket (mock sensitive) “Please let us not fall in love, my darling” (tough voice) which signifies that you already have. What did you fall in love with … his mind, his cock, his graying temples, his fame?

  MISTRESS (curt) His shoes actually.

  WIFE Ha, ha, ha. His fancy shoes … they’re so goddamn lecherous … the swank shoes for the swanky man. And he fell for your eyes, your beautiful cat-green eyes.

  MISTRESS They were contact lenses actually.

  WIFE Yes, but to him they were still the most beautiful cat-green contact-lens eyes, as he put it.

  MISTRESS (taken aback) He told you that?

  WIFE Of course. What he doesn’t tell me I squeeze out of him … I suck it out of him like a shaman sucking a boil. They’re all weak … and his repertoire when smitten isn’t that original …, haven’t you noticed that? … how many times have you been in love, Clarissa?

  MISTRESS Henry says I’ve never been in love before … I’ve been waiting for him.

  WIFE His favorite opening gambit.

  MISTRESS Three times actually.

  WIFE I am faithful to Henry but that does not mean that I do not have my little amusements … it also doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to make him jealous … he’s wildly jealous … he’s even jealous of my shrink, me lying down in a shaded room, telling a total stranger my fantasies; (scolding) I am friends with many of his exes (laughs) even while knowing that he goes back for the odd poke … I’m on a first-name basis with all of them … they’ve made calls in the middle of the night … I’ve made calls in the middle of the night … they’ve threatened to slit their wrists … (quiet) me too … so little variation in these messes … all that remains is the biannual fuck and debris.

  Mistress gets up.

  MISTRESS I shall not be calling in the middle of the night or slitting my wrists … or …

  WIFE Oh yes, you will … When the heat’s off, when he’s quiet after he’s come—introspective whereas once he was rapturous, you’ll teeter, you’ll lose your poise, you’ll call in the middle of the night, sobbing, and you’ll hang up, but he’ll know it was you and I’ll know it was you, we’ll both know it was you and we’ll snuggle up to each other in the dark, man and wife against the enemy outside.

  SCENE EIGHT

  Lights come up on Daughter who is sitting by the drums but not playing.

  DAUGHTER She asked me to work on him. He came in here all sheepish and said “You have something to tell me, Brandy.” It was awful. Then I blurted it out. I said, “Daddy, you’re not to leave us ever.” And he swore he wouldn’t, couldn’t. He was drinking a martini and let me take a couple of sips. We sat and talked. He said we’d go to Ireland in the summer and hire a horse and caravan and travel all over, like gypsies. His dad’s people were from there, some big cloud over his dad … he kinda vanished, and his mom never got over it. … “What is love, Daddy?” I asked. … “Clarissa is one of us,” and I could tell by the way he said her name that he was crazy about her, crazy about her. (confidential) I wanted to tell him, to swear to him that no man would ever come between him and me … it’s something he should know … and he will.

  MISTRESS (declarative) “Let’s call it off, Henry, before we go in too deep,” and he said we had gone in too deep. I asked him, was it Brandy? He said yes, that she was the closest thing in the world to him … in fact … he went so far as to say that if anything happened to her he could not go on living.

  WIFE He confessed everything … where he saw you … why he got trapped … you playing the helpless maiden so convincingly … he broke down in my lap and said how sorry he was and I said I knew all along but kept it from him and he said, “God bless you for saying that,” and then we both said, “Where do we go now?” and I said, “Let’s stick together” … so we’re going away … far, far away … he’s going to write … he’s going to write you out of his system … you’ll be a memory … then you’ll be a figure on a page.

  MISTRESS Thank you, Pauline, for letting me know … in fact, he told me himself and we parted the best of friends.

  DAUGHTER I might as well have been an orphan … Scooting off to Spain to make their marriage work and me here with Fatima, who doesn’t speak a word of English … “You can have your friends over on weekends,” Mommy said … I’ll have my friends over … I’ll wear her clothes … I’ll sleep in their bed …

  SCENE NINE

  Mistress, Wife, and Daughter walk around the stage, breaking into each other’s space and into each other’s lines, talking in rapid urgent voices as the mood befits them.

  WIFE The villa was not on the sea but up a long winding goat track.

  MISTRESS Manhattan was all mine. He was gone. I had an admirer, a Greek … took me to Greek restaurants and taught me Greek sayings.

  WIFE Henry wrote ten hours a day. I cooked delicious meals, left them on a tray outside his door … he was very quiet and very grateful.

  DAUGHTER Mummy writing to say how lovely the villa … how lovely the morning glory … the donkeys … bullshit.

  MISTRESS After the Greek left town there was a Scandinavian … he made fondue on his roof terrace … I got a taste for aqua vitae. “Skoal, Henry, skoal.”

  WIFE One night we got very drunk together—

  MISTRESS Skoal, Henry, skoal.

  WIFE … very …

  MISTRESS … very …

  WIFE & MISTRESS … drunk.

  WIFE We danced and smooched … then we crawled into a washhouse and we made love …

  MISTRESS … and we made love …

  WIFE Afterward I cried …

  MISTRESS … and he said, “Why are you crying, darling?”

  WIFE And I said, “Do you know how long it is since we’ve made love?” And he said … “Don’t, darling, don’t.”

  DAUGHTER Daddy sent a card every other day, telling me what a champ I was.

  WIFE We did not discuss his play … I suppose he knew that I knew she was in it … her ghost.

  MISTRESS My acting got better … I did have one relapse … I was with friends upstate and a woman read the tea leaves and said that I was soon to be married … I snapped at her.

  DAUGHTER I flew over to Spain for Easter … goats, donkeys, mules … miles off the beaten track … my mother did nothing but cook … she had a range of Escoffier cookbooks lined up.

  MISTRESS (enthralled) I met a young man, not Greek, not Scandinavian: Jonathan, and he was English … perfect, perfect, he would come to almost every show and afterward he would give me a hug.

  DAUGHTER Daddy said he wanted to read us the first act of his play. Mommy lit candles and got the drinks tray out and it was dire … it just dragged and dragged … I could see my mother twitching and then Daddy said, “What did you think of it?” and she gushed and
he said, “For fuck’s sake stop acting the little wife, Pauline.”

  MISTRESS He was all the things a lover should be. We were so happy, we rode bicycles around Central Park, we flew to Arizona to see an eclipse of the sun.

  DAUGHTER The morning I was leaving Daddy broke off a flower and said, “Take that back to New York.” So he was still hot for her.

  WIFE I knew that his writing was at a standstill … We should never have gone there.

  MISTRESS … mates, soul mates, we proposed to one another in the very same breath.

  WIFE I got the blues. I went to the local doctor to see if he could give me something … The moment I laid eyes on him I forgot about the blues … there he was looking at me with his long El Greco face and his soft gray eyes … (chuckling) “I’ve never had to fake orgasm,” I said. He almost fell off his chair.

  MISTRESS Jonathan went back to England. The plan was that I would follow. How I missed him. How I missed him. I wore a sweater of his in bed, things like that.

  WIFE El Greco got more and more excited and he said there were many women patients who would give anything to be in my boots or in my bed. He was looking at me quite longingly. I know that look. I’ve seen it on my husband’s puss many a time.

  MISTRESS I kept changing the dates for our wedding …

  DAUGHTER When I got back, we cooked this fancy meal, Fatima and I, Mexican stuff; only three of my friends showed up, Betsy and Kim and Venus … No boys … Said they got lost … Someone gave them smack … And they couldn’t keep track of the program. Daddy wrote and told me that my prince was waiting in the wings. Yeah, right.

  MISTRESS One night I rang Henry’s apartment … Why did I do it? God, the relief when nobody answered.

  WIFE Not too long after, I twisted my ankle and Henry had to send for El Greco. He arrived rather late and he came into the bedroom and Henry left us alone. He drew off my sock or rather Henry’s green sock and flung it away and looked at me with that, that … He had me in that room in those few stolen moments and I thought: We’re even now, Henry and me … we’re even and I can go down to that clinic anytime that I choose and have fingers stuck up into me … doctor’s fingers stuck up into me. (She claps her hands forcefully.) I was wrong. Two mornings later Henry announced that we were going home.

  They each return to their own area.

  SCENE TEN

  As Mistress enters her dressing room the phone is ringing. Her mirror lights come on as she answers it.

  MISTRESS Oh! … Buenos dias or Buenas noches or whatever they say … how was Spain … I don’t need a present … I have everything I want … a what (laughing) a washboard … what do you think I am … a scrubber. I’ve got a wonderful part … guess. Well she’s a girl who goes into the forest with her father who has been banished and she becomes a boy in order to chastise lovers … love is merely a madness … deserves a dark horse and a whipping … jealous … I’ve no need to be jealous, I’m getting married … he’s called Jonathan and he’s a forester and he has nothing to do with writing … with theater … an earth man.

  She laughs heartily. He has put down the phone.

  She takes one of her stage props and goes toward the stairs, reveling in her triumph.

  She dons a shawl and walks all around the stage, triumphant.

  MISTRESS He was in the third row … watching, watching, and then just before the end he got up and he was here pleading, his arms out to lift me, to lift me down … he asked if Jonathan called himself Jon for short and then he took hold of my ribs and he mashed them and he said “You know fucking well that with me and you it’s not acting, it’s not theater, it’s not writing, it’s not forestry, and it’s not Jonathan, and it’s not false … the thing I’d waited half a year for … crushed my ribs so badly … I had to wear a … truss … this dressing room became our castle … he would leave things, his notebook, his cigarettes, his scarf, ribs of his hair. (contrite) Poor Jonathan.

  SCENE ELEVEN

  Action changes to Wife’s area, which is in darkness.

  A crash as Wife falls and various things fall off the table onto the floor.

  Daughter comes in and turns on a light.

  DAUGHTER Mommy! Oh shit.

  WIFE He’s seeing her again.

  DAUGHTER Are you OK?

  WIFE I don’t know … I don’t care.

  Daughter starts to help her up.

  DAUGHTER He’ll get tired of her; he always does.

  WIFE He’s moved out some of his belongings … he’s planning to leave us.

  DAUGHTER So … we’ll have to get used to it … other women do.

  WIFE I’m not other women … he’s my life … my rock … I’d rather he died than lose him to her.

  DAUGHTER That’s sick.

  WIFE Show me a bit of kindness for once in your life … I know what you say about me … you and your friends … I’m stupid and I talk too much and I have no dress sense, none.

  DAUGHTER You’re imagining it.

  WIFE (confidentially) I’ll tell you something Brandy that I’ve never told you before … I was glad that you were a daughter … because if you were a son he’d be more jealous … mothers and their sons have this thing.

  DAUGHTER Thanks a bundle.

  WIFE (contrite) Brandy, we were so happy … we were so right for each other … we were inseparable … it was like a hand in a glove … I was the glove and he was the hand and then he was the glove and I was the hand. Oh, he changed slowly but surely … he changed. Fame, women … women idolizing him, in restaurants coming up to him and telling him how great he was … Henry, so reticent. (tenderly) Small things like the way his hair falls down over his face.

  Daughter gets her up and sits her on a chair, comforting her.

  DAUGHTER (melting) Oh, Mommy.

  WIFE (sobbing) Brandy, pray that she dies.

  SCENE TWELVE

  Light on Mistress’s dressing room.

  Mistress looks up to see Brandy wearing a tight-fitting velvet jacket with baseball cap.

  MISTRESS Hello Brandy … would you like a drink?

  DAUGHTER Stoli.

  MISTRESS Huh … you drink Stoli?

  DAUGHTER For fuck’s sake don’t you treat me like a child.

  MISTRESS OK. I won’t.

  DAUGHTER You’ve got to give him up.

  MISTRESS Why?

  DAUGHTER It’s harming his work.

  MISTRESS Does he know you’re here?

  DAUGHTER Maybe. Maybe not.

  MISTRESS Does your mother know?

  DAUGHTER I tell her nothing.

  MISTRESS We have tried giving each other up, but it’s no use … we are (pause) inseparable.

  DAUGHTER Bullshit.

  MISTRESS It may be bullshit to you but not to me.

  DAUGHTER And what about us … You haven’t even given us a thought.

  MISTRESS I have given you a thought … in fact I often walk past your building and I wonder what’s going on up there, on the tenth floor.

  DAUGHTER (hitting her) Mayhem. All for a fuck.

  MISTRESS (fends her off) Young lady, there are things you have yet to learn … manners for one thing and propriety for another.

  DAUGHTER You should hear my mother sobbing … it’s like Niagara Falls.

  MISTRESS Please don’t.

  DAUGHTER There are times when he has to pick her up and hold her and rock her in his arms like a baby … then he’s in his office, on the phone to you, cooing.

  MISTRESS Yes. Lovebirds.

  DAUGHTER When she can’t sleep she goes downstairs, wakens Jesse to play with a ball … back and forth, back and forth … all Jesse wants is to sleep. She’s my dog, she followed me home from the subway last Christmas. She’s the one I talk to, not them.

  MISTRESS Surely that’s not true.

  DAUGHTER They’re too wrapped up in themselves, they’ve no time for me … well, not enough time.

  MISTRESS What do you want to be …?

  DAUGHTER A drummer.

&
nbsp; MISTRESS Do you have a beau?

  DAUGHTER Yeah … lots … but they’re all geeks. Morons. I can talk to my father about movies or rock or hip-hop, or clothes, or my grades, or anything.

  Pause.

  MISTRESS I would give him up, but I can’t. He’s part of my life now.

  DAUGHTER (angry again) Do you do it on the floor? Or on the stairs?

  MISTRESS Both.

  DAUGHTER We have suppers alone, together. He asks my advice. I tell him that it would be better if he went away … but really away … far away from the two of you … not upstate … not out west … but to another country altogether, and he says, “You’re right … I should go far away because I haven’t made anyone happy and I haven’t done what I want to do.”

  Pause.

  DAUGHTER I love him.

  MISTRESS We each love him.

  DAUGHTER But I am his princess.

  MISTRESS So why be so jealous?

  DAUGHTER (with relish) I hate you. I stick pins all over your face every time I see a photograph of you … that simper, that Mona Lisa smile … I cut it out and paint a horrible black mustache on you and pin it up on my board. He’s seen it. I read in the gossip column that you drink green tea all day and then champagne in the evening … champagne made from the white grape only.

  MISTRESS Bullshit.

  DAUGHTER (shouting) Go back to where you came from. … Leave … us … alone.

  MISTRESS I’m afraid I have to ask you to go.

  Daughter leaves.

  MISTRESS (turning) Little did she know that she was to have a brother or a sister or a half brother or a half sister before long.

  STAGE MANAGER (offstage) Ladies and Gentleman of the As You Like It Company, this is your fifteen-minute call. Fifteen minutes, please.

  SCENE THIRTEEN

  Daughter watches as Wife starts to dress herself, preparing to go out. Mistress starts to dress herself for her part as Rosalind.

  MISTRESS I was out and about doing errands and a taxi stopped at the light and he opened the door and I got in and he said, “Where shall we go?” “North,” I said and he tapped on the glass and told the driver to keep going north. Should I tell him or should I not. No one knew, certainly not Rosalind, she would scold me. (clasps her waist) He’ll know soon enough … so will Rosalind in her doublet and hose.