That Summer

by David French

MARGARET

  What player’s nickname is the Say Hey Kid? And who hit .500 in the 1953 World Series?

  PAUL

  That’s too easy. Ask me something harder.

  MARGARET

  Yeah, sure.

  PAUL

  I’m serious.

  MARGARET

  Bull. You don’t know, do you? Admit it.

  PAUL

  Shame on you, Maggie. You probably think Americans like baseball and Canadians just like hockey. Some of us like both, you know.

  MARGARET

  I think you’re full of it. You just don’t know, do you? That’s why you’re stalling.

  PAUL

  Bet me then. If I know the answer, I get a kiss. If I don’t, you can shove me off the dock, shoes and all.

  MARGARET

  I really don’t want to shove you off the dock, Paul.

  PAUL

  Sure you do.

  MARGARET

  All right, maybe I do. But I don’t want to kiss you.

  PAUL

  Sure you do.

  MARGARET

  I do not. God, you take the cake. I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite and passive?

  PAUL

  All except me. I’m the exception that proves the rule … So bet me. According to you, I can’t possibly win anyway.

  MARGARET

  It’s a waste of time.

  PAUL

  Call my bluff, why don’t you? Go on.

  MARGARET considers.

  MARGARET

  Okay, I will. But you have to get both answers right or it’s no deal. Understood?

  PAUL

  Understood … Now what was that first question again? …

  He approaches her.

  … What player’s nickname is the Say Hey Kid? That right?

  MARGARET

  Yes.

  PAUL

  (takes the bottle from her and takes a swig) Let’s see. The Yankee Clipper is Joe DiMaggio, the Georgia Peach is Ty Cobb, and the Chairman of the Board is Whitey Ford. The Sultan of Swat is Babe Ruth, the Rabbi of Swat is Mose Solomon, and the Say Hey Kid is none other than … than …

  MARGARET

  You give up?

  PAUL

  A little drum roll, maestro!

  MARGARET

  Admit you don’t know.

  PAUL

  WILLIE MAYS OF WESTFIELD, ALABAMA!

  MARGARET

  (snatches back the bottle) All right, you don’t need to show off, stupid. Just answer the question … Besides, the next one’s tougher. Who hit .500 in the ’53 World Series?

  PAUL

  That’s easy. The Yankees beat the Dodgers that year. They took it in six games. Billy Martin, the second baseman, finished with a .500 average. He also hit the winning run that drove in Hank Bauer in the ninth.The game was 4–3.

  MARGARET

  You shit. You knew the answers all along.

  PAUL

  I warned you, didn’t I? I told you to ask me something else …

  He steps close to MARGARET. She backs away.

  Looks like we have more in common than you thought.

  MARGARET

  I doubt it.

  PAUL

  Bet your heart’s like a bird, Maggie. Fluttering away in its cage. Knowing you’re about to be kissed.

  MARGARET

  Yeah, right.

  PAUL

  Just think. If I hadn’t come by, you’d be up all night, reciting to yourself the immortal words of Robbie Burns:

  (recites “Simmer’s a Pleasant Time”)

  Sleep I can get nane

  For thinking on my dearie.

  MARGARET

  If that’s what you believe, Paul Wyatt, you really are the most conceited boy I ever –

  PAUL kisses her.

  From the Red Pavilion comes the sound of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” the NARRATOR singing along with it … During the kiss MARGARET and PAUL begin to move, almost unconsciously, to the song.

  PAUL

  See, Maggie? I knew you could dance. You just lacked the confidence … You haven’t been kissed a lot, have you? I can tell.

  MARGARET

  You can? How?

  PAUL laughs. MARGARET pulls away.

  MARGARET

  Why? What’s so funny about the way I kiss? Tell me.

  PAUL

  Nothing’s wrong with it, Maggie. It’s just that you kiss like a virgin.

  MARGARET

  I am a virgin, stupid.

  PAUL

  I know. What a pity.

  MARGARET

  Not every boy’s like you, is he, Paul? A Lothario? A letch? A debaucher?

  PAUL

  Debaucher? Don’t you think you’re being slightly old-fashioned? … It’s a different world now, Maggie. The Russians have Sputnik 3 in orbit.

  MARGARET

  Don’t change the subject … I know all about you, Paul. All about Connie, Mrs. Crump’s niece.

  PAUL

  What about her?

  MARGARET

  I know about Brenda Fisher, too. Remember Brenda Fisher, Paul? The waitress at Somerset Lodge? The girl you’ve been going steady with?

  PAUL

  Who told you all that? Mrs. Crump? … Is that why you stood me up tonight? Because of some bloody old gossip?

  MARGARET

  Mrs. Crump is not a gossip.

  PAUL

  Isn’t she?

  MARGARET

  No, she’s not. She just doesn’t like the way you treat the opposite sex. Neither do I, if you must know. And if that makes me quaint or Victorian, then so be it!

  She runs off.

  PAUL

  (to himself) “So be it”? (then) Wait! Maggie! Let me explain! Dammit!

  Lights fade on the dock.

  Music: “Hushabye” by the Mystics.

  Lights rise on the cottage … MRS. CRUMP stands in the yard, gazing up at the sky. MARGARET slips into the cottage by the back way, sets down the whisky bottle, then notices MRS. CRUMP … She turns off the radio and steps outside. MRS. CRUMP acknowledges her with a look.

  MARGARET

  Thought you’d gone to bed, Mrs. Crump.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Not yet, dear. I will when Daisy gets home … Lovely night, isn’t it? The moon’s so bright, it even lights up the dock down there.

  MARGARET

  I don’t like being spied on, you know.

  MRS. CRUMP

  I wasn’t spying, Margaret. I just happened to look out my window … When I was young, I couldn’t sleep on nights like this. The moonlight kept me awake.

  MARGARET

  My mom was like that, too.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Was she?

  MARGARET

  Mostly after she took sick … She’d sit out back every chance she got. Bundle up beside the cherry tree and watch the stars.

  MRS. CRUMP

  What happened to your mother, Margaret?

  MARGARET

  She died. When I was twelve. Cancer.

  MRS. CRUMP

  I wondered.

  MARGARET

  Her and Dad used to rock climb. Mostly in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mom’s favourite place was the White Horse Ledge. There’s a six-hundred-foot climb there called the Inferno.

  MRS. CRUMP

  You thought she’d fall, didn’t you?

  MARGARET

  (nods) Funny, isn’t it? Instead, she died at home on a Monday morning, watching the cherry blossoms from her bedroom window. A month shy of her thirty-fifth birthday.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Death picks its own time, luv. Its own time and its own place. The way love does, I suppose.

  Pause.

  MARGARET

  Mrs. Crump, you know the boy you mentioned this afternoon? The one you fell in love with at seventeen? Was that your husband?

  MRS. CRUMP

  My husband? Oh no, dear, I met Gerald years later at a picture show … No
, the boy I fell for that summer was Matthew Russell. His dad had just built the Red Pavilion … In those days we lived here side by side, Matt’s family in this cottage, my family next door.

  MARGARET

  He lived in this cottage?

  MRS. CRUMP

  (nods) Matt had just graduated from high school that year. He was helping his dad run the dance hall … Such a handsome boy. He had a shock of ginger hair, Matt did, and the bluest eyes you ever saw. Mother used to say, “I wish I was twenty years younger!”

  MARGARET

  (laughs) I bet she did.

  MRS. CRUMP

  We’d known each other for the longest time, Matt and I, but suddenly that summer, we knew we were in love. I don’t think we ever spoke about it, it was something we just knew. Our shared secret, so to speak … I’d fall asleep at night, thinking of Matt and I’d wake up thinking of Matt. You might say he was my Morning and my Evening Star, my beloved with those blue, blue eyes … You sure you want to hear this, dear? It all happened so long ago.

  MARGARET

  Please. I want to, Mrs. Crump.

  MRS. CRUMP

  The summer I fell in love was the summer of 1918. The First World War was still raging in Europe, and Matt said if it wasn’t over soon, he was going to enlist. And as if the war wasn’t bad enough, that spring the Spanish flu had swept the world. They called it the Spanish Lady.

  MARGARET

  The Spanish Lady?

  MRS. CRUMP

  No plague ever killed so many in so short a time. Between twenty-five and forty million in less than a year. More than died in the Great War.

  (chants)

  I had a little bird

  And its name was Enza

  I opened the window

  And in-flu-enza.

  Little girls skipped rope to that jingle … Oh, we’d all been warned, of course, but no one listened.

  MARGARET

  Warned? How?

  MRS. CRUMP

  Signs. Portents. In Brazil, a sailor praying to the statue of Our Lady of Consolation saw her shed a tear. In New Zealand, a nurse glanced out a window and saw a fiery cross in the sky … Of course, none of it mattered to Matt and me. Not the war, not the Spanish Lady, nothing. All that mattered was each other … And then in September came the second and more deadly wave of the flu, and the schools closed. Which suited us just fine. It meant we had more time at the lake. However, even that was short-lived. Calvin Coolidge saw to that.

  MARGARET

  Calvin Coolidge? The president?

  MRS. CRUMP

  Wilson was the president then, luv. Coolidge was the acting governor of Massachusetts. At the time, he had fifty thousand flu cases on his hands. That’s how Matt and I came to be separated; my father wanted to help. He was a doctor.

  MARGARET

  I see.

  MRS. CRUMP

  His practice was in Toronto, and when Coolidge asked our mayor for help, Father volunteered … The last time I saw Matt was the day we closed the cottage and drove back to the city. He was standing here in the yard, waving goodbye.

  MARGARET

  And you never saw him again?

  MRS. CRUMP

  (shakes her head) I promised I’d write, of course. And for a time I did. And Matt wrote back in his big neat scrawl … But then I took sick myself and almost died. And by the time I was back on my feet, it was months later.

  MARGARET

  And you hadn’t heard from him?

  MRS. CRUMP

  No, not in all that time. I suppose I thought he’d just forgotten me. Things like that can happen when people are separated … Anyway, in the spring of 1919, the Spanish Lady had all but vanished, and Father brought us home. And come the first warm weekend in June, we drove up here to the lake … The first thing I noticed was the For Sale sign on the Red Pavilion. I saw it as we drove past … And then we pulled in here. I saw there were words printed on the door that I couldn’t make out from the road.

  MARGARET

  Words?

  MRS. CRUMP

  Four words … The cottage was all boarded up, and when I ran up the steps, I read what Matt had printed there in his big neat hand. Four simple words in shiny black paint: WE HAVE THE FLU. He’d done that, you see, to keep others away … It was then I understood why he hadn’t written. Then and only then.

  MARGARET

  He’d died, hadn’t he?

  MRS. CRUMP

  Yes, dear, he had. Died in this very cottage. Along with his parents.

  MARGARET

  All three died here?

  MRS. CRUMP

  Yes, the Spanish Lady had passed this way and taken Matt with her. For the longest time she took the heart and soul of me … There’s a poem I teach called “That Summer.” By a man named Henry Treece. Don’t suppose you know it?

  MARGARET

  No.

  MRS. CRUMP

  (recites)

  That year, snow came in April and again

  In May, and the pony died in his harness;

  But in summer, under the whitewashed trees,

  A girl in a white dress gave me an apple.

  I fitted my teeth in the marks her teeth

  Had made; so we were one. Then dusk

  Moved slowly among the trees like a blue

  Smoke at night, and I cried that joy

  Could come so easily, for then I knew

  It must break with as little warning.

  Offstage, a car suddenly stops on the road.

  MARGARET

  That’s Daisy, now.

  MRS. CRUMP

  It’s not hard to tell you’ve been drinking, Margaret. I can smell it … Was that his idea?

  MARGARET

  It was mine, Mrs. Crump. And I’m not the least bit intoxicated.

  MRS. CRUMP

  He’s not worth the heartache, you know. All the whisky in the world won’t change that. Nor all your tears.

  A car door slams.

  DAISY

  (off) ’Night, Tim!

  The car drives away.

  MARGARET

  You’ll be happy to know I sent him packing. He won’t be showing his face here again, Paul.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Don’t bet on it, luv. Bad pennies have a habit of turning up.

  Enter DAISY, holding an orchid.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Here she comes: the belle of the ball. And with such a beautiful orchid.

  DAISY

  It’s called a yellow lady slipper. Tim picked it in the woods.

  MRS. CRUMP

  He did? I’m impressed.

  DAISY

  Maggie, you should’ve been at the dance tonight. Someone asked me where you were. Bet you’ll never guess who it was.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Paul Wyatt. She knows.

  MARGARET

  He came here looking for me, Daisy. I sent him away.

  DAISY

  You did? Why?

  MRS. CRUMP

  I think you know why, young lady.

  DAISY

  But he’s so cute, Maggie. Tim didn’t even like me talking to him.

  MRS. CRUMP

  The more I learn about Tim Scott, the more sensible he seems. Now get to bed, Daisy. It’s late. You need your rest. You, too, Margaret.

  DAISY

  (starts into the cottage) ’Night, Mrs. Crump. See you tomorrow.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Good night, luv. Sleep well.

  MARGARET

  ’Night, Mrs. Crump.

  She hugs her.

  MRS. CRUMP

  Good night, Margaret. Remember: keep that ring on your finger. At least till you’re safely back in Jericho.

  She exits.

  MARGARET goes inside. DAISY is putting the orchid in a vase … MARGARET watches her, absently turning the ring on her finger. Finally –

  MARGARET

  Was he alone?

  DAISY

  Was who alone?

  MARGARET />
  Don’t be coy. You know who: Paul … Was he with anyone?

  DAISY

  You mean, like Brenda Fisher?

  MARGARET

  Yes, like Brenda Fisher.

  DAISY

  I wouldn’t know, Maggie. I wouldn’t know Brenda if I saw her … He did dance once with a girl. She had auburn hair.

  MARGARET

  Was she pretty?

  DAISY nods.

  MARGARET

  Bet that was her. Mrs. Crump said she was pretty, remember? … I don’t get it, Daisy. Why would Paul take an interest in me? He knows I’d never go all the way.

  DAISY

  Maybe he likes you, stupid.

  MARGARET

  Why?

  DAISY

  What do you mean, why? What kind of question is that to ask?

  MARGARET

  Let’s face it, Daisy. I’ll never be like you or Brenda. You know it, and I know it.

  DAISY

  The trouble with you, Maggie, is you have an inferiority complex a mile wide.

  MARGARET

  I don’t. I’m just realistic. God, I don’t even have much of a figure … So why would Paul give me a second glance? He can have any girl in Willow Beach.

  DAISY

  Remember Snow White? How she lay in her glass coffin on the green hill? How she grew more beautiful every year?

  PAUL appears in the yard.

  MARGARET

  So?

  DAISY

  So maybe Paul’s like the handsome prince. Remember how he rides by and falls in love with her? How he wakes Snow White from that long, long sleep with a kiss?

  MARGARET

  The sleep of innocence? Is that what you mean, Daisy?

  DAISY

  Exactly. The sleep of innocence.

  PAUL

  Maggie Ryan!

  DAISY

  Did you hear that?!

  PAUL

  Come out, Maggie!

  DAISY

  I think I’m psychic!

  MARGARET

  Tell him I’m not here.

  DAISY

  (shouts) She’s not here! Go away!

  MARGARET switches off the lights, leaving the cottage dark except for the wash of moonlight. The porch light remains on … MARGARET and DAISY stand motionless, listening.

  PAUL

  I know you’re in there, Maggie. I can hear you breathing. I can even hear the beating of your heart.

  DAISY

  Does he always talk like that? That’s fantastic!

  PAUL

  I wanted to explain, Maggie, but your temper got the better of you. You do have a temper, you know.

  DAISY

  He’s right, you do.

  MARGARET

  Shh.

  PAUL

  Why do you think I left the dance early tonight? Why do you think I came straight here? … The truth is I can’t get you out of my mind.