Toronto, Mississippi
Page 3
MADDIE exits.
KING:
How many copies you sell?
BILL:
Thirty-seven.
JHANA:
Bill’s on the book Dad.
KING:
He sure is. That’s great man. Poetry. The Path of Despair. What do you know.
BILL:
I teach, you know, in Canadian Studies. Literature.
KING:
Right.
BILL:
Animal as victim, environment as victim, women as victim. That sort of thing. Despair’s more of a sideline. Not that they don’t overlap. I love women’s literature. And it’s very despairing, for the most part. This is a very exciting time for female writers in this country. I mean since the time I was born.
KING:
Why would that be?
BILL:
They just haven’t had much of a voice at all, up until now –
KING:
Unhappy women have always tended to speak loud and clear around me.
BILL:
Right.
KING:
I’m out there last night, just talking. And this woman, she’s right at the front at this table with two other ladies.
JHANA tries to sit on his knee.
That’s kind’a heavy, darling. How about you and me just holding hands for a while? This woman was real heavy. All dolled up and fat. And sad! Man. I wasn’t even halfway through the first set and she started – just weeping at first but then full-blown, hyperventilating tears. Just sobbing away.
BILL:
Don’t you just get up and sing and shake your hips?
KING:
No, I don’t.
JHANA:
No, Bill.
MADDIE:
(off ) I think we’re about ready to eat. Can you give me a hand, Jhana?
JHANA:
No.
KING:
Help your Mum, sweetheart. That’s the stuff.
JHANA exits.
BILL:
I watched Blue Hawaii when I was about seven.
KING:
You got a girlfriend?
BILL:
Of sorts.
KING:
What’s “of sorts”? She half fish or something?
BILL:
You do sing and shake and that most of the time. Right?
KING:
I sing … tell stories. I have re-invented the man. I’ve put all the parts back together in a way better suited to survive. He didn’t have a very thick skin.
BILL:
Thus the weight.
KING:
You almost ready out there?
MADDIE:
(off ) Just about.
JHANA:
(off ) Just about, Dad.
BILL:
How many of you are there?
KING:
Playing the King? Not so many as before. Probably about the same as the number of people writing poetry. Sixty-eight pages. That’s a son-of-a-bitch. Don’t you think?
BILL:
I suppose.
KING:
(in a Memphis accent) We’re in Texas. Way the hell in the middle of nowhere. Very hot. I’ve been driving. Sonny and Red are in the back and some asshole we’ve just met is in the front with me. He’s making us stop every twenty minutes or so-taking a piss, taking a picture. There are these clouds in the east, big and thick. Did I say this sort of thing has happened before? I have heard the voice of God twice: once through a blackbird, out back at Graceland, another time while holding a gun against the head of a woman. This is what’s whispered while taking aim, “I’m listening. I wasn’t before but now I’m all yours.”
But this is different man. I am looking at these clouds because they are, you know, pretty good. They’re moving fast. Heading south. But when I stare them down, they stop. When I look back toward home, they come with me. I direct those clouds across the whole fucking sky.
Every dream I’ve ever dreamed has come true a hundred times. I’m always the hero. None of this surprises me.
Blackout.
Scene Four
After supper the same night, BILL, MADDIE and KING show the first signs of drunkenness, JHANA sits beside KING.
KING:
When you were little, Jhana, around five years old –
JHANA:
Five years old, Dad?
KING:
We had this old van, all painted up in rainbows and psychedelic shit. I washed it about forty times a week and I’d put you inside –
JHANA:
Yes!
KING:
Aim the hose at that pretty face behind the windshield. Remember?
JHANA:
Remember!
KING:
And you’d fake that I’d knocked you over. You’d wring the water out of your pigtails. Born performers, you and me.
JHANA:
You and me, Dad.
KING:
Remember touring, sweetheart? The three of us and the band driving across the country? Naw, you were too little then.
JHANA:
I’m too little, Dad.
KING:
Drink up there, Bill.
BILL:
Yes sir.
KING:
Maddie?
MADDIE:
Yeah. More. This was my favourite. Driving to Edmonton in the middle of the night. It was about two hundred below and we stopped for coffee –
KING:
The Diamond Kitchen.
MADDIE:
You remember the horses?
KING:
Bunched up around the fence.
BILL:
Why would they be outside if it was so cold?
KING:
This is the wild west, man! Jhani’s real small and I’m holding her inside this sleeping bag.
JHANA:
Me.
KING:
You’re checking out this big black horse. It’s crazy looking and rough ‘cause of winter. You’re face to face. You just reach out and touch his nose, no fear, none whatsoever.
MADDIE:
You thought the Northern Lights were about the funniest thing ever invented. You’d point at them –
KING:
Then just about pee yourself laughing.
JHANA:
Pee yourself laughing!
BILL:
You know I’ve been up north too but the best view I ever had of the lights was from Southern Ontario.
KING:
(pause) What do you know.
MADDIE:
Really.
JHANA:
Really, Bill.
KING:
(in Memphis accent) This dog sleeps on the porch all day but when night comes he’s got a whole life of his own. Man that’s great. Just like us. We’re driving through night in this big sonofabitch. Nobody knows what we’re doing. Not even the old boys in the back seat.
JHANA:
Elvis Presley!
KING:
(same accent) The one and only, darling.
JHANA:
You gonna’ sing for her?
KING:
Who?
JHANA:
Jhana Kelly.
KING sings one verse of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” then JHANA cuts him off.
JHANA:
Sing faster!
KING: (singing)
You may go to college, You may go to school,
JHANA tries to sing “baby, baby, baby” in the background.
You may have a pink Cadillac
But don’t you be nobody’s fool.
Come back baby come back,
Come back baby come back,
Come back baby I want
To play house with you.
MADDIE:
Good night, Jhana.
JHANA:
(to KING) You’re sleeping with me?
KING:
No ma’am. But I’ll make you breakfast.
J
HANA:
Dad’s making breakfast, Bill.
BILL:
Good.
JHANA:
Mum? You’re sleeping with Bill?
MADDIE:
I don’t sleep with Bill. I sleep in my own bed. Quit stalling, Jhana. You’re being silly. Your Dad is staying down here. Everything else is the same as ever.
JHANA:
The same as ever.
KING:
C’mon you. Show me your room. Show me what you look like sleeping.
JHANA and KING exit.
BILL:
I like him, Maddie.
MADDIE:
No you don’t.
BILL:
Why didn’t you say he was staying overnight here?
MADDIE:
It’s no big deal.
BILL:
Divorced pals. I think that’s wonderful. I really do. (holds up bottle) Is there more?
MADDIE:
We’re all out.
BILL:
Maybe you’ll be like Elizabeth Taylor … marry the same guy twice. Or Zsa Zsa Gabor. Didn’t she do that? You mean we’re all out of alcohol? Completely? I’ll get more.
MADDIE:
It’s nearly midnight. And it’s Sunday.
BILL:
In case you hadn’t noticed, Maddie, we have a liquor store right next door.
MADDIE:
You’re going to buy liquor from the neighbours? That’s really low, Bill.
BILL:
I can probably buy all sorts of things there. What would you like? Beer? Heroin? Perhaps a film –
MADDIE:
You’re really serious.
BILL:
More white wine? King seems to like it and he’s an alcoholic.
MADDIE:
He has it under control. You, on the other hand, are acting like a lunatic.
BILL:
If I don’t come back –
MADDIE:
Bill? You are okay aren’t you? You seem really –
BILL:
Fun loving.
MADDIE:
I’m serious, Willy.
BILL exits. KING enters.
KING:
Where’s Lord Byron gone?
MADDIE:
Hunting down more liquor.
KING:
Jhana’s real wired, eh?
MADDIE:
What else is new.
KING:
But great. You’re doing a great job and all. Always have.
MADDIE:
She’s really screwing up at this workshop.
KING:
Everyone screws up at their first job.
MADDIE:
I didn’t.
KING:
You making it with Mr. Despair?
MADDIE:
People think certain words work magic – group home, workshop. They hear that and assume everything’s taken care of. Someone from York just did a research project on her. She’s moderately mentally handicapped – moderate. I like that, like the weather when we lived on the coast. Superbly dyslexic – very complicated version of it. Symptoms of autism or soft autism. That’s what they’re saying now. That’s the style. There is a style of everything. But then you’d know all about that.
KING:
I’m out of style Maddie. I’m the greaser at the end of the row while the rest of you are streaking your hair and buying Volvos … She’ll make out.
MADDIE:
So you’ve said. Ever since she was diagnosed.
KING:
But it’s true, Madelaine. She’s done okay.
MADDIE:
Bill’s great with her. Better than I am, to be perfectly honest. It’s not really any of your business, you know, how Bill fits into my life.
KING:
My first job was playing a wedding. A lot of the stuff we played through twice because we only knew eight numbers. We’d have been sued except that at weddings everyone’s uncle gets pissed and wants to get up on stage and sing “The Impossible Dream.” Most bands hate that kind of shit. We encouraged it. You’re too hard on yourself about her. You always have been.
MADDIE:
I don’t have any choice.
KING:
You have some –
MADDIE:
And don’t tell me, King of the Road, about letting things unfold naturally. Her doing okay is a full time job. For me.
KING:
You want me to take her for a while?
MADDIE:
Right – to some motel in Detroit. She needs her routine.
KING:
We have a routine.
MADDIE:
Drinking, getting up at noon. Is she going to stay in your room? Sleep in a twin bed next to you and some bar fly: Cindy, Lucy-Ann, Tammi with an “i.” (pause) I’ve always hated the sound of my voice when I talk to you.
KING:
There aren’t any Cindy-Anns or Tammies right now.
MADDIE:
You mean at this particular moment. Here and now. There’s probably one or both of them waiting out in the car or in your motel room.
KING:
I came on the bus.
MADDIE:
I also don’t take any of this stuff very seriously anymore. I really don’t.
KING:
You’ve made a fist.
MADDIE:
Bill delights in making people feel good about themselves. Do you have any idea how great that is for Jhana?
KING:
I can imagine.
MADDIE:
I mean he’s got the confidence of a shoe when it comes to himself but he really does make people feel, you know, pretty good.
KING:
He’s sort of straight.
MADDIE:
Perfect, King.
KING:
Perfect. (touching MADDIE’s face)
MADDIE:
You’re like your daughter, repeating.
KING:
You smell good.
MADDIE:
Right. Booze and garlic. Lovely stuff.
KING:
You smell like you. The way your pillow used to.
MADDIE:
Since when did you lie around sniffing my pillow? Since never.
KING:
The Diamond Kitchen. We settle that little girl of ours down in the front of the van. The lights have calmed down, left something thick in the air. We make love against the fence post and you got a little cut at the top of your leg.
MADDIE:
Your memory is very selective.
KING:
There should always be something at risk.
MADDIE:
The next morning we had a hell’uva fight. You’d spent practically our last dime on an amplifier and hadn’t even told me or –
KING:
Fuck the next morning.
MADDIE and KING kiss; then, hearing BILL approaching, they stop. BILL enters unaware of what has just happened.
BILL:
The very first movie I saw, I mean in a theatre, was Blue Hawaii.
KING:
So you said. How’d your mission go?
BILL:
It was also about the dumbest fucking movie ever made. Even as a little kid, I thought he was dumb. (producing a bright purple wine from under his coat)
MADDIE:
Oh good. Nothing like a little pancake syrup at the end of a day.
BILL:
Moody Blue. Brilliant stuff. Where’s the crystal? (exits)
KING:
You look about ready to collapse, lady.
MADDIE:
He barely drinks, you know.
BILL enters with tall glasses of wine.
BILL:
You know, Maddie? Our neighbours are good folk. Real salt of the earth.
MADDIE:
You’re going to get sick, Bill. You get sick mixing beer and water. Remember?
BILL:
They’re just sitting around, w
atching a little TV, skinning live animals, that sort of thing. I showed them some poems, explained how I was raised by a family of timber wolves, in the suburbs of Ottawa.
KING:
I told Jhana I’d be up again after New Year’s.
MADDIE:
Then you’d better explain that means you won’t be here for Christmas.
BILL:
So why do you do it? Why glorify … No. It’s even more bizarre than that. You’re a human effigy. I mean at least you could imitate someone who really was a tragic hero. God knows there’s enough around.
KING:
Elvis was magic, man. Pure and simple.
BILL:
Wearing diapers at forty? Giving away fleets of Cadillacs to strangers? And guns. Didn’t he spend around a million a week on revolvers and …
MADDIE:
I’m going to clean up a little.
BILL:
(to KING) Why don’t you be Sylvia Plath? “Every woman adores a fascist.”
KING:
You need a hand?
MANDIE:
No. I’m fine. (exits)
BILL:
And all these phoney badges and shit from Nixon. He was pretty fucked, all around if you ask me.
KING:
(in the Memphis accent) I chased every girl I ever met. This one girl was fourteen. Her mother threatened to charge me with rape. She comes in to talk to me after the show. You know something? By the end of our talk, I could’ve made the mother too.
BILL:
You do that very well.
KING:
How about some poetry? You write poems about Jhana?
BILL:
No.
KING:
I’d love to see something like that lying flat on a page.
BILL:
I don’t write poems about Jhana. I live with her.
KING:
She’s wearing that cape to bed. That dumb cape I gave her.
BILL:
Sometimes she’s in overdrive and it’s really hard to take. She’ll be bitchy to Maddie. Just whining or glued to the TV. She’ll talk about Andrew, this guy she’s hot on from work, until you can’t stand it anymore.
KING:
It’s over top of her nightgown. That dumb cape.
MADDIE enters.
MADDIE:
I’m ready to call it a night.
KING:
I’m pretty shot.
BILL:
(to MADDIE) You need the blankets and stuff out of my room?
MADDIE:
It’s okay.
BILL:
The almighty Elvis. Just a fat old guy, afraid to leave his room.
KING:
We’re all fat and mean, pal. But even the biggest jerk in the world, when he tucks his kid into bed, he leaves his hand on her forehead a minute ‘cause he loves the warmth.
BILL:
I don’t know how you could do it.