Boston Marriage
Page 4
ANNA: Oh la. Where could it be?
CLAIRE: Gone to Arcturus, with the rest of the light…
ANNA: Where is Arcturus?
CLAIRE: In the Heavens.
ANNA: Is it a star?
CLAIRE: I would think so.
ANNA: Far far away?
CLAIRE: Of necessity.
ANNA: Lover’s agog at the "immensity" of it all.
CLAIRE: …yes?
ANNA: Good then, see here, the star. It’s not yours. Do you know? It’s not your soul. It’s the sky. It sits there and displays this or that trick of the light, and your kidneys, or spleen, direct you to mate, and you gaze upward.
CLAIRE: Mmm.
ANNA: Because you are a poet? No. BECAUSE YOU ARE OUTSIDE. It would seem equally sublime, were you cased in a piano crate, squinting at the screws.
CLAIRE: …indeed.
ANNA: It is none other than our friend, the Mating Instinct.
CLAIRE: Mmm.
ANNA: Toying with you. Once again.
CLAIRE: And what would you know of that? Greek to a Goose.
ANNA: I pray you would indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech, which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: HOW DARE YOU?
CLAIRE: No. No. No. It is not fair. Do you see? It is not fair.
ANNA: What is "fair"? Is Love Fair?
CLAIRE: Mmm.
ANNA: Is it fair, that the sea, for example, should rage wide and savage, erasing whole towns and coastal…
CLAIRE: Settlements?
ANNA: No, well, yes, certainly, but I meant the …the …the sites of agriculture …(Pause)
CLAIRE: "Farms"?
ANNA: Thank you. Then retreat to that calm beauty so cherished by painters of the second class? (Pause)
(MAID enters.)
ANNA: Have they come? Have they called? What is it? Has a letter arrived?
MAID: No, miss.
ANNA: Well then, what brings you here? Sick Curiosity? Come for the Spectacle …? Oh, no. I see it: Years to come: our Martha here, back in Ireland, reinstalled by her Peat fire, the wee bairns, listening, once again, to grandmother’s saga, "My time in the City," listening, each for her favorite part, for one the splendor, for one the scope …
CLAIRE: …for one the end.
ANNA: In the so-heavy odor of the village bodies, in that "hut," where the very caulking, of the walls…What is it made of? What is it made of? The, the caulking …
CLAIRE: What’s it made of?
MAID: Mud.
ANNA: "Miss."
MAID: Mud, miss.
CLAIRE: Of that river mud, so suggestive of sex to the pre-orgasmic mind, that mud …
MAID: Actually, they dig it from the barrow, miss.
CLAIRE: From the barrow.
MAID: From the Hill. Me Auld Gran used to say …
CLAIRE: I know what a barrow is.
MAID: Yes, miss.
CLAIRE: I wondered that the Barrow mud was moist enough. (Pause) Of fog, sweat, peat smoke, and that ineffable reek, so redolent of…childbirth, menstrual blood, of copulation, of…
DAVID MAM ET
MAID: Actually, it isn’t moist, miss. That’s why it falls out. (Pause) It dries up.
CLAIRE: It dries up.
MAID: The mud. (Pause)
CLAIRE: What do they do then?
MAID: They, well. They moisten it, and they replace it.
ANNA: Whyn’t they just use moister mud?
MAID: Well, I’m sure that they do, you see, but, but, but, but, that, as time goes by …
ANNA: Mmm hmm.
MAID: … it all dries out. (Pause)
CLAIRE: Aha.
MAID: However you moisten it. (Starts to cry)
ANNA: Why are you crying?
MAID: Cause I’ll have to leave.
ANNA: Have you been spying on your Betters?
CLAIRE: Eavesdropper.
ANNA: Is that the happy excuse for your visit? To profess your chagrin over our reversal?
MAID: Yes, that’s right, miss. I came to see was there ‘Nything I c’ld do to help.
CLAIRE: Oh, Wizard! Brave Sorority indomitable. Come to support us in our grief. Yes. Boil Water. Make a poultice. (Pause)
ANNA: What?
CLAIRE: What could you do to help?
MAID: I was goin’ to say, that It’s like rowing.
ANNA: (Pause) What is like rowing?
MAID: The troubles between women and men.
CLAIRE: Pray. How is it like rowing?
MAID: Men have big shoulder blades. Our shoulder blades are smaller. Which means less power rowing. Although, if you row correctly, you should use yer legs, which, women, have big muscles in our legs. (Pause) Though, of course, it don’t make much difference in a short pull. (Pause)
ANNA: What doesn’t make a difference?
MAID: Rowing.
CLAIRE: Why does it make that much difference, then, rowing a long way?
MAID: Because, miss, like many things in life, a lack of form can be hid in the short run, its absence being taken up by power. (Pause)
CLAIRE: How do you come to know so much about the nautical?
MAID: I was on a boat once.
CLAIRE: Really.
ANNA: That will be all. (MAID exits. Pause.)
CLAIRE: You were going to say something.
ANNA: What about?
CLAIRE: How the deuce should I know …? (Pause)
ANNA: I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.
CLAIRE: Well, say something else, for the love of God.
(MAID enters.)
MAID: Mum.
ANNA: Oh MIGHT YOU GET OFF MY TITS? What is it? (Pause)
MAID: I’ve told a lie.
CLAIRE: Well, then you’re going to hell.
ANNA: A lie about what?
MAID: I can’t rightly say it.
ANNA: Oh, spit it out.
MAID: It’s me’s in trouble.
ANNA: Go on.
MAID: I’ve lost me most precious possession.
CLAIRE: Your Rapier Wit?
MAID: No.
CLAIRE: I give up. (Pause)
MAID: Me maidenhood.
CLAIRE: How icky.
ANNA: When did it occur?
MAID: During before when you had yer tea.
ANNA: Aha.
MAID: No, not the whole of it.
ANNA: No.
MAID: …jus’ between the first time that you rang for the Hot water.
ANNA: Mmm.
MAID: No, not even. No, I tell a lie. It was when I came back with the tray.
ANNA: Yes…
MAID: But b’fore I put the tray down.
ANNA: Ah.
MAID: That’s why the cook quit.
ANNA: Is it?
CLAIRE: …didn’t like the entertainment?
MAID: No, I tell a lie. I’d put th’ tray down, do you see, but I wz holdin’ on to it, on to the handles, like, while it was on the counter.
CLAIRE: …thank you, yes.
MAID: … for
CLAIRE: …that’s quite enough.
MAID: For "balance." (Pause)
CLAIRE: Ah, yes.
MAID: And I’m afraid I’ve spilt the milk. (MAID cries)
ANNA: Oh, Man—oh, Adversary Implacable. What does one not sacrifice upon the altar of your merciless caprice? (To MAID) Go away. You’re fired.
CLAIRE: Are you deaf? You’re sacked. Go away now, go home.
MAID: I can’t go home.
ANNA: Can’t you see, we have troubles of our own?
CLAIRE: Have you no sympathy?
MAID: I can’t go home, I’m ruined.
CLAIRE: You ain’t ruined. Just don’t tell nobody. You dense cow. Don’t tell anyone. And pray to the gods your friend has neither given you the pox, or a child. (MAID cries.) Shall I write it down for you …?
ANNA: Go, go, go, go away, you sad, immoral harlot.
MAID: I don’t know what to do.
CLAIRE: Well, what would your Auld Granny say?
MAID: I don’t know.
CLAIRE: Well, go home and ask her.
MAID: She’s dead.
CLAIRE: She should have taken better care of herself.
MAID: Waal, she lived a long life.
CLAIRE: Oh, good.
MAID: She was forty.
ANNA: …Ah ha …
MAID: But she always said, My Gran, she would Reach Out from Beyond the Grave.
CLAIRE: Told Fortunes, did she?
ANNA: Go away.
CLAIRE: Turned the odd trick? Fill up the Family Larder?
MAID: …she had the second sight.
CLAIRE: …how handy.
MAID: The islanders said she could see right through a man and two yards into the dirt that he stood on. One time, Annie MacPherson lost her locket. Actually, she lost it more than once. She never could hold on to anything. She used to tie her shovel to her apron strings when she went out to work in the garden. That’s how she broke her ankle. One time, she baked a trowel in a pie. (Pause) I must pull up me bootstraps. Yer right. I’ll go.
CLAIRE: Oh top hole! (Pause)
ANNA: Happy Day.
MAID: Because Me Auld Gran used to say …
CLAIRE: Oh, for Christ’s sake, let her void herself.
ANNA: What did your Auld Gran say?
MAID: "Life is Froth and Life is Bubble. Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble. Courage in your own." (Pause)
(MAID exits.)
CLAIRE: We’ve fallen victim to the worst sin.
ANNA: Farting in Church?
CLAIRE: Despair.
ANNA: …that is the worst sin?
CLAIRE: The girl is right.
ANNA: In what particular?
CLAIRE: Fine. We are mired in difficulties. We must extricate ourselves.
ANNA: I am all attention.
CLAIRE: Our fortunes are turned upon the unwonted discovery in your home of a specific emerald necklace.
ANNA: In brief.
CLAIRE: All, then, we must do is excuse its presence here.
ANNA: You bound before me.
CLAIRE: Look here: You are a jeweler. You are a lapidary. He brought the Emerald to you to have it Reset. (Pause)
ANNA: No.
CLAIRE: You are a sleuth. You are a detectress. Commissioned to locate and restore the stolen necklace.
ANNA: …Mmm…
CLAIRE: You are a valuer for an Assurance Firm.
ANNA: Hold hard. Hold hard.…. No no no no better than that. Better than that far: do you see? You brought her to me. You brought the little twat here. You bought the trollop here to …
(MAID enters. Pause.)
ANNA: What?
MAID: Are ye angry with me, mum?
ANNA: Do you know why you people perished? Do you know? In your precious potato famine? Do you think it was chance? You died, through a criminal lack of concern for the nitrogen content of the soil. (Pause)
(MAID exits crying)
CLAIRE: Where were we?
ANNA: … it is gone.
CLAIRE: No, I deny it.
ANNA: It is vanished.
CLAIRE: Best of friends. Most inventive of Preceptors…
ANNA: You brought her here …(Pause) No.
CLAIRE: How may I retrieve that Philosopher’s stone, which bid fair to repair our fortunes? How can I jog your memory?
ANNA: No, it is gone.
CLAIRE: How may I recruit your dispersed fancies?
ANNA: Distract me.
CLAIRE: Uh, uh, uh …Once two children went into the woods…
ANNA: No.
CLAIRE: Alright, Once upon a time …Once in the course of human events, wait: Awake!
The roseate hue of dawn steals o’er the sleeping copse.
Hark! Hark! The hunting horn…something …something…
"Foxes"…
ANNA: Yes. Yes. I have it.
CLAIRE: "…Little kit fox, why weep’st thou? For, though your daddy dies, he gives healthy amusement to the county"…Uh …"Let us, like that dying fox, discern our place in life, and …" (Pause) "and …"
ANNA: Have you run down?
CLAIRE: I seem to.
ANNA: Good. I have the Perfect Plan.
CLAIRE: I beg your pardon— Disgorge it.
ANNA: Upon the one proviso.
CLAIRE: … a proviso?
ANNA: That should I resurrect our Fortunes, you swear to see this twit no more.
CLAIRE: You swine.
ANNA: Everything has a price.
CLAIRE: You Visigoth.
ANNA: And having a price, has a price tag, read it.
CLAIRE: I shall see her the once.
ANNA: Granted.
CLAIRE: In privacy.
ANNA: For how long?
CLAIRE: An afternoon.
ANNA: Done.
CLAIRE: You concede so blithely. Why?
ANNA: And she unbroken to the Bit? All innocent of the Chafe of the Saddle …And Shy of the Touch of Man. Progress how you will, I feel the one afternoon will hardly avail you.
CLAIRE: That will be as it may.
ANNA: And I want to watch.
CLAIRE: Outside of the room.
ANNA: I’ll fetch the auger.
CLAIRE: Tell me the plan.
ANNA: You tell the girl that her father came, to visit a Famous Clairvoyant…
CLAIRE: Mmm.
ANNA: Madame de …
CLAIRE: No, I get ya …
ANNA: And he brought her mother’s Jewel…
CLAIRE: Say on …
ANNA: In order to divine by it. (Pause) Whdja Think?
CLAIRE: It is the least credible explanation of Human Behavior I have ever heard.
ANNA: Of course. But you miss the point.
CLAIRE: The point being …
ANNA: That it is not to be believed …
CLAIRE: Mmm?
ANNA: Our tale is offered, but as a fig leaf of propriety. Not to "explain," but to clothe with the, the …
CLAIRE: Mantle of decency.
ANNA: Yes. That behavior it would be irksome to hear explained.
CLAIRE: You are a Medium.
ANNA: Yes.
CLAIRE: And her Father…
ANNA: Yes.
CLAIRE: He heard, whilst abroad …
ANNA: Yes.
CLAIRE: Heard, yes, while in the Orient. Of a Fortune-Teller.
ANNA: Mmm.
(MAID enters.)
MAID: I’ve come to get me wages.
CLAIRE: One moment, a seer, who could conjure …
ANNA: By means of the Jewel.
CLAIRE: Now, there you’ve lost me.
ANNA: You take the jewel and gaze into it, as into a crystal ball, to determine, do you see? Both the woman’s secret ills, and their alleviation.
CLAIRE: …the woman.
ANNA: Yes.
CLAIRE: What woman?
ANNA: Her mother.
CLAIRE: Whose mother?
ANNA: Your friend’s mother. My protector’s wife. You see, we tell her that’s why her father came. Not to betray his wife, no, but to aid her. What is her problem, by the way? Has your friend spoken of it?
CLAIRE: The Mother?
ANNA: Yes.
CLAIRE: She is subject, it seems, to those unnamed, vagrant…How did you know she has a problem?
ANNA: Her husband has been in the Orient for Seven Years.
CLAIRE: As long as that.
ANNA: He tells me.
CLAIRE: And she lacked the, the …
ANNA: Let us say the capacity for independent action.
CLAIRE: (Pause) Makes you think …
ANNA: Well, I’d hardly go that far.
MAID: I’ve come to get me wages.
CLAIRE: And so, …
ANNA: So the Husband, do you see, out of Concern.
CLAIRE: Concern, yes.
ANNA: On his return from Abroad, brought in his wife’s jewel, t
o allow the medium …
CLAIRE: Mmm.
ANNA: … to Divine with it. (Pause)
CLAIRE: Fine. Which leaves only this. How does one explain to the father his daughter’s exceptional presence here?
ANNA: Oh, faugh.
CLAIRE: Ah. Tis not your ox was gored. Where is your Bible now?
ANNA: It’s in the morning room.
MAID: I’ve come to get me wages.
CLAIRE: Alright, then, can you think that your protector will continue in his liaison with one whose Best Friend had debauched his little girl?
ANNA: Do you suggest he might object?
CLAIRE: You must get out more.
ANNA: Truly? (Pause)
CLAIRE: Yes.
ANNA: What has become of liberality? Of Progressive thought? Of…
CLAIRE: Gone at the slightest hint of difficulty
ANNA: My oh my.
CLAIRE: Disappeared like an Oil Stock newly invested in by a young Widow.
ANNA: … I ask you.
CLAIRE: …like a tarsier, at the hint of False Dawn.
ANNA: What is a tarsier?
CLAIRE: It is an East Indian Rodent.
ANNA: Is it?
CLAIRE: I believe it is.
ANNA: Noteworthy for its skittishness?
CLAIRE: It is proverbial…but.
ANNA: …live and learn.
CLAIRE: How do we explain to the father the presence here of his little girl?
ANNA: We tell him the selfsame thing.
CLAIRE: To wit:
ANNA: She came here to consult a fortune-teller.
CLAIRE: But he knows you’re not a fortune-teller.
ANNA: We tell him you‘re the fortune-teller.
CLAIRE: I’m a fortune-teller, too?
ANNA: Mmm.
CLAIRE: Does that mean I, too, must wear a funny hat?
ANNA: If necessary. (Pause)
CLAIRE: But could such a Byzantine rodomontade restore the girl to me? Could it convince the father?
ANNA: Men live but to be deceived.
CLAIRE: They do?
ANNA: Well, what have I done but deceive him? My protector loves me. He requires my aid. How to continue with me when all the world conspires to the contrary. We will mint for him his excuse. And our poor simpering effort will, once again, conquer all. (Pause)
CLAIRE: I have underestimated you.
ANNA: I’m quite aware of it. Oh, my word, in fine: we shall have a séance. Eh? Eh?
CLAIRE: A Séance.
ANNA: At Which Séance, I, Madame de …
CLAIRE: Mmm.
MAID: Miss …
ANNA: Yes, shut up one moment, will you …? Will put all …
MAID: Miss…
ANNA: Will put all aright.