Triptych and Iphigenia (2 page)

S
CENE
F
OUR

Lights crossfade to bright light in Wife's area.

Very loud blues music—Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin.

Wife is a little drunk as she dances and sings to the music. She is wearing a sleeveless vest and a very short skirt. She veers from anger to false cheer, sometimes dancing, skipping the songs as her mood and temper alter. At times she talks back to the music.

WIFE
   (
mimicking the Mistress
) “I think you've come to the wrong dressing room … If you will excuse me, I have friends waiting.”

BRANDY,
her daughter, enters, wearing a miniskirt and bright socks.

DAUGHTER
   Partying! All by yourself … Poor Mommy.

WIFE
   You look ridiculous.

DAUGHTER
   This one must be something … what does she do? Cat-walk?

WIFE
   She's an actress.

DAUGHTER
   Famous?

WIFE
   Look Brandy, you've got to stand by me. You've got to say, “Don't do it, Daddy … don't, don't do it.”

DAUGHTER
   (
angry
) I hate this fucking house … scenes, fights, tears … Daddy can't stand it … that's why he goes
to the country. … He can't work with a crazy woman like you.

WIFE
   (
quietly
) Brandy. I need you. You have got to stand by me in this … it's for everyone's sake.

DAUGHTER
   What's so different about her?

WIFE
   She'll play one of his heroines—a slut.

DAUGHTER
   You're nuts.

Daughter goes into her own area.

S
CENE
F
IVE

On a board, pinups of her favorite rock stars and her father. She kisses her father's face.

DAUGHTER
   Silly Daddy … silly silly Daddy, (
scolding voice
) I'm watching you.

Daughter begins to pin the sheet to the wall.

DAUGHTER
   All my friends adore him … Two of them have crushes on him … They ask for his autograph because he's quite famous … he comes to school on opening day with my mother, my mother wearing stupid clothes and clunky jewelry … of course I prefer him … One Christmas Eve it was snowing and he lifted me out of bed and said (
conspiratorial voice
), “Would you like to see the tree in Rockefeller Center?” and he put Mummy's fur coat over me and we snuck out and got into a cab … it was magic, the tree, the lights, the snow, couples ice-skating after midnight, and my father holding me in a long fur coat, and people looking at us as if we were lovers. Yes, lovers.

S
CENE
S
IX

Early morning. Light in Mistress's area. She is wearing jeans, hair tossed, bemused.

MISTRESS
   Oh God, oh God, oh God … I did show some gumption … at first, but then his hand, his thief's hand, came under my skirt and he said, “You could not have put those stockings and those garters on just to go straight home,” and I said, “You could be right, Henry, you could be right.”

Wife in Daughter's area.

Daughter reading a magazine interview.

DAUGHTER
   Actress tells why she takes on difficult roles.

WIFE
   (
brisk
) Go on.

DAUGHTER
   (
scanning
) Her deep entreating voice, her tragic heroines … (
skipping
) “Oriental fury,” the pathos of a disappointed queen …

WIFE
   Her years.

DAUGHTER
   Doesn't say.

WIFE
   'Course it doesn't say. (
intent voice
) A long lock of her hair.

DAUGHTER
   Not the voodoo crap that the maid did with snake oil and chicken's blood.

WIFE
   Yes, the voodoo crap with snake oil and cockerel's blood.

DAUGHTER
   (
cutting in
) It's ghoulish.

WIFE
   It worked on her husband.

DAUGHTER
   He got run over.

WIFE
   He had it coming. (
sweeter voice
) O, my precious snake oil and warm cockerel's blood, unhair her head, dim her eyes (
vicious
) … This malefaction must be stopped … a cuckoo in our nest.

DAUGHTER
   I hate it when you act.

WIFE
   Make her dull of tongue and dwarfish … a poor pastiche of what she was …

DAUGHTER
   You should put yourself up for auditions … bit parts …

WIFE
   This is not acting … feel my pulse … the man's gone mad … Her gypsy's lust.

Mistress takes up the story.

MISTRESS
   (
on the floor or stretched on staircase
) Your hair … your hair … kept going on about my hair … We mustn't fall in love, I said … speak for yourself, he said … Ran his forehead all along the wall … (
imitating Henry
) I am dying, Egypt … dying. It was there, no, not there. There. (
She kisses the wall.
) Anyone could have come in; says to expect him at all hours, he'll get a stepladder, bribe the man at the stage door, (
rueful
) I am dying, Egypt … dying.

Wife has come across to eavesdrop.

DAUGHTER
   (
calls across
) Mummy. What is love?

WIFE
   Ask your father. Ask his whore.

S
CENE
S
EVEN

Mistress comes downstage, sits on bench. Wife watches pantherlike and follows.

WIFE
   Ah, there you are.

MISTRESS
   So you must be Pauline.

WIFE
   Yes. I must be Pauline.

Wife sits.

Mistress moves along to distance herself

WIFE
   You have cats? (
waits
) You look like a cat person, a silver-haired or a tortoiseshell curled up on your lap … we have a dog, an old lazy setter—Jesse—getting on … oh yes, dozes most of the day.

MISTRESS
   I came here to be by myself.

Pause.

WIFE
   Ever pick anyone up on a park bench?

MISTRESS
   No.

WIFE
   I did. A Latino … I recognized him from our deli … we got chatting … he said he could cover a woman's face, any woman's face, with a paper bag, and he could tell her exact age from just feeling her cunt … A bit like telling the age of a tree from the circles in the trunk.

MISTRESS
   Not quite.

WIFE
   That got you going … I often wonder about women coming … us … us coming … if it's different for each one of our little individual cunty selves … men are so reserved about it … take you, now … you have this
composure … this veneer … Grace Kelly would play you if you were ever to be played and if she were still alive … but that's beside the point … as a matter of fact I would say in the flagrante department you would crow as loud as the rest of us.

MISTRESS
   You do rattle on … is it your nerves?

WIFE
   (
with a husky laugh
) No, sister. The one thing I take care of, is the upstairs department. I mean life and love and kids and all that stuff can send a woman loopy … I've seen them … beautiful women … all bloated … out to lunch with big hats and dark glasses because their husbands have wandered … Do you know the surest way to keep your man happy?

MISTRESS
   You are about to tell me.

WIFE
   Give him rope … be mysterious … tell him about the Latino and the paper bag but don't say you met him on a park bench … It was overheard. Every sensitive man loves two women—Mamma Mia and Mamma Whore and he's sincere about it … so let's not bitch about them … I love men and I can see you love men unreservedly.

MISTRESS
   And how do you arrive at that conclusion?

WIFE
   Your swallow, (
pause
) the way you give little gasps, little intakes, when that Duke, whatever the fuck his name is, comes on to you in the play.

MISTRESS
   I am inhabiting the character, the Duchess of Malfi … We are different creatures. My dear woman, how little you know about the theater …

WIFE
   I know plenty. At this moment you are shit scared.

MISTRESS
   Why should I be shit scared?

WIFE
   Because you made a wrong connection, schmuck. You ate of the forbidden fruit. I want my husband, every last little piece of him.

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 …