Triptych and Iphigenia (3 page)

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.

S
CENE
E
IGHT

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 …

S
CENE
N
INE

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.

S
CENE
T
EN

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.

S
CENE
E
LEVEN

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.

S
CENE
T
WELVE

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.