Triptych and Iphigenia (6 page)

WIFE
   They were anemones … tall, white Japanese anemones …

MISTRESS
   … and in the starlight they seemed to … blanch … (
suddenly howling
) HELP … HELP.

S
CENE
T
WENTY

WIFE
   My new therapist was tough … we did things called visualization and interaction. She started by making me roll bits of paper into snowballs and pelt them at her. Soon we got on to Henry, what I would like to do to him. For one instant I thought, This is absurd, this is dumb, and then she told me to take his clothes off and stand him in the dock, the bastard. She asked me what I wanted to do with his penis … what was the first thing I would do to his penis? “Cut it off,” I said. And having cut it off she asked me what I wanted to do next. I hesitated. I thought we'd gone far enough. But no, she goaded me. She said, “Do you want to eat it, suck it, cut it up, or wear it.” So we imagined me wearing it and she made me walk around the room, swagger. She said, “Have you ever had a woman? … being with a woman would get rid of some of your jealousy.” And I said, “I'm getting rather fond of my jealousy …” and she made a note of that.

She moves downstage.

WIFE
   (
cont.
) I came out of there and wrote him a letter. I said I would share him with her … Mailed it on the corner of
Fifty-eighth Street … opposite a luggage shop. Two mornings later, it arrived, he read it, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. He just shook his head and I realized that we were each in a trap, and I thought, How will it end, how will it end—one of us will indoubtedly be squeezed to death in that trap. “Did Brandy get fitted with a coil,” he asked. “How do I know. She's a liar, and moreover, she shoplifts.” Shoplifts!

S
CENE
T
WENTY-ONE

Wife and Mistress are reading an identical book.

MISTRESS
   I love this story … it was about a woman who sleepwalked …

WIFE
   … Mrs. Rheinhardt.

MISTRESS
   At first she was rather timid and only ventured into her own rose garden but then she got bolder, more adventurous. One night she walked with a little son whom she did not have and they went a long way into the countryside and all of a sudden …

WIFE
   (
taking up the story
) They knelt down and began to scrape the rich red earth for treasure that they knew was there and they found …

MISTRESS
   (
joyous
) A latchkey. A talisman.

WIFE
   (
storytelling voice
) That night Mrs. Rheinhardt dreamt that she was not in the country but back in London … prowling about … and on her sleepwalk she came to a mews house, number ten, with a big tub of flowers outside, and she rummaged in the clay and found the key …

MISTRESS
   … the same key as in her dream and she let herself in and there in the bedroom was her husband … waiting …

WIFE
   (
loud whisper
) To be unfaithful with her. To ravish her. Those clandestine orgies went on and on in her sleep … then one day …

MISTRESS
   … Mrs. Rheinhardt went to her husband's gallery on Bond Street … he'd gone out but his diary was on his desk, open, and there was the address of the mews house, number ten, penciled in, three, four times a week.

WIFE
   She took a taxi and found the key and let herself in. The kitchen was minute … there was a pan in which an omelette had been cooked.

MISTRESS
   Three eggshells …

WIFE
   … two brown and one white … the fat was still warm in the pan.

MISTRESS
   She stood at the bottom of the stairs and then (
triumphant
) she crept away, because it was clear to her that Mr. Rheinhardt went by day just as …

WIFE
   … she went by night because they were on different tangents … but one day or one night they would come together …

MISTRESS
   … arrive at the same time to the house of their dreams and up the stairs to the four-poster bed.

She gets up and goes to her own area.

S
CENE
T
WENTY-TWO

MISTRESS
   (
happy
) The phone rang very early. My replacement had fallen and broken her shoulder and they asked me if I would consider coming back! Would I consider coming back! Friends said there was something different about my acting—scarier. (
softer voice
) Henry thought so too, and he knew why. I didn't have his child, I didn't have him in the fullest sense of the word, but we'd grown closer … we'd come through our black season.

WIFE
   (
overcheerful
) Clarissa, let's bury the hatchet. Come to dinner.

MISTRESS
   He would shout in his sleep and sit up … a nightmare. We were all on holiday, on someone's yacht and we, the women, were drowning and he couldn't save us, couldn't save all three of us and I said “Darling, we won't all be together on someone's yacht” and we'd hold each other and he'd say “Promise that you will always come to me in moonlight” and I promised, because that was how it had to be.

WIFE
   Monday, seven thirty, informal.

S
CENE
T
WENTY-THREE

Mistress picks up her fringed shawl and allows it to trail across the floor as she goes.

Wife's area a sea of lighted candles. Wife has her hair pinned up and is wearing an apron; a picture of domesticity.

MISTRESS
   How … lovely; you've gone to such trouble.

WIFE
   I love going to trouble … a homebody … and guess what we're having?

MISTRESS
  
Poulet roti.

Wife shakes her head.

MISTRESS
  
Poisson an vin blanc.

Wife shakes her head even more, teasingly.

MISTRESS
   (
less sure of herself
)
Caneton à l'orange.

WIFE
   Go on.

MISTRESS
   Tripe.

WIFE
   Truffles.

MISTRESS
   Truffles! How extravagant.

WIFE
   You look well … rested.

MISTRESS
   I don't feel rested.

WIFE
   Do you sleep on your face or on your back?

MISTRESS
   It depends.

WIFE
   I sleep on my face and I waken all swollen and pudgy.

Over her last speech, Wife has brought a tiny plate of truffles and toothpicks.

They both sit. Wife takes one. Mistress hesitates.

WIFE
   (
cont.
) Come on … dig in … no need to stand on ceremony here.

Wife picks up a cookbook.

WIFE
   (
cont.
) The truffle appears to be one of the original secrets of the universe. How does it get into the ground? Why should such diverse creatures as pregnant pigs and psychic dogs be the exclusive hounds for finding them?
(
more seductive
) The fragrance of truffles is impossible to explain—a truffle smells like … a truffle. But beyond its perfume the truffle has a visual quality which adds to its mystique. Black … flat … deep. The black punctuation of the truffle making a statement. (
consults cookbook
) The pig has a most keen sense of smell, without which it would never be able to find the treasure deep within the ground under the snows. Der Teufel—which means devil, Clarissa. (
pause
) Did Henry insist that you not have his child?

MISTRESS
   (
terse
) Yes.

WIFE
   You should have cheated … it would be a little person now … in its crib, gurgling away.

Mistress flinches—Wife holds a truffle to the Mistress's lips.

Mistress reluctantly takes it.

Mistress chews truffle, nervously.

WIFE
   You'd think they were poison.

MISTRESS
   Whereas, in fact, they are only little devils. (
looking around
) Have you sent Henry out, for this fest?

WIFE
   Didn't have to … he's gone.

MISTRESS
   (
thrown
) Gone?

WIFE
   To Ireland …

MISTRESS
   (
shocked
) No.

WIFE
   Across the ocean … (
half singing
) Oh little was my notion as I sailed across the ocean … (
speaking
) We went there, to Connemara, as you know, at Christmas, which was also our anniversary. We walked all day across flat, stone, misted country …

MISTRESS
   (
cutting in
) Yes, he described it in his letters, the rain, the mist, the light, the people.

WIFE
   (
cutting in
) At night we went to the local pub. There was a beautiful young girl, long auburn hair, shy, mysterious. On the last night she struck. Outside the window we could hear singing … quite ethereal … haunting … gave us goose pimples. Henry opened the window, it was the auburn girl, her hair all wet, like a fairy queen, and he just took her arm and brought her in. I knew that she had gone out there and sang for that very purpose, for Henry to open the window and bring her in. Quite a coup … They have corresponded. She sent him the words of songs … those fucking heartbreaking songs that got to him; she beckoned … and he went.

MISTRESS
   You mean, you let him go … you didn't try to stop him? (
sharp
) Didn't slit your wrists?

WIFE
   On the contrary, I helped him pack … put his warm sweaters in and his shoe trees—he's very fussy about his shoe trees …

MISTRESS
   Why so considerate?

WIFE
   She provides a new name, a new face, a new bed, sad songs … breaking the spell of you.

MISTRESS
   Monster.

WIFE
   Yes, you have made me so … but, as things stand …

MISTRESS
   (
cutting in sharp
) As things stand …

Over the next speeches is the sound of the sea starting low then rising, louder louder, intercut with the singing of the
AUBURN GIRL.

AUBURN GIRL
   (
offstage
) My young love said to me

My father won't mind

And my mother won't slight you

For your lack of kind.

WIFE
   (
exalting
) It couldn't be better … Back to his roots … The old stories that his father taught him as a child, the legends, there, in some cottage, a big fire, the smell of peat, his sea nymph outside the window, or just come inside, into the warmth … all the thrill of courtship.

Mistress rises and wraps herself inside her shawl, as protection.

Wife holds up a candle to usher her away.

A noise offstage of slamming door.

Daughter enters, disheveled, wearing a fur coat.

DAUGHTER
   Dear, darling, Mummy.

WIFE
   (
fending her off
) These overnight rave parties have to stop … finito.

DAUGHTER
   Get your widows' weeds out, to look good for a funeral.

WIFE
   She's crazy.

DAUGHTER
   Crazy yes … crazy, crazy, crazy. My father's missing at sea.

MISTRESS
   (
aghast
) No. No.

DAUGHTER
   He went out in a blizzard in a little row boat. He's missing five hours.

WIFE
   How you love to scare me … Daddy's gone a-hunting. Daddy's gone a-missing.

DAUGHTER
   They rang you but you were too busy clawing at her.

MISTRESS
   Are they thinking missing … or is he washed ashore in some inlet.

WIFE
   (
abrupt
) Whose talking missing … nobody. Moreover he's a brilliant sailor.

DAUGHTER
   The fishermen warned them.

WIFE
   (
cutting in
) Them?