Frolic of His Own (10 page)

—No it's not what I mean. Turn on the light, it's right behind you. I mean this complaint you brought over from Kevin about my accident, let me read it over.

—Here. And that he said he probably couldn't help me out either? She squeezed the chair closer to the discomfort he'd strung out on the bed there, —Bobbie I mean.

—Yes, just let me read the, to file this claim declining inclusion under No Fault protection in asserting his full common law rights to seek tort recovery for damages for personal injuries including pain and suffering, and the . . .

—Because he just bought this Porsche, I even went over to the phone company but they said they're not hiring anybody even on the long lines, you could always get work on the long lines before all this technology screwed it up for everybody. I can't even pay my rent, did I tell you what the bank did?

—plaintiffs loss of earning capacity attributable to the scar.

—Where these checks I wrote bounced so they won't let me write any more because this other person may be cashing them who's going around being me?

—Listen just let me find what he's asking for damages here, where's the, consisting of a facial scar extending . . .

—Where I can't even pay to go see this doctor for this pain I told you about once right up here?

—facial scar extending below the right eye approx . . .

—No up here, give me your hand. Feel it? this lump?

—Yes. Now just let me, a facial scar extending below the . . .

—Not there no! You know what that is, wait . . . and another button of her blouse came undone, —there. Can you feel it?

—No. Yes. Listen, this facial scar under the right eye about two inches in length, where did he get that.

—Who, this scar? Her own hand came up tracing the line of it, —I think it's cute.

—God. Listen. I mean where did he, where did Kevin get this description.

—I don't know, just some movie he saw how do I know. Wait . . . a buttonhole burst, the blouse came away, —there. Now you can . . .

—That's what I'm asking you, how do you know. What movie.

—Just some movie he said he saw, how do I . . .

—I called you last night, I called you two or three times is that where you were? at the movies?

—I thought you'd be mad Oscar, I just thought . . .

—Well I am, no. No I just want to know, was it this big Civil War movie that just opened everyplace?

—It was real long, yes.

—No but was it the Civil War was it, what was the name of it.

—It was just a movie Oscar I don't know, who cares what the . . .

—Well I do, that's what I'm telling you I do! Was it The Blood in the Red White and Blue?

—There was blood in it. That's all I remember, there was blood . . .

—No now listen, listen . . .

—See I knew you'd be mad, he just said do you want to go to the movies so we went to this Chinese restaurant after with this crispy duck
like these rubber bands and he's talking about your accident and this scar where this man in this movie has this scar that wasn't my fault was it?

—I didn't say your fault. I'm talking about the movie.

—I just told you. He said do you want to go to the movies and . . .

—And then you went to a Chinese restaurant, fine. Now the movie.

—Like you said, there was all this blood. Right here, can you feel something?

—In the battle scenes, but what about . . .

—I just closed my eyes. Where you see this soldier get almost cut right in half and, and his, where this soldier waving a sword rides right over him I just closed my eyes.

—Listen, just start at the beginning.

—This first time they meet? where he's out hunting and she rides up on this horse? So she's acting very superior and says what is he doing on their land, only then she gets off the horse because it's real hot and then you know what? Her hand had come burrowing under the quilt he'd pulled up —where he's wearing these kind of overalls?

—I can guess. Listen . . .

—Where her hand down there is unbuttoning these buttons? The mound under the quilt stirred —and you can practically see what her hand is doing in there. Like, remember in the hospital? where you didn't want to do anything because the nurse might come in? The mound gently receded, gently rose, —Oscar? Who's that picture.

—The, who?

—Up there by those books, in this black bathrobe.

—It's not a bathrobe he's a judge, it's my grandfather when he, what are you doing . . .

—I just don't like the way he's watching what we're doing here . . . and she had, in fact, drawn up her blouse clambering off the end of the bed to reach up and turn the picture's face to the wall —because it's none of his business is it? her blouse falling open again —look. Do they look lopsided?

—Do, what?

—I said don't they look lopsided? like this one's higher than . . .

—Listen! I've got to clear things up about this movie. We're going to read the play right from the start and you tell me if you saw the same thing in the movie, here. You read the part of the Mother.

—Me?

—Just read it! I'm Thomas, I'm standing silhouetted against the window, left, my back on the room and a letter clutched in my hands behind me and I say, Dead! Now go ahead.

—But I thought we . . .

—Just read it! Where it says His Mother. Is that the place?

T
HOMAS

(IN A HOARSE WHISPER)

Dead!

H
IS
M
OTHER

Is that the place? On your cheek? Where you were wounded?

T
HOMAS

(INSTINCTIVELY RAISING HIS HAND TO HIS CHEEK)

It's healed.

H
IS
M
OTHER

Like a kiss . . .

T
HOMAS

(TURNING SLOWLY TO FACE HER)

Is it so bad, then?

H
IS
M
OTHER

No, not bad Thomas no, only . . . you look surprised. Is it true then, what we heard? That you were a hero?

T
HOMAS

Where?

H
IS
M
OTHER

On the . . . battlefield?

T
HOMAS

I mean where did you hear it.

H
IS
M
OTHER

Ambers heard, up at Quantness. What happened?

T
HOMAS

(DISMISSING IT IMPATIENTLY)

What happened? A shot, or a flying splinter. How's one to tell at a moment like that . . . ? I didn't know myself when it happened.

Seating himself in the window, THOMAS raises a boot to the sill and smooths letter out against it, intently as though trying to read.

H
IS
M
OTHER

(ANXIOUSLY)

Didn't know yourself, Thomas?

(SHE PAUSES, AS HE PAYS HER NO ATTENTION)

You don't look well, Thomas. I couldn't see when you came in, coming before it was light, but I knew your step. You look like you've scarcely eaten or slept the whole year you've been gone, since it started . . . You're thinner and tired, too, now I can see. You might have lost an eye.

T
HOMAS

Tired . . . ?

H
IS
M
OTHER

Or been blinded for life.

T
HOMAS

(EXCITEDLY PLANTING BOOTS, BRANDISHING LETTER)

I told you I hadn't slept! How could I, with this?

H
IS
M
OTHER

Your uncle never gave things away before. Not a smile, not a penny, and his own brother lying dead and buried in a foreign land . . .

T
HOMAS

(WITH ELATION)

And he never died before either! Dying intestate, Lord! I admire that, I must confess it. I don't know why, but I admire that ‘intestate.' For him, of all men, to die without leaving a will! And after the way he talked to me then, when we came back from France like beggars looking for a new exile, and you sent me up there to see him? ‘Coming in here in your fine French clothes demanding your rights,' he said to me, when I asked him for the money that he owed to my father, when I'd spent the morning trimming frayed cuffs and pinning the hem on my father's coat to try to look fit to call. Five hundred dollars! What was that to him, ‘the prominent coal magnate' this letter calls him, and here . . .

(LOOKING AT LETTER AGAIN, WAVING IT)

‘The eminent Pennsylvania political leader,' shabbier than I was with his tarnished buttons, and a coat gone green at the seams. And not for want, mind. He was proud of it, of saving the cost of a coat. Do you know where he'd got it? Off his coachman's back, when even the coachman was ashamed to be seen in it. And even at that,
would he part with the five hundred dollars? Three hundred, take it or leave it, he said, and a deed to oblivion, the deed to this place he'd been stuck with on a bad debt.

(CHUCKLING WITH RELISH)

What a fine pair of tramps we must have made, and this fortune between us, when he sent me off to see his man Bagby. This same one, his General Manager, the same Bagby that's written this letter. ‘Bagby takes care of such things,' he said when he sent me off. Seven years ago, this same one, this same Bagby.

(PACING THE ROOM, MUTTERING WITH RELISH)

Sitting up stark naked in the middle of his bed gaping at a comic print, a bag of jawbreakers beside him and a hard hat on his head. ‘Come in,' he says to me, into his dingy furnished room. ‘There's your money on the chiffonier, I've no doubt you'll want to count it.' ‘Here? The devil it is,' I told him, without even touching the envelope. ‘My uncle said gold, and where's the deed that he talked about?' ‘Suit yourself,' says Bagby, cracking a jawbreaker in his teeth, ‘in the top drawer,' and back he went to his comic. There it was, three hundred dollars counted out in the drawer, and the deed to this place with it. And now . . . !

(TURNING HALF TOWARD HER)

‘Bagby takes care of such things . . . ' By God, and he does!

H
IS
M
OTHER

Thomas! . . . Language fit for the battlefield, you're not in camp now among strangers and animals.

T
HOMAS

(APPROACHING HER)

A battlefield, that's what it's been all our lives! And now? Isn't it a time for . . . ‘language,' as you say? To owe no one, after . . . all this. The years of all this, and of talking poormouth at Quantness . . .

H
IS
M
OTHER

You've earned your keep up at Quantness.

T
HOMAS

And to never be forced into any man's debt again!

H
IS
M
OTHER

Do they know?

T
HOMAS

Know? Up at Quantness? Of course. And the first thing the Major said, when I told him about it last night, was ‘Get up there and claim
it.' Do you think he wants the mines, the coal, all of it seized by the Federal government? Confiscated, if I don't claim it? Do you know how much we need coal?

H
IS
M
OTHER

(LOOKING PAST HIM TO WINDOW)

I do know, Thomas.

T
HOMAS

When I rode in there last night, on furlough, and found this news waiting, why I . . . I was a hero, home from the war, as though I'd lived there all my life and not just these three years since I married.

H
IS
M
OTHER

(RUEFULLY)

They've needed you more than you did them, Thomas. The work you put in on Quantness cotton while this place ran to ruin . . .

Standing over her, THOMAS gestures imploringly, then turns and crosses to the window, where he stands staring out.

T
HOMAS

By heaven, what a day!

H
IS
M
OTHER

(AFTER PAUSE)

They've stopped the pension, Thomas.

T
HOMAS

(TURNING)

Pension?

(STARES AT HER FOR A MOMENT, THEN BREAKS INTO LAUGHTER)

My father's pension? That . . . how-much-was-it-a-month?

(ADVANCING TOWARD HER AGAIN)

Listen, don't you understand? This, what we have now, it's worth all the pensions they ever paid?

(HALF TURNING FROM HER DOWNSTAGE CENTER)

It was an insult, that pension, coming year after year to remind us what injustice was, in case we'd forgotten. In case I'd been able to forget all the plans that he had for me, for a great career in public life, bringing me up to read Rousseau, believing the ‘natural goodness of man . . . '

Turning to her impulsively, THOMAS goes down to one knee beside her chair, and she throws up a hand to save the lamp from falling.

Listen, we can wait our lives out, Mother! Waiting for something like this . . . Waiting for something to happen, isn't that what people do? What keeps them alive, this waiting? What . . . even my father, wasn't he? Waiting for something to happen? to come out of nowhere and change things . . . and then?

As his enthusiasm fails to kindle her, THOMAS regains his feet slowly, turning away pensively toward the window.

Why, they die that way, waiting.

Letting himself down slowly half seated against the window-sill, THOMAS opens his coat and takes out a tobacco case and a cigar.

(HALF TO HIMSELF)

Free to be something, all the things . . . things we've talked about, to make choices. Yes, free to make choices, instead of being driven to them, will you get ready Mother, please? They're waiting for us, up at Quantness.