The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays (28 page)

BELLA
: Son, set her down
somewhere—comf’table
.

CHARLIE
: Tryin’ t’ hold her, Mom.

BELLA
: Careful, don’t hurt the baby! What’s her name?

CHARLIE
[
struggling to restrain her
]: Stacey! [
He wrestles her to the carpet and straddles her swollen belly
.]

BELLA
: Cornelius, where are you goin’, what is Cornelius up to? [
She rushes, panting to door
]

POLICE OFFICER
[
offstage
]: Okay. What’s goin’ on?

BELLA
: Officer? Officer! It was all a mistake, everything is all right here.

CORNELIUS
[
offstage
]: Yais, I’ll tell you the problem! We’d just got back from a fam’ly fun’ral in Memphis when we discover the other one, Charlie, had brought a pregnant lunatic here in our absence, that’s
the—

CHARLIE
[
offstage
]: Wait a minute! That ain’t the problem a-tall, I’ll tell you the problem! This sick, crazy
ole—

CORNELIUS
[
offstage
]: You goddam whelp with your whore. Intends to marry a pregnant demented prostitute. In
the—

CHARLIE
[
offstage
]: He’s talkin’ about my fiansay who was respectably employed
at—

POLICE OFFICER
[
offstage
]: Awright, all in the car, can’t wake up the whole neighborhood.

EMERSON
[
offstage
]: Officer, I am Mr. Emerson Sykes, President of the Night-a-Glory Motel Chain on the coast. This is Cornelius McCorkle, once candidate for Mayor.

POLICE OFFICER
[
offstage
]: Yeh, yeh, get your names at the station.

EMERSON
[
offstage
]: Officer, Captain James would not want Mr. McCorkle involved in a scandal
so—

CORNELIUS
[
offstage
]: Be Goddam if I get in a police car with a Jesus-freak of a whore!

CHARLIE
[
offstage
]: SAID THAT TOO OFTEN!

EMERSON
[
offstage
]: Why’d you do that, boy?

CORNELIUS
[
offstage
]:
Broke my dentures!

POLICE OFFICER
[
offstage
]:
Into the car, I said!

CORNELIUS
[
offstage
]: NAWWWWWWWWW!

EMERSON
[
offstage
]:
Easy, Corney, just goin’ to the Moose Lodge!

STACEY
: Keep praying! Pray! Jesussss!

BELLA
: CHIPS? SO HAPPY THAT
YOU—COME—HOME
. SON? SON? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR SO LONG?
WHAT
? STAWM IS SO LOUD CAN’T HEAR YOU! CHIPS? CHIPS? LOOK IN THE ICE-BOX, HONEY, YOU MUST BE HUNGRY. I COULD EAT SOMETHING, TOO. [
Pause. She has a slow realization. Shuts her eyes tight
.] Oh . . . no! No . . . [
She rises slowly and maneuvers passage to the phone
.] Jessie Sykes, please. Jessie, Jessie, Emerson Sykes wife . . . [
Pause
.] Jessie, is that you, Jessie? Chips is back
from—Jessie
? Terrible stawm blown the door open and everybody’s gone out.
—What
? Oh, good. God love you, Jessie, yes, do. . . . come over?

JESSIE
: Bella?

BELLA
: Chips!

JESSIE
: Bella?
—Jessie
!
—Now
, Bella, it’s all right. Emerson has persuaded the officer to dismiss all charges. Can you hear me, Bella?

BELLA
: STAWM! AWFUL!

JESSIE
[
crossing to sofa and shouting in Bella’s ear
]: THEY’RE GOING TO TALK EVERYTHING OVER AND GET IT ALL STRAIGHTENED OUT AT THE MOOSE LODGE, BELLA!

BELLA
: Moose?

JESSIE
: Lodge, yes. So you just rest on the sofa. How are you feeling, Bella? What happened in Memphis must have been a shock to you. Mary Louise says it was suicide, Bella. Suicide is awful, it’s worse than death. I do hope it wasn’t that, Bella, but, anyhow,
whatever—What’s
that you got in your hand?

BELLA
: Something was in the mailbox when we got back from Memphis. Recognized Joanie’s handwriting. Hid it from Cornelius.

JESSIE
: Why’d you hide it
from—
?

BELLA
: He would’ve torn it right up. You know our little Joanie? Remember our little Joanie?

JESSIE
: Oh, yes,
her
. Who could
forget
her?

BELLA
: Scared to open it. See here in the corner of the envelope, Jessie? State Hospital Number Three? Stamped on the envelope, Jessie?

JESSIE
: State Hospital Number Three
is—

BELLA
: Lunatic Asylum. I know, I know. My uncle Archie was there thirty years, so I know. Would you read it first and prepare me a little?

JESSIE
: Bella, I can’t see to read without my reading glasses. Sooner or later you’ve got to read it. Of course you could put it off until tomorrow
when the other problems are hopefully straightened out at the Moose Lodge.

BELLA
[
opening envelope
]: Won’t sleep till I know. [
Reads
.] “Oh
God!—Dear
Mom. Don’t commit me. They can only hold me ten days without the consent of you or Pop. Pop would give it but you wouldn’t. All I had was a little nervous breakdown when that son of a bitch, that black mother I lived with in Jefferson Parish left me without a dime and went back to his wife.” Excuse me Jessie, she’s picked up some awful language. I’ll try to skip the worst. “Mom,” she says, “I swear I’m okay, never felt better in my life. I just want a chance to make a new start on my own. Without no prick of a . . .”

JESSIE
: Bella!

BELLA
: Sorry. [
Resumes reading
.] “I can go back to my old job at the Pizza King on the highway. I know the manager can’t wait to get me back there. So just sit tight. Don’t mention nothing to Pop. And for crissake don’t sign no papers. Love your little Joanie.”

JESSIE
: Hmmmm. Never felt better in her life. How sad. Now Bella, there’s no way you can conceal this from Cornelius. So my advice is to let him handle it his way. Bella, don’t interfere. Just resign yourself to it. That girl is better off right where she is than that notorious Pizza King on the highway. Board of Health discovered the whole kitchen infested with vermin and half the staff was infected with V.D. “Can’t wait to get her back?” Bella, that girl is in a much better place so don’t be upset about it. Now. I will try to get through to Emerson at the Moose Lodge. Phone’s off the hook. [
She replaces it. Then lifts to dial
.]
Operator?—
[
To Bella
.] A death in the family is always upsetting.
—Oh
, operator, connect me with the Moose Lodge, please.
—Ringing
. . .

BELLA
:
—Chips—gone
.

JESSIE
: Did you say something, Bella?

BELLA
: GONE, FIRS’ BAWN.

JESSIE
: Whom I speakin’ to? Aw. Mrs. Emerson Sykes would like a word with her husband if you’d be so kind as to call him to the phone.

BELLA
: Know what happened on the street, Jessie?

JESSIE
: Yais, Charlie attacked Cornelius and a hysterical woman was involved in
the—Em
? Jessie! What’s the disturbance I hear? Find out. I’ll hold on.

BELLA
: Yesterday like today. Same
as—and
tomorrow? Tomorrow? Years and years of it gone by.

JESSIE
[
attention on phone
]: Yais, Bella, time is like that. [
Pause. Then impatiently
.] Oh, pshaw. Just a loud confusion of voices, you’d think the whole Lodge was in session.

BELLA
: Moose Lodge? In session? This late?

JESSIE
: No. I meant the noise, the confusion. Stag movies, Saturday nights, disgustin’. Emerson pretends to go ’possum hunting.

BELLA
: Aw. The confusion in session . . .

JESSIE
: Yes.

Take it easy, Bella. You seem unstrung.

BELLA
:
—Can
I get you something to eat?

JESSIE
: What, Bella?

BELLA
: Want a bite of something? From the ice-box?

JESSIE
:
Oh—no
,
I—We
had a late dinner, barbecue ribs at the Hickory Hollow on the highway. Emerson’s mad about barbecue but it’s too spicy for me the way that they prepare it. Doc Crane sent me to this proctologist in New Awleuns who advised me to avoid all strong-seasoned things.
—My
hemorrhoids are acting up again. I wonder if you could hand me over a cushion off the sofa. You know, at our time of life, so many afflictions come on us. Have you noticed?

BELLA
:
—Did
you ask me something?

JESSIE
: Have you ever had hemorrhoids? Well, I want to tell you, that’s an embarrassing affliction if ever there was one. I mean when
they’re internal and severe. Inclined to get worse, not better. At first I got relief from an application.

BELLA
[
senselessly repeating
]: Application. . . .

JESSIE
: What, Bella?

BELLA
: Soon’s I recover my strength,
I’ll—

JESSIE
: Don’t exert right now, you’re still looking under the weather.

BELLA
: I’ll go look for something
to—make
us a snack while the Moose
Lodge—

JESSIE
: Oh, yes, I’m sure the Moose Lodge will straighten things out so much better than at the police station: could result in publicity of the wrong kind. Hand me a sofa pillow. Yes, my hemorrhoids have returned. Embarrassing thing to discuss. A woman of sixty obliged to expose such an intimate part of the body, but Dr. Crane, oh, I don’t mind old Dr. Crane who delivered my children, but when I had to go, at his insistence, to New Awleans to that proctologist, specializes in, uh . . . such
conditions—what
severe pain, had to sit on a rubber-doughnut all the way and the examination was too embarrassing to describe. Had to strip myself naked and lie on a table that doubled me up so that this specialist
could—oh
, my God, I am telling you, Bella, he had an instrument with a light on one end of it, the
end—inserted—and
a magnifying lens on the other end through which he looked up into the colon, all the way up the colon.

BELLA
:
—Colon
. . . Jessie, maybe you could go in the kitchen and look in the ice-box faw me, I just don’t have the strength to.

JESSIE
: Oh, I imagine some people aren’t embarrassed by any kind of a clinical procedure but to me it was the most mortifying experience of my life. And must be repeated. [
Pause. A look of fright widens her eyes
.] Oh, I don’t know when afflictions like this come on you, it might be better
to—I
was about to say just go, but I am scared to, Bella. Are you?

BELLA
[
discovers a morsel on a plate and devours it
]: Me? What?

JESSIE
: Isn’t everybody? But sooner or later, it’s one way or another like it or not. You do go, Bella.

BELLA
: Lights on in the kitchen. Who’s eating in there?

JESSIE
: See it coming, another trip on that rubber-doughnut to the specialist, Bella, and the instrument up
my—Moose
Lodge? Don’t leave the phone till you get me Emerson Sykes. Who is that shouting Jesus like a hyena? What is going on there? A Holy Roller session?

BELLA
: That must be Charlie’s girlfriend! Charlie’s engaged to a bawn-again Christian.

JESSIE
:
Is he
? Well, personally, I would rather be dead than a born-again Christian!

BELLA
: Are you a beer-drinker, Jessie? Cornelius keeps a supply in the ice-box. You know the way to the kitchen. Right through the dining room, Jessie.

JESSIE
: Later, Bella, not now. Got to check with Emerson on the Moose Lodge situation.

BELLA
:
Joanie—

JESSIE
: Oh, now, Bella, we’ve been through Joanie. Let’s not revert to that subject.