THE DAY I FELL AWAY
A play in nine scenes
By
Larry Gleason
860 Grand Concourse #7N
Bronx, NY 10451
917.549.5173
© 2002
revised: July 1, 2002
THE DAY I FELL AWAY
A play in nine scenes
By Larry Gleason
Cast:
Aileen, 40’s, a photojournalist, caregiver for Róisín
Róisín, 70’s, Aileen’s mother
Sissy, 30’s, Aileen’s sister
Paul, 20’s or 30’s, a nurse
Mrs. Dumont, an elderly nursing home resident
Young Woman
Various non-speaking Men and Women
(At the beginning of each scene, the name of the scene is flashed on the backdrop. Images appear throughout the play to establish sense of place so that only essential props, furniture and scenery need be used, making changes of location fast and fluid. The opening tableau that greets the audience is an empty stage with sand at its foreground, a gray late afternoon horizon of a strand in western Ireland on the backdrop and the sound of the ocean.)
Scene 1— West Coast Ireland. The Strand At Inch.
(AILEEN, camera around her neck, and RÓISÍN (pronounced Ro'-sheen) walking on the sand, during which slideshow images of the strand appear on the backdrop. As they do, AILEEN’s voiceover is heard. With each description comes a new slide.)
AILEEN
Ireland.
The strand at Inch.
Dingle bay.
Aileen, at age 9.
Róisín, age 39.
A dance studio in Killarney.
Róisín is helping Aileen into a costume.
Aileen and her classmates dance. Their parents watch.
More recently--Róisín’s house in the Catskills, upstate New York.
I am Aileen and that is my mother, Róisín, sitting in her kitchen, lost in thought. That’s me behind her. She seemed to me that day to be at the edge of a precipice, a canyon, watching, and viewing quizzically as her particles of speech disappeared into the depths below. On that day I realized I was reduced to the status of a noun. I realized I had fallen away somewhere, down there, out there, anywhere but where I thought I had a right to belong. She doesn’t know where I’ve gone to, and, to no fault of her own, she doesn’t seem to care. See how her eyes betray her. Her hazel view of me is as a stranger in my own house.
I imagine she hears all my words and my tones and meanings as when I was a child. I fool myself and remember her perfect posture, her clear voice. The smell of her lavender-soaped skin comes back to me and she is whole, full bosomed. She is mother. My mother. Róisín.
(The voiceover ends. The slideshow returns to the various views of the strand.)
RÓISÍN
What is that?
AILEEN
A jellyfish.
Marooned.
RÓISÍN
No fault of its own.
AILEEN
Lion's Mane. Cyanea capillata. A rare castaway for here.
RÓISÍN
Poor thing.
AILEEN
(Poking at it as if with a stick. AILEEN starts a devilish laugh.)
Mmmmm.
RÓISÍN
What?
AILEEN
Oh, nothing.
(RÓISÍN and AILEEN continue their walk. The slideshow is of various views of lion’s mane jellyfish up close and personal. AILEEN speaks directly to the audience as she takes pictures of the jellyfish:)
I couldn’t tell her that this lump of jelly suddenly looked rather sexy to me. That was six years ago--six years before I brought her to the nursing home. Six years earlier---my mother brought me to the west coast of Ireland where off and on she grew up as a girl; where I, too, was born and spent my first few years. We walked the wide, jutting strand there. And we almost stepped on them, the jellyfish. One, with a bell, like jelly brains. Though a meter across, out of water it looked smaller: a withering skullcap now wearing its tentacles like a cellophane beard. Reddish-brown trailing tentacles and fussy oral lobes loaded with nematocysts --stinging capsules. Like a vulva-- that pricks. Take it from me--very undesirable. Knock you for a loop well into tomorrow. The day’s earlier gale had washed them in only to be discovered now as splattered matter languishing under a Dingle day mixed bag of a sky. In one place I could see pockets of showers spraying stone houses miles away. Yet above us were breaks in the clouds and an angular shaft of warming sun spilling on our manes, on our brains.
(She reveals another creature from her pocket. To her mother:)
I brought this from my last assignment in the Caribbean. Look.
Not a very sexy creature, is it?
RÓISÍN
Bizarre. Who can make heads or tails of it?
(AILEEN laughs heartily.)
RÓISÍN
What?
AILEEN
It’s a seahorse.
RÓISÍN
Oh….
AILEEN
Dried up now. Found him on the beach down there. I don’t usually keep my research subjects but this one I did. (after a pause:)
Did you know a key part of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s is the hippocampus, named, because of its shape, after the Greek word meaning seahorse?
RÓISÍN
As well it should.
AILEEN
Should what?
RÓISÍN
Be Greek. I don’t understand any of it.
And it is only some prelinary diagnosis. Buíochas le Dia (pronounced bweé-shis lay deé-ah).
AILEEN
Preliminary.
RÓISÍN
That’s what I said.
AILEEN
(To the audience again.)
She grew stone silent and turned away as the sun setting sky now included streaks of blood orange red. We stood with our hands behind our backs viewing the carnage strewn in seaweed and sticks and stones. The living--helpless. The dead-- fodder for birds and bugs and though Death had dulled their colors, still, they might have an after-life surprise of poison or sting for human or scavenger.
(To her mother, childlike:)
Jellyfish. Seahorsies.
RÓISÍN
Why would they call it that?
AILEEN
What?
RÓISÍN
That word. Describing my brain. Hippo’s campus.
AILEEN
Hippocampus.
RÓISÍN
Are you still with that woman?
AILEEN
(stunned at the quick shift of topic:)
Well, no. Not any more.
RÓISÍN
You’ve come to your senses?
AILEEN
My senses are fine, Ma. Can we forget about this?
RÓISÍN
I think about it all the time. How can I forget? You know how I feel. It’s not right. It’s not right.
AILEEN
Ma.
RÓISÍN
So this woman is gone. Perhaps there’s still a chance---
AILEEN
I’m seeing someone new. We just met last week.
RÓISÍN
I may not like it, but there it is.
(She takes the seahorse from AILEEN and holds it in front of her.)
Let me see him. Or is it a her? You never know these days.
AILEEN
(pointing to the seahorse:)
It’s a him.
RÓISÍN
How can you tell?
AILEEN
Well, you can’t now, really, he’s all dried up.
RÓISÍN
Good. One less to leave a girl seahorse pregnant.
AILEEN
Ma--
(To the audience:)
But then I stopped. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it is the male who becomes pregnant when it comes to seahorses. She would only think I was pressing some sort of agenda and that I didn’t want to do. That was a story I hoped we would work out on some other day.
RÓISÍN
(To the seahorse:)
Did you go to college? I didn’t.
All I can think of is a college for hippos. Or two campy hippos. Dancing. In skirts. Da da dee, da da dum. Da da dee, da da dum….
(She dances silently with the seahorse as her partner. AILEEN is amused. After snapping another picture, AILEEN looks back inland.)
AILEEN
I don’t remember that sign back there. Maybe I was too young.
RÓISÍN
What sign?
AILEEN
(A picture of a sign attached to the exterior of a small building appears in the slideshow.)
The white sign back up there above the dune. With red letters. The one that talks about leaving Inch. It reminded me of a Robert Frost poem.
RÓISÍN
Really?
AILEEN
Let’s take a picture of that when we go back up.
RÓISÍN
I’d like that. Maybe your brother and sister will come next time. I’d like them to see where I grew up someday.
AILEEN
It was easy for me to say yes to come with you. I was born here. Bri (long ‘i’ in Bri) and Sissy weren’t.
RÓISÍN
All the same.
AILEEN
(As a voiceover:)
The tide pulled out and abandoned more in its wake. The retreating waves slapped a few more insults at the shore. The wind brushed raindrops against our faces. The crimsoned west did battle with the oncoming night. The sun had moved on.
(The wave sounds continue as the backdrop fades. A chair and a bed are pushed out to the left and right corners of the stage, respectively. The two women separate left and right. Where RÓISÍN sits, there is a side table with a phone. AILEEN puts down her camera, picks up her phone and sits on the edge of her bed. A BUXOM BLOND, with blouse off, sits patiently on the other side of the bed as if on hold. We move right into:)
Scene 2—At Each Other’s Home In Upstate New York. Night.
(The backdrop is now a split screen showing the exteriors of two different houses behind RÓISÍN and AILEEN, respectively. The BUXOM BLOND clears her throat. AILEEN holds up a finger to her silently asking her to wait.)
AILEEN
I just want to remind you Ma at the end of this conversation please put the phone back on the cradle, do you see the cradle next to you?
RÓISÍN
Cradle?
AILEEN
The thing next to my picture. See my picture?
RÓISÍN
Yes….
AILEEN
The cradle is right next to it.
RÓISÍN
Oh, the holder. You mean the holder.
AILEEN
Whatever. That’s where you put the phone down when we finish talking, okay?
RÓISÍN
(She picks up AILEEN’s picture and looks at it during the conversation.)
But I always do that, why are you telling me that, I always do that.
AILEEN
No you don’t Ma, last time---
RÓISÍN
Yes I do. Don’t tell me what I do and don’t do especially when I know I do do it.
AILEEN
Remember last time I called, there was that--I kept getting that busy signal all night and then it was two AM…
(During this, the BUXOM BLOND shakes her head, sighs, checks the time. AILEEN doesn’t notice and her line is continuous.)
…and I assumed that something was wrong and had to drive all the way out there to see if you were all right and—
RÓISÍN
For no good reason you drove out here I remember.
AILEEN
Because I thought you—
RÓISÍN
You woke me up. Banging on the door like that.
(There is a sound of someone banging on a door, which reverberates in a series of diminishing echoes. RÓISÍN winces and shuts her eyes. She puts the picture down. The BUXOM BLOND begins putting on her blouse.)
AILEEN
Because I thought you might have fallen or hurt yourself, lying on the floor in the kitchen or something---
(Silence.)
Ma?
Are you still there? Ma?
RÓISÍN
(Recovering.)
What is that man’s name?
AILEEN
What man?
RÓISÍN
That man. You know, that man. What is his name?
AILEEN
Well, I don’t—I don’t know who you’re talking about.
RÓISÍN
What’s his name, the one I was supposed to call, what’s his name?
AILEEN
You were supposed to call someone?
RÓISÍN
You told me about him.
AILEEN
I told you about whom?
RÓISÍN
The one I was supposed to call about, you know, that stuff the doctor told me about.
AILEEN
I don’t know—what you’re talking about.
RÓISÍN
You were the one who told me.
AILEEN
Can you give me some clue? Like are we talking another doctor, a neighbor-you know, a relative?
RÓISÍN
What is hisNAME?
AILEEN
Ma, what if I called you up out of the blue and said to you without any other explanation, “What is his name?”
RÓISÍN
Well if I knew his name I would tell it to you.
(The BUXOM BLOND has left the bed and the room by now, unnoticed by AILEEN.)
AILEEN
I’m sure you would. Just put the phone back where it belongs, that’s all I ask. Okay?
RÓISÍN
But I always do. Why are you telling me that?
AILEEN
I gotta go now Ma. Okay?
RÓISÍN
Okay. Hurry back.
(Lights fade on RÓISÍN. AILEEN hangs up her phone and turns to see the BUXOM BLOND is gone. Lights fade on AILEEN.)
Scene 3—Going Home
(The chairs, tables and beds disappear. The backdrop shows a leaf-lined street in a small upstate New York town. As the scene progresses the screen may change to suggest RÓISÍN’s travels.)
RÓISÍN
You have no idea how angry I am.
I have been waiting here all afternoon.
I’m not going to wait any longer.
I don’t know what is wrong with him.
I’m going to give him a piece of my mind when I get home.
I haven’t walked anyway in such a long time it’ll do me good.
Let’s see, left or right?
Right.
That’s a new shop.
What happened to my hairdressers?
Twenty years every week and no notice she was moving.
What a pretty shop.
Claire’s Coiffures.
I’ll show her.
I’ll ask Bri to bring me here next week to Claire’s.
Funny.
I’ve never really noticed how ---
Well, when you’re in a car you don’t really look at things.
Hi, Miriam!
Oh, I thought you were Miriam.
No, I see that you’re not.
Bye-bye. (Under her breath:) Jerk!
Love your hat!
This street used to be all elms.
Not one left. Dutch elm disease Aileen says.
I’m sure Walker is the next street, the next intersection.
Doctor did say I should get in more exercise. I guess this will suffice.
Can’t wait to tell him.
I’m so glad I didn’t give Aileen my sweater.
It’s rather chilly.
I saw her looking at it yesterday.
I know she wants it.
But she can’t have it.
Oh.
Oh, that’s right. This is where they built the new school.
Looks very much like the old one.
These town councilors.
New agers. Always have to have a theme.
They’re lucky to be getting an education.
That’s the one thing I will always regret.
I could have gone to that school as a girl.
Well, not that school, but one just like it.
I’d paint it green so it would be different.
No, instead the son of a bitch--- back to Ireland.
God will never forgive me for saying so, but you’re a stupid man.
Stupid, stupid man. Pig-headed. Selfish.
God will never forgive me, no. I know, Kathleen.
Barefoot, dumb and pregnant.
I didn’t have any choice.
This is—
Not Walker.
It’s the next block.
Catch my breath.
Left or right.
Right.
I never did like Victorian houses. Too many colors.
I don’t remember them being painted like that at all.
This is that short cut Bri always refers to.
A time-saver. Take the path.
Goes right to the backyard.
Just cut through this field.
And my house is on the other side.
I didn’t know he grew corn.
Well, now I hope I’m not making a mistake.
Bri will be very mad at me.
It’s like the tall grass.
I hope there isn’t a cliff.
I don’t want to fall into the ocean.
I miss the tall grass.
Bríd, sweet Bríd. (pronounced Breed)
No! No Bríd. Not now.
You go away.
I refuse to talk about Bríd.
Change the subject.
Oh, I never want to see another ear of corn again in my life.
I hate corn. I never did like it.
It just all comes out the other end.
What is the point?
Left or right, who knows-- it’s all corn no matter which way I go.
Corn.
Tall corn.
(There is a sound of a gun, which reverberates in a series of diminishing echoes. Róisín grabs her ears, shuts her eyes and gasps. She calms down.)
Oh, dear.
Left…?
Or right?
(RÓISÍN stands still as the scenery for the next scene closes around her.)
Scene 4--At Róisín’s Home:
(The backdrop is of RÓISÍN’s kitchen: drab, utilitarian.)
AILEEN
Would you like something to drink?
RÓISÍN
Sure, what do you want?
AILEEN
I’m going to have a soda. What would you like?
RÓISÍN
Tea. (She pauses.) I don’t think I’ll have any, though.
AILEEN
Sure you do. You put water in the kettle, I’ll find the tea.
RÓISÍN
Do you like this sweater?
AILEEN
It’s very nice.
RÓISÍN
Do you like it?
AILEEN
Yes.
RÓISÍN
Good. I want you to have it. You need a sweater. It’s cold out.
AILEEN
It’s not cold. My jacket is enough. Here’s the tea. Chamomile all right? Did you put water in the kettle?
RÓISÍN
It’s right there on the stove.
(AILEEN walks over to the stove and hands the kettle to RÓISÍN.)
AILEEN
Well, fill it with some water for me. I’ll make some Chamomile.
RÓISÍN
(She fills the kettle with water.)
Take it anyway. Take my sweater.
AILEEN
No, you should keep it. Soda in the refrigerator?
RÓISÍN
I want you to have it.
AILEEN
(She opens the refrigerator. She finds a phone book.)
Thank you, but no thank you.
RÓISÍN
You don’t like it.
AILEEN
(Now she finds her picture.)
No, it’s not that.
RÓISÍN
Then take it.
AILEEN
Really, I don’t need it. Here, flame’s on. Put the kettle on the burner.
RÓISÍN
(She puts the kettle on the burner.)
You think it’s ugly. You think I wear ugly clothes.
AILEEN
(Finally pouring her soda.)
No I don’t.
RÓISÍN
I have taste. You think I’m going to wear something ugly and then ask you to wear something ugly?
AILEEN
I’ll consider the offer when I’m 80 years old Ma, not now.
RÓISÍN
Hummph.
AILEEN
Brian says he made some pasta for you before he left.
RÓISÍN
He’s got a lot to learn about cooking.
AILEEN
(Going to the refrigerator.)
Maybe he doesn’t use enough salt. Is there any left? I’ll taste it for you.
RÓISÍN
I wasn’t that hungry.
AILEEN
You haven’t touched it.
RÓISÍN
I had some crackers before. I wasn’t hungry. I’ll eat it later.
AILEEN
Why don’t you get your cup and saucer ready?
RÓISÍN
For what?
AILEEN
Your tea.
RÓISÍN
I’d love some Chamomile.
AILEEN
That’s what we’re going to make.
RÓISÍN
Good.
AILEEN
(As a test.)
So get your cup and saucer ready.
RÓISÍN
(After a pause. She looks about the room, but doesn’t make a move left or right.)
Could you get that for me? My hands are a little stiff. I’m having trouble reaching.
(AILEEN does.)