Pinball

by Alison Lyssa

  Built for an arsenal.’

  He goes.

  SYLVESTER: He’s more Theenie’s build than mine.

  LOUISE: Sylvester, let’s not think of her any more, darling. The point is, we can afford the fees, he’s probably scholarship material anyway, and he needs a private school as an antidote to that woman.

  SYLVESTER: Theenie is not that woman. And don’t worry about Alabastar. Theenie’s done the groundwork—Vitamin B, books from Dr Seuss and a set of Scrabble on his seventh birthday. He’ll make it whatever school we send him to.

  LOUISE: She’s a better mother by the minute. I don’t know why you bothered to get a divorce.

  SYLVESTER: Darling, I did it for you. I knew I loved you when I found myself looking forward to my lectures, because you’d be in the front row, sitting there with your folder open. You made me feel I had somewhere to belong.

  LOUISE: It’s all right for you. Wherever you go someone’s going to make you belong there. Fifty percent of the time, you said, Alabastar’s got to be with us fifty percent of the time. But how am I going to belong with you if Alabastar’s hers?

  SYLVESTER: Darling. Stop it! I can’t bear that I’ve hurt you. I had no idea. Darling? I’ll canvass my colleagues for the best of all possible schools.

  The WAITER re-enters.

  LOUISE: Sylvester. I can’t bear us to quarrel. Darling, look, if his future’s out of danger and he’s set his heart on that video game, we could buy it, now, a present from both of us.

  SYLVESTER: No, no, darling. From you! As your welcome to Alabastar.

  LOUISE: Darling, I knew you could be tender and perceptive. Garçon! Where could we find the Space Invaders?

  WAITER: ‘How much better is your love than wine,

  And the fragrance of your oils than any spice!’

  LOUISE: Where’s the pinball department?

  WAITER: On the mezzanine, Madam. Santa Claus is in Aladdin’s cave, on the right as you come off the escalator.

  LOUISE and SYLVESTER go out, SYLVESTER giving the WAITER a small tip on the way.

  WAITER: Merde! So well-dressed and so rude.

  ‘And when the Queen of Sheba

  Had seen all the wisdom of Solomon,

  The house that he had built,

  The food of his table,

  And his burnt offerings

  Which he offered at the house of the Lord,

  There was no more spirit in her.’

  A good old lesson. Harlots! Take note. Now, does anybody else want a piece of this child?

  THEENIE enters.

  SCENE THREE

  WAITER removes coat. Takes off table cloth, puts on dirty apron. Covers chalkboard menu with Coca-Cola advertisement: ‘SMILE, COKE ADDS LIFE’. Turns menu inside out. Now a cheap Lebanese restaurant.

  WAITER: [during the above activities] ‘King Solomon made himself a palanquin

  From the wood of Lebanon.

  He made its posts of silver,

  Its back of gold, its seat of purple:

  It was lovingly wrought within

  By the daughters of Jerusalem.’

  You come up in the world, you come down in the world.’

  Lebanese music.

  ‘What is that coming up from the wilderness,

  Like a column of smoke,

  Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense?’

  AXIS enters with a bicycle helmet, a luminous jacket and a smog mask.

  AXIS: As I rose out of the evening peak

  Head down head choking

  Bicycle past news of sieges …

  THEENIE: Sounds like where we live.

  She embraces AXIS.

  WAITER: Two of them! In all my born days.

  He goes.

  AXIS: Did you get anything done?

  THEENIE: I’ve been standing in front of the canvas for hours, not painting, stabbing.

  AXIS: Don’t give up, Theenie. Anybody who tries to paint humanity with confidence is going to have days when nothing happens.

  THEENIE: I’m sick of ‘almost’. I want it magnificent. Have you seen the way Alabastar’s hands move? Zap, zap, sideways, dodging, and it’s on the screen that very instant, as if any second his life is going to blow up.

  AXIS: If he’s got twenty cents he gets another one.

  THEENIE: I hate those machines. Why couldn’t I work today? I get an idea, I try to do it …

  Pause.

  AXIS: Stop worrying about what other people are going to think.

  THEENIE: I’m not good enough.

  AXIS: You are. It’s your palette and your brush. Go on, say it, ‘I’m a painter and I’m good’.

  THEENIE: I’m … I’m … Oh, Axis.

  She hugs her.

  Thanks. How was your day?

  AXIS: Don’t ask. I’ll get onto the latest government cuts at the clinic.

  THEENIE: Is that going to send you all into another collective depression?

  AXIS: We’re not going to let it. I’ve been doing pregnancy tests all day. When the last one came out positive I didn’t know how to break the news to the woman; she looked like she’d fall apart. But she was thrilled. Been trying to have a kid for years.

  THEENIE: Hooray.

  WAITER: [re-enters] ‘Your two breasts are like two fawns …’

  AXIS: Two large mixed plates please.

  WAITER: ‘Twins of a gazelle

  That feed among the lilies.’

  AXIS: Hang on—one vegetarian.

  WAITER: Vegetarian.

  THEENIE: And if we could please, a carafe of white wine.

  WAITER: White wine.

  THEENIE: Almond cakes, coffee.

  WAITER: Almond cakes, coffee.

  THEENIE: Oh, and Turkish delight.

  WAITER: Turkish delight.

  He goes.

  AXIS: Theenie, are we having a party?

  THEENIE: A funeral for Western society. Sylvester’s bought a Space Invaders console.

  AXIS: For himself or his students?

  THEENIE: For Alabastar.

  AXIS: How are we going to afford to switch him on?

  THEENIE: He’s back with us tomorrow. It’s our month.

  AXIS: Hope you fixed it so we always get the short months.

  THEENIE: I want to see him.

  Pause.

  When he’s home with me I can’t ever go into the studio and shut the door.

  AXIS: Guilt.

  THEENIE: Crap. When he’s gone, it hurts, there’s something missing.

  AXIS: Yeah, dirty socks. I’ll find something to turn him on. Do-it-yourself bread? Bicycle maintenance? Creative graffiti?

  THEENIE: We spent hours with him making that billycart. He rode it down the hill once, and he was back inside demanding more money for the robot in the laundromat.

  AXIS: Maybe we can save up to buy him a hang-glider. Sorry, Theenie. Every time we try to eat, try to get to know each other, in comes the update on Alabastar, and you plonk him in the middle of the bed … I mean the table.

  THEENIE: He has learnt to knock.

  AXIS: He’s nearly ten.

  THEENIE: When he was born they gave me bowls of peaches. They covered the end of the bed with blue forget-me-nots, pansies and shawls. Now they’re teaching him to open fire.

  AXIS: Well, you could have had a girl child.

  THEENIE: Is that the only way you can think of making paradise?

  AXIS: All I mean is, if you’d had a girl, it would be easier. She wouldn’t be anybody’s hero, she wouldn’t have anything to inherit. You could take a girl with you to self-defence classes.

  THEENIE: What the hell do you want? Keep a knife by the bedside in case one pops out, and then cut it off and tuck it in? Expose them on the hillside like they did with unwanted girls? It craps me off when people give up hope for Alabastar because he was born a boy. That’s as senseless as blaming everything on Eve or Pandora.

  AXIS: Calm down.

  THEENIE: I won’t have people telling me that evil comes because
of that male piece of punctuation. If I have to believe that, I’m running out of here like Jocasta, to hang myself.

  AXIS: Shut up. I want to get drunk. And I love you.

  THEENIE: And Alabastar?

  AXIS: Sometimes I think you don’t see me.

  THEENIE: Axis, let’s get off this tightrope.

  AXIS: I don’t think we own the ground down there. Or the wire we’re balancing on.

  WAITER: [entering with a basket of bread] ‘How graceful are your feet in sandals,

  O queenly maiden.’

  He leaves.

  THEENIE: There’s nothing we can do about it. My brother gave Alabastar a gun for Christmas. When we got home Vandelope was there.

  Lights change.

  Our friend the pacifist.

  AXIS: In her jungle greens.

  She plays a mock firing game with AXIS and the invisible ALABASTAR. VANDELOPE enters.

  VANDELOPE: So this is Alabastar. I’ve met him. On the pinnies.

  Firing video game noises.

  He thinks he can bring a machine gun in here, does he? Good one. Boom. Got ’im.

  Firing noises.

  THEENIE: Alabastar dear. Put it away.

  VANDELOPE: Away? Smash it. You know what little macho shits grow into. Big macho shits. As if having a gun cocked with bullets isn’t enough, they grow their own, the fuckers. Put it down, Alabastar, I said, put it down. Only pigs and warmongers have guns—Stalin, Reagan, Pinochet and Alabastar. Aw Shulamith, now I’ve made him cry.

  THEENIE: Don’t cry, Albie. She didn’t mean to jump on you.

  AXIS: Go on, Vandelope. Explain to him that right now we have to fight our way out from under, but when the anger’s all come out and changed the world we’re gonna live in peace.

  VANDELOPE: If you put your commitment to male children above your commitment to women …

  AXIS: Heavy.

  THEENIE: Albie, we’ll get you a soccer ball.

  VANDELOPE: If you put your commitment to male children above your commitment to women … Holy Germaine! Anybody coming? I’ve got a few billboards to bugger up.

  She leaves.

  THEENIE: Go if you want to, Axis, follow her. She’s so lucky, so pure, she’s never even had a tampon inside her.

  AXIS: You don’t have to send me away, Theenie.

  They embrace. Lights change.

  THEENIE: The sun’s come out.

  AXIS: Okay, Alabastar, let’s go down the canal and play.

  She plays a game with THEENIE and the invisible ALABASTAR. Invisible ball! VANDELOPE enters. Writes graffiti on Coca-cola billboard: ‘SMILE: WHILE U STILL GOT TEETH.’ Then joins the ball game between AXIS, THEENIE and ALABASTAR. The WAITER re-enters and tries to join the game.

  WAITER: ‘Catch us the foxes, the little foxes,

  That spoil the vineyards,

  For our vineyards are in blossom.’

  [Hit in the middle with the ball] Ooof!

  AXIS and THEENIE collide and embrace at the moment. VANDELOPE goes. The WAITER kicks it away.

  Howzat.

  He notices THEENIE and AXIS kissing.

  Harlots! Break it up. You’ll put the customers off their food.

  THEENIE: Appeal to his rationality, Axis. His inbred sense of justice

  AXIS: I’ll phone Vandelope. She’ll know a lawyer. Arrest this restaurant.

  She kisses THEENIE.

  WAITER: ‘The juice of my pomegranates.’ What a waste!

  He separates AXIS and THEENIE.

  AXIS: How come you’re not molesting that couple of heterosexists up the back?

  WAITER: They have a right to enjoy their evening in peace.

  AXIS: Enjoy their evening? They’re canoodling, paddling up to their necks, and because they’re a man and a woman it’ll turn up on children’s TV.

  THEENIE: Axis, don’t. Let’s go.

  AXIS: I haven’t eaten my dinner.

  THEENIE: We can’t fight the whole world.

  AXIS: He’s discriminating against women on the grounds of sex. Call the cops.

  WAITER: Get out of here. You sluts are ruining my business.

  AXIS: Stuff your business!

  The WAITER exits.

  THEENIE: Come home, Axis, come home.

  The kettle calls on the stove;

  The curtains keep out the cold.

  The walls, the walls make us free.

  AXIS: I want justice! Do I have to turn the tables over before I can have a quiet dinner? Lay my head on a woman’s breast, and you insult me. Vandelope! Help! Slander! Ho! Police!

  The WAITER enters wearing a SERGEANT’s coat and hat.

  WAITER: Behold, the paddy wagon!

  ‘About it are sixty mighty men …

  All girt with swords

  And expert in war …

  Each with his sword at his thigh.’

  THEENIE: Axis, we can reason our way out of this.

  AXIS: Good evening, officer, sir, would you be so helpful as to register formal charges against this place of business and its manager for violating the Anti-Discrimination Act.

  SERGEANT: You’ll have to come down to the station.

  AXIS: You don’t understand. You have to book the restaurant.

  SERGEANT: I’ve had dinner, love.

  THEENIE: Axis, he’s bigger than us.

  AXIS: I’m not going to have him call me ‘love’.

  SERGEANT: [seizing AXIS] Come on, love.

  THEENIE: You’re hurting her. Police don’t hurt people.

  AXIS: You’re breaking my arm, you dickwit.

  THEENIE: Please stop.

  SERGEANT: Are you coming quietly, lady, or head first and noisy?

  AXIS: Let me go.

  SERGEANT: Bloody communist drug–fiends!

  AXIS: Radioactive mine owner from Queensland!

  THEENIE, AXIS and the SERGEANT leave in disarray. VANDELOPE strolls through with a sandwich board. the front of which reads: ‘SISTERS, KEEP A SMILE ON YOUR LIPS AND A SONG IN YOUR HEART’, and on the back: ‘WHILE YOU’RE SMASHING THE STATE’. She rearranges chairs for the next scene.

  VANDELOPE: [singing]

  Don’t be too polite, girls

  Don’t be too polite.

  Show a little fight, girls,

  Show a little fight.

  Don’t be fearful of offending in case you get the sack,

  Just recognise your value, and you won’t look back.

  All among the bull, girls,

  All among the bull …

  She leaves. SOLOMON enters.

  SOLOMON: Manhater! Hijacking harlot!

  VANDELOPE, off, blows a raspberry. SOLOMON covers VANDELOPE’s coca-cola ad graffiti.

  Give them their heads and they’d change the scenery. I’m the one with the overall view.

  He hangs up a banner: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALABASTAR’.

  The child is turning ten. Now’s the time to infiltrate the party.

  Changes his coat to become KURT.

  Disguise myself as a plant in the heart of the nuclear family. The boy needs his uncle, Kurt, a capital man, of my own calibre. He’ll know what the boy wants in a mother.

  ‘I would lead you and bring you

  Into the house of my mother,

  And into the chamber of her that conceived me.’

  He goes.

  SCENE FOUR

  VIOLET enters during KURT’s last speech, followed by ARCHIBALD, both wearing party hats, and carrying a punch bowl and a tray of punch cups. Light opera music, e.g. a Gilbert and Sullivan medley.

  VIOLET: The children can eat in the rumpus room, they’ll be less of a mess and bother.

  ARCHIBALD: Theenie rang to say she’s bringing that woman.

  VIOLET: We’ll need another chair for the adults then, dear.

  ARCHIBALD: My dear Violet! Must you encourage my daughter in that unspeakable house full of bandwagons? Last year a pro-communist war, this year women’s lib, next month the Aborigines and any moment now they’ll discover somethi
ng useful, like rainforests.

  VIOLET: Dearest, she believes in good causes. There but for the grace of God go you or I.

  ARCHIBALD: I would not want her to be insensitive to injustice, but she embarrasses. Any excuse to demonstrate the disruption of our peace, from government bashing to graffiti, and our daughter is in attendance. Doesn’t she realise our country is being handed over on a platter to the very bus-stop collection of union-mongers and liberationists who are plunging it into bankruptcy?

  VIOLET: On your grandson’s tenth birthday.

  THEENIE and AXIS enter.

  THEENIE: Hello, Mum.

  VIOLET: Hullo, Theenie.

  THEENIE: Hullo, Dad. This is Axis. My parents. Violet and Archibald.

  ARCHIBALD: How do you do, Axis? Axis. First names already. I’ll save my protests.

  Pause.

  VIOLET: Arch.

  ARCHIBALD: Would you ladies like a party punch?

  AXIS: Thanks.

  THEENIE: Cheers!

  VIOLET: Where’s our Alabastar?

  THEENIE: Hiding in the willows. He’s a tree pirate.

  ARCHIBALD: Pirate eh? [Calling] Alabastar? Here comes the big crocodile. [To THEENIE.] Remember? Coming to get you. Tick tock, tick, tock.

  He goes.

  VIOLET: Be good to your father, won’t you? He’s feeling the strain of work. There’s so little decency left in the world.

  THEENIE: I’ll be good. I care for you both, you know that.

  She hugs VIOLET.

  VIOLET: That’s my girl. [To AXIS] And you, dear, it’s nice of you to come, it’s nice of you to have each other, and be friends. [To THEENIE] Theen, anytime you want to invite her over for a meal, dear, just let me know, and it’s nice for you and Alabastar, having an auntie in the house. Now I wonder where the others are; come and we’ll get out the good tea set, not much use saving it till I’m dead and gone. [Leaving] Arch! Alabastar!

  THEENIE: Thanks for coming.

  AXIS: Your old man wants to put me in the zoo.

  VIOLET: [off] Come on, Theen.

  THEENIE goes.

  AXIS: Write me a message that I don’t exist.

  VIOLET enters carrying a jug with more punch.

  VIOLET: Oh, dear, Alabastar does need a haircut, he can’t possibly see out, dear. You have to find the wisdom to choose. The good Lord gave Theenie the brains to use, heaven knows.

  AXIS: We were going to do it for him this morning. Only we had a bit of trouble finding the scissors in the chaos. Theenie’s working on a new painting.

  VIOLET: When she was little she loved bright colours. I’d get her those pots of fingerpaint and we were always running out of red.