The House of Blue Leaves and Chaucer in Rome

by John Guare

  An idea comes to ARTIE. He goes to the piano and sings:

  The day that the Pope came to New York

  The day that the Pope came to New York,

  It really was comical,

  The Pope wore a yarmulke

  The day that the Pope came to New York.

  BANANAS: Don’t be disrespectful.

  She gets up to go to the kitchen. ARTIE rushes in front of her and blocks her way. BUNNY pushes herself against the icebox trying to hide; she’s eating a bowl of cornflakes.

  ARTIE: Stay out of the kitchen. I’ll get your food—

  BANANAS: Chop it up in small pieces …

  BUNNY, in a loud, fierce whisper: Miss Henshaw cannot reserve our places indefinitely. Tantamount to theft is holding a place other people could use. Tantamount. Her nephew the cop could lock us right up. Make her go back to bed.

  ARTIE fixes Bananas’s food on a plate.

  BANANAS sits up on her haunches and puts her hands, palm downward, under her chin.

  BANANAS: Hello, Artie!

  ARTIE: You’re going to eat like a human being.

  BANANAS: Woof? Woof?

  ARTIE: Work all day in a zoo. Come home to a zoo.

  He takes a deep breath. He throws her the food. She catches it in her mouth. She rolls on her back.

  BANANAS: I like being animals. You know why? I never heard of a famous animal. Oh, a couple of Lassies—an occasional Trigger—but, by and large, animals weren’t meant to be famous.

  ARTIE storms into the kitchen.

  BUNNY: What a work of art is a dog. How noble in its thought —how gentle in its dignity—

  ARTIE buries his head against the icebox.

  BANANAS, smiling out front: Hello. I haven’t had a chance to welcome you. This is my home and I’m your hostess and I should welcome you. I wanted to say Hello and I’m glad you could come. I was very sick a few months ago. I tried to slash my wrists with spoons. But I’m better now and glad to see people. In the house. I couldn’t go out. Not yet. Hello. She walks the length of the stage, smiling at the audience, at us. She has a beautiful smile.

  BUNNY comes out of the kitchen down to the edge of the stage.

  BUNNY, to us: You know what my wish is? The priest told us last Sunday to make a wish when the Pope rides by. When the Pope rides by, the wish in my heart is gonna knock the Pope’s eye out. It is braided in tall letters, all my veins and arteries and aortas are braided into the wish that she dies pretty soon. She goes back to the kitchen.

  BANANAS, who has put a red mask on her head: I had a vision —a nightmare—I saw you talking to a terrible fat woman with newspapers for feet—and she was talking about hunters up in the sky and that she was a dream and you were a dream … She crosses to the kitchen, pulls the mask down over her eyes, and comes up behind Bunny: Hah!!!

  BUNNY screams in terror and runs into the living room.

  BUNNY: I am not taking insults from a sick person. A healthy person can call me anything they want. But insults from a sickie—a sicksicksickie—I don’t like to be degraded. A sick person has fumes in their head—you release poison fumes and it makes me sick—dizzy—like riding the back of a bus. No wonder Negroes are fighting so hard to be freed, riding in the back of buses all those years. I’m amazed they even got enough strength to stand up straight.… Where’s my coat? Artie, where’s my coat? My binox and my camera? To Bananas: What did you do with my coat, Looney Tunes?

  ARTIE has retrieved the coat from the hallway.

  BUNNY: You soiled my coat! This coat is soiled! Arthur, are you dressed warm? Are you coming?

  ARTIE, embarrassed: Bananas, I’d like to present—I’d like you to meet—this is Bunny Flingus.

  BUNNY: You got the ski p.j.’s I bought you on underneath? You used to go around freezing till I met you. I’ll teach you how to dress warm. I didn’t work at ski lodges for nothing. I worked at Aspen.

  BANANAS thinks it over a moment: I’m glad you’re making friends, Artie. I’m no good for you.

  BUNNY, taking folders out of her purse, to Bananas: I might as well give these to you now. Travel folders to Juarez. It’s a simple procedure—you fly down to Mexico—wetback lawyer meets you—sign a paper—jet back to little old N.Y.

  ARTIE:

  Bunny’s more than a friend, Bananas.

  BUNNY: Play a little music—“South of the Border”—divorce Meheeco style!—

  ARTIE: Would you get out of here, Bunny. I’ll take care of this.

  BANANAS sings hysterically, without words, “South of the Border.”

  BUNNY: I didn’t work in a travel agency for nix, Arthur.

  ARTIE: Bunny!

  BUNNY: I know my way around.

  BANANAS stops singing.

  ARTIE, taking the folders from Bunny: She can’t even go to the incinerator alone. You’re talking about Mexico—

  BUNNY: I know these sick wives. I’ve seen a dozen like you in movies. I wasn’t an usher for nothing. You live in wheel chairs just to hold your husband and the minute your husband’s out of the room, you’re hopped out of your wheel chair doing the Charleston and making a general spectacle of yourself. I see right through you. Tell her, Artie. Tell her what we’re going to do.

  ARTIE: We’re going to California, Bananas.

  BUNNY: Bananas! What a name!

  BANANAS: A trip would be nice for you …

  BUNNY: What a banana—

  BANANAS: You could see Billy…. I couldn’t see Billy.… Almost laughing: I can’t see anything …

  ARTIE: Not a trip.

  BUNNY: To live. To live forever.

  BANANAS: Remember the time we rode up in the elevator with Bop Hope? He’s such a wonderful man.

  ARTIE: I didn’t tell you this, Bunny. Last week, I rode out to Long Island. To Bananas, taking her hand: You need help. We—I found a nice hosp … By the sea … by the beautiful sea … It’s an old estate and you can walk from the train station and it was raining and the roads aren’t paved so it’s muddy, but by the road where you turn into the estate, there was a tree with blue leaves in the rain—I walked under it to get out of the rain and also because I had never seen a tree with blue leaves and I walked under the tree and all the leaves flew away in one big round bunch—just lifted up, leaving a bare tree. Whoosh…. It was birds. Not blue leaves but birds, waiting to go to Florida or California … and all the birds flew to another tree a couple of hundred feet off and that bare tree blossomed—snap! like that—with all these blue very quiet leaves.… You’ll like the place, Bananas. I talked to the doctor. He had a mustache. You like mustaches. And the Blue Cross will handle a lot of it, so we won’t have to worry about expense.… You’ll like the place … a lot of famous people have had crackdowns there, so you’ll be running in good company.

  BANANAS: Shock treatments?

  ARTIE: No. No shock treatments.

  BANANAS: You swear?

  BUNNY: If she needs them, she’ll get them.

  ARTIE: I’m handling this my way.

  BUNNY: I’m sick of you kowtowing to her. Those poison fumes that come out of her head make me dizzy—suffering—look at her—what does she know about suffering …

  BANANAS: Did you read in the paper about the bull in Madrid who fought so well they didn’t let him die? They healed him, let him rest before they put him back in the ring, again and again and again. I don’t like the shock treatments, Artie. At least the concentration camps—I was reading about them, Artie—they put the people in the ovens and never took them out—but the shock treatments —they put you in the oven and then they take you out and then they put you in and then they take you out …

  BUNNY: Did you read Modern Screen two months ago? I am usually not a reader of film magazines, but the cover on it reached right up and seduced my eye in the health club. It was a picture like this—she clutches her head—and it was called “Sandra Dee’s Night of Hell.” Did you read that by any happenstance? Of course you wouldn’t read it. You can’t see anything. You’re
ignorant. Not you. Her. The story told of the night before Sandra Dee was to make her first movie and her mother said, “Sandra, do you have everything you need?” And she said—snapped back, real fresh-like—“Leave me alone, Mother. I’m a big girl now and don’t need any help from you.” So her mother said, “All right, Sandra, but remember I’m always here.” Well, her mother closed the door and Sandra could not find her hair curlers anywhere and she was too proud to go to her mom and ask her where they were—

  ARTIE: Bunny, I don’t understand.

  BUNNY: Shut up, I’m not finished yet—and she tore through the house having to look her best for the set tomorrow because it was her first picture and her hair curlers were nowhere! Finally at four in the A.M., her best friend, Annette Funicello, the former Mouseketeer, came over and took the hair curlers out of her very own hair and gave them to Sandra. Thus ended her night of hell, but she had learned a lesson. Suffering—you don’t even know the meaning of suffering. You’re a nobody and you suffer like a nobody. I’m taking Artie out of this environment and bringing him to California while Billy can still do him some good. Get Artie’s songs—his music—into the movies.

  ARTIE; I feel I only got about this much life left in me, Bananas. I got to use it. These are my peak years. I got to take this chance. You stay in your room. You’re crying. All the time. Ronnie’s gone now. This is not a creative atmosphere…. Bananas, I’m too old to be a young talent.

  BANANAS: I never stopped you all these years …

  BUNNY: Be proud to admit it, Artie. You were afraid till I came on the scene. Admit it with pride.

  ARTIE: I was never afraid. What’re you talking about?

  BUNNY: No man takes a job feeding animals in the Central Park Zoo unless he’s afraid to deal with humans.

  ARTIE: I walk right into the cage! What do you mean?

  BUNNY: Arthur, I’m trying to talk to your wife. Bananas, I want to be sincere to you and kind.

  ARTIE: I’m not afraid of nothing! Put my hand right in the cage—

  BUNNY, sitting down beside Bananas, speaks to her as to a child: There’s a beautiful book of poems by Robert Graves. I never read the book because the title is so beautiful there’s no need to read the book: “Man Does. Woman Is.” Look around this apartment. Look at Artie. Look at him.

  ARTIE, muttering: I been with panthers.

  BUNNY, with great kindness: I’ve never met your son, but—no insult to you, Artie—but I don’t want to. Man does. What does Artie do? He plays the piano. He creates. What are you? What is Bananas? Like he said before when you said you’ve been having nightmares. Artie said, “You been looking in the mirror?” Because that’s what you are, Bananas. Look in the mirror.

  ARTIE is playing the piano—“Where Is the Devil in Evelyn?”

  BUNNY: Man Does. Woman Is. I didn’t work in a lending library for nothing.

  ARTIE: I got panthers licking out of my hands like goddam pussycats.

  BUNNY: Then why don’t you ever call Billy?

  ARTIE stops playing: I got family obligations.

  BANANAS, at the window: You could take these bars down. I’m not going to jump.

  BUNNY: You’re afraid to call Billy and tell him we’re coming out.

  BANANAS, dreamy: I’d like to jump out right in front of the Pope’s car.

  ARTIE: Panthers lay right on their backs and I tickle their armpits. You call me afraid? Hah!

  BANANAS: He’d take me in his arms and bless me.

  BUNNY: Then call Billy now.

  ARTIE: It’s the middle of the night!

  BUNNY: It’s only two in the morning out there now.

  ARTIE: Two in the morning is the middle of the night!

  BUNNY: In Hollywood! Come off it, he’s probably not even in yet—they’re out there frigging and frugging and swinging and eating and dancing. Since Georgina died, he’s probably got a brace of nude starlets splashing in the pool.

  ARTIE: I can’t call him. He’s probably not even in yet—

  BUNNY: I don’t even think you know him.

  ARTIE: Don’t know him!

  BUNNY: You’ve been giving me a line—your best friend—big Hollywood big shot—you don’t even know him—

  ARTIE: Best friends stay your best friends precisely because you don’t go calling them in the middle of the night.

  BUNNY: You been using him—dangling him over my head—big Hollywood big-shot friend, just to take advantage of me—just to get in bed with me—Casting couches! I heard about them—

  ARTIE: That’s not true!

  BUNNY: And you want me to cook for you! I know the score, baby. I didn’t work in a theatrical furniture store for nothing!

  She tries to put her coat on to leave. He pulls it off her. If you can’t call your best friends in the middle of the night, then who can you call—taking advantage of me in a steam bath—

  BANANAS, picking up the phone: You want me to get Billy on the phone?

  ARTIE: You stay out of this!

  BANANAS: He was always my much better friend than yours, Artie.

  ARTIE: Your friend! Billy and I only went to kindergarten together, grammar school together, high school together till his family moved away—Fate always kept an eye out to keep us friends. He sings:

  If you’re ever in a jam, here I am.

  BANANAS sings:

  Friendship.

  ARTIE sings:

  If you’re ever up a tree, just phone me.

  ARTIE turns to us exuberantly: He got stationed making training movies and off each reel there’s what they call leader —undeveloped film—and he started snipping that leader off, so by the time we all got discharged, he had enough film spliced up to film Twenty Commandments. He made his movie right here on the streets of New York and Rossellini was making his movies in Italy, only Billy was making them here in America and better. He sold everything he had and he made Conduct of Life and it’s still playing in museums. It’s at the Museum of Modern Art next week—and Twentieth Century—Fox signed him and MGM signed him—they both signed him to full contracts—the first time anybody ever got signed by two studios at once…. You only knew him about six months’ worth, Bananas, when he was making the picture. And everybody in that picture became a star and Billy is still making great pictures.

  BUNNY: In his latest one, will you ever forget that moment when Doris Day comes down that flight of stairs in that bathrobe and thinks Rock Hudson is the plumber to fix her bathtub and in reality he’s an atomic scientist.

  BANANAS: I didn’t see that …

  ARTIE, mocking: Bananas doesn’t go out of the house …

  BUNNY, stars in her eyes: Call him, Artie.

  ARTIE: He gets up early to be on the set. I don’t want to wake him up—

  BUNNY: Within the next two years, you could be out there in a black tie waiting for the lady—Greer Garson—to open the envelope and say as the world holds its breath—“And the winner of the Oscar for this year’s Best Song is—” She rips a travel folder very slowly.

  ARTIE, leaning forward: Who is it? Who won?

  BUNNY: And now Miss Mitzi Gaynor and Mr. Franco Corelli of the Metropolitan Opera will sing the winning song for you from the picture of the same name made by his good friend and genius, Billy Einhorn. The winner is of course Mr. Arthur M. Shaughnessy.

  ARTIE goes to the telephone. He dials once, then: Operator, I want to call in Bel Air, Los Angeles—

  BUNNY: You got the number?

  ARTIE: Tattooed, baby. Tattooed. Your heart and his telephone number right on my chest like a sailor. Not you, operator. I want and fast I want in Los Angeles in Bel Air GR 2-4129 and I will not dial it because I want to speak personally to my good friend and genius, Mr. Billy Einhorn … E-I-N—don’t you know how to spell it? The name of only Hollywood’s leading director my friend and you better not give this number to any of your friends and call him up and bother him asking for screen tests.

  BUNNY: When I was an operator, they made us take oaths. I had Marl
on Brando’s number for years and pistols couldn’t’ve dragged it out of my head—they make you raise your right hand—

  ARTIE: My number is RA 1-2276 and don’t go giving that number away and I want a good connection … hang on, Bunny—she takes his extended hand—you can hear the beepbeepbeeps—we’re traveling across the country—hang on! Ring. It’s ringing. Ring.

  BUNNY, his palm and her palm forming one praying hand: Oh God, please—

  ARTIE, pulling away from her: Ring. It’s up. Hello? Billy? Yes, operator, get off—that’s Billy. Will you get off—To Bunny: I should’ve called station-to-station. He picked it right up and everything. Billy! This is Ramon Navarro! … No, Billy, it’s Artie Shaughnessy. Artie. No, New York! Did I wake you up! Can you hear me! Billy, hello. I got to tell you something—first of all, I got to tell you how bad I feel about Georgina dying—the good die young—what can I say—and second, since you, you old bum, never come back to your old stomping grounds—your happy hunting grounds, I’m thinking of coming out to see you. … I know you can fix up a tour of the studios and that’d be great … and you can get us hotel reservations—that’s just fine…. But, Billy, I’m thinking I got to get away—not just a vacation—but make a change, get a break, if you know what I’m getting at…. Bananas is fine. She’s right here. We were just thinking about you—NO, IT’S NOT FINE. Billy, this sounds cruel to say but Bananas is as dead for me as Georgina is for you. I’m in love with a remarkable wonderful girl—yeah, she’s here too—who I should’ve married years ago—no, we didn’t know her years ago—I only met her two months ago—yeah….

  Secretively, pulling the phone off to the corner: It’s kind of funny, a chimpanzee knocked me in the back and kinked my back out of whack and I went to this health club to work it out and in the steam section with all the steam I got lost and I went into this steam room and there was Bunny—yeah, just towels—I mean you could make a movie out of this, it was so romantic—She couldn’t see me and she started talking about the weight she had to take off and the food she had to give up and she started talking about duckling with orange sauce and oysters baked with spinach and shrimps baked in the juice of melted sturgeon eyes which caviar comes from—well, you know me and food and I got so excited and the steam’s getting thicker and thicker and I ripped off my towel and kind of raped her … and she was quiet for a long time and then she finally said one of the greatest lines of all time…. She said, “There’s a man in here.” … And she was in her sheet like a toga and I was all toga’d up and I swear, Billy, we were gods and goddesses and the steam bubbled up and swirled and it was Mount Olympus. I’m a new man, Billy—a new man—and I got to make a start before it’s too late and I’m calling you, crawling on my hands and knees—no, not like that, I’m standing up straight and talking to my best buddy and saying Can I come see you and bring Bunny and talk over old times.… I’ll pay my own way. I’m not asking you for nothing. Just your friendship. I think about you so much and I read about you in the columns and Conduct of Life is playing at the Museum of Modern Art next week and I get nervous calling you and that Doris Day pic—well, Bunny and I fell out of our loge seats—no, Bananas couldn’t see it—she don’t go out of the house much…. I get nervous about calling you because, well, you know, and I’m not asking for any Auld Lang Syne treatment, but it must be kind of lonely with Georgina gone and we sent five dollars in to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund like Walter Winchell said to do and we’re gonna send more and it must be kind of lonely and the three of us—Bunny and you and me—could have some laughs. What do you say? You write me and let me know your schedule and we can come any time. But soon. Okay, buddy? Okay? No, this is my call. I’m paying for this call so you don’t have to worry—talking to you I get all opened up. You still drinking rye? Jack Daniels! Set out the glasses—open the bottle—no, I’ll bring the bottle—we’ll see you soon. Good night, Billy. The call is over.