SALLY: I’m ready, we should go.
GRANDMA: We have everything? We haven’t forgotten anything?
FRANNY: I don’t know.
GRANDMA: Let me just check . . . (Heads back to the bedroom)
SALLY (Following her): If you did, we can always mail it—
(Phil hands a magazine to Franny.)
FRANNY: What’s this?
DOLLY: What is it?
PHIL: An old copy of the New Yorker. With a wonderful story in it.
FRANNY: I can’t take this. It’s your only copy—
DOLLY: Let me see—
FRANNY: No, you’ll rip it. (Takes it)
SALLY (Coming back out with Grandma): What’s that?
PHIL: Nothing.
FRANNY: The Salinger story—
DOLLY (To Phil): Why are you giving her presents?
FRANNY: Because he likes me better!
DOLLY: He does, does he?
(Dolly grabs Phil and tickles him, he fights back, tickling.)
SALLY (To anyone who will listen): I can’t believe I’m taking you to the train!
GRANDMA: Come on, girls. We’re going to be late. Leave Phil alone. Come. Pick up your bags.
(Sally suddenly joins in the tickling.)
We have to go. Phil, why don’t you walk with your wife.
(They all continue to tickle as she pushes them out.)
Let’s go. Girls, let’s go. Girls!
(They go out into the hallway, still trying to tickle each other. Grandma stays behind, and again becomes Older Franny. She speaks to us:)
OLDER FRANNY: And so I went home that summer. And tried to finish my Victorian Yorkshire novel—with no success. And tried to forget a boy—with a good bit more success. And tried to find a much better hiding place for my diaphragm.
Nine months later, my cousin Sally and Phil had a new baby. They came up to show her off. Uncle Edward took them to see the house on Chestnut, and they never left.
I did read Mom’s letter—a few billion times. Dolly, my clever little sister, organized an unescorted “shopping trip” that Christmas to New York City. We were to meet Mother in front of Saks. She appeared down Fifth Avenue, through a light snow, amidst the haze of the streetlamps, her fur collar framing—that beautiful face. Like a vision—that is how she appeared to me; and that is just about how real, sadly, she proved, to be. Dolly disagrees, and says I just should have spent time with her—like she did. (Shrugs) Grandma lived only another five years. Women, it has recently dawned on me, die young in my family.
And little Annie? The baby? She’s buried in Queens. For a while there was talk of moving her to Millbrook. But that stopped years ago. I think she’s been forgotten.
(Short pause. Street noise continues from out the window.)
As we get old, we start to see the— (Searches for the word, then) fragility of . . . well everything. (Short pause) But when we’re young, thank God, we are oblivious.
(Suddenly Franny charges back into the room. From down the hall cries of: “Franny!” “We’re going to miss the train!” “We can send it to you!” etc.)
FRANNY (Shouting back): I’ll just be a second!
(She looks around, then hurries to the sofa, desperately searching for something she’s forgotten. The Older Franny watches. Young Franny flips over magazines and finds what she is looking for—her mother’s letter. She sighs, folds it. Then she suddenly notices something else. Sticking out between the cushions in the couch: her underpants from the night before. She grabs them, looks around, doesn’t know what to do. She tries to hide them on her body, then slides them inside the pages of the New Yorker she is carrying, smoothing down the pages, as she hurries out shouting:)
I’m coming!!!
(Older Franny looks out the window, as the street sounds continue: they are alive, music in the distance from Washington Square, cars, laughter, church bells, siren, and so forth.)
END OF PLAY
RICHARD NELSON’S plays include (besides the five in this volume) Rodney’s Wife, Madame Melville, The General from America, Misha’s Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus and the Discovery of Japan, Left, Principia Scriptoriae, Life Sentences, Between East and West and The Vienna Notes. His adaptations include Tynan (with Colin Chambers, based on The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan); Jean-Claude Carriere’s The Controversy; Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The Father; Chekhov’s Three Sisters, The Seagull and The Wood Demon; Pirandello’s Enrico IV; Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. He has written three musicals—James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey), My Life with Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon) and The House of Bernarda Alba (with Michael John LaChiusa)—the screenplay for the film Ethan Frome, and the book Making Plays (with David Jones).
He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad, including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce’s The Dead), an Olivier Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere), Tony nominations (Best Play for Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score as co-lyricist for James Joyce’s The Dead), an Olivier nomination (Best Comedy for Some Americans Abroad), two Obies, a Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of The Royal Shakespeare Company, and lives in upstate New York.
Goodnight Children Everywhere and Other Plays Page 37
