by Tracy Letts
She looks in an address book, dials the phone.
MARY PAGE: Hi, Jackie, this is Mary Page Marlowe, how are you? (Pause) That’s good. Listen, I’ve lost my boy. (Pause) Well, it’s kind of a long story, he— (Pause) No, that’s right, he did, he moved back to Dayton to live with his father. But that hasn’t worked out, they haven’t been getting along and now Louis has gone missing. (Pause) I thought . . . I know he really liked Renee, I know they were close, and I thought . . . I don’t know, maybe he had hitchhiked back here to see Renee, or got the money together for a bus ticket, or— (Pause) You haven’t? (Pause) Okay. Okay, well. I’m sorry to bother you with this, Jackie, he’s just got me so worried, and you know how they are, he’s sixteen years old— (Pause) Thank you. I will. (Pause) Okay, Jackie, thank you so much. Uh-huh. Bye-bye.
(She hangs up. She makes a drink, talks to herself:)
. . . Goddamn it . . . don’t be a shit, Louis, just tell me you’re okay . . . don’t make me this way . . .
(Door closes, off.)
WENDY (From off): Mom?
(Wendy, twenty, enters, carrying a backpack.)
MARY PAGE: I’m so glad you’re here.
WENDY: What’s going on?
MARY PAGE: I’ve gotten myself into a state. I can’t shake some morbid thoughts, and I . . . I’m really glad you’re here.
WENDY: So nobody has heard anything.
MARY PAGE: No, we might have tracked him down. Your father heard maybe Louis has been staying with this boy Matt. So your father is headed over to Matt’s house to see if he’s there.
WENDY: He can’t just call Matt’s parents?
MARY PAGE: I guess Matt has his own place or something.
WENDY: He’s got his own place? A sixteen year old?
MARY PAGE: I don’t know, Wendy! I don’t know how old he is, what’s going on, I’m not there!
WENDY: Okay, it’s okay.
MARY PAGE: I’m sorry, I, I don’t know. I don’t really understand what’s been going on up there. Louis and I haven’t been talking, you know, he’s so goddamn tough, and uncommunicative, and—
WENDY: It’s okay, Mom.
MARY PAGE: I’m sorry. I just, I need a drink.
(Mary Page makes herself another drink.)
WENDY: So how did this start, he and Daddy got into some—
MARY PAGE: They got in a fight, and I guess it was pretty bad, Louis hit him, hit Sonny in the face—
WENDY: —Oh God—
MARY PAGE: —and then Louis screamed some ultimatums and ran out. Then Sonny eventually got him—
WENDY: Did Daddy hit him?
MARY PAGE: No, Sonny would never hit him, not even in self-defense, he couldn’t do that.
WENDY: What started the fight?
MARY PAGE: Your father found track marks on Louis’s arm and flipped out. Louis has fallen in with a bad crowd up there and . . . Louis is struggling. He’s always struggled. It’s just always been a hard row for him, I don’t know why, he—
WENDY: So Daddy hasn’t seen him since they had the fight?
MARY PAGE: No, so, Sonny got out in the truck and drove around and finally found Louis in front of the 7-Eleven, of course—I mean, c’mon, Louis, if you’re going to be a little junkie at least try to do it a little more creatively, something with a little more originality than the fucking 7-Eleven. He said Louis was a lot calmer, he thought Louis had probably gotten high—
WENDY: Are you sure they were track marks?
MARY PAGE: What?
WENDY: Would Daddy know track marks if he saw them? ’Cause I wouldn’t.
MARY PAGE: Sure you would.
WENDY: I just know them from movies.
MARY PAGE: Well, the movies make them look like real life. You would know them. I mean, would it surprise you? Forget all the pot, I caught him with coke, pills, I caught him with a sheet of acid, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t even think people dropped acid anymore, and he had this beautiful sheet, he’s probably dealing. And you know he’s on medication for his ADD and I don’t know that it’s helped at all, I just think it’s made things worse.
WENDY: Finish your story, you said Daddy drove around and found him.
MARY PAGE: Your father found him, and said he was a lot calmer, and they had a talk. I shouldn’t call it a talk, I don’t think your little brother knows how to talk anymore, but anyway, they talked. And they agreed that it wasn’t working out, living together. Your father asked him if he wanted to come back here and live with me, but Louis told him no, he hated Kentucky, and it’s no secret we weren’t getting on like a house on fire. You know we haven’t talked in over a month, me and Louis. He won’t even get on the phone and speak to me. I went up to Dayton a couple of weeks ago and tried to see him but he hid or ran away every time I came around.
WENDY: So where does he want to live?
MARY PAGE: He told Sonny that he wanted to go live with his friend, Kenny Lafferty. You remember Kenny Lafferty, the little boy that—
WENDY: I remember Kenny, the one who ate all our food.
MARY PAGE: Right, who ate all our food, all the time. So Louis said that Kenny’s mother had told Louis he was welcome to stay with them until . . . whenever, she said he was welcome to stay. And your dad felt all right about that, ’cause we know the Laffertys, they’re okay, they were always good to Louis, so okay, they had a . . . your father and Louis, they had a plan. So Sonny dropped Louis over at the Laffertys with his backpack two days ago. And nobody’s seen him since. That’s the last time anybody saw him. Louis never even went inside. Your father called over to the Laffertys later on to check on him and the Laffertys had never talked to Louis about staying there. Louis had just made the whole thing up. He’s crafty, that kid, you know, he’s a sneaky, crafty little bastard. That was two days ago. Your father spent yesterday looking for him before he called me this afternoon to tell me he was missing. And now when the phone rings . . .
(She cannot finish the sentence.)
WENDY: That’s not going to happen.
MARY PAGE: You don’t know what’s going to happen.
WENDY: Has anybody called the cops?
MARY PAGE: Sonny made a report this morning. Listen, if your father doesn’t turn him up over at this other boy’s house, I want you to drive me up to Dayton. I would drive myself but I just feel very shaky—
WENDY: No, please let me drive you. Me driving is a good idea.
(Mary Page makes another drink.)
MARY PAGE: I swear, I don’t know what we’re going to do about him, Wendy. We need to get him in some kind of program, he needs some serious help because this is wearing me out. He has—you will find this when you have kids of your own, it’s unavoidable, but—he has aged me.
WENDY: Mom.
MARY PAGE: What?
WENDY: You need to stop drinking now.
MARY PAGE: I’m going to count to ten. Okay? Just please don’t say anything.
WENDY: You are not helping yourself or this situation by getting drunk right now.
MARY PAGE: For Christ’s sake, Wendy! For Christ’s sake! Can you not understand how scary this is for me?
WENDY: I just don’t see how drinking is going to make the situation any better.
MARY PAGE: I’m just trying to keep it together here.
WENDY: What the hell is that?
MARY PAGE: It’s a rosary.
WENDY: You have got to be kidding me.
MARY PAGE: Why? I was confirmed. Against my will, but it still counts.
WENDY: You can’t just pull that out of a shoe box when things look bad.
MARY PAGE: Wanna bet?
WENDY: You are a piece of work.
MARY PAGE: If Louis is all right, maybe I’ll go back to the church.
WENDY: I’m glad you said “maybe.” That lets me know you’re still you.
MARY PAGE: Do you want something to eat? I have a pot of chili in the fridge.
WENDY: I’m okay.
MARY PAGE: You want a sandwich?
WENDY: No, I’m fine.
MARY PAGE: Um . . . oh, there’s fudge, from that place at the mall.
WENDY: Mom.
MARY PAGE: You want a drink?
WENDY: Not if I’m driving you to Dayton, no.
MARY PAGE: I have some pop in the fridge. (Pause) How are classes?
WENDY: Fine. Boring.
MARY PAGE: How’s Jonah?
WENDY: He’s fine.
MARY PAGE: Boring?
WENDY: A little.
MARY PAGE: That might not last, huh?
WENDY: No, I don’t think it will last. Who knows?
MARY PAGE: Is there anybody else in the picture?
WENDY: I’m not like you, Mary Page. There’s only one person at a time in my picture.
MARY PAGE: Mm. Good for you.
WENDY: I’m sorry.
MARY PAGE: No, that’s . . . on the nose. If you’re going to be mean, you should at least be accurate.
WENDY: No, it’s not going to last.
MARY PAGE: I really admire you, Wendy. I respect you.
(Pause.)
WENDY: Thank you.
MARY PAGE: I get mad at you sometimes because you seem inflexible, but the truth is: you are your own person.
WENDY: Thank you.
MARY PAGE: That’s not easy, you know. For us.
WENDY: Who’s us?
(Mary Page doesn’t hear her. She sinks to her knees, trembling.)
Mom?
(Tears fall. Wendy goes to her.)
MARY PAGE: I thought I would be stronger.
WENDY: It’s okay.
MARY PAGE: I always thought I was a stronger person.
WENDY: Mom, it’s okay.
MARY PAGE: What did I do?
What did I do?
(The phone rings.)
SCENE 11
2005.
Mary Page Marlowe is fifty-nine.
Ben is in his mid-thirties.
The dry cleaners. Lexington, Kentucky.
MARY PAGE: It’s pretty fragile.
BEN: Yeah. We can do that.
MARY PAGE: You don’t seem too sure.
BEN: No, we can do it. Y’know, bring it in, so I can look at it. ’Cause if it’s really old, sometimes, I mean they can . . . is it just really threadbare, or—
MARY PAGE: —Yeah—
BEN: —is it disintegrating?
MARY PAGE: No, it’s . . .
BEN: Is it stained? Are there stains on it?
MARY PAGE: A few of the panels.
BEN: Do you know what it is, the stain is?
MARY PAGE: No, they’re brown stains.
BEN: ’Cause we might be able to get it out, usually can. But if it’s disintegrating, I wouldn’t want us to try it. I just want to make sure we’re not—
MARY PAGE: I don’t think it’s that fragile. It’s intact. You know what it is, the uh, the panels, there are different panels.
BEN: Right.
MARY PAGE: Different women would sew the different panels and then stitch them all together, and some of the panels look more threadbare than others. The women were not using all the same materials. But it’s not falling apart, it’s not as if you hold it and it crumbles between your fingers. ’Cause I’ve seen that.
BEN: You just need to bring it in.
MARY PAGE: Okay. I just wasn’t sure if you did that here.
BEN: We don’t get a lot of them.
MARY PAGE: Is there a place that specializes in that? Should I be going somewhere else?
BEN: Not around here. One lady told me she took hers to the college, to the person at the college who teaches textiles.
MARY PAGE: Did they help her?
BEN: I don’t know.
MARY PAGE: Okay. Sorry, what did it come to?
BEN: Fourteen-fifty.
(She pays.)
Oh. That’s right. We couldn’t save this one.
MARY PAGE: No?
BEN: No, I don’t know what that is.
MARY PAGE: I was afraid of that. Well, it’s a cheap blouse.
BEN: I didn’t charge you.
MARY PAGE: Thanks. Okay, thanks. I’ll bring in that quilt next time. Do I need to talk to you or?—
BEN: It doesn’t matter who’s here. Like I say, we get ’em. I just don’t want to promise you something until I—
MARY PAGE: No, I understand. Thank you.
BEN: How old did you say it was?
MARY PAGE: I don’t know. A few generations.
BEN: Sometimes they’re worth a lot.
MARY PAGE: Yeah, I don’t think this . . . it just has sentimental value. I was cleaning some stuff out of storage, trying to get some things together, when I came across it. I forgot I even had it, to tell you the truth. It’s not even much to look at, really. It’s quaint. The most interesting thing about it is this one panel. The other panels show various frontier women, probably some of the women who started the work on it, farm women, and milkmaids, and baby girls, grandmothers in their shawls, that sort of thing. But this one panel shows a woman, in a long dark blue dress . . . and she’s turned away from us, we can’t see her, just a bit of one side of her face, and her head is slightly bowed. I wonder what that was about.
BEN: Huh.
MARY PAGE: Actually, it doesn’t have any sentimental value. It’s just old. Like me.
BEN: You don’t look that old.
MARY PAGE: Aren’t you sweet.
BEN: That stuff, it’s all just a state of mind anyway, right?
MARY PAGE: Yes. It is.
BEN: I’ve seen you before, right?
MARY PAGE: Yes.
BEN: You’re a regular customer.
MARY PAGE: Yes, I’ve been coming in—
BEN: Yeah, you’ve—
MARY PAGE: I’ve been coming in for a little while.
BEN: Right, I knew I’d seen you. I’m Ben.
MARY PAGE: Hi, Ben. You have a nice smile.
BEN: Thanks. Who are you?
MARY PAGE: I’m Mary Page Marlowe.
BEN: Can I help you get those to the car?
MARY PAGE: No. I got it.
END OF PLAY
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
TRACY LETTS is a playwright, actor and resident company member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County.
