ASH: They rush me into surgery and as they’re putting me under, I ask if he’s here yet.
And then the anesthetic sweeps up over me.
HAM: I look around.
ASH: Dream that I’m freefalling
HAM: Retrieve her sliced-up boot.
ASH: from ten thousand feet up
into the ocean.
HAM: Piece of leather falls away.
ASH: Icarus swoops down and cradles me
HAM: Hold it to my face. Breathe her in.
ASH: into the warmth of his chest.
HAM: Take the carcass of her dog from the car.
ASH: Safe.
HAM: Least I can do is give it a decent burial. Tell her later, when she’s whole again.
ASH: And we soar; catch the updraft.
HAM: Get into my car.
ASH: He asks me where I want to go, and I just say:
HAM: Drive.
ASH: Forever.
HAM: Windows down.
MIA: Then one morning he tells me to get in the car.
HAM: Sun bleeds orange-red over the horizon, leaking life back into the world.
MIA: Won’t tell me where we’re going, says it’s a surprise.
HAM: The road sings straight and true before me. I watch the white lines rushing past, telling their own stories: traffic and life and human hearts traversing across the country …
MIA: He drives to this block way out of town …
HAM: carrying the weight of dreams and hope and chance and choice.
MIA: pops some champagne and asks me how I like my new home.
ASH: When I come out my leg’s in a full cast. Traction. Head bandaged up. Chin stitched. Nurse says: ‘You’re lucky. Fella died out there last week. Trapped in his car for three days.’
HAM: And it’s like the world’s been reborn or something. Everything fresh and new-smelling.
ASH: Lucky.
MIA: That night we sleep out there, looking up at the stars;
talking and laughing and fucking our way into the future …
HAM: And I know I have to tell her. To her face. I owe her that.
So I pull in at home.
She’s been crying.
She’s drunk, and crying.
MIA: Where’ve you been?
ASH: I ask her if he’s been in, she says: Who?
MIA: Where’s your jacket?
ASH: But I know he’s coming,
HAM: Can you see the early cracks if you look closely enough?
ASH: … so I wait …
MIA: You’re late.
ASH: A day passes.
HAM: Accident. On the road.
MIA: Anyone die?
ASH: A night.
MIA: Boots off. Hear them hit the floor.
Fridge opens.
ASH: And another day and night.
MIA: Dull clud of hand around a beer.
‘Tsch’.
HAM: Her mouth opens and shuts, but …
Nothing. Barriers up.
She heads to bed. Not a word.
Easier not to ask, so I don’t.
ASH: Propped up in the white bed of an off-white room
peeling paint on the walls
stained ceiling.
HAM: I wonder when love and lust fades into habit and routine.
When it becomes easier to stay in a holding pattern
than it does to walk away into a new life.
ASH: Keep hoping.
HAM: And I’m tired. So, so tired.
Can’t cope with this tonight.
Grab another beer.
Sit and watch the sun rise.
Dawn.
Start of a new day.
ASH: Glass always full.
HAM: I’ll bury the dog, pack a few things, then …
Go. Just …
go.
ASH: Smells like antiseptic and apples, mixed in with disappointment.
HAM: It’s time to bury this one.
ASH: And by then even I’m not that much of a dickhead to believe he’ll come.
HAM: Put on my boots.
Find a nice spot in the backyard,
under the Bloodwood.
Shaded.
Peaceful.
Dig.
Dig.
Dig.
Hit something.
Prise it up.
Brush off the dirt.
A small box.
Open it up.
Lining.
Red silk.
Something tucked inside.
Yellow.
Blue.
Cold.
Slimy.
Stiff.
… takes me a while to twig …
and then I do.
ASH: The sudden emptiness in my belly when I realise.
HAM: Foetus.
It’s a foetus.
ASH: The yawping feeling of absence. Gaping open inside you.
The loss of a thing which you never even had.
HAM: I take the box inside.
Show it to her.
Watch her face as she crumbles.
ASH: Lost inside myself with the aching-ness of it.
HAM: She tries to speak, but …
MIA: I can’t tell him.
Can’t believe it myself.
Try to push the image out of my head.
Sits there and festers;
face just hanging there.
Nothing. Gone.
A barely-there star, lost to the universe.
HAM: … spurting grief like blackened oil. Tears and snot and dribble pulsing out of her.
Then she tells me.
MIA: Bathtub. Bottle of gin. Water as hot as I can stand.
HAM: She drinks till she nearly passes out.
MIA: I wasn’t ready.
Wanted to keep this happiness inside me
the magic of just you ’n’ me
the safety of our twosome-ness.
I didn’t want a kid. Not yet.
Still a kid myself. Still eighteen, in my head.
Figured there’ll be time, later on
when we’re ready
… and then …
a feeling like …
soft
a goldfish, flapping
when you take it out of water
the way it …
And again.
Spinning around.
Inside me.
My baby.
My.
Baby.
ASH: Wait for my foot to come out of the cast.
MIA: And again.
ASH: Plates gotta knit.
MIA: The quickening.
ASH: Rehab.
Three months.
Four.
MIA: Must be the hot water.
ASH: Learn to walk again. Like a child.
MIA: Trying to get out.
ASH: Five months.
Six.
MIA: And I realise what I’m doing.
ASH: Try to forget him. Scrub him from my mind.
MIA: Get out.
ASH: Ten months.
Eleven.
MIA: Sit down in the shower.
ASH: And still his face hovers over me; night after night.
MIA: Force myself to vomit back the gin.
ASH: Twelve months. Bang on the day.
MIA: Cold water.
ASH: Drive out there. Skid marks still on the road.
MIA: Cool off. Sober up.
ASH: Trashed car hanging, upside-down. Scars of a car crash.
MIA: Cradle my belly.
ASH: Broken glass, twisted metal, remnants of coolant and diesel.
Blown tyres, scabs of rubber.
MIA: My baby.
ASH: Scraps of a boot.
MIA: My.
Baby.
ASH: No dog.
MIA: He chose me.
HAM: He chose us.
MIA: He chose to stay.
HAM: My child too.
ASH: I drive out to the mine, ask around.
>
Bloke tells me Ham doesn’t work there anymore. Came back from a week out, and he wasn’t the same.
Something about an accident.
MIA: Feeling him move inside me, everything changes.
ASH: A woman.
MIA: The power of a new life.
ASH: A dog.
MIA: We’re gonna be a family.
ASH: He couldn’t get it together after that. Just started to fade out.
Hasn’t been around for months.
MIA: Champagne.
ASH: Won’t tell me where he lives.
MIA: Flowers on the table.
ASH: Outside Alice, that’s all he says. Northside.
Could be anywhere.
MIA: Roast beef, spuds, gravy.
ASH: Drive.
MIA: We’ll work it out together.
ASH: Round in circles.
MIA: My red dress, the one you like.
ASH: Northside.
MIA: Silk.
ASH: Determined to find him.
MIA: Tighter round the belly now.
ASH: Figure he’s got to come into town for supplies eventually.
Prop outside Coles.
MIA: I’m gonna be a mum.
ASH: Watch the people come and go.
MIA: Beer cold in the fridge.
ASH: Three days.
MIA: You’re gonna be a dad.
ASH: Four.
MIA: Spend the rest of the night waiting for it again; the flapping feeling …
ASH: Nothing.
MIA: … and I think: maybe it’s sleeping.
ASH: People must think I’m mad.
MIA: Tired after those first flaps.
ASH: Start to think it myself.
MIA: Worn its little self out.
ASH: One week.
MIA: But it doesn’t come again.
ASH: Nothing.
MIA: Fades, like a dying star.
ASH: Prop outside Woolies.
MIA: Waiting for you to come back home.
ASH: Day two, and there he is.
Want to walk up to him.
Hit him.
Hold him.
Never let him go.
Take him away with me.
Drive. Just …
Drive.
He stands in the queue. Blank face, like no-one’s home.
Trolley full. Stocking up.
Wheels it out to the carpark.
I follow, from a distance.
Packs his car.
Drives off.
I follow.
To a block out of town.
MIA: I’m out here all alone.
ASH: Long way from anywhere else.
HAM: There was an accident.
MIA: … and then …
HAM: On the highway.
MIA: … serrated dagger slicing through my belly
from navel to cunt
and back again.
ASH: He slows, indicates.
MIA: Barbed.
ASH: I drive on past, a hundred metres.
Hide the car in some scrub.
MIA: Grip-gripping.
ASH: Walk back, scrub-side
MIA: Angry.
ASH: Keep my head low.
MIA: Pain.
ASH: Big block
fence around it
veggie patch
above-ground pool.
MIA: Soaking my red dress
the one you like
standing in a pool of—
ASH: Swingset.
MIA: Ghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
ASH: Kids?
MIA: Breathe.
ASH: He’s got kids?
MIA: Ghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
ASH: You fucking idiot. Of course he has. A man like that.
MIA: Nonononono. Not yet.
ASH: You stupid, gullible dickhead. Kids, wife, dog. The whole shebang.
MIA: Keep it in! Clench. Clench!
ASH: And my heart shreds into tiny pieces
HAM: And all I can think is: This is it. My exit strategy.
I’m free now. I owe her nothing.
ASH: Crawl along the fence-line
down the backyard
prop behind some spinifex
watch.
MIA: He turns and goes. Not a word. Heads for the bedroom.
Going in there to pack. Packing to leave.
HAM: Tired. So, so tired.
MIA: And so I follow.
HAM: My wife comes and lies down next to me, smelling of whiskey and sadness.
MIA: Tell him how I tried to hold him in.
Couldn’t.
Blood and muck and mucus and cells oozing out of me.
HAM: And she curls her body in next to mine.
ASH: … one hour …
MIA: Giving birth to a dead thing.
Calling him Michael and finding him a star.
HAM: Her need leaks out of her like amber:
warm and fluid and hard and cold all at the same time.
MIA: Alone.
ASH: … two hours …
MIA: Carrying the grief.
HAM: Small chunks of loss fused into a hardened shell.
ASH: … three …
MIA: Where were you?
HAM: Idiot. Coming back here.
Get up. Into the car
Drive. Just …
ASH: And then a woman walks out.
HAM: Drive.
ASH: Reaches up into a Bloodwood tree. Picks some flowers.
HAM: When is it too late?
ASH: Squats, lays them on the ground.
In a pattern.
Pattern of a star.
She says something, then rises.
Turns.
Full belly. Ripe with fruit.
Goes back inside.
HAM: I turn towards her. Open my mouth to tell her …
She’s asleep.
Curled up tight and hard.
Against me.
Asleep.
ASH: And then he comes out.
Sight of him makes me shake.
He goes to the tree
squats
says something into the ground
touches something on a low branch
something hanging
speaks to the hanging thing softly
caresses it.
Goes back inside.
Closes the door.
HAM: Put my arm around her. Curl into her with my body.
Cocoon her. Keep her safe.
Hold her to me, until she begins to thaw.
ASH: Something glints at me from the hanging thing.
And the colour.
I know this thing.
HAM: Because that’s the deal.
ASH: Hands that hold a memory and fling it back at you.
HAM: That’s what you sign up for.
ASH: Dog collar.
Purple.
Tag hanging off it.
Glinting in the sunlight.
HAM: It’s bigger than me.
ASH: ‘Lucky’.
HAM: Bigger than us.
ASH: The tag says ‘Lucky’.
HAM: Bigger than anything.
ASH wraps HAM’s jacket tighter around her.
HAM holds ASH’s boot.
MIA searches for a barely-there star.
THE END
Also by Mary Anne Butler and
available from Currency Press
Highway of Lost Hearts
Mot wakes up one morning to find that her heart is missing from her chest. She can breathe, she has a pulse, but she feels … nothing. So she decides to go and look for it. With her dog enlisted as co-pilot, Mot heads down the Highway of Lost Hearts. The futher she drives, the more she realises that those around her are also missing some vital part of themselves.
An allegory for a country that has lost its heart, Highway of Lost Hearts is half gritty road journey, half magic realism and all heart. It leaves you pondering the question: when your heart goes mi
ssing, what lengths will you go to, in order to find it again?
ISBN 978-1-92500-508-0
Copyright Details
First published in 2016
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia
[email protected]
www.currency.com.au
First digital edition published in 2016 by Currency Press.
Copyright: Introduction © Andrew Bovell, 2016; Broken © Mary Anne Butler, 2016.
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