by David French
MARY Not now. Your father might come in any second. Later. (She starts for the kitchen.)
BEN No. Come on, Mom. I’d like to hear it, okay? I’ve had a strange one myself, lately.
MARY (turns back to BEN) I took it for a warning, Ben. Like a bird in the house . . . Death ain’t always a pale rider on a pale horse, my son. Sometimes . . . like last night . . . he’s just a man dressed all in black. Wearing a peaked cap and holding a black lunch pail. Standing high on a rooftop . . . (She pauses.)
BEN Yeah? Is that all?
MARY It was windy, and the wind took his cap off, and he just stood there staring out over the city . . . as though he was beside the shore, looking out to sea for somet’ing lost . . .
Stamping of feet is heard outside the kitchen door, and MARY returns to the kitchen counter, just as JACOB enters, carrying his rubbers. As he closes the door behind him, she picks up a cup and saucer and turns. The cup falls to the floor and shatters.
JACOB That’s one you won’t t’row at me. (He crosses to the hallway closet.)
MARY The night ain’t over yet, boy.
JACOB (hanging up his coat, to MARY) At least she’s speaking to me.
MARY (as she sweeps up the broken cup) I oughtn’t to, after the fool you made of yourself tonight. Where did you t’ink you was — the beer parlour?
JACOB Go on with you. We had a few words, that’s all.
He enters the kitchen, crosses to the fridge. He removes a wedge of cheese and cuts off a slice with his penknife.
MARY Words? Is that what you calls it? Well, I’d hate to be the one has a conversation with you. (She deposits the broken cup in the garbage receptacle.) What brought that on?
JACOB Not’ing. I don’t wish to talk about it.
MARY Well, get out of the kitchen, then. Go in the other room. Ben wishes to speak to you.
JACOB He do? What do he want?
MARY How should I know? Go and find out.
JACOB You come in with me, Mary.
MARY Don’t be silly. Go on. He won’t bite. (as JACOB picks up a newspaper off the top of the fridge) And leave the paper right where it is. You won’t need to hide behind that. (pushing him towards the door) Go on, I said.
As JACOB enters the living room, BEN switches off the radio. JACOB removes his tie and hangs it over the banister. He looks at BEN’s back a moment. Then he crosses behind the chesterfield to the window.
JACOB Wonder how much Wiff paid for that casket? Bronze is the most expensive there is. Must’ve set him back two t’ousand, at least, wouldn’t you say?
BEN Probably more than that. (slight pause) Dad . . .
JACOB (not hearing BEN) Back home we never had funeral parlours in my day.
BEN No?
JACOB No. When Father died, he was kept home in bed, and somebody — mostly Mother and me — sat with him for the t’ree days, every hour. (Out of his embarrassment he takes a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, discovers it empty, then crosses to the armchair and sits.) Some would keep their blinds drawn for months on end. Once the preacher preached a sermon saying what a sin it was to keep out the Light of God that way. (BEN quickly offers his father a cigarette. JACOB takes one.) T’anks. (He breaks off the filter, and BEN lights the cigarette for him.) They never embalmed in those days, either. And lots couldn’t wait the t’ree days, let me tell you. Had to be buried sooner.
(Pause.)
BEN How did your father die?
JACOB Cancer, my son. Like Dot. He was only forty-six.
BEN What was he like?
JACOB Father? Oh, that depended on who crossed his path and what mood he was in. On good days he’d give you the bread out of his mouth. He was a hard man to know. Don’t suppose many knowed him well, except Mother. She was the only one wasn’t frightened of him. (slight pause) The first time they operated on him, four men had to hold him down on the kitchen floor. No morphine, no kind of painkiller, just the knife and four men kneeling on his arms and legs. A ball of flesh as big as a marble popped out of his mouth and rolled across the floor. Never let out a whimper, just kicked and t’rashed. The cancer was in his mouth, you see, and Mother said she’d pick up teeth in the bedclothes weeks later. (slight pause) The night he died he was in such torment he reached up and took hold of the frame of the bed and bent the brass out of shape. Still never made a sound . . . The doctor later said he never knowed how any normal man could’ve stood it without screeching out . . .
BEN Were you there?
JACOB No. Mother told me later. She wouldn’t let me near the room. Never wished me to see him, the shape he was in. At t’ree or four that morning she came out, rolling down her sleeves, and closed the door, and I knowed before she spoke he was gone, just the way she came out that way and closed the door . . . When I did see him, at last, after they’d made him up, he looked so small lying there in bed that I wondered to myself how I ever could’ve been so frightened of him, such a small man. In life, I’d never noticed that, how small he was . . . (slight pause) By the way, your Mother said you wished to speak to me.
BEN Yeah, I do . . . (He stands.)
JACOB What about?
BEN Well, Mom told me you’re going back to work tomorrow . . . and I was thinking . . .
JACOB Don’t waste your breath, my son. Did she put you up to this?
BEN Put me up to what? You haven’t let me finish. I’d like to stay home for a while if that’s okay with you, and work.
JACOB What’d you say? . . .
BEN I said I’d like to stay home for a while and work. I mean, if you don’t mind.
JACOB Mind?
BEN Maybe you don’t want me here. It’s your house.
JACOB That ain’t true, now. Your mother owns half. She’s got as much say in the matter as I does. (He stands.) Did you mention this to her yet?
BEN No.
JACOB Good. Watch me surprise her. Mary, come in here quick. Hear the good news. (to BEN) She’ll be some overjoyed, Ben. (then) Mary! (He crosses to the arch-way.) Drop what you’m doing and get in here before he changes his mind.
MARY (crosses to the sink, deposits her cup) What is it?
JACOB Hang onto your bonnet, Mary. You’ll never believe what I just heard with my own two ears. You ready for this?
MARY (crosses to JACOB) You won the Sweepstakes.
JACOB Better. Your son wishes to stay home.
MARY (to BEN) Oh?
JACOB “Oh?” Is that all you can say is “oh?”
MARY What was you expecting?
JACOB I t’ought the least you’d do is jump and smack your hands. You does that much at the bingo. Didn’t you hear me? He wishes to stay home for good.
BEN For a while.
JACOB For a while? What’s the good of that? (then) All right. For a while.
MARY (to BEN) What for?
JACOB There she goes again. What does you mean “what for?” By the Christ, if you ain’t contrary.
MARY Perhaps we’d be better off if he never, Jake.
JACOB In the name of Christ, Mary, what’s got into you?
MARY Remember what we talked about earlier? Just the two of us?
JACOB All right, my son, pack your bag, your mother don’t want you here.
MARY It ain’t that.
JACOB Well, what kind of a way is that to speak? (crosses to BEN) Look, this is my house, and there’s a spare bedroom. You can come and go to please yourself. And neither your mother nor me will interfere. Will we, Mary? (then) Will we?
MARY says nothing.
Well, this calls for a drink. I’ll break out the whiskey. Billy gave me a bottle for Christmas. (He rushes off into the kitchen and pours two drinks, singing.)
Up and down the southern shore
Go to bed after supper
See the great big ugly t’ing
Go after Charlie Tucker
(then) Don’t go back on your word, now.
MARY What’s the idea, Ben? You was supposed to convince him not to work. What�
��s staying home got to do with it?
BEN I’m going to get a job, and he won’t have to work. I just haven’t told him yet.
MARY So that’s it. Well, my son, you’d better let him know what you intends. He might not go for it.
JACOB rushes back with the two drinks, hands one to BEN.
JACOB Here you is, my son. Here’s to us, to the t’ree of us. Down the hatch. (He drinks. BEN doesn’t.) This is some night, ain’t it? Just like old times. My only regret is poor Billy ain’t here. (slight pause) Why the long faces? Look at the two of you. What gives? (then) Mary? . . .
MARY You never let him finish, Jake. There’s more. I t’ink you ought to hear the rest of it.
JACOB The rest of what?
Doorbell rings, then pounding on the door.
What’s that? . . .
MARY Someone’s at the door.
BEN I’ll get it. (He exits.)
JACOB (to MARY) At this hour? (He crosses to the window, looks out.) Why, it’s Wiff . . .
MARY Wiff? What’s he want?
JACOB Now how should I know? (He crosses into the hall.)
MARY Don’t you dare give him anyt’ing to drink. We’ll never get rid of him.
WIFF rushes in, holding his heart. BEN follows. WIFF is dressed only in his suit. He is agitated, breathless, dishevelled, and shivering from the cold.
JACOB Wiff, my son, what’s wrong? What’s you doing out like that?
WIFF Let me catch my breath. I’m half froze . . .
JACOB Who’s after you, boy — the devil?
WIFF No, duckie, Dot. (He warms his hands on the radiator.)
JACOB (to MARY) What’d he say?
MARY (her eyes on WIFF) Dot . . .
JACOB Dot . . . ?
MARY Has you been drinking, Wiff?
WIFF No, bless your heart, I ain’t been drinking. Nor will I touch another drop as long as I lives, if I lives to be two hundred. Not after tonight . . . (He collapses on the chesterfield.)
MARY He must’ve been dreaming.
JACOB How could he? We just dropped him off. He hardly had time to take off his coat.
WIFF Close to t’ree t’ousand dollars, almost a year’s salary, I paid for her funeral. And she calls me heartless. (to BEN) Your Uncle Wiff’s heartless. (then grabbing BEN’s drink) Is you drinking that, duckie? I needs to calm my nerves, love.
MARY (to herself) The shortest two hundred years I ever seen.
WIFF What’s she want to come after me for, for crying out loud. We had plenty of good times in the past . . . One time I come home drunk from the Union meeting and she’d locked me out. So I sat down on the steps and took a spell. All of a sudden up went the window overhead and down came a pan of cold water. I jumped halfway out in the road, with the fright. Then she come downstairs and let me in, laughing to beat the band . . .
JACOB All right, boy. Tell us what happened.
WIFF . . . Well, when I got home, duckie, I hung up my overcoat, switched on the basement light and went down to the furnace. Damn t’ing’s been acting up, lately, clicking off when it shouldn’t . . . and there she was, Dot, standing in the shadows beside the washing machine, as real as you or me.
MARY Blessed God.
WIFF Walked right up to me, love, wearing that old raggedy dressing gown of hers.
JACOB Mother saw Father about the house, weeks after he died.
WIFF Oh, she laid right into me, Ben. The names she called your old Uncle Wiff. And I t’ought Dot never knowed a single one of them words, Jake. Said I ought to have tried to reach her when she was alive. Said I never cared enough. “Why’d you let it happen?” she said. “Why didn’t you reach out?” Said she’d follow me the rest of my days for what I done . . . Well, duckie, I got out of there some quick, let me tell you. And when I looked back, she was starting up the stairs after me, crying to beat hell . . . That’s when I took off out the door. I run all the way here.
JACOB Don’t you worry none, Wiff. We’ll put you up. Plenty of room here.
MARY Where will he sleep? Is you forgetting who’s home?
BEN I’ll sleep on the chesterfield. He can have the bedroom.
MARY Suit yourself. I’ll get the blankets. (She exits upstairs.)
WIFF I couldn’t go back there, Jake. I’d die of fright, if I was to wake up in the middle of the night with Dot leaning over me, as much as I adored her . . .
JACOB Say no more, Wiff. I understands. (to BEN) Bring in the bottle, will you, my son? (BEN exits into the kitchen.) What do you say to another drink, Wiff, old boy? Take the chill out of your bones.
WIFF No, bless your heart, I had one already tonight. One’s my limit, after this. (then) She always wanted a blue silk dress, and I was always too stingy. Oh, my son, I wish I had it all to do over . . .
BEN enters with the whiskey bottle and a glass for himself.
BEN Uncle Wiff?
WIFF Well, perhaps I’ll have a drop after all. A little one, my dear. (as BEN pours) Not too little . . .
MARY comes downstairs, carrying a pillow, sheets, and blankets.
MARY (as she deposits the bedclothes on the chesterfield) Before I forgets it, Wiff, what was that row about tonight down at Jerrett’s? Jacob’s too modest to tell.
JACOB Won’t sleep till you knows, will you, Mary? No mistake.
WIFF Oh, ’twas not’ing, Mary. Ike was boasting how they made him foreman.
JACOB Foreman! Don’t know his ass from a blueprint. He married the superintendent’s daughter. That’s how he got the job.
WIFF Jake took him down a peg or two, didn’t you, duckie? T’ought he’d come to his own funeral by mistake.
MARY Not carpenter foreman, Wiff?
WIFF Yes. T’inks he’s King Shit, now.
MARY On what job?
WIFF Ours, my dear.
JACOB What’ve I told you all these years, Ben? It’s who you knows, not what you knows.
MARY Oh, you fool! He’ll work you ragged, just to get back. You’ve done it this time, boy.
JACOB Go on with you. I’ll crown him with a two-by-four if he so much as looks at me sideways.
MARY Yes, you will so.
JACOB Oh, won’t I?
MARY No, and I’ll tell you exactly what you’ll do, knowing you. You’ll do whatever he tells you to do and do it twice as quick as you ought to and then ask for more. That’s what you’ll do. As if it wasn’t bad enough before! . . . (She sits on the chesterfield.)
WIFF Come to t’ink of it, Jake, Ike’s a mean bastard when he’s sore. He don’t forget an insult, that one. Watch out for him, boy. He might try to get back at you.
MARY How?
WIFF Oh, I’ve seen it before, Mary, more than once. A foreman’s got it in for you, he gives you the worst job there is.
MARY Which is?
WIFF Rigging beam bottoms and beam sides. You got to climb out along the steel with your toolbox.
BEN How high are they up?
WIFF Twenty floors.
JACOB For Christ’s sake, Wiff, what’s you trying to do — frighten her?
WIFF All right, my son, I won’t say another word. But if I was you . . .
JACOB Well, you ain’t me, and that’s that.
WIFF No, but if I was, I knows what I’d do, duckie. I’d tell him where to shove it or I’d quit first.
JACOB I won’t do no such t’ing. Do you t’ink I’d let that little bastard get the best of me? That’d be the day.
MARY (desperately) All right, but what does you want more? To get the better of Ike Squires or for Ben to stay home? You’d better make up your mind right now, Jake, ’cause you can’t have it both ways, not this time. Can he, Ben?
JACOB What’s you talking about? (to BEN) You’m staying home, ain’t you?
MARY Tell him, Ben. Go on.
JACOB You made a promise, now. Don’t go back on your word.
BEN Yeah, but you never let me finish, Dad. I wanted to stay home so you wouldn’t have to work. That’s what I was getting
at before. Even Uncle Wiff thinks it’s a good idea.
JACOB (to WIFF) Oh, he do, do he? What is this, Wiff — a goddamn conspiracy?
WIFF Now don’t take it the wrong way, my son, I wouldn’t go behind your back. You’ve been looking kind of pekid, lately, that’s all I meant.
MARY Yes. You’ve earned a good rest, Jake. Ben’s young and strong. Let him pitch in for a spell.
WIFF Jesus, if I had a son . . .
MARY Just till you gets a clean bill of health, Jake. Not a second longer.
WIFF For crying out loud, you’re too good a man to be taking orders from that arsehole.
BEN And what do you care what he thinks of you?
WIFF I’d give a week’s pay to watch King Shit crawling out on that cold steel with a heavy toolbox.
JACOB (chuckling) Did you see him tonight? Couldn’t move his ass quick enough, could he, Wiff? Lickety-split like a jackrabbit.
MARY Jake, please . . . Reconsider, won’t you? Do it for me, if not for yourself.
BEN I want to, Dad.
Pause.
JACOB Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mary, if it’s that important to you . . . (He crosses into the kitchen with his glass and gets the whiskey bottle.)
