FAYE: Yes.
JEFF: Before there was, it seemed, some leeway, some sympathy and even humanity, but the new owners are not inclined that way
FAYE: Why would they / be?
JEFF: There’s been an exorbitant offer on the apartment downstairs but it’s contingent on their being able to buy this place, too—apparently fourteen rooms is not enough for three people, they’re looking to form, I don’t know, the nucleus of a kingdom or something. And there’s only so much negotiating and stalling to counter the horrid tricks buildings play to rid themselves of undesired tenants
FAYE: Sure
JEFF: And the thought that that would be . . . her . . .
FAYE: Ending
JEFF: . . . is, I think, unbearable.
FAYE: Yes
JEFF: . . . None of this is new to you.
FAYE: Who do you think was you during the last hospitalization?
(Jeff looks at her.)
I’m the remnant, kiddo.
JEFF: It’s an impossible situation.
FAYE: Is it?
JEFF: I’d pay for it myself, except she’d never accept charity.
I’ve thought of funneling the money into her account without telling her.
But . . . somehow . . . that’s disrespectful.
FAYE: Ah.
(Julie enters with a tray of mugs. She is wearing a gorgeous vintage gown from the forties.)
JULIE: I’ve brought consommé!
FAYE: Julie!
JEFF: Look at you!
JULIE: I’ve brought it in mugs so it’s not an actual course—this way we’re not actually starting—we’re just having a little liquid nibble before our company’s assembled.
(They take mugs. She has brought four. She looks up:)
Is that—?
Oh.
I thought I heard . . .
Well, I didn’t so I didn’t!
Have you tried the soup?
Isn’t it good?
JEFF: De / licious.
FAYE: Lovely.
JULIE: It’s my mother’s recipe.
Everything is in it.
You start by roasting bones.
There was a moment—looking at the bones laid out on the tray—but then
I just got over it!
JEFF (To brighten): She cooked, too, your mother?
JULIE: Oh yes. Yes!
She was obsessed with food. She wrote about food and read about food and cooked food and dreamed food. She did everything you could do with food short of eating it, which she didn’t do once in the thirty-seven years I knew her.
FAYE: And that’s her dress you’re wearing, of course.
JULIE: Yes. Do you like it?
FAYE: Very beautiful.
JEFF: Incredible, really.
FAYE: But I love all her dresses.
JULIE: I have a trunkful of them. I’m going to wear every one once before I . . . Oh yes, she had an exquisite sense of line and volume and drape.
And you take the dresses apart and see the bones and she was—Palladio!
She was Christopher Wren. Genius.
She made scrawny women look voluptuous and fat women look voluptuous.
Sex was her métier. Professionally. Privately . . . less so. (She laughs)
How do I look? Dare I ask?
JEFF: Voluptuous.
JULIE: I’m going to be Irish now and say: Lord love you for a liar.
JEFF: Only I’m not lying.
You look incredibly beautiful.
(Julie is halted by this. They smile at each other.)
JULIE (Almost inaudible): Thank you
. . .
Jenny’s dresses, they do that for a girl!
FAYE: It isn’t / the dress
JEFF: Was she a good mother?
FAYE: Bite your tongue!
That’s no kind of question.
JULIE: No, it’s all right.
She wasn’t like Rivka, she wasn’t an enemy.
She was . . . neither this nor that! She had so much to cope with, my father walking out on us so suddenly and so early.
She was certainly not the sort who cripples you
and haunts you and whom you blame even when
you’re old and wizened . . . or as wizened as you get to get.
On the other hand, when she died . . . it wasn’t as though the gap . . . could
never be filled. (She becomes thoughtful now, goes away, abruptly brings herself back)
She was as good to me as she could afford to be and that’s all you can ask.
FAYE: Amen to that.
JULIE: This was my favorite of her dresses because I watched her make it.
FAYE: Did you?
JULIE: Yes!
She had a sewing machine in the apartment.
In a closet of a room off the kitchen, I think it had started out as a spare pantry.
But she’d installed this fearsome old Singer from the Year One, you know the kind?
With the angry bobbin and the rusty treadle, black and glowering.
It was—I think—the one her father had bought her when she was sixteen and he’d figured out who she was and managed to scrape together the pennies for it and presented it to her with . . . such pride!
Though it was hideously ugly in the apartment.
And—my God!—why a sewing machine anyway? When there were factories here and abroad executing in intricate detail her every notion . . .
But some nights, she would sneak down to this tiny room and . . . work the machine.
And this one time—just once because I wouldn’t risk it—I sneaked down after her. And I hid myself and watched . . .
I barely recognized her. She wasn’t . . . fretful. The way she was with me. She wasn’t inadequate.
That was gone.
She was gone.
She had become . . . allegorical:
Woman at the Loom.
Such gorgeous nimble obliviousness.
I was silenter than silent.
I didn’t want anything, least of all me, to interfere with the . . .
loving-kindness of her attention.
Oh I loved her. That woman. Who had been my mother.
. . .
I think
somehow
that’s what she deeded to me.
Not the genius, of course,
or the concentration,
but,
oh what am I saying?
. . .
I look around me, I know it’s dilapidation
but I love it:
It’s the memories that erode the things, after all,
and the things . . . in themselves—
I’m saying this badly
. . .
This dress: it’s the record of an intention
and—the joy of that!—
And each tiny dwindling object in the room—is historical!
And the decay only means it’s still alive.
And even after . . . the cruelest losses, savage, unsurvivable losses, there came a day when
something as trite as
the first breeze of spring or ramps or garlic scapes or the memory of the ruby necklace
was such cause for
jubilation
and there was so, so much of it
everywhere
vast
and minute
and without end.
And it’s unbelievable to me.
Unbelievable.
(Looks about her, sees it all receding. Almost a whisper:)
Unbelievable.
(She is staring out, solitary. A suspended moment.
A door slams. Something heavy drops. Tim enters, carrying a plastic grocery bag.)
TIM: Hey.
JULIE: Be still my heart, it’s the Second Coming!
TIM: Mom, you know, that kind of remark really sets a very difficult standard for me.
JULIE: Sweetie, no—yes—no but you’re here!
FAYE: That was a very noisy entran
ce, Timmy.
TIM: Oh! I dropped my bag on the chair but the chair was / gone
FAYE: That’s what’s missing: those Queen Anne chairs!
TIM: They’re not Queen / Anne, actually
JULIE: Yes, I’m having them / reupholstered
TIM: You can tell by the / legs
JEFF (Alarmed): Reupholstered; why?
JULIE: That’s what we do.
Remember, Faye, Rivka? In Forest Hills? She could barely breathe anymore but there were paint samples hanging / from the kitchen cabinets
FAYE: Yes! A million different whites. You would have needed an Inuit to choose among them
JEFF: How much does it cost to reupholster two chairs, just as a point of / interest
JULIE: I don’t know for certain. Two or three thousand / but it’s worth it, he does exquisite work
JEFF: Jesus
JULIE (Enough of this, aglow with the wonder of Tim’s presence): You’re back.
You’ve come back.
TIM (Brushes it off): Uh yeah. (Thrusts out a bunch of frowsy deli carnations) I got you these, Aunt Faye.
FAYE: Darling boy, thank you.
TIM (Hands Jeff a brick of cheese): And this is for you. I hope you like it.
JEFF: It’s . . . cheddar.
TIM: I thought for a second Monterey Jack but then you seemed, I don’t know, cheddar. Merry um Christmas, fellow Jews.
JEFF: Thank you, Tim.
TIM: Oh.
JULIE: Do you see? He was just out buying presents. How lovely. You’re lovely.
TIM (Shies away from that): . . . Oh . . . No.
JULIE: But you are.
TIM (Now ashamed): . . . No.
JULIE: Come here.
TIM: Why?
JULIE: Come.
(Reluctantly, he comes. He hasn’t yet looked directly at her.)
Look at me.
(He looks vaguely toward her.)
Look at me.
(He looks more nearly at her. She adjusts his head so it’s pointed directly at her face. His eyes are subtly downcast. She adjusts his head again so that he must look at her. He looks at her. He very slightly trembles. Controls it. He doesn’t cry. Beat. He doesn’t cry for a second time.)
TIM (Constricted): Can—?
Can I—?
JULIE: Darling!
TIM: What?
JULIE: I’m going to teach you to cook now.
TIM: But—
JULIE: You’re going to finish the dinner with me—we haven’t eaten yet! My, how hungry we must be!— You’re going to finish it with me and write down everything you learn. The skills you’ll have before this evening is out!
TIM: But
JULIE: We’ll start with the salad—you’ll be garde-manger—
Oh what fun—what fun this all is!
(And she gets him to go with her. A moment.)
FAYE: “The memory of the ruby necklace.”
She still thinks of it.
I had no idea it mattered to her.
JEFF: Three thousand dollars on chairs that nobody sits in. It’s hopeless. There’s no way to fix it.
FAYE: Stop being a lawyer.
JEFF: I’m not a—
oh I am.
I am a lawyer. (He stares into his empty glass)
And as a lawyer, I say it’s hopeless.
FAYE: Maybe not.
JEFF: Do you have some sort of secret information?
FAYE: Maybe I do.
JEFF (Mutters, really to himself): Yeah, well maybe I do, too.
FAYE: Do you know the story of the ruby necklace?
JEFF: I do not.
Does it apply to the present situation? Or at the very least will it kill time until we’re fed?
FAYE: I’ll tell you and you decide.
It’s a good story for Christmas, it has red in it.
And a miracle.
By the time I finish, I expect there’ll be snow.
JEFF: Go on
FAYE: My mother had a ruby necklace—ask me how.
JEFF: How?
FAYE: I have no idea.
Was she a sultan’s mistress there in the Old Country?
JEFF: Was she?
FAYE: I have no idea.
Did she steal it?
Was the family wealthy once?
JEFF: Did she? Were they?
FAYE: I have no idea.
Or . . . just possibly . . . was this necklace . . . a piece of crap?
JEFF: Was it?
FAYE: Of course it was.
What would this little shtetl maiden be doing with actual rubies? It was junk.
Except in her mind where it was . . .
JEFF: Rubies?
FAYE: Indeed.
And so it became the family treasure.
And it was coming to me.
The only living girl.
As my dowry?
Some other time?
“When, Rivka, when do I get the ruby necklace?”
“It’ll come to you when it comes, my girl.”
Okay.
My wedding, bupkis.
My daughter’s birth—nothing.
“Am I waiting for you to die, Mameleh?”
So I bide.
JEFF: And when did you finally
FAYE: Wait!
There’s a twist.
So.
Benny finds Julie.
This beautiful girl.
From the movies yet.
A German Jew.
Which to my Galician mother is just a shiksa with a problem.
Mama’s going to the wedding, she’s not going to the wedding; she approves, she reserves the right to create mischief.
It’s a headache of a situation because truth to tell by the time this wedding was happening, her opinion was of no concern to anyone.
Still, it would have been nice if she came to the party not wearing black crepe.
So.
Finally she’s subdued into a single attitude:
chronic weary acceptance.
“I accept your girl, Benny.
I accept this union.
I accept whatever fruit may come from
your loins.”
And a party is held to celebrate all this lovely clenched tolerance.
Glasses clink.
Mama welcomes the bride with a toast. And a present:
Here, darling girl, is a token of our embrace
. . . What?
JEFF: The crappy rubies.
FAYE: Excellent: You’re a listener.
The crappy rubies.
And as she hangs the crappy rubies on the swansdown neck, she stares at me with a smile like a jack-o’-lantern
So that I know that a barely acceptable stranger trumps me in her esteem.
That when I threw in my lot with the hoi polloi who knocked me up, I threw her away, too.
JEFF: . . . That’s . . . awful.
FAYE: Wait there’s a sequel!
Quarter-century later—Mama’s dying in Mount Sinai.
By now her venom is diluted by dementia.
Flashes of clarity, the odd sentence time traveling from an intact brain.
Christmas—
Christmas mind you—
Benny goes to see her.
At my behest.
Because Benny and hospitals Benny and impairment Benny and any human material in sub-Nietzschean condition are not compatible.
But he goes.
The two of them alone.
And there’s a flare of brain function:
What is it?
It’s Mameleh saying:
“Benny, give Faye the necklace.”
And right then—
I swear to you I would not invent cornball crap like this—
she perishes
. . .
Making it up to me is her last unfinished business
. . .
I was
in those days
a little nutsy myself, the theory was menopause, I say Soul
-Rot.
And I have proof.
Because Benny came home and told the story.
And Julie stood next to him.
And she handed me the necklace.
She was grinning from ear-to-ear—no one had ever been so happy for me.
And there was this lifting.
I got lighter and lighter and . . . and lighter . . .
JEFF: Something about this sounds familiar.
FAYE: Have I told you this before?
Old people boil down to a handful of fables.
JEFF: I know you haven’t.
FAYE: Anyway
(and this is where it starts to apply:)
One day
a few years ago
my widow’s portion having dwindled
(because Mort was less interested than he should have been in policies and other legalities, I was fine but not extravagantly fine),
on a whim, I take the ruby necklace to be appraised.
Expecting it will lead to a bidding war between Woolworth’s and Kresge’s
and what do you think?
JEFF: Not so crappy?
FAYE: You don’t know the half of it.
Which circles back to my earlier question:
How did Rivka, Sweetheart of the Pale of Settlement, get her hands on this . . .
rutilated . . . asterized treasure?
And was this the source of discord between her and bitter sister Ruchel?
JEFF: And . . .
FAYE: I have no idea.
(Beat. A memory.)
JEFF: “A fucking string of phony rubies”?
FAYE: What?
JEFF: I don’t know what that is.
No.
Must be from a movie.
Where is it now?
FAYE: I sold it.
JEFF: Oh!
FAYE: It had done its job as a symbol: It was time it became cash.
JEFF: How much did you
FAYE: Ho-ho!
JEFF: Which you invested.
FAYE: Brilliantly.
And reinvested even more brilliantly
JEFF: Good for you.
FAYE: I have gifts. And this is how I happen to know that people do secretly funnel money into other people’s accounts.
JEFF: Have you been paying the rent here?
FAYE: You may join me if you’d like.
It’s a form of disrespect I think you’d enjoy.
(Jeff nods.)
JEFF: Thank you.
FAYE: She’s lived her life in a ridiculous fashion.
But I’d like to see it follow through that way.
(Julie and Tim reenter with plates.)
JULIE: Tim has made his first vinaigrette.
FAYE: Wonderful!
JEFF (Simultaneous with above): Congratulations.
The Assembled Parties Page 8
