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HOUSES OF THE HEART
A play in four scenes that begins on an outdoor patio. Stage left is a redwood picnic table with a lighted citronella candle on it and the remains of a family meal. To the side of it is a wagon and overturned tricycle. Other toys are scattered about. On a clothesline are draped wet children’s clothes and pinned on one end are several diapers. On the other side of the stage is an aluminum lawn lounge where HE, a young man in shorts and tank top lies sprawled as if in complete exhaustion. A mason jar of ice cubes sits on the floor near his hand. There are sounds of crickets chirruping between the roar of passing cars. As the play begins a young woman in a crumpled sundress comes through a door from the back of the stage. SHE ducks under the clothes and heads for the picnic table.
Scene I
SHE:
(eagerly and optimistically) I have it all figured out. With just a few trims to our budget we could afford the house.
HE:
(without moving) Never.
SHE:
(sitting down and going over the figures written on a school tablet) Yes. With your raise you expect and if you would put off buying that plane. . .
HE:
(raring up in outrage) Never!
SHE:
(putting down her pencil and staring off dreamily into space) That is just the house I should be living in. It is the dream house I never dared to dream – one built over a river.
(Opening her eyes wide) Imagine! Instead of rugs in the living room, you look though glass right down into the river! Wow. That is what rugs should be – constantly evolving areas of color and light.
HE:
(again slumped in his lounge replies in a bored voice) Never.
SHE:
(brightening) Maybe I could borrow the money from my folks and buy it myself.
HE:
(with a less bored voice) The house was damaged from the winter floods. The next time the river floods it will wash the whole thing away. Your dad would never invest in a disaster waiting to happen.
SHE: If I got a job and made payments. . .
HE: If a kid fell off that porch it would land in the river. . .
SHE:
(sitting up straight and defensive) I have kept them off the street so no cars have run over them, I can surely train them to respect the river.
(returning to her dream state) Can you imagine all night hearing the sounds of the river washing over those huge old stones?
(BACKSTAGE)
STAGE HAND MCALEX: “The chips we arranged on the table tasted old, the dips sour.”
STAGE HAND BIAS: “I emptied half of the coke they put in the beer bottles. Look at TV News: near god near petroleum BBC 912.”
MCALEX: “laundry day, you know, it’s raining, so my daughter Jackie hung up the diapers here on stage.”
We interrupt this program with a public service announcement. This is an amber alert. Be on the look out for the poem thief. This woman, who was formerly on the west coast but has duped her latest victim who lives in New York. This undisciplined woman disguises herself as a poet. She then lures real poets and writers into doing a collaborative poem which she sometimes refers to as “renga” or even “renku.” Afterwards this woman cold-heartedly then submits and lets be published the completed poem as her own. Once she was apprehended and given a warning but she has now struck again. All writers, poets and wordsmiths, be on the lookout for this woman and do not fall for her wily schemes.
BIAS: “Listen to her, The “She” acts emotional like my third wife finding a chocolate bar, Camille, remember her? Right, the one in Zen thinking. Watch out, more red lights, still more. Whenever I wanted to save some bucks she spends it for marijuana seeds. Know what? Red lights down, more. You know, last week our neighbor’s canary died, the guy brings it over, “fertilizer for the little plants,” he says - god knows, he must have watched us at the balcony – watering.”
MCALEX: “Gee, last Sunday – turn the river sound up, no not that much flooding – when refilling aunt Maya’s pill-organizer, I accidentally muddled up her antidepressants with some of my ecstasy pills – wow, how that updated her. Now dim all lights, He and She are going to leave for a shower.”
Final Scene
Lights gently go up on another porch. This one has a redwood rocking chair on one side and a matching wooden lounge on beside it. Very luxuriant ivy vines spill over the banisters and the lattice roof is hung with grape vines. Reflected in the windows is a view of the sea. Occasionally the rolling of a wave can be heard in the otherwise stillness. SHE, a gray-haired woman sits on the lounge reading a magazine. As HE, a different older man enters from a French door in the back, SHE turns to him.
SHE:
(holding out the magazine) Look! here is an article about that house I once wanted to buy that was built over a river. It has been saved and renovated by two guys. See here is a photo of the glass panels in the floor where you can look down into the river. Forty years ago I wanted that very house so much. I thought I would never become myself if I did not get that house.
HE:
(stiffly straightening up) And now?
SHE:
(smiling with satisfaction) Instead of a river, I have an ocean at my doorstep.
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