The Old Neighborhood Read online

  BOBBY: Yeah …?

  JOEY: I picked it up. (Pause) They wanted me to take a crowbar to shove it aside, the car could pass. I didn’t know what they meant. Huh? I wasn’t showing off … you know I’m strong …

  BOBBY: … since grade school.

  JOEY: And Arthur says, “We got to move the tree …” I picked it up, I put it over there, I put it down, he’s standing there, a crowbar, all their mouths are hung open. (Pause) It was a big tree, too. That’s what I mean, Bobby, that’s where we should be, farming somewhere.… Building things, carrying things … this shit is dilute, this is schveck this shit, I swear to God, the doctors, teachers, everybody, in the law, the writers all the time geschraiying, all those assholes, how they’re lost … of course, they’re lost. They should be studying talmud … we should be able to come to them and to say, “What is the truth …?” And they should tell us. What the talmud says, what this one said, what Hillel said, and I, I should be working on a forge all day. They’d say, “There goes Reb Lewis, he’s the strongest man in Lodz.” I’d nod. “He once picked up an ox.” (Pause) Or some fucking thing. I don’t know if you can pick up an ox, Bob, but I tell you, I feel in my heart I was meant to work out in the winter all day. To be strong. Of course we’re schlepping all the time with heart attacks, with fat, look at this goddam food I sell … that stuff will kill you, it killed my dad … it’s good to harvest wheat, to forge, to toil; my father’s sitting on his ass for forty years driving through Idaho for Green and Green, what did he need for nourishment …? Nothin’. He should have been … the time should come we’re sixty we look back, our wives are there, our children, the community … and we are sitting there, we are something.… And we’ve been men. You know …?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: And we’ve lived. We’ve lived the life we were supposed to live. (Pause) Not this, Bobby. Not this … (Pause) I don’t know. I’m getting old. I look at the snow the only thing I long that I should be in Europe.

  BOBBY: I’m sure it was no picnic there.

  JOEY: In Europe?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: Ah, fuck, I don’t know, Bob … I don’t know …

  BOBBY: Joe, with the Nazis …?

  JOEY: Fuck the Nazis. Fuck the Nazis, Bob. I’m saying, give a guy a chance to stand up.… Give ’im something to stand for.

  BOBBY: That’s very pretty, and when they stick glass rods in your dick and break them off …

  JOEY: … that was the Japs …

  BOBBY: I’m saying, Joey, that’s romantic shit …

  JOEY: Is it …?

  BOBBY: Because, yes, because, yes. It is. And to a certain, yes, it is, and to a certain extent it’s, I’ll tell you what it’s, it’s profaning what they went through.

  JOEY: Oh. Is it …?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: And why …

  BOBBY: Because they went through it.

  JOEY: They did … what I’m saying, that I could have, too, that’s all I’m saying.

  BOBBY: You don’t know you could have …

  JOEY: Yes. That’s what I’m saying, Bob … I could …

  BOBBY: … to go through that shit in the Camps …?

  JOEY: Yes.

  BOBBY: No, Joe, no. You don’t know what you would have done.… (JOEY shrugs.) You don’t know what the fuck you would have done, what you would have felt. None of us know.

  JOEY: (Shrugs) If you say so, Bob.

  (Pause)

  JOEY: I’ll tell you where I would of loved it: in the shtetl. (Pause) I would of loved it there. You, too. You would of been Reb Gould. You would of told them what Rabbi Akiba said …

  BOBBY: You think they fooled around?

  JOEY: Who? In the shtetl?

  BOBBY: Yeah.

  JOEY: The guys in the shtetl?

  BOBBY: Yeah.

  JOEY: I think it was too small.

  BOBBY: But when they went to town …

  JOEY: When the guys went to town?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: With Polish whores …?

  BOBBY: Yeah …

  JOEY: I don’t know.

  BOBBY: You think you would have?

  JOEY: No. With who?

  BOBBY: Or some young Jewish thing …?

  JOEY: Inside the shtetl …?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: And, what, defile my home …?

  BOBBY: You think you would have.

  JOEY: You would be found out …

  BOBBY: I would?

  JOEY: Because you were a, yeah. Because you were a Jew. If you wanted to go out fuck around who’d have you? If you stayed home you would be found out. I think, (Pause) But on the other hand who’s to say what could go on. At night. In Europe. (Pause) That’s true, too … (Pause) Judy would be old … she would have some incurable disease … we would be married years. But I would not be old. I would be deep in grief, and deep in contemplation of my life. Some young, the daughter of one of my customers, the orphaned daughter … is this what you’re saying?

  BOBBY: Yes.

  JOEY: She comes to me, the whole town is silent with sympathy, “I baked this for you.” (Pause)

  BOBBY: Righty-o. (Pause)

  JOEY: Is this what you’re saying?

  BOBBY: That’s right. What did she bake?

  JOEY: What did she bake? What did she bake? What did she bake?

  BOBBY: (Pause) … yum.

  JOEY: (Pause) … carbohydrates …

  (Pause)

  JOEY: Yeah, many times I wished to go back, to the war, to when my folks came here … to Orchard Street … you know, to Maxwell Street … to pushcarts … to …

  BOBBY: We wouldn’t have liked it.

  JOEY: You think?

  BOBBY: No.

  JOEY: I don’t know …

  BOBBY: You know what I would, I’ll tell you what I would have loved, to go, in the twenties, to be in Hollywood …

  JOEY: Huh.

  BOBBY: Jesus, I know they had a good time there. Here you got, I mean, five smart Jew boys from Russia, this whole industry …

  JOEY: Who?

  BOBBY: Who. Mayer. Warners. Fox.

  JOEY: Fox? Fox is Jewish?

  BOBBY: Sure.

  JOEY: Fox is a Jewish name?

  BOBBY: Sure.

  JOEY: Who knew that?

  BOBBY: Everyone.

  JOEY: Huh. (Pause) I always saw their thing, it looked goyish to me.

  BOBBY: What thing?

  JOEY: Their castle, that thing on their movies …

  BOBBY: No.

  JOEY: I thought it was a goyish name.

  BOBBY: “Fox”?

  JOEY: Twentieth Century-Fox. (Pause) Century Fox. (Pause) Charlie Chaplin was Jewish.

  BOBBY: I know that, Joe.

  JOEY: Yeah? People fool you. Oh, you know, you know who else was Jewish? Mr. White …

  BOBBY: Mr. White …?

  JOEY: Mr. White. On Jeffrey. The shoe store …? Miller-White Shoes.

  BOBBY: … yeah …?

  JOEY: On Jeffrey …?

  BOBBY: He was Jewish?

  JOEY: Yeah.

  BOBBY: Huh.

  JOEY: My mom told me.

  BOBBY: He didn’t look Jewish.

  JOEY: That’s what I’m saying … (Pause)

  BOBBY: He was a nice guy.

  JOEY: Yes. He was.

  BOBBY: I remember him. They always gave you what, a lollipop something when you came out.

  JOEY: Why do you think kids hate trying on shoes?

  BOBBY: I don’t know. (Pause) You know, actually I don’t like trying them on either.

  JOEY: You don’t?

  BOBBY: No. (Pause)

  JOEY: I don’t think that I do either. (Pause) Jimmy does.

  BOBBY: He does?

  JOEY: Yeah. (Pause) So I was reminiscing with my mom …

  BOBBY: … yeah …

  JOEY: You know, about the shoe store, huh? ’Cause I took Jimmy in to get his shoes, I’m talking about when we stopped on Pratt, I say,
“The old shoestore the goyish guy, Miller’s partner.” So she goes “Jerry White …” He was the shamus, Temple Zion thirty years.

  BOBBY: Huh.

  JOEY: Huh …?

  BOBBY: How about that.

  JOEY: That’s what I said.

  BOBBY: How about that. (Pause) He still alive?

  JOEY: No. He died.

  BOBBY: He died, huh?

  JOEY: Yes. He did. (Pause)

  BOBBY: The store still there?

  JOEY: Oh, Bobby, it’s all gone. It’s all gone there. You knew that …

  (Pause)

  JOEY: Life is too short.

  BOBBY: Life is very short.

  JOEY: It’s very short. We’re sitting on the stoop, we’re old … (Pause) We’re married … we have kids … (Pause)

  BOBBY: How’s Judy?

  JOEY: (Pause) I pray, you know, I pray every night, I pray that I can get through life without murdering anybody.

  BOBBY: Who would you murder?

  JOEY: I’m saying I’m uncontrollable.

  BOBBY: Hey, hey, you’re human …

  JOEY: … and I got married wrong. (Pause) Well … there, (Pause) there you are.

  BOBBY: You didn’t get married wrong, Joe.

  JOEY: Yes, I did. You don’t know. I want to tell you something, Bob, she’s a wonderful woman, but there’s such a thing as lust. I don’t know if it’s lust. Yes. Yes, it is. I, I, I say this is a feeling … I, I’m not alone. (Pause) Then I walk out the door …

  BOBBY: We all feel like that sometimes …

  JOEY: You don’t know what I’m going to say, I walk out of the door I say, “If I never saw them again, it would be fine …”

  BOBBY: We all feel like that sometimes …

  JOEY: No, no. Listen to me. There are times, a feeling I think gets so overpowering it becomes a fact, and you don’t even know you did it. Sometimes I think, “Well if they were killed … if they died …” and sometimes I think I’ll do it myself.

  BOBBY: It’s just a feeling, Joe.

  JOEY: I pray you’ll never know it. Sometimes it goes farther. I have killed them, and I take the plane, I don’t call anyone, because now I don’t care; and fly to Canada and rent a car and go into the forest and begin to walk … I know I have to die … so I walk … and I’m going north. I feel so free. I can’t tell you, Bobby … I have a pistol, I can end it any time. I feel so free … If I could feel like that in my life … I swear there are people who can live like that. I know there are. Who exist. Holy men. Visionaries, scholars, I know they exist.… I know they’re cloistered.… I know that it’s real. But I can’t get it up. I’m going to die like this. A shmuck. (Pause) All of the stuff I’d like to do. I’ll never do it. (Pause) What do you make of that? (Long pause)

  BOBBY: You really have a gun?

  JOEY: What gun?

  BOBBY: You said you have a pistol …

  JOEY: I said that I have a pistol …?

  BOBBY: You said you were going north …

  JOEY: In my dream. In my dream … in my fantasy … you know …

  BOBBY: Oh. (Pause)

  JOEY: In my imaginings.

  BOBBY: Oh. (Pause)

  JOEY: I actually have a pistol. In my store.

  BOBBY: You do?

  JOEY: Behind the counter.

  BOBBY: Mmm.

  JOEY: For burglars. You worried I would shoot myself?

  BOBBY: You said you would.

  JOEY: I actually might. I think that sometimes. (Pause) Don’t you? (Pause) Bobby …?

  BOBBY: (Pause) Sometimes. (Pause)

  JOEY: I knew you did. (Pause) I wouldn’t take the pistol from the store, though. And I’ll tell you why, because I think that just its presence, that you know it’s there discourages them. (Pause) Let them go rob someplace else. Everything, everything, everything … it’s … I’ll tell you: It’s a mystery … (Pause) Everything is a mystery, Bob … everything. (Pause) I don’t know how things work. I can hang up a coat hook, people that I know can fix a stove. (Pause) Anyone can change a tire—although Lucille bought a new Pontiac, she went to change the tire, the jack wouldn’t fit it.

  BOBBY: Maybe she wasn’t putting it in right.

  JOEY: She said that she was. I think they gave her the wrong size, they custom things today and you can’t change a fucking tire with the wrong size jack. People could die of something like that. Because everything is so far from us today. And we have no connection.

  BOBBY: There are people who have a connection.

  JOEY: Who? Who are they?… and there are lives, Bobby, where people never have a thought. Where all day it is like they aren’t there. Where they are a dream of their environment. Where their lives are a joy. Where questions are answered with ritual. Where life is short. We read them in the books.

  BOBBY: … what books …?

  JOEY: I don’t know what books … that’s what I’m saying … but there are things … there are things … there … there are ways to get there that exist. They … (Pause) In rituals, I’m saying that you didn’t make up, but existed … they would cause you pain.

  BOBBY: Who would?

  JOEY: … they’d take you in a hut. You’d come out, you would be a man. (Pause) And, by God, that is what you would be. (Pause)

  BOBBY: (Pause) I think I invent ceremonies, but I never keep them up. I know I should, I say if I forget this now, I’ll never keep it up, but I don’t.

  JOEY: What? Like what?

  BOBBY: Like anything.

  JOEY: Like what?

  BOBBY: Like prayer.

  JOEY: You don’t keep up prayer?

  BOBBY: No.

  JOEY: What? Did you used to pray?

  BOBBY: I’ve prayed. (Pause)

  JOEY: Judy and I joined a synagogue.

  BOBBY: You did?

  JOEY: Yeah.

  BOBBY: Which one?

  JOEY: It’s new.

  BOBBY: Up by you?

  JOEY: Yeah. (Pause)

  BOBBY: What do you do, you go there …

  JOEY: … we just joined …

  BOBBY: You did.

  JOEY: Yeah. (Pause)

  BOBBY: Hey, you know?

  JOEY: Yeah, I know.

  BOBBY: What?

  JOEY: I know.

  BOBBY: (Sigh) Joey … Joey … Joey.

  JOEY: Bushes are steel.

  BOBBY: Bushes are steel. What else in the world would they be?

  JOEY: That’s right.

  BOBBY: And what’s the second manhole?

  JOEY: It’s a ground rule double.

  BOBBY: Take your base. (Pause) D’you ever think that we would live to be this old?

  JOEY: No. (Pause) I never thought about it. (Pause)

  BOBBY: You think we’re getting old?

  JOEY: Yeah. (Pause) I suppose we are. (Pause) Isn’t everybody?

  (Pause)

  BOBBY: You remember the Sleepy Time Motel?

  JOEY: Yes.

  BOBBY: Is it still there?

  JOEY: Yes, it is.

  BOBBY: You remember when Joan Carpenter threw up?

  JOEY: Yes.

  BOBBY: Those girls. (Pause)

  JOEY: Yeah, I remember …

  BOBBY: (Pause) Joan … Deeny.

  JOEY: Deeny. I see her now and then. She works at Fields.

  BOBBY: She does?

  JOEY: She got divorced.

  BOBBY: I didn’t even know that she was married.

  JOEY: She got married million years ago.

  BOBBY: When did she get divorced?

  JOEY: Not too long, maybe a year ago. Two years.

  BOBBY: And how is she?

  JOEY: Yeah. She’s fine.

  BOBBY: Did she get fat?

  JOEY: No. (Pause) She’s selling cosmetics on the first floor.

  BOBBY: She is?

  JOEY: Yeah.

  BOBBY: She ever ask about me?

  JOEY: Yeah.

  BOBBY: What does she say?

  JOEY: How were you.

  BOBBY
: What did you tell her?

  JOEY: That you’re fine. (Pause)

  BOBBY: She works at the place downtown or on Michigan?

  JOEY: Michigan.

  BOBBY: Cosmetics.

  JOEY: Yeah.

  BOBBY: What does she look like?

  JOEY: She looks the same.

  BOBBY: She does?

  JOEY: Yeah. I’m struck by that sometimes. I mean you look the same to me.

  BOBBY: Isn’t that funny, ’cause you look the same to me.

  JOEY: You think that’s funny?

  BOBBY: Yeah.

  JOEY: I think it’s funny, too. I wish I had a cigarette.

  BOBBY: Yes. I do, too. (Beat)

  JOEY: You wanna go get some?

  BOBBY: I almost do, but I shouldn’t.

  JOEY: No, I shouldn’t either. (Pause) Isn’t that something?

  BOBBY: Yes. It is, Joe.

  JOEY: Isn’t that something?

  BOBBY: It’s one for the books.

  END

  JOLLY

  CHARACTERS

  JOLLY a woman in her thirties or forties

  BOB her brother

  CARL her husband

  SCENE

  Jolly’s home

  Evening, JOLLY, BOB, and CARL.

  JOLLY: … and he said, “I disapprove of you.” “Of what?” I said. “Of, well, I don’t know if I want to go into it …” “Of something I’ve done …?” I said, “Yes.” “To you?” “No.” “To whom?” I said. He said he would much rather not take it up. “Well, I wish you would take it up,” I said, “because it’s important to me.” “It’s the way,” he said. “It’s the way that you are with your children.”

  BOB: (Pause) What? (Pause)

  JOLLY: “It’s the way that you are with your children.”

  BOB: Oh, Lord …

  JOLLY: I …

  BOB: … how long can this go …

  JOLLY: I …

  BOB: … how long can this go on?

  JOLLY: I wanted to, you know, I stayed on the pho—

  BOB: How long can this go on? Wait a minute. Wait a minute: You should call all …

  JOLLY: … I know …

  BOB: … you should cease …

  JOLLY: … I know.

  BOB: … all meetings, dialogue …

  JOLLY: … but the children …

  BOB: You should never … listen to me, Jolly:

  JOLLY: I’m …