Boston Marriage Read online

  CLAIRE: You flatter me.

  ANNA: Plead with the cook to stay.

  (MAID exits.)

  ANNA: But perhaps it is not love.

  CLAIRE: It is love.

  ANNA: But perhaps it is not.

  CLAIRE: Then what would it be?

  ANNA: You know, so many of our ills proceed from a corporeal imbalance.

  CLAIRE: Do they?

  ANNA: I tell you that they do.

  CLAIRE: How lovely for them. To have, as it were, a provenance. In this gale of uncertainty.

  ANNA: Mmm.

  CLAIRE: To say, "I was engendered," for example, "by an excess of protein."

  ANNA: ‘S were we all, s’far as that goes…

  CLAIRE: Ah, yes, your newfound expertise.

  MAID: (Reentering) Cook’s gone.

  ANNA: Did you not plead with her?

  MAID: Yes, miss.

  ANNA: What did she say?

  MAID: She said as how you could kiss her arse. Till…

  ANNA: Yes.

  MAID: She said some holiday, but I’ve forgot it.

  CLAIRE: Mayhap it will come to you.

  MAID: God willing. You know, me Auld Gran used to say …

  ANNA: (To the MAID) Oh, go away. (MAID exits.) And now we shall have no party; but of course now we have no cause.

  CLAIRE: Oh, my dear.

  ANNA: Escoffier had it as the last of the pleasures. Which will persist when all the rest have gone.

  CLAIRE: When all the rest have gone.

  ANNA: Yes.

  CLAIRE: Escoffier did.

  ANNA: Yes. (Pause)

  CLAIRE: Is it a word one may say in a drawing room?

  ANNA: It is Food.

  CLAIRE: (Pause) Food.

  ANNA: Yes.

  CLAIRE: Food is the pleasure which persists. When all the rest have gone.

  ANNA: According to Escoffier.

  CLAIRE: (Pause) And who was he?

  ANNA: A cook.

  CLAIRE: Well, it would be striking, then, had he said otherwise.

  ANNA: Mmm. (Pause) What didja think he meant?

  CLAIRE: Oh, you know …

  ANNA: Can you not conceive of a World Above your Waist ?

  CLAIRE: And you:

  ANNA: Speak:

  CLAIRE: I come, do you see, I come to you, with my report …

  ANNA: …yes…

  CLAIRE: Of that which I could neither control…

  ANNA: … I take it you are speaking of your loins …

  CLAIRE: Nor …ain’t you an evil old bitch.

  ANNA: I am not old.

  CLAIRE: Older than I …

  ANNA: Hardly true.

  CLAIRE: What? Have they repealed the Calendar…

  ANNA: If it were true, it would be cruel to suggest it. You are cruel.

  CLAIRE: Am I indeed.

  ANNA: Yes. You are.

  CLAIRE: I have a boon to beg.

  ANNA: Oh what a shithole is the world, and how the friends of youth turn, until time, in its glass, seems to denounce one, and for what enormity? For primogeniture. Oh Lord, who seeest all, I need a cup of tea. (Pause) Mary. Mary!

  CLAIRE: I’ll tell you what you require. An electric bell.

  ANNA: No. I think I would rather be tied to a cannon. I wish that I were dead. (Pause) Why don’t you leave? Your errand done, pray take your congé—you have broke my heart.

  CLAIRE: I have to ask a favor.

  ANNA: Well, there is a time for everything. (Pause) Except, of course, those things one has not time for. And what is there to be done about that? (Pause)

  CLAIRE: Can I not induce you to share my …

  ANNA: …no.

  CLAIRE: Or, fine, then, to endorse …

  ANNA: I don’t think so.

  CLAIRE: My happiness.

  ANNA: No. I don’t see it happening.

  CLAIRE: I cannot…?

  ANNA: No. It’s just not being done.

  CLAIRE: Aha.

  ANNA: And why should you require my endorsement? Why, for all that, would you, in the state of, this supposed state of, what?

  CLAIRE: Bliss.

  ANNA: Require of me anything at all? Would not a traditional understanding of the term "Bliss" render its meaning "requiring nothing further of the world"?

  CLAIRE: Do you know why I particularly hate it when my teeth begin to chatter?

  ANNA: Why is that?

  CLAIRE: Because they so seldom have anything to say.

  ANNA: Aha. How bold it is. How courageous. Rich in that newfound courage. In the light of the New Thing. (Pause) Love? Which, which like religion, and the Sea, which, like expensive jewelry, conquers all. (Pause) Zat the thing?

  CLAIRE: Yes.

  ANNA: God forgive you.

  CLAIRE: What am I to do?

  ANNA: …what is the problem? You told me, but I forgot.

  CLAIRE: I am in Love.

  ANNA: "Love."

  CLAIRE: It is a state sung by the poets.

  ANNA: So is death. But I don’t see you floating in here and proclaiming, "I’m dead!"

  CLAIRE: …aha.

  ANNA: "I’m dead! I have died! Embrace me!" How wonderful for you. Many fine people are dead.

  CLAIRE: How ill your disordered state becomes you.

  ANNA: Tell it to the Marines.

  CLAIRE: How I preferred my Friend of Old.

  ANNA: Izzat so.

  CLAIRE: Yes. Full of self-respect, inspiring …

  ANNA: And who is the favored one?

  CLAIRE: …awe. Yes, awe, and, more to the point, emulation. In all who beheld her. Her calm, her …

  ANNA: And what am I to do for a friend?

  CLAIRE: No, I will always be your friend.

  ANNA: Oh, faugh, you’ll…

  CLAIRE: I’ll always…

  ANNA: …until the virus relents, you will be but the most abject boor, fit only to attempt to give or receive sensual satisfaction.

  CLAIRE: I warrant you that I will always put my my affection for you …

  ANNA: …there was a time you would have said "love" …

  CLAIRE: and my regard for your interests, and your peace of mind …

  ANNA: …you’ve ruined my life.

  CLAIRE: Before everything.

  ANNA: Liar, liar, liar.

  CLAIRE: Saving, of course,

  ANNA: Say "equal with."

  CLAIRE: … I cannot.

  ANNA: Say equal with,

  CLAIRE: I

  ANNA: …those of my beloved.

  CLAIRE: I

  ANNA: Say it, goddamit to hell.

  CLAIRE: I cannot.

  ANNA: Say

  CLAIRE: It is impossible.

  ANNA: Did I say "mean it"? Did I say "abjure hypocrisy"? You tell me you have some residual regard for me. I say that being so, lie. You reply that you cannot. Burn in the vile circle of hell reserved for the virtuous and weak.

  CLAIRE: I

  ANNA: And be damned. Go, and indulge yourself. With the object of your "love."

  CLAIRE: You don’t mean it?

  ANNA: Sate yourself, till you are sick of love, then sate yourself with apples, then return to me bloated with roughage, distended …

  CLAIRE: I …

  ANNA: Go to your, your …

  CLAIRE: … I have asked her to come here. (Pause)

  ANNA: You’ve asked her to come here. Your friend.

  CLAIRE: Yes.

  ANNA: For, for a vile "assignation."

  CLAIRE: (Pause) Yes.

  ANNA: And what is your "boon"? My permission?

  CLAIRE: I …

  ANNA: Have you taken a vow of arrogance?

  CLAIRE: … I am in love, I …

  ANNA: Yes, so I understood you to have said. It is "love," you said that it was "love," did you not?

  CLAIRE: It is love.

  ANNA: And you have, therefore, presumed upon my, my, my, my …

  CLAIRE: Your universally known and lauded generosity.

  ANNA: But what is L
ove?

  CLAIRE: …what is love?

  ANNA: That we should pine for it.

  CLAIRE: No, no, I understood that to be your meaning. I require a place. I need a place, at which my friend and I…

  ANNA: Your own home being? What? Too Far? Too Cold? Tainted by a life of depravity?

  CLAIRE: I need a home where I may, with impugnity …

  ANNA: …mmm?

  CLAIRE: Take a …take a young …

  ANNA: How young?

  CLAIRE: Take a…

  ANNA: You Want me to Be Your Beard.

  CLAIRE: In Short.

  ANNA: You wish me to clothe your nakedness.

  CLAIRE: I come to you, as I confess myself, as I beseech you, beyond shame.

  ANNA: And this "shame," this "shame" you treasure, restores balance to the world, this "shame," in whose Fine Light, all is permissible.

  CLAIRE: I have no merit, to plead my case, but her mother… to whom she is devoted. Do you see? To whom she is, unfortunately, tied. Her mother…

  ANNA: What about her mother? (Pause)

  CLAIRE: Well, the young thing cannot travel unchaperoned, her mother, who, mistakenly, takes on herself the child’s supervision.

  ANNA: How old is she?

  CLAIRE: How old is who?

  ANNA: Your friend. (Pause) I see. And, so having delighted to pollute any residue of your own reputation, you make bold to squander mine.

  CLAIRE: Please.

  ANNA: And you demean me by the blithe assumption, that I would consent.

  CLAIRE: I…

  ANNA: That I would Taint, that I would endanger, my, my compact with my New Protector …Yes. My Protector, who provides the very cushions upon which we sit. (Pause)

  CLAIRE: To Market, to Market, to Be a Fat Pig …

  ANNA: I did it for you, you ill-conditioned sow. I did it for the cause. He is a "man." What possible joy or diversion for me in this arrangement? I did it for us, for that unity-of-two which …

  (Crash in the kitchen)

  CLAIRE: Ah, yes. The disruption of the Lowly, mimicking that of the Great.

  ANNA: Perhaps she’s in love.

  (MAID enters.)

  MAID: I’m sorry, mum.

  ANNA: Go away.

  MAID: I’m sorry, I …

  ANNA: Retire.

  MAID: I dropped the platter.

  ANNA: Go away. Are you deaf? (Pause) Say: are you deaf? From the incessant roaring of the surf upon your savage, native shore? (Pause) Go away. You stink of peat smoke.

  MAID: We had a coal fire, miss.

  ANNA: And what did you do? Worship it? (Pause)

  MAID: We lit it.

  ANNA: Did you.

  MAID: Yes, mum.

  ANNA: What? To keep you Warm? (Pause) Mmm? In the interminable nights when you lay there, bundled with your livestock, into the one room? Mmm? Whilst the savage and uncaring moon beat down, and so forth, engend’ring dreams of your escape to the Metropolis, thither to torment me? Is that what brings you here? After we’ve beseeched you to die?

  MAID: I’m sorry that I dropped the plate, miss.

  ANNA: Ah, yes, that was the import of the sound.

  MAID: You c’n deduct it from my wages.

  ANNA: And live in luxury the rest of my days. Oh good.

  MAID: and …and …(Dissolves in tears)

  CLAIRE: Oh, now look what you’ve done. You never could deal with servants. Let me amend it. (They watch the MAID cry for a while) What is it? You’re with child, by the man who pledged to marry you, now you discovered he’s a wife and babe at home? (Pause) Zat it? Something like that? (Pause) Mmm? You try …

  ANNA: Y’r Da is dying of the Black Lung from a life spent in the Collieries, ‘n’ you lack the four pence which could transport him to rest and renewed vigor? (Pause) Which is it? (Pause) Choose. (The MAID exits) And now the tea will remain cold. (Pause) Quite cold. ‘N’ who have I to blame. But myself. And an impersonal, and thoughtless deity. (Pause)

  CLAIRE: Help me.

  ANNA: You are without shame.

  CLAIRE: I have confessed it.

  ANNA: Ah, no love as foolish as an Old Woman’s love. (Pause) An Old Woman’s love. A HAG, et cetera, shorn of all, save those last vestiges of beauty, those final shreds, not clothing, nay, but Framing her horrible plain face and form, that crone, reduced to sophistry to lure the young and the beautiful into her sway. And this is what it comes to, at the cold-fag end. To sit in dead conversation with the Duenna, to offer "cookies" to the chaperone, while you, and your young…no, the mind cannot compass it. Oh what a constantly disrupted …Oh what a disorderly …Oh what a sad thing. The endless capacity of the world to unseat and disappoint us. Do you believe in God?

  CLAIRE: I would if you’d shut up.

  ANNA: And do you begrudge me my "keening"?

  CLAIRE: Oh, pull your socks up.

  ANNA: …I …

  CLAIRE: Every note you strike is false. I cannot assemble them into a rational composition. You’re like a spinet so bad out of tune the name of any note is arbitrary. How can one respect you? (Pause)

  ANNA: I beg your pardon.

  CLAIRE: And I am sorry I was moved to speak with enthusiasm.

  ANNA: I have forgotten it.

  CLAIRE: Bless you.

  ANNA: (Pause) Sherry?

  CLAIRE: Perhaps just a touch.

  ANNA: …and you would have this young Person come to my home.

  CLAIRE: Yes.

  ANNA: When?

  CLAIRE: Today.

  ANNA: You presume much. Yes—even now, I see you scour the street. This is the new thing, then. This is that for which it has amused God to spare me. (Pause) Fine.

  CLAIRE: … I beg your pardon?

  ANNA: Have her come. (Pause)

  CLAIRE: You don’t mean it.

  ANNA: I shall grant graciously what I dare not refuse.

  CLAIRE: Bless you, Oh Best of Friends.

  ANNA: Is it not so?

  CLAIRE: It is so. It is so.

  ANNA: Godspeed you, and your Young Friend, to your Hour of Bliss.

  CLAIRE: And God preserve you …

  ANNA: Joy to your sheets.

  CLAIRE: And may heaven both witness and endorse your sainted humanity.

  ANNA: … please … (they drink.) But may I, whilst preserving that essential veil of "decency"…

  CLAIRE: Yes.

  ANNA: Inquire …

  CLAIRE: …please?

  ANNA: (Pause) That is, you take my meaning, "Does" she, or … to put it differently "have" you …(Pause)

  CLAIRE: She does not. We have not.

  ANNA: Yes. Then, I have my own request.

  CLAIRE: Anything under heaven.

  ANNA: To, let us say, to, to participate, in …

  CLAIRE: I fear that my vision of the meeting …

  ANNA: Yes.

  CLAIRE: Of the "geometry" of the thing …

  ANNA: Quite, no, you mistake me. I only meant to the extent that I … set the scene, ease the transition, as it were: I, I bring you cocoa, I open the windows, and suggest you two would be more "cozy," underneath a "throw," I …

  CLAIRE: Yes, thank you, but…

  ANNA: Do you see? In the capacity of a stage manager, or …

  DAVID MAM E T CLAIRE: I …

  ANNA: Yes, this shall be our party. And we must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

  CLAIRE: A pie.

  ANNA: It casts out stress as the heat of the hand repels quicksilver. Faugh I say. Faugh. Keep you your precious vapors, your fantods, your anxiety. Give me a pie. Give me a pie anyday.

  CLAIRE: Give me a pie, too. But…

  ANNA: For there is that of the bucolic in it. Is there not? The pie, the cottage, the …

  CLAIRE: The hearth, finally.

  ANNA: Little Nell. Nell or Molly.

  CLAIRE: Young …

  ANNA: That’s right.

  CLAIRE: Young Susan. Her brown arms shapely from the work of the fields. One wisp of h
er …

  ANNA: Dark blond hair.

  CLAIRE: If you will, come down on her eyes. Brushed back with the flour-covered forearm. As she kneads the dough we may see the tendons now assemble now disperse beneath the nut brown skin. She looks up: "I’m making a pie." (Pause)

  ANNA: Do you mock me?

  CLAIRE: I am concocting a seduction. I do not require a pât-tissière. (Pause)

  ANNA: What is there risible about a pie?

  CLAIRE: Fine. And we must have ices.

  ANNA: "Ices."

  CLAIRE: I believe so. (Pause)

  ANNA: Ices.

  CLAIRE: Yes.

  ANNA: … at a seduction?

  CLAIRE: And what, party favors, little, what are they? One gives them to the Cook.

  ANNA: Wallets.

  CLAIRE: That’s right. And the odd vial of scent.

  ANNA: I just said "a pie."

  CLAIRE: I riposted ices.

  ANNA: …but…

  CLAIRE: What is it you find abhorrent in them? Is it their, their artificial color, mmm? Or their Frigidity …(Pause)

  ANNA: Oh. (Pause)

  CLAIRE: I beg you to accept my deep and unreserved apology my tongue has run away with me. I have traduced both the memory of our friendship and the fact of our love. I am alone, in the midst of my own folly of my need and vice. I stand naked before you, in my panting and unclean depravity, and beg for your aid. Help me.

  ANNA: (Pause) Alright.

  CLAIRE: Oh, Blessed forgiveness.

  ANNA: But I want to watch.

  CLAIRE: You whore.

  ANNA: Not in the room. Not in the Room. What do you take me for, my God.

  CLAIRE: You Pagan slut.

  ANNA: Through a hole in the wall.

  CLAIRE: No.

  ANNA: Did I say I want to participate? Or Comment?

  CLAIRE: I said no.

  ANNA: Or advise, which, given the youth of the …

  CLAIRE: I said no.

  ANNA: …might not be supererogatory.

  CLAIRE: Rave on.

  ANNA: Ah. Yes. Love. Love for thee, but not for me. My sacrifice is naught. While you, yes…Gaze through the window. Gaze in vain, while we may sit here and beguile the hour, in parsing the distinction between Friendship and Acquaintance. Lug your trick off to the park. Amuse the nannies with their prams. "What’s that, nanny?" "Well, that’s just two women, dear." "But, nanny, what are they doing?" Off you go.

  CLAIRE: (At the window) Oh my God. It is she. I recognize the conveyance.

  ANNA: Oh your new friend. Is she come?

  CLAIRE: She is here.

  ANNA: Hard cheese.