a new play inspired by old news

before you read this, know that this piece is BASED on experience
though NOT what actually took place-
i say this because assumptions can and have been made
but i am a fiction writer after all
and add grains of salt to fill out the feel of a tale
or an event.

so, let's be clear
T did not overdose
or intend departure
but the person in this play did
okay?
got that?

now, this piece was commissioned from a small theatre
they sent out photos of a particular house to writers
and the writers wrote events for the rooms
this is the blue bedroom
and thought it might be of interest.
i may decide to use it to expand my one act WHITE BIRCHES into a longer piece, hence the use of the name Jim.
here we go.


CARLA TELLS US WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BLUE BEDROOM
By Susan Merson


CARLA, A WOMAN IN HER 50’S, SITS QUIETLY IN HER SWING ON THE PORCH. SHE TAKES A SWIG OF TEA. SHE LOOKS UP AND SPEAKS SIMPLY.

CARLA
Houses are sentimental. Nothing special. Nothing real except fabric bone and rock. Nothing oozing from corners except memory and sound. Nothing waiting in the closets or under the beds except the dust of years lived together and creaky springs that got lazy after too many attempts at sex when it didn’t matter much anymore. And the old tennis balls from the dog, chewed over and over and now not even buoyant, just left.
Like a widow, rolling against pillows that used to hold her lover, who became her husband, who became her friend, then her companion, then her other lung and the weight on her heart til he curled peacefully to his side one night, when I slept fitfully, for the first time in so many months, in the next room. Only to allow him rest. To allow us both a little rest.
“You’re on your own,” I said that to him. “You’re on your own!” furious, when he downed the last handful of pills. “They aren’t in the bottle, Jim. They’re not in the bottles. All these pills, all white, all powder all different. How can you figure?”
“We’ll sort them in the morning,” he said to me .“We’ll sort them.”
But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. I got out a magnifying glass.
A big one. I told him right then.
“Now, let’s sort it now!” Furious. Losing.
He flicked his hand at me The one with the bent finger,
He took what he wanted and lay back against the puffed pillows. A fluffy bed I made for him. Ridiculous. The things you do for comfort.
I lay down next to him. Watching him. He startled at my eyes, demanding he be present.
watching his breath, holding him here on the planet.
So I gave in.
“You’re on your own,” I said to him and went to the room across the hall.
He breathed a sigh of relief as I passed the bell in the hallway.
“I’ll hear him. I’ll know if he needs me.”
He didn’t need me
He wanted to be gone,
to be done and so,
gently he turned to his side and
closed his beautiful eyes and slipped off.
A blessed death, they say, going that way
A blessed death with little more suffering to endure
That a blessing to be sure.
The police when they came. Officer Jimmy and Officer Carl.
Young, so young and stiff.
They looked at me. Suspicious, “”The pills, ma’am”,they said?
”And the magnifying glass, ma’am,” they asked?
Looking at the plastic bag, the white box, the dirty glass on the dresser.
They asked me. They looked hard.
They were ready to unroll the yellow tape and make the house a crime scene, while the doll watched from the hallway and the bell still said nothing.
But my wailing, I suppose. My wailing, my chant,
”Omigod,omigod..”
It’s all that would come,
“A cliché,” is all I could think of. “Omigod”, comical. No poetry there.
I think it scared those little police boys, none with wives yet, none with lives or history.
They left. They slunk off. Peeling back their white plastic gloves and their grim eyes.
We loaded him beautiful on a gurney, with flowers and a homemade quilt and he was gone. Off to dust.
But the sentimental house, the empty house with silent dust and empty corners,
The silent house oozes him
And us
And then
And now, and I sleep and the bell doesn’t ring
And I wonder I just wonder if there will be breath here again
A wind to push us to the next place
Silent and possible.
Sunlight brushing death every day I’m left.

SHE TAKES A SIP.
Tea’s cold. That’s what happens.
SHE GETS UP. THEN SITS BACK DOWN HOLDING THE MUG IN HER HAND.
PUSHING THE SWING SLOWLY BACK AND FORTH WITH HER FEET. WAITING.
LIGHTS FADE.