CHARACTERS
Asta (sister of the bride)
The Mother of the Bride
The Angels (mute)
The Drainpipe and Other Sound Effects
Uncle Hod
The Photographer
The Brother of the Bride
The Evangelical Cousins
Merced (cook)
Other Uncles
SCENE
A family wedding.
ASTA
What you want is for me to play with little cats. Talk to little cats. Make movies about little cats.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Well, we have a cat.
ASTA
I’m much too busy.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
What’s that book you’re reading?
ASTA
Library book.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Stories?
ASTA
How to quarter a buffalo.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh.
ASTA
How to breathe underwater. How to sharpen almost anything. Useful skills. I can keep it a year, I have five library cards.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
We won’t worry about you, then.
ASTA
You don’t worry about me anyway. You think I’m simple.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh you’re not simple. Nazis are simple. You’re straightforward.
ASTA
I collect facts.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
You do collect facts.
ASTA
I don’t always know what they amount to till the time comes.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Is that why you’re always up on the roof? Waiting till the time comes?
ASTA
There are days my heart is sore.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
I know that.
ASTA
And sitting on the roof I can listen to everything, all you janky crowd downstairs, if I put my ear to the drainpipe.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
I know that too.
ASTA
Was nicer up there before the angels left.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
They left?
ASTA
Didn’t like the cat. So what’s happening now? Photo session?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Photos on the balcony.
ASTA
Glad to miss that.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
But you’ll come down later? Come down for the cake.
ASTA
Later.
Exit Asta to the roof, where she listens through the drainpipe to conversation continuing downstairs, and occasionally comments; the drainpipe is heard making drainpipe sounds intermittently from now on.
UNCLE HOD
Never enough to go round.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Enough what?
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Will the bride be down soon?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
I do hope so. She’s been weeping for a week.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Is there any beer?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
You’re not having beer, you’re nine.
UNCLE HOD
I suppose Asta’s on the roof.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Do you take milk?
UNCLE HOD
Thank you, no. She’s quite a kid. You know, she interviewed me once.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
For her imaginary magazine?
ASTA
It’s not imaginary. God! Don’t they know me at all?!
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
What kind of questions she ask you?
UNCLE HOD
She asked about trust, as I recall. The kind of chaps I trust. The kind of chaps I have to deal with.
ASTA
Trust! Ha! Not likely! I asked him about rock salt and buckshot and how you mix them half and half.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Not prison?
ASTA
Rock salt just melts away. You don’t leave no forensics.
UNCLE HOD
Prison was the politest place I ever lived.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
You know what would be really funny?
ASTA
Here he goes, one of his idiot-brother joke ideas. What do you bet—
UNCLE HOD
Everyone saying good morning, no one pushing in the queue.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
If we let Odd Otto think—
THE EVANGELICAL COUSINS
The very stone that the builders rejected …
ASTA
I knew it! Always going after Odd Otto. As if he doesn’t have enough! Trouble! Being Odd!
MERCED
Saturdays make me sad.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh dear, Merced’s having a sad day.
UNCLE HOD
Is Otto the ambidextrous one?
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Ask him to be ring bearer!
ASTA
Idiot brother thinks that would be funny. To make Odd Otto do the rings. Because Odd Otto has anxiety. Odd Otto does everything with both hands at once—writing, eating, putting in his earplugs—it has to be symmetrical, or he gets anxious.
MERCED
We’d sit on the back porch, all of us, singing and talking and grinding the querns.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
There would have to be two rings! or four rings! or who knows!
THE EVANGELICAL COUSINS
The very stone that the builders rejected Is become the cornerstone.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
I have a slight feeling of precipice.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Should we go to the balcony? Set up the group shot?
ASTA
Otto has male days and female days. They get all haughty-snorty about it, the family.
MERCED
Grinding, singing. Saturday was for weddings.
UNCLE HOD
What’s a quern?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Perhaps standing with the sea behind us?
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
No matter what you ask him he says, Oh, oh! Yes, yes!
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Or should we try to be not facing the light?
MERCED
All so happy, grinding.
ASTA
I interviewed Merced once. About grinding. It wasn’t all so happy, actually. She said it took all day to grind enough grain for a wedding. And you have to grind in one direction only, one direction always, clockwise always. Or you call up the Devil. She’d laugh. Then she’d get really scared.
UNCLE HOD
Curses always backfire.
MERCED
You got that right.
UNCLE HOD
Curses bring regret.
MERCED
Big regret.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh don’t get her going.
Enter Other Uncles.
OTHER UNCLES
Drinks up yet?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
There’s hot tea in the urn.
UNCLE HOD
Only one thing in my life I would undo.
ASTA
Oh no, he’s in that mood.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
’D be hilarious. Both hands at once.
ASTA
You fart-arse. Go away and eat tadpoles.
MERCED
Curse the grain, ruin the marriage.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
A family has a violence older than itself. They become a mob.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
He just says Oh, oh! Yes, yes! to anything.
THE EVANGELICAL COUSINS
Little children, love one another.
UNCLE HOD
I mean in the scheme of things.
OTHER UNCLES
I’m just saying, you go where you’re sent. I was third flotilla.
MERCED
Clockwise always.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
More hot water, Merced? For the tea?
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
I think we really need the bride at this point.
MERCED
Or out comes the Devil.
ASTA
Did he say “in the scheme of things”? He says that a lot. I like the idea of there being a scheme.
OTHER UNCLES
Well, it’s twelve years but I’m still in fight mode. I miss the lads.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Can’t you just march in and say, Ticktock, baby girl?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh dear no.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Many a mother bargains with a daughter.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Oh no.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Aren’t you the boss?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
We’re pouring toward the precipice now.
Whistling is heard.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Who makes these rules?
Sound of whistling.
ASTA
Good question.
OTHER UNCLES
Who’s that whistling?
ASTA
Another good question.
UNCLE HOD
It should never have happened.
ASTA
Ah, soon he’ll say, I don’t do innocents.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
How about the groom, is he available?
Sound of whistling.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Shaving. With a new razor.
OTHER UNCLES
I miss the firefights.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Don’t you wish we’d got roses, not lilies. The lilies look a bit mythic.
ASTA
Did she say “mythic”? It’s a code word for her. Oh Asta, don’t be mythic. Days when my heart is sore. I try to keep my life mainly separate from her. But I’m going to write a book threaded through with the soreness of my heart. So she’ll know. How it felt, how it feels, those days I suddenly remember things—how we used to go all the family together to a summer place we had—I still see it so very clearly, that place, that time, the pure blue blazing morning and all the world open, all the day tight in its web of its own self-oblivious self, slipping along, and me in it, me slipping along that thick time with me in it, me then, me already gone, the mythology of me, I see it as close as my hand yet I can never touch it again. Am I ridiculous? People think kids have no fear of time, no sense of the past, because they’re kids. Wrong. Me waiting in the shadows of then, nothing is more terrible.
MERCED
Who’s that whistling?
UNCLE HOD
I don’t do innocents. It haunts me still.
OTHER UNCLES
You wear gloves all the time, Hod, those gray gloves, why’s that?
UNCLE HOD
Who shaves the barber? Old joke. Know it?
ASTA
I need to think again about the scheme of things.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
What’s a quern?
Sound of whistling.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Someone should look it up.
ASTA
The angels left because the cat kept sneezing. Is that the scheme of things?
MERCED
Stupid English word.
ASTA
Or Uncle Hod saying, I was a businessman. My business was crime. Is that the scheme? I studied mythologies once. For the scheme. Mythologies are sad, too sad. Like Baldr. Do you know this myth? The other gods loved Baldr so much they didn’t want him to die so his mother traveled round and got each thing in the world to vow it would not harm him. Stones, storms, poisons, knife blades, everything in the world swore a vow. The gods were joyous. They stood Baldr in their midst while they shot at him and sliced at him and knocked him down and laughed. Laughing, they forgot mistletoe. No one asked a vow of mistletoe. They thought she was too young to swear a vow. So a passing blind man shot mistletoe at Baldr, who fell down dead. What I mean by the sadness is this dark, dark, dark stupidness at the heart of it. Uncle Hod has that. Kills people as a business all his life, then goes to prison for an accident. Twenty years to life with four off. The scheme of things. I don’t do innocents.
A loud cry is heard and the thud of something heavy falling.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
What’s that sound?
ASTA
Something going on down there.
OTHER UNCLES
Who was that whistling?
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Did you know he had it?
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Had what? Who’s whistling?
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
I saw him putting something in his pants earlier. Looked like a machete.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Why are people staring?
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Thought it was a joke.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
What’s that on the floor?
OTHER UNCLES
Well, he had enemies.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Think they’ll give me the machete? After?
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Revenge, oh my.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
But can I have the machete? After?
ASTA
Go sleep in a snake pit, barbarian.
OTHER UNCLES
That barber joke. He was trying to tell us something—
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
I do so ache to be taken care of.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE
Let’s check if he’s dead.
ASTA
I doubt he’s dead. Uncle Hod is tough. But there’s the scheme again. If Uncle Hod had practiced switch skating in prison, like Odd Otto did, instead of chess, he might have looped the loop on that machete and not be lying on the floor right now. But Uncle Hod had a fatal streak. In this game you can’t blame anyone but you, he used to say, and on the surface he was talking about chess but really he meant that guy who strangled on the gag. Accidental mishap amidst a perfectly planned robbery. I don’t do innocents. Blame makes you sad, sadness makes you stupid, you forget the mistletoe. Smart feet might have saved him. I do hope the angels come back. I’ve swept and dusted. I guess I should go downstairs. Left to themselves they just lie to each other, the family. I wonder if I will learn to do that too, growing up. Don’t turn away, the angels used to say. Their heads would glow silver.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Did we find out what a quern is?
OTHER UNCLES
What did you mean, joke?
Sound of whistling.
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
Shall we put the shutters down?
Curtain.
Home page image: John Ashbery, 2008, from Eleven Collages in issue no. 188 (Spring 2009).
