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.
