Remembrance and Pantomime (7 page)

ANNA

     Defiant pride.

JORDAN

     I sorry we get here twenty years late, Reverend Rabbi, but I had a little bladder trouble and a serious attack of cowardice, not to mention colonial inferiority, but we here now, anyway.

ANNA

     Defiant pride is killing me.

JORDAN

     So if you could get through your semi-demi as fast as possible, I’d be grateful to you for restoring my honor, for keeping my promise, and you best make one thing of it—like christening the child, pronouncing this business null and void one time—because bigamy is still a serious charge, ask Mabel, and with modest lechery, you may kiss the bride.

(
Turns to
ANNA
)

     I have kept my word, haven’t I?

ANNA

     Someone you loved, huh?

JORDAN

     During the war.

ANNA

     Are you in touch with her?

JORDAN

     I’m talking to her. Oh, that’s nonsense. She died, you see. She died in a swimming pool from a heart attack in Coral Gables, Florida, trying to extricate herself from a rubber tire. Life is ridiculous.

ANNA

     I’m sorry.

JORDAN

     Am I forgiven?

ANNA

     Yes. Will I get to meet Mrs. Jordan?

JORDAN

     You’ll meet her. Mabel, my monument. And you’ll love my son Frederick, I know that. He has his mother’s heart.

ANNA

     His paintings, they’re weird.

JORDAN

     Modern art. It’s him they should have shot for that shit.

ANNA

     You don’t mean that. I’m going to take the baby for some air. Do you want to come?

JORDAN

     It would look a little incongruous, don’t you think?

ANNA

     Why?

JORDAN

     Don’t you think so?

ANNA

     Certainly not. I’d love you to. Come on.

(
FREDERICK
enters the veranda with his painter’s knapsack and a rolled canvas
)

FREDERICK

(
Reciting
)

     “Once more up to the beach, my friends, once more,

       And lie there till your naked arse goes red …

       In peace…”

(
Spoken
)

     I’m home, Professor. I’m home, and I’m hungry.

(
Enters
)

     Well, what have we here?

JORDAN

     Frederick, this is Anna Herschel. Anna, Frederick.

FREDERICK

     Anna Herschel.

ANNA

     Hello.

JORDAN

     Anna’s a great dancer.

ANNA

     Not really. Your father’s been very kind to me. I got tired and lost and I …

(
To
JORDAN
)

     Sounds phony, doesn’t it?

FREDERICK

     Do you like painting, Anna?

ANNA

     I don’t know much about it.

(
The baby cries
)

FREDERICK

     What’s that?

ANNA

     It’s a baby …

FREDERICK

     Yours?

ANNA

(
Nods
)

     Mine … I was just going to take him out …

FREDERICK

     He’s in Junior’s room. That’s great. It’s been empty. Come on, come on, you take him out, and I’ll walk him. It’s a him? I’ll walk him with you and I’m going to bore your ears off about my painting, unless I’m stealing you from the old man. Am I stealing her from you, Professor?

JORDAN

     Steal her with my blessing. I thought you were hungry.

FREDERICK

     Professor. How can you talk of food at a time like this? He’s got no poetry in his soul, Anna. He’s a Philistine. Come on, let’s go. I’ll put these things inside. I been up in the mountains, you know …

(
He embraces
ANNA
as they exit.
JORDAN
puts on the record, the volume low, listening. Fade
)

SCENE 2

The same. Morning. A week later.
MABEL
at the window,
JORDAN
resting in the armchair.

MABEL

     Albert, you too young for me, you hear? For seven days I gone to catch some rest in Princes Town, and in those seven days you not only pick up some young chick but you contrive to have a baby, too? Is only the Almighty who did so much in one week. If you keep this up in your retirement, you go kill me from surprise.

JORDAN

     Well, it’s you who left me, old queen.

MABEL

     I came back, yes. But I didn’t come back for this: to look through my window and see some hippie and my last son strolling arm in arm like man and wife in that park. I go put up a sign, you hear?
JORDANS’ REST HOME.

JORDAN

     Arm in arm? Let me see.

(
He walks over to the window, and after a while puts his arm around
MABEL
)

     Seven years ago they could have been killed. Maybe there’s trout.

MABEL

     Why you let this girl in, Albert? How she could confuse you so?

JORDAN

     I told you. She used her last cent to come out here with the child, to get to the farthest point that she could, to the end of the world.

MABEL

     Belmont is the end of the world?

JORDAN

     She was supposed to meet friends here. Somewhere in this neighborhood. But it was either an old or a wrong address and she had no money for a hotel. The plane was four hours late, she got as far as a taxi could take her, and she got out and started walking.

MABEL

     Then she looked through this window and saw the Pope of Belmont shining through the glass, and lo and behold! we have a boarder. She ha’ to go, Albert. And you know that. Frederick is the anchor she using to stay here.

JORDAN

     Listen, Mabel.

MABEL

     And I been watching you. You like her, too, don’t you, Albert?

JORDAN

     Too? What you mean?

MABEL

     You think all I do is cook, sing hymns, and tolerate your moods. You think I don’t read? You think I ain’t realize who Padmore is? You think I never read “My War Effort,” and realize that if you wasn’t such a coward thirty years ago, you would of leave me? Well, the way I have watched you watching her, all I can see is memory and regret. Lord, I ain’t know why I had to come back for this.

JORDAN

     Woman, you imagining things. Is you should have been the blasted writer.

MABEL

     You think what you have written, however long ago it is, the book still there, you can’t kill a book, you think it didn’t hurt me to look like such a fool. You write some hard things, Albert. My mother said it when I married you, I burned out my talent in domesticity. I have wasted my life. Whether is “Barrley and the Roof” or “My War Effort,” think they didn’t hurt me?

JORDAN

     I didn’t mean to hurt you, woman. I just was not good enough. That was what makes my work so small. I am a small man, Mabel.

MABEL

     Anyway, like I always told you, is never too late to find somebody young, however different. So, if when I wasn’t here you and she had anything going on, don’t let me stand in your way. I have always felt, you have always made me feel, that I stood in your way.

JORDAN

     In my way? Where you think I would be today, woman? In a rum shop somewhere quoting Shakespeare and Macaulay to a bunch of no-teeth drunkards. I never been great enough to write about the simple things, about real magnificence, about you, in fact, my dear.

MABEL

     I ain’t want no magnificence, Albert. I just want to go to my grave in peace, knowing that I didn’t stand in your way as a writer. And to see that love in your eyes coming back again so fierce as if you wish you was young and could go away with her … I can’t take it.

JORDAN

     Mabel. We ain’t do nothing in this house. I would not violate a memory. Is very simple. Listen, Mabel: William Blake:

(
Recites
)

     “To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

       All pray in their distress;

       For Mercy has a human heart

       And Peace, the human dress…”

(
MABEL
exits
)

     So cherish Pity, lest you drive an angel from your door …

(
FREDERICK
and
ANNA
,
carrying the baby, come in
)

FREDERICK

     Hi, Pop.

ANNA

     Hello, Mr. Jordan. I’ll just see how he is.

(
She exits
)

FREDERICK

     Had a nice little walk. Anything wrong? I can feel the tension through your back.

JORDAN

     From the day you turned down Mr. Barrley’s ridiculous proposal, Frederick, I knew you had become a man.

FREDERICK

     After thirty years.

JORDAN

     That’s how it is.

FREDERICK

     Well. I’m a man. So.

JORDAN

     So, seize opportunity. Act on principle and tell rumor to go to hell. You know what I mean.

FREDERICK

     Very vaguely …

(
Pause
)

     What’s all this leading to, Professor?

JORDAN

     You know that poem …

FREDERICK

     What poem …

JORDAN

     Gray’s “Elegy” … L-E-G … Leg! B-E-G! Beg.

FREDERICK

     You’ve recited it for thirty years … I know it backward.

JORDAN

     It’s really all about obscurity and missed opportunities, you know … It’s all “perhapses” and “maybes” … Listen …

FREDERICK

     Get to the point, Pop. Don’t recite any more.

JORDAN

     I’m telling you, boy. The hardest thing for a father is to see his son making his old mistakes. If, when I watch the two of you, I see Albert Perez Jordan and Esther Trout instead of Frederick Jordan and Anna Herschel, then all I would have left you, boy, is my shame and trembling. Since you love the girl, erase history from your mind and make your own. Don’t ask her questions and don’t let her ask you; take her as she is with what she has, and teach her to accept you the same way. But history, gossip, rumor, and what people go say? Blank it out! You have the strength. From the day you refused to sell that roof for money, I knew you had it.

FREDERICK

     I got it from you.

JORDAN

     That girl’s got qualities you need. She’s bright, she’s honest; take her, with my blessing.

FREDERICK

     That’s the trouble with you, Pop. She ain’t yours to give away. You don’t own the world. Stop getting on like is yours. Is up to her, not you.

JORDAN

     I’m sorry. Yes. I see your point. Don’t hide in the men’s room all your life …

FREDERICK

     What the hell does that mean?

(
Enter
ANNA
)

JORDAN

     It means … It means I’m going to have a pee!

(
Exits
)

ANNA

     What’s wrong?

FREDERICK

     He says he can’t afford to change his glasses, but he’s going blind, I think. It makes him irritable.

ANNA

     Maybe he’s just shortsighted. The first night I came in here, he peered very closely at me and called me another name: Esther. Who was Esther?

FREDERICK

     You read the stories. You mean, if she was real?

ANNA

     Yeah. If she was, that was an awful thing to do. Stand her up like that.

FREDERICK

     Why not? It’s just another honky.

ANNA

     Freddie Jordan, you lousy black chauvinist, come here! Come here!

(
She chases him, a mock fight, they embrace
)

     Have you told him?

FREDERICK

     Not yet.

ANNA

     Do you want me to?

FREDERICK

     No, Anna. Let me do it.

(
JORDAN
returns to the room
)

JORDAN

     Oh, sorry. You’re talking. I won’t interrupt.

ANNA

     Please stay, Mr. Jordan … Sit. Frederick wants to …

JORDAN

     I know. I know …

FREDERICK

     No, you
don’t
know. I’ve been listening to you all my life. Now it’s your turn.

JORDAN

     Shall we say I’ve guessed?

FREDERICK

(
To
ANNA
)

     He drives you crazy, you know that? You see what I was saying.

JORDAN

     I’m just excited, that’s all. I’ll be quiet.

(
Pause
)

     I’m quiet.

(
Pause
)