Triptych and Iphigenia (5 page)
Read Triptych and Iphigenia Online
Authors: Edna O'Brien
Daughter lying on her futon, flicking through salacious magazines, whistles, etc.
DAUGHTER
  Wow, she's curvy ⦠You've got a very big bush, madam, you could sweep Amsterdam Avenue with that.
S
CENE
S
IXTEEN
Wife in raincoat and red beret approaches the Mistress's space pointing the ferule of the long black umbrella. She is smiling, almost laughing. She has had a few drinks, weaves a little.
WIFE
  (
singing
) Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar
Oh pretty boy
Please don't ask why,
You know that you must die â¦
Oh, pretty boy
MISTRESS
  Whenever I saw a mother and a baby on the street I just burst into tears.
WIFE
  (
quizzical
) Your hair ⦠something different ⦠Seems shorter ⦠Not quite so tousled.
MISTRESS
  You've been on the town, I see.
Wife, ignoring that, takes a photograph out of her wallet.
WIFE
  Souvenir. Thought you'd like to see what Henry looked like when we met twenty years ago ⦠He'd seen a postcard of James Dean wearing a cap, standing by some fence so he got himself the same cap. From the moment I met him I decided that he was the one, my Orpheus, even if it meant going down into hell for half the year.
MISTRESS
  Look, I am not breaking up your marriage and I don't intend to ⦠I am his mistress and I know the rules.
WIFE
  You and your ilk are a pox on married households ⦠up our husbands' asses, licking our husbands' asses ⦠and we carry the can and smile and say, “Darling, shall we have Lourda O'Shaughnessy around for dinner?” She of the alabaster cleavage. And we smile and smile (
lower voice
) and get fat.
MISTRESS
  He spends time with you ⦠Christmas, Thanksgiving, anniversaries ⦠values your advice about his work.
WIFE
  He's washed up. He has a block. He can't deliver. It's different with actors, you can fake it ⦠you have your (
pause
) repertoire of masks ⦠that you put on and off at will ⦠but a writer dons a mask at his peril. When he goes into solitary, he doesn't lie, Clarissa.
MISTRESS
  (
scornful
) What pearls of wisdom.
Wife picks up a vodka bottle off the dressing table.
WIFE
  May I?
MISTRESS
  Help yourself.
Wife drinks, savoring it.
WIFE
  You went to Washington with him.
MISTRESS
  Did I?
WIFE
  I telephoned him at his hotel and the girl on the switchboard said he was out, so I tried later. She said, “Ma'am ⦠you've been phoning all evening.” I said: “No, that's his whore, that's his English whore that's been phoning all evening; can't you tell from our accents?”
MISTRESS
  Does he know what poisons you are dipped in?
Wife laughs lustily and takes Mistress's bare arm, strokes it.
WIFE
  I know you fancy women ⦠I've checked you out ⦠you shared a suite in Philadelphia with a German girl ⦠the two of you stayed in that suite all day, all day until it was time to go to the theater ⦠she was your dresser was she not ⦠made you sheer dresses with tiny waists. Kiss me ⦠go on.
Wife kisses her.
WIFE
  (
passionate
) You'd like us both, Henry and me ⦠that's what you'd really like ⦠Henry and me together ⦠because then you would not be an outsider ⦠you would be one of us ⦠Henry watching me kissing you kissing your cunt ⦠Henry coming into you and into me and into both ⦠part of one another ⦠that's what you really want and that's what Henry wants ⦠but he doesn't know it yet, it will all just unfold ⦠like seascape.
MISTRESS
  (
shrill, mirthless laugh
) That's
very
bizarre.
Wife brings her face close to Mistress's face.
WIFE
  What am I ⦠a mind reader? ⦠I know what you're thinking ⦠(
imitating an English accent
) Oh, Henry, please come through that door and fuck us both and put an end to all this torture and all this untruth and all this agony and all this jealousy â¦
Mistress stands pushing Wife away.
Wife touches Mistress's lips with her forefinger, then kisses her, a longer kiss.
WIFE
  (
cont.
) You're a piece of work, Clarissa.
Wife goes.
Mistress pours herself a drink and drinks in one gulp.
MISTRESS
  I just pictured her going home and saying, “She has a luscious mouth, your whore.” For one awful second I yielded ⦠I was unfaithful to him with his own wife.
S
CENE
S
EVENTEEN
Daughter is tripping out and is standing, one foot on a chair, the other foot on the table, her arm stretched out calling a boy. Wife comes in but Daughter is unaware of anything except her trip. Disco music starts during her monologue as she creates a rock concert in her own mind and is the star of it. Strobe lighting. She is wearing a fur coat, inside out.
Daughter addresses imaginary audience.
DAUGHTER
  Zack ⦠Zachary ⦠I can't see you ⦠you're hiding ⦠hidey hidey (
whisper
) I'm wearing a see-through skirt with nothing on underneath ⦠it seems we're going to the same party ⦠you want dialogue ⦠uh huh ⦠that's tough ⦠we're hooking up with Venus ⦠you've got to take care of her ⦠she gets catatonic after two lines (
She takes a tiny pill box and shakes it playfully.
) We get our goodies down the hill from the school at the pizza place ⦠My mother would have a hissy fit. (
giggling
) We kind of know who to hit up ⦠weird guy ⦠Zack ⦠you've got to get groovy ⦠I mean university professor or not groovy is where it's at ⦠enlightenment baby ⦠Venus got blown away the first time ⦠whiney about her belly flab. (
wooing
) To be perfectly profane about it Zack, it's good good shit. (
more alert
) You what ⦠What ⦠You're not
coming? Never mind ⦠it's not an issue ⦠screw you. (
to her audience
) They've rented this huge space for the Homecoming Party ⦠a bunch of us going ⦠do you want to hear my dirty little secret ⦠I'm performing ⦠I'm the guest performance artist ⦠cee-voo-play ⦠(
rousing
) Ladies and gentlemen will you please welcome Miss ⦠Brandy ⦠Macready â¦
Deafening applause as Daughter starts to ad-lib from “I'll Take Care of You/It's a Man's World.”
DAUGHTER
  (
cont.
) (
singing
) I know what you're going through ⦠and I want to take care of you.
Wife bursts into Daughter's space.
DAUGHTER
  (
cont.
) Doobedoobedoo ⦠doobedoobedoo ⦠take care of you ⦠we never have to worry ⦠we never have to pine ⦠you've got to trust me (
really loud
) trust me ⦠trust me.
WIFE
  Brandy.
Daughter ignores her and goes on with her solo.
DAUGHTER
  (
singing
) Without a woman ⦠without a girl ⦠without a woman ⦠(
speaking voice
) what town is it ⦠(
singing
) without a woman without a woman.
Wife turns to Henry as if he is there.
WIFE
  (
loudly
) You see what your fornicating has done to this family, this child.
Daughter takes off fur coat. She is wearing a skimpy slip.
DAUGHTER
  (
coy voice
) Daddy ⦠Daddy did I tell you I lost it ⦠my cherry was popped ⦠it was with Nathan ⦠it
was so (
searching
) nothing. I kept saying to him, “Is it over, is it over?” ⦠now we do it wherever we get the chance ⦠I'm very good at it ⦠sex is not all it's cracked up to be but it's terrific not to be a virgin ⦠virgin sucks. Sucks.
WIFE
  Jesus.
S
CENE
E
IGHTEEN
MISTRESS
  I was asked to do a reading of his playâ
The Winter Maze.
Very grand apartment. I played the older woman and Rebecca played my rival ⦠There were two males, the nice guy and the shit. People sat on chairs and cushions, the cream, the cognoscenti ⦠Pauline, on a high throne, very relaxed, the sphinx. Afterward people said such adoring things to him, people gloated over him, women were gushing, telling him how great he was, how deep, how moving. He had thrown me the odd bashful smile and then he came over and said, “What did you think?” and I said, “It was good Henry ⦠but it doesn't cut the mustard.” He was appalled. I knew it was curtains because I knew that above and beyond what the shits and the cognoscenti said, that he had his own doubts about it. People were watching us, nudging, and Pauline the sphinx was sitting up commanding. I tried to make amends. I tried to give him back to himself, but it was too late. He did something ugly. A poodle kept sniffing around his ankle, just would not abstain, and he called across and said, “Pauline, can you get this bitch off me?”
WIFE
  (
commandingly
) What's going on between you two?
MISTRESS
  He told her, said, “Clarissa thinks it doesn't cut the mustard.”
WIFE
  (
going to her
) Oh really ⦠and how do you come to that conclusion?
MISTRESS
  I can't lie to him ⦠I don't lie to him about his work.
WIFE
  You think I do. You think he would have stayed with me all these years if I lied to him about what matters most to him in this world? You do us a disservice, my dear. Henry weighs every single word, a master jeweler, weighing his precious golds and his precious gems. Moreover, in case you think he stays with me because of my money you are also mistaken: Henry is a very independent man and I am not his purse. (
goes toward Mistress gloatingly
) You do know he does a real fine imitation of you for after-dinner guests. (
miming
) Your dying fall, the little flick of your wrists, your nasal sensitivity.
Mistress cowers.
S
CENE
N
INETEEN
MISTRESS
  I had to come out of
As You Like It
.
WIFE
  Struck poor Celia across the cheek, a hard nasty blow.
MISTRESS
  Her acting was false, mincing ⦠the director took â¦
WIFE
  ⦠Took you aside, sat you down â¦
MISTRESS
  Said I needed time off. Time off ⦠I who dreaded leisure. What to do. I walked â¦
WIFE
  She walked.
MISTRESS
  Got to know Manhattan ⦠the smells, the heat belching up out of the grids ⦠trumpet, trombone, the
ghost hands of the homeless like twigs ⦠people sitting on steps ⦠talking to themselves.
WIFE
  Crazy people ⦠Thinking you would walk into him. In a bar. In that private club where he goes to play poker.
MISTRESS
  There was this man on the pavement, very tall. Red beard, tartan rug, he sold cheap prints ⦠the wounded orchids of Georgia O'Keeffe, wounded, spent. I spoke to him, asked if he ever cracked up. He looked at me. “Never.” He was a mountain man and a Green Beret man ⦠Plus I have God ⦠Yes, that was his reply ⦠I rang Rachel. I said, “Have you God, Rachel, do you feel the presence of God, are you enfolded in God's arms?”
WIFE
  And Rachel told youâ“You're having a breakdown, very soon they'll come for you and you'll be in a place upstate where the inmates are not allowed to lock their bedroom doors ⦠bars on the windows ⦔
MISTRESS
  Rachel must have telephoned him because one morning he was ringing my doorbell ⦠Judge my disarray at him seeing me so unkempt ⦠he bearing a large bunch of white roses â¦
WIFE
  Not roses ⦠definitely not roses â¦
MISTRESS
  Let me say this, a man does not wish to see a woman on the verge of a breakdown ⦠He had kept the car waiting ⦠he was going to Washington to meet a senator ⦠they're all opportunists. “I got laid by one,” I said, harshly, too harshly, and he flinched and he said, “That's not very attractive, that's not like you,” and I said, “I know, I know.” He was in the doorway ⦠and he said, “I did, do, and always will love you.” I followed him out into the hall. It's a slow clunking lift. “Henry,” I called.
“Clarissa,” he called back. We had never said each other's names so tenderly, so ⦠hopelessly ⦠(
about to break
) They looked like roses â¦
