A Passage of Time by David Mauriello
JOSEPHINE: Mike's thinking. So! You would be cleaning up. Men! Making
beds, swishing out hoppers, and God knows who'll be sleeping under
your roof. I think you should sell. What if there's a depression,
who'll come all the way up here for a vacation? What if the weather is
bad? At least the bank was safe. You had a future. Why couldn't you
have left it at that? You at the bank, Mike working for the
university? I see he hasn't quit, or moved from his apartment in
Boston.
JOEY: This is unbelievable. You suggested that, that he keep his job,
until we saw how things went up here since he was earning more. Mike
was against it. But you were so upset.
JOSEPHINE: MIKE, Mike, Mike. All of a sudden, it's Mike, Mike, Mike.
JOEY: (laughing) All of a sudden? I've known Mike for almost a year.
Pop and Rose think he's great.
JOSEPHINE: Almost a year. Compared to your lifetime.. Joey! I can't
stand it. Living with your sick father, Rose growing more senile every
day. You gave me hope, maybe it's wrong, but I kind of planned
around you. I wanted you to have a job with prestige, not a
chambermaid in some hick town.
JOEY: I should think you'd be proud, my own business. Mike's and mine.
We'd be in business now, but you. I mean, for someone who hates the
place, you went to a lot of trouble moving up here, having Mike
rearrange all his plans.
JOSEPHINE: If you must be told, reminded. I couldn't face the thought
of you being here and me back there with. I would just miss you,
that's why.
LIGHTS DOWN on inside area, LIGHTS UP on deck
POP: How many blue eggs in a dozen? Think that's an easy one, but
you'd be surprised how many people get tripped up on the color.
MIKE: Hey in there. We're about to have a wild plum party. Go ahead,
Ray, eat.
POP: Josie! Josie! Will you take a look at this? (to MIKE) She knows
just how much I can have.
JOSEPHINE and JOEY enter.
JOSEPHINE: (reading the label) Hmmmm, just natural fruit sugar, smells
good. (spreads a cracker with jam) Wild Plum. Sounds exotic.
POP: Is it expensive?
JOSEPHINE: You're not supposed to ask. Now here, have some.
RAY eats. THEY watch for his reaction
POP: (savoring the attention) Not so bad.
JOEY: Isn't it good?
JOSEPHINE: He doesn't know the word. I slave baking things, and all he
ever says is “not so bad.”
MIKE: That means it must be good.
JOEY: Could mean, fair or poor. Pop. Mike bought that jam, how is it?
ROSE: What is it, strawberry?
MIKE: Wild Plum, Rose. Want some?
ROSE: I'd rather have a highball.
MIKE: Use your imagination.
MIKE spreads jam on cracker, hands it to Rose. ROSE eats. THEY all
watch for her reaction
ROSE: That's a good cracker. Ritz?
JOSEPHINE: Rose! How's the jam? The jam.
ROSE: Excellent. Ray, isn't it good?
POP: Not so bad. (helps himself to more)
JOSEPHINE: No more after that, Ray.
ROSE: We used to can our own. With wax on top to seal the jar.
MIKE: You did?
JOSEPHINE: Of course. We had shelves and shelves. Canned apples,
pears, peaches, blueberries.(She spreads a cracker) Ahhh, that is
good. Thank you, Mike. Joey, try some.
JOEY: (reads from can) “Wild Plum.” What does that mean?
POP: They pick plums and turn them into jam.
MIKE: I think he means the “wild.”
JOSEPHINE: (hands JOEY a cracker) Joey, try it.
THEY watch him
JOEY: (eating) Hmmmm, not so bad. I mean, it's good. Smells fresh,
airy.
ROSE: We had long poles with little wire baskets at the end of it so
we could reach up and pick the apples.
MIKE: You had orchards.
JOSEPHINE: No. Just a lot of trees.
POP: That's what an orchard is. Rose and I would bushel them and sell
them to the stores, a dollar a bushel.
JOEY: A dollar! You got cheated.
MIKE: We're the ones getting cheated with prices today. (eats a
cracker) But I don't know about the “wild.” It's like bread they call
“country kitchen.” They bake it in a factory in the city.
JOEY: You don't think it's really wild.
ROSE: It was wild when we picked 'em. Especially towards the end of
those warm, late summer evenings
JOSEPHINE: Rose!
MIKE: Uh, uh. Hanky-panky in the orchards.
ROSE: The boys pushing those long poles at each other, and we girls
shrieking in the bushes (She laughs hysterically)
JOSEPHINE: Rose. Stop, stop.
JOEY: Let her laugh.
ROSE starts to choke
JOSEPHINE: Sure, sure, let her laugh. But who stops her coughing?
JOSEPHINE slaps ROSE on the back
ROSE: Remember the time when one of the boys waved a pole in the air
and there was a girl's panties hanging from the end of it?
MIKE: How'd that happen?
POP: They sure weren't his own.
JOSEPHINE: Ray.
JOEY: Whose were they?
ROSE: I know.
JOSEPHINE: Rose, stop. You don't know. You don't even know when to buy
new shoes.
ROSE: When I get some money.
JOSEPHINE: Ha. You keep pinning your security checks to your slip.
They'll cancel them if you don't cash them soon.
MIKE: Wait a minute. What about the panties?
JOSEPHINE: Don't you think we should call Irene and Bob? Maybe
something happened.
ROSE: I know. So does Josie. Wild Josie.
POP: What? No, not with the fat Watkins kid. (makes sound like a pig)
Oink. Oink. That's what we called him. Oinky. But he was crazy about
Josephine, chased her all over the place.
MIKE: So. You didn't just gather fruit. You gathered rosebuds.
ROSE: And blackberries. And when the pears were overripe they'd draw
all those yellow jackets
JOEY: Mama wouldn't.
JOSEPHINE: What a foolish conversation. Something we don't know about
forty or more years ago. And anyway, Rose being the oldest, was up in
the kitchen.
ROSE laughs
JOSEPHINE(CONT): She can't remember what day it is and you think she
remembers that.
ROSE: (rising, defiantly) I remember. I do! It was just getting dark,
so's you'd begin to feel private. We heard shrieking in the bushes.
Then it was all quiet, then out came this long pole with panties on
it, waving like a victory flag.
JOEY: What?
MIKE: Wild cherries.
JOSEPHINE: MIKE!!
JOEY: Mama?
JOSEPHINE: What a foolish discussion.
MIKE: Who belonged to the panties?
JOEY: Who belonged to the pole?
ROSE: I know!
JOSEPHINE: Rose shut up.
POP: Tell us, Rose.
JOSEPHINE: Ray. You'll be sorry.
POP: (exchanging a glance with JOSEPHINE) What! All right. That's
enough, Rose, that's enough.
JOSEPHINE: That ham must be about done.
MIKE: Rose, you can't stop now.
ROSE: Well, they were pink
JOSEPHINE: All panties were pink in those days, it seems to me. Rose,
see if I help you take a bath anymore.
ROSE: You make the water too hot, anyway.
MIKE: Meow. Meow. Cat's been in the bag an awfully long time.
JOEY: No big deal. I know it wasn't Mama.
MIKE: I thought you liked pink, too, Josephine.
POP: What?
MIKE: Just an observation. The way she had decorated your apartment.
JOSEPHINE: Ray, come help me with the ham. If they want to listen to
someone who gets her facts all mixed up.
As JOSEPHINE gets up, ROSE reaches for her, knocking the can of jam
onto the floor
ROSE: There wasn't just piggy Watkins. There were other boys, not just
Ray, there was our brother Richard. Richard was always fighting to
carry Josephine's book to school. And , yes! that handsome blond
boy
JOSEPHINE picks up the can and stands mesmerized
ROSE(CONT) wanted to quit school and marry her right then and
there. but everybody said wait, wait, take your time, take your time.
Blond. Became a boxer. Then he got killed in the war. What was his
name?
A brief silence. JOSEPHINE: slowly sits, looking at the can
JOSEPHINE: Wild Plum. I think it's real. Yes, real wild plum.
POP: No, Mother. Mike is right. The trees these plums grow on are
planted in neat rows, in weed-free soil, with fences around to stop
the wind. The trees have rubber bands around their trunks with numbers
on them and wires that tie them all together. Even the honeybees that
pollinate them come from a cultivated hive.
JOSEPHINE: They would say so, on the can.
MIKE: They do in a way. See where it says Wild Plum? Right after it
there's a tiny circle with the letter “r”. It's a registered trademark
that's all. A trademark.
JOSEPHINE: Oh, no, no. I thought they were found, in the forests, by
chance, real big black plums, purple with dew on them. Black trunks.
They're fairly short trees, plum trees, but hardy, growing in rocky
soil, the wind pushes them, makes them crooked, but they spring up,
wild, eager, unconventional. (She rushes off)