| |
Characters: SYD, a 72 year-old man; Jewish, crotchety
MRS. ERSKINE, a 62 year-old woman, WASP socialite
Time: The present.
Place: The waiting room in a doctor’s office in Manhattan.
(SYD and MRS. ERSKINE sit next to each other.)
SYD: Cold in here.
MRS. ERSKINE: Quite.
SYD: Park Avenue neurologist, you’d think he wouldn’t skimp on the heat.
MRS. ERSKINE: Indeed.
SYD: You must be warm though, that jacket? What is it, chinchilla?
MRS. ERSKINE: Mink.
SYD: Oh come on, forty years I worked in the garment business, you don’t think I can
tell the difference? Those PETA guys should be kissing my ass how much faux fur I
passed off as mink in my time.
MRS. ERSKINE: It’s real mink.
SYD: Let me feel.
MRS. ERSKINE: I wish you wouldn’t.
SYD: (Feeling her coat.) Soft.
MRS. ERSKINE: I’d wish you’d get your hands --
SYD: That’s the real thing alright. How much a coat like that cost you?
MRS. ERSKINE: Let us pray that a seat opens somewhere else in this waiting room.
SYD: I bet you at least 10 Gs.
MRS. ERSKINE: Perhaps my bearing alone has not conveyed the message to you
clearly enough, so allow me to make it explicit…please keep quiet.
SYD: You want me to shut up.
MRS. ERSKINE: Did I leave it ambiguous?
SYD: Well, I would, I would, if they called my name already. Been waiting here oneand-
a-half hours.
MRS. ERSKINE: Myself just as long.
SYD: The Messiah could have come and gone by now.
MRS. ERSKINE: And I am one of his oldest patients.
SYD: And I’m his father.
MRS. ERSKINE: Well, that’s a relief. I was worried the good doctor had begun to
admit a certain HMO element.
SYD: What’s wrong with you?
MRS. ERSKINE: I believe I may be losing my mind.
SYD: No, not why you’re here - you don’t think I know already that the goyim are
meshugenah? I mean, why do you keep insulting me?
MRS. ERSKINE: Meshu --?
SYD: Crazy, crazy, the gentiles are crazy. No Jew would ever worship some guy runs
around with long hair in the desert. The schvitz alone could have flooded the whole
Negev.
MRS. ERSKINE (She spots a magazine.): Oh look, Martha Stewart. Pabulum for the lower
classes is better than pabulum from them.
SYD: My son ever tell you about me?
MRS. ERSKINE: One, I wouldn’t be interested anyway. Two, you have to remember
he does have a sense of shame.
SYD: Figures he wouldn’t. Fancy doctor lives in Scarsdale, treats me like some kind of
greenhorn, fresh off the boat, still hasn’t been through delousing. His shikse wife too,
venomous raven-eyed bitch - she’s the one who turned him against me.
MRS. ERSKINE: Frankly, I would count yourself fortunate that your son even agreed
to see you.
SYD: He took my girl away, that’s why I’m here. She cleaned my apartment, did my
errands - said he wouldn’t pay for her anymore unless I came in for a check-up. It’s not
fair. I can’t get my groceries myself. Every time I go into the bodega around the corner,
they look at me like I’m Judas Iscariot. That girl’s been with me since my wife died.
MRS. ERSKINE: I’m sorry.
SYD: Thank you. Ten years she’s been buried, but it feels like yesterday.
MRS. ERSKINE: Mine was buried yesterday, but he was dead to me ten years ago.
SYD: My Gloria.
MRS. ERSKINE: My Archie.
(SYD looks to the heavens. MRS. ERSKINE spits in disgust.)
SYD: Not the greatest relationship, huh?
MRS. ERSKINE: It was a marriage of convenience turned inconvenient then an
albatross.
SYD: Gloria was my everything. Not a day goes by when I don’t want to join her.
MRS. ERSKINE: When I go, I want it to be sudden and operatic.
SYD: (Not paying her any attention.) Why shouldn’t I want to join her, huh? He says I’m
just sitting around waiting to die. Waiting to die. I say I’m honoring her the way she
deserves to be honored. The flame on his mother’s yorzheit candle still flickering, and
he’s talking with a caterer about a shellfish bar for their wedding. If the Jews in the
camps had known they were scraping and struggling to survive all so the next generation
would wipe out their religion of their own doing, they would have been rushing to throw
themselves in the ovens.
MRS. ERSKINE: I somehow doubt that.
SYD: Yeah? How would you feel your kid married a Jew?
MRS. ERSKINE: My son is gay.
SYD: You shouldn’t begrudge him his happiness.
MRS. ERSKINE: Gay as in homosexual, those of bent wrist, lisps, and from what I can
tell from their political activity, a complete overestimation of the pleasures of marriage.
Archie disinherited him. I sit around waiting for the call one day where he’ll tell me he
has the virus and I have to tell him I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help him. Every
conceivable advantage we offered him. The finest schools, entree to exclusive social
clubs full of all the right people, a job at any of the best law firms. Instead, he becomes
a florist in Tucson.
SYD: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
MRS. ERSKINE: Thank you. Thank you for that.
SYD: I went last month, Passover at their house. He says he’s going to send a car for
me. All I have to do is ride the elevator down to the bottom of my building, everything
else will be taken care of. “How about I bring the Haggadah we used when you were a
kid?” I say. He hands the phone to his wife. He doesn’t have the guts to tell me himself.
“No Syd, no need to bring anything, we’ve got it all covered,” she says. I get up there,
it’s not Pesach they’re celebrating, it’s some kind of Amnesty International benefit for
every goy who’s ever had to suffer a day of discomfort. They’re singing Negro spirituals,
Joan Baez songs - I tell you, I learned more about Pol Pot’s crimes against humanity than
I did the Pharaoh’s.
MRS. ERSKINE: A lack of respect for tradition and ceremony.
SYD: You got it.
MRS. ERSKINE: My son has even changed his last name.
SYD: If the ancient Hebrews had known they would wander around the burning hot
desert for 40 years only to have their descendants remember them by commemorating
the genocide in Armenia, they would have asked Moses to open up the Dead Sea again
so they could go to the bottom and join the Egyptians.
MRS. ERSKINE: If I had known I would be strapped to a hospital bed and writhing in
pain for 32 hours only to give birth to a boy who considers Mame the height of artistic
achievement, I would have strangled him with his own cord right then and there.
(Pause. They realize they have more in common than they thought.)
SYD: Freezing in here.
MRS. ERSKINE: I can’t understand what’s taking so long.
SYD: I was wondering -
MRS. ERSKINE: Yes?
SYD: We’re never going to get out of here.
MRS. ERSKINE: Quite possible.
SYD: But if we do…
MRS. ERSKINE: Ah-hah.
SYD: I was wondering if you would like to go for a cup of coffee.
MRS. ERSKINE: Why, I’d be delighted.
THE END
|
