Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

and I’ll snap with it! We have to go! My parents are apes! They talk in code! In riddles! I hate my dress! It’s either too big or too small! And I never seem to change it! I’m trapped in my dress! I’m a prisoner—

TOMMY: Shut up! (He grabs her)

EMMA: Help me!

TOMMY: You’re pretty. (He grabs her nipple)

EMMA: OUCH!

(He clubs her to the floor with a grunt. Blackout. Todd rushes into a pool of light and addresses the audience.)

TODD: Earlier, when I gave my overview of life on the planet, I explained that I’d forgotten my notes. Now, it’s been pointed out to me that I made some mistakes. But I’m not going to correct them, because I don’t believe they were mistakes. I think the people who corrected me are idiots. The point is, I forgot my favorite part. The ten plagues. I love the plagues. They happened, as you know, or maybe you don’t, after the Jews built the pyramids, or before it, or during. And God wanted to punish the Egyptians for being nasty to the Hebrews, so he tortured them with plagues. I don’t remember them all. There was lice and vermin, which always seemed redundant to me. And frogs and blood and something else and something else. And my favorite, the slaying of the first born. It’s my favorite because I am a “first born.”

(Solemn) “And it came to pass at midnight, that the Lord smote all the first born in the land of Egypt, from the first born of the Pharaoh that sat upon the throne unto the first born of the captive in the dungeon; and all the first born of the cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in the land of Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said: ‘Rise up and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go and serve the Lord as ye have said.’ And the Egyptians were urgent to send them out of the land in haste; for they said . . . ‘We are all dead men.’”

(The lights come up. Everyone is present. Todd goes to work on the dinosaur. Arthur is reading the newspaper. Emma holds an ice pack on her breast. Tommy cleans windows.)

GRACE (Blankly): Let’s talk funerals.

ARTHUR: Grace!

GRACE: Well, since Todd is dying—

TOMMY: Did you ever see Funeral in Berlin?

ARTHUR: Buzz isn’t dying.

TODD: I have no symptoms.

EMMA (Raising her hand): I have symptoms.

GRACE: I thought he might want to have some say—come away from that thing.

ARTHUR: It’s revolting.

TODD: It’s our history.

GRACE: I want to talk to you.

TOMMY: I like it.

TODD: It’s a stegosaurus.

EMMA: It’s icky.

TODD: Or a tyrannosaurus.

EMMA: It’s creepy.

TODD: Or a coelurosaurus.

EMMA: It’s Roget’s Thesaurus!

TOMMY: With a shade, in the corner, and a forty-watt bulb—

GRACE: Don’t you want some say in what happens after you’re gone?

ARTHUR: I find this inappropriate.

TODD (Still working): In terms of what?

ARTHUR (To Todd): Let’s have a catch! Ya like that, Buzzboy?

TODD: No.

GRACE: In terms of who reads what, who wears what—

ARTHUR: We’ll go in the yard. It’s your day!

TODD: Did you know dinosaurs lived as families, traveling in packs?

ARTHUR: Who cares?

EMMA: The air is like sand.

GRACE (To Todd): What would you like to wear?

TOMMY: I’d like to wear something simple with a—

ARTHUR (To Tommy, hostile): Isn’t it dinnertime?

TOMMY: Excuse me. (He exits)

ARTHUR (Going to Emma): Let’s plan the wedding!

EMMA (Politely): Please don’t touch me.

ARTHUR: I think that’s a good idea! It’s okay with you, isn’t it, Buzzboy?

TODD: Todd.

GRACE: I’ll wear my black Donna Karan.

EMMA: At my wedding?

GRACE: It’s very simple. A black column. Very Greek. Very tragic. Very Medea.

ARTHUR: I don’t think that’s appropriate.

EMMA: It’s my wedding.

ARTHUR: People will talk.

EMMA: I wish I were dead.

GRACE: I love planning a party!

ARTHUR: Grace.

GRACE: Or an affair.

EMMA (To Todd): Can you breathe?

TODD: Yes.

GRACE: Emma, you wear that new black Romeo Gigli.

EMMA: I thought I’d wear white.

ARTHUR: And you’ll look beautiful.

EMMA: What do you mean by that?

GRACE: How’s “Oh, Promise Me”?

ARTHUR: At Buzz’s funeral?

TODD: I’m not dying.

GRACE: At Emma’s wedding.

TODD: Did you know all dinosaurs lived on land?

GRACE: I thought that’s what you wanted to plan.

TODD: Pterodactyls, for instance, weren’t dinosaurs. They lived in the sky. But they died just the same.

GRACE (To Todd): Open casket?

ARTHUR: Stay on one subject Grace.

GRACE (Out): I love planning a party! The occasion is piffle.

EMMA: The air is like halvah.

GRACE: Remember the party I threw for the new lawn jockey?

EMMA: Of course not.

ARTHUR: Remember that, Buzz?

TODD: Call me Todd.

ARTHUR: Remember that?

GRACE: I thought we might do something along those lines.

TODD: At her wedding?

EMMA: At his funeral?

ARTHUR: Grace! No one knows what you’re talking about!

GRACE: Don’t shout at me!

TODD: Don’t bully her!

ARTHUR: Don’t be fresh, Buzz.

TODD: My name is Todd!

EMMA (Extending her hand): My name is Emma. Have we met?

TODD (To Emma, hostile): Christ!

ARTHUR: It’s all right, Emma.

EMMA (Politely): Please don’t touch me.

GRACE: What about entertainment?

TODD: I’ll read poems by Brecht!

EMMA: At my wedding?

GRACE: Too downbeat.

TODD: His comic poems.

GRACE: I thought a sit-down dinner, on the lawn, under a tent.

TODD: I like this one:

“I am dirt. From Myself

I can demand nothing but

Weakness, treachery and degradation.”

ARTHUR: That’s not comic. Not remotely.

GRACE: I thought squab or salmon, or both with pearl onions!

TODD: How about:

“With arsenic: I had

Tubes in my side with

Pus flowing night and day—”

EMMA: Ick!

GRACE: Emma, if you have a hundred can Tommy make due with a hundred?

TODD: Should I continue?

GRACE, ARTHUR and EMMA: No!

EMMA: A hundred what?

GRACE: Guests. People. Friends. Family.

EMMA: Tommy has no family.

TODD: Lucky.

EMMA: And I have no friends.

TODD: What about Alice Paulker?

EMMA: Dead.

ARTHUR: I cannot afford dinner for two hundred people!

GRACE: How many weddings will you give?

EMMA: I don’t need a wedding.

GRACE: Yes, you do.

EMMA: I don’t I don’t I don’t.

GRACE: How many daughters do you have?

EMMA (Panicked): Are there sisters I’ve repressed?

ARTHUR: Who are these two hundred people?

GRACE: There are the