christopher woods : “cleveland impromptu”

 

Mary, will you never get out of bed? So many hours have passed now, fading into days. And you won’t get up. Surely you have things to do, errands to run. Your duties in this world go unattended, and it’s so unlike you. As though you don’t care that your mother waits hungry at the nursing home. You know full well she will not eat unless you are there to feed her. How even her voice disappears for a week when her daughter isn’t around. So unlike you, Mary.

 

You don’t even bother to answer the phone when your boss calls, begging you to help with inventory at SUPER SHOE OUTLET. You know how Frank depends on you.

Here it is, seven in the evening, and you are still in your nightgown, soiled and caked. My, you’ve changed. For shame, Mary.

 

In the kitchens of neighbors meals are being prepared. Shepherd’s pie, meat loaf, good old Sloppy Joe’s. Children wander home at dusk, laughing and still fighting, twitching from energy or drugs, who can tell. Families gather in kitchens, dream of better times in every crock pot and microwave dinner. Everyone knows night is coming. Wheel Of Fortune blares from countless televisions. In their hearts, they all believe that Vanna White will live forever, just like Jesus.

 

Your own television screen is now black, and that too is odd. You with all your soap operas, reality shows, the sacred shopping channels. In short, all the important things in life. Why are you ignoring all this, as if you are suddenly too important for the flash and jolt of the video midway? Mary, have you lost your religion?

 

In bed, you appeared poised and waiting, but for what? A change of attitude? His? Your own? For time to reverse itself so that you are a young  bride again, your nipples erect, for John on your wedding night at Red Roof Inn? Just what are you thinking, Lazy Mary?

 

Oh, this must simply be a front. You must know by now that John won’t be coming to bed. That the television will remain mute and dark. Night seeps through curtains. It blankets you in your bed, crawls slowly across the floor, then hurries down the hall to the kitchen, where John still sits ramrod at the table, his eyes unblinking, piles of unpaid bills spread out before him on the table, his brain scattershot on the blue wall paper and across the sea of cocoa puffs, his pistol still dangling from his trigger finger.

 

Christopher Woods is the author of a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY (Panther Creek Press), & a collection of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK (Stone River Press). His play, MOONBIRDS, about doomed census takers in a desert country, received its New York City premiere by PERSONAL SPACE THEATRICS. He lives in Houston & in Chappell Hill, Texas.

 

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