Читать книгу The Unnatural and Accidental Women - Marie Clements - Страница 7

SFX: A collage of trees whispering in the wind.

SLIDE: THE UNNATURAL AND ACCIDENTAL WOMEN

SFX: The sound of a tree opening up to a split. A loud crack—a haunting gasp for air that is suspended. The sustained sound of suspension as the tree teeters.

SLIDE: FALLING BACK—Beacon Hotel

Lights dim up on a small room covered with the shadows of tree leaves and limbs. Lights up on a LOGGER looking up at a tree, handsaw in hand. He shouts across time.

LOGGER:

TIM-BER…

AUNT SHADIE:

Re-becca …

A big woman suddenly emerges from a bed of dark leaves. Gasping, she bolts upright, unfallen. Nude, she rises, leaving the image of herself in the bed. She follows the sounds and images of the trees.

SLIDE: Rita Louise James, 52, died November 10, 1978, with a 0.12 blood-alcohol reading. No coroner’s report issued.

SFX: Real sound of REBECCA slamming a glass of beer on her table.

SFX: The sound of trees moving in the wind increases.

SLIDE: TIMBER

Lights fade up on REBECCA as she sits, and thinks, and drinks at a round table with a red terry-cloth cover. She takes her pen and writes in her journal.

The LOGGER continues sawing …

SFX: Sound of a long saw sawing under softly in lengths.

AUNT SHADIE walks through the forest, covered by the leaves/branches in them.

REBECCA:

Everything here has been falling—a hundred years of trees have fallen from the sky’s grace. They laid on their backs trying to catch their breath as the loggers connected them to anything that could move, and moved them, creating a long muddy path where the ends of trees scraped the ground, whispering their last connection to the earth. This whispering left a skid. A skid mark. A row. Skid Row.

The LOGGER lays down his saw and picks up a chainsaw…

SFX: Sound of a chainsaw under.

Throughout—a blizzard of sawdust chips swarms the backdrop, covering AUNT SHADIE and tree parts. One by one, the trees have been carved into a row of hotels.

REBECCA:

Hotels sprung up instead of trees—to make room for the loggers. First, young men sweating and working under the sky’s grace. They worked. They sweated. They fed their family for the Grace of God. And then the men began to fall. First, just pieces.

AUNT SHADIE:

Fingers …

REBECCA:

… chopped down to the palm.

AUNT SHADIE:

Legs …

REBECCA:

… chopped up to the thighs.

AUNT SHADIE:

Years …

REBECCA:

… went by. You never knew what might be fallen. A tree. A man. Or, a tree on its way down deciding to lay on its faller like a thick and humorous lover, saying …

AUNT SHADIE:

“Honey, I love you—we are both in this together. This is love till death do us part—just try and crawl out from under me.”

REBECCA:

Some of the men survived their amorous lover. Rows of men sweet-talked that last fallen tree into moving an inch to get that human limb out. Maybe just a leg—or part of it. Whispering …

AUNT SHADIE:

“God, if you just do this for me. Jesus, just get this log off me … and …”

REBECCA:

Well, a whole crew of men sitting in their rooms drinking and thinking of the weight of that last tall love.

The LOGGER finishes and looks around and looks right at REBECCA. REBECCA mouths “I love you” to him silently.

The LOGGER cups his ear and shouts towards her.

LOGGER:

Eh? (he waves his hand a “never mind” and continues)

REBECCA:

Saying “Eh”?

The LOGGER continues the buzz with the chainsaw. Wood chips blizzard on the backdrop. The chainsaw buzzes under transforming to a bar buzz.

AUNT SHADIE:

(laughs) Saying “Eh?” a lot. Could you repeat that? Their voices yelling over the sound of the power saw buzzing thirty years ago, or was it last year? Never mind, the buzz rings in their ears just as the sawdust used to rest in their belly buttons after a hard day’s work. Honest work. A tree for …

REBECCA:

… a thumb.

AUNT SHADIE:

A tree for a …

REBECCA:

… leg.

AUNT SHADIE:

A tree for their …

REBECCA:

… hearing.

AUNT SHADIE:

An honest trade made between a logger and his trees. No malice between the two—just an honest respect for the give and take of nature.

SFX: The full buzz of a bar under.

The woodchip blizzard clears, and crudely made stumps that look like bar stools remain behind her and deepen the look of the bar—the Empress Hotel. AUNT SHADIE walks across the bar but is also covered by it, in it.

REBECCA:

Now the loggers sit like their lovers, the trees—they sit like stumps, and drink, and think. And think the world has gone to shit. They think of a time when cutting down a tree was an honest job, a time when they all had their good-looking limbs, a time when they were respected by the tallest order, a time when drinking was not an addiction.

AUNT SHADIE turns up a flight of stairs as we watch her shadow ascend.

AUNT SHADIE:

And the women. Oh the women strolled by and took in their young sun-baked muscles and happy cash.

REBECCA turns back to her journal.

REBECCA:

If you sit long enough, maybe everything becomes clear. Maybe you can make sense of all the losses and find one thing you can hold on to. I’m sitting here thinking of everything that has passed, everyone that is gone, and hoping I can find her, my mother. Not because she is my first choice, but because she is my last choice and … my world has gone to shit.

She looks around the room and raises her glass.

Cheers …

Lights up on the same hotel room, as AUNT SHADIE takes two old suitcases out from under her bed. She lies them on the bed and opens them slowly, hesitantly. Cree words spill out everywhere. She opens and closes the sound and begins to laugh. Affectionately, she snaps them shut, picks them up and walks towards the door and up. The suitcases get heavier and heavier as she rises.

SLIDE: THE SWITCHBOARD—Reception

AUNT SHADIE walks towards small lights that fade up and down. As she approaches, lights fade up on the back of ROSE sitting at her switchboard. Her lobby is a 1960s hotel. ROSE is dressed conservatively in 1960s attire. The switchboard beeps and lights. She connects throughout. AUNT SHADIE huffs herself forward.

AUNT SHADIE:

Excuse me.

ROSE:

(not looking at her) Can I help you?

AUNT SHADIE:

Yeah sure. I’m looking for a place to leave my baggage for a while.

ROSE:

I’m sorry, I can’t do that.

AUNT SHADIE:

Why, because I’m In—

ROSE:

—naked. Yes, that’s it. You’ll have to register first. I can’t be taking just anybody’s baggage now, can I? Can you write your name?

AUNT SHADIE:

Listen, I’m naked, not stupid.

ROSE:

Oh. Well, I’m just trying to help you people out.

AUNT SHADIE:

Why don’t you look at me when you say that?

ROSE turns slowly around revealing a black eye and bruises on her face.

AUNT SHADIE:

Wow, they sure dragged you through it.

ROSE:

Humph. (ROSE looks away from AUNT SHADIE’s nakedness)

AUNT SHADIE:

Haven’t you ever seen anybody nude before?

ROSE:

Not up front.

AUNT SHADIE:

I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for you or not. Well, I went to bed wearing clothes, and then I woke up naked as a jailbird.

ROSE:

I woke up naked once.

AUNT SHADIE:

What, a million years ago?

ROSE:

Pardon me?

AUNT SHADIE:

I said, good for you.

ROSE:

Aren’t you cold?

AUNT SHADIE:

Of course, I’m cold.

ROSE:

Here, put this on.

ROSE takes a big beige cardigan from her chair and hands it to her.

AUNT SHADIE:

Now I feel ugly.

ROSE:

It’s from England.

AUNT SHADIE:

Like I said, now I feel ugly.

ROSE:

It’s the same one the Queen wore on her inaugural visit to Canada.

AUNT SHADIE:

Like I said, ugly. (looking at the sweater) Ugly. For a queen, you’d think she’d dress better. It’s almost like she’s punishing herself. If I had all her money, I wouldn’t be wearing all those dowdy dresses. Just once I’d like her to wear a colour. Something not beige or plaid. Something blue maybe. Something that gives her colour: Red!

ROSE:

Mothers of countries do not wear red.

AUNT SHADIE:

She’s a mother alright. Always did love those white gloves though. They remind me of white swans, especially when she waves. It’s kinda pretty actually.

ROSE:

My mother always wore gloves. She used to say a lady wasn’t a lady unless she wore gloves.

AUNT SHADIE:

Hmm. My mother wore mitts. They were white though, and furry. Big rabbit mitts. When my mother waved, it wasn’t so much pretty as it was sad.

ROSE:

Waving can be sad.

AUNT SHADIE waves like a queen.

Where you going?

AUNT SHADIE:

I’m dying for a smoke.

ROSE:

What about registering?

ROSE watches as AUNT SHADIE signs her name.

Rita Louise James.

AUNT SHADIE:

There, you satisfied?

ROSE:

Just doing my job.

AUNT SHADIE:

What’s that?

ROSE:

I’m taking account.

AUNT SHADIE:

Reminds me of the government. Taking count but not accountable.

She picks up her suitcases and begins to leave.

ROSE:

You’re going like that?

AUNT SHADIE:

(looks down on herself) Why not?

ROSE:

You sure you don’t want me to find you some pants?

AUNT SHADIE:

It’s alright. There’s a good draft …

ROSE:

Oh please.

AUNT SHADIE:

… and frankly, if the pants look anything like the cardigan, I might as well be dead.

ROSE:

Suit yourself.

AUNT SHADIE:

I always have.

AUNT SHADIE keeps on walking. Lights fade on ROSE. AUNT SHADIE stops and sits on her suitcases. She reaches inside one of them and pulls out a pack of tobacco and rolls a cigarette. She reaches in and picks up an outfit from when she was a housewife. She smells the material and closes her eyes in memory. The clothes talk to her and she to them. She drapes them over her body and smokes her thinking smoke. Lights fade, leaving a bright butt and smoke rising up.

SLIDE: Rose Doreen Holmes, 52, died January 27, 1965, with a 0.51 blood-alcohol reading. “Coroner’s inquiry reported she was found nude on her bed and had recent bruises on her scalp, nose, lips and chin. There was no evidence of violence, or suspicion of foul play.”

Lights fade up on ROSE, as she affectionately touches her switchboard. It responds with light flashes and beeps and muffled voices.

ROSE:

I’ve always been right here. No matter where I am, I am in between people connecting. I like to think I’m the one who connects them, but mostly I like to think that they have to go through me. If nothing else, it gives me a place. A place in the making, the flashes of being … the feeling of feeding that beeping energy into a whole that understands it, and soothes it, into a gentle darkness. A small whimper when it enters—a connection between the here and there—a giant light it becomes. It begins and ends with the beeping, but it goes through me. I wait for the cry like a mother listening, hoping to slot the right thing into its void—hoping to be the one to bring about the pure answer. Again, the pure gentle darkness that says I have listened and you were lovely, no matter how loud your beeping cry becomes, no matter how many times I wanted to help but couldn’t. There is something maternal about it, the wanting to help, the trying, going through the motions on the switchboard, but in the end just being there always it seems just listening to voices looking for connection, an eternal connection between women’s voices and worlds.

ROSE leans over and nosily watches AUNT SHADIE enter REBECCA’s world.

Everybody always thinks that the switchboard operator is listening in on their conversations, and they’re not always wrong. The tricky thing is to act like you don’t know a thing. I swear on the Queen, it’s a tricky thing.

AUNT SHADIE enters dressed as a young housewife. She is carrying her suitcases and a folded piece of paper. She sets the suitcases down and places a paper on the table. She turns to leave, but stops as REBECCA picks it up.

SLIDE: RUNNING SHOES

SFX: Sound of wind in the trees.

Backdrop gradually brings in close-ups of Hastings Street when it was the centre of shopping. The Army and Navy, Woolworth’s—late 1960s/70s.

REBECCA:

My dad—the Character—was still full-limbed but hard-of-hearing when he died. Still asking “Eh?” after every sentence I spoke, but quick to hear the sound of change falling to the ground. Death was no big surprise for him. The thing he couldn’t get out from under was the day she left. I found him holding a piece of paper she had put on the kitchen table. He held it for a long time and then simply folded it and put it in his pocket. “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

SFX: Sound of tree falling and landing.

He said, “She went for a walk.” I thought maybe she had gone to the IGA or something. Somebody was always having to go to the IGA. When she didn’t return and he didn’t move, I started complaining about the big fact that I was supposed to get new running shoes today. I was supposed to go downtown today. I was supposed to get a hamburger today … milkshakes, fries and ketchup at Woolworth’s. It was supposed to have been a great day, and now we had to wait. I was getting pissed off, because I was getting tired of going to the Salvation Army for smelly clothes, and I felt like I was gonna be normal like everyone else when Mom said we could go to the Army and Navy and get something new, something that smelled good, something that nobody had ever worn. Blue suede running shoes—three stripes on either side. I had to have them. It was unbearable, and my dad just standing there, and my mom deciding to go to the IGA. I thought it was a master plan. Both of them against me being normal. I started yelling—the injustice too great. My dad just stood there like he didn’t hear anything. “Get in the truck,” he said. We went. I ate hamburgers and floats and fries and everything I could see in the posters of food on the walls of the Woolworth’s cafeteria on Hastings Street. We went to the Army and Navy. We went home. No Mom. Again. “Where’s Mom?” again. He said, “She left us. I didn’t know anything was wrong.” He sat down. I took my running shoes off. I would never wear them again. Nothing was going to be normal.

REBECCA takes the running shoes off and kicks them. AUNT SHADIE turns around and silently picks them up, putting them properly under her chair. She exits.

Fade out.

SFX: Sound of car streams, transforming into the tide.

SLIDE: FOUR DAYS: DAY 1—Glenaird Hotel

SFX: Sound of tide hitting the edge of the island/bed.

The hotel room is an ocean of blue. The bed an island. The lone woman sits on her island. She is wet and holds a white pillow that shapes her different needs. The comfort of a child, a lover. THE WOMAN reaches over and grabs a drink from the table beside her. She places it down and in … in her own drinking rhythm. The ocean gets deeper in its colour.

Rhythms of a drinking room: 1) Tide—Time, 2) Light vs. Shadow, 3) Drinking Rhythm.

SFX: Sound of the tide begins to increase and finally sprays to telephone static.

SLIDE: I’M SCARED TO DIE 1

A click of light on. MAVIS sits in a huge beaten-up armchair. Her hotel room matches the chair. It is beaten and slightly tinged with hues of brown. As she sits, MAVIS leafs through her address book looking and reminiscing about each entry. She urgently picks up the phone and dials. A light flashes up on the switchboard, and we hear ROSE speak in the darkness.

MAVIS:

Hi, Mona? It’s me.

SFX: Weird static and otherworldly connection.

ROSE:

I’m sorry, you’ve reached the operator.

MAVIS:

The operator? I didn’t want any operator. I dialed the numbers myself. I’m more than capable of calling a long-distance number.

ROSE:

I’m sure you are. At any rate, you’ve reached the operator. (very polite) Can … I … help … you?

MAVIS:

Well, I guess if you’re just sitting on your ass you could put me through—save me the time of letting my fingers do the walking.

ROSE:

I’m sorry, I can’t do that.

MAVIS:

Are you gonna help me or not?

ROSE:

Well, to be honest … no one’s ever reached me on the phone before, and I just don’t know if it’s house policy or not.

MAVIS:

What kind of house are you in where people call and you don’t help them?

ROSE:

Don’t raise your voice at me. I’m just following rules.

MAVIS:

Whose rules?

ROSE:

Management.

MAVIS:

(covers the receiver with her hand) Bitch!

ROSE:

Pardon me?

MAVIS:

I said, isn’t that rich.

ROSE:

I’ll put this call through just this once as a special favour, but this is highly unusual.

MAVIS:

Sure … whatever.

SFX: Sound of real telephone connection.

(ring) Hi, Mona. I just thought … (ring) … got to thinking of you and thought I’d call. Actually, I just thought I’d call ’cause (ring) I wondered if you and Bill might be coming into town sometime. You know, change of scenery and all … (ring) Doing good here, though (ring) just would be nice to hear your voice. I’ll try back later, okay. (ring) We’ll talk about all sorts of things. What I need is a good laugh. (ring) You know, a laugh so hard liquid comes from your nose like that time … (ring) Well, anyways, here I am going on … Just would be nice to talk about some old times maybe. (ring) I’d like that. I’d … like … that …

She slowly places the receiver to her chest.