Cast of Characters

 

YVETTE: Fifty years old, very attractive, great legs. She wears a chic black mourning dress and a large black sunhat. 

 

JOHN: Fifty-two years old, handsome, a professional actor by trade. Past lover to Yvette Martin. He has not seen Yvette in fifteen years.

 

SETTING: The open courtyard of a funeral reception. There are four wrought iron tables, each with four chairs. Sunlight is streaming down into the courtyard. A lone woman sits at one of the tables. Assorted mourners are scattered in the shadowed walkway that surround the courtyard.

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TIME: Midday, a warm day in spring. 

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AT RISE: YVETTE, sitting at a table in the sunshine. She is holding a glass of wine. Enter JOHN carrying a glass of wine and a tumbler of whiskey. He approaches YVETTE’s table.

 

YVETTE: John Staffen, a ghost from the past at a wake.

JOHN: Hello Yvette. I saw your glass was empty. I had to guess on the wine.

YVETTE: Red and in a glass is perfect.

JOHN: I can't believe it's fifteen years. You look really good.

YVETTE: It's sixteen, but who's counting? You look good as well. 

JOHN: Not true, but not as bad as our dearly departed Harry.

YVETTE: Easy with the false modesty, my thespian. A touch of grey, some craggy lines; you're still the handsome devil. 

JOHN: Are you living in the city?

YVETTE: Yes, still at the scene of our crimes. I've got a condo with a view of the Charles, walking distance from my lab and the lecture hall. I assume you're just here to pay your last respects.

JOHN: A few weeks, then I'm off to Seattle to play the Old Professor in Uncle Vanya. 

YVETTE: I'll bet the script girls still swoon.

JOHN: Not as much as you'd think. Sixteen years gone and our paths cross here. I think Harry would get a chuckle out of that.

YVETTE: Were you two still close?

JOHN: Not since he became the famous Henry Grimes. We'd see each other now and again when he felt like slumming. I played Falstaff to his young prince, even though he had a decade on me. And you?

YVETTE: It's been five years. We had a bit of a falling out. Bitter words, expectations not met, that sort of thing.

JOHN: Wait, were you two a thing? I had no idea.

YVETTE: Why would you? Harry kept his lives in separate compartments. What would he say? Oh, by the way John, I'm bedding the former love of your life. Lovely girl, I don't know why you ever let her slip away. It ended badly, yet here I am, mourning the beloved dead. Don't be shocked, John. Harry was a charming man until he wasn't.

JOHN: I'm not shocked, just a bit surprised. You know it's true, about you being the love of my life. 

YVETTE: I know.

JOHN: Do you mind if I change the subject?

YVETTE: Please do.

JOHN: How many funerals have you been to this year?

YVETTE: What a morbid question.

JOHN: Humor me, you used to be good at it.

YVETTE: Don't be catty, it doesn't suit you. How many funerals this year? Three, if we're counting today. Why?

JOHN: This makes four for me. These days I go to more funerals than weddings. When I review the owner's manual for my life, I can't find a single chapter where it states that death will become a regular event. The bastards lied, at least by omission. 

YVETTE: There's an owner's manual? I never got my copy.

JOHN: Sure you did; we all did. It's the compendium of expectations. Growing up, meeting that special someone, marriage, children, then a happy life into dotage. But not everyone gets their allotted four-score years. A car crash, an OD, cancer, and suddenly my heart is crowded with dead people elbowing for space. 

YVETTE: Your metaphorical heart is crowded?

JOHN: Ever the scientific mind.

YVETTE: The perils of being a scientist.

JOHN: Yes, I'm talking about the poet's heart, not the muscle in my chest that races every time I see you.

YVETTE: John Staffen, that is a very odd and sweet thing to say. You're talking about accumulated grief. I lost my mother, then my sister, both to breast cancer. Dead friends, some younger than me. And now Harry, of course.

JOHN: There's that as well, the quick assessment of my own mortality. When I read someone's obit, the first thing I do is compare my age to theirs. Were they younger than me? The math gets less pretty as the years pass.

YVETTE: No obituaries for me. I'm fifty, not some crazy old cat lady. And no mortality discussions at a Harry's wake.

JOHN: Right, no mortality, but now I have to make room for Harry as well. Except as I'm saying this, I think it's a question of weight rather than space. The dead weigh more than the living. Does that make any sense?

YVETTE: (Laughs aloud) Sorry, science and grief colliding.

JOHN: Which one of them is funny?

YVETTE: It's the collision that's funny. Do you remember Bernoulli's principle?

JOHN: You are the strangest woman I've ever met. You know that, right?

YVETTE: Says the man who almost married me. Are you stalling for time?

JOHN: No, Bernoulli, I remember. That's what allows planes to fly and shower curtains to be annoying, right?

YVETTE: Yes, and more to my point, why straws collapse when you try to suck up that last bit of milkshake. Fluid dynamics; as the speed of flow increases, the pressure decreases. Less pressure inside the straw than outside it, so the milkshake squishes the straw.

JOHN: I'm being serious and you're making fun.

YVETTE: No, I've been struggling with this same sense of loss, more than just today. You talk about grief in terms of weight and space and my brain searches for a scientific principle to corroborate or deny. It's how my mind works. You know that.

JOHN: Then would you care to explain how Bernoulli equates to the weight of grief?

YVETTE: This is not an equation; it's an analogy that banged into my head on top of, um, three glasses of wine. Which doesn't make it untrue, just a little tangled. First, we need a baseline. Have you ever dated a widow?

JOHN: No widows, no orphans. Why?

YVETTE: You always were a smart man. It's very difficult to compete with a dead lover. Once they're dead, they don't make mistakes. The dead don't forget birthdays, or anniversaries, and they are always there. Unlike the living, who tend to fuck things up and are often absent when they should be present. 

JOHN: Is this from first-hand experience?

YVETTE: Trust me, John, just say no. You can bitch about someone's ex and survive, but you slander their dead at your own peril. Which is the opening to my hypothesis: the dead are immobile, hence denser. The living are different. We hold them in our hearts, but not like lumps of lead. They move around, sometimes they annoy the hell out of us. Their relative weight in our heart changes. What I'm saying is that their presence is not a constant.     

JOHN: The living are annoying, so they weigh less? That's your theory?

YVETTE: It's a hypothesis, and yes. Poor Harry is dead and buried. I can list his less than charming traits, but in a month all I'll remember is the Harry that I loved, minus the annoying bits.

JOHN: What about me? What do I weigh in your heart?

YVETTE: You've still got balls, John, but you're not dead yet. I could say that I pine for you every day, but that's not true. We had some amazing years until you started indulging in script girls.   

JOHN: Something I'll always be sorry about.

YVETTE: Water under the bridge, the bridge has fallen in the river, and always is too long for anyone. 

JOHN: (Waving his hand towards the mourners offstage) Harry would have hated all this ritual. It's no wonder the dead want to clutter up my heart. Where the hell else would they go? Certainly not here, not with all this carefully modulated grief. 

YVETTE: Right, as if we've lost the rituals that hold the dead in place. When I go to an old cemetery, I feel the presence of all those departed souls. Not very scientific, but I do love an old cemetery.

JOHN: Remember wandering around Père Lachaise in the rain?

YVETTE: Yes, it was dismal, rainy, and cold. You wanted to find Oscar Wilde and I was looking for Edith Piaf.

JOHN: (Turning his head to look offstage) It looks like they're closing the bar. Shall I fetch you another glass?

YVETTE: No thanks, if I stop now, I'll remember what happens next.

JOHN: What does happen next?

YVETTE: I think we bid Harry a fond farewell and find a taxi.

JOHN: And where will this taxi be takin us?

YVETTE: Taxi first, John, destination second. 

 

(Yvette rises to her feet and John does the same a moment behind her. Yvette raises her glass as does John.)

 

YVETTE: Au Revoir, Harry. Bon voyage.

JOHN: Adios, Harry. Vaya con Dios.

 

(They drain their glasses. John offers Yvette his arm and she accepts. Arm-in-arm, the two characters exit the stage.)

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END OF PLAY