Spring and Summer
J.C. Pankratz
MARLA: Hey. How are you holding up?
FELICITY: …Where’s Sam?
MARLA: He took the kids back to the hotel. Jimmy spent the whole funeral trying to wiggle out of his tie. I thought Aunt Helen was going to smack him. (Beat.) It’s … been a long day for them.
FELICITY: God, I’m sure I look awful. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much, and I’m not one of those women who can weep beautifully. Not that it matters, really.
MARLA: Fee, you look fine. Nobody expects you to be together today. Hell, it’s not as if anyone else is.
FELICITY: You seem to be.
MARLA: (shrugs) It’s just –
FELICITY: (cuts her off, not harshly) – the way you are, I know. (Beat.) There were so many flowers. Everywhere, flowers. I don’t know where half of them came from – I tried counting the bouquets when I couldn’t stand there and listen to them cry anymore, and I lost count again and again. They reminded me…(Beat. She’s thinking.) … of someone’s garden…
MARLA: … Lola’s garden. Grandma Lola’s garden, out there in the boonies. God, Fee, how do you remember that? You were only three or four.
FELICITY: But we were there for such a long time… I guess I don’t remember it, not really. But it was spring, wasn’t it? It rained a lot. The ground was muddy, but it was the only place to play –
MARLA: No, no, it was summer. I remember. We went there when Mom was sick… (decides to humor her) but we were there forever, Fee. Maybe it was spring at one time or another.
FELICITY: It was spring. Dad came back and we were playing hide and seek in the garden. You were hiding behind the tomato trellis…and I was trying to find you … and I saw him, and he got down in the mud and hugged me.
(Beat.
Marla is uncomfortable.)
MARLA: (slowly) That’s a lot to remember for not remembering anything.
FELICITY: (an unsteady laugh) I’m probably imagining it. That’s what people do with memories. I thought about it all through the service. He wore a scratchy wool suit – it was gray, smelled old, felt strange on his body. He knelt right down in the mud between the bushes.
MARLA: (almost a little embarrassed) Fee, come on, stop. That didn’t happen – I was there. We only got to go home after Mom died. He didn’t –
FELICITY: (cuts her off) You were hiding behind the tomato trellis. Maybe you didn’t see.
MARLA: You were four years old. You’re making up stories and it’s not healthy. Not … not now. You don’t remember.
FELICITY: I think … I was sad to leave that garden. It was so lush and gorgeous – our apartment didn’t even have a fern.
(Beat.)
MARLA: Mom was allergic to pollen and she was … (awkwardly) scared of green things. They were so alive, and she was drifting in the other direction.
FELICITY: I don’t remember her so well. She’s … hazy, wrapped up in a hospital bed.
MARLA: Yeah. They set her up in the living room. And then we went to go live with Lola. I wonder if there were flowers at her funeral.
FELICITY: Maybe.
MARLA: I like to think that they wrapped ribbons around her casket.
(Beat.)
FELICITY: It’s funny how things go in circles.
MARLA: (eyes her warily) ... What do you mean?
FELICITY: You live in a little apartment, just like we used to. And I’ve never seen you fight over flowers.
(Beat.)
FELICITY: (sighs at Marla’s indifference) I took some mums and piled them in my trunk, but there’re so many left. (Beat. Marla is silent.) You should go get the tulips. Aunt Helen sent them, so she won’t fight you for them (shaky laugh). They’d look perfect by your stoop.
MARLA: (abruptly) I have something else there. Not enough room.
FELICITY: But … you should have some of Dad’s flowers. It just doesn’t seem … right. God, Aunt Harriet was fighting with June over who got the lilies.
MARLA: I don’t need any flowers. There are plenty of people here to take them.
FELICITY: But it’s –
MARLA: (cuts her off) —No. No. I have no desire to bring Dad’s funeral foliage into my apartment. (Beat.) Every time we bowed our heads to pray – well, you prayed – I sat there with my eyes shut tight, listening to the people breathe behind me in the back row.
FELICITY: (tries to reconcile) I know, Mar, it was awful, sitting there so still, just waiting –
MARLA: I’m going home tomorrow, and I’m glad to go home.
FELICITY: Mar…
(Marla will not let her speak; the
bitterness pours out.)
MARLA: You don’t get it. You were too young. Who cleaned up the glass from those broken beer bottles, shoved his work clothes in the wash when they were covered in vomit and booze and god knows what? I signed the parent teacher forms and shoved packages of lunch meat in my coat pockets so we’d have something to eat. I called his work when he was too drunk to drive his truck. I had to try to drag you to the clinic when you stepped on broken glass. (softer) Don’t you remember that? How you screamed and cried, and you tried so hard to be brave, but it was like no one taught you how?
FELICITY: Mar, it wasn’t so bad. It was hard, sure, but we got through it. We’re still here. We’re still going.
(Long beat. Slow
realization by Marla.)
MARLA: In the movies, they always find out. Somebody gets suspicious. Somebody makes a phone call. But that doesn’t happen, does, it? It didn’t happen for me. For you. Now it’s over. It’s done. I’m not taking a single goddamn petal.
FELICITY: But he was still Dad, Marla. He was still … Dad. He tried, didn’t he? Sometimes … we try, and it doesn’t work. He tried the day he came to get us from Lola’s didn’t he? He tried to protect us from Mom, from –
MARLA: Shut up! Shut up! You know nothing, you know absolutely nothing about what we went through, about that garden, about Dad and Mom, with her being sick and – and – and you don’t even remember what season it was! Spring? Summer? You want flowers, Fee, all you want is flowers and stories and hope and peace, but that’s not what it was. You want little violets blooming on his grave; I want to slam his casket closed and run away screaming. (breathing) That’s all this is, Fee. A fairytale. A story you’ve imagined, from the smell of his suit to the color of his eyes. The book is shut, we failed, we are done.
(A long beat. Marla seethes, Felicity speaks coolly.)
FELICITY: … but you tried too. Didn’t you? It wasn’t just him. I know you. I remember… (Pause.) You used to paint. You painted trees, the house, and the kids across the street, the black asphalt covered in rain. I remember when you painted flowers.
MARLA: I never painted flowers.
FELICITY: (goes on) The Queen Anne’s lace. You used my hand as the model. You got first place at the art show; your face was shining when you came home. Nobody knows you didn’t make it, Mar. Nobody knows but me. And Dad. Sometimes, we try, Marla, and it doesn’t work. And we don’t want anyone to know. And we drop out of college. Have kids by nineteen.
MARLA: That’s not true – I fell in love with Sam – the paintings didn’t matter so much anyway. He was more important. Our family together was more important. I didn’t fail.
(Felicity stares. Silence.)
MARLA: Make up your story, Felicity. Imagine. Imagine the way I cried at night because I could never let people into the house. You can lose yourself in the flower garden still – you’re still young.
FELICITY: You were ashamed of the way we lived.
MARLA: Weren’t you?
(Again, silence.)
MARLA: Wait until you have a house of your own. When you see clean sinks, clean floors. Food in the cupboards. Intact chairs, couches. I wanted peace. And I will keep the peace in my house. I won’t take the flowers. I can’t even look at them. Let them rot.
FELICITY: You’re afraid of them. Like Mom. You’re drifting in the other direction. Mom’s dead. So is Dad. You’re dying too, Marla, just slower than all the rest. You won’t go outside, you won’t breathe the air. You sit in that apartment all day and clean and watch your children and wait for Sam to come home and then what? Then what, Marla? You’re still. Just … still.
MARLA: No one knows. And I can’t tell them. It’s my only secret. I have to keep it hidden, locked away. I cut myself away from it long ago.
FELICITY: Is that why you can’t look at the flowers? Why you can’t stand to remember the gentleness of the broken man who was our father?
MARLA: Felicity, I can’t. I … they hurt, they hurt to look at. They remind me of him. I can’t.
FELICITY: I do remember, Marla, when you dragged me to the ER when I stepped on broken beer bottles. I remember crying, screaming. I was so frightened. But I picked those shards of glass out of my feet a long time ago. When are you going to start?
MARLA: (very, very softly) It was spring.
FELICITY: (jerks) What?
MARLA: It was spring.