|
TRIMMING by
Jack Duffe CAST OF CHARACTERS RED:
A proud, middle-aged man
wearing red. BLUE:
Red’s
submissive wife, wearing blue. WHITE:
A young
man, wearing white. SCENE Red’s front
lawn,
next to a sidewalk. TIME The present. SETTING:
A
suburban front lawn. AT RISE:
BLUE walks
in with a pair of hedge clippers and starts trimming the giant bushes
with
them.
(RED frantically runs outside from the
house.) RED Hey! What the hell
are you doing with those?! BLUE I’m just
trimming
the bushes, dear. They’re growing a little wild.
(WHITE walks by on the sidewalk.) RED How dare you!
Don’t
you know those are keeping this house together?!
(RED PUNCHES BLUE in the face. WHITE rushes
to BLUE.) WHITE Hey, what do you
think you’re doing?! RED Damn it, I
didn’t
mean to hit her that hard… okay, here’s what
we’ll do. Hon, you forget it ever
happened. New guy, get the hell off my lawn. BLUE Yes dear. WHITE What?! I’m not
going
to do anything but call the police on you for domestic abuse. BLUE No, please! We have
to keep the house together at any cost. It was wrong of me to want to
trim the
bushes. WHITE Trim the bushes? Is
that what this is about? RED Of course. These
bushes have been here for the past five years, and all that time the
house
hasn’t had a single catastrophic collapse. Sure they attract
dangerous wildlife
and their roots have caused some damage to the water pipes, the
underground
electric wires and the foundation, but the house itself has stayed in
one
piece. If anything obstructs their growth or cut them back, the whole
house would
fall. BLUE But they are
getting a little out of control,
dear. RED Did I ask for your
opinion? BLUE No, dear. WHITE You’ve trapped
this
poor woman in an abusive relationship! BLUE That’s not
true, he
still lets me do certain things. And my input is very valuable to him. WHITE Oh really. When was
the last time he asked for your input? BLUE Just a few minutes
ago when he asked me if the bushes were getting out of control. RED That’s a lie! BLUE You asked,
“Aren’t
the bushes getting too out of control?” RED But I didn’t
imply I
wanted you to do anything about
them.
The whole house would crumble if not for their power. WHITE Their
“power?” Their
very existence is ruining what makes your house livable in the short
term and
will cause it to crumble faster anyway! RED Are you suggesting
my house isn’t magically supported by the uncontrolled growth
of my bushes?
You’re probably wishing my house would collapse,
aren’t you? WHITE No, the last thing I
want is for any house as well-made as yours to collapse. I’m
wondering more
about that punch you gave your wife… but wait, what did you
just say? RED I said my house is
supported by their uncontrolled growth. WHITE But you asked your
wife whether or not they were getting too out of control. RED Yeah. So? WHITE So you were at least
concerned that their uncontrolled growth was a bad thing. RED What? I was never
concerned about that. In fact I never asked her about it. Get off my
lawn! WHITE That’s a lie!
Your
wife just proved you asked her about it. RED It’s not lying
when
I do it, it’s just a technicality. Now get off my lawn! WHITE I’d be glad
to. Then
I can call the police. RED You’ll call
the
police just because I told you to get off my lawn? You hateful
girlie-man! WHITE No, that has nothing
to do with it. I’m going to call them because you punched
your wife in the
face. RED You’re just
criminalizing criminal behavior, you biased activist! That’ll
never hold up in
court. BLUE I thought you
didn’t
like the court, dear. RED I like it when it
likes me. Other than that I have no use for it or the police for that
matter. WHITE Well that’s
too bad,
because as long as you live in this county you’re going to
have to abide by
them. RED County? I
didn’t
vote for the police, I didn’t vote for the mayor and I sure
as hell didn’t vote
for the county court. BLUE You did all of those
things when you were younger. RED Liar! . . .Well okay
maybe I did do that stuff when I was a kid, but I was crazy back then.
A whole
different person WHITE Isn’t the
county
courthouse only fifteen minutes away? RED Shut up! Are you
telling me how to live my life? WHITE I’m not,
believe me.
People should live as they’d like, but within certain
boundaries, like not
abusing the person you’ve lived with for. . . how long? RED Too long. WHITE Look, I’ve
lived in
this area all my life and I’ve studied as much of the laws as
I possibly could.
As a law-abiding citizen and as a generally decent person I’m
still going to
call the police on you for beating your wife. RED You damn intelligent
bigshot, suggesting what I shouldn’t do just because
you’re qualified to! (RED
grabs the hedge clippers from BLUE.) RED I’m going to
chase
you out of the state! WHITE You can’t do a
thing, I live right next door to you! RED Where’s your
county
courthouse now, huh?!
(RED
chases WHITE offstage, snipping the hedge clippers at him. BLUE sighs,
runs her
hand across the bushes and walks back inside.)
|