A Play in One Act
Version 3
by JP Morgan
CHARACTERS
LOTTI, a woman in her 80s
KIRA, Lotti’s older daughter
JOHNNY, Lotti’s son
SISSI, Lotti’s younger daughter
ARMIN, Lotti’s husband
KATIA, Lotti’s sister
MANYA, Johnny’s wife
And, incidentally,
A NURSE
INGRID, a disembodied voice from Lotti’s past
THE PLACE: A room in a nursing home, and various places remembered.
THE TIME: The start of the twenty-first century, and various times remembered.
THE SET: There are various areas, the principal one being Lotti’s room at the nursing home. There is a door leading to a bathroom on the right, and an entrance door on the left. The room is cluttered with stuff strewn about.
There are two additional areas, slightly forward of the room, one to the left and one to the right, to be used as required by the story. Both are defined by lighting, and maybe a single piece of furniture to identify with one or another character. The area on the left is the small living room of Lotti’s condo where Lotti’s relatives have gathered and where remembered scenes occur; the area on the right is where the various characters play out their own memories in remembered scenes.
The curtain clears and we see the red light of an answering machine. Light comes up.
LOTTI, dressed in a motley collection of worn T-shirts and long underwear, sits on an institutional bed that fills one side of the room, and leafs through her thick photo albums. She adjusts her glasses and leans forward for a closer look, turning the pages. The bed is piled with a dozen of these albums. In fact, the whole room is crowded with her memorabilia: pictures, photographs, books and magazines piled on shelves, plastic sleeves jammed with articles cut from newspapers and magazines. The other side of the room has a couch and a coffee table, both piled high with more papers and magazines. A telephone and an answering machine rest on the front edge of the coffee table.
LOTTI
[In a vague, indeterminate continental accent]
Oh..now that was a party, something we knew how to do before the war. How beautifully everyone was dressed. Where is that silly woman? [She struggles with the bed controls, finally throwing them on the floor.]
[An African-American nurse enters breezily through the entrance door.]
You rang, Countess?
LOTTI
What are you talking about? There are no countesses, or anything noble, in this…country of yours.
NURSE
[reaching for all the things LOTTI has thrown on the floor]
Not my country, no way. My folks were brought here as slaves; ain’t nothing about this country that belongs to me, sugar. I reckon I’m stuck here just like you. Sorry: [Emphasis] Countess. I wish you wouldn’t be throwing all this expensive equipment on the floor, though. Cause I have to pick it up and if you break it, they all gonna be mad at me.
LOTTI
You talk too much. Besides, I always liked you people better than the rest of them. You’re better than most people who populate this country.
NURSE
Gee, thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Just don’t cross you, right? Say, Countess, I talked to your daughter Sissi on the phone this morning and she said you were a Countess back in Buda, Buda…what? And that you were rich, and high society, and just the belle of the ball, in all the papers all the time.
LOTTI
Please play the song again for me. [Pointing to the bookcase] And bring me the box with the little teddy bears.
Nurse
I think you should listen to some Motown. Time you learned some of my music. [Turning on the CD player]
[A French song comes on called La Vie en Rose, softly sung by a male voice]
What do you do with these ratty old teddy bears, honey?
LOTTI
Yes [wistfully]. I miss my father. My life was perfect in his house. I had everything. He gave me these bears when I was a child, one every year on my birthday. [Thinking] That war took it all away from me.
NURSE
Yeah, I know about that. My folks had to fight in their wars too. You don’t mind if I call you Countess? [with a sly smile]. That’s what your daughter Sissi called you when I talked to her earlier today.
LOTTI
Sissi? You talked to Sissi? That…
NURSE
Don’t worry. She didn’t want to talk to you. She was just being nosy, trying to find out what’s going on with you.
LOTTI
She wants to know if dead yet. [Now examining her lttle teddy bears] I should have kept them all. And stop with the Countess; I am not a Countess. Well, maybe we were minor nobility…after all, somewhere. Who knows anymore? [Lotti selects another album and starts leafing through it] And we had the opera. Oh, you can’t imagine. We knew the composers, the singers, Wagner’s daughter was part of our crowd. That life is gone now. Look how handsome he looked [pointing at a photograph in her album].
NURSE
[Approaching to look at one of the other open albums]
Look at that cute little baby girl. You took a picture of everything, in the altogether, didn’t you? Very European.
LOTTI
That’s my daughter Kira. [Indicating the album the nurse is looking at]
[At this point in the conversation, the light fades a bit in the room, with a spot light directly on LOTTI, KIRA enters the space on the lower left with a spot directly on her; LOTTI, humming La Vie en Rose, stops and is stunned for a moment, surprised to see her. They look at each other across the dark space between the two areas.]
KIRA
[a trim, middle-aged woman]
[Cautiously, tentatively] Hi, how are you?
LOTTI
You came…I’m so glad you came. [To the nurse] That’s my daughter Kira.
NURSE
Yes, sugar, I heard you the first time.
KIRA
Well, you know, what could I do? I had to come. Somebody did. It’s a long flight, you know.
NURSE [watching LOTTI curiously]
Say, isn’t she the one from Brazil that you told me about yesterday? [She looks around the room over her shoulder, seeing nothing, as her beeper sounds] Don’t go making up stories again, you hear. You be a good girl, Miss Countess, and I’ll be back before you know it, with your lunch. [She leaves the room shaking her head]
LOTTI
[To the NURSE as she leaves]
Rotten food. Keep it. [To KIRA] Well, it doesn’t look like your brother and sister are going to be coming.
KIRA
Why should that surprise you? You…[She stops] No, actually, this time I think they will come.
LOTTI
Everybody is a critic now. And I get blamed for everything. Well, I lived my life the way I wanted. After they took everything away from me, that Roosevelt, that Stalin, that war. I don’t care what anybody thinks.
[LOTTI leans back onto the pillows, looking up at the ceiling.]
As long as I had enough money. Now that it’s gone, I don’t want to live anymore.
KIRA
Yes, but what about us?
LOTTI
You? Who?
KIRA
Yes, us, your children! Remember?
LOTTI
I always did everything for you, trips, skiing, Paris, I gave you Paris.
KIRA
You gave us what you wanted, because it fit your program.
LOTTI
The best schools…
KIRA
Yes, we were the token poor refugee immigrants at the best schools. That was always tricky, but you pulled it off. Do you remember that you and Armin were always at war, screaming and fighting? And we were always stuck in the middle of it. And sometimes in public.
LOTTI
[Indignantly] We never fought. [Seeming to fall asleep] How can you say such a thing? I am your mother!
KIRA [with a jaw-dropping look]
How can you deny it? You can’t be serious. [Pause] Yes, yes you can. I didn’t come here to argue. We are past all of that now.
[At this, the light in LOTTI’s room goes very dim, including the spot that was on her, while the light in KIRA’s space comes up, as JOHNNY and SISSI come into it, bringing a platter of food and bottles of wine and glasses. We realize that there is a couch, a chair and a coffee table in the space.]
JOHNNY
Hi, you look exhausted. LOTTI will do that to you. How did it go with our dear mother? [Placing the meal on the coffee table] Did she recognize you when you showed up or was she on the phone the entire time?
KIRA
Well, she’s been rewriting history again. She insists that she and Armin never fought. Of course, she’s never taken responsibility for anything in her life. Why start now?
SISSI
Because she is dying, that’s why! Except that she still believes she is going to live forever; she always did! So the fictions continue. But you? [To Kira] You don’t sound as tolerant of her as you used to.
KIRA
No, I’m finally weary of it. Has she ever told the truth? In her life?
SISSI
And she was never wrong about anything.
JOHNNY [opening a bottle of wine]
Remember that awful day in San Francisco? When Lotti and Armin were screaming at each other over some letter from one of her boyfriends?
SISSI
How could we forget? Fourteen. Remember that we were able to count and document fourteen lovers. And she was screwing all of them. Not all at once, of course!
KIRA
Yeah, I don’t know what we were thinking. Like nothing was going on? And you know there were more.
JOHNNY
Yes, weird, we were rewriting the history as it happened! Why wait for Lotti to do it? We beat her to it; we denied the facts just as quickly as they occurred!. Amazing. [Looking into his wine glass] How could we have been so brainwashed? For more than two decades, for chrissakes. We let her get away with murder.
KIRA
And nobody ever called her on it, except Armin, the cuckold. Go back to that day in San Francisco. Was that the day he pushed Grandma down the stairs?
SISSI [Calmly, routinely]
No, that was later. You guys were gone by then.
JOHNNY
Yeah, no, that was the day I heard all the commotion upstairs. I ran up with a stick I had already put aside; I saw Armin struggling with you, Kira, on the floor. You had some letter in your hand. Everybody was screaming and yelling. I think it was in Grandma’s room. And I hit him on the head, and ran like hell. He came to, and got a knife from the kitchen, chasing me out of the house. Then I called the cops and they took him to jail. Yeah, that was an interesting day.
SISSI
Madame La Comtesse certainly made a great job of it.
KIRA
Did any of the neighbors ever say anything? You could hear everything through those thin San Francisco rowhouse walls.
JOHNNY
We will never know.
SISSI
You know, Kira, I always thought that you were too good and forgiving to her. I mean, look at the stunts that she pulled with you. You didn’t know that Armin wasn’t your father until you were a teenager. And all along he would always treat you especially badly, like you weren’t his daughter. And you never wondered?
JOHNNY
And how about the baptism thing? You were such a good Catholic, Mass all the time, and she let you think that you were baptized, when she knew you weren’t.
KIRA
Yes, you can imagine how stunned and angry I was. She probably didn’t know the rules about these things.
SISSI
There you go being nice to her again. Did we fear her so much that we always excused her behavior?
JOHNNY
Maybe we felt sorry for her, them. Because of the war, they lost everything, had to go into refugee exile. We always forgot what they did. [Wistfully] We just wanted peace, and a quiet place to be.
KIRA
Except you, she always wanted to marry you. You, her son, who was going to be rich and famous.
JOHNNY
In her dreams. What she never got was that I, all of us, just wanted to get away and never come back.
SISSI
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let go, and kept trying to reel us back in. It just got worse. Her situation was intolerable for her. I don’t know what she expected to do with Armin, like he would disappear at the right moment. In the end she still needed him, so he was always lurking in the background.
JOHNNY
I remember the time he followed us in his car, and I was driving with Lotti. He was mad at her, again, for some reason, maybe thinking she was going out somewhere to see her boyfriend, a boyfriend. And we drove around the streets and hills of San Francisco like a bunch of idiots. But it was scary too: speeding, running red lights, you gotta be crazy. And I fell right in with that kind of crap.
KIRA
My God, these people were crazy. Why couldn’t we have ended up in a nice quiet family?
JOHNNY
Yeah, Rock Hudson and Doris Day, the perfect couple. I remember, whenever I was in their boxy little house, I felt like shrinking myself into a small corner, out of the way. There was never any place to sit, where you didn’t feel like you were too big.
[LOTTI sits up as the spot comes up on her, and the spot stays on JOHNNY, as his space darkens.]
JOHNNY [Continues, turning to look in her direction across the dark gap between the two spaces]
What I never understood was why you stayed? You hated being there, you hated him, you went away all the time, sometimes for weeks and months, yet you always came back.
LOTTI
[LOTTI gets out of the bed with renewed energy and moves about the room, looking at her stuff while talking]
Oh, God, it’s that old record of yours again. You were such a disappointment to me.
JOHNNY
I was a disappointment to you? That’s funny, but you won’t get it.
LOTTI
You could have been a great man, like my father. He was an admiral in the Hapsburg navy.
JOHNNY
I know.
LOTTI [almost deliriously]
You could have been a vice-president.
JOHNNY [not comprehending]
Vice? President? That’s all? Of what? What did you have in mind? I know, there are a lot of things that I could have been, that you wanted me to be. I wanted them too, for you. It was just different with me and Manya, we…[trails off] it was very special. She was home to me, like Yale was. It was the first and only time that I knew what I wanted. And it wasn’t what you wanted, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t going to let you have your way.
LOTTI
Stop with that ugly Jew. She stole my son. You’re not a man, you’re a housekeeper.
JOHNNY
And you’re my mother?
LOTTI
I am the daughter of an admiral in the Hapsburg Empire. You forget. We had everything. The highest class, position. Home! You had a home!
JOHNNY
No mistakes. I never could talk to you, you were always right about everything. You never made mistakes.
[The phone rings, the little light goes on and the machine answers and a woman’s raspy old voice sounds]
JOHNNY [continues]
Why don’t you pick up? It’s Ingrid. Whom I loved so dearly. She was so stylish. Tante Ingrid, Kira and I called her, as though we wanted to belong to her. Maybe you did too.
INGRID [through the machine]
Hello, Lotti, I heard from Betty that you weren’t well. You must call me and tell me everything. I’ve been thinking so much about the past lately, and how young and gay and beautiful we were. Do you remember that Fall on the Riviera, and the Grand Hotel du Cap was already closed for the season?
LOTTI [as if to herself]
Of course I remember.
INGRID
And those French businessmen that paid for everything; it was marvelous.
LOTTI
Yes, Robert.
JOHNNY
I remember that time too, Ingrid and you, and the man with his 1955 Thunderbird, and the speedboat ride to Monte Carlo. I was only nine, but it was heaven for me too.
INGRID
Lotti, please, please call me back. What’s going to happen to us? I’m so scared. [Phone clicks, message light starts to flash.]
JOHNNY
Why couldn’t we have stayed? It was so crisp and bright and peaceful there. Armin wasn’t there. [To Lotti] Why don’t you call her back?
LOTTI
Too late ; it’s too late. Too late for everything. Remember, I gave you Paris.
JOHNNY
Yes, you gave me. Millions of tourists go to Paris every year. They all owe you gratitude. Manya and I gave our kids Paris too. Will you let me know when the debt is paid? I am tired of running from you.
LOTTI
Put the record on. I want to hear it one last time.
JOHNNY
My old record?
LOTTI
No, the music, you idiot. Never mind, I’ll do it myself.
[LOTTI pushes a button on the recorder at her bedside, and Edith Piaf starts singing La Vie en Rose as the scene fades to black and the red light of the answering machine continues to flash. The light on JOHNNY stays on him for a bit longer]
LOTTI
[Continues]
Yes, a countess. Why not?
[The light in her nursing home room fades, while the light in the condo living room on the left comes back up, and the conversation among the three siblings picks up again]
JOHNNY
What’s funny is that she ended up at the Jewish nursing home. How did that happen?
KIRA
I think the hospital or the ambulance took her there. Maybe it was the closest place. It’s a good thing they didn’t ask her. Funny alright.
SISSI
I think it’s hilarious. She would have thrown a fit if she had known.
JOHNNY
I don’t get it. This thing with the Jews. I mean, she was a lifelong anti-semite and yet, many of her friends were Jewish, especially all her pals from Budapest.
SISSI
Ah, but we don’t know about the ones that didn’t survive, do we? Only the ones that got scattered.
KIRA
You know, we’ve met a lot of old Jewish friends of hers…
SISSI
(OVER) And a lot of her boyfriends, half of whom were Jewish. And she was screwing all of them.
JOHNNY
You know something? I liked a lot of those people. They were nicer and smarter than her regular friends. I read that Budapest was 20% Jewish before the war.
SISSI
Yeah, and there were ten left after the war.
JOHNNY
When we were little I remember them going about the Jews, and the ones that got to Brazil. There was George King, who brought me a soccer ball once.
SISSI
Yep, she was screwing him too.
JOHNNY
Right, so I shouldn’t think fondly of him, because he was the cause of all hell breaking out afterward. Or just one particular episode of it. Wait a minute, I don’t remember Armin screaming at the guys, just at her. And we had to be there and put up with it.
KIRA
We had to put up with a lot more than that. There was the furniture throwing, the china, screaming at each other in that ugly Hungarian. Didn’t those apartment house neighbors ever complain? I was always so embarrassed. I would hide my face from them in the elevator.
SISSI
And he wasn’t even your own father.
KIRA
Thats’s right. I didn’t know that. Lotti didn’t tell me that until I was sixteen. Can you imagine? All that time I thought that screaming lunatic was my father. And then he wasn’t.
JOHNNY
Lucky you.
[There is a small red glow that appears in the dark space on the right; it is the ember of a cigarette. The effect is spooky. Armin appears in the space on the right, as the light comes up there, while Johnny’s space dims, but the spot stays on him, as he looks toward Armin across the dark, while moving to the edge of his space. Armin is in his middle age, a bit shabbily dressed, sitting in his small kitchen.]
JOHNNY
[Continues]
You were always smoking in the dark in San Francisco. And cooking.
ARMIN
We had to eat.
JOHNNY
Why did you stay with her? Brazil, and then Pittsburgh? It was so miserable. Why couldn’t you leave her and give us peace?
ARMIN
[Shrugging his shoulders]
We were refugees, penniless immigrants. What did you want me to do? I had to keep my family together. And move where we had to. To find a job.
JOHNNY
Yeah, to the West Coast. That was as far as you could go, as far as anybody could go.
ARMIN
I was proud and happy that I could bring you here. I thought you would be too. And your mother.
JOHNNY
And you brought your misery, everything with you.
ARMIN
Don’t say that. We saved you from communism.
JOHNNY
Thanks, I know. And I am grateful. Really, It’s just that…Look, she makes you live out of that hallway closet. Look at the size of that closet. All your stuff in that little closet.
ARMIN
I don’t mind.
JOHNNY
Why couldn’t you let her go, and make a life with your kids instead?
ARMIN
Kira wasn’t my kid.
JOHNNY
Did you ever think that all that screaming and yelling was scary and cruel? [Silence, as Armin looks at his hands clasped on his lap] You know, in Brazil Lilo would take me on these afternoon teas with her friends, mostly men, as though I was her shill, her cover. I don’t think she ever did anything bad when I was around. I drank a lot of Coca-Cola, from those little bottles that they don’t have anymore. But of course all hell broke loose when we got home, because you were there demanding to know where she had been. This went on every other day for ten years! What the hell was the matter with you?
ARMIN
Your mother had moral insanity.
JOHNNY
Yes, I remember that was the phrase you used after we ended up in San Francisco. And we spoke English by then.
ARMIN
She was a stinking whore.
JOHNNY
Yes, I remember that phrase in Hungarian. You repeated it often enough at the top of your voice, while throwing furniture and stuff. Then you would come into our room to see if we were sleeping. That must be your Hungarian sense of humor. Well, we faked it for you and made believe we were. We were always so agreeable, when not terrified. How could anybody in the neighborhood sleep? You and Lotti got away with it.
ARMIN
She had all these men over the years. And always threw it in my face. How so-and-so was doing so well, and is this the best I could do. You know.
JOHNNY
Yes, I know. There would be peace for a while, oh, how we loved that brief moment of blessed peace, and then Lotti would start her needling and nagging, slowly building it up. So what? You couldn’t control her, so you couldn’t control yourself either?
ARMIN
You don’t understand. You know nothing. You don’t know what it was like under the communists. Or the Nazis.
JOHNNY
Don’t give me that. I suppose it was better with the Nazis. Oddly, you never hit her. What were you afraid of? Why didn’t you beat her? Kill her. That would have been better for us. And don’t tell me you saved us from communism, and how great your life was before the war. That is an insult.
ARMIN
But it’s true.
JOHNNY
You know the part that gets me finally. It’s that we never called you on it, or her. No, it’s worse. You used to pull me aside and interrogate me about where we had been and what we were doing. Do you remember that? No, of course not. What was I suppose to answer? Duh, I don’t know, like some idiot. Or tell you where we were. In which case, your little hell would break loose again.
ARMIN
I’m sorry, I understand. It can’t matter anymore now.
JOHNNY
That’s not even the best part. Want to hear it?
ARMIN
What? Tell me. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?
JOHNNY
The best part was when Lotti and Kira would find me afterwards, and tell me what a traitor I was. That’s very good. So the whole sordid business was my fault, you see. And that was the end of it, for a couple of days, until one of you got an itch, and started all over again. Say, do you remember Brazil?
ARMIN
Yes, of course, ten years we were there. For ten years we got nowhere in that wild tropical place. And I hated to see the other refugee Hungarians. Some made it, some didn’t, some just stood still, like us. The worst was the comparing. You know, so and so is doing well, how nice; or so and so is not, how sad. They were always comparing to one another. You know how we ended up there, don’t you?
JOHNNY
Does it matter? I guess you need to talk, huh?
ARMIN
The American quotas were full right after the war, and Kristof was in Brazil with his fellow Benedictine monks running the school you attended.
JOHNNY
I know all that. Lotti never had much that was nice to say about your brother Kristof. In fact, she accused him of screwing around. Funny, coming from her. Why did you tolerate it? All you did was scream and yell. You never really did anything about it. And she went right on doing it.
ARMIN
Why didn’t you make her stop? You and your sister. You just went along with it.
JOHNNY
Yeah, we had just about as much influence over her as you did. What is a six- or eight- or ten-year-old supposed to do with an adult? Sometimes I wonder how children survive their parents. I mean, look, I know a lot of people have it a lot worse. I understand that, and I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, but you and your wife, you were among the worst, the most selfish, ignorant parents anyone could have the bad luck of getting. Hell, what am I talking to you for?
ARMIN
Because you never had the chance, or the courage, to do it when I was still around. You never came back after you went to university.
JOHNNY
No, because after a while, we didn’t care anymore. We just wanted out, and truly didn’t give a damn what happened to either of you. Kind of like your behavior. There used to be a funny scene, there in Brazil, when you would be screaming at Lotti, calling her names, throwing furniture. Then, you would come into our room, I guess to see if we were awake. And do you know what we did? We faked being asleep. We actually made believe we were asleep? Can you believe that? I still don’t know why. To make it easier for you? What? You and Lotti got away with it. You both should have gone down with the Nazis.
ARMIN
That’s a very harsh judgment. But I suppose you’re right.
JOHNNY
And don’t start blaming it all on the war, or your inability to make good, or whatever. It was your obsession with your cuckolding wife that wrecked everything.
ARMIN
I should have let her continue to cheat on me? She had moral insanity. When did she tell the truth about anything?
JOHNNY
What is moral insanity? We always used to laugh at that one. It never made much sense. [Pause] But you know something? It actually does make sense to me now. She was completely amoral about it. She did it for money, or favors, trips, whatever, and it did not cause her any fear or guilt. She went right on doing it. Do you want to know how many guys she had that we knew about? Never mind the ones we didn’t know about, especially after I left, and couldn’t possibly care anymore.
ARMIN
[Over] I don’t…
JOHNNY
[Over] Fourteen! Can you beat that? Yes, she could, and probably did. What kind of private hell did you live in? Had you no pride, beyond the screaming and yelling? What about us? We had to put up with it. You and Lotti didn’t give a shit about your children. Twice we paid the price of her cheating, once to her and once to you. Thanks. So don’t ask me why you didn’t see much of me after I left for college.
More: Armin boasts of being rich in Hungary, their cars, even a chevy.
[The light fades on ARMIN, but he continues to smoke in the dark, the red glow of the cigarette ember moving around during the rest of the scene.]
[Johnny is alone for a moment, dejected. The light comes up on the younger Johnny, briefly, then disappears again, like a ghost]
JOHNNY
Johnny? Johnny, is that you?
[Young Johnny comes back into the light]
YOUNG JOHNNY
Yes, it’s me. Where did you think I would be?
JOHNNY
Johnny, talk to me. I talk to you all the time, you know.
YOUNG JOHNNY
I know. I hear you. Like you were in mourning. Now, with Lotti finally on her way, I’ll have to find some other place to hide. Seems like everybody is on the move.
JOHNNY
Is that why you’re here? With Armin?
YOUNG JOHNNY
He doesn’t really know. He keeps trying to bring me back, ever since you left. It’s weird. Remember the woods at Land’s End? That’s where I hang out mostly, Lotti and Armin never knew about it. They don’t know to look for me there. I don’t think they’ll find me.
JOHNNY
Johnny, I’m sorry. But I remember. The waves crashing on the edge of the land. The constant fog and the wailing foghorns. Those dark, soft woods. But it was peaceful.
YOUNG JOHNNY
You and Armin left suddenly, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to go.
JOHNNY
Armin took us, me, to that sleazy hotel in the Tenderloin. Poor schmuck. He could never get it right. I used to tell my high school buddies that we lived at the Hotel Clift on top of the hill, not the bottom. Just make it up, nobody cares anyway. What am I talking about? I never got anything right either. You don’t know how many times I started things over again, schools, jobs, girls, stories.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Don’t tell me. All along you were trying to get it right, but for them.
JOHNNY
Yeah, I always thought I could fix it, for them. If only this, if only that…
YOUNG JOHNNY
And you finally gave up, and started running, disappeared. Say, when did you start talking in the subjunctive?
JOHNNY
Ah, the Latin scholar.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Please, don’t remind me of those Jesuit thugs. [Pause] We did have a good time on Land’s End, though, didn’t we?
JOHNNY
Come with me now, Johnny, be part of my new family. New? The kids are over twenty!
YOUNG JOHNNY
So you can do it right, now. You have a second chance. Your wife and kids love you. I’ve watched them. Don’t be a fool.
JOHNNY
But I want to bring you with me.
YOUNG JOHNNY
I know. Don’t you think I wanted to? How many father figures, or big brother figures did we go through? A dozen? More? Every time I met a likely candidate, I would latch on: a classmate or somebody else’s parent. A friend. [Pause] None of them wanted the job. [Another pause, hardens] So, I just made sure to leave all of them first.
JOHNNY
I’m here now. Can we be friends?
YOUNG JOHNNY
Sorry, pal, I wish you could. Thanks for the thought, but it doesn’t work that way. I have to stay here. But you don’t and you did OK, no?
JOHNNY
Yes, of course, but…
YOUNG JOHNNY
What but? Listen. I finally get a big brother. [Gesturing to JOHNNY] Come on. I thought you were tougher than that. Remember the day you cut up your hand?
JOHNNY
Do I?
YOUNG JOHNNY
You were pretty cool.
JOHNNY
That wasn’t me. That was you.
YOUNG JOHNNY
And ended up losing your finger?
JOHNNY
That kind of thing is hard to forget. But it kept me out of the army and Vietnam.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Lucky you. And the dog ran off with your index finger. Funny. No, not funny. Sorry. Sissi said she found it later.
JOHNNY
Sometimes that’s the story I tell. Other times, it depends. I don’t tell that one to a girl in a bar.
more?
[YOUNG JOHNNY starts to go, on the edge of the light]
JOHNNY
Johnny, wait. Don’t go yet. Stay a while. There’s so much to talk about.
[YOUNG JOHNNY re-enters the light, impatient]
You were such a good boy. Even Armin said so.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Great guy, Armin. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. And I remember when Lotti said to me once, solemnly, that children never forget. Well, she got that right. When she couldn’t get her way, she would lock me in the closet. Do you know how big those Brazilian cockroaches were in there. Children never forget.
Old Johnny, Johnny, why didn’t you take me with you?
JOHNNY
I didn’t know the way. But I always feel your presence.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Yeah, when you’re sad and depressed and feeling sorry for yourself. Well, look, you have your family now. So let me be your guide. I’ll show you the way.
JOHNNY
And you? What can I do for you?
YOUNG JOHNNY
Well, I’m lost, and I have to go with them. That’s what happened when you left. They drove you out, but kept me. But don’t worry. Sometimes I have young Kyra for company. We don’t talk much. We never did. She spent time in that closet too.
JOHNNY
I always wanted to go back for you. I knew you were there.
YOUNG JOHNNY
NO! Look how lucky you are. Don’t grieve for me anymore. You’ll make yourself crazy. Stick with Manya and the babies. Bring some photos next time.
JOHNNY
Do you know that when we had the kids, she stopped and went away completely? I never heard from her again.
YOUNG JOHNNY
Stop. I gotta go. Can’t you hear the foghorns? The fog must be really thick tonight. [YOUNG JOHNNY turns and walks off, the light tries to follow him, but it fades to black]
JOHNNY
Wait…
ARMIN [reappears in his space]
What? What was that about the foghorns?
JOHNNY
Nothing. You never heard them.
[The light fades to black on ARMIN, as the light comes up stage right on KYRA and SISSI, who have been joined by MANYA. Their animated conversation rises in volume as JOHNNY turns to the group. MANYA is doing stuff with her phone, as well as taking out and doing her crocheting, but following the conversation all the while]
JOHNNY
Do you remember Lotti’s collection of little teddy bears?
SISSI
Oh, sure, she made a fetish out of them. One for every birthday. She gave us each, what, four or five of them?
KIRA
Including some really old, ratty ones that had lost all their hair. What did she think we were going to do with them?
SISSI
Keep them and continue to worship her father in her place.
KIRA
Worship her, you mean.
JOHNNY
They looked like little dried up old mice. There was something sad and pathetic about all that. I wonder where hers ended up. I still have mine, if you can believe it.
KIRA
You’re just as sentimental as she was. You should see her albums. She has them all with her, and is looking through each one. I brought some back with me. [Motioning to a stack of fat, overstuffed photo albums on the dresser]
JOHNNY
I didn’t mind the bears. I kinda liked them. I still have them, somewhere.
MANYA
It’s these albums that are fascinating. Could we look through some of them?
[Sissi gets up from her chair, and retrieves one of the albums brings it over to the couch where she sits between Johnny and Manya, and begins to turn the pages]
SISSI
Look at this, unbelievable, hotel decals, menus, match books, swizzle sticks from the bars. Busy girl.
MANYA
When was this?
JOHNNY
Late sixties, early seventies? We were still in college.
KIRA
Yes, she had discovered New York, and since Johnny and I were there, she camped out, and not just to get away from Armin in San Francisco. She had some new boyfriend in New York.
SISSI
Or more.
JOHNNY
Yep, that’s when I started to stay at your parent’s apartment in Brooklyn. Our apartment was so tiny, and the Riviera Café was blasting all night. Impossible. And all of Kira’s airline friends were crashing there too.
MANYA
Of course I remember. And I didn’t like it because you were sleeping in my old bed…without me.
JOHNNY
No, no, no. We were still taboo, don’t forget.
MANYA
[Archly] That may be, but I had already decided about us, even if you didn’t know it…
SISSI
How about this one. It’s from the fifties, and seems to include your trip to Europe in 1956.
KIRA
Oh, yes, I want to see that one.
JOHNNY
The fifties, my favorite time. In Brazil, with Lotti and Armin, then a trip to paradise by ocean liner, then paradise is taken away, lost, as they say. And then to Cleveland. What an odyssey. And then there was all that penis sniffing.
SISSI
What? Penis what…?
KIRA
No, John Peter…
JOHNNY
(Over) That’s the one.
KIRA
Be serious. Let’s not talk about that, please. It’s too embarrassing.
JOHNNY
But true. [To the others] As you may all know, I am not circumcised.
MANYA
[Quizzically, but with a lascivious smile] Yes, I know.
[Militarily] At ease. [Proceeding] Well, Lilo decided, perhaps, from her own experience, that boys who were uncircumcised needed to wash their penises every day, or else they stank. And in order to ensure that this boy’s penis was clean, she enlisted Kira’s help. So, what I remember is the two of them, depending on who was nearby, sitting me down on the bed, peeling back my foreskin and sniffing it to make sure it was clean. They must have done this everyday.
SISSI
That is completely hilarious.
JOHNNY
Yep, sniffing at it like you would with a good cigar. Isn’t that great.
KIRA
It was awful, and we all thought it was normal.
JOHNNY
Well, it is, I suppose. When you’re a poor refugee and you can’t afford a professional.
Scene between Johnny and Katya
[Katya appears at the mention of her name, in the neutral/spirit zone]
JOHNNY
Aunt Katya, what can I do for you? Why on earth have you come, of all people? You’re not dead yet, though you might as well be. Or did you come to make sure Lotti was?
KATYA
I suppose I must have a lot on my mind.
JOHNNY
Yes, you’re getting near the finish line there.
KATYA
There are just some things I wanted to say before I forgot them. You always looked so sad. From the time you were little, actually I don’t think I met you until you were ten years old (take out?), you always had this miserable, unhappy appearance.
JOHNNY
Gee, was it so obvious? No, I didn’t know that. I wonder why. I guess it was living with Lotti and Armin. On the other hand, you kinda stayed away from them too.
They were always so needy, you were probably afraid that they would ask you for money.
KATYA
It’s just that they were always in trouble of some kind. Desperate. They could help themselves. I mean they couldn’t help committing blunders, and then they couldn’t get themselves out of them.
JOHNNY
No, they weren’t much of a team, were they? But they stayed together and always undermined each other. It was so destructive. You can imagine the effects on us.
No, I suppose the last thing you wanted was to get involved with us. I don’t blame you for that. But I don’t owe you anything either.
KATYA
I’m so sorry you lost your cat.
JOHNNY
Ah, Max, the grey Max. Max, the conveyor of the great irony.
KATYA
I don’t understand.
JOHNNY
I’ll explain to you. But since you’ve always loved animals so much, you know how it is when you get really attached to one, one who is very special.
By the way, I heard from your lawyer that you are giving your estate to a bird sanctuary. In fact, he was quite crowing about it. I didn’t know that you thought so little of us. Did I ever do you wrong? Certainly not Kyra.
KATYA
What about the cat? (Katya kind of spacey as always)
JOHNNY
You said you were sorry, about him Max. I know why, and why you should be, but I want you to tell me why you are sorry.
Why have you come here anyway?
Can I remind you of the circumstances of Max’s death? You dragged me out here to this crummy place [we have a switch in scene here to Kentucky] (all three cats and the dog) in my crummy little car. Because you kept calling and calling me, telling me how lonely you were, and please would I come to visit you? Somehow, you must have known Manya was away working.
KATYA
Please, I don’t remember anymore.
JOHNNY
I was always so gullible with this stupid family. You were as relentless in your calling as Lotti always was. She was going to have her way with you and nobody was going to stop her.
KATYA
She was that way ever since we were children in Budapest.
JOHNNY
So it was Lotti all along, who was pushing on you. And I felt sorry for you. She was still trying to get me away from Manya, and I let him get killed on the road. And the very next day Lotti and Armin show up at your crummy little house. What a coincidence.
You probably don’t remember this, or you conveniently forgot, that after Max was run over, I was so devastated, that you actually said something profound. You said that I should have children.
KATYA
I don’t remember.
JOHNNY
That probably came from your own sorrow at your inability to have children. And you probably don’t remember that the person I was most likely to have children with was Manya, about whom you gave me that long speech, the night before Max died, about how I shouldn’t marry a Jew, you can’t trust them, they’ll just take advantage of you.
KATYA
I always wanted to have children. Your Uncle didn’t want them. Besides, I couldn’t have any anyway. My parents made me take those X-ray treatments before the war, for my hands, which they x-rayed while they were on my lap, x-raying my whole body.
JOHNNY
The latest German technology, at your service. I’m sorry for you. It never broke the right way for any of you, did it?
The irony of ironies, Max’s irony, which you all probably missed, was that no more than a year later, Manya and I did start having kids, three in a row! Bang! Bang! Bang! How do you like that?
All of Lotti’s scheming came to nothing. In fact, it achieved the exact opposite.
KATYA
Well, good for you. You never sent me any birth announcements. Don’t be so hard on me. I’m not your enemy. Look at what I have to show for my life: a man I hated, who treated me like a servant. A mother and father who carted me off to Munich to be a companion to my grandmother, for ten years while I was growing up. A sister who was always better, more beautiful, all the men looked at her, she skied better, and she bossed me around. But the war got her too, didn’t it?
JOHNNY
You still betrayed me. As they did. You betrayed all of us in the end. That was good, the bird sanctuary thing. You got your revenge.
KATYA
So what? You came out ahead.
JOHNNY
Wait, birth announcements? These were those jewish children that you warned me against. After that, I didn’t trust you anymore. Why did you stay loyal to Lotti?
KATYA
Not really, your Uncle Mike couldn’t stand her. Not that he was so lovable either. But she always made a mess of everything. She took money and never paid it back. She flirted, and more, with his doctor friends at the medical conventions.
[Katya with her faux cute, girlie voice]
JOHNNY
Yes, then, I suppose we should try to have some kids before it’s too late. What do you think?
MANYA
What do I think? Of course we should have kids. I’ve waited ten years for you to come around to it.
or maybe she wanted to teach her daughter about these matters
Lotti’s Steiff teddy bear cult…they are her Rosebud.
Lotti’s albums and the hundreds of bits of assorted memorabilia from all her travels—hotel and restaurant matchbooks, swizzle sticks, menus, hotel decals, etc.
Lotti’s insistence that Kira sniff Johnny’s uncircumcised penis to make sure that it is clean
Lotti’s overflowing wardrobe, and her claims that she has nothing to wear
Her shoplifting episodes in San Francisco
She attended séances wherever she went and believed everything she heard from the fortune teller (that was some kind of Germanic thing with fate.
Check out the album from the fifties, the one with the boat trip to Europe. Why did they go? Coincided with the Hungarian Revolution.
The forged passport story…
The bit with having Emil send a bill for the burial of her father(?) to some insurance company, which she then kept for herself.
Their travels in Egypt when Mia fell down and broke her leg, and Lotti just left her behind.
Lotti’s final scene
–I deserve to be happy, after what I‘ve been through…
NOTES:
Lotti was a life-long anti-semite, yet many of her friends were jewish (no irony); in fact, many of her lovers were Jews. After all, twenty percent of Budapest was Jewish before the war; “and only about ten left after the war.”
Use the “germans make excellent ovens” line
Money from Budapest lot; Sissi and Lotti cutting Katia out of the deal; Lotti doesn’t want to live if she can’t have money.
Lotti’s manipulations: send JP to Brasil to get him away from Myra; have Katia push JP to Ohio to again get him away, or because he wasn’t answering the phone; that was Katia’s little betrayal; Max dies as a result; oddly, Katia urges JP to have children
Manya and Johnny’s birth announcement; jewish shopkeepers daughter; sympathy card
Johnny asks Armin why HE never left her, since she treated him so badly that he acted out like a monster; his relegation to the tiny entrance-hall closet, while she gobbled up all the rest of the closet space for her stuff
Armin itinerary; the layoff; the repo men; the seedy hotels
The Schadenfreude and invidious comparisons among the refugees…
Lotti will die to the strains of La Vie en Rose. She has come to the nursing home to die, and she will not have put her discontent to rest. She humns the tune at various times during the play.
The blinking red light remains at the fade out at the end.
Johnny’s search for other families, liges is Brooklyn while attending business school (also brother/father figures)
Johnny finally tells Lotti everything, but she is dead already
Scene of Johnny and Sissi going through all of Lotti’s stuff, throwing most of it out, but keeping her many photo albums and uncovering secrets within. (“You know, there isn’t a single picture of Armin anywhere.”)
Lotti pushes hard on the Brasil job for Johnny, telling lies to both sides.
Speculate on what would have happened if Johnny had left Manya at Lotti’s insistence, i.e. if Lotti had succeeded in breaking them up.
Katia does get her revenge on Lotti…
The Thanksgiving gathering of the siblings where they make fun of Lotti, yet it is awkward.
In fact Lotti was a skank, whoring around at the expense of her children. She never acknowledged her bad behavior nor did she ever apologize. She did not give her children the break they really needed.
Lotti cheats on her husband and has numerous lovers (Johnny and Sissi are able to document at least fourteen).
She always gave mixed messages: I love you, ski trips, Paris, etc. but then held them out as debt incurred.
Lotti never told Eva that Armin was not her father; nor that she was never baptized, as Eva believed.
Johnny never understands why Lotti let it go after the “That makes me very sad moment.”
She never tries to reconcile.
Termites under the shower
Lotti has no pictures of Armin: -You have no pictures of Armin. –Of course I do, there must be one here somewhere
–You know, I don’t remember much of the good times, only the bad.
–Yeah, it feeds your anger, and it’s going to gobble you right up.
Lotti never told the truth in her life
Armin cracks up in his car.
The pedophilic incident
