A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (3 page)

DOROTHEA:
Whew!

BODEY:
Think how cool it will be on the
open-air
streetcar to Creve Coeur.

DOROTHEA:
You must have had your hearing aid off when I said I had other plans.

BODEY:
Buddy, I been telling Buddy to cut down on his beer, and Buddy is listening to me. He’s cut down to eight a
day—from
a dozen and will cut down more . . .

DOROTHEA:
Bodey, could you stop talking about Buddy this hot Sunday morning? It’s not a suitable subject for hot weather. I know
brother-sister
relationships are deep, but it’s not just the beer, it’s the almost total lack of interests in common, no topics of conversations,
of—of mutual—interest
.

BODEY:
They could develop. I know Buddy just feels embarrassed. He hasn’t opened up yet. Give him time and he will.

DOROTHEA:
Bodey, this discussion is embarrassingly pointless in view of the fact that I’m already committed to Ralph Ellis. I still have to do my hip swivels . . .

BODEY
[
rushing to the phone
]: Olive 2697, Olive 2697! Buddy? Me!
Grosser Gott!
I can’t talk now, but you absolutley got to go to Creve Coeur with us this Sunday.
—Dress
good! Don’t smoke cigars! And laugh at her witty remarks.
—Well
, they
are
, they’re witty! She teaches
civics
.

Now be at the Creve Coeur station at 1:30,
huh? —Please!— Somebody’s
at the door, I can’t talk now. [
Leaving the phone off the hook, she rushes to the door and opens it
.] Oh. Hello.

HELENA:
Good morning.

BODEY:
Are you a friend of Dotty’s?

HELENA:
Of Dorothea’s?
—Yes
.

BODEY:
Well, then come on in. Any friend of Dotty’s is a friend of mine.

HELENA:
Is that so?

BODEY
[
discomfited
]: Yes,
I—got
grease on my hand. I was fryin’ up some chickens for a picnic.

HELENA:
—Well!
This is a surprise! [
She makes several turns in a mechanical, rigid fashion, eyes staring
.]

BODEY:
Excuse me, I should
of—interduced
myself.

HELENA:
You are Miss Bodenheifer.

BODEY:
Hafer, not heifer. [
She laughs nervously
.] Heifer meaning a cow.

HELENA:
No conscious association whatsoever. [
She advances forward a step
.] So this is Schlogger Haven?

BODEY:
Oh, Schlogger Haven, that’s just a joke of Dotty’s. The landlord’s name is Schlogger, that’s
all—that’s
all . . .

HELENA:
Dorothea was joking, was she?

BODEY:
Yeh, she jokes a lot, full of humor. We have lots of laughs. [
Bodey extends her hand
.]

HELENA:
I can imagine you might, Miss Bodenheifer.

BODEY:
You can forget the Miss.
—Everyone
at the office calls me Bodey.

HELENA:
But we are not at the
office—we
are here in Schlogger Haven. [
She continues enigmatically
.] Hmmm . . . I’ve never ventured this side of Blewett before.

BODEY:
Never gone downtown?

HELENA:
I do nearly all my shopping in the West End, so naturally it amazed me to discover street after street without a shade tree on it, and the glare, the glare, and the heat refracted by all the brick, concrete,
asphalt—was
so overpowering that I nearly collapsed. I think I must be afflicted with a combination of photo- and heliophobia, both.

BODEY
[
unconsciously retreating a step as if fearing contagion
]: I never heard of
neither—but
you got
both?

HELENA:
An exceptional sensitivity to both heat and strong light.

BODEY:
Aw.

HELENA:
Yes. Now would you please let Dorothea know I’m here to see her?

BODEY:
Does Dotty expect you, Miss,
uh—

HELENA:
Helena Brookmire, no, she doesn’t expect me, but a very urgent business matter has obliged me to drop by this early.

BODEY:
She won’t have no one in there with her. She’s exercising.

HELENA:
But Dorothea and I are well acquainted.

BODEY:
Well acquainted or not acquainted at all, makes no difference. I think that modern girls emphasize too much these advertised treatments and keep their weight down too much for their health.

HELENA:
The preservation of youth requires some sacrifices.

BODEY:
—I
guess you and Dotty teach together at Blewett High?

HELENA:
—Separately
.

BODEY:
You mean you’re not at Blewett where Dotty teaches civics?

HELENA
[
as if addressing a backward child
]: I teach there, too. When I said separately, I meant we teach separate classes.

BODEY:
Oh, naturally, yes. [
She tries to laugh
.] I been to high school.

HELENA
: Have you?

BODEY:
Yes. I know that two teachers don’t teach in the same class at the same time, on two different subjects.

HELENA
[
opening her eyes very wide
]: Wouldn’t
that
be peculiar.

BODEY:
Yes. That would be peculiar.

HELENA
[
chuckling unpleasantly
]: It might create some confusion among the students.

BODEY:
Yes, I reckon it would.

HELENA:
Especially if the subjects were as different as civics and the history of
art
.

This
is
, it really
is!

BODEY:
Is
what?

HELENA:
The most remarkable room that I’ve ever stepped into! Especially the combination of colors! Such a
vivid
contrast! May I sit down?

BODEY:
Yeh, yeh, excuse me, I’m not myself today. It’s the heat and
the—

HELENA:
Colors?— The
vivid contrast of colors? [
She removes a pair of round,
white-rimmed
dark glasses from her purse and puts them on
.] Did Dorothea assist you, Miss Bodenheifer, in decorating this room?

BODEY:
No, when Dotty moved in, it was just like it is now.

HELENA:
Then you are solely responsible for this inspired selection of colors?

BODEY:
Excuse me a moment, I got to turn over the fryers in the skillet.

HELENA:
Don’t let me interrupt your preparations for a picnic.

BODEY:
Didn’t catch that. I don’t hear good sometimes.

HELENA:
Oh?

BODEY:
You see, I got this calcium deposit in my ears . . . and they advised me to have an operation, but it’s very expensive for me and sometimes it don’t work.

PHONE VOICE:
Booow-deeee!

HELENA:
I would advise you against it. I had an elderly acquaintance who had this calcification problem and she had a hole bored in her skull to correct it. The operation is called
fenestration—it
involves a good deal of danger and whether or not it was successful could not be determined since she never recovered consciousness.

BODEY:
Never recovered?

HELENA:
Consciousness.

BODEY:
Yeh, well, I think maybe I’d better learn to live with it.

PHONE VOICE
[
shouting again
]:
Bodeyyyyy—Bodeyyyy—

BODEY:
What’s that?

HELENA:
I was wondering, too. Very strange barking sounds are coming out of the phone.

BODEY
[
laughing
]: Oh, God, I left it unhooked. [
She snatches it up
.] Buddy, sorry, somebody just dropped in, forgot you was still on the line. Buddy, call me back in a few minutes, huh, Buddy, it’s, uh, very important. [
She hangs up the phone
.] That was my brother. Buddy. He says he drunk two beers and made him a liverwurst sandwich before I got back to the phone. Thank God he is so
good-natured
. . . . He and me are going out on a picnic at Creve Coeur with Dotty this afternoon. My brother is very interested in Dotty.

HELENA:
Interested? Romantically?

BODEY:
Oh, yes, Buddy’s a very serious person.

HELENA
[
rising
]:
—I
am very impressed!

BODEY:
By what, what by?

HELENA
[
with disguised fury
]: The ingenuity with which you’ve fitted yourself into this limited space. Every inch seems to be utilized by some appliance
or—
decoration?
[
She picks up a large painted china frog
.]
—A
frahg?

BODEY:
Yes, frawg.

HELENA:
So realistically colored and designed you’d almost
expect it to croak.
—Oh
, and you have a canary . . . stuffed!

BODEY:
Little Hilda . . . she lived ten years. That’s the limit for a canary.

HELENA:
Limit of longevity for the species?

BODEY:
She broke it by three months.

HELENA:
Establishing a record. It’s quite heroic, enduring more than ten years in such confinement. What tenacity to existence some creatures do have!

BODEY:
I got so attached to it, I took it to a,
a—

HELENA:
Taxidermist.

BODEY:
Excuse me a moment. [
She rushes to the stove in the alcove
.]
OW! —Got
burnt again.

HELENA
[
following curiously
]: You were burnt before?

Miss Bodenheifer,
please!
You’ve sprinkled my clothes with that powder!

BODEY:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to.

HELENA:
Intentional or not, I’m afraid you have! May I have a clothes brush?

BODEY:
Look at that, I spilt it on the carpet. [
She rushes to fetch a broom
.]

HELENA:
Miss Bodenheifer, I WOULD LIKE A CLOTHES BRUSH, IF YOU HAVE A
CLOTHES
BRUSH! Not a broom. I am not a carpet.

BODEY:
AW. SURE. Dotty’s got a clothes brush. Oh. Help yourself to some coffee. [
She drops the broom and enters the bedroom
.]

DOROTHEA’S VOICE:
Sixty,
ha!
Sixty-one
,
ha!
[
She continues counting but stops when she notices Bodey
.]
—The
PHONE? Is it the PHONE?

BODEY:
Clothes brush. [
Bodey closes the bedroom door and begins opening and shutting drawers as she looks for the clothes brush
.]

DOROTHEA:
DON’T, DONT,
DON’T—slam
a drawer shut like that! I feel like screaming!

HELENA:
The hazards of this place almost equal the horrors.

DOROTHEA
[
in the bedroom
]: I asked you if the phone rang.

BODEY:
No, no, the doorbell.

HELENA
[
who has moved to the icebox
]: Ah. Ice, mostly melted, what squalor!

DOROTHEA:
I presume it’s Miss Gluck from upstairs in boudoir
cap and wrapper. Bodey, get her out as quickly as possible. The sight of that woman destroys me for the whole day.

HELENA
[
still in the kitchenette
]: This remnant of ice will not survive in this steaming glass of coffee.

What’s that?

Another tenant.
Demented!