THE HOUSE CLEANING
A One Act Play
Cast of Characters
JONATHAN: A psychiatrist in his mid-sixties who just lost his mother to cancer.
LINDA: Jonathan’s wife, also in her mid-sixties.
TWO UNAMED MOURNERS
MIKE AND NANCY: Friends of Jonathan and Linda attending the funeral.
GLORIA: Jonathan’s late mother – a Narcissist.
Place
Cemetery where a graveside service for Gloria has ended
Time
July
Scene 1
Setting: Suggestions of a cemetery.
At Rise: Gloria’s funeral the service is over and people are leaving the gravesite. As they go, they stop by Jonathan and Linda to offer condolences.
UNNAMED CHARACTER
Jonathan, Linda, Sorry for your loss.
UNNAMED CHARACTER
Sorry for your loss, Doctor.
MIKE
“Jonathan, I know there was tension between you and your mother, but she is gone now. Whatever her faults were, it’s all over. We’ll stop by in a few days to see how you guys are doing.”
LINDA
Thank you, Mike, Nancy. (Turning to her husband)
Let’s go home, Jon.
Scene 2
At Rise: The last of the mourners leave. Jonathan and
Linda walk a few steps holding hands. Jonathan steps into the lighted office space while Linda fades off stage.
Setting: As they progress across the stage, the lighting
shifts from the simplified gravesite to a simplified representation of a psychiatrist’s office with two chairs and a couch – all tastefully modern
JONATHAN
(Turning toward audience) My friend Mike said my mother is gone and it’s all over. It’s over for her. But I’m still alive. I have to settle her estate. I have to clean out the house she’s been in for the last 60 years.
Cleaning out a house is like cleaning out a mind, emptying memories one drawer, one closet at a time.
I have patients who sit in that chair, or lie on that couch, and just talk and talk, not recognizing they are pouring out every hurt they’ve ever inflicted, every relationship they’ve ever poisoned.
Cleaning out my mother’s house is like listening to one of those patients, a monologue that only reveals, never heals.
Yet those patients will keep coming back, just to hear the sound of their own voices. And they show up like clockwork to have their time in the spotlight.
(Jonathan looks at his wristwatch)
And look at the time! Hello Mom.
(Jonathan’s mother, Gloria enters from the shadows of backstage.)
GLORIA
So this is your office. It’s too modern. When people visit their psychiatrist, they want to see traditional furniture lots of leather and mahogany. I can see Linda’s influence. Now I know why you never let me come in here.
JONATHAN
It’s not as if I didn’t think it was a good idea for you to visit a psychiatrist’s office, Mom. Just not mine.
GLORIA
Well it’s about time you had me in your place of business.
JONATHAN
You have ten minutes.
GLORIA
What can I do in ten minutes? I got Edward into law school, you into medical school, and Brian into… whatever it is he does with computers. That takes more than ten minutes!
JONATHAN
We’re going to have to focus. We’ll talk about three things my brother’s and I found while cleaning out your house: the pictures and the Mother’s Day card in your top dresser drawer and the letter from Hal in your night table.
GLORIA
I’ll tell you what I want to talk about: how much you hurt me when you stopped inviting me over for Thanksgiving. Linda’s family got invited every year. I wasn’t good enough.
JONATHAN
I think you do want to talk about those three things, the pictures, the Mother’s Day card, and the letter from Hal. Why else would you leave them there for us to find?
GLORIA
I was sick. I couldn’t do anything.
JONATHAN
You were diagnosed with end-stage pancreatic cancer eight weeks before you died. For six of those weeks, you were functional. You could have thrown those things away. You didn’t. There must be a reason.
GLORIA
I forgot all about them. Why are they important to you? Have you thought about why you are fixating on them, Mr. Psychiatrist?
JONATHAN
The letter from Hal was 50-years-old. Yet it was in the top drawer of your night table, the only thing in that drawer. Every other drawer in every piece of furniture was crammed with junk. But that letter had a special place of honor next to your bed. So I think it – and the card and the pictures – were important to you.
GLORIA
When you were a little boy, you were up every night. I would wake up to find you staring at me. You would always ask if you could get into bed with me and I always said yes. It would wake up your father and he used to get annoyed. He had to wake up at 3:30 to get to his bread route by 4:30. But I couldn’t say no to my little lovey.
JONATHAN
You’re in my office now. I’m going to focus you. We’ll start with the pictures. Why did you take those pictures and why did you keep them?
GLORIA
The human body is a beautiful thing!
JONATHAN
That may be true, but those pictures are really pornography.
GLORIA
(Slyly) You know, that’s not the first time you saw my breasts. When you were a baby, you couldn’t wait to get to my breasts. You were the hungriest of all my boys.
JONATHAN
Why not throw the pictures out so that my brothers and I didn’t have to?
GLORIA
You threw them out?
JONATHAN
Yes.
GLORIA
Did you show them to your wife?
JONATHAN
Yes.
GLORIA
Good. She should see what you were comparing her to.
JONATHAN
Now that is a sick thought. I wasn’t comparing her to you. And believe me, you would have lost in any comparison.
GLORIA
I was beautiful when I was young. You and your brothers should know. I hope you remember that, even though you threw away those pictures.
JONATHAN
I see. Let’s talk about the Mother’s Day card that you wrote to Linda but never sent.
GLORIA
I should have sent it.
JONATHAN
Why didn’t you?
GLORIA
Your sister-in-law, Marnie. She said I was totally wrong and to back off. I’m sorry I listened to her. I didn’t want to be the villain in the eyes of your brothers and their wives. But I was right. You hurt me.
JONATHAN
Do you remember the circumstances that Mother’s Day?
GLORIA
Yes. It was Mother’s Day and you didn’t visit, didn’t call, didn’t care. Your brothers were here. Their wives and children were here. My grandson Alan in California even called. From you, nothing.
JONATHAN
Do you remember where Linda and I were that day?
GLORIA
Don’t you think my heart was breaking with Jack in the hospital? I loved my grandson.
JONATHAN
I actually don’t think your heart was breaking, or you couldn’t have acted the way you did.
GLORIA
I’m still your mother and you could have called from his room. I’m sure he would have appreciated that and wanted to wish me a happy Mother’s Day too.
JONATHAN
Linda and I were in the hospital trying to see Jack through his first round of chemo. We were devastated–
GLORIA
(cutting him off) I was devastated too!
JONATHAN
…And you were trash talking us to my brothers for not being there on Mother’s Day. They told you that you were out of line, so you got a blank Mother’s Day card…
You wrote: Dear Linda, if you had a mother’s heart you would be here. And you were going to send it to Linda.
GLORIA
Well, I didn’t send it. I was angry and wrote that, but then I calmed down and didn’t send it.
JONATHAN
Six months after Jack died you called Linda to find out if we had any plans for the weekend. She said we had no plans and she did not feel like going anywhere. You asked her, why. She said because her son died six months ago. Do you remember what you said?
GLORIA
I don’t remember every conversation I ever had, like Linda. I move on.
JONATHAN
You said, You have to keep living, Linda. You have to move on. You told a woman who had lost her son to cancer six months before that it was time for her to move on.
GLORIA
Linda, Linda, Linda. Saint Linda! Like she never did anything to hurt me. Jonathan, we used to be so close. That ended when you married Saint Linda.
JONATHAN
You saved that card these seven years, so I imagine you died with no regrets about it. Let’s talk about the letter from Hal, which you saved for 50 years.
GLORIA
That letter is none of your business.
JONATHAN
If it’s none of my business, then why didn’t you throw it out before you died? When Marnie found it and started reading it out loud, Eddy screamed Stop reading that fucking letter.
I have it here.
Dear Gloria and Frank,
It’s been a hard few months working my campaign for Board of Education, and I know you both made a lot of sacrifices to help me. I want to thank you.–
GLORIA
(interrupting) Edward shouldn’t have said the “F” word.
JONATHAN
(looking at his mother) How would you feel about us throwing this away?
GLORIA
I’m dead and don’t care at all.
JONATHAN
It was next to your bed. Did you read it often?
GLORIA
Your father had no ambition. He retired and sat on his butt watching TV. I got my high school and college degrees after Brian started first grade. I worked my way up from being a secretary to doing public relations for important people.
Was the life he gave me supposed to be enough? I deserved a better life than that.
JONATHAN
Did you often think about Hal?
GLORIA
I hated Hal. He was an ugly man, inside and out.
JONATHAN
Yet you kept his letter. Did you read that letter often?
GLORIA
When your father was alive, yes. I had to remember that I was more than just his nursemaid with his heart failure. After he died, not so much.
JONATHAN
More than his nursemaid?
GLORIA
(passionately) I was desirable to a man like Hal! He was a lawyer. He owned a building in Manhattan! He was elected president of the school board. He wore a suit. He was somebody.
His wife Edna was a mouse, not a companion for a man like that. And your father, he went to work every day in his gray uniform and bread truck.
JONATHAN
Did you show that letter to Dad?
GLORIA
Of course. It was addressed to both of us.
JONATHAN
How did you think Dad would interpret that letter?
GLORIA
As an expression of gratitude from an important man, and a statement of how valuable I was.
JONATHAN
Do you remember the day Edna walked into our house without knocking on the door and what she said?
GLORIA
She was terrible, terrible. She had no right to come into my house and say those things!
JONATHAN
I remember what she said. She looked you directly in the face and screamed, You’d better stay the hell away from my husband. I never want to see you near him again, or I will kill you.
GLORIA
She was lying! That was a lie. Hal tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him – so he told his wife I tried to sleep with him to get at me.
JONATHAN
I believed that for years. And you always taught me that what you believe is the most important thing. But I no longer believe that story. I want truth.
Mom, did you have an affair with Hal?
GLORIA
Edna wanted to hurt me, and she had no right to come into my house and embarrass me in front of my husband and children!
JONATHAN
It’s pretty obvious that Edna was telling the truth and you were lying. That is why you kept Hal’s letter for 50 years.
GLORIA
Hal was ugly inside and out.
JONATHAN
How do you think Dad interpreted the last sentence of the letter after Edna revealed your affair a year later?
GLORIA
He didn’t think about it. Hal tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him. You don’t believe me, but your father did.
JONATHAN
He didn’t think about it?
You would complain to me and my brothers that Dad stopped having sex with you because of his congestive heart failure, which, by the way, was a totally inappropriate thing to share with your children – adults though we were.
When did he stopped having sex with you?
GLORIA
Your father refused to have sex with me because he thought it would kill him with his weak heart. Weak!
JONATHAN
When was that?
GLORIA
I don’t know.
JONATHAN
Was it right after Edna revealed your affair with Hal, or after his heart attack years later?
GLORIA
I don’t remember.
JONATHAN
Do you remember the last sentence of Hal’s letter?
GLORIA
It was a thank you letter.
JONATHAN
What was the last sentence?
GLORIA
Hal was thanking Dad for all the time I spent working on his campaign.
JONATHAN
(forcefully) What did he write?
GLORIA
(shouting) He wrote, Thank you for letting me borrow your wife.
There! Are you satisfied?
JONATHAN
(silent for a few seconds) You and Hal had quite a joke on Dad.
How do you think Dad felt when he remembered that sentence after Edna revealed your affair?
GLORIA
I don’t know how your father felt. I don’t know what anyone feels. I know what I felt. Hal desired me more than Edna, that’s what I felt!
JONATHAN
You don’t know what anyone feels. That statement is very true. And I think it ends this conversation.
GLORIA
But I want to keep talking to you.
JONATHAN
We’re almost finished getting your house empty and ready for sale. This is our last conversation.
Gloria is not there anymore. Jonathan turns and leaves the stage.
CURTAIN
J. David Liss asks questions that matter in gripping stories. How does a feeling heart overcome the tragedy of loss? How do we know whom to trust, and can trust ever be won back once lost? He’s published numerous stories and poems in journals and anthologies.