Lenten Observance (A play) ACT I

Lenten Observance

Dramatis Personae

Mark……………The father
Julie……………The mother
Frank…………. The eldest son
Louise………….The eldest daughter
Nathan…………The youngest son
Sarah…………..The youngest girl
Daniel…………Nathan’s friend
A Nurse

Act I

Scene 1

Good Friday

Mid-day in the sitting room

(The room should have a three-piece suite, lamp and a mirror hanging on the wall stage right. There should be a radio sitting on a small table in front of a picture of the Sacred Heart and a TV in the corner facing the sofa and chairs. The décor should reflect the style of the average lower middle-class. There is a door into the sitting-room at the rear of the set, stage left, which leads off into the hallway and the upstairs. MARK enters through this door, in the process of dressing. He walks across to the mirror and begins to put on his tie, which is draped around his shoulders. His hair is sticking up making it obvious that he has just showered. He is humming part of the first movement of Mahler’s second symphony. When finished with his tie he combs his hair. It is short but neat with a side parting. He is dressed respectably enough for a middle-aged man – casual, not stiff and has the pleasant demeanour of a man who feels comfortable with his age, is a good husband and parent with no apparent skeletons in the closet. He turns and walks back toward the door and sticks his head through)

Mark: Come on you lot! I’m starting breakfast and I’m only calling you once. (Chuckles) In my dreams! I’ve been shouting kids awake in this house for twenty years with no luck. Still it’s a holiday. Hardly fair to get them up at all but it’s an important day. He looks over at the Sacred Heart picture. We should all acknowledge His sacrifice. Maybe not all of us; can’t see the big feller coming. He won’t even go at Christmas now. I mustn’t force him – no – it’ll just push him further away. He’ll come back in his own time. He’s got a good heart, like yours, only he’s a little lost at the moment, like so many others.

(He goes over to the Sacred Heart picture)

You’ll help him won’t you? Set him right. He can’t die without his faith; that would kill me. Perhaps we’ve spoilt him, made things too easy. Look at his brother, Nathan, with his problems. Okay he’s not severely autistic but he still finds it hard to understand a lot of the world around him and yet he has the faith of a child. Without that you’re nothing.

Enter JULIE

Julie: Here (having heard the end of his monologue she pretends to throw something at him) when you picked up your tie you forgot your halo!

Mark: Morning sweetheart – have a nice lie in?

Julie: That extra ten minutes – can you see the effect? My crow’s feet are actually receding.

Mark: You didn’t need to get up.

Julie: I didn’t want to.

Mark: Oh, sorry – too loud. How else can I wake them though?

Julie: A gentle shake perhaps? What time’s Mass?

Mark: It’s Good Friday. What sort of a Catholic are you?

Julie: I forget.

Mark: Three o’clock. The time He died on the cross.

Julie. You know Frank won’t go don’t you?

(Goes back to the door)

Mark (Shouts even louder): Come on boys and girls – get up!

Julie: I’ll start breakfast.

Mark: No, no – I said I’d do it.

Julie: I’m up now. I may as well be busy. (Exit)

Mark: That’s my girl.

(NATHAN enters. He is 17 year old, tall and slender and his outward appearance does not betray his autism)

Mark: And there’s my boy. Morning smiler!

Nathan (Goes toward the TV): Dad.

Mark: Well, is it going to rain today?

Nathan: Just going to find out.

(Nathan kneels in front of the TV and begins to rock back and forth)

Mark (Goes to window): Looks fine to me.

Nathan: That’s no good. You have to check the forecast.

Mark: Plan ahead.

Nathan: What plan?

Mark: Ahead.

Nathan: Where?

Mark: Where what?

Nathan: What’s a plan?

Mark. I’m sorry son, I’m confusing you. It means…making arrangements.

(Nathan looks bemused)

Mark: …hang on…preparing for…hem… (Pause) that’s it, that’s it – we’re all going to church today aren’t we?

Nathan: Not Frank.

Mark: Forget Frank. Now if we check the forecast today and find out its going to rain we can take our umbrellas.

Nathan: That’s the plan.

Mark: Yes.

Nathan: Well it’s stupid.

Mark: Why?

Nathan: It’s going to be sunny.

Mark (Ruffles Nathan’s hair): Absolutely. What a ridiculous plan that was!

(Enter LOUISE. She is 19 and is also tall and slim. She is pretty and has ambitions to become an actress)

Louise: You can turn that off for a start!

Nathan: No – I haven’t checked next week.

Louise: You did all this yesterday morning.

Nathan: Things change.

Louise: Change! You never change. Every morning it’s the same thing. Dad, why can’t I watch Friends this morning, just for once?

Mark: He won’t be long, have patience.

Louise: You always give in to him.

Mark: Remember what day it is. Can’t you make a sacrifice too?

Louise: What about Nathan?

Mark: His was made for him, he didn’t have a choice.

Louise: And I should be grateful, like the starving in Africa.

Mark: There’s no comparison.

Louise: Isn’t there? I’ll go and shower. (Exit)

Nathan: She’s always angry with me.

Mark: Not you. Maybe her boyfriend or it might be her whatsits playing up.

Nathan: Her...

Mark: And is it going to stay sunny over the weekend then?

Nathan: Showers on Sunday.

Mark: Bolloc… (Coughs) I mean oh dear. We were going to the Malvern Hills for a picnic as well.

Nathan: Shouldn’t be allowed should it Dad?

Mark: What a picnic?

Nathan: No the rain. It shouldn’t rain on Easter Sunday.

Mark: Correct son. It’s the most joyous day of the year; the day He conquered death. It gives us hope that through Jesus’ unmitigated love we will live forever. It should by rights rain today, the day they crucified him.

Nathan: Maybe God doesn’t have a plan.

Mark: Hang on son I think you’re getting this all twisted.

(Louise re-enters)

Louise: Sarah’s in the bathroom. She’ll be there for hours.

Nathan: And I’m next.

Louise: Think again! The only shower you’ll be taking before me is a heavenly one.
I’ll stand guard on the stairs.

(Exits again)

Nathan: Louise is stupid.

Mark: Unreasonable sometimes but…

Nathan: They don’t need showers in Heaven.

Mark: I suppose not.

Nathan: You have to be clean already. That’s right isn’t it Dad? Otherwise they won’t let you in.

Mark: A fine piece of logic young Master Holmes.

Nathan: Who are you talking to?

Mark (Sighs): So we’ll be dry going to mass today?

Nathan: Yeah, dry all day.

(There is banging coming from upstairs and Louise’s voice is heard offstage)

Louise: Sarah! That’s long enough. You’re just a kid.

Sarah: I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.

Nathan (Switches off TV): Finished now. I’ll get ready.

Mark: Nathan, let Louise go first, please. Let’s have a little respect for the day.

(Nathan exits)

Mark: Look at him - a pauper on earth but a prince in Heaven.
Need a hand with the breakfast love.

Julie (from kitchen): No, but you can tidy up in there.

Mark: It is tidy.

Julie: A tip would look tidy to you!

Mark: Okay, okay.

(As Mark begins to tidy Julie re-enters)

Louise: You’re a real brick Dad!

Mark: Hold on now, I told Nathan to wait.

Louise: Is that all you told him?

Mark: To keep the peace.

Louise: For you. What about me?

Mark: For everybody.

Louise: Even angry old irritable me?

Mark: Well sweetheart you know you’re not exactly my morning princess.

Louise: That’s my prerogative; however, it didn’t stop you providing Nathan with a suitable list of possible symptoms for my prickliness.

Mark: You’ve rather lost me.

Louise: Perhaps it’s your whatsits playing up Dad?

Mark: Ah! (Pause) I didn’t elucidate though.

Louise: As if that would matter with that stupid brother of mine.

Mark: Don’t call him that!

Louise: I don’t mean it that way. Look I’m just trying to treat him normal; that’s what you told me to do.

Mark: Nevertheless, if other people hear his sister disparaging him, it’ll give them a good excuse to do the same.

Louise: And just what do you think is going to happen to me in church today?

Mark: Some prayers perhaps?

Louise: Forget the detours Dad. Stay on the same road for once.

Mark: Nathan! Come down here!

Louise: At last!

(Nathan enters)

Nathan: Dad?

Mark: You’ve landed me in hot water son.

Nathan: Are you taking a bath, ‘cause I haven’t had my shower yet?

Mark: No. That’s an expression. It means to get someone into trouble.

Nathan: Who’s in trouble?

Mark: Me.

Nathan: I haven’t done anything.

Mark: You said something though, something you shouldn’t have.

Nathan: No I haven’t.

Mark: What about the whatsits?

Nathan: What whatsits?

Louise: My whatsits!

Mark: Her whatsits.

Nathan: What about her whatsits?

Louise: I haven’t got any.

Nathan: Neither have I.

Louise: That’s a relief.

Mark: Don’t mention Louise’s whatsits to the others, will you?

Nathan: She said she hasn’t got any.

Mark: Not those whatsits. I mean the whatsits I mentioned before, the ones that make Louise angry.

Louise (Angry): They don’t make me angry!

Mark: Well, irritable then.

Louise: They don’t make me irritable either and I haven’t got any whatsits now. Is that clear?

Nathan: Where have they gone then?

Mark: They come and…

Louise: What my father is trying to tell you in his own idiosyncratic manner is to forget all about the whatsits. They don’t exist and never have. But, just in case your voice-box happens to resound with that absurd idiom dad came up with, and Frank and Sarah, by unfortunate chance are within earshot, the whatsits will come after you like the Furies on heat, with a severe migraine and the worst case of PMT in the history of sisterhood. Is any of this getting through?

Nathan (After a pause): Say nothing to Frank and Sarah.

Louise: Halleluiah!

Mark: Louise, please; in vain dear, in vain.

Louise: I thought it rather apt for the season. Exits

Mark: Thank God she’s calmed down.

Nathan: Perhaps the whatsits have gone.

Mark: Ssh! Not a word now, okay?

Julie (From kitchen): Breakfast!

Scene II

The kitchen

Julie: Sit down Nathan and make sure eat this morning.

Nathan: I don’t want a greasy breakfast.

Julie: You don’t have to but have some…whatsists…

Mark: Don’t you start.

Julie (Continuing): …cereal. What are you blathering on about?

Louise: I’ll have a fry up

Mark: No dear. No meat today.

Louise: C’mon dad, give the archaic religious dogma a break. I’m going isn’t that enough?

Mark: If it’s such a strain, stay home with Frank.

Julie: We’ll go as a family and you can have your bacon.

Mark: But…

Julie: You can give up arguing with your brothers and sister for one day – that would be a sacrifice worth making!

Louise: Deal. And two eggs, mushrooms and toast.

Julie: Darling?

Mark: I’ll stick with the All Bran.

(Enter Sarah. She is carrying her favourite doll)

Sarah: Mmm, bacon! Any sausages Mum?

Mark: Oh I give up?

Sarah: Okay, what’s the crime?

Louise: You want meat!

Sarah: So what; only Dad gives that up on Fridays.

Mark: This is Good Friday!

Sarah: All the more reason to enjoy it.

Mark: We shouldn’t be enjoying Good Friday. This is a black day.

(Nathan gets up and goes to the window)

Mark: Our Lord is nailed to the cross today for our sins.

Sarah: Not for mine, I’m only 12.

Louise: Maybe yours Dad. Some mornings you look 2000 years old.

Nathan: It’s a blue day.

Mark: What?

Louise: Christ not the bloody weather again.

Mark: Cursing and eating meat.

Nathan: No rain.

Julie: If you could be less zealous…

Sarah: I’ll get my own sausages.

Louise: I wish it would rain.

Mark: I have a responsibility to the church.

Nathan: Why would they lie?

Julie: A little more consideration for these might work to your advantage.

Sarah (Searching in the fridge): Where are they?

Louise: Everybody lies.

Mark: I have a higher duty.

Nathan: But I’ve seen it.

Julie: Charity begins at home.

Sarah: Got ‘em.

Louise: Things change. What about that hurricane?

Mark: Charity? Who’s the loser in this family, them?

Nathan: We can’t get hurricanes or tornados, they’re American.

Julie: Why claim credit for what you’re supposed to do?

Sarah: I’m putting them on now mother dear. She puts her dolly down on a chair. We’ll have sausages together won’t we Hope?

Louise: But we did, in 1987.

Mark: Twenty years of graft. Not just eight hours a day mind but overtime too.

Nathan: You were a baby.

Julie: Overtime! When did I ever ask you to get up in the middle of the night and feed any of them?

Sarah: They’re getting all burnt one side. She tries to turn them by shaking the pan.

Louise: Check it out on the internet – see if I’m right. They didn’t see that coming, your so-called weather gods.

Mark: How could I? You breast-fed all four. You wanted to; it was healthier you said. What was I going to do, let them suck on a dry tit?

(Louise and Sarah turn to look at Mark. As Sarah turns the pan falls to the kitchen floor. Sarah shrieks but is not injured. Louise smirks triumphantly. Frank enters)

Frank: Father dear, such language. And on Good Friday too!

(Pause)

Mark: I apologize – (turns to Frank) – but not to you.

Frank: So that universality of love you affect to worship has limits.

Julie: Frank, your father does love you.

Frank: He does? (Turns to Mark)

Louise: Don’t play the martyr Frank. When have you ever admitted being wrong?

Frank: But, sweet sister, surely I was born wrong?

Mark: You ungrateful bast….consider your poor brother.

Frank: Nathan? But he’s the luckiest of us all.

Julie: Frank, stop – arguing for something you believe in is fine, but don’t provoke your father with this.

Frank: But I do, completely. What complications or crises will ever faze him? Nathan has a simple creed
I believe in one cereal in the morning
With milk and with sugar
I believe in the weather man
I believe in the sun and the rain
I believe in cirrus and cumulus
I believe in my special school
And my special teachers…

(While he incants this Nathan is grinning in pleasure)

Julie: Frank – enough!

Mark: You blasphemous shit! You spoilt bastard!

Nathan: That was funny.

Frank: Dad, listen, just for once lift your eyes above that wall of dubious morals you’ve constructed around yourself.

Mark: Ah ha, out it comes again – I’ve got a university degree.

Frank: Which you used to be proud of.

Mark: Because I thought it would lead you on to higher things – a good job, something solid; not a stick to beat me with.

Frank: It taught me to think, isn’t that enough?

Mark: You mean questioning everything that you were brought up to believe. I should never have sent you – never have wasted all that money.

Julie: How far do you want to go with this, both of you?

(Pause)

Julie: May I remind you that Nathan is not only your brother but he’s my son as well.

Sarah: And he’s doing really well at school too.

Louise: You’d never know.

Sarah: Nathan draws a line between home and school. They’re two different worlds to him and he doesn’t feel there has to be a link.

Louise: Why so expert?

Sarah: Because I talk to him.

Louise: And I do.

Sarah: No, you talk at him. You expect him to react the way you do. What you regard as normal is strange to him.

Mark: Nathan is normal, and I won’t have it any other way.

Sarah: I agree Dad, but normal isn’t one simple level playing field. There are degrees.

Julie: What do you mean sweetheart?

Sarah: At school we study different peoples and their cultures – Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. We’ve looked at Ancient Greece and Rome and examined how the Native American lived. It would never occur to an Indian that he was less than normal and yet white settlers considered them savages.

Frank: All this from a Catholic school – well times have changed. So which God do they believe in now?

Mark: When did this start?

Julie: Mark, for God’s sake, Louise had to learn this too.

Louise: And man was it boring. I mean Christianity is bad enough without having to be lumbered with other people’s gods…hem.

Mark: What’s this Frank, another recruit to the ranks of atheism?

Frank: Not guilty your holiness.

Louise: Dad, I haven’t lost my faith. (Pause) It’s just, that…look Dad. I’m a size eight. I buy dresses and skirts that fit me.

Frank: Interesting!

Mark: So it’s off the peg faith for this family now; and you?

Sarah: I’m still young.

Julie: Meaning:

Sarah: Indoctrination. It’s expected of me.

Nathan: You are all stupid.

Mark: What’s that son?

Nathan: Of course there’s a God.

Mark: Out of the mouths of mere babes!

Frank: Proof?

Nathan: What’s proof?

Louise: Why has there got to be a God?

Nathan: Somebody had to make the weather.

Frank: Well that’s my argument fucked.

Mark: You’re right Nathan, not only the weather, but the stars and the earth and us too.

Nathan: Then why did he make me different?

Frank: To make us grateful.

(Mark rises angrily from his chair and knocks it to the floor)

Mark: Is this what I raised you to be, dead?

(There is a knock on the door. Sarah gets up to answer it)

Julie: Sit down Mark.

(Sarah re-enters)

Sarah: It’s Daniel, Nathan’s friend. Can he come in?

Mark: We’re going to church soon.

Nathan: He can come to.

Julie: Nathan, Daniel isn’t Catholic. I don’t think he goes to church

Nathan: But he believes in God. He told me.

Louise: That’s weird.

Nathan: Weird?

Sarah: Don’t you talk about football and girls?

Nathan: We play football don’t we?

Julie: Let him come in for a moment.

(Sarah exits)

Mark: But church!

(Daniel enters with Sarah)

Julie: Come in Daniel. Have you had breakfast?

Daniel. Yes thanks. Can Nathan come over to my house?

Mark: We’re just going to church, fancy coming?

Daniel (Taken aback): No thank you. I’ve got some new games for the X-Box.

Nathan: Brilliant! I’ll get my shoes on.

Mark: Nathan, didn’t you hear me?

Julie: Sorry Daniel but this is important for Nathan’s father.

Mark: Just me?

Nathan: Why do I have to go to stupid church?

Julie: We’re all going.

Nathan: And Frank?

Mark: Frank doesn’t like the weather.

Nathan: I want to go to Danny’s house.

Julie: Let him go Mark, it won’t hurt.

Louise: Hypocrites! Treat him like everybody else yet he gets to miss mass.

Daniel: I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interfere.

Frank: I’m not this is the most fun I can remember on a Good Friday.

Sarah: Louise is only mad because she doesn’t want to go either.

Frank: Hey Dad looks like the team’s deserting you.

Mark: Fine! You can all do whatever you want. I’ll go myself.

Louise: If you insist Dad. I’ll go get changed. I said I’d meet Sally in town this afternoon.

(Exits)

Frank: I’m playing pool today, so I’ll say adieu before I get crucified.

(Exits)

Mark (Shouting after him): Getting pissed more than likely.

Sarah (Picking up her dolly): We’ll go with you Dad, me and Hope. That’ll make three which is a good Catholic number isn’t it? I’ll go get ready.

(Exits)

(There is an awkward silence as both Nathan and Daniel are unable to speak or move toward the door)

Julie: Go on Nathan, go with Daniel. Be back for tea.

(Nathan looks at his father and as Mark returns his look he nods his assent. Both Nathan and Daniel exit)

(Julie looks at Mark from across the breakfast table and begins to console him)

Julie: It’s a transitional period for them - teenagers into young adults. Try to remember what it was like for you.

Mark: I never lost my faith.

Julie: Never?

Mark: Not once.

Julie: And you never missed mass?

Mark: Oh come on, everybody misses the occasional mass.

Julie: Your mother never did.

Mark: She was a saint. She’ll be rolling in her grave this very minute at what’s happening to this family.

Julie: Nothing’s happening to us. Don’t we all still love each other? Would you really desert Frank if he was in trouble whether or not he believed in God? In twenty years time they might all be back in church with their own kids, our grandkids, but through their own choice, not self-serviant to some dogmatic ideology.

Mark: Closer to the grave you mean. We can all play that game.

Julie: That’s not for you to judge.

(Pause)

Mark: Do you really think that?

Julie: They all have good hearts, that’s what’s important, and if that is the way they decide to go, yes I can believe it.

Mark: But not for Nathan.

Julie: Why not for him?

Mark: Be realistic Julie, what’s out there for him?

Julie: Are you trying to say my son has no chance, that he can never find love?

Mark: But he’ll never get a real job, he’ll always need assistance - how could any woman make that kind of commitment? It wouldn’t be a marriage it would be some weird kind of adoption.

Julie: If you were qualified to speak from that perspective it might mean something. He’s a good-looking boy and he’s clever in his own way. He’s fiercely loyal and he’d be a good father and friend.

Mark: Friend? That’s a strange way of phrasing it.

Julie: Aren’t we friends lover, isn’t that what’s really important?

Mark: But it’s complicated with Nathan, how could they afford to live?

Julie: Sure he’ll never be a high-flyer in the workplace but his partner could be and he is quite capable of running a home.

Mark: I could never be comfortable with that.

Julie: His independence you mean.

Mark: But we’ve been responsible for him all his life, how do you let go and trust in a stranger.

Julie: Mark, you make it sound like he’ll be kidnapped. I’m sure Nathan will be like other boys and eventually find the right person.

Mark: Person! You could be talking about anybody.

Julie: Okay then, girl, if that makes you feel more contented.

Mark: She’d have to be a saint.

Julie: Like mother?

(Pause)

(Sarah re-enters)

Sarah: Ready Dad?

Mark: Okay love. Julie?

Julie: I’ll go tonight if you don’t mind.

Mark: Gethsemane.

Julie: Oh Mark, why be some biblically melodramatic? There are always options, people have busy lives. I can tidy up here, get dinner ready and go to evening mass.

Mark: Come on sweetheart - the youngest and the most devoted. They exit.

(Julie turns on the radio as she begins to tidy up the breakfast dishes. The Puccini aria ‘Oh Mio Babbino Caro’ is just beginning. She turns it over to a more mainstream channel)

Julie: Bloody racket.

(Curtain)