5

SAMUEL
Mama did come back a year ago
After Tom made all kinds of promises
On bended knee
Watching this arthritic mountain of a man
Lumber down and cry and beg
Mama felt she had no choice
After all she was his memory bank.

ELEANOR
The keeper of the books
Filer of names and dates
Cataloger of every object and artifact
Tom amassed over the years.

SAMUEL
Yeah,
Mama,
She came back
Albeit reluctantly. See:
The year she was gone was the first year
She’d ever spent by herself

ELEANOR
I met Tom
When I was seventeen. Just a girl, really.
He was twenty-eight.
He had the most striking head of any man I’d ever seen.

SAMUEL
See: when my mother was seventeen
She and the boys threw stones in the alleyway
And broke the office window of Tom’s shop.

ELEANOR
He ran a wrecking company back then.
Tore down obsolete factories,
Dismantling all the beautiful old machines
Discarding their remains onto the scrap heap.

SAMUEL
Tom caught the crew
had a punishment in store for each and every one of them.
He used to joke that Mama’s punishment was marriage to him.

And you have to ask why I don’t live there anymore?

ELEANOR
No, Tom wasn’t rich.
He made a decent living.
But even so,
That’s not the reason a woman marries a man like Tom.

SAMUEL
From seventeen to fifty-five

ELEANOR
Thirty-eight years

SAMUEL
Mama stood by Tom.

ELEANOR
The beautiful old house just outside Madison

SAMUEL
The miscarriages

ELEANOR
Tom’s motorcycle accident

SAMUEL
The other women

ELEANOR
The birth of my son.

SAMUEL
The silent treatment

ELEANOR
Making love in the summer in a tent on the shores of Devil’s Lake

SAMUEL
The Year Dad Went a Little Crazy

ELEANOR
When Tom turned 40
He sold the company.
Which took a toll. Money-wise. But he
Couldn’t bear it anymore
Tearing down obsolete factories
Sending beautiful old machines to the scrap heap.

SAMUEL
The Year My Father Was Reborn

ELEANOR
He couldn’t bear erasing that history.
Tom figured
Instead of condemning these beautiful useless things to oblivion
He would resurrect them.
He would write an epic poem –
In the form of a sculpture
Built from the dead machines he loved so much.

SAMUEL
The Sunday in May
When I was nine
When Tom taught me the art of handling a blowtorch.

ELEANOR
Summers crisscrossing the continent
Collecting material for the sculpture

SAMUEL
From seventeen to fifty five

ELEANOR
Thirty-eight years.

SAMUEL
Mama stood by Tom.

ELEANOR
When my son left
It broke Tom’s heart.
We had to invent other children.
People,
Young people, mostly
Somehow find this place.
They fall in love with it.
They take on Tom’s dream as if it were their own.
They stay for awhile.
Learn the ins and outs of using a blowtorch.
But after awhile
They’d learn that Tom’s dream was his
And they’d move on hoping they’d find their own.

Magdalena….

She showed up one day.
Came all the way from Poland.
She stayed.

SAMUEL
So at 55, Mama left home.
First time she ever left home
Since the day she moved out of her parents’ house and into Tom’s.

And you have to ask why I don’t live there anymore?

ELEANOR
I never lived in a big city before.
So I drove up to Minneapolis..
Figured, why not?
I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.

First thing I did
After I found a place to live:
I bought a computer.
Seemed like the thing to do, right?

I felt guilty about it.
A thousand dollars
For a machine to play solitaire on.

One day
I
Mustered up the courage
To go out.

I volunteered delivering meals to
The elderly
The disbled.
People who couldn’t leave their homes for one reason or another.

I delivered meals to Mrs. Wiedinghof
She lived in the house she was born in.
She was 81.
She was a shut in.
Hadn’t thrown anything away
Since her husband died forty years ago.

She spent her days alone
pacing back and forth through the narrow maze
She’d carved out between the walls of garbage.
You could smell the rot from the sidewalk

I thought, no one should have to live like that.
So I cleaned out every inch of the place myself.
She screamed obscenities the entire time
Like it was torture to her.

At the bottom of the heaps
I found a newspaper
April 17 1953
The day she buried her husband.

When the house was finally clean
Seeing the walls made her feel
claustrophobic.

She died just a few weeks later.

And I went home.

SAMUEL
Yeah, Mama did come back last year
After Tom made all kinds of promises

And now she’s on her knees
Looking through a keyhole
Watching it happen all over again.

ELEANOR
The little girl sits on a metal chair
Across from the couch
where Tom’s weight sinks
The girl can’t be a day more than twenty-two
Her name is Magdalena
And she has legs that are a mile long
Toned and tan and she isn’t wearing any shoes.
Handsome bare feet, toenail polish chipped.
She wears a navy blue man’s shirt
And a grey wool mini and I mean mini skirt.
Knees pressed tight together, ankles intertwined
Like the knot of a pretzel

“Will you sing for me?”
That’s what I hear Tom say.

And I hear her say:

MAGDALENA’S VOICE
What would you like for me to sing?

ELEANOR
Magdalena has a beautiful voice.
She sings an old song as ancient as time itself
she doesn’t remember where she learned it.
It’s always been there somehow.

MAGDALENA’S SONG
(song based on the house carpenter)
He slips
He slips from our bed late at night
He goes
He goes into town
And there he meets a girl with lovely skin
Lovely skin that’s smooth and brown

Will he
Will he come home to me
Will he
Stay away all night
Can I bear the shame of being a wife
To a man who remembers me not

One night
I follow him into town
To see his other girl
To smell her scent to see her dress
To see how his face she caressed

Last night
Before my husband came home
I painted
My face like hers
Dressed in her clothes scented my skin
And waited for him longingly

No he
No he didn’t notice me
He looked
He looked so forlorn
He found a picture of our wedding day and
cried wife why are you dead and gone?
Why are you dead and gone.

ELEANOR
And she finishes the song
And my husband’s eyes are red
Like he knows he’s dying

SAMUEL
And Mama’s on her knees
Peering through the keyhole

ELEANOR
And there they sit quiet
Tom
Sunk deep in his couch
Magdalena on the stool
Legs a mile long
Knees pressed together
And I hear my husband say

SAMUEL & ELEANOR
“Open”

ELEANOR
Her lips form a half smile
Like she’s remembering a game they used to play
And she

Opens

SAMUEL
Mama can hardly stand it,
She feels a pit open in her stomach.

So she leaves once again.

ELEANOR
Who would have thought after my husband died
She’d become like a daughter to me?

SAMUEL
And you have to ask why I don’t live there anymore?