Perfect Match

“Perfect Match”

[poem to be read aloud before the scene begins]

Love Song: I and Thou

by Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level or square:

the studs are bowed, the joists

are shaky by nature, no piece fits

any other piece without a gap

or pinch, and bent nails

dance all over the surfacing

like maggots. By Christ

I am no carpenter. I built

the roof for myself, the walls

for myself, the floors

for myself, and got

hung up in it myself. I

danced with a purple thumb

at this house-warming, drunk

with my prime whiskey: rage.

Oh I spat rage’s nails

into the frame-up of my work:

it held. It settled plumb,

level, solid, square and true

for that great moment. Then

it screamed and went on through,

skewing as wrong the other way.

God damned it. This is hell,

but I planned it, I sawed it,

I nailed it, and I

will live in it until it kills me.

I can nail my left palm

to the left-hand cross-piece but

I can’t do everything myself.

I need a hand to nail the right,

a help, a love, a you, a wife.

[Scene: Man sleeping shirtless in a bed. A woman is standing at the foot of the bed in a bathrobe, watching him silently, perhaps smiling. She turns and addresses the audience, moves downstage slightly as she gives her monologue.]

Woman: He looks really beautiful, sleeping like that. I mean – he always looks beautiful – but I like him especially this way, sprawled out unself-consciously on the sheets.

I can’t sleep again tonight – like last night – and the night before – but being able to watch him kind of makes up for it. I get to fantasize a little – I pretend I’m Psyche, y’know, from the Greek myths, and I’ve brought a covered lantern so I can see my husband for the first time. And I open the door very slowly and quietly, and open the lantern, just a little – and there is my Eros, a god. –I get awfully romantic at three a.m., sometimes. [laughs, quietly] I wish he always looked like this to me. Sometimes . . . sometimes things aren’t so pretty, you know? Last night we had another fight and he stormed out, slammed the door so hard some of the pictures fell off the walls. And I – I try so hard, really – maybe I try a little too hard. I don’t know. I did as much of the screaming and accusing as he did. Nobody’s to blame. Or both of us are.

He just has this penchant for ruining special occasions. I mean, it’s not like he’s unromantic, but if you have a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday and you try to celebrate, it’s just asking for trouble. Too much pressure or something, I don’t know . . . Christmas I don’t let him sleep late and he’s sulky and irritable, ends up sitting alone in the bedroom, locking me out. Our second anniversary, he drops this bomb about how he’s not really sure how he feels about me anymore. And, oh yeah, the morning of my eighteenth birthday is the first time he says he hates me. Thank you, dear. Thank you so much.

But . . . he never quite means it . . . he thinks he means it but he’s always too wrapped up in the moment, at the whim of his unpredictable moods. A few hours or a few days later he comes to his senses and he’s sorry, and I cry and he cries and we make love and it feels better, really it doesn’t hurt anymore. For him and no one else I can put up with that. As often as we hurt each other the good times are just -so- good . . . and even when things are a little shaky I still feel like I’ve known him forever, I can tell him anything. I love him – he loves me – in the end he always loves me, at least.

But still . . . it gets to be a little too much for me sometimes, I guess. When he’s at work and I’m at class I think about him all the time. Some days I imagine coming home and having an incredible, romantic evening with him. Other days . . . well . . . other days I imagine I’ll come home, find my sharpest kitchen knife, walk into the bedroom where he’s sleeping and . . . well, you know. I don’t think it’s that abnormal to wish violence against people you love. But the two fantasies feel remarkably similar sometimes . . . I don’t know. Once in a while when I can’t sleep like tonight, I stick a knife in my bathrobe pocket and carry it around, just to see how it feels. [Man stirs slightly in the bed.]

It’s frightening, that kind of power. Is it reasonable that having a dinky kitchen knife in my pocket should make me feel so big? [she has her hand in her pocket, seems to be gripping something] He’s over six foot and weighs twice as much as I do, but I could slit his throat in his sleep and he’d never even know. [Man is thrashing a bit more now – having a dream.] And sometimes – sometimes when things are really bad I think that maybe I should – I mean, if anyone would have the right, it’s me – all the things he’s promised me – his love, his life, his soul, never to leave – sometimes I think – I think – maybe I should make sure he never breaks those promises to me . . . oh . . . [Woman sinks to the floor or into a chair, puts her head on her knees. She rocks back and forth, like a child or a schizophrenic. Man seems to be breathing heavily, frightened, still asleep.]

[raising her head] But – oh. Don’t listen to me. I’m really a normal, sweet-tempered person when you get me in the daylight. You can’t hold a person accountable for everything they say at three a.m., right?

Man: [sitting bolt upright] . . . Eve! . . . Evie?

Woman: [running to the side of the bed, kneeling] What, sweetheart? What’s wrong?

Man: I don’t know . . . a dream. A bad dream. [He holds out his arms to her, and she cradles his head on her chest, embracing him. The tenderness between them is obvious. She strokes his hair, kisses it, and looks at the audience. Her face is contorted – with love, fear, anger, pain?]

[Lights out.]