Melody Assignment

Lizzie Vieh
LITR1110
Assignment 3

Baroque Style


A luxurious apartment in a Phoenix senior-citizens community.
The décor is elegant and old-fashioned.
A woman in her 80’s, Astrid, sits in a wheelchair. She is wearing a floral satin robe over a white nightgown.
Next to her sits Pam, a young woman in a turquoise nurse’s outfit.
Across from them sits Louis, a scholarly man in his 40s, wearing a corduroy jacket and khakis. He takes notes on a legal pad.
It is 11 pm, August.
It is pouring rain. The balcony door is propped open.

ASTRID
When I moved here in the 30s it rained at least 20 inches a year. All of August, we’d get a monsoon every afternoon. Around 5. We knew we had to get the horses in by then, cause they’d run away at the thunder and the lightning. It would pour. Buckets and buckets. Flash floods on the roads, not that we had many roads then. Dirt, what we did have. My mare Loopy would thrash against the sides of her stalls. I tried to calm her down, slipped in to her stall. She threw me against the wall, broke three of my ribs. I was in a body cast for over a year. It’s not easy to find a dress that covers a full-body cast.

PAM (to Louis)
Can I get you something to drink?

ASTRID
Cool cider is best in August. We had a stable-hand, he’d make it himself. I think he also made moonshine, but in those days, nobody minded. Sometimes around Christmas I ‘d ride Loopy out to Frank Lloyd Wright’s—he had a house way out there in the McDowells—my mother would say, “Take this bottle of champagne to Mr. Wright, and tell him Happy Christmas.”

PAM
We have water, orange juice, Diet Coke, or any kind of hard drink you’d like.

LOUIS
I’m fine thank you. You met Frank Lloyd Wright?

ASTRID
They lived at Taliesin, which is actually a Welsh word. He ran his architecture school out there. George Mayshaw was one of his students. We went out several times, with my mother. He was delighted to go out with both of us. He said he’d never met a woman as charming as my mother. The first time he came to the door, she answered, and he blurted out, “How old are you?” He thought she must be my sister. She was very beautiful, Ruth.

PAM
Well, please don’t mind if I help myself to something.

LOUIS
Not at all.

Pam heads to a tray of crystal decanters at the bar. She fills a short glass with scotch. She comes back to her seat next to Astrid. She drinks in sudden, large gulps.

LOUIS
Now, what year was it that your mother first met Robert Oppenheimer?

ASTRID
My father and my mother bought the house on 2060 Del Maro right after they got married, and they moved there in 1919. My mother always said that the first months of her marriage were the happiest times of her life. My father carried her over the front doorstep and she had to pile

PAM— (deadpan)
-her veil into her lap because it was so long and she didn’t want to drag it on the floor. And he had to duck to get through the front door because the doorway was short because the house had been built haphazard, piece by piece, without any plan.

LOUIS
Excuse me?

PAM
What kind of question is that.

LOUIS
I’m a bit taken aback…

Pam sips.

ASTRID
As a little girl, I always liked to think the house had secret passages. My brother George and I would look for them. We thought the house was haunted, and it must have a secret passage. We never found one, we did find a storage space up above the living room though. George climbed up there one day, and it wasn’t very well-supported

PAM
So after he’d crawled over a little ways the boards started to creak and he yelled “Astrid! Help!” and he comes crashing through the ceiling and lands right on Mother’s red velvet sofa.

Pam sips

LOUIS
Is there…May I ask--

PAM
I’ve heard her a thousand times. She has about thirty stories and they just rotate. The George in the storage space one drives me nuts. It turns up with particular frequency.

LOUIS
I don’t think that’s fair, Astrid, you have a wonderful memory.

PAM
She can’t hear you.

LOUIS
Excuse me?

PAM
She can hear, she just doesn’t really track what people are saying. Her mind’s an overgrown forest. If what she says happens to answer your question, it’s only because something you said triggered a story in her rotation.

LOUIS
Astrid, I don’t believe that’s the truth. We’ve been having a beautiful conversation.

Silence.

LOUIS
Astrid?

Silence.

PAM
The Limeliters.

ASTRID
My husband Dan and I would have our friends Annie and Bill over for dinner all the time and one night we had just moved into our new house that had a swimming pool. Dan put on his Limeliters album, it had my favorite song “Hey Liley-Liley,” and we’d had a bit to drink, and Bill picked me up and threw me in the pool with my clothes on!

PAM
Then Annie pushed Bill in, and Dan jumped in to join the fun.

ASTRID
We ended up playing a vicious game of tag on the golf course, and of course it was late night so eventually the sprinklers turned on, but we didn’t mind, we were already wet.
It was a full moon that night, and Annie was wearing a white dress. You could see her underwear through the dress because it was white, and I’ll never forget, Dan pinched her fanny and said,

PAM and ASTRID
“Two full moons.”

PAM
That was the night my son Dan Jr. was conceived. It was a lovely night, and he’s a lovely boy. Dan Jr. was my first child, and the only one of my children who ever really loved me. I think you need some help.

LOUIS
Do I just say “Robert Oppenheimer?”

ASTRID
My father and my mother bought the house on 2060 Del Maro right after they got married, and they moved there in 1919. My mother always said that the first months of her marriage were the happiest times of her life.

PAM
My father carried her over the front doorstep and she had to pile her veil into her lap because it was so long and she didn’t want to drag it on the floor. And he had to duck to get through the front door because the doorway was short because the house had been built haphazard, piece by piece--

PAM and LOUIS
Without any plan.

LOUIS
How do I get her to talk about him.

PAM
Train tracks.

ASTRID
When the stock market crashed we heard about bankers in New York City checking into high-rise hotels and jumping out of the window. We laughed at those stories. But my father, he lost everything in ’29. And I think too, there were some problems with my mother. She was a very beautiful woman. Men were always looking at her. We had a handsome neighbor at the time at 2060. He’d come over every day to take my mother to lunch. I was eight years old and one day I came home from school and Tessy our maid took me into the kitchen and said “Astrid, you be a good girl, your daddy’s very sick.”
The next morning my mother was packing up the house, and a week later we were in Europe and Mother left me in a convent in Geneva. It wasn’t until years later that my brother George told me that my father had walked in front of an oncoming train.

PAM
Love letters.

ASTRID
Mother died in 1983. It was left me to clean out her house. She had lovely things. Beautiful jewelry, silks, furs. But the real treasure was in her garage. Old shoebox from Sak’s, nothing fancy. I was going to throw it in the trash, but something made me look inside. An enormous stack of love letters, two years worth, between my mother and the inventor of the atomic bomb, Mr. Robert Oppenheimer. A lovely man. He’d come over every day to take my mother to lunch. I was eight years old and one day I came home from school and Tessy our maid took me into the kitchen and said “Astrid, you be a good girl, your daddy’s very sick.”
Pam and Louis speak over the next part of Astrid’s story
The next morning my mother was packing up the house, and a week later we were in Europe and Mother left me in a convent in Geneva. It wasn’t until years later that my brother George told me that my father had walked in front of an oncoming train.

PAM
Whoops, sorry, wrong turn.

LOUIS
She still has the letters?

PAM
They’re in her security box at the bank.

LOUIS
You know I can’t afford to buy them, I just want to read them, study them, for the book.

PAM
She could get a lot of money for them.

ASTRID (triggered by the word “book”)
My father has a Bible that is almost four hundred years old. His ancestors brought it over the ocean from Bavaria. In the back, on the blank pages, are written in tiny careful cursive the birth and death dates of my ancestors for hundreds of years. My father wrote in my name and my brother’s name, and when he died I wrote in his name. That Bible is worth a fortune, but I wouldn’t part with it

PAM
For the world.