Rosemary for Rememberance
ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBERANCE by Julie Jurgens
JOSEPHINE A young woman in her twenties, drunk, wears an old fashioned nurse's uniform.
SARA A young woman in her twenties, dressed for a night in.
A shabby but tidy living room, with a couch, a chair, a lamp.
(She wears an old nurse's uniform, like some kind of Jenny Fields fangirl. She's sitting idly with a scotch in one hand and a screwdriver in the other.)
Do you ever stop and think about what an absolute fucking miracle the human body is? How incredible it is that we can even breathe and walk, much less create poetry, build rockets, split the atom? "What a piece of work is man" and all that. How we grow from cells to babies to incessantly questioning three year olds to insufferable teenagers crying out for love to sad middle aged folks wondering where their twenties went to elderly women soft as uncooked dough, powdered and strong even as they become frail as birds. Just think of how many bones make up the human face alone- the vomer, the palatine bone, the lacrimal bone. The lacrimal bone is my favorite. It makes me think of lachrymose, and the mock turtle, forever weeping.
(SARA enters, carrying a large, limp doll.)
SARA Being a drunk nursie again?
JOSEPHINE Always. Why are you home? Shouldn't you have a date?
SARA He called off at the last minute. As he usually does.
Why do you have the screwdriver out?
JOSEPHINE Just in case. You never know.
SARA That's it, you're not allowed to watch Grey Gardens or
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane this weekend. You're getting entirely too weird.
JOSEPHINE
Am I allowed to listen to my Smiths records, warden?
SARA Sequentially only, with hour breaks between each
repetition. And vodka only, no scotch.
JOSEPHINE Fine, fine, fine. You're such a cunt when you're not getting laid.
JOSEPHINE At least I've resigned myself to my situation. How's your mother?
SARA I'm surprised you didn't say "Speaking of cunts."
JOSEPHINE It crossed my mind. Anyway. How is she?
SARA Near death, as usual, but fighting it tooth and nail.
Usually so violently that my father gets cut in the melee.
JOSEPHINE No chance of offing her early? I could wear the nurse
uniform, people become very pliant and trusting in the face of the nurse's uniform.
SARA No, thank you; I don't wish to be deprived of the
pleasure of having waited her out.
JOSEPHINE Suit yourself. I know for sure I wouldn't want to
linger that way. Such a waste of time and energy. Making myself and everyone else around me miserable for no good reason.
SARA I thought you lived to sow misery.
JOSEPHINE I live for a great many things; sowing misery is just
(Off stage a phone rings. SARA drops the doll and goes off to answer it. JOSEPHINE picks up the doll. She fusses with it for a moment--smoothing its hair back, straightening its dress, etc.)
No bones for you. Cloth and fluff and stitches. You can't see a damn thing. Or feel.
(JOSEPHINE takes her screwdriver and
lines it up by the doll's eye.) Have you ever heard about what happened to poor
Rosemary Kennedy? Poor stupid Rosemary. Was it because she was the child of cousins? Or lack of oxygen during the birth because of an unsure nurse? If I'd been there, I'd've delivered that poor little girl all by myself. Rosemary was beautiful, before the procedure. Plump and pink and pretty, but never good enough for those son of a bitching Kennedys. Hidden away so the good name wouldn't be besmirched. Poor girl.
(JOSEPHINE begins driving the screwdriver into the doll's face. SARA enters, unnoticed by JOSEPHINE, and watches. JOSEPHINE finishes lobotomizing the doll. After a beat she looks up and locks eyes with SARA.)
SARA Let's go visit mother.
