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A Short One Act
ONE FIERY LEAF
(sequel to Autumn Leaves)
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2000
Geralyn Horton
 JANET, a woman in her fifties, is humming to herself as she potters
in her garden, fussing with some small plants she intends to transplant
into a flower bed. A car is heard pulling up, and then Janet’s
30ish daughter ANN calls to her from off stage.
ANN
Mom? Mom, where are you?
JANET (calling)
I'm out here, dear. In the garden. What is it? You look bursting.
ANN
Can you take the children next weekend?
JANET
Probably. Next weekend...? (thinking)
ANN
It's important.
JANET
I have a Saturday meeting, but it's just 3 of us. I could ask
them to come here. (back to working with her trowel)
ANN
Thanks.
JANET
Rather last minute, though.
ANN
I could put this off till the beginning of next month, but now's
the best time.
JANET
For? (still working)
ANN
Telling Brian I want a divorce.
JANET
There's a best time? (dropping trowel, paying full attention)
ANN
Before school starts. I hope he'll do the right thing and move
out, but if the kids and I have to go, it means changing schools--
JANET
Annie, I -. You and Brian bought the house for the schools. (pause)
Would you hand me that sprayer? (ANN does) Thanks.
ANN
You'd be our last resort, Mom. I have other possibilities.
JANET
I'd love it if you and the kids were here—I'd ask Dan and
Kerry to vacate their rooms in a minute, or squeeze all of you
in even if it meant wall to wall sleeping bags. But kids need
continuity, school and friends and familiar beds. Especially if
their world is to be shaken up like that.
ANN
I know, Mother. But I can't stand it any more. Not another 20
years of it. Not another day!
JANET
On your anniversary you were so hopeful--
ANN
I though it'd get better if I got better work hours. But Brian's
taken my being home more to mean that now he doesn't need to do
anything for the kids but yell at them! Like yelling's the Daddy
job, the rest is woman stuff. I'm just so angry.
JANET
About the housework? (back to gardening)
ANN
About being Annie the Nanny. No, Annie the maid!
JANET
Your kids are at a high-maintenance stage.
ANN
Are they?
JANET
They are when they're over here!
ANN
All I know is I pick up after them every minute I'm in the house.
Fewer hours at paid work means more hours at maid work.
JANET
So you think that Brian..?
ANN
That's where they get it! Daddy leaves his socks, his tools, his
dishes: The kids leave their socks, their toys, their dishes.
Monkey see--
JANET
Maryann seems willing to help. The last time she was here we sorted
out my sewing basket.
ANN
Maryann is willing. She wants to sort laundry, put away groceries:
though at her age she hasn't the coordination. Sometimes I'm tempted--
train Maryann to serve, while her brothers grow up like pashas,
waited on hand and foot.
JANET
Careful! You're on the petunias.
ANN (stepping off)
Sorry.
JANET
If the boys are a bit spoiled--
ANN
A bit? They scream “Mom! Mom! Annie!” at me, then
they order me to bring them a drink of water. 8 and 10 and they
can't fill a glass with water? They're crippled, they can't climb
stairs?
JANET
Maybe what they want is Mom near by and caring for them. Their
thirst is for love.
ANN
Well, love is not how I respond. I don't take well to orders.
JANET
You don't have to tell me that!
ANN
I say, "Boys , if you want to talk to me, come where I am. Don't
scream for me unless its an emergency. Unless somebody's bleeding."
So they send their little sister.
JANET
To get them water? Maryann's too little--!
ANN
To give me the pashas' orders! To communicate with the maid! Or
their father-- they will actually yell for their father and then
tell him to tell me to bring them up a fried egg! Which he does!
JANET
Brian goes to get you?
ANN
No-- Brian yells for me, in a louder voice than the boys can.
Which I can't ignore, because Brian's a grown up and supposed
to know better than to scream unless someone's bleeding.
JANET
If growing up were all it takes to know better--
ANN
I can't cope. Brian makes no attempt to help. He even complains
about the quality of the maid service! I've disturbed a tool or
tee shirt or a piece of paper-- he expects it to be where he dropped
it. Two weeks ago.
JANET
We think when we're young that some day we'll get organized. But
about the time the kids move out and you've almost got a system
working, your short term memory starts to go. So you stand in
the middle of the room, you've forgot what you were looking for.
ANN
That happens now.
JANET
It'll get worse.
ANN
Everything does! What will Brian be like in twenty years? We'll
need a shovel to get in the house. Mountains of obsolete computers
and old fishing gear and Geographics and bashed up bicycles and
broken furniture and gadgets pulled out of trash bins because
they might come in handy--towering heaps that can't be touched
because Brian has this delusion that he knows exactly where in
each heap his junk is-- at least until he tries to find something.
JANET
All this sounds very familiar.
ANN
It is. Same old same old. I can tell you don't want to hear it.
JANET
Not particularly.
ANN
Brian won't listen, the kids' won't listen. Now my own mother.
JANET
I'll listen. To anything. I love you. But it's painful, because
I love Brian, too.
ANN
Since when?
JANET
Since you settled on him and I decided to
ANN
Decided to what?
JANET
To appreciate Brian's virtues and indulge his flaws as I would
yours.
ANN
You didn't love him when I was dating him.
JANET
Then, I didn't need to.
ANN
If I had listened to you--
JANET
You listened. Maybe too well.
ANN
You were right. Brian's a bully.
JANET
Brian has problems with control. I never said a bully.
ANN
You did. Over the trip.
JANET
The trip to North Carolina?
ANN
To California.
JANET
That was right after you'd met. And I don't believe I actually
said--
ANN
You don't have to actually say. You're my mother. I hear you thinking.
JANET
So I didn't say--
ANN
Your exact words were “that sounds a bit like bullying”
JANET
My exact words? After 12 years?
ANN
You warned me. “Obsessive compulsive” you said, “unable
to negotiate or change.” If he gets worse--
JANET
If Brian gets worse, if you get worse-- that's in the contract.
Better or worse is what you sign on for.
ANN
Mom!
JANET
I know. Shocking thing to say.
ANN
From you, it is.
JANET
I guess what I'd want to ask, whether it's bad luck or a character
flaw, is are you two battling against it? Are you on the same
side? If it's one making the other worse--
ANN
Psychologists call that enabling--
JANET
Whatever, if that's what's going on you have to stop it or walk
away.
ANN
Right. Because he's making me crazy.
JANET
Crazy? Or just pissed.
ANN
Pissed, I guess. But royally pissed.
JANET
Off with his head! Still, if a person is just the same flawed
person you married in the first place -- that doesn't seem fair.
ANN
Fair?!
JANET
Not that I care if you're fair--I want you to be happy. But I
don't think you're the kind of person who can be unkind to the
people you love.
ANN
I agree-- which I think is why I must have stopped loving him.
JANET
When?
ANN
When I realized that in spite of being relatively fortunate--
no disasters to deal with, no disease, no debt-- I spend most
of my life being a nag. That's not who I want to be 20 years from
now, not what I want for an epitaph.
JANET
Suppose it was a disease?
ANN
Was what?
JANET
Suppose Brian had a fatal disease. You wouldn't worry about how
he'd be 20 years from now, but just the pain for a few months,
or just for today-. After which you'd be a widow, and your children
fatherless.
ANN
I don't get what you--
JANET
It's not so far fetched. Brian's about the age your father was
when he had his first heart attack.
ANN
Is he?
JANET
Allen was 45. You were 12.
ANN
I remember. I'd come home from 6th grade and you'd send me up
to tell Dad about my day. It seemed so strange to have him home.
Strange but nice. We were much closer after, I think….
JANET
You might never have had the chance. That very spring, I was thinking
of divorce.
ANN
You couldn't have.
JANET
Of course I could. While there's life, there's choice.
ANN
But you were so happy.
JANET
After Allen nearly died, we decided to be happy.
ANN
Decided how?
JANET
Together. Day by day, because who knows if there will be another?
ANN
I think I'll be happier without him.
JANET
Maybe so. I'm pointing out that what seems probable isn't all
that's possible.
ANN
I'd divorce Brian and marry the Prince of Wales. Or never find
anybody at all.
JANET
You could. But that's not so bad.
ANN
You're damn right it's not.
JANET
I prefer a life with love in it, but that doesn't necessarily
mean a man.
ANN
For starters, I'd have the kids.
JANET
The kids belong to both.. You don't know who will have them.
ANN
I would, of course. Brian wouldn't want--
JANET
You can't know that. People separate aren't the same.
ANN
If Brian could cope as a single parent, I wouldn't want him to
leave.
JANET
Another question is, will they be the same kids? We love them
the way they are, and they love us, without question. But once
they discover that love is an option-- that people stop loving--
ANN
Nobody's going to stop loving.
JANET
You can only speak for yourself—and only for the self you
are now.
ANN
Mother, why are you saying this?
JANET
Cause I think it's true?
ANN
You're a feminist, you burned your bra!
JANET
After your Dad changed -- he really did change, you know. Death
grabbed him by the heart and brought him to his senses. Shut down
the engines of his ambition. Did I ever show you Allen's lucky
leaf?
ANN
You mean your necklace?
JANET
No, his literal fiery leaf. His keepsake. He was looking at it
when he had the epiphany. Allen bought this necklace for me so
that I'd have a leaf of my own. His, he carried in his wallet.
It's in mine, now. Very brown and tattered, of course, but--!
Of course! You should have it.
ANN
The leaf.
JANET
No, the necklace. Now that I have the leaf itself.
ANN
I don't understand why I should have--?
JANET
The keepsake of your Dad's epiphany?
ANN
Uh huh. It means a lot to you, I know. But to me--
JANET
I know it sounds ridiculous.
ANN
It's not that, Mom. It's hard—
JANET
It's hard to find words for my own experience, let alone his.
But as Allen got well, I saw a change in him that was like a gift--
But really, it was a reward, something your father had earned.
Staying alive was terribly hard work for him— well, it was
for me, too, of course. We worked together. Then autumn came,
and we were walking side by side, enjoying the warm late sun,
and the fiery leaves. Allen picked up this one particular leaf
and looked at it for the longest time. I could see that he was
lost in its beauty, pulled out of himself-- away from all the
worry and pain we were going through. And then he took my hand,
and put the leaf in it, and said, very-- he said: “This
wonderful color, it's always there. It's formed in the leaf by
spring. But it's hidden till frost, covered by all the busy green
of growth. Then, ta-da! we see it. But even then—- only
if we take the time to look.” And then he smiled at me with
such-- appreciation. As if he were lost in my hidden beauty, too.
ANN
That's very sweet, Mom. But—
JANET
Just wear it, Annie. Give it a chance. (Puts necklace on ANN.)
I'll take the kids next weekend, darling. (begins gathering up
plant paraphernalia) You know I'll support you whatever you decide.
But please— (hugs ANN) take the time to look, won't you?
Really, really, look.
(arm in arn, they exit slowly in the direction of ANN's car)
THE END
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