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A Play in One Act

Autumn Leaves

By G. L. Horton
copyright © 1999 Geralyn Horton

On a brisk bright Saturday morning in October, JANET is half humming/half singing "Autumn Leaves" to herself as she rakes the fallen leaves into a pile in the yard of her big old house in suburban Boston. Janet is a fiftyish woman with gray streaked hair and a comfortably padded figure who wears faded jeans and a green flannel shirt for gardening. ALICE, a neatly dressed accountant in her mid-to-late twenties who favors beige silk and linen, enters carrying an armload of flowerpots and some withered plant material.

ALICE
Hi. I –umm—I can see that you're-- I've got this plant stuff. To recycle. Can I ...?

JANET (with a welcoming smile)
Sure. Just add it to the pile. When I'm done raking, I'll stuff it all into the special bags.

ALICE
The special bags?

JANET (shows her one of the bags)
The town sells these special bags for yard waste. Turns into compost, bags and all.

ALICE
Are dead houseplants yard waste?

JANET
Sure. Throw ‘em right in. Wait--! What about your potting soil--?

ALICE
They don't allow dirt?

JANET
Dirt's fine. But don't you want to save it?

ALICE
No, thanks. I'm giving up on plants.

JANET
Some are a lot easier than others.

ALICE (holding out dead flowers)
Not for my brown thumb. Would you believe this stuff used to be a bouquet? I was supposed to put it in water. I feel embarrassed telling you, your garden is so pretty—


JANET (laughs)
Don't think of them as failed flowers—think compost!

ALICE
From my kitchen window I can see those tall pink and purplish ones--

JANET (indicates bed where cosmos are growing)
Cosmos.

ALICE
Cosmos. Your pink cosmos were a big reason I moved in here.

JANET (bowing graciously)
Were they? Well, flower lovers are particularly welcome.

ALICE
But I kill them!

JANET (melodramatic recitation)
"Each man kills the thing he loves". Don't worry. Flowers die.

ALICE
I thought bouquets all came sealed in little plastic water tubes.

JANET
Do they, now? It's been so long --
(handsome, well-built DANNY, about ALICE's age, comes jogging by. He glances appreciatively at ALICE, not noticing JANET. JANET shouts)
G'morning, Danny. Gorgeous day!

DANNY (slows down, turns back to give a little wave)
Uh-- hi. (jogs on by)

JANET
Do you know Danny?

ALICE
I may have seen him...

JANET
Every sunny day Danny brightens up our lives by running around the block in his skimpy shorts. At least so far he has: May to October. Surely you've noticed him. With a body like that--?


ALICE
I only moved here in July.

JANET
A hundred times around, and you haven't met him yet?

ALICE
I tend to work late.

JANET
Well, Dan'll be back here in no time, I'll introduce you. This might be your last chance-- the last of the perfect days. The weatherman is predicting rain, followed by sleet and a hard frost.

ALICE
Weathermen love that. Like they are the weather, masters of the universe--. (ALICE kicks gently at some leaves, looks up at the trees overhead)
The leaves are almost all gone, and I never came out to appreciate the color.

JANET
You're out now.

ALICE
Too much of my life is cubicled.

JANET
Cubicled! Right. Too much of my life was kitchened. I didn't know what I was missing, all those years my husband did the leaves. Raking's lovely, a kind of harmonious activity. Like rowing, or waltzing. The slanted sun, the intense October colors, the tang in the air. And when you gather up an armload of leaves, the smell's so ripe--! I feel so alive I can barely stand it.

ALICE
I feel sort of guilty. As if I should be in school.

JANET
A late fall day like this is a gift. No guilt allowed. You know in your bones that winter's coming; it's not far behind.

ALICE
The farther the better. Winter, everything just gets harder.

JANET
I wouldn't think you were of an age to notice that.


ALICE
How could I not notice? Longer commute, double the work load, my boss gets Seasonal Disorder. On top of that my class will have papers due.

JANET
Class? Then you are in school!

ALICE
I never said guilt feelings made sense.

JANET
So many shoulds, so little time-- . You know what I miss? The smell of burning leaves. When I was a girl, the men and boys would rake all the neighborhood leaves into a huge pile, and make them into a bonfire.

ALICE
Wasn't that dangerous?

JANET
Maybe. Though the worst I can remember is some singed grass and a toasted trouser cuff or two. Still, the pollution--Oh, it's so hard to think of that glorious smell as pollution! Smoke so rich and strange, it turned our shabby suburb into an Indian campground, our scrubby woods into the forest primeval. We kids'd grab a branch out of the bonfire and dash around like dragons, spewing smoke and sparks and shrieking like banshees.

ALICE
Sounds dangerous to me.

JANET
No more than leaf-messing: jumping and dancing and sliding and throwing leaf balls and trying to stuff ‘em down each other's shirts.

ALICE
The grown-ups didn't freak?

JANET
Guess not. Of course, kids who were caught red handed had to clean it all up. Or if somebody was hurt, maybe they got a spanking.

ALICE
Try it today--

JANET
When I think of the way we used to play in the woods! Where the grown-ups never came to bother us. Trees: chopped and carved and swung down flat. Traps set, pits dug, streams dammed. Of course, all that no man's land is now subdivision. The trees are all in parks and gardens. Today, we'd be vandals. I feel so sorry that—


DANNY (enters, jogging a second round)
Hey there, Mrs. E!

JANET
Hey yourself, Dan.

DANNY
Great day for a run, eh?

JANET
I'd say perfect. But you're the expert.

DANNY
Perfect. A really great day to be out.

ALICE
Your friend here was warning me that this may be one of the last.

JANET
Winter is a cumin' in.

DANNY
Fine by me. I got my skis, got my snowboard.

JANET
Danny's the wee braw lad in my third floor front.

DANNY
Hidden in the landlady's attic. Except when I'm out running around.

JANET
This nice young woman is our new neighbor. We haven't exchanged name rank and serial, though, so I can't introduce--.

ALICE
Sorry. I'm Alice Notsinger. I have the second floor apartment next door.

DANNY (shake hands)
Daniel Reeb. Danny. So, how do you like the neighborhood?

ALICE
I think it's great. All these well kept lawns and old houses. It's like, stability.

JANET
Who would guess they've all been cut up into flats? Or that the average tenant turnover is two point one years?

ALICE
The important thing for me is that it really feels safe. Living alone, driving up to park after dark or coming home late on the train--- safety's my first consideration.

DANNY
Yeah, I can appreciate. There are a lot of places around where you'd be looking over your shoulder. Course, those places offer you more space for less rent. But a good looking single woman who has to work late...that's how you said, right? You work long hours?

ALICE
Usually. But not always. Accounting's seasonal.

DANNY
Seasonal's like what? Christmas and New Year's?

ALICE
The kind I do, yes.

DANNY
So that's what you do.

ALICE
What?

DANNY
Seasonal accounting..

ALICE
Uh huh. (pause)

JANET
Alice is going to school, too.

ALICE
In the off season.

JANET
Taking what kind of classes?


ALICE
Accounting.

DANNY
But you said you're already--?

ALICE
To get my CPA.

DANNY
That's --uh-- that's the way. To-- uh--.go. Way to go.

JANET
She's ambitious, huh?

DANNY
Yeah! Still. S'lotta work, accounting.

ALICE
From January first to April fifteenth it is.

DANNY
Lotta numbers.

ALICE
Fourteen hours a day.

DANNY
You must really like numbers.

ALICE
They're OK.

DANNY
But-- I mean, that much?

ALICE
What I really like is money.

DANNY
Oh yeah. Money! (they all laugh)
Great stuff, money. If you also got time for spending it.

ALICE
Oh, I will. One of these days.

DANNY
But not any time soon.

ALICE
'Fraid not.

DANNY
Well, I guess it's time to do another go-round. Work up a little sweat before I head for the shower. Nice meeting you, uh-

ALICE
Alice.

DANNY (waves)
Alice. (turns to go)

JANET (calls)
Danny? (DANNY turns back) Have a nice day.

DANNY (smiles, waves)
You too, Mrs. E. (runs off, while the women watch him appreciatively)

ALICE
What's the E stand for?

JANET
Elkin. Janet Elkin.

ALICE
Have you always lived here?

JANET
My husband and I bought this place in sixty nine. For the schools. It was a duplex then. When Allen died I figured out that 2 roomers on the third floor would just about take care of the mortgage.

ALICE
Are your roomers all like Danny?

JANET
Male roomers come in three sorts: bitter just divorceds, lonesome foreigners, and happy go lucky overgrown boys.

ALICE
Like Danny.

JANET
Most of my roomers are women, though. Women with safety their first concern. Serious women, who are temporarily on a limited budget. In my opinion, they are too serious. But maybe when they're with their own age they're different.
(JANET begins filling one of the special bags with leaves)

ALICE
I doubt it. That is, if they're serious around you… (JANET laughs, embarrassing ALICE) I didn't mean--! Can I give you some help with that bag?

JANET
Not in those clothes.

ALICE
How should we be different? We serious ones?

JANET
Oh, I don't know. Spend a little time in useless beauty? Notice nature's seasons as well as the IRS's? Maybe even make safety secondary? But your whole generation--. When I was young, women didn't have careers, they had "interests". Picked up smatters of everything. All superficial, of course. Men were the serious ones-- but Lord, were they boring. Nothing but work, work, work.

ALICE
It's a different world, the new economy. Women especially. We're expected to be totally focused on the job, -- but have one eye out looking for the next one.

JANET
Makes me crosseyed just thinking about it.
(holding a leaf up to admire the effect of light on its coloration)
All work and no play---

ALICE (primly, with folded arms)
Well, all play, like your roomer there--

JANET
Danny.

ALICE
Danny'd better get focused, or he'll be forty and living in a cardboard box.

JANET (batting the leaf away)
Oh, Danny's focused. He's scanning for playmates. Career girls and landladies don't show up on his screen.


ALICE
Well, besides that he's clueless, he's awfully young. So why should you care?

JANET (businesslike, back to stuffing leaves into the bag)
If I were Danny's age, and he were mine,-- then should I care?

ALICE
What do you mean?

JANET
A fiftyish man attracted to a twenty something woman.

ALICE
Men! I'd say grow up and get over it.

JANET
Fifty may feel it has something to share.

ALICE
What randy old guys "share" is the loot they've piled up: a lifetime of better jobs at higher pay.

JANET (throws her armful of leaves at ALICE, laughing)
So cynical, so soon? Lighten up, young lady!

ALICE
Mrs. Elkin! What are you doing--?

JANET (dumping leaves from bag, throwing them up to rain down) Playing! I'm playing. While there's still time.
(threatens to stuff leaves down ALICE's silk shirt)

ALICE (shrieking)
Stop that! (JANET laughs, backs off and gently tosses leaves at ALICE)

JANET (singing, while dancing and laughing at the same time)
"The leaves belong to everyone. The best things in life are free."

ALICE
Mrs. Elkin--

JANET (trying to calm down and stop laughing)
Janet! I'm Janet. Don't be offended! Please, Alice. Forgive me. You'll be the better for it.


ALICE
You're so--. You took me by surprise.

JANET
I didn't mean to scare you. I know we're all supposed to pretend we're grown-ups. Especially past fifty. I understand, and I try. But on an autumn day like this, so perfect, and maybe the last--! It's too much. Inside, like you, I'm still fifteen.

ALICE
Fifteen? Fifteen was terrible! (pause. Decides) Will you let me be eleven?

JANET (grins)
Sure. If eleven's what you really are.

ALICE (picks up a handful of leaves)
You promise cross your heart never to tell! OK? Then, you're it!
(hits JANET with leaves, runs tag-fashion, laughing)

DANNY (-- how long has he been watching?-- joins in)
Hey! Hey, I want to play, too! Can I play too?
(They all run and romp as the lights fade.)


THE END

 

 
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