"Mother" script

Mother
By Grace Paley

Narrator
Mother
Father

Group 6

Scene: A man is listening to the radio and begins to reminisce about his mother. He recalls her words while standing in doorways and in the living room with his father. Man is in his teens in first memory and all of the characters get older with each memory. Music is playing.

Narrator: One day I was listening to the AM radio. I heard a song: “Oh, I Long to See My Mother in the Doorway.” By God! I understand that song. I have often longed to see my mother in the doorway. As a matter of fact, she did stand frequently in various doorways looking at me. She stood one day, just so, at the front door, the darkness of the hallway behind her. It was New Year’s Day.

Mother: If you come home at 4 A.M. when you’re seventeen, what time will you come home when you’re twenty? (Asked without humor or meanness)

Narrator: She had begun her worried preparation for death. She would not be present, she thought, when I was twenty. So she wondered. Another time she stood in the doorway of my room. I had just issued a political manifesto attacking the family’s position on the Soviet Union.

Mother: (bedroom door) Go to sleep for godsakes, you damn fool, you and your Communist ideas. We saw them already, Papa and me, in 1905. We guessed it all.

Narrator: And at the door of the kitchen…

Mother: You never finish your lunch. You run around senselessly. What will become of you?

Narrator: Then she died. Naturally, for the rest of my life I longed to see her, not only in doorways, in a great number of places—in the dining room with my aunts, at the window looking up and down the block, in the country garden among zinnias and marigolds, in the living room with my father. They sat in comfortable leather chairs. They were listening to Mozart.

(Music gets louder)

Narrator: They looked at one another amazed. It seemed to them that they’d just come over on the boat. They’d just learned the first English words. It seemed to them that he had just proudly handed in a 100 percent correct exam to the American anatomy professor. It seemed as though she’d just quit the shop for the kitchen. I wish I could see her in the doorway of the living room.

(She stands for a minute, then sits beside him)

Narrator: They owned an expensive record player. They were listening to Bach.

Mother: Talk to me a little. We don’t talk so much anymore.

Father: I’m tired. Can’t you see? I saw maybe thirty people today. All sick, all talk talk talk talk. Listen to the music. I believe you once had perfect pitch. (Pause) I’m tired.

BLACKOUT

Narrator: Then she died.