Hard Road Home
[full length play, 2 acts]
[Produced, 8/99 Sanford Meisner Theater Center, North Hollywood, CA, and Theatre Shed., L.A. Workshopped A.S.K. Theatre, L.A. Produced, Columbia Theater, Portland; New City Theatre, Seattle.]
Committed to making his marriage work this time around, a house painter returns to the motel he once called home, only to find his estranged wife trading sex for siding from an aluminum siding salesman. “I hope you have some idea just how sick you are, Shirl.” “Some idea.” Excellent acting challenges in this surprisingly complicated dark comedy. [cast 1 w, 2 m]
SHIRLEY: You do want your siding on my exterior, don’t you? Well, here’s my fine print: I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign, but you have to stay here tonight.
JAKE: There’s something about the road at night, the road and speed. And it’s not just the feeling of having a place to go or of getting away from someplace else. It has to do with dreaming. The road moves faster than the eye...changing...The billboard on the horizon, the billboard nearer, passing the billboard, the billboard vanished...a dream of the road. When your brain wants to dream, your eyes start moving, fidgeting back and forth. But the road can do that for you, move for your eyes. It is the dream, the dream of moving, the dream of leaving, the dream of getting somewhere. On the road, you still need sleep, but you don’t need dreams...I know...Because when I pull over for some shut-eye, I either don’t dream at all, or I dream about the road...
SHIRLEY: Hold me. It won’t hurt. If you want to think it’s just business, if that helps, then think that. If you want it to be love, then think that. Or don’t think at all. That’s all I want...to not think at all...with you holding me.
CAL: Don’t expect any miracles.
JAKE: Why do you think I came back?
CAL: I don’t know!
JAKE: That’s right, you don’t. And yet you’re standing there holding a gun on me while you finish your business. No “hi, hello, how are you, thanks for the use of your wife.” No nothing, Cal. Just a gun in the face and a contract for some of that ugly no-painting-ever aluminum shit that’ll end up costing more than the whole damn place is worth!
JAKE: You can put down the gun. Looks pretty silly.
CAL: Hey, I didn’t know what else to do. When a husband walks through the bedroom door, sometimes it’s hard to be very original.
JAKE: You’re being very helpful, Cal. There’s a lot to be said for having somebody hold a gun on you. It helps you get your priorities straightened out. No beating around the bush.
JAKE: Tell me, Cal, was it a little like making love to somebody in a coma?...Don’t mince words in front of Shirley. She can take the truth. Every day of our marriage I was doing things I regret out of respect for truth...for what she made me think was truth. It’s doubtful she took anything you did or tried to do tonight personally anyway. I used to call it her “graveside manner.”
SHIRLEY: You taught me something last night, Jake. You taught me it’s not enough to just understand. I’ve got to feel everything, too!
SHIRLEY: Now I’m thinking about something else you said last night, something about loving something enough to kill it. Well, let me tell you something. That is so...so STUPID! Marla was never gonna kill you. She just wanted to maim you! That’s what love’s about. Wounds that won’t ever heal the same again, crying that never stops even after the tears are gone, bloodstains that never wash out no matter how hard you try...
