Part Three
Cecil, Virginia, 1964, was my second full length play but the first one produced—in August, 1985—by the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival. The subject of the play was based on—or, more accurately, compelled by—the murder of my cousin Phyllis Jean. It was pure fiction, an attempt after many years of mulling over her death to deal in writing with what had happened. While there are positive things to say about the play and the production (even the critics granted that) it failed my own expectations. I had hoped that writing it would somehow deepen my insight into the murder, help me understand what drove Phyllis Jean’s husband to kill her, and knowing that would free me from thinking about him ever again. But the critics said, and I came to agree, that the play was too much a portrait of life in a small town and not enough about the murder that had taken place there. The reviews, bad and good, only compounded the emotional confusion I had felt thirteen years earlier, when the killing had occurred.
In a case of tragic serendipity (or a cosmic joke) the actor cast to play Joe Pete, the wife killer, would, only a few years later, murder his real wife. And in an even stranger alignment of dark stars the woman he killed (with an iron skillet) was a co-worker and friend of mine, her office no more than a hundred yards from where I sat at my drawing table in the art department of a large government agency. She was no tomboy like Phyllis Jean, and she didn’t have red hair and freckles—but she was vivacious and witty and fun to be around. And she had a lovely smile. In those ways, and in her fate, she reminded me very much—too much—of my cousin.
Cecil is an ensemble play with nine speaking roles. The character of Kitty, Joe Pete’s wife, is based on Phyllis Jean; Asher, the editor of the local paper, represents me. The story is told from Asher’s point of view and the first scene in his office is designed to define the relationship of those two friends from the time they were children, neighbors, and schoolmates, and to foreshadow the tragedy to come. In the complete scene we also learn that Asher had been hired by Kitty’s guardian to keep an eye on her on the school bus, in the same way that my grandmother paid me to spy on Phyllis Jean. But that’s pretty much where the resemblance to real life ends. The Baltimore Sun critic wrote, in part, that “Watching (the play) is like looking at a cut-away version of a small town.”
Here are a few lines from Act One, Scene One, beginning with a stage direction.
We hear a typewriter. Lights up in the office of the Cecil Herald. ASHER, who has a small town businessman look about him, is using his index fingers to tap out a story. After a few beats KITTY struts in. She is a small woman, pretty, light makeup, flowing red hair, the toned body of a dancer.
KITTY (After a long beat watching ASHER work, teasing.): It’s O.K., Asher, don’t pay me no mind. Just pretend I ain’t here at all. (ASHER finishes the line he’s typing and looks up. KITTY, still teasing, snatches the typewriter paper and reads the headline.): “Country Man Is Charged With Murder” (Beat, she glances at ASHER, then continues.) “Four children have lost their mother and may lose their father for some time as the result of a long gun slaying at 7:30 last night in the Blue Run area of Cecil.”
ASHER (Hand out, mock-stern.): Kitty, give it.
KITTY: Lordy, what is this?
ASHER: Guy shot his wife over in—
KITTY (Overlapping, curious.): What for you reckon?
ASHER (Ignoring the question.): Kitty, please, I’ve got this deadline—and a headache.
Many who saw the play agreed that my female characters were well written and—if they wanted to condescend—they’d add, “for a man.” Any skill I may have for writing from a female point of view can be accounted for by the fact that as a young boy I spent a lot of time listening to women in all kinds of settings, mesmerized by what I heard. My favorite half-sister ran a beauty parlor, and when she had to baby-sit me on a workday I’d tag along. Those were happy times. I loved to watch and hear the women sitting under the hairdryers, flipping through Look and Life and Collier’s, gabbing about this and that, appearing at once silly and cute in hair curlers—talking, talking, talking.
There are several beauty shop scenes in Cecil, Virginia, 1964, which cover the women’s relationships with their men, humorous and otherwise. In one of them Kitty says, “When me and Joe Pete was first together I thought there weren’t nothing else to want, I mean beyond tending him and the kids. Figured that was just love, but now I don’t know. Sometimes he takes notions. Says one thing one minute and another the next. Then he’ll warn me to just leave him be.” Kitty’s older best friend, Rose, talks about her happy marriage. “Love is like a potluck dinner at the church,” she says, “you need to be grateful if you get something good.” Dora, owner of the beauty shop and Kitty’s contemporary, delivers her cynical (and I hope funny) reason for living alone. “Don’t have to clean your bathroom near as often,” she says, “easy to tolerate more of your own filth.” She goes on to say how she enjoys the company of men that happen to pass through town, and through her life.
In a local newspaper review of the play a very kind critic said: “ . . . the author describes himself as a failed cartoonist, but there is nothing cartoony about these characters. They are, to be sure, typical lower-class women. But (he) has given them so much love, life, humor and lyricism that they are memorable, full people I could listen to for hours as they chatter away at Dora’s beauty parlor.” But then he goes on to point out what he considers my weak points as a playwright. “Sizemore has little gift for dramatic architecture. The play has no suspense and little action. (It is) at its worse when (he) constructs theatrical scaffolding. For example . . . the eccentric newspaper (man’s) editorial asides are unnecessary. What is more interesting is his sexual ambiguity. He is the one man to penetrate the women’s world, and that is because he remains the most ‘unnatural’ thing in Cecil, Virginia—a man who can simply be a friend to women.”
Aside from the reviews (brickbats included), the fun of hearing actors say my words and getting to experience firsthand how a play is staged was my reward for months of hard work. But the nagging fact remained that the murder as written and staged happened out of the audience’s sight and was, as one critic wrote, “. . . the off-stage fulfillment of (an) ominous promise (and) so perfunctory we are cheated of pathos. Perhaps the playwright wanted us to see the play’s climactic event as just another news item in the Cecil Herald. Still, murder is not a subtle crime. It calls for more than suggestion.” That critic had me pegged. While the play was an O. K. first effort, Phyllis Jean’s death needed to be—deserved to be—dealt with directly and, because of my inability or unwillingness to face it, not hidden off-stage. As serendipity would have it I’d get the chance to try again.
Flashback
It is the middle of an afternoon in 1950. Our father is drunk, but at least this time he’s a happy drunk. He’s smiling and singing and gives me and my younger brother—we’re ages ten and eight at this time—money for the Jack and Jill ice cream man ringing his truck bell in front of the house. Our house looks like an army barracks—and is a barracks of sorts, because the government used military housing plans and built it and hundreds more like it on a hill overlooking Baltimore harbor and the city—homes for shipyard workers during World War II. The war’s over now but the housing development is still here and so are we. It’s beautiful here, especially at night with the city lights in the distance.
My brother and I finish our double orange Popsicles and our father is still sitting in his overstuffed red chair, listening to the radio. We can’t afford a television. Except for this or that little carpentry job, our father has been out of work since the war ended. He nods off now, and when he wakes he’s got a big idea that came to him in a dream—he wants to make dandelion wine, the kind his daddy made when he was a boy. He laughs and says, “The sins of the father.” My brother and I have no idea why he thinks that’s funny, but we are delighted that he needs our help. Our job is to scour the neighborhood and pick as many of those little yellow flowers as possible, then he’ll show us the secret of dandelion wine. Hoping to impress our father we run off in different directions to see who can collect the most.
When we return my brother’s brown paper sack is full of flowers and mine is only half that. Our father is disappointed and says something mean. I say something just as mean back. He smacks me while still sitting in his chair and I fall at his feet. Without getting up, he kicks me. Still sitting, he picks me up and turns me over his knee and spanks me like I’m a little kid, only harder because I’m ten years old and can take it. It hurts but I don’t want to cry—I know the more I cry the worse it will be. Actually, I do cry but not very much—maybe four or five little tears. Soon he gets tired and is done with the beating. All he says is, “Dry up or I’ll give you something to really cry about.” I believe him and compose myself. That fast the storm is past and once more our father is joking and laughing. That whole knock-down-kick-and-spank thing took three minutes, tops—it just sounds worse when I tell it, at least that’s what I tell myself. And the dandelion wine?—well, that is really bitter stuff.
The final part of BAD ACTORS will be post next Monday. Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.
Hey Dad:
I rember helping build the set for the play. Can’t believe it has been that long ago!
Yes, Vince, I remember, it well. You were willing to give up part of your leave time from the U. S. Navy to help out. And it was much appreciated because that was one complex set for a small community theater production.
Dad