Taking Charge
by Maria Brandt
ANNA: 90 years old
HENRY: ANNA’s husband
HENRY is sitting at a lovely table for two.
ANNA lights a candle and serves them both, then sits also.
ANNA: I made your favorite.
HENRY: You didn’t.
ANNA: I did. I clipped an entire cup of basil this morning and bought ricotta this afternoon from Tony down on Latta Road.
HENRY: Tony always had a crush on you.
ANNA: (pleased) You’re lying.
HENRY: “That Anna,” he’d say to me whenever I stopped to get homemade butter for Claudia, “that Anna, she’s got the plumpest arms I’ve ever seen, plumper than a ripe fig.”
ANNA: Now I know you’re lying, there’s nothing plump about a fig.
HENRY: Dried figs are chewy but the fresh ones? The fresh ones are plump as plump gets, plump and juicy and jammy and all that pink.
ANNA: You’re a dirty old man, Henry. You were a dirty young man and now you’re a dirty old man.
HENRY: I’m in love with the plumpest, pinkest woman in this city, how could I not be a dirty old man.
Anna moves to touch him in some way but stops.
Did you invite Claudia?
ANNA: For dinner? No. I was going to but . . . She’s busy with her grandkids.
HENRY: Grandkids . . . Our Claudia . . .
ANNA: It seems like yesterday we caught her with a pack of cigarettes down in the basement, teetering on your workbench so she could blow all that smoke out the window by the ceiling.
HENRY: Or sitting hunched over a pile of dried leaves in the spring looking for butterflies.
ANNA: Our Claudia . . .
HENRY: You should have invited her.
ANNA: She’s busy, like I said, she’s got two grandkids now, Simon and Ruby, they’re a handful, those babies, and besides—
Beat.
HENRY: Babies?
ANNA: Well, Simon’s five and Ruby’s three. Claudia dressed Ruby as a butterfly this past Halloween, made wings out of a bright purple tunic she bought at the thrift store.
HENRY: I wish I could have seen them.
ANNA: I know, I wish you could have seen them too. Simon dressed himself, his first time, you wouldn’t have believed it.
HENRY: I would have believed anything that boy did, anything you told me that boy did, I would have believed it and held it close to my left cheek while you were sleeping.
ANNA: Do you watch me?
HENRY: When?
ANNA: When I sleep, do you watch me?
HENRY: Yes.
ANNA: I wish I could touch you.
HENRY: I know.
ANNA: I argued with Claudia this afternoon, while I was roasting the tomatoes. She called and I put her on speaker while I used the oven mitts she got me for my birthday to take the roasting
pan out of the oven, but I still burned my finger, and she got mad at me. Told me I needed to take charge of my life, told me I needed to see my doctor and get tested for colon cancer and uterine cancer and some other kind of cancer and fill out some paperwork and hire someone to clean out the basement, and I told her that didn’t seem like I would be taking charge of anything, that seemed like a lot of other people would be taking charge and I would end up somewhere far away from where I really want to be.
HENRY: Is that why you invited me tonight, instead of her?
ANNA: I don’t know.
HENRY: She loves you.
ANNA: I know she loves me.
HENRY: She worries about you.
ANNA: There’s no need for her to worry about me.
HENRY: But she does.
ANNA: I’m ninety years old, Henry, I’m going to die, it’s going to happen.
HENRY: I know.
ANNA: Henry, I want it to happen.
HENRY: I know.
Again, ANNA moves to touch HENRY in some way but stops.
ANNA: My best and favorite moments used to be with Claudia, they really did, she was and still is the light of my life. But now . . .
HENRY: Now?
ANNA: Now, my best and favorite moments are with you, that’s where I really want to be, making homemade lasagna for you, talking with you about figs, thinking about the ways you used to touch me.
HENRY: I loved touching you.
ANNA: I want you to touch me again.
HENRY: I can’t even eat your lasagna.
ANNA: I don’t want you to touch my lasagna, Henry, I want you to touch me.
HENRY holds out his hand. Beat.
What are you doing?
She looks at him.
What are you doing, what does that mean?
HENRY: I think you know.
They look at each other. Beat.
ANNA: Oh, Henry . . .
Slowly, ANNA takes HENRY’s hand, she holds it tight. Beat.
Yes . . .
ANNA leans into HENRY. HENRY blows out the candle. They envelop each other.
End of play.
Maria Brandt has published short-fiction in magazines across the country. Her collection New York Plays was produced by Out of Pocket Theatre and is catalogued with Heartland Plays, her novella All the Words won the Grassic Short Novel Prize, and her full-length play Swans premiered at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage, co-produced by Method Machine and Straw Mat Writers. Maria teaches Creative Writing at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY.
Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash