The Plays
Wintertime [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
[Doctor Jaqueline Benoit enters.]
JAQUELINE
I beg your pardon.
I am looking for Hilda Braunschweiger.
FRANK
And you are?
JAQUELINE
I am going to be called Doctor Jaqueline Benoit.
I had the phone call
that Ms. Braunschweiger has had the severe chill and needs the doctor?
FRANK
You are a medical doctor?
JAQUELINE
Oh, yes.
MARIA
And you're making a house call?
JAQUELINE
A house call I don't know.
MARIA
You are coming to the house
and not having the patient come to your office.
JAQUELINE
Ah, because I am the doctor without walls
and I happen to be here
because the snow she is not having the other doctors to be here.
FRANK
I see.
FRANCOIS
And you are visiting for the holiday?
JAQUELINE
Francois?
FRANCOIS
Yes?
JAQUELINE
You don't recognize me?
FRANCOIS
Ah!
Recognize you!
Recognize you!
Of course I recognize you!
Jaqueline!
JAQUELINE
I would hope so.
After this night in Zagreb.
FRANCOIS
Ah. Yes. Well.
[checking with Maria and the others]
That afternoon.
JAQUELINE
Yes, this afternoon and this night and this day.
FRANCOIS
The uncertainty of the political situation. No place to spend the night.
JAQUELINE
I like this hotel.
FRANCOIS
Yes, I mean, of course, we finally found a hotel
which we had to share, with...
so many others, refugees.
MARIA
The room?
JAQUELINE
The hotel.
MARIA
You mean there were other guests in the hotel.
JAQUELINE
Yes. Of course.
MARIA
Are you saying the two of you spent the night together?
JAQUELINE
In Zagreb.
MARIA
When was this?
FRANCOIS JAQUELINE
Oh, long ago. This spring last time.
FRANCOIS
It seems so long ago.
MARIA
Last spring?
FRANCOIS
It couldn't have been.
JAQUELINE
And then your wife took you away.
MARIA
Your wife?
What wife?
JAQUELINE
He had to go with her
because, although no longer they were close
as the lovers
and had not to make love in years before—
as I think I can know,
because of how it was to be with us
this afternoon and this night and this day—
his wife, she was ill
and he was devoted to her.
Very nice. Very gentle.
How is she, Francois?
FRANCOIS
Ah, she has passed away.
MARIA
She has passed away?
JAQUELINE
I'm sorry to hear this.
FRANCOIS
Yes, well....
JAQUELINE
But, does this mean you are now free?
Because, I don't, excuse me,
I am not with thinking,
I don't mean just to jump like this at you.
I am only thinking, perhaps you need the friend.
FRANCOIS
Yes, indeed, I do.
DOCTOR
And because you did say,
one day, when you are free,
you want to be with me.
MARIA
You are a pig, Francois.
FRANCOIS
Yes, it's true.
I am afraid it's true.
I am a pig.
I can't understand it.
MARIA
And on top of that
telling her you had a wife.
FRANCOIS
Except that, in a way,
I did have a wife
I mean,
even if,
in an official sense
she was someone else's wife.
JAQUELINE
I beg your pardon?
MARIA
He doesn't have a wife.
FRANK
He has my wife.
JAQUELINE
I have been waiting for you, Francois.
Waiting and waiting for you.
I thought—
the way you care for me—
I never know a man like you.
From the moment we make love
my life she has never been the same.
MARIA
He is a bad person.
FRANCOIS
You know, I have never pretended to be other than
a bad person
MARIA
And you are.
How you are:
it is not funny
it is not charming
FRANK
It's not even French, necessarily.
EDMUND
Or male even.
MARIA
No one is amused.
EDMUND
People are not going to forgive you
for being the person you are.
JAQUELINE
I am....I don't know.
I feel air in the head.
[she sits]
FRANCOIS
No, yes, I am,
here, let me help you,
it is not funny
it is not funny to me
I am a tormented individual
a sick person
from birth probably
you would know about this, being a doctor,
but also you know the way I have been socialized
perhaps I don't know
probably I was raised too permissively
or not
or not
it may be I was raised to be hypermasculine
and allowed to run and jump
and be rowdy
and even shove and wrestle
probably because there was recess
and there should not have been any recess.
I should have been forced to play with dolls
to bathe them and help them get dressed
I live a life of such confusion
sometimes I think I can't go on
MARIA
and then you do
FRANCOIS
and then I do and I regret it
because look at me
I am a wreck.
FRANK
No one feels sympathy for you, Francois.
FRANCOIS
Good. Good.
Everyone blames me.
And is this fair?
[to Maria]
Let's say it were you
let's say it would be a woman who did this
no one would think she is a pig
MARIA
I would never do this.
FRANCOIS
What?
MARIA
Have a fling with a woman in Zagreb.
Or a man.
This is not what women do
that's why they are not pigs.
FRANCOIS
Maybe it is not something you would do
but some woman might do it.
MARIA
No woman would do it.
FRANCOIS
How do you say no woman would do it?
JAQUELINE
I did it.
