Beige Tea
By Dusty Wilson
dustywilson.playwright@gmail.com
Dusty Wilson © 2006
Produced in the 3rd Annual Undergraduate Playwrights’ Festival (Athens, OH, 2006), 13th Street Repertory Company’s Lucky 13 Short Play Festival (New York City, NY, 2006), Adena High School’s Feastival: A Smorgasbord of Theatre (Frankfort, OH, 2007), White Room Theatre’s Bite-Size Lunch Hour at the Brighton Festival Fringe (Hove, United Kingdom, 2008), Nantucket Theatrical Production’s Imaginations Run Wild (Nantucket, MA, 2008), and 0-60: Longwood University’s 2nd Annual Ten Minute Play Festival (Farmville, VA).
Characters
April Lau, 18 A young, world weary girl
Donald Lau, 53 April’s Father
Setting
The Lau family living room. A recliner, a couch, and a coffee table furnish the room.
Lights up on a girl, APRIL LAU, 18. She rests in an old, worn-out recliner. Her face, though beautiful, is haggard from time. As she sits, she pages through the leaves of Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted.
APRIL
It’s a story that’s more common than you think. There’s a girl: young by the standards of the world. She works, barely plays. She repeats for sixteen years. A short time in the world’s eyes. Yet, people will tell you sixteen years seems far too long. This girl works every day of her life toward impossibility. At first it’s easy: almost second nature. But anything can be second nature when it’s all you know how to do. She watches others make mistakes, discover who they are; the perfect do not receive those rights. She makes her own mistakes, and she’s never allowed to forget them. She’s the reason her parents can’t retire. She’s the long-term cross to bear. She’s the reason her mom should have supported Roe v. Wade. She’s told this every day. Sixteen years can be a very long time.
The front door creaks open and Donald Lau, 53, enters. His wardrobe is as plain as possible. He carries a bag of groceries. Donald places his keys on a stand, turns, and discovers April. He drops the groceries.
APRIL
Hi, Daddy.
DONALD
…Hi.
April rises.
APRIL
Don’t be scared, Dad.
DONALD
I’m not…how’d you get in here?
APRIL
You didn’t change the locks. I had a set of keys with me.
DONALD
…I wasn’t expecting you home so early. I figured you’d be seeing your friends first.
APRIL
I tried. Most of them are at college.
DONALD
Ah.
Pause.
APRIL
Dad-
DONALD
-Do you want some tea?
Short pause.
APRIL
Sure.
Donald picks up the groceries. He ekes by his daughter, staying close to the wall. He exits.
APRIL
We all have one coping mechanism. Some people bite their nails. Some self-deprecate. My Dad makes tea. When I skinned my knee while learning to ride my bike, he made green tea with white jasmine for me. When I came home crying because a boy didn’t like me, he made Earl Grey. When my mother finished yelling at me, he’d make black tea with chamomile. My father made tea, but only when my mother wasn’t looking.
Donald returns to the room with a tray of ornate china tea cups and a tea kettle. He places the tray on the table, sits on the couch, and pours the tea. April attempts to sit next to him, but he scoops up his cup, and migrates to the chair. April lifts her cup. They sip.
DONALD
It’s white tea with peach.
APRIL
It’s good.
Pause between sips.
DONALD
Have your friends kept in touch?
APRIL
Some of them.
DONALD
I heard Anna got married.
APRIL
Yeah, so did I.
Pause.
DONALD
Your stuff is packed; it’s upstairs.
APRIL
Thanks.
DONALD
When we’re finished, I’ll carry them down for you.
APRIL
It’s not necessary. I can get them on my own.
DONALD
Some of them are heavy.
APRIL
It’s fine, Dad. I can get them myself.
Pause.
DONALD
I think I left the stove on.
Donald exits.
APRIL
The key to any dysfunctional family is juxtaposition. For every raging alcoholic there’s a quiet, beaten-down soul. Each workaholic comes home to a bed-ridden, Prozac junkie. Dictators acknowledge only submission. I tried to live, and succeed, and make my ruler proud. I never could, so I became the resistance. In my cause I was alone. I tried to recruit whenever she wasn’t home, but the propaganda was too much. He was on my side, but always physically on hers: three feet back and to her right. Silent. When she raged over school work. Silent. When she roared with dissonance as I played the Moonlight Sonata. Silent. When she “accidentally” knocked me chin first onto the blistering brick hearth of the fireplace. Silent. Even during my trial when she was nowhere to be seen, he sat behind me, silent, three feet back, and to the right. Married sixteen years. A very long time.
Donald re-enters, drying his
hands.
DONALD
Are you finished with your tea?
Silence.
APRIL
Why did you let them say I was insane?
Silence.
DONALD
To keep you from going to jail.
APRIL
You owe me an honest answer-
DONALD
I don’t owe you anything.
APRIL
Why did you say I was insane?
DONALD (QUIETLY)
…Because it’s true.
APRIL
What?
DONALD
Your lawyer said-
APRIL
I know what he said. Did you really believe him?
DONALD
…You stabbed her nine times, April. It was the only thing that made sense.
APRIL
How can it not make sense?
DONALD
Don’t act like you are the victim.
APRIL
I have always been the victim. She needed to know how that felt. Just once.
DONALD
Your mother loved you-
APRIL
She never loved me!
Pause.
DONALD
I’m going upstairs to gather your things. After you have them, I want you out of my home.
Donald exits.
APRIL
How does one convey thought to a neutral spirit? A bland soul? A man long-since hollowed by a lifetime of forced status quo?
Pause.
APRIL
I promise you, hell isn’t every color of fire ranging from red to blue. It’s beige. Beige kills slowly. Psych wards are twice as beige as any prison. I do understand why my lawyer wanted me to plead insanity, but it was the diagnosis that killed me: schizotypical personality disorder. More commonly known as mild schizophrenia. There are nine symptoms ranging from metaphorical speech to eccentric behavior or belief in the paranormal. Everyday, all that consumed me were the vague symptoms of my so-called disease. Many of the best writers, artists, and thinkers share these traits, plus everyone I’ve ever met.
Pause.
APRIL
I shouldn’t let this bother me anymore. It’s not the reason I came back here. Mostly just a catalyst, a small coincidence leading to bigger, and bigger, and bigger fate: chaos theory. Belief in which is symptom four.
Short pause.
APRIL
One Sunday in my beige hell, I was asked to search for redemption. It was recommended that I come here to find it. It makes perfect sense really. Look in the last place you left it.
Donald re-enters with a box.
He sets it on the floor.
DONALD
You can have one of your friends come and get the rest.
APRIL
Thanks.
Pause.
DONALD
Goodbye. And don’t ever come back.
April nods. Tears moisten her
face.
APRIL
Before I go, can I ask one question?
Donald nods.
APRIL (VOICE QUAKING)
Do you believe in redemption, Daddy?
Pause.
DONALD
The Bible teaches us that if you truly regret the sins you commit, no matter how heinous, and devote the rest of your life to God, then yes, you can be redeemed.
April smiles and cries. She runs to Donald and hugs him tightly. This abashes Donald, but he instinctively hugs April. She wipes her runny nose with her sleeve, then lowers her hand to her pocket. She pulls out a switchblade knife.
APRIL
Thank you. But I wasn’t talking about me, Daddy.
April flips open the knife.
APRIL
Redemption is an ideal impossible to achieve, but I’ll help as much as I can.
Lights out.