Two Sisters and a Red Lollipop A Play by Judah Skoff Cast of Characters (in order of speaking): Scene: Time: (SYLVIA speaks to a toy doll.) SYLVIA I had a husband once. (Beat) On the corner near our house was a candy store. (ISOBEL speaks to the audience.) If I’d been born in another century, I might have been a Queen. SYLVIA The air in her room was stale. Don’t crack it, I told her. That would hurt your teeth. ISOBEL What interests me is empty space. SYLVIA I sat outside our house. (Beat) Beyond our house was a small lake. ISOBEL When I first moved to the here, I was looking for gallery space. (Beat) I found a little studio to live in. I couldn’t remember the name of his country. SYLVIA One day my sister left. (Beat) I looked under the bed. (SYLVIA puts the doll down, moves to another area My first exhibit was called Crying Man. (Beat) I created a little doll SYLVIA I asked my husband: what would you do if I cut my hair? It was a small ask, as these things go. ISOBEL I was so embarrassed by Crying Man, unloved as it was. (Beat)
I often think about accidents of birth.
SYLVIA One day, the rotted wood cracked in the gazebo. ISOBEL I think about the ways I’ve been lucky. SYLVIA One day, the candy store closed. ISOBEL I think about the ways I’ve lied. SYLVIA There’s so much I’ve forgotten. ISOBEL It is ultimately blank space I love most of all. SYLVIA I made her bed my own. ISOBEL A room like this one. (Colors fill the stage.) And what I realize, what I’ve learned, END About the Author Judah Skoff graduated from Brown University with a degree in English. His plays have been produced in London, New York, Los Angeles and other venues, including at Theatre503, Symphony Space, and The Road Theatre. His full-length play THE SINLESS is published by Next Stage Press. His short play THE ARTIST ELECTRIC is published in Best American Short Plays, 2018-2019. He has directed several of his plays at various theatre and festivals in New York. HIs work has also been seen at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Valdez Theatre Conference, the Midwest Dramatists Conference, and other festivals. He has won numerous awards for his playwriting. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
SYLVIA
ISOBEL
An art gallery.
The present.
He told me he loved my hair.
When I asked me why he married me
Well
We were having some trouble.
Lots of fighting and
I asked him, kind of yelled, actually, why did you even marry me?
He told me he couldn’t live without my hair.
Then he wrapped a few strands in his fingers and pressed them against his face.
Across from the store was a park with a gazebo in the middle.
Rotting wood that creaked.
In the afternoons, we would jump on the wood, trying to see if it would break.
We wanted to blast open a big, splintered hole and fall through.
Later, I’d buy a red lollipop from the candy store.
I’d bring it home to my sister.
My sister who stayed in bed.
ISOBEL
That’s the trick of birth, isn’t it?
True for us all.
Still, she refused to open a window or turn on the fan.
She liked it, the stale air, she said.
On the walls were drawings in crayon of monsters and ghosts and cars driving kids in
Open fields and there was one crash
One picture of a car hitting a rock.
It spun off the highway.
Everyone was fine, my sister would say.
I drew that picture to show that everyone was still fine.
I would hand her the lollipop and watch her lick it.
Lick it until it disappeared.
A line on the horizon that catches your eye.
Something that’s unseen at first.
Then something fills it.
Something I put there.
I looked up and stared into my sister’s window.
I tried to hear as she licked the lollipop.
The window was closed.
I don’t have magic ears.
I wanted to hear.
There was a curtain over her window.
It was white with strawberry patches, green bushes and thorns.
You could fish there, or take a swim.
That was best in summertime, although winter too had its charms.
Have you ever had a cold swim?
I had a vague sense of light.
Something I wanted to do with light.
It was awful in my mind, harsh reds.
Maybe maroon.
Or yellow.
A nauseating thought, isn’t it?
I wanted to ask people to come to the gallery, to sit in the dark.
To sit on uncomfortable chairs.
Chairs with ripped cushions.
This was my dream, anyway.
It wasn’t much, but it was a large open room.
I needed that.
Beneath me, one floor below, lived a man from another country.
Everything about him is obscure.
Everything a haze.
Everything but that he cried.
He cried all the time.
I would see him crying in the elevator.
I would pass him crying in the hallway, too.
I cooked him dinner once.
Well, not dinner.
I warmed him a frozen pizza, left it outside his door, knocked.
Ran away.
No idea if he ate it.
I wanted to ask why he cried, but I never did.
Rather he told me
Once he told me
look, he said,
If you want some cocaine I know where to get it.
I don’t remember where she went, or maybe,
If I’m honest, I didn’t care to know.
She left when I was out.
No warning, no notice, no goodbye.
A few days later, after she was gone, I went into her room.
Suddenly it was different.
The curtains had been removed.
Someone opened the windows, airing it out.
There was a box pressed up against the wall.
It was square, with an emerald ribbon tied around it.
I moved the ribbon around my fingers.
It was cool and smooth and I felt calm.
Inside the box were hundreds of lollipop sticks
Lined up in neat little rows.
Some smooth; some sticky.
Some chewed; some with tiny red rocks
Remnants of the lollipops left behind.
I kept few of the most beautiful ones.
I placed them in a small plastic bag which I kept in my wallet.
I take it with me.
I have it now.
I sleep with it under my pillow.
onstage.)
ISOBEL
It was part of a group show in a gallery.
The owner of the gallery felt that, well,
Recent exhibitions had become too cheerful.
She wanted a spider-web aesthetic.
None of us knew what that meant,
A spider-web aesthetic
but, well,
Maybe she meant being trapped in something.
A struggle to get out.
A creeping horror.
A friend hooked it up with this electric something or other.
It moved.
It’s arms and legs kind of jerked a bit.
And on the face, I attached a little screen.
It showed a series of pictures, black and white pictures,
Pictures of the man in my building
Crying.
The doll was placed in the corner of the gallery,
Largely out of view, because, well,
I guess she thought it was embarrassing.
The gallerist.
It embarrassed her to have my little piece of art in her show.
And I understood that.
It looked like a child’s toy.
I had made a fool out of myself.
Like just shaved it all off.
He told me he would pick it up, off the ground.
He’d keep it.
He’d put it somewhere.
He’d treasure it.
Before I left him, he did ask one favor.
Would I cut off a few strands of my hair and give it to him
As a parting gift?
Why not? I said.
And I did.
He held it in his hands, running it between his fingers.
As I was leaving,
As I stood in the doorway, bags in hand
I told him, marrying him had been the worst mistake of my life.
He shrugged his shoulders.
There will be other mistakes, he said.
There will be others.
I wanted to rip it out of its corner, throw it down a drain somewhere.
But I didn’t.
It’s not like anybody noticed it, or commented on it.
It stayed through the exhibition.
Until the works had been taken down.
Some sold. Most didn’t.
Soon after, the gallery closed.
Perhaps I contributed to that, in some small way.
I saw her on the street a few months later.
The gallerist, I mean.
I thanked her for including my piece.
She laughed.
She’d lost her gallery but still had to condescend.
I asked her what she was up to.
She wasn’t up to anything, she told me.
She’d taken up walking.
I fell through and twisted and ankle.
Empty and controlled.
Like when I was a girl.
Stale air and a filter over life.
Some colors
Some harsh, beautiful colors.
After she left, I slept in her room/ for a while.
(overlaps with SYLVIA saying “room”)
That we sit in.
I can only imagine the chairs are uncomfortable.
Maybe they’re even ripped.
And we look at colors together, colors that I’ve chosen.
It can become a consuming light.
