Cast of 7 adults and 3 children
The marriage isn’t cracking—oh no. Franny might be, but not the marriage.
“You’re not thinking past your nose,” Chuck tells her. Visiting family—too risky. No vaccines, yet.
“You know what I think?” she retorts. “I think you’re cold and remote and detached. Do you even care? Not seeing the kids—does it even matter? Do you even miss them?”
“You’ve lost all perspective,” he says.
“Not true,” says Franny. “Not. Just, I despise this—this—gulf. I hate it. I hate it.”
They’re already en route. That’s the thing. And merely stopping for gas (and creamers, because the relatives in Pittsburgh mightn’t have any—they always drink their coffee black) means wiping down the car door handles afterwards, the steering wheel, even the soapy-water jug tainted by her touch.
The woman in Sheetz couldn’t make out what Franny was asking. Too much padding in her mask. The creamers—could she take a few? The woman would’ve said yes. Walking out with them wasn’t stealing.
But let’s back up.
No days-long stay at the grandparents’ this summer—for the children, that’s a bummer. No Old Hound. No cackly hens. No snake swinging on the end of Granddad’s shovel. No toasting marshmallows to slag. No nuzzling beneath the dark Virginia sky. But for Franny, the loss is visceral. Propelled by her grief at the separation these past months, she lays her plans. She and Chuck, instead, will pay a visit. They’ll take their old tent. No going in the house except for the bathroom. Out in the backyard, no evil corona particles jumping from person to person.
The story, some of it flashbacks, the sets makeshift, moves between kitchens, bedrooms, fields, a woods, a party venue, highways, an airport. And sporadically, music erupts from the recording studio in Minneapolis where Chuck and Franny’s son and daughter-in-law are holed up. She tells her kind but disinclined foot-draggin lover man / to just cooperate, croon the two, their words winding and wailing around the heads in the audience. How hard, though, should somebody married to her opposite push?
In the beginning, when Chuck bristled at her idea, Franny said, “You always do this. Anytime I suggest something the least bit out of the ordinary, you shut down. It’s always a no. No, no, no. You’re such a skeptic.”
“Franny.” He scowled.
“Right? You know I’m right. You’re the worst foot dragger.”
“Well now.”
“Drag your feet. Drag, drag.”
“Yep.” He tipped back in his chair. “I’m just not like you.”
“Thank goodness, you mean. That’s what you mean.”
Franny’s never been one to give up. So what happens, in the end, might throw you.
Workshop production 11 March 2023, video credit Kathy Stoltzfus
