Authors: Dorothea Benton Frank
“Good! Ella? Is the shaker empty? I’m a little parched.”
Ella refilled our glasses, Aunt Daisy knocked hers back in one giant swallow, held it out for Ella to refill yet again, which she did, and Aunt Daisy took a lady sip.
“I’m gonna tell you something and I don’t want you to ever forget it.”
I nodded my head and waited.
“Every woman needs to have her
own
money.”
“We all do!” Patti said.
“Aunt Daisy? I learned that lesson the hard way. Patti always said I needed a stash of FU money. And I had a little but not nearly what I needed.”
“Yes, but that’s in the past now. And you know what’s really wonderful about you taking over?”
“What?”
“Now you’ll have all the time in the world to write and you don’t need a man to pay your bills.”
“Thanks to you, Aunt Daisy. Only because of you.”
Setting:
Empty stage, soft light.
Director’s Note:
Show the silhouettes of Dorothy and DuBose on the back scrim. At the end remarks, Dorothy blows audience a kiss and stays onstage while the lights go down.
Act III
Scene 5
Dorothy:
I am one of the luckiest women you will ever meet. I had so many spectacular opportunities and I am so grateful for having had each and every one of them. I actually lived my dream of having a life in the theater. I met and even knew many of the great creative minds of my day. I had the chance to help young playwrights find their voice and ultimately their wings. And most important, I was the mother of Jenifer Heyward and the very happy wife of Edwin DuBose Heyward. Oh, let’s be honest, there were days I wanted to strangle him but there was never one minute that I regretted my decision to marry him.
Do I have any regrets? Only that I didn’t meet DuBose sooner. And maybe that I was not born in Charleston, although I got here as quickly as I could.
My time with you is coming to an end. After all, it’s late and DuBose is waiting for me in that big cocktail lounge in the sky. We still have our rituals, you know. These days we’re drinking whatever heavenly thing that they’re pouring and then we get together and sing. Not a bad way to pass eternity.
You all coming here tonight and listening so patiently marks the fulfillment of my dreams and I want to thank you for allowing me to tell you my story. Oh, there are endless anecdotal stories I could regale you with—bits of gossip about our friends, about us, but for me it is enough that you now know where DuBose fit in the scheme of things, just how very important he was to not only the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the Charleston Literary Renaissance but to also consider the bold risks he took to make his contribution to the collective social consciousness in matters of racial inequality.
Edwin DuBose Heyward was a great man. He was an intellectual decades ahead of his time. He literally had the sensitive soul of a poet, the gentlemanly manners of an aristocrat, and I cherished his love. Yes, I did.
Thank you for coming and good night.
Fade to Black
The Playwright
T
he Porgy House seemed lonely without Patti. If I had learned another thing it was that I was much happier surrounded by family. I had placed that recommended call to Jennet Alterman, who could not have been sweeter or more understanding. When I went to her office to tell her the whole story of Heather Parke, she did exactly what I had hoped she would. She took that worry away.
“I’ll call my good friend, Susan Rosen. Big family attorney. Fabulous woman! She’ll write her a letter that will give this Heather a religious conversion. Just give me her contact information.”
I did and a letter went out the next week. Of course, I got the address from Patti, who got it from Mark. According to Patti, Mark wouldn’t ever keep a secret like that from her again. Wish I’d been a fly on the wall for
that
conversation!
Having attended to yet another stinky detail of Addison’s legacy, I knew I had to say something to Aunt Daisy.
So over supper one night that week I said, “Oh by the way, Aunt Daisy. I had a lawyer write a letter to Heather Parke telling her she wasn’t entitled to a dime and that if she harassed you ever again we’d have her locked up.”
There was a pregnant pause in the conversation.
“Good! Thank you!”
“That’s my girl,” Ella said.
“I don’t know why I ever worried about you, Cate. You seem to be managing life very well.”
“Thank you! I’m just putting one foot in front of the other the way you taught me to.”
Sara and Russ were thrilled to hear about Aunt Daisy’s recovery and that I was taking over her business. And Sara was especially excited that I was attempting to write a play. We had talked last night for more than an hour.
She said, “I remember when I was a little girl you used to say that all the time, that you wanted to write.”
“It’s still true,” I said.
“Remember all those silly plays we used to make up?”
“I sure do. There was a lot of laughing around the house in those days.”
“Well, if making up stories makes you happy, maybe that’s what you ought to be doing?”
Out of the mouths of babes, like they say.
So there I was, with my morning coffee, sitting on
the
chair at
the
desk allegedly used by the Heywards to write
Mamba’s Daughters,
writing about the Heywards themselves. I decided to call my play
Folly Beach
. The subtitle would be
A One-Woman Show with Images
. The story Dorothy Heyward wanted me to tell, or so I thought, was about the deep love she felt for DuBose, which bloomed the first moment she met him and then became all-consuming. Okay, I thought, where to begin? Well, she’s dead, I thought, so we have to bring her back to life so why not start in the cemetery? If anyone had a sense of humor, it was Dorothy Heyward and she would think it was a riot to rise from her grave, dust herself off, and set the record straight on a few things. Wait! Would she? Crap! Well, my lack of conviction was going to be a
huge
problem so I knew I’d better decide what it was I really thought and go with it.
Scene: St. Philips Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina . . .
I was on my way. The floodgates were officially open.
I wrote and wrote, the story gushing out of me in twists and turns like the white water of the Chattahoochee River. I laughed, loving the fact that I was helping Dorothy tell the world so many things they did not know about her, about DuBose, his mother, George Gershwin, and on and on. I was having the most exhilarating time of my life! I stopped for a moment and thought, people made money like this? Incredible!
I did not hear the knock on the door so when I looked up to see John in the doorway of my room I nearly screamed.
“Oh!” I jumped in surprise.
“Sorry. Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry. I’ve been knocking on the door for five minutes. Then you didn’t answer your cell and I thought, oh please, don’t let anything have happened to you so I just walked in.”
“No! It’s fine. I was just . . .”
“In the zone, Cate. That’s what they call it when you’re writing and you tune out the whole world. Let me see what you’ve got.”
“What? Oh, no! I can’t. It’s just a draft!”
“I read drafts for a living. Remember?”
“Yeah, but let me just polish it up a bit.”
“Oh, please. Come on. What do you think I’m going to do? Rewrite it?”
“No. You might, I don’t know, laugh at me and think I’m stupid.”
“Never. I would never laugh and I know how brilliant you are.”
“Well, let me just try to read it through and spell-check it and then we’ll see.”
“How many pages have you got?”
“Twenty-two.”
He whistled low and long.
“When did you start writing?”
“This morning. I’m waiting for the carpenter. Wait! What if he came and left?”
“Just call him. I’ll tell you what. I’ll go pull the back off of your piano like I said I would, you polish your pages, and then I’ll read while you get dressed.”
“What?” I looked down at my lap. I was still in my pajamas.
We lost it, laughing and laughing until we had tears rolling down our faces.
Then he said the magic words, “This is why I love you, Cate.”
“You do?” Did I hear him correctly?
“Yeah, a lot, in fact.”
“So, how come you never told me?”
“I thought you knew.”
“I might faint.”
He kissed my cheek. “You polish and I’m going to work on Cunningham.”
Well, how was I supposed to concentrate on
anything
now besides the fact that John Risley just told me he loved me? My mind was spinning. What did it mean that John loved me? People love chocolate and opera and cars and a great movie or a song. Was it all the same? Of course not. But did it mean he wanted to marry me? No, you big crazy, I told myself. Or did he want to just keep going as we were? Well, I wasn’t going to blow this historic moment by bringing any of my neurotic thoughts up to him. That was why women got called pushy and I wasn’t going to wear
that
nasty label.
Oh,
I told myself,
just be happy, will you?
Breathe. Relax. Breathe some more.
I checked the spelling and grammar about ten times and I was ready to print.
“Hey, Cate?”
“Yeah?”
“Come here! You’re gonna want to see this!”
I hit the print button and went out to the living room.
“Come around here,” he said.
There, written in black ink on the inside of the back of my piano, were the signatures of George Gershwin and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and underneath George’s signature it read,
Folly Beach, June 1934.
“Oh. My. God!”
“Do you realize what this means?” he said.
“Yeah, that either the one at the museum is a fake or Gershwin rented more than one piano?”
“Bingo. Is this another sign of karma or what? Plus, do you have any idea how much this thing could be worth?”
I shivered from head to toe. Karma.
“More than it was yesterday, that’s for sure. I need a glass of water and I think I’m hungry. Do you want a sandwich or something?”
“It’s almost three o’clock. I ate. You didn’t eat?”
“No, I, well, I guess I was so preoccupied that I forgot.”
“Wow, I may have created a monster, Igor.”
“Oh, you’re a riot,” I said and smiled. I went to get a banana and thought, writing! What a great way to lose weight!
I picked up the twenty-two pages from the printer and gave them to John, who was still sitting on the floor, marveling at the fact that I owned a piano actually used and signed by Gershwin and the Heywards.
“I’m going to go change,” I said.
“Isn’t this incredible?”
“Yep.”
Well, the discovery
was
phenomenal but I wasn’t telling anyone about it except Patti and the kids and Aunt Daisy and Ella. It would be good for John’s students to see it, because it would add more authenticity to the whole Porgy House story and bring it all to life. I wondered then if the museum’s piano was signed as well. It didn’t matter really. Mine
was
. What a piece of luck!
I was dressed and putting on some makeup and I heard John coming up the steps.
“Cate?”
“Yeah? It’s terrible?”
“No, Cate. It’s absolutely wonderful. I’m gonna put the curse on you now.” He walked over and put his right hand on my shoulder. “God save you, you’re a writer.”
“Oh, John! You really think so? I’m so happy!”
“Just keep writing. I wouldn’t change a word.”
So I did.
February finally turned into March and flowers were in bloom everywhere you looked. John’s wife, Lisa, passed away and John felt terrible.
“What did you tell them to do? I mean, did you make arrangements?”
“I told them to have her cremated and to send me the ashes.”
“Oh, John. I’m sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay.”
“So, what are you going to do with her ashes?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll keep them in the closet until I figure that out.”
“Look, when you get them, we’ll pick a nice windy day and maybe we’ll go down to the beach across from the Morris Island Lighthouse and let her spirit fly. If you want, I can probably even find a willing member of the clergy to put a blessing on them?”
“You’d do that for me?”
“John? I’d do anything for you. You know that. I love you.”
I did. I surely did.
And as threatened or promised, depending on your point of view, Aunt Daisy and Ella put on their vagabond shoes and started combing the globe. They sent me postcards from everywhere. I especially loved the ones from Egypt that were pictures of them riding on camels.
They spit!
That was all Aunt Daisy wrote on the card. Classic Daisy McInerny.
And while they were away, I collected their mail, paid their bills, and took care of the dozen houses that were someday to be mine and Patti’s. I hoped
that day
was never going to come.
By the middle of March, Alice was throwing up all the time but still gaining an alarming amount of weight. She cried all the time and Russ, who had become
poor Russ,
had his hands full. I walked the beach with Alice and tried to tell her that her feelings were normal. But I think all she
heard
was that her pregnancy wasn’t special and that she wasn’t the only woman in the world who ever had a baby.
“If she wants to sulk, let her sulk,” Patti said.
“I don’t think it’s healthy, Patti, and it’s not good for Russ, either.”
“Then maybe you can find a nice way to remind her she has a husband who needs a healthy wife and a happy home?”
“Oh sure!” I laughed and said, “Tell you what. Since she’s your niece-in-law, you have every right to have an opinion. So why don’t
you
call her up and tell her that?”
“Are you kidding? I like my life. You think I want that little crank to come up here to New Jersey and kill me?”
“My poor son,” I said.
“Truly. He carries a heavy cross. Say, how’s your play going?”
“Oh, Patti, I am so nervous about this. I finished it. I mean, I stopped working on it because John said it was ready and that I was just whaling on a dead horse. Anyway, John
loves
it, and of course, I never could have written this without him.”
“He helped you a lot, huh?”
“Well,
yeah
! He didn’t actually write it, I did that, but he helped tighten it up, you know, he made suggestions.”
“Well, good! You know what? It sounds like he’s the Dorothy to your DuBose, you know, as writing partners?”
“Yeah, he sort of is! So then he wrote a letter and submitted it to the Office of Cultural Affairs, because he wants to produce it in a little black box theater at the College of Charleston.”
“And he can’t do it if they don’t approve it?”
“I’m not sure how it all really works but if it’s going to be advertised in all their printed materials it has to be accepted. So I’m waiting to hear if it’s
worthy
.”
“Worthy? God! What a scary word! I’d be a wreck, too. So when do you hear?”