EAT THE FISH BITCH!
Here, we have a crazy, dysfunctional play about a crazy, dysfunctional family. Everyone is crazy in their own way, because everyone is trying to find a way to cope.
Violet, the matriarch, is diagnosed with cancer. She copes by popping pills. Beverly, her husband, drinks. "That's the bargain we've struck" he says. In the prologue, he and Violet argue about hiring Johnna, a young Native American woman, for extra help around the house. The prologue (and later the play) end with quotes from the T.S. Eliot poem 'The Hollow Men.'
A tragic event brings the family together- Beverly has disappeared. Violet's daughters- Barbra, Ivy, and Karen,their families, and her sister Mattie Fae all arrive to support her.
Jean, the youngest of the bunch, is Barbra's daughter. They suspect suicide. Jean copes just like her father- she smokes weed. When Johnna doesn't stop her from smoking, Jean opens up to her about the family drama she's been through. (This is when the monologue occurs.)
At the end of the act the Sheriff (and Barbra's ex) tells the family that Beverly's body has been found- he drowned.
In act two, the fights escalate and eventually get physical. Karen's fiance Steve slimily teases Jean about smoking pot. This teasing, and the families fighting, escalate through the entire act. Nothing is resolved. Jean and Steve smoke together, and by the end of a shared joint, Steve turns off the light and the audience hears nothing but heavy breathing. Johnna, noticing something is wrong, turns on the light and beats Steve with a skillet. The family rushes in, no one knows what happened, and everyone starts screaming at everyone else.
And then we arrive at the fantastic dinner scene. Violet and her daughters are attempting to have dinner, during which Ivy hopes to confess to her mother that she is in a relationship with Little Charles, her dopey cousin. What she does not know is that Little Charles is actually her half-brother. Barbra does know this, and tries to shut down the conversation, eventually screaming at her mother to eat the fucking fish. Despite her efforts, all is revealed. Ivy leaves in shock and despair. The play ends with Barbra leaving, Violet calling out for her daughters, and when no one comes, to Johnna and they quote the final lines of T.S. Eliot "this is the way the world ends... and then you're gone..."
The title comes from a poem by Howard Starks-
Dust hangs heavy in the dull catalpas;
the cicadas are scraping interminably
at the heart-thickened air—
no rain in three weeks, no real breeze all day,
In the dim room,
the blinds grimly endure the deadly light,
protecting the machined air,
as the watchers watch the old lady die.
“I’m eighty-six,” she said: “it’s high time—
now John’s gone.”
And to the town’s ne doctor
“You’re a good boy,” (she had a great-grandson
who was older,) “so don’t fiddle around.
When fighting was needed, I fought –
But I’m all fought out.”
and later—
“John left when he was due—well—I’m due now,”
“I promise, “ he whispered;
I’ve learned when right is right.”
Now, her daughters sit – – and her grand-daughters –
and at night, her grandsons- –
and her pampered sons-in-law.
One of these, not known for eloquence – –
or tears—said, last week,
“Ola, chance gave me a mother,
but God gave me two.”
She smiled at that,
“yes, I had one boy; god gave me seven more.”
She lies under the sheet,
Thin as one of her old kitchen knives,
honed by years and use to fragile sharpness,
but too well-tempered to break just yet.
It’s two days since she spoke—
“Don’t cry, Bessie;
puppies just die, that’s all.”
(A girl again,
gentling baby sister.)
All the watchers can do
is wipe her dry mouth with gentle wetness.
They watch her old hands and murmur—
How many biscuits
and pans of gravy?
How many babies soothed
and bee-stings daubed with bluing?
How many lamp-wicks trimmed?
How many berries picked?
words circling
as her quiet breath winds down to silence.
No sobs, for she was due, but tears, a few,
selfish ones,
before the calls, the “arrangements”
to put her to bed, beside John,
on the dusty hilltop.
Standing there,
we look up from the dry clods
and the durable grey stone,
upwards—
expectantly—
westwards—
where the clouds grow dark.
JEAN'S MONOLOGUE
Mom and Dad don't mind. You won't get in trouble or anything.
I just mean that they don't mind that I smoke pot. Dad doesn't. Mom kind of does. She thinks it's bad for me. I think the real reason it bugs her is because dad smokes pot too and she wishes he wouldn't.
Dad's a lot cooler than mom really. Well, that's not true. He's just cooler in that way I guess.
He's fucking one of his students which is pretty uncool if you ask me. Some people would think that’s cool, like those dicks who teach with him in the Humanities Department because they’re all fucking their students or wish they were fucking their students. “Lo-liii-ta.” I mean I don't care and all. He can fuck whoever he wants and that's who teachers meet, students. He was just a turd the way he went about it, and didn’t give mom a chance to respond or anything. What sucks now is that mom’s watching me like a hawk because she thinks I’ll go on some post-divorce freak out and become some heroin addict or shoot everybody at school or God forbid, lose my virginity. I don’t know what it is about dad splitting that put mom on hymen patrol.
Mom freaked when she got the call from Aunt Ivy this morning, just like… freaked. I’ve never seen her like that. I couldn’t get her to calm down. It was weird. I guess it’s not weird that she freaked out, but like, to see your mom freak like that, like you’ve never seen before, y’know? And we’re real close. So imagine you see your parents one day just totally lose their shit just like ‘whoa.’
Don’t say anything about Mom and Dad splitting up okay? It’s kind of low-key.
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