Out of t e Windo a Bat A Dra ati Perusa of Materia Deat

Cast of Characters HARRY, an elderly man and the grandfather of Gwendolyn. GWENDOLYN, a woman in her early thirties and the heir apparent of Croton House. JESSICA, a young maid at Croton House. FELIX, the exterminator andbeloved pet of Harry. DIVERSE GROUPING OF CATS, either à la the hit musical, Cats, or a group of phenomenal feline thespians.

Act I: Scene I

[Scene: An overgrown castle garden. Cats roam about, wandering from various dirty food bowls clustered on the gravel walkways. Two people sit at a rusted table: a young woman with dark hair and an old man.]

HARRY. Well, last night’s fire destroyed the Hansen wing—it was in a horrible style, anyway. Soon, there’ll be nothing left for you to inherit. [chuckling spitefully.]

GWENDOLYN. At least wait for the smoldering to conclude before erasing portions of the Croton’s blueprint, grandfather.

HARRY. Don’t tell me what to do—she’s my house. I’ll torch the rest and scatter the blueprints if I want.

GWENDOLYN. Yes, she’s your house. But you’re not eternal. Unless you destroy the Croton, she’ll outlive you. She might even outlive me. Let’s not argue; your blood pressure will increase. Shall we go inside for lunch?

HARRY. Fine. If you’ve let go of that cook who was serving me moldy breads. I cannot abide a moldy bread. [They enter into an old stone hallway decorated in a modern style and walk to the dining room.]

GWENDOLYN. This dining room looks brighter now—doesn’t it? I had Marco wash the remaining window panes. He said the middle one way up at the top is broken, so I had him order a new one. It should arrive later today.

HARRY. Well, they certainly let in enough light for me to see there’s bread on the table. You taste it first, Gwen.

GWENDOLYN. Don’t be a child. It was a raisin loaf Jessica served you—freshly made that day. No possibility for mold.

HARRY. Don’t dance around the topic. Taste the bread.

GWENDOLYN. Fine. It tastes fine.

HARRY. Three slices, then. Be generous with the butter, we’re not peasants.

You know, despite the mold, that last cook made better butter.

GWENDOLYN. I didn’t fire the cook; the butter is the same. Delicious jam today, as well.

HARRY. I told her to get out of my house! What right do you have to keep on my employees against my expressed desires? You live here, but my resources are not at your discretion or disposal. [A cat walks by and rubs against Harry’s leg.] Hello, Felix. You know your place, good kitty. Yes.

GWENDOLYN. He quite knows his place—bringing meals to you, the big cat who can’t hunt for himself. It’s a wonder that he’s in here with all this smoke. The others were practically having a garden party to avoid the stench.

HARRY. Again, he knows his place.

GWENDOLYN. Stuck inside a decaying house? If that’s his place, I should euthanize him now and end his agony. 71 Play

[Felix hisses, and a bat flies into the dining room through the broken window pane.]

GWENDOLYN. Eck—a bat! Quick! Grab Felix before he hits it. had listened, you would know I was a zoologist in America. I encountered bats everywhere, and in every environment: on the rafters of frozen barns, under thatched tropical rooves, misty city bridges, northern-most craggy caves.

GWENDOLYN. Sure, you wandered northeastern caves.

72 Play HARRY. [ponderous, not taking the prescribed action.] Have I been reduced to a common cat-catcher? Is my only boast in preserving the life of a creature perfectly capable of defending himself? Why shouldn’t Felix or this guest have the pleasure of the hunt? With you around, it could be Felix’s last chance to feel like a cat again.

GWENDOLYN. For heaven’s sake, Grandfather. [snatches the cat.] Quiet down, Felix. I’m not hurting you! [to Harry.] It could be diseased. [The bat comes to a resting position underneath the mantle on the unlit fireplace.]

HARRY. I didn’t wander. I knew exactly where I was going. I had a purpose in studying bats. Bats lived here, in the attics of Croton house when I was a boy. Their wakening clicks lulled me into twilight trances—sleep! The only regret I have from that fire is the bats.

HARRY. Bats can’t be diseased. Their fur rejects pathogens. Cleanest animals on earth, beside Felix here. Supposedly they can get rabies, but then again, what can’t get rabies? Soothing animals, they just have a bad reputation.

GWENDOLYN. What, suddenly you’re the great bat enthusiast? You’ve never spoken of some great passion for zoology before. When a bat swoops in, suddenly you’re an expert on transmittable illness? Bats are rabid. Their natures allow easy transmission of diseases and bacteria. Stop this nonsense of “rejecting pathogens.”

[pauses.] I will hold Felix until Jessica can get this creature out.

HARRY. You know nothing of me—I lived fifty years before you decided to barge unannounced into this world. I have knowledge you could never imagine of the feeble old man you’ve built me to be.

GWENDOLYN. I haven’t made you be anything except what you’ve shown me you are. You’re not a construct of my childhood boogeyman. I don’t even know who you think you are besides those deprecating commentaries on all facets of life that you share whether alone or in a group.

HARRY. Perhaps you should’ve listened more closely to the stories I told you when your mother fell ill—if you GWENDOLYN. The only regret you have is the bats?! You don’t even know there were still bats living there! You haven’t been in that wing in a decade.

HARRY. I go to the Hansen wing every week to speak to the only children who appreciate my visit. I’d have moved them into the main house, but they prefer dank atmospheres.

GWENDOLYN. Don’t act like you weren’t happy about the destruction. Just outside you said—

HARRY. You’re not going to incriminate me by quoting to me my own words. I laughed at the destruction of my legacy, this prison, not at the destruction of the precious lives of bats. I’m not inhuman.

GWENDOLYN. Ouch, Felix! Don’t bite me. Get away from that bat, you dumb cat.

[to Harry.] You know, you don’t have to keep telling me what you are or are not. You could just show me who you are, instead of being a stodgy koogle who claims the proverbial heart of gold.

HARRY. “Koogle”? Who taught you to speak to your elders, a tree vermin? A louse?

GWENDOLYN. Well, I certainly wasn’t taught by you, grandfather.

[Jessica walks in carrying a tea tray.] HARRY. Indeed, they are. I brought one over with me, when I left America. Franklin, I called him. He had the softest nose and the most delightful caramel coloring—Franklin was a truly divine specimen. [holds out his fingers to indicate a size.] Would fit between these fingers, you know.

GWENDOLYN. Thank you, Jessica. The bread was delicious. Next time, bring the bread and tea at the same time. And right on the hour, dear. We pay for punctuality.

JESSICA. Yes, ma’am. Can I bring anything else?

GWENDOLYN. No, but you can shoo this bat out—

HARRY. Don’t leave, girl, and don’t touch that bat. Have I told you of my time in America? I studied animals on their rebellious colonial prairies and their sandy shores.

JESSICA. No, sir. Your son, though, once told me— GWENDOLYN. Jessica, you may go. Grandfather seems ready for a rest.

HARRY. If you would like to rest, Gwen, you may leave. Jessica will stay and hear about Franklin’s trip across the sea with me.

JESSICA. Yes, sir. I would love to hear this. My own mother thought bats were good omens. She never shooed them from our apartments when they’d come in through the chimney.

GWENDOLYN. Since you’ve suggested it, I will go. [exits.]

HARRY. Anything he told you about this was surely a lie. That boy never understood my need to explore, but he came along with me despite it all.

I primarily went to study the bats. Fascinating animals. Their wings were initially arms, you know. Little mountain climbers—still today they can use them either to climb or fly. Now I ask you, what other animal can flaunt such adaptations?

JESSICA. You would certainly know this better than me, sir.

GWENDOLYN. No, he wouldn’t. [to Harry.] Father wasn’t a liar. Just because you disagreed doesn’t mean he was lying.

HARRY. The answer is NONE. No other animal is so adapted, so poised, so stealthy! The beating of their wings—like hummingbirds! They are the beauties of the nocturnal world.

HARRY. Your mother was smart—bats are good omens to those who accept their companionship. Franklin was as good a companion as any. [takes a sip of tea.]

JESSICA. [still standing with the empty tray.] Please tell me about him. Did he really travel with you across the ocean?

HARRY. He did. He flew above the boat at night as our own albatross of guidance. The crew loved him. When I first found him, he was crippled on the ground of Moaning Cavern. Out in California, you know. Shocking really that he hadn’t drowned. He was just lying there on a raised-up section of rock. I remember thinking the ceiling looked like jellyfish petrified in the act of swooping down on Franklin. The other researchers thought I was foolish, that I should’ve used Franklin as a specimen. Have you ever noticed this house has no hunting trophies, Jessica?

JESSICA. Yes, sir. Ma’am said they had been burned in a great fire many years back.

HARRY. That was a delightful day. This house will 73 Play

never see another stuffed being, unless Gwen decides to keep me around. [laughs derisively.]

Well, I picked up Franklin with my grandfather’s tartan handkerchief, tucked him into my shirt pocket—his little head poking out like a prairie dog—and that’s where I carried him until he was strong enough to fly. Only thing strange about him was he loved light—not very nocturnal, Franklin. Slept through the nights on a jewelry hanger next to my bed. ropterans. I’ve often wondered if his love of light preserved him for so long.

[Harry and Jessica pause as a crash is heard upstairs.]

JESSICA. Oh my! What a loud crash! We must check on ma’am.

74 Play JESSICA. He loved the light?

HARRY. Yes. More tea please, dear. [Jessica rushes forward and fills his tea cup.]

And sit down, yes. Sit down. [She sits, looking uncomfortable, across the table from him.] Franklin loved the light only after we moved back here. He flew alongside me all the way through my travels and stayed awake through the nights, too. Perhaps he rested too much after I first found him because he didn’t sleep a wink for two months after he could fly again.

JESSICA. Did your fellow travelers not mind his presence?

HARRY. Some incorrectly—as we well know— [Jessica nods] view our dear Chiropterans as symbols of death or witchcraft. Our group of researchers nearly disbanded when I refused to release Franklin. They thought I was simply healing him, but we bonded during his recuperation. If I had sent him off, he would have followed me anyway. But they only minded him when we were on land. The sailors who took us back home had just finished a bad voyage somewhere in the north. Many were jaded and told me they sensed good fortune once I stepped on their ship. Amongst themselves, they called our berth HMS Il Pipistrello Benedetto. Rather a mouthful, but it seemed to please them. They were mostly Italians. [both exit.]

Act I: Scene II

[Upstairs, inside Gwendolyn’s bedroom. Gwendolyn is screaming and thrashing in her sleep.]

HARRY. Good Lord! Is she having a fit? I knew that bread wasn’t fit to be eaten!

JESSICA. Sir, you had the bread yourself. We must try to wake her from this terror, or she may harm herself.

HARRY. Here, throw this over her! [He hands Jessica a pitcher of water that had been sitting on the bedside table.]

JESSICA. Aiyaaah! [tosses the water.]

GWENDOLYN. [sputtering.] Bleck! [stirs.] Excuse me! What are you doing in my bedroom, cook! And you, grandfather? Absolutely no propriety—

JESSICA. And then Franklin lived here with you in this house?

HARRY. Yes. He did. Franklin must have been just a baby when I found him because he lived with me for nearly forty years—double the lifespan of most species of Chi- HARRY. You were screaming and destroying bits of the house. Earlier, it seemed important to you that the house remain intact, so we were spurred upward in a spirit of human decency.

been screaming, and there is no evidence to suggest anything was being destroyed as you say it was. Please leave. Apparently, I have to change my clothing now. [muttering.] First the fire, then that bat, now this—

HARRY. The bat has nothing to do with this and should not be listed amongst the things that have gone wrong today. He is in the dining room as we speak, relaxing by the fire. [to Jessica.] Get Fernand to light the fire—our guest must be getting chilly by now, as the sun is finally retiring for the evening. GWENDOLYN. And you wonder why I am this way? When your wife and son—my father!—did not supply you with the happiest times? That you could love a bat more than the people around you? You expect me to be kind and doting and not long to inherit when you care more for your companionship with a bat than for the health of everyone in this house?!

HARRY. I care as much for them as they do for me.

GWENDOLYN. You’re impossible!

JESSICA. Yes, sir. [exits.]

GWENDOLYN. That thing is still downstairs?! You senile old koogle! Must our entire home be fumigated for such vermin due to your delusional sympathies?!

HARRY. Calm yourself. He’s only resting until nightfall. I’m sure he’ll be leaving us soon.

GWENDOLYN. The bat is not a plaything or pet! We have to get it out of here before we’re all infected. [A loud crash sounds from a few rooms away.]

GWENDOLYN. Good. That terrible kitchen maid is finally shooing the bat. She’s making quite the racket doing so, though—

[gets up, wrapping herself decorously in a soft wool blanket.]

[calls down the hall.] JESSICA! DID YOU REMOVE THE BAT?

HARRY. Or you could just get out and let us be.

GWENDOLYN. Harry! I mean, Grandfather. This is my home, too.

HARRY. What you don’t seem to realize in your mania for getting your inheritance is that this is my home. It is your home, but not your home only. I can choose to keep a bat, and you can choose to live with it because it makes me happy.

GWENDOLYN. You don’t need to be happy if the only source of your happiness could kill us.

HARRY. I lived with a bat for forty years and survived to tell the tale.

GWENDOLYN. You were lucky.

HARRY. We should see what that girl is doing. With that much noise, she could be knocking the Croton down to her long-due grave.

GWENDOLYN. Don’t joke like that, grandfather.

[They walk into the hallway, where billows of smoke emerge from the Hansen wing’s remains.]

GWENDOLYN. Good heavens! The fire’s started again!

HARRY. Quick! Get downstairs!

[They run to the stairs.]

GWENDOLYN. Oh no! The cracking was from the fire! It’s all downstairs, and the stairs themselves are falling! 75 Play

76 Play HARRY. We’re better off finding a window—otherwise, we’re likely to be buried in splintering steps.

GWENDOLYN. A WINDOW? Do you have any idea how high we are right now? We’d as likely die from that distance as we would from being burned alive!

HARRY. Well, I’m going out the window. Stay here, if you must.

GWENDOLYN. I’m not staying here!

HARRY. I’M NOT REMAINING TO BE BURNT ALIVE BECAUSE YOU ARE INDECISIVE AND WORRIED ABOUT BREAKING A FEW BONES!

GWENDOLYN. Fine! There’s a window with a ledge beneath it in the red room. Let’s use that one.

HARRY. [Reaches for the handle of the red room.] Ouch! The red room’s on fire, too! We just need any window at this point, Gwen!

GWENDOLYN. Down here! [At the end of the hall, there’s a broken window.] We can jump through this one! You first!

HARRY. [prepares to exit the window.] I’ll catch you! [jumps. lands safely.] JUMP DOWN TO ME, GWEN! JESSICA. [panting.] SIR! What’s happened?!

HARRY. Oh, Gwen. The fire! We had to take the window, the fire was spreading everywhere!

JESSICA. Oh, Harry. Come away from there. You know you’re not meant to be out of your bed. Come sit by the fire and tell me about Franklin. You always love to tell stories of your adventures with him.

HARRY. But Gwen! We can’t leave her body there, she needs help! And we can’t go inside the house to sit by the fire when there’s a fire!

JESSICA. Harry, sir, we’re not outside. Come back to your room and we can sit by the fire. You’re just a little confused, but some tea will help.

HARRY. Where am I? Where’d Gwen’s body go?

[The room easily converts into a single apartment inside an assisted living home.]

JESSICA. It’s okay, Harry. Gwen hasn’t been around for a while, but she said she’d be here on Monday. I told her that it’s harder for you to remember when she’s away for so long, and I’ll let her know how much you’ve missed her.

GWENDOLYN. I CAN’T! IT’S TOO FAR!

HARRY. JUST JUMP, YOU SILLY GIRL!

[Gwen jumps from a horrible angle and lands on her neck. She is obviously mangled past repair.]

HARRY. GWEN! NO! [howls.]

[Jessica rushes from off stage upon hearing the howling.] [Settling in by the fire, the pair sips on fresh cups of tea.]

JESSICA. When Gwen called earlier, she said she was planning to be here a few days early for Christmas. Isn’t that sweet? Hopefully her train isn’t delayed this year. You were so disappointed last year.

HARRY. What’s that? Yes. Yes, I suppose I was disappointed. This bread is good. Did you make it? Are these raisins?

JESSICA. [insistently continues the conversation.] She said she didn’t want you to be alone for it this year.

HARRY. That’s kind of her, but Franklin will be here if she misses the train again. He’s such a punctual lad. Always on time to have adventures or holidays with his father.

JESSICA. Harry, you know this. Franklin—

HARRY. Don’t tell me. [stares down into his teacup.] Please don’t tell me that again.

[finis.]

77 Play

78 Creative Essay the flow of coffee in our home. I did not yet know what loneliness was, and I did not fear it. I do not think I feared anything, except for maybe sturgeon, but that was from a bad dream after too much sugar and imagination at the zoo one day.

When I was six my dad and I went up a mountain in a jeep to visit an old lady. She opened her knotted pine door to us, filling the space with toothless welcome. Her home was small, sparse, and filled with an abundant family. Her grandchildren swarmed me, touched my blonde curls. I sat next to my dad on the floor-cushions around the tiny living space while the old lady served tea first, then rich, black, foaming coffee in tiny cups. I thought the cups were silly in my dad’s rough, stocky fingers. They were just the right size for my American Girl doll back home. I was not allowed to drink the coffee, but I had the tea with its copious accompaniment of sugar cubes, so perfect and white before they dissolved and swirled into a tornado of liquid energy in the goddess-shaped glass. I learned to put my spoon on top facing up to say “one more, please,” and facing down to mean, “I’m done” (the latter only when I was told to). Later, the swarming grandchildren showed me how to spit at semi-feral cats from the balcony. At that age, I did not understand why this old lady had so many kids in her house, or why her toilet was a porcelain hole with foot pads on either side. All I cared for was the tea and spitting at cats.

On the way back down the mountain, my dad said he had a headache. Too much caffeine. But I was on fire, and so was every evergreen branch that flashed past the jeep— on fire with life, with curiosity, with undefeat. I pressed my little soles against my dad’s leg and stretched out on the bench seat. His presence was constant and warm, like The first time I flew on my own I was sixteen. I arrived at the gate in Atlanta fifteen minutes before departure. With a pounding chest and anxious tears in my eyes, I scanned my pass and found my seat between two nice old men. I was too excited to read the book I brought. Instead, I thought about all the times I had flown before. I could not count them, some of them I did not even remember distinctly, but I knew they had happened because of the memories of where they took me. Flying had been a routine part of my life, mostly international, but occasionally domestic. I had never been anywhere far away from home without my parents. In fact, they always reminded me about this when I complained about not having siblings. “We couldn’t take you to all these places if you had a little brother,” they said. I was not sure which I wanted more: the adventures or someone to live them with, and I never understood why the two could not coexist. I was not ready to realize that parents can double as best friends.

When I was nine, we went back to the mountain. This time, both of my parents went up with backpacks and no jeep. Just the two of them and six college students. My adventure was staying at home with my grandparents for four days. I thought this would be fun until the nightly spatter of distant gunfire down by the river woke me up. I began to cry, not because I was afraid, but because—for the first time in my life, I realized—I was alone. The presence of my parents was a hundred or more miles away. They were somewhere, watching the brightest stars from the bed of a ceaseless alpine bowl, green with glacial springs, clambering rocks and aquamarine lakes… teaching people older than me about the strength of life. And I was me: lonely, singular, and under the watch of more distant parents; in the flatlands by a river that separated hate from hate, while they reached for the heights of mountains, barely visible from my window. All I knew was that I did not want to be without them.