[6/14/2011] Perelman Tonight: A shameful family secret revealed -- Part 2 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" (continued)

A very great Russian: Count, er, Louis Tolstoy

"That, Octavia, is what a very great Russian named Louis Tolstoy once called 'redemption.'"

-- Milo Weatherwax to his wife, tonight
in "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Part 2

SCENE: The library of the luxurious Park Avenue triplex of Mr. and Mrs. Milo Leotard Allardyce DuPlessis Weatherwax. The furnishings display taste but little ostentation: a couple of dozen Breughels, fifteen or twenty El Grecos, a sprinkling of Goyas, a smidgen of Vermeers. The room has a lived-in air: a fistful of loose emeralds lies undusted in an ash tray, and the few first folios in evidence are palpably dog-eared. The curtain rises on a note of marital discord. Octavia Weatherwax, a chic, poised woman in her mid-forties, has just picked up a bust of Amy Lowell by Epstein and smashed it over her husband's head. Milo, a portly, well-groomed man of fifty, spits out a tooth, catches up a bust of Epstein by Amy Lowell, and returns the compliment.


OCTAVIA [brushing plaster from her coiffure]: Listen, Milo, we can't go on this way.
MILO: Why not? I've still got this left. [He picks up a bust of Amy Epstein by Lowell Thomas.]
OCTAVIA: No, no, this is the handwriting on the wall. Our marriage is washed up -- napoo -- ausgespielt.
MILO: Maybe you're right. I've felt for some time that things haven't been the same between us.
OCTAVIA: Oh, well, the fat's in the fire. How are we to break the news to Rapier?
MILO: Rapier? What Rapier is that?
OCTAVIA: Why, our nineteen-year-old son, which he's home from Yale on his midyears and don't suspicion that his folks are rifting.
MILO: Oh, yes. Where is our cub at the present writing?
OCTAVIA: In the tack room, furbishing up the accouterments of his polo ponies.
MILO [acidly]: Far better off to be furbishing up on his Euclid, lest he drag the name of Weatherwax through the scholastic mire.
OCTAVIA: Shhhh, here he comes now. [The sound of expensive Scotch brogues approaching on a parquet floor is heard, an effect achieved by striking two coconut shells together.] If you need me, I shall be laying down on my lounge with a vinegar compress. [She exits as Rapier enters -- a rather awkward bit of stagecraft, as they trip over each other, but if the play runs, the property man can always saw another door in the set. Rapier, albeit somewhat spoiled, is a blueblood to his fingertips, carries his head and feet as though to the manner born.]
RAPIER: Hiya, Jackson. What's buzzin', cousin?
MILO: Humph. Is that some more of your new-fangled college slang?
RAPIER: Don't be a sherbet, Herbert, [lighting a gold-monogrammed Egyptian Prettiest] What's cookin', good-lookin'?
MILO [gravely]: Son, I'm not going to mince words with you.
RAPIER: Don't mince, quince. I'm waitin', Satan.
MILO: My boy, the Weatherwax union has blown a gasket. Our frail matrimonial bark, buffeted by the winds of temperament, has foundered on the shoals of incompatibility.
RAPIER: Get in the groove, fatso. I don't latch onto that long-hair schmaltz.
MILO: To employ the vulgate, your mother and I have pphhht.
RAPIER [with quick sympathy]: That's rum, chum.
MILO: Yes, it's hard on us oldsters, but it isn't going to be easy for you, either.
RAPIER [frightened]: You mean I've got to go to work?
MILO: Certainly not. As long as there's a penny of your mother's money left, we'll make out somehow.
RAPIER: Look, guv'nor, I . . . that is, me . . . aw, cripes, can I ask you something man to man?
MILO [aside]: I was afraid of this.
RAPIER: Well, I've been running with a pretty serious crowd up at New Haven -- lots of bull sessions about swing and stuff -- and I've been wondering. Where does our money come from?
MILO [evasively]: Why -- er -- uh -- the doctor brings it. In a little black bag.
RAPIER: Aw, gee, Dad, I'm old enough to know. Please.
MILO: There, there. Now run along and play with your ponies.
RAPIER: Wouldn't you rather tell me than have me learn it in the gutter?
MILO: We-e-ell, all right, but my, you children grow up quick nowadays. Have you ever heard of the Weatherwax All-Weather Garbage Disposal Plan?
RAPIER: You -- you mean whereby garbage is disposed of in all weathers by having neatly uniformed attendants call for and remove it?
MILO: Yes. That is the genesis of our scratch.
RAPIER [burying his face in his hands]: Oh, Daddy, I want to die!
MILO: Steady on, lad. After all, think of the millions which their flats would be a welter of chicken bones, fruit peels, and old teabags were it not for our kindly ministrations.
RAPIER [sobbing]: I'll never be able to hold up my head in Bulldog circles again.
MILO: Nonsense. Why, you wear the keenest threads on the campus and are persona grata to myriad Eli frats.
RAPIER [his face drawn and a new maturity in his voice]: No, Father, this is the end of halcyon days in the groves of Academe. I'm going away.
MILO: Where?
RAPIER: Somewhere beyond the horizon -- to fabled Cathay or Samarkand and Ind, if need be. Anywhere I can find other values than the tinkle of money and the clang of refuse cans.
MILO [his eyes shining]: There speaks a Weatherwax, my boy. Here, I want you to have this little keepsake.
RAPIER: What is it?
MILO: A letter of credit for seven hundred grand. It won't buy much except dreams, but it belonged to your mother.
RAPIER: Thank you, sir. [He starts out.]
MILO: Wait a minute, I can't let you go like this. You'll need money, introductions, shelter --
RAPIER: I'll patch up that old private railroad car of mine -- the one underneath the Waldorf-Astoria.
MILO: Take ours, too. It's only using up steam.
RAPIER [simply]: I'm sorry, Dad. From now on I walk alone. Goodbye. [He exits, colliding with his mother -- there simply must be two doors in this set. Octavia looks back at him, puzzled.]
OCTAVIA: Why, goodness, what ails the child? What's that exalted look on his face?
MILO: That, Octavia, is what a very great Russian named Louis Tolstoy once called "redemption."
OCTAVIA: Milo! You didn't tell -- you couldn't --
MILO [his shoulders bowed]: It just soaked in through his pores. [Octavia, her eyes tragic, picks up a bronze caryatid, smashes it over his head, and exits. He shrugs, picks up a Greek bacchante loitering in the wings, and consoles himself.]

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