The Music of Impossibility

Open in a fluorescent hospital room. An old woman (86) rests 

still on the hospital bed. A young woman (19) sits beside her. The

consistent ‘beep’ of a heart monitor hums like a metronome.

It is night. There is no light but the eerie, white glow of 

the moon and of the sterile room.  A cold, metal bottle of hairspray

sits on the side table of a hospital bed. Maggie enters the room,

looks at the hairspray, and sighs a sad laugh to herself.

MAGGIE: 

Of course.

Your hair still looks fabulous.

Only your hair could hold a perfect curl

at a time like this…

I don’t even know if you can hear me. 

I’ve never done this before.

You’ve never done this before.

Everyone has to do this:

Be the one lying in bed at the end

or be the one sitting in the chair by the bed

watching the end 

I’m so sorry you’re here.

I know you wanted to be home for this part. 

You wanted to be home with your cat in your bed

that holds you the way you like to be held –

away from all these tubes and machines. 

What was that you always said about hospitals? 

They’re just places with bad food and bad lighting 

and people who don’t care about your name. 

Did I ever tell you – I'm so proud that we have the same name?

Did I ever tell you… anything?

About my days?

About my nights?

Did I let you in?

Did you feel

 I let you in?

Did I tell you any secrets?

What would have happened then?

They’d probably go right over your head.

So, 

I want to meet you again. 

Yes!

I want to meet you again…

when you were thirty. 

I like hearing about the parties you threw when you were young.

  Those days, you looked like Marilyn Monroe

living in that dusty, dinky Austin, Texas apartment

crammed with drummers and drugs, 

guitar players and groupies.

I imagine you saying,  

“Everyone here is special and rare. 

We’re gonna change the world! 

You, me, all of us.

I believe in you, I believe in you, 

 I believe in all this music.” 

You turned life into a dress -

A black dress,

A black mini dress,

Paired with baby blue tights,

and blue eyes,

Pupils wide

set on a coke tray

that held your sad, 

romantic heart.

(a pause)

 The heart monitor beeps in agreeance.

Time just pours light over everything

and watches as the light drips off, drips out

through the eyes. 

But I know you’re not a fan of crying.

You never liked the way that crying twists people’s faces  

into these red, wet, puffy desperate things. 

–

I remember our last Christmas all together.

Your gifts. You tried so hard.

You remembered that Mom loves salmon,

it’s her very favorite fish,

and you remembered that! 

So you bought some… raw salmon.

And you wrapped it.

You wrapped the raw salmon

and you put it under the tree.

Wet, cold, fishy salmon sitting limp

in red sparkly wrapping paper.

But the smell –

it just grew and grew and spread and 

infected everything 

until Christmas Eve,

We were all horrified,

Why is the cat ripping apart mom’s present?!

And then there was salmon 

all over the living room

  matted into the carpet,

  caked into Gingerman’s whiskers 

This was when you started to drift away,

When you started to become the music.

There was the time you swore 

that Mozart was stuck in your tree,

so you called me in the middle of the night.

Me! Your nineteen year old granddaughter. 

What was I supposed to do 

about a Mozart in your tree?

I tried to tell you – I can’t help you grandma.

I’m in college now. 

And then you cut me off, you asked,

“Why do you go by Maggie? 

What’s so wrong with being a Margaret, like me?”

I didn’t know what to say,

because then you started screaming.

The music started flooding your house, your yard, down your street.  

The music was flooding and drenching everything

and you didn’t know how to escape it.

You wanted to build a raft, but you couldn’t find any wood,

the closest thing to wood was the bark from the tree that Mozart was stuck in,

so it was all totally hopeless, there was nothing to hold onto,

and every last fate in the world was against you.

(pause)

Maggie looks up to the TV mounted to the corner of the room.

Silent clips of the ocean’s underworld play on a loop.

A small seahorse swims across the screen.

Maggie softens.

Maybe you’ll come back as one of those. 

Or a jellyfish. Or a sandcrab

crawling on a beach somewhere. 

Maybe you’ll come back as the entire ocean. 

(Mozart music starts playing, louder and louder.

The music symbolizes a decaying grasp on reality)

Once I asked if you believed in Hell,

when I was thirteen, I asked

 “Are people mostly ‘Good’ or ‘Bad?’”

 and instead of answering, you started rambling about BUGS –

How some of them are hideous

and some have beautiful wings.

 Some are to be cherished

 and some are to be

stomped on without a second thought.

That’s us, you said.

We’re the bugs! We are the bugs. 

We’re the bug souls. 

Scuttling around. Lost. Hard shells. 

Beady eyes. Pests. 

We sting, we infect, but we are also

somehow sacred?

Making love and making honey.

Just waiting our turn for that sick, sick promise

of metamorphosis. 

(Then you called me your ladybug, of course. 

One of the good ones)

You weren’t religious, but when I was seventeen 

(after I took that one yoga class) 

I asked if you were spiritual,

and you said everyone is spiritual ,

and I said Grandpa isn’t spiritual,

 and you said Grandpa isn’t anything!

But you loved him… 

You used to love him. 

You moved from England to America for him and then

You got bored. 

(a pause)

They say only boring people get bored, I say

only people who are bored of themselves get “bored”

of the people they love. 

I don’t even know if I believe that, 

that’s just one of the digestible truths I like to tell myself. 

A list of truths I can stomach: that you still love grandpa, 

and maybe you’re half with him right now; 

that you are good, that we are not BUGS, 

we are people who mean well;

that you are going to be reincarnated into something beautiful!

Something happier, and free and… 

I’m going to be okay after everyone has passed on 

because I’ll have a family of my own by then. 

My life will be filled

with so much LOVE, all that LOVE will be like a fluffy cushion between

me and horrible bugs and dirt.

I’ll share a king-sized bed with nice, satin pillowcases,

and a fancy espresso machine, and a bookshelf filled with

words and stories that make everything make sense.

I’ll understand all the things I know nothing about.

I’ll be fine, I’ll ignore how loud all this music can get,

how noisy, how crowded this life can get. 

It swept you up.

All the noise, it swept you up.

Now the music is carrying you, lifting you up:

weightless, timeless, shapeless,

taking you somewhere where there’s nothing

but singing!