The year is 2013. A steady rain outside. The Muldoon farm’s kitchen. It is neat and well kept. Rosemary is ushering in Anthony. He’s dripping. She throws off the shawl.
ROSEMARY: Come in then. Give me the coat.
ANTHONY: I’m fine.
ROSEMARY: Give me the coat. Leave your Wellies off.
ANTHONY: I can’t stay.
ROSEMARY: Take them off. That’s it. One, the other, good. And this is the summer weather! Jesus, look at the rain. Is Noah behind you? That’s it. You’re in. Oh, Mother of Mercy, don’t look, Anthony, for the love of God! The house is in ruins! You’ll think me a clotty woman, that’s certain.
ANTHONY: Not a bit. It’s not a bad time?
ROSEMARY: What would I be about? Other than cleaning, which I haven’t done in weeks.
ANTHONY: What are you saying? You’re daft. The floor is gleaming. It’s sterilized.
ROSEMARY: It is not. You’re blind. And the walls are yellow with old smoke. Me mother left me with this coughing stove and the linoleum like sludge.
ANTHONY: Your mother will never be dead while you’re alive, Rosemary. You see disaster where others see green fields.
ROSEMARY: I can’t deny it. If it weren’t for rare signs from Heaven, I’d have nothing in me mind but doom.
ANTHONY: Rare signs from Heaven?
ROSEMARY: Few they are. Sit down before your legs go. Here’s a towel for your head.
ANTHONY: That’s alright, I have a handkerchief.
(He pulls out an awful handkerchief.)
ROSEMARY: How long has that been in your pocket?
ANTHONY: I don’t know.
ROSEMARY: It’s half alive. Take the towel and give that over.
(She takes it with a pair of tongs.)
I’ll wash it if it doesn’t run off.
ANTHONY: Don’t bother with me. I can’t stay. You know, I’ll come back.
ROSEMARY: You’ll come back, will you? It’s your first time in my house in three years. You hang outside like a wild creature when you come at all.
ANTHONY: Why come in? All houses are strange, are they not?
ROSEMARY: What are you saying?
ANTHONY: It’s like being nailed in a crate.
ROSEMARY: My house?
ANTHONY: Any house.
ROSEMARY: You’re having me on. Where would you stay, in the rain? Put down that weed whacker and rest your bones.
ANTHONY: It’s not a weed whacker. It’s the finest metal detector known.
ROSEMARY: People think you’re after bombs from Pakistan with that rig.
ANTHONY: Can’t a man have a hobby without calling down Judgment Day?
ROSEMARY: Sure, I’ve seen you roaming the cow paths with that electric thing as often as not. You’re becoming famous in the wrong way. What are you after besides the odd treasure?
ANTHONY: Unexpected stuff. Coins maybe.
ROSEMARY: If you want coins, I’ve got ’em spilling out of the dish there.
ANTHONY: Older coins than that. And odd bits. Metal buttons. Last week I found the keys to a Jaguar.
ROSEMARY: Now you just need the car and you’re off to the races. Would you take a Guinness from the bottle?
ANTHONY: It’s no use. I’m just here for the minute.
ROSEMARY: You’ll visit with me or I’ll know why. They say this new bottle Guinness is as good as the pub, but that’s a lie. But it isn’t too bad maybe.
ANTHONY: Does it taste of glass?
ROSEMARY: It does.
(They share a laugh.)
ANTHONY: Don’t open it. I’m going.
ROSEMARY: I’m going to open it.
ANTHONY: Don’t.
ROSEMARY: It’s done. I’ve opened it.
ANTHONY: Jesus.
ROSEMARY: It’s useless but to drink now.
ANTHONY: Alright, if you will open it, if you must open it, if you’ve opened it, share it with me.
ROSEMARY: Me? I couldn’t.
ANTHONY: Pour it out in two glasses.
ROSEMARY: You’re only saying that to divide the time in half you’ll stay.
ANTHONY: I’m telling ya. Sit and share it or I won’t touch it.
ROSEMARY: Alright then, Anthony. Two glasses. You’re a demon tempting me with the drink.
(He puts aside his detector and headset.)
ANTHONY: I’m no worse than the weather.
ROSEMARY: Well, we know how bad that is.
ANTHONY: Sure it’s a great day for the rope alright.
ROSEMARY: What do you mean?
ANTHONY: It’s a great day to be hanging from the rope.
ROSEMARY: Don’t even joke about the rope and the suicide with half the country hanging from the trees and bridges.
ANTHONY: It’s me joking, that’s all.
ROSEMARY: It’s not funny, with the Celtic Tiger belly up and people leaping off castles and cliffs.
ANTHONY: I should jump meself and have done.
ROSEMARY: The Chinese say if you kill yourself, your ghost is trapped to earth till it can tempt another to do the same. Imagine that. Ghosts pushing at us to destroy ourselves.
ANTHONY: The Chinese, is it? You still on that? Have there been many of them bothering you?
ROSEMARY: They believe awful things. I read a book. I’ll never go there after all. Do you think about it?
ANTHONY: What?
ROSEMARY: Killing yourself.
ANTHONY: What? No. Why? Do you think about it?
ROSEMARY: Suicide? I think of little else.
ANTHONY: What are you saying? You’re not serious?
ROSEMARY: The only thing that stops me is my hand. I think of Daddy and what he would want and my hand goes dead on my wrist. Otherwise, I’d be undone by now in a blast.
ANTHONY: What do you mean? What blast?
ROSEMARY: The shotgun.
ANTHONY: Your father’s old cannon? You still have it? You’re not serious?
ROSEMARY: I am. I keep it behind the door there.
ANTHONY: The ten gauge? But why?
ROSEMARY: Against the depression.
ANTHONY: You’re depressed?
ROSEMARY: Are you serious? I’m shattered with depression. I’m shattered with black clouds of depression.
ANTHONY: No. But why?
ROSEMARY: Since I quit the cigarettes.
ANTHONY: Oh yeah. I heard you’d shaken off the damn smokes. Very good.
ROSEMARY: No, it isn’t. I’ve thought of taking poison. I can’t stand being alive. You can’t know it. It’s a madness. It’s like a kettle boiling blood that comes up into me head from down below. You know. Feelings!
ANTHONY: Jesus. Your own blood turning against you. I can see it.
ROSEMARY: It’s like a horror movie. It’s only the rare sign from Heaven that gives me hope.
ANTHONY: It’s anxiety. That’s what it is.
ROSEMARY: Is that the name for it?
ANTHONY: Sure, I have the same thing. Comes over me in waves. It’s nothing.
ROSEMARY: But you don’t smoke.
ANTHONY: I don’t, but maybe I should take it up. I’d be better off, with the anxiety eating me alive as it does.
ROSEMARY: It’s feelings boiling up, isn’t it?
ANTHONY: Sure I hate them! Feelings are useless.
ROSEMARY: It’s worse in a man. I can’t stand a man with feelings.
ANTHONY: A man with feelings should be put down.
ROSEMARY: You’re right.
ANTHONY: The problem is there’s just not enough air in the world to suit me and there never has been. That’s all. Modernization has run roughshod over the spaces between things. The stars are suffocating in the sky and the dirt is choking on itself.
ROSEMARY: And you roaming the land with your gizmo, what’s that but modern madness?
ANTHONY: ’Tis true.
ROSEMARY: First time I saw you with that outfit was the week after Mam’s funeral. I was awful low. I was looking out the window, thinking, What now? And I saw you at the white hedge, swinging that stick like you were teaching the grass to grow. Why’d you take it up?
ANTHONY: Tony’s not alive to stop me, and it keeps me from thinking.
ROSEMARY: Then I should get one. Thinking’s worse than February.
ANTHONY: The Guinness is good.
ROSEMARY: Do you like it?
ANTHONY: Perfect.
ROSEMARY: It’s not the pub.
ANTHONY: No, it’s not the pub. But neither do you have to drive down to the pub and face the garda on the way home.
ROSEMARY: It’s terrible the way the garda persecute the country folk with the stops.
ANTHONY: Well, we were murdering ourselves with the automobiles on the black turns of the road. Did you read the story about the six college boys last week?
ROSEMARY: I read it.
ANTHONY: They were going a hundred on a lane as wide as my leg. Spattered themselves across the road. There was a badger licking the blood when the bodies were found.
ROSEMARY: I’ll think of that detail as I drift off tonight.
ANTHONY: Don’t.
ROSEMARY: I will. Imagine their mothers.
ANTHONY: I won’t do it. It’s too awful.
ROSEMARY: You should come by more. A girl needs a chat.
ANTHONY: Sure, and a man does, too. Rosemary. I have news.
ANTHONY: You did not.
ROSEMARY: I knew there must be something to get you within sight of the house.
ANTHONY: It’s true. My cousin is coming from America.
ROSEMARY: Who?
ANTHONY: Frank’s son. Adam Reilly.
ROSEMARY: Adam. Imagine naming your child after the first man on earth.
ANTHONY: I suppose they did. He’s going to want to be brought
’round.
ROSEMARY: They must’ve had the Bible open to the first page.
ANTHONY: I suppose so.
ROSEMARY: What do you mean? Brought ’round?
ANTHONY: He’s going to want to meet people.
ROSEMARY: Which?
ANTHONY: You’d be good.
ROSEMARY: Me?
ANTHONY: Why not?
ROSEMARY: Why?
ANTHONY: If you want to know the utter truth, I believe Adam is coming from America in search of a wife.
ROSEMARY: A wife.
ANTHONY: He has an idea that an Irish woman would be made of better stuff then these girls he meets in America.
ROSEMARY: There’s truth in that. And you want me to help him find somebody.
ANTHONY: You could do that I suppose.
ROSEMARY: How about Mary O’Connor?
ANTHONY: Mary O’Connor!? Does she still have that whistling tooth?
ROSEMARY: She does.
ANTHONY: And ankles like shackles spilling out of her shoes?
ROSEMARY: Hard worker though. She can rip an aluminum can with her hands.
ANTHONY: God love her. I was thinking more somebody like you.
ROSEMARY: Me what? Who’s like me?
ANTHONY: Well, you are. I was thinking you might let him take a look at you.
ROSEMARY: Take a look at me in what way?
ANTHONY: Your beauty.
ROSEMARY: My beauty?
ANTHONY: Yes.
ROSEMARY: This is the first I’ve heard of it.
ANTHONY: Don’t pretend you don’t know you’re beautiful. Half of Mullingar has been to your door.
ROSEMARY: Tony Reilly, you’ve lived a rock’s throw since the day of me birth and this is the first I’ve heard about beauty.
ANTHONY: Are you going to denounce me for bringing it up?
ROSEMARY: And you want to what, put me in the shop window? Like one of those Euro floozies in Amsterdam?!
ANTHONY: What the hell are you talking about Amsterdam?
ROSEMARY: Amsterdam! You know what I’m talking about! Naked women on parade in the windows of Amsterdam!
ANTHONY: We’re talking about my cousin! He’s a solid man. He’s never even been to Amsterdam I don’t think.
ROSEMARY: But you’d bring him here to look me over. Like I was a red heifer.
ANTHONY: I see what you mean about the smoking and giving it up, Rosemary. You’re not yourself.
ROSEMARY: How would you know?
ANTHONY: Your temper is rough.
ROSEMARY: Did he offer you money?
ANTHONY: Who?
ROSEMARY: Your cousin.
ANTHONY: For what?
ROSEMARY: Why would you go out of your way like this? You know what it is? There’s a name for it. It’s human trafficking.
ANTHONY: Human trafficking? It is not!
ROSEMARY: It’s all over the news. You heard me.
ANTHONY: He’s my cousin. He’s a fine lad. And he’s lonely.
ROSEMARY: Half the world is lonely and you wouldn’t knock on my door about that. Look out the window at the rain and the gloom and the empty land and tell me why that hasn’t made you knock on my door, if loneliness made people knock on doors. What is it about this Adam—that he’s named after the original man is still strange to me. Why for Adam do you knock?
ANTHONY: I don’t know.
ROSEMARY: WHY NOT FOR YOURSELF?!
ANTHONY: What’s that?
ROSEMARY: Why not for yourself? If you found me beautiful and lived a hen’s kick away from the day I began, why have you not for yourself knocked on the door?
ANTHONY: Maybe I should come back another time?
ROSEMARY: Now don’t make me reach out from behind the door the shotgun. ’Cause I will.
(He jumps up.)
ANTHONY: Jesus, Rosemary for the love of God, if it’s this bad, go back on the cigarettes. There’s cures for cancer easier than your mood.
ROSEMARY: Oh, you’d put me back on the smokes, would ya? Bad cess to yuh.
ANTHONY: Don’t be cursing me!
ROSEMARY: After what I’ve been through. Sit down again.
ANTHONY: I won’t sit.
ROSEMARY: You will.
ANTHONY: Calm down then.
(He sits.)
ROSEMARY: Drink your Guinness.
(He does.)
Are you a homosexual?
ANTHONY: What? What’s happened to your mind?
ROSEMARY: Are you gay? Are you gay?
ANTHONY: No.
ROSEMARY: Sit.
(He sits.)
Are you disabled?
ANTHONY: No.
ROSEMARY: A morphodite?
ANTHONY: What the hell is a morphodite?
ROSEMARY: I don’t know. Are you oddly put together somehow? Do you have something extra?
ANTHONY: Will you remember that you’ll see me at church?
ROSEMARY: I thought you might find me ugly and there’s no answer to that, but when you go and give out that you find me beautiful, and that you’re not after the boys, well then why, in the name of Cinderella’s shoe, would you try to give me away to a cousin you barely know?
ANTHONY: It’s a solid idea.
ROSEMARY: Foisting a stranger on me? Are you a pimp?
ANTHONY: A pimp? No, I’m not a pimp. He’s a cousin. He’s a fine lad. He’s an earner. And he stands the same height as you.
ROSEMARY: What kind of badge is that? A woman doesn’t want the same height in a man. A man the same height as a woman is short.
ANTHONY: What are you talking about? Are you short?
ROSEMARY: No.
ANTHONY: Then a man the same height is not short.
ROSEMARY: He is.
ANTHONY: That makes no sense.
ROSEMARY: You stand taller.
ANTHONY: Why should you look up at me when you could look straight ahead at him?
ROSEMARY: Because men are beasts and need height to balance the truth and goodness of women.
ANTHONY: There’s no answer to blather like that.
ROSEMARY: Then don’t answer. You should have come for yourself, Tony. You stand on the same land I do!
ANTHONY: Which is another thing. We’re neighbors.
ROSEMARY: That should be a plus.
ANTHONY: It’s not.
ROSEMARY: It is. It is. I had reason to think you’d make a move, but nothing came of it. I thought maybe it was the cigarettes put you off so I quit at last.
ANTHONY: You did that with regards to me?
ROSEMARY: I did. And it brought me to my knees I can tell you. I only smoked so that I wouldn’t feel while I waited. Now look at me! My eyes could set fire to Gomorrah! My emotions are unspeakable, Anthony, unspeakable.
ANTHONY: But I never said a word about the smokes.
ROSEMARY: You did. You spoke against them.
ANTHONY: I didn’t mean it.
ROSEMARY: What do you mean? I have no gift for reading your mind, Anthony, though I’ve tried. When all seemed lost, I prayed for a sign, and sure I got one as strong as a kick. Still you never came for me and the years passed.
ANTHONY: You got a sign?
ROSEMARY: As plain as grace.
ANTHONY: The white heather?
ROSEMARY: No.
ANTHONY: What was it?
ROSEMARY: What does it matter if you didn’t come?
ANTHONY: Well, I’ve had signs, too, that told me the reverse.
ROSEMARY: What?
ANTHONY: I should have never come today.
ROSEMARY: Is it Fiona? Are you still mooning over Fiona?
ANTHONY: To hell with Fiona. I opened my heart to her and she ran like the wind. That’s all there was to that.
ROSEMARY: What did you say to her?
ROSEMARY: So there’s the secret. Are you in love with another other than Fiona?
ANTHONY: Stop the cross-exam.
ROSEMARY: Are you without feelings in general?
ANTHONY: I have feelings. Though I’d rather not.
ROSEMARY: Do you have any feelings towards me? Or am I alone with this? (He doesn’t answer) Have you ever wondered what I wore when I wore less?
ANTHONY: You’ve lost me.
ROSEMARY: Have you stripped me off down to the skin in your imagination?
ANTHONY: Jesus Christ, Rosemary! Shut up with that. I see you at church.
ROSEMARY: You say I’m beautiful. Have you thought about my beauty? Have you dwelt on my beauty, my face, my form, my shape?
ANTHONY: I don’t know.
ROSEMARY: Do you know that I have a shape?
ANTHONY: I suppose.
ROSEMARY: You know I’m a woman, and that I have parts that are swollen up and exaggerated to attract the man . . .
ANTHONY (Overlapping): Shut up!
ROSEMARY (Overlapping): . . . to make a man look where he’s not supposed to look.
ANTHONY: I refuse to know what you’re talking about!
ROSEMARY: Do you know I have a shape?
ANTHONY: Yes, I know you have a shape!
ROSEMARY: Thank God for that.
ANTHONY: Sure I was raised on a farm and seen it all.
ROSEMARY: As have I. But you don’t act it.
ANTHONY: How would I act? What would I do? Have my tongue swinging around?
ROSEMARY: There’s a good distance between winking and drooling.
ANTHONY: Let’s leave it that I know the facts.
ANTHONY: I’ve seen it all.
ROSEMARY: Sure you’re a master at the game. It’s one thing to look at the horses and another to look at your own breed at work. Wait.
ANTHONY: What?
ROSEMARY: Are you a virgin? Is that it? Were you going to give me away to this cousin Adam out of ignorance of yourself ?
ANTHONY: What’s come over you, Rosemary? You’ve been chaste as a dove all me life. Now of a sudden you’re going on like a pirate! I would never have started in talking about anything if I knew we’d end up talking about everything. I’ve always thought you were pretty. I didn’t think it right to say. That’s all.
ROSEMARY: Why not?
ANTHONY: Because one thing leads to another, and we live on top of each other. (Blushes) I mean, I mean, close by.
ROSEMARY: Well, what’s wrong with one thing leading to another?
ANTHONY: We already live on a patch, it’s like sharing half a coffin. If anything went wrong, God’s mercy on us! I can hear your kettle whistle when I’m in the shed. We’d be throwing daggers over the fence.
ROSEMARY: You can’t live AGAINST life, Tony. You can’t avoid harm by avoiding good. What? Would you spend your life swinging your electric detector over the land looking for loose buttons in the rain? Do you not want love?
ANTHONY: What about you, Rose?
ROSEMARY: What about me?
ANTHONY: You’ve turned down a dozen men over the years! You’re notorious.
ROSEMARY: For what?
ANTHONY: Nothing. You’re notorious for nothing. For wasting your life and your great beauty, smoking and moping and mopping your way to old age.
ROSEMARY: Well, I quit smoking, and I’m damn well near the end of my mopping and moping. And there you are. You’ve done it again.
ANTHONY: What have I done?
ROSEMARY: Called me beautiful. And stopped there like a stone. Don’t you understand? You’re the reason I look at the shotgun.
ANTHONY: Me? What did I do?
ROSEMARY: Why did you knock for an American man and not for yourself ?
ANTHONY: There’s reason.
ROSEMARY: Look at my face and tell me.
ANTHONY: I told Fiona and she ran for her life.
ROSEMARY: I’m not Fiona. Tell me.
ANTHONY: Don’t. I’m cracked. I’m mad. Leave it at that.
ROSEMARY: You’re mad?
ANTHONY: I am genuinely off-kilter.
ROSEMARY: Because you hate people?
ANTHONY: No I don’t. I have the Kelly madness. Don’t make me say it. Me own mam said don’t say.
ROSEMARY: And yet you will say. I’ve sat here in this house for more years than my grandmother LIVED, waiting for you to notice my heart lighting up the way down the old boreen to you. Tell me why you haven’t come.
ANTHONY: I did come.
ROSEMARY: Never. When?
ANTHONY: Three years ago. But I turned back. Right there at the white hedge.
ROSEMARY: Why?
ANTHONY: Because I’m cracked. I’m mad.
ROSEMARY: Why are you cracked? How are you cracked?
ANTHONY: You want to know everything? Alright. Here it is. I believe that I am a honeybee.
ROSEMARY: Say that again.
ANTHONY: I believe that I am a honeybee.
ROSEMARY: But you live in a house, not a hive.
ANTHONY: I think of it as a hive.
ROSEMARY: You can’t fly.
ANTHONY: I believe I can fly.
ROSEMARY: How long have you thought you were a bee?
ANTHONY: Enough of me life that you might as well say all of it.
ROSEMARY: This is what you told Fiona?
ANTHONY: That’s what I told her and she ran like Satan.
ROSEMARY: And this is why you’ve never told me I was beautiful?
ANTHONY: That, and the nearness of your farm to mine. And it’s true, bees don’t like smoke.
ROSEMARY: Well, I’m fed up.
ANTHONY: With what?
ROSEMARY: All that stands in the way. I don’t care if you think you’re a bee, Anthony. I don’t care if you ARE a bee. I’m half dying with living for you. But wait, do you think I’m a bee?
ANTHONY: No.
ROSEMARY: You don’t?
ANTHONY: You are NOT a bee.
ROSEMARY: I’m not?
ANTHONY: No.
ROSEMARY: May I know what I am?
ANTHONY: You’re a flower. The most beautiful bloom that grows.
ROSEMARY: Oh. Oh. Do you really think that of me?
ANTHONY: Yes and more. And each time a fella came to try his luck with you, I suffered like Christ himself.
ROSEMARY: Oh Anthony.
ANTHONY: But I wish you had married one of those men, my dearest, to end my torture, because I’m no good for nothing and no one.
ROSEMARY: You’re good for me. You knocked me down in the yellow grass when I was six, and it was you from then. I’ve been cleaning this kitchen till my hands were glass, hoping the day would come you would enter here and sit there. And now that day has come.
ANTHONY: That day has not come. Marry Adam. Go to America.
ROSEMARY: You really want me gone?
ANTHONY: Yes! I had a sign. I came to your door with me mother’s ring three years past, but when I reached in the pocket, nothing. It was gone.
ROSEMARY: Is that what you’ve been doing with that gizmo? Looking for your mother’s ring?
ANTHONY: That I lost it was a sign. A man who thinks he’s a bee should not marry.
ROSEMARY: Why not?
ANTHONY: Because he’s mad.
ROSEMARY: What do bees know of madness? The thing that makes you feel crazy is the very thing that proves you sane. You know you’re a man.
ANTHONY: A man who thinks he’s a bee.
ROSEMARY: But if you know it’s odd that you think you’re a bee, are you not sane? And why have you gone on looking for the ring?
ANTHONY: It was my mother’s.
ROSEMARY: Bees don’t have mothers with rings. Men do. And men bring rings to women why?
ANTHONY: Leave off.
ROSEMARY: What would you have done if you found it?
ANTHONY: When?
ROSEMARY: Ever.
ANTHONY: But I didn’t.
ROSEMARY: But if you had?
ANTHONY: Oh, I’d have offered it to you.
ROSEMARY: Give us a chance.
ANTHONY: But I couldn’t find the ring.
ROSEMARY: Give us a chance, man.
ANTHONY: If it was meant to be, I’d have found it.
ROSEMARY: WE SAY what’s meant, Tony! Life is here! We name it! Be bold for me!
ANTHONY: But I’ve told Adam about you.
ROSEMARY: Tell him to go the hell to Amsterdam!
ANTHONY: Would you leave off Amsterdam!
ROSEMARY: Tell him I’m yours.
ANTHONY: But you’re not.
ROSEMARY: Make me yours.
ANTHONY: But I’m mad as a Kelly!
ROSEMARY: I don’t care.
ANTHONY: I think I’m a honeybee. I fly around in my mind like a tiny thing.
ROSEMARY: Look at me! Look how I look at you. I have no skin so tender I am to you.
ANTHONY: And I am a virgin.
ROSEMARY: We’ll solve that.
ANTHONY: But I think I’m a honeybee! Even now, I’m choking with being in the house. I’m only happy in the fields, or by the window where I can feel the wind and imagine my wings in the free air.
ROSEMARY: You can have the wind and the fields and all the windows up! Here, sure, you fool, here’s the ring!
ANTHONY: What’s this? You have it?! My mother’s ring?
ROSEMARY: I found it by the door three years ago.
ANTHONY: Why didn’t you say?
ROSEMARY: I thought it Heaven sent to stop me from suicide and give me hope.
ANTHONY: Three years looking and there it is!
ROSEMARY: I prayed for a sign, and there was my prayer’s answer in my hand.
ANTHONY: And the thing that stopped me from knocking.
ROSEMARY: What do I have to do? Do I have to swat at you to get you to sting me? Because I will. You see me as a flower? That’s the sweetest thing.
ANTHONY: We should be thinking, Rosemary, not rash. We’re neighbors. I see you at church. We’ll kill each other when it goes wrong. I should go away out into the air!
ROSEMARY: Think of me as the open door.
ANTHONY: I’ve never thought of you without fear.
ROSEMARY: Why now fear?
ANTHONY: The pain. Of love.
ROSEMARY: Think of the pleasure. Take your ring.
ANTHONY: Bad luck! Sure it’s yours, is it not? It always was.
(He kisses her. It’s a good one. They breathe.)
ROSEMARY: I’m mad, too, you know.
ANTHONY: How are you mad?
ROSEMARY: You’ll find out. When it’s too late.
ANTHONY: Jesus. All those years wasted.
ROSEMARY: Who knows the way things should be? There’s beauty in this.
ANTHONY: Will you take down the gates?
ROSEMARY: Never!
ANTHONY: The voice I heard in the fields. It didn’t say go. Not just that. It said, “Go to her.”
ROSEMARY: Look. The sky.
(They look out a window. The sun is breaking free of the clouds. The sun lights Anthony and Rosemary’s faces. “Wild Mountain Thyme” plays.)
END OF PLAY