Scene Twelve


The Knopf living room, late afternoon, a month later. At rise, ROSALIE is lying on the sofa very much the way she was at the beginning of the play. However, now there is no music coming from the phonograph, and she is no longer the old Rosalie Knopf, but something somewhere in between that girl and the Diane Wolfe clone she almost became. In a moment, NADINE enters from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
NADINE
I’m on Moses now, darling. He has a long white beard down his shirt front. He really looks old. Come see, Rosalie.

ROSALIE

Not now.

NADINE

But the Biblical characters are the best of all. I’m going to let you do Jezebel. Come, darling, before I put the marshmallow back in the refrigerator.

ROSALIE

Please, Mama…

NADINE

Why? What is it?

ROSALIE

It’s just no fun any more.

                               (SHE turns over on her side and hides her face from her mother.)

NADINE

Darling, what’s the matter? You just come home from school every afternoon now and lie on the sofa and stare through the window. You don’t write anymore. You don’t listen to your records. We hardly even talk. Is it so difficult for you at school?

ROSALIE

No. It’s like it used to be. They just ignore me. And the kids outside the clique sort of stare now. Bobby Wascow’s the only one who talks to me. He says he admires me. He keeps inviting me to Hanahan Park to watch the old people shuffleboard.

NADINE

But it was bound to happen, dear. They were bound to find out sooner or later. And you said you don’t care about progressive dinners and slumber parties and Key Club pins.

ROSALIE

It’s not that.

NADINE

Then what, darling? Things could have been so much worse. I expected by this time we’d have had to move away from Ft. Mineola.

ROSALIE

No. Daddy has his job.

NADINE

And he’s just as happy as he can be at Ojus. He is very, very gradually and ever so subtly improving the curriculum. He’s already cut out diagramming sentences completely from the English classes.

ROSALIE

I lied once, and I got what I deserved. But he lied twice.

NADINE

But, Rosalie…

ROSALIE

Once when he told Mrs. Fell that Art Knopf was his son, and then when he told Mr. Peeples that he never told Mrs. Fell Art Knopf was his son.

NADINE

But…well…he so needed the job…

ROSALIE

Diane saved it for him.

NADINE

I told you, Rosalie, she was a sweet girl.

ROSALIE

I don’t understand her at all. Before she left to go back to Lansing she wrote me that letter I showed you saying that her father would see to it that Daddy kept his job.

NADINE

Yes, dear.

ROSALIE

But at the same time Bobby Wascow told me she wrote another letter. To Betty Claire’s mother. Telling her that her daughter was doing filthy things with Chuck Hatfield in Chuck’s pup tent.

NADINE

Oh, my!

ROSALIE

Then Betty Claire’s mother showed the letter to Chuck’s father, and they say Chuck got such a beating he ran away and lied about his age and became a paratrooper.

NADINE

A paratrooper!

ROSALIE

But Betty Claire’s back at school just as if nothing had happened, and Bobby says she got to keep Chuck’s pup tent, and she’s given it to Rickie Richards. And she and Rickie are doing the same things in that pup tent she used to do with Chuck. And Jimmy Moore is back dating Sharlene Harkness even though he used to tell me that if Sharlene hadn’t been a Baptist and this was back in ancient Rome, she would have been the first one to stone Jesus.

NADINE

What an unkind thing to say!

ROSALIE

And Mrs. Fell avoids me in the corridor as if I had bubonic plague or something. Bobby Wascow says he thinks Diane Wolfe wrote her a letter, too. And then, Mama…and then…

                                        (SHE begins to cry.)

NADINE

What, dear?

ROSALIE

You know, sometimes I’ll be sitting in algebra class, staring at the blackboard and seeing that a plus c-square over b always equals the same thing, when all of a sudden I see Diane’s face looking up at me so pitifully saying, "You did like me, didn’t you?" And I just want to die inside. I wish I could go away somewhere. I wish I could go back to Boston. No. I wish I could go some place I’ve never been. Where nobody knows me.

NADINE

Rosalie! Oh, Rosalie! It’s not that terrible. None of this is so terrible you have to run away. It’ll all pass by. And in a few months you’ll look back, and you’ll be amused by most of it.

ROSALIE

I won’t, Mama. I won’t be amused. Oh, Mama! Mama! The whole world isn’t Mineola High, is it? (SHE throws her arms about Nadine’s waist and sobs. NADINE presses her cheek against Rosalie’s head.)
NADINE
No, darling. The whole world isn’t Mineola High.
 
 

SLOW CURTAIN