"D O U B L E L I E S"
A Family Drama
(OUTLINE)
FADE IN:
DRAY CANTY stares into the local newspaper of a town he's
visiting when he spots a photograph that will change his life
forever. He reads about a local businessman, REGINALD
LYONS, who has just died, and the family he's left behind.
But as Dray stares down into the picture he notices something
strange about Reginald Lyons' family, something familiar. So
he heads straight to their house. But they are at Reginald's
funeral. So the next day Dray returns and is hired as the
gardener by Reginald's 18-year-old son, REGGIE.
As Reggie shows Dray the grounds, Reggie's mother, ANDREA
drives up and notices Reggie talking to tall handsome Dray.
Reggie introduces Dray to his mother, but right away Andrea
and Dray are distant and cold to each other, seemingly angry.
When Reggie introduces Dray to the rest of the family, his
16-year-old sister, RUBY, and his six-year-old brother,
BOBBY, and Ruby likes Dray, and Dray likes them, Andrea seems
even more aloof and disturbed, and paradoxically a little
jealous. Even the simplest things Dray says to Andrea seem
tinged with hostility and resentment--stinging, pointed,
verbal darts that cause Andrea to bristle.
Watering the lawn, Dray starts thinking back to his teenage
years, to a country setting, helping his girlfriend climb
down from her window so they can elope. Now he and she stand
before the marriage official, he and Andrea.
When Andrea's father, DR. GATZ (Gates), finds out about the
marriage he has it annulled. Then she realizes she's
pregnant. Still in love with Dray, she searches for him to
make up with him, but finds him with another girl. Andrea
then meets Reginald Lyons and marries him, without telling
him she's pregnant.
She goes back to her hometown to stay with her father to have
her baby. While giving Andrea a physical, Dr. Gatzs is
surprised to hear two heartbeats.
One day while Andrea shops in her hometown, she is spotted by
Dray, who is now married to the girl Andrea saw him with,
CONSTANCE. Dray guesses it's his baby Andrea carries, so he
threatens to take her to court for joint custody. He
threatens to have his attorney contact her husband to get
things straightened out. Andrea fears this will destroy her
marriage. Feeling desperate, the only thing she can think to
do to save her marriage and to be fair to Dray is to offer
him one baby but not tell him about the other.
When the babies are born, Dray takes the baby Andrea gives
him to his barren wife, Candance. They raise that twin,
BRIAN.
Eighteen years later, Andrea tells her husband, Reginald,
that the son he's raised, Reggie, is not his. Before she can
finish her explanation, Reginald goes into cardiac arrest and
dies.
That's when Dray sees Reginald's obituary in the newspaper,
and is hired by his own son, Reggie, as the gardener.
Six-year-old Bobby, expresses the lost of his father by being
sullen and hostile, begging for attention by nagging Reggie
to take him camping. When Reggie and no one else will do it,
Dray finds the time.
Fortunately, the kids are well adjusted and able to get on
with their lives, but Andrea feels a tremendous guilt
associated with the lost of her husband, a guilt she can't
shake, and Dray's presence just aggravates it. Her own
self-hatred she turns on Dray because he interrupts their
lives at such a critical time.
When the family learns that Dray has offered to take Bobby
camping, they manage to find time to do it themselves, but
Bobby insists that Dray come along.
Camping turns out to be a disaster when a BEAR enters the
campsite, throws Reggie against a tree and injures his brain.
At the hospital, they all stand around waiting for a report
from the Doctor. Reggie's life hangs suspended, and Andrea
has to make a life or death medical decision. Already
distraught over her dead husband, Andrea is hysterical and
unreasonable, too upset to make a logical decision. Her
decision is emotional, only emotional, and blinded by fear.
Dray makes a contrary decision, a decision that will give
Reggie the slim chance of being whole again. Indecisive, and
not wanting to reveal who Dray is in front of her children,
Andrea is forced to go along with the decision. But she
resents Dray even more for it.
Music Professor, Dray, also a renowned novelist, pen named
Roger Grey, rearranges his life to stay and help Reggie
recuperate.
The kids and Dray form a close bond which Andrea resents, but
to the kids it, in a way, fills the void of their father's
absence. Dray has been a widower for many years, and his
son, Brian, is away at college, so the kids fill a void in
Dray's life as well. They and Dray come to love one another.
Brian finds Andrea's name on his birth certificate, and wants
to know why and who she is. He believed, Candace, the woman
who raised him to be his mother. So he goes searching for
Andrea, since Dray is very evasive in their telephone
conversation about Andrea's name on his birth certificate.
Candace was loved and cherished by Dray, but he has always
been in love with Andrea since they were kids, and now that
he's seen her again he grows more in love with her each day.
If Andrea has any love for Dray it is buried beneath layers
of guilt and inner-conflict.
Even when they all go skating and bowling together like a
family, Andrea keeps her distance and makes sure that Dray
gets no mistaken notion that she is interested in him--even
after he confesses his love for her.
Andrea, for the purpose of discussing her husband's Company,
accompanies her attorney, EUGENE BRODY, to a social
gathering. The guest of honor is famous author Roger Grey,
aka Dray Canty. At the gathering Andrea is surprised to
learn that Dray is Roger Grey and that Roger Grey is engaged
to the party's HOST.
Fury seizes Andrea, and she orders Dray to move out of the
gardener's cottage off of her property and out of her life.
Dray, jealous of Eugene Brody, becomes arrogantly cynical,
packs his bags and leaves.
Now Andrea goes to the bank and opens the security box left
by her husband Reginald. She finds a letter he left telling
her about his heart condition, and telling her that he's
known that Reggie wasn't his for years. She leaves the
letter in her coat pocket, and when Reggie takes her coat to
the cleaners he finds it.
When Reggie asks Andrea who his real father is, she is
perplexed and afraid to say it's Dray. So when Reggie keeps
asking, out of frustration she screams she doesn't know.
Reggie, bolts out of the door and off the property and
doesn't return.
The next day when everyone is searching for Reggie, Brian
arrives in town looking for Andrea and stands knocking at her
front door. Of course, they mistake him for Reggie. Andrea
tells Brian to go into the kitchen where they can talk, and
when Brian hesitates out of confusion, and not knowing where
the kitchen is, Andrea assumes Reggie is purposely being
uncooperative, and orders Brian, who she thinks is Reggie,
upstairs to Reggie's room. Rather than argue, and out of
curiosity, Brian obeys.
Upstairs in Reggie's bedroom, Brian finds a photograph of
Reggie on his dresser. He stares, stunned, at the picture.
His whole world is shaken, and his confusion is shown in the
flush of his face and the slight tremble of his hand.
Realizing that Andrea must be his mother and Ruby and Bobby
his brother and sister, and Reggie his twin, he is confused
about the parents who raised him. Still, he's not ready to
reveal who he is. He will pretend to be Reggie, until he
understands more about what's going on, and what kind of
people these are, and how he will relate to them and they to
him. Obviously, Brian figures, Reggie has run away, but why?
Brian comes to love his new family, but keeps pretending to
be Reggie, until, one day, Reggie calls and leaves a message,
with Brian, for Andrea, that he is coming home.
Brian doesn't reveal who he is to Reggie, but makes plans
with Reggie to meet with him at Dray's house, although Reggie
doesn't know it's Dray's house or why Brian wants to meet
with him.
On his way to meet with Reggie, Brian swerves to miss a
drunk, lands in a ditch, and in the hospital. The hospital
thinking, he is Reggie calls Andrea who rushes to the
hospital. Brian has a head injury and some bad springs,
bruises and lacerations, but for the most part he is stable,
though in a coma.
Reggie's doctor asks Andrea if Reggie has a twin, and tells
Andrea that he can tell from the x-rays that the boy she
thinks is Reggie is not. Andrea now realizes that it's
Brian.
Now Brian arouses from his coma, but he doesn't know who
Reggie is. He doesn't even know who he is. Andrea, recently
having lost her husband, now with one son in the hospital,
and not knowing where the other has disappeared to, loses it,
and has to be sedated.
Reggie has gotten the key from the hiding place in Dray's
backyard as Brian told him to do, and he's gone upstairs to
look for Brian's bedroom as Brian has directed him. As
Reggie stares at Brian's picture, at an image exactly like
his, he hears Dray downstairs unlocking the front door.
Reggie comes to the top of the stairs, staring angrily down
at Dray, and demanding that Dray tell him who he is. Dray
doesn't know if it's Brian or Reggie.
Then Reggie asks if Andrea is his real mother or the woman in
the picture he's now holding, Dray's dead wife. Dray assures
Reggie that Andrea is his mother. But Reggie's heart begins
to break as he realizes that the man who raised and loved him
was not his real father.
Through anger and tears, Reggie demands an explanation. But
as Dray begins to tell Reggie that Andrea should do the
explaining the phone rings and it's the hospital calling Dray
to come and see about Andrea, who has had an emotional
collapse.
At the hospital the doctor explains to Dray and Reggie that
Brian is there and has had a brain injury and that Andrea is
resting.
In Brian's hospital room, Dray and Reggie sit staring into
Brian's face and holding his hand. Andrea comes into the
room, rested and calm. Ruby and Bobby have been called to
the hospital and enter Brian's room. Ruby clutches her
chest, in shocking disbelief, and little Bobby zooms out of
the room, slams himself against the wall, runs back in,
slides towards the bed with a huge grin on his face and asks
which one is Reggie.
Brian arouses from sleep, explains that he fibbed about not
knowing who he and Reggie are, because he was afraid he was
in trouble, and that they would resent him.
Now the explanations begin about how everything has occurred,
and all the loose ends are tied up, except that when Bobby
asks if Brian and Dray can live with them, Andrea's face
falls, and Dray can tell that he's not welcomed.
So Dray returns home and back to his job at the University.
Andrea, sad and lonely, is still grappling with her guilt,
but in addition, she must also face her feelings for Dray,
that the love she had for him since they were kids has really
never gone away. But just like she lost Dray before to
Candace, how could Dray tell her he loves her now, and at the
same time, be engaged to someone else?
Eugene Brody calls and asks Andrea for a date. Andrea
refuses but takes the opportunity to ask Eugene about Dray
and his fiancee'. Eugene explains that it was done by the
party's Host as a deception to cover the fact that she was
seeing a married man, and that she and Dray were never
engaged, and that Dray fired her as his agent for doing that.
Dray, exhausted with Andrea's coldness, resentment, and
unwillingness to let him explain, has told Andrea that he's
not going to chase her anymore, and that if she wants him,
she will have to come to him.
One day when Dray comes home from work, he walks into a
decorated house filled with excitement, and Ruby, Reggie,
Brian, Bobby, others, and even Rory, the family dog are
waiting for Dray. Dray walks through the front door
surprised and greeting everyone, when Ruby walks downstairs
to greet him, but Dray is shocked when Andrea trails behind
her.
Dray wants to know what all of this is about, and Ruby guides
him upstairs to a bedroom decorated with a banner that says
"Happy Wedding Day." "Who's getting married?", Dray asks.
"We'd hoped Mom," Ruby answers. "To whom," Dray asks, "It
couldn't be to me. She hates me," he says. "Well, would you
consider it," Ruby asks. "Well, I don't know," Dray
responds, "She'd have to ask me." Andrea nervously attempts
to ask Dray to marry her. She stops and starts and stutters
and fidgets so long, Dray finally takes her hand and proposes
to her.
They all stand on the steps of a wedding chapel, and bid Dray
and Andrea the happy honeymoon they should have had many
years ago.
THE END
Copyright-Tiana Boulet-2000
DISCLAIMER
These songs selected for your entertainment in reading, they enhance the scenes, and the scenes give the songs a renewed exposure and greater meaning. They are not sold here or given away. If there are any of these songs that you like, please purchase them at your local record store or at an online store. Thank you.
