Arlington – A One Act Play
Husband says to his wife in bed – you don’t love me anymore – I feel adrift and depressed. Wife says I love you deeply. Husband says I watch you with the boy and see unconditional love there, I want that love from you like it used to be. Things are different now, says the wife. I’ve been changing. I’m overwhelmed by what goes on and so I move to the nonserious, to the ephemeral and joyful. When life was simpler I clung to the serious – we paired well – you being so serious and cerebral. As I move away from that world and trivialize its icons, you cling tighter and our rift grows. Husband says I feel like a third wheel at times and see your eyes sparkle for others – in the late night sitting close and watching inane canine massages on tv – too close when you’re actually sick. The co-advil makes me wired, says the wife. I try to move back to you but you distance yourself on your island and look disdainfully on my chatter of friends goings on, my choice in music, my desire to have fun and be carefree. It’s not about those things, it is about love, he says. And I do love you, she says. But not like before, he retorts. There are too many things happening externally for me to know whether I can go back to where we were or whether we can pass through this to a better place. I can’t know that right now, she says. I want to feel your sparkle, your passion, he says. If you had to choose you would choose the boy, he says. She responds: I chose you 15 years ago, 10 years ago and again 5 years ago when it was about a boy. But, he says, you wouldn’t make that choice now. She sighs. Most likely not if I had the choice. A discussion of what fatherhood is or is not ensues (ad lib) and then who is or who is not a good father and whether he would have been one or the other. She says, you can’t know that now. I feel unrequited love, he says. I just don’t know what to do anymore, she says. I try to show you love in my actions – fixing your eggs in the morning, folding your clothes neatly for your drawers. I don’t care about those things, he says. No, you never have, she sighs. Again he reiterates he longs for the passion of her. The wife says, it has to come naturally or not at all.