"Lunar Son Tarot" is a nonfiction play by Mark Gordon Russell chronicling his perceptions in life and those of his mother on the evening of a Tarot card reading in 1986. The play is based on a tape-recorded interview with my mother at that time. This play has never been produced.
Note: Information about the origin of this play is provided in the 2017 blog article "Accessing an Omnipresent Unlimited Information Source through Tarot Cards". This noncommercial play is available to everyone to read or even perform if there are two people who would be willing to memorize all those lines. As I mentioned in a journal entry last week — The selection of this post [for publication now with this blog] is another suggestion of M and I can't imagine not accepting one of M's suggestions.
INTRODUCTION
It is spring 1986.
The two-character play takes place in a dining room of a two-bedroom rented stucco condominium in Pasadena, California at East Orange Grove Boulevard. The cards that will be seen are those that were found during an actual Tarot card reading that was tape-recorded by the author.
The furniture is vaguely affluent. The oddity is a curio cabinet with a collection of porcelain Siamese cat figurines. A noticeable picture on the wall measuring 46" x 36" could be a colorful Marianne Hornbuckle lithograph of a plateau (if verisimilitude is desired).
The view seen by the audience is the dining room in front and the living room in back. There is a small patio with a view of the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles to the south. At the back left is a door leading to a bedroom. At the front left is a hall leading to another bedroom. The entire kitchen and entrance way are not in view. The diningroom table has no tablecloth.
A portion of the stage should be blank to allow projected images of Tarot cards to be projected upon it to reveal the individual cards when each is revealed or discussed.
The characters are a fifty-four-year-old woman and her twenty-nine-year-old SON. MOTHER is slightly inebriated and becomes giddy and morose in intervals as this is a tumultuous time in her life. She is not college-educated yet has made a success of herself by passing the state test to become an Accredited Record Technician. She is a hospital medical records department head.
The SON is introverted and obsessed with the unexplained. If one of the two is feminine, it is the SON. He is only a little overweight despite the conversation to follow. When reading brief passages of books about the Tarot, he has an emphatic delivery. He wears pajamas and a lovely silk robe that is a gift someone gave him. It is night and the MOTHER's cotton robe is disheveled. Her hair is dyed brown. This night she is desperate most of the time while the SON has a usual introvert serenity.
The SON's reference books that he carries with him are the paperbacks The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite, A Complete Guide to the Tarot by Eden Gray; and the hardbound books The Encyclopedia of Tarot by Stuart R. Kaplan and The Magic Zoo by Peter Costello.
There is one intermission.
As the audience enters, the stage is in darkness yet the lighting suggests the cosmos throughout the theatre. Radio songs of the period play as the audience takes their seats (and later during the intermission). Here is the suggested sequence of songs.
(preceding the first act)
"Tusk" Fleetwood Mac
"Material Girl" Madonna
"Mickey" Toni Basil
"Dirty Laundry" Don Henley
"Abracadabra" Steve Miller Band
(intermission preceding the second act)
"Mad World" Tears for Fears
"Money for Nothing" Dire Straits
"Walk Like An Egyptian" Bangles
"Magic" Olivia Newton John
"Hold Me Now" Thompson Twins
A few moments before the MOTHER enters from the hall, there should be the sound of a Television program circa 1986 until the TV set is turned off.
The time is 10:40 p.m.
ACT I
The MOTHER enters from the hall stage left. She walks with a noticeable limp. Her reading glasses are of the drugstore variety. She is talking silently to herself as she goes to the door of her SON's room. She carries with her a small glass of beer. She knocks three times quickly.
MOTHER: Are you ready? You promised.
(There is no response.)
MOTHER: Honey?
(She knocks again.)
MOTHER: I can't wait all night.
(There is no response.)
MOTHER: What are you doing?
SON: (OFFSTAGE) I'm reading.
MOTHER: What are you reading?
SON (OFFSTAGE): It's about legendary animals like mermaids and dragons. (an afterthought) But it isn't very good.
MOTHER: Then why don't you stop reading it?
(Scowling, she knocks again even more loudly.)
SON: (OFFSTAGE) Let me finish this chapter about the Phoenix.
MOTHER: I don't want to miss "The Eleven O'Clock News."
(pause)
MOTHER: Did you hear me?
SON: (OFFSTAGE) Just a moment.
(Satisfied with this response, MOTHER goes to the diningroom table and sits down. She removes a pack of playing cards from a pocket in her housecoat, removes the rubber band and begins a game of Solitaire. She occasionally sips from her glass of beer.)
SON: (OFFSTAGE frantically calling out) Ohhh!
MOTHER: What?
(She goes back to the door to his room, hesitant to ever open it without permission.)
MOTHER: Are you all right?
(The door opens and the SON seems startled.)
SON: It was a spider. A big one. I opened the patio door and was trying to get it to climb onto my book so I could put it outside and it suddenly jumped.
MOTHER: Spiders don't jump.
SON: This one did.
MOTHER: What kind of spider was it?
SON: It was a big spider. I don't know what kind it was.
(He closes the door.)
(MOTHER returns to the table and resumes her game of Solitaire.)
SON: (OFFSTAGE) Where did it go?
(It is silent for an interim and then the door opens and SON joins his MOTHER at the table. He has put on a Japanese satin jacket and is holding a box with the Tarot cards. He also has several books, including two paperbacks and a hardbound book about the supernatural. He places the books on the table beside him.)
(She continues playing solitaire.)
MOTHER: This is a good hand.
SON: Are you kidding? Put them away.
MOTHER: I didn't know how long you'd take. You can wait a few minutes now.
SON: You can play solitaire anytime.
(She keeps playing.)
SON: Well then I'm not going to have time tonight.
MOTHER: Oh all right.
(Heeding him, she stacks the cards and takes off her glasses.)
MOTHER: You know what? I got the electric bill today. I'll figure out how much you owe.
SON: I never turn on the central air. That's what makes the spiders crawl out of the air ducts.
MOTHER: The only ones you have to worry about are the ones with a red hourglass on their belly or the ones shaped like a violin. Did you get a good look at it?
SON: It looked like it would hurt if it bit me. Next time I'll just kill it.
MOTHER: They're not going to bite you. They're afraid of people. I admire spiders. It's not their fault they're ugly. They have to kill to survive like all animals. That's nature. Spiders are unusual because they have an art form. There aren't very many animals with a craft. They make beautiful webs.
SON: I don't need any 'weaver of illusion' in my room.
MOTHER: What?
SON: In India the spider has symbolized the eternal weaver of the web of illusion.
MOTHER: This isn't India.
(pause)
MOTHER: If you don't give me ten dollars for the electric bill this month every spider I see I'm putting in your room.
(SON takes out the Tarot cards and begins separating them into groups using a technique of his own.)
MOTHER: I don't know why I let you tell my fortune with those spooky cards.
SON: There is nothing spooky, as you say, about them.
MOTHER: Not with all those weird pictures and characters?
SON: Who's doing who the favor? How many times have you begged for me to give you another Tarot card reading? I remember what you said after the first Tarot reading a few months ago. You said you were bored. As I explained then, Tarot cards present a symbolic procession of human existence. When somebody reads from the Tarot they try to draw upon the vast perceptions of their subconscious mind to interpret the life before them. Our lives show certain patterns of behavior. Tarot cards can help us to see where that pattern may take you.
MOTHER: Where does God come into it?
SON: 'God' is a word that people rarely stop to think about. If they did, they would realize that the word has no coherent meaning. Other words that people accept and use without understanding that they have no idea what it is they're talking about include fate . . . destiny . . . chance . . . luck. 'God' is just one of many slang words for the unknown. An understanding of the workings of both God and chance is impossible for us in our current stage of knowledge.
MOTHER: Just because you don't believe in Him doesn't mean I don't. Or Her.
SON: The name is inadequate but I believe in some of the things that are meant to be conveyed by the word 'God.' It's just that I don't know what 'God' is. I'm Agnostic. I believe there is some kind of 'God' but the knowledge of that Being is something beyond what is possible for us to understand. Most of the things that happen to us seem random and haphazard. But philosophers as ancient as Hippocrates have distinguished a pattern of hidden affinities in life. Jung called it 'synchronicity.'
MOTHER: It's too hard to try and figure it out.
SON: Of course, we have to make a living, "make ends meet." Figuring out how to do that is a challenge that most people have in common, which reminds me.
(pause)
SON: The nuns. How are they?
MOTHER: Didn't I tell you? The sisters all left.
SON: (stunned) Where did they go?
MOTHER: The week before the takeover they came and took everything away. They left and everything else went with them. They had some nice mosaics on the wall. They tore it all out.
SON: Why?
MOTHER: The Catholics didn't want to leave anything . . . any trace. They wanted anything that would remind anybody that it was previously a Catholic hospital erased. But like, on the fifth floor there was a big wall – bigger than that. It had a big picture of, you know, a Virgin Mary.
(She holds up her hands in a suggestive pose.)
MOTHER: Like this. It was all in mosaic.
SON: What was the Virgin Mary doing in the picture?
MOTHER: She was just sitting like this. Just like this.
(She makes a cradling gesture.)
MOTHER: Holding a little baby. It was all handmade.
SON: That was the Christ child.
MOTHER: They wanted it out!
SON: A Madonna and child.
MOTHER: Of course.
SON: (joking) That's almost sacrilegious.
MOTHER: When the employees came in, they were so upset. At first, everyone thought some vandals had broken in.
SON: Was it the sisters or the new corporate owners of the hospital who were responsible?
MOTHER: The sisters.
SON: Where did the sisters go?
(He continues separating and organizing the Tarot cards into five piles: one for the Major Arcana, one for Swords, one for Wands, one for Cups and one for Pentacles.)
MOTHER: They went back to the Mother House in Orange. You mean the sisters who came to the hospital to move the other ones out? A whole bunch of sisters came from the Mother House, which is like their main headquarters.
SON: (joking) I thought the Vatican was their main headquarters.
MOTHER: They told the engineering staff to help them, you know, dig that stuff out.
SON: I guess they'll take that huge lit-up ceramic cross off the roof of the hospital too.
MOTHER: That's gone already.
SON: I can't believe it. It was like a beacon of hope in the night. I mean, seeing that big cross filled me with hope that maybe there was something supernatural about Jesus and that his story isn't just a glorified myth. Are they going to take the 'Saint' away from the name of the hospital as well?
MOTHER: I don't think so. I guess the nuns aren't going to make them change that. Maybe they forgot about that.
SON: Help me get the cards in the right numerical order. In the technique I use, the cards should always be in order at the start before shuffling.
(He gives her the stack of cards with Swords.)
SON: Why did the nuns sell the hospital?
MOTHER: Nobody ever really figured that out for sure. I guess because they were losing money. It was only the second or third time in the history of the United States that a Catholic hospital was sold to a for-profit organization. You see, they have lots of hospitals.
SON: I wonder how many centuries nuns go back. Yesterday I saw one at the bookstore and said to myself how good it was to see a nun again. They're a link to the past. Like Tarot cards. Nuns are kind of icons onto themselves. They've been very controversial with all those lesbian nuns breaking silence all over the place. There's a book about it on the bestseller list. I read a little of it and it's all these different nuns telling about how they found out about themselves. Some of them left the convents and others are gay and are still living there. A lot of Catholics are upset about it but it has probably always been going on.
MOTHER: Is there a card with a nun?
SON: No.
(He glances through his paperback.)
SON: Looking for a card that might be representative of a nun, one might select the High Priestess card. Or the Hierophant. Maybe the Temperance card.
MOTHER: What's the hero – heiro –
SON: Heirophant?
(He turns to the correct page in the Waite paperback.)
SON: (reading from the book) "He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but they are not those of the Temple which is guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a sceptre terminating in the triple cross, and with his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign which is called that of esotericism, distinguishing between the manifest and the concealed part of doctrine." Wait, this might be too vague for you.
(He skims down the page.)
SON: "He has been usually called the Pope."
(He turns the page.)
SON: " . . . he is the channel of grace . . . He is the order and the head of the recognized hierarchy, which is the reflection of another and greater hierarchic order . . . this his symbolic state . . ."
(He puts the book down and turns to the appropriate page of the Gray paperback.)
SON: This book will probably say it in a more clear way. That other one was written in 1910.
MOTHER: I don't know why you need more than one book. That's a weird one.
SON: The one I just read from was written by Edward Waite, who was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Authors don't all have the same interpretation. These are just to give you an idea. I haven't yet been able to read a book about the Order of the Golden Dawn.
MOTHER: It sounds like a cult.
SON: I guess so, but I think these people were pretty harmless. The word 'cult' brings to mind the Manson Family or those people who drank the poisoned Kool-Aid. Any religious group can be called a 'cult.'
(He flips through the other paperback.)
SON: I think this book will clarify for you what the Hierophant card stands for.
(He finds the passage.)
SON: "The Hierophant represents traditional, orthodox teaching considered suitable to the masses. He is the ruling power of external religion, whereas the High Priestess teaches only in secret and to initiates." The 'Divinatory Meaning' is "Preference for the outer forms of religion, the ritual, the creed, the ceremony. The importance of social approval; the need to conform to society." That's just this author's opinion. Eden Gray.
(pause)
SON: A precise interpretation of the significance of the card depends on what cards show up before and after it. It's all a matter of timing and sequence.
MOTHER: That reminds me. I had a phone call a month ago about a hospital looking for a director but, dumb me, I told him I wasn't interested even though I knew the way things were coming down. I think I kept his name. I'm going to try to call him.
SON: I guess you couldn't see the writing on the wall despite that worrisome Tarot card reading.
MOTHER: What am I supposed to do with these cards?
SON: Put them in the right order right side up facing the same way – one two three four and so on through Page Jack Queen King.
MOTHER: How can you tell which is which?
SON: There's little numbers at the bottom. Or you can count the number of Swords. I gave you all the Swords.
MOTHER: God, I can barely see those little numbers.
(She takes off her glasses, dabs her tongue against each lens and then rubs her robe against them to clean the lenses.)
SON: Ewww, what are you doing?
MOTHER: I'm cleaning my glasses.
SON: You don't have to lick them.
MOTHER: Oh yes I do.
SON: Gross.
MOTHER: What's VII?
SON: Seven.
MOTHER: No, it's eight.
SON: You don't know how to read Roman numerals, do you?
MOTHER: Yes.
SON: Then maybe you don't know how to count.
MOTHER: This one doesn't have a number on it. This is trying. I'm not a Tarotoe expert like you.
SON: Tarot. Although that word you said is close to the original pronunciation of the name for the cards. In Italy in the early Sixteenth Century they were called Tarocchi or the singular Tarocco.
(She drops some and gasps.)
SON: Poor Mother. You get so carried away.
(She picks them up.)
MOTHER: What do I do with this one? It doesn't have a number.
SON: Give them to me.
(He checks them.)
SON: Two, four, three, this is one.
MOTHER: Where does it say one?
(He holds it up.)
SON: There's just one Sword, isn't there?
MOTHER: Piss!
SON: Don't say that. That's disgusting.
(He places the cards in the proper sequence.)
SON: Tell me more about the new company that's taken over the hospital.
(She takes off her glasses.)
MOTHER: They don't care that Medical Records has always been the most efficient department at the hospital. They're pressuring me and all of the other department heads to quit. How is it our fault that the hospital was mismanaged at the highest level?
SON: How many department heads are left?
MOTHER: Well . . . there's Frida left. And Jan in P.R. And Barbara, and poor Ed – well, you know, he's probably forty-nine. He's the one –
SON: Younger than you!
MOTHER: He's got this horrible disease.
SON: What disease? Hodgkin's disease?
MOTHER: And a family to support. Yeah, he's so worried. No, not Hodgkin's – malignant melanoma. That's just incidental to them. Just another reason why they want to get rid of him.
SON: And I remember what happened to that janitor you told me about.
MOTHER: I feel sorry for him too. The sisters had been good to him. You see, he's mentally retarded. The sisters told him that as long as they were there he'd always have a job. Well you know what happened. The new company heads want to promote all the secondaries and pay them less money.
(He flips through the other paperback.)
SON: I think this book will clarify for you what the Hierophant card stands for.
(He finds the passage.)
SON: "The Hierophant represents traditional, orthodox teaching considered suitable to the masses. He is the ruling power of external religion, whereas the High Priestess teaches only in secret and to initiates." The 'Divinatory Meaning' is "Preference for the outer forms of religion, the ritual, the creed, the ceremony. The importance of social approval; the need to conform to society." That's just this author's opinion. Eden Gray.
(pause)
SON: A precise interpretation of the significance of the card depends on what cards show up before and after it. It's all a matter of timing and sequence.
MOTHER: That reminds me. I had a phone call a month ago about a hospital looking for a director but, dumb me, I told him I wasn't interested even though I knew the way things were coming down. I think I kept his name. I'm going to try to call him.
SON: I guess you couldn't see the writing on the wall despite that worrisome Tarot card reading.
MOTHER: What am I supposed to do with these cards?
SON: Put them in the right order right side up facing the same way – one two three four and so on through Page Jack Queen King.
MOTHER: How can you tell which is which?
SON: There's little numbers at the bottom. Or you can count the number of Swords. I gave you all the Swords.
MOTHER: God, I can barely see those little numbers.
(She takes off her glasses, dabs her tongue against each lens and then rubs her robe against them to clean the lenses.)
SON: Ewww, what are you doing?
MOTHER: I'm cleaning my glasses.
SON: You don't have to lick them.
MOTHER: Oh yes I do.
SON: Gross.
MOTHER: What's VII?
SON: Seven.
MOTHER: No, it's eight.
SON: You don't know how to read Roman numerals, do you?
MOTHER: Yes.
SON: Then maybe you don't know how to count.
MOTHER: This one doesn't have a number on it. This is trying. I'm not a Tarotoe expert like you.
SON: Tarot. Although that word you said is close to the original pronunciation of the name for the cards. In Italy in the early Sixteenth Century they were called Tarocchi or the singular Tarocco.
(She drops some and gasps.)
SON: Poor Mother. You get so carried away.
(She picks them up.)
MOTHER: What do I do with this one? It doesn't have a number.
SON: Give them to me.
(He checks them.)
SON: Two, four, three, this is one.
MOTHER: Where does it say one?
(He holds it up.)
SON: There's just one Sword, isn't there?
MOTHER: Piss!
SON: Don't say that. That's disgusting.
(He places the cards in the proper sequence.)
SON: Tell me more about the new company that's taken over the hospital.
(She takes off her glasses.)
MOTHER: They don't care that Medical Records has always been the most efficient department at the hospital. They're pressuring me and all of the other department heads to quit. How is it our fault that the hospital was mismanaged at the highest level?
SON: How many department heads are left?
MOTHER: Well . . . there's Frida left. And Jan in P.R. And Barbara, and poor Ed – well, you know, he's probably forty-nine. He's the one –
SON: Younger than you!
MOTHER: He's got this horrible disease.
SON: What disease? Hodgkin's disease?
MOTHER: And a family to support. Yeah, he's so worried. No, not Hodgkin's – malignant melanoma. That's just incidental to them. Just another reason why they want to get rid of him.
SON: And I remember what happened to that janitor you told me about.
MOTHER: I feel sorry for him too. The sisters had been good to him. You see, he's mentally retarded. The sisters told him that as long as they were there he'd always have a job. Well you know what happened. The new company heads want to promote all the secondaries and pay them less money.
SON: Tell me again what happened last week when that woman came in and started accusing you of things. Michelle. Mitch, I think you call her.
MOTHER: The first day she came in was over a week ago and even then she turned on me. I was down having a meeting with a new company officer and she comes walking in and I was answering questions. It was my first meeting with this man, and she jumps in and says why don't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And then he comes back later and he says that what I'm doing is obsolete and why don't you do it this way. This is the system we want. And I told him that wasn't what I had been told –
SON: By your previous bosses.
MOTHER: (a scream) Yes!
(He separates the Queen of Swords from the rest. After finishing with the Swords, he begins placing each of the other suits of cards in the correct order.)
SON: So what did Mitch say after that?
MOTHER: What could she say? She's there for a reason. We all know why she's there. Her job is to try to drive the department heads that are left to quit so the company won't have to pay them full severance pay.
(MOTHER pauses as she gets up with her empty glass and then heads for the refrigerator. She walks with an obvious limp.)
MOTHER: I've had to fight with Mitch constantly. Tooth and nail. We've only been on this new system a week and a half. One time she found out that the bills weren't being dropped. We don't print them. All we do is put the information into the computer. It wasn't our fault that the bills weren't being dropped. Accounting was supposed to come and drop the bills.
(She opens the refrigerator, fills her glass and then closes the refrigerator.)
SON: Did you tell her that?
MOTHER: She loved having an excuse to barge into my office again and begin screaming at me, saying "I hear you haven't been doing your job."
(She sits down again.)
MOTHER: I was so mad that I just started to cry. I didn't know what to say. I mean it was so unfair. I had been busting my buns to make the changeover go smoothly. I wanted to tell her to drop dead but I was too mad to talk to her. I just ran for the ladies room. It was so humiliating.
(She is becoming more distressed.)
MOTHER: It was a whole new system for all of us and we were given no instructions. Nobody knew a thing. Anyway, she knew how difficult it was all and, still, it was a well-run department. That was the first thing we always did. Get our bills out. Even with the nuns. And then, to have her come in there and start screaming like that. I was going to leave when she did that. But then Joan made me come out of the ladies room and told me not to leave. She said I wouldn't qualify for unemployment insurance if I did that.
SON: Did this ladies room episode happen the Friday you came home early?
MOTHER: No, that was the day before. Then on Friday I told the new Controller that I had to leave at noon on personal business. He didn't say right away that I couldn't go. Why didn't he say right away that I couldn't go? I imagine after our talk he discussed it with Mitch because that's the way they operate. The next thing I know Pat's in my office bringing the message that if I left at noon I should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
SON: Personal business? So why did you leave early?
MOTHER: Because if they're going to fire me, they might as well go and do it now and get it over with, so I can get on with my life.
(pause)
MOTHER: Don't you worry.
SON: I'm not worried.
MOTHER: I know I can get another job. I want money. Money money money. I'll never be like your father. I could never sit home all day watching TV. My brain needs more stimulation than that. I am a woman of action. I was one of the first of the new breed of career women. I didn't have any choice. I had to work because your father refused to.
SON: If you're fired, what about the other people in the department? What will they do without you?
MOTHER: I'm sure they'll get somebody in there who does just as well as I did.
SON: They won't get paid as much either.
MOTHER: True. They will have somebody in there, one of those smart asses just out of school who don't know their dingalings from their ding-dongs.
(a beat)
At least after they fire me maybe I'll be able to get a good night's sleep again.
SON: You can't sleep?
MOTHER: I go to sleep early and then I wake up around midnight and from then on all I can do is think of what I can do. Things drift through my mind.
SON: What I try to do in life is not to always be caught up in my exterior reality and not lose sight of my internal reality. I try not to worry about everything. You've always reacted emotionally to things first instead of intellectually.
MOTHER: So much has happened so quickly at the hospital that it makes my head spin.
SON: I still don't understand why you left early on Friday.
MOTHER: I told you. I told him I was leaving early because I wanted him to threaten me with being fired. I wanted to see if they expected me to be a slave who always says yes master, yes master, yes master.
SON: Well you found out.
MOTHER: If I have to do that, I'll do that for somebody. Only I won't do it for this corporation. Certainly not for that Mitch. Do you know what we call her? Mitch the bitch. I think it will be on Monday that I get my pink slip. They would have done it last Friday, I think, if I hadn't left early. They'll have to give me all the vacation pay I have coming.
SON: How much vacation pay do you have coming?
MOTHER: Five months.
SON: Great.
MOTHER: And two weeks severance pay.
SON: That's a lot of money.
MOTHER: It is not.
SON: How long would that last you if you're unemployed?
MOTHER: A while but I would never touch my money in the bank. My IRA's already netted me three hundred and forty-five dollars and thirty-two cents. I will not touch my savings. Even if I have to go to Bullocks and get a job down there, which I know I won't have to do. There are plenty of hospitals around. I think older women are more reliable than kids straight out of college. Young girls meet men, have babies, want to improve their circumstances constantly.
SON: Why didn't you do those things?
MOTHER: Are you kidding? You mean again? After the divorce? It wasn't that I gave up on men. I just didn't want to go through it all over again. I had enough to worry about just taking care of you kids.
SON: Well shall we begin?
(He keeps the stack of the Major Arcana separate from the other cards, placing each suit of Minor Arcana cards on top of one another without any shuffling.
He removes one of the cards and sets it at the edge of the table.)
MOTHER: I guess I can forget about watching the news and you can forget about "The Honeymooners."
SON: It's not on Sunday, anyway. I don't know why you watch the news all the time.
MOTHER: You never know when there's going to be another meltdown or something and I was hoping they would rerun the story about the angry squirrel.
SON: Did you say squirrel?
MOTHER: Yeah, on the six o'clock news they told you about this insane squirrel over in the Hollywood Hills. The squirrel ran up the back of a woman's dress and bit her on the neck. "I'm still sore," she said, "and I'm not the only one who's been bitten."”
(pause)
MOTHER: This squirrel has been terrorizing their neighborhood. The woman told the reporter that she had called the police and animal control but the authorities were downplaying the problem.
SON: They always do.
MOTHER: People living on the woman's block ran away whenever they saw the squirrel.
SON: So what happened?
MOTHER: Somebody from Animal Control shot it out of a tree with some chloroform.
(SON reacts with surprise.)
MOTHER: He took the squirrel away. Either it died in the fall or is under observation. The TV reporter also interviewed the man from animal control and he said he wanted to point out that the squirrel didn't have rabies. He said that it would be far more likely for a meteor to fall on our heads right now than for the squirrel to have had rabies.
SON: Really?
MOTHER: Who knows? He also explained that this is the time of the year when squirrels are protecting their young. Apparently, there have been other reports of squirrel attacks over the years and they all happened in the spring.
SON: If that story comes on again, let me know. Do they show footage of the squirrel?
MOTHER: You don't really get to see it. They flash on these black and white front and profile shots like the kind they take of somebody in jail. They're very grainy. It looks just like an ordinary squirrel.
SON: It's just as well. I don't like watching the news. There are so many terrible things that happen in the world. I always get depressed when I watch the news. They never show good things.
MOTHER: I know what you mean. I had to turn the TV off last week when they were reporting about what happened to that little girl who was missing.
SON: Was she dead?
MOTHER: Of course! And she had been molested, they said, which means she had been raped. And tortured.
SON: Spare me the details.
MOTHER: Can you believe it? I mean this was a five or six-year-old little girl.
SON: Are we going to get started or not?
MOTHER: I'm ready when you are.
SON: Once again you can put aside all the sadness, horror and pettiness that eats away at your day-to-day life and catch a glimpse of the larger scheme of things.
MOTHER: Amen. But I hope there won't be any . . . errors.
SON: There can be an interpretation that is incorrect.
MOTHER: There's a card reader who also reads palms over on Lake Avenue. I bet she doesn't make mistakes. She's within walking distance.
SON: Not with your gout.
MOTHER: Slap! Don't start in. Stop jawwing at me.
SON: You never listen to anything I say, anyway.
(MOTHER notices the card separated from the others that is face-up on the table.)
MOTHER: What does this card mean?
(She holds it up to get a better look at it.)
SON: That's you. I selected a card that represents you as the Questioner. The Queen of Swords.
(He takes the card from her and places it at the center of the space between them on the table.)
MOTHER: I don't think that's fair. I think I should be able to choose my own card. Maybe I want to be King.
SON: All women over the age of thirty are Queens. Don't you want to be a queen?
MOTHER: I thought all men under thirty were Queens.
SON: Stop it. Only you would make a joke like that.
MOTHER: Well I don't understand why I have to be the Queen of Swords. I would like to know why you as the Preceptor – why did you pick this card for me instead of another Queen?
SON: Because it is the appropriate card. For example, the Queen of Wands is a dark countrywoman. You're not a dark countrywoman. I'll read you what the Queen of Swords represents.
(He flips through pages of the Gray paperback.)
SON: Here she is.
(reading from the book)
SON: "Queen of Swords. On a high throne, looking into a clouded sky, sits a queen with a raised sword in her left hand. This suggests, 'Let those who approach who dare!' Her crown and the base of her throne are decorated with the butterflies of the soul, and just under the arm of the throne we find a sylph, the elemental of the air. The queen's face is chastened through suffering.
"Choose this card for a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman.
"Divinatory meaning: A subtle, keen, and quick-witted woman who may represent a widow or one who is unable to bear children. Perhaps she is mourning for those she loves who are far away from her.
"This card may mean widowhood, mourning, privation. Kindness but also firmness. Keen observation. Gracefulness; fondness for dancing."
MOTHER: What about the other queens.
SON: This part of it isn't that big of deal.
MOTHER: Bullshit. I'll pick my own.
SON: You should trust me. By the way, the Tarot card reader can be called the Diviner.
MOTHER: Pfffffffff!
SON: Okay, listen to this.
(He chooses the Waite paperback with a shorter description.)
SON: (reading) "Pentacles. Queen. The face suggests that of a dark woman whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein. Divinatory meanings: Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.”
(studying her reaction)
SON: This card definitely doesn't relate to you.
MOTHER: Okay, so what's the next one?
SON: Then there's the Queen of Wands. The dark countrywoman.
(He turns to the right page and skims the definition.)
SON: (reading) "Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King but –"
MOTHER: I don't need any King. Forget that one.
SON: The only other Queen is that of . . . let's see now. Wands, Pentacles and of course Swords. The last Queen is that of Cups.
(He turns to the page.)
MOTHER: You mean there are only four queens?
SON: Just like with regular playing cards. Here she is.
(reading after turning to the right page)
"Beautiful, fair, dreamy — as one who sees visions in a cup. This is, however, only one of her aspects; she sees, but she also acts, and her activity feeds her dream. Divinatory meanings: Good, fair woman; honest, devoted woman, who will do service to the Querent; loving intelligence, and hence the gift of vision; success, happiness, pleasure; also wisdom, virtue; a perfect spouse and a good mother."
MOTHER: Hey, that's me.
SON: "Beautiful, fair, dreamy?"
MOTHER: Yes!
SON: "As one who sees visions in a cup?"
MOTHER: Definitely. Of course.
SON: What do you see in a cup? You only see beer in a cup.
MOTHER: Put it down.
SON: The Diviner decides what card is appropriate.
MOTHER: I should choose a card for you.
SON: That isn't necessary for the Diviner. Just the Questioner.
(He places the Queen of Swords card back into its place in the deck and removes the Queen of Cups card and puts it on the table.)
SON: I'll let the Queen of Cups represent you this time but you're just being silly and not being cooperative.
(pause)
Now you're supposed to begin concentrating on the questions you want answered. You can close your eyes if it will help.
MOTHER: You know what I want to learn. What will happen on Monday.
SON: You seem to have indicated that you already know that. I don't think you should have left on Friday. Especially when they told you not to.
MOTHER: I don't care. I wasn't going to let them get away with those Gestapo tactics. I won't be treated that way.
SON: When you work for a profit-making company, you can't have much of an ego. Forget about the way things used to be when the nuns were there.
MOTHER: My department is still the best-run department in the hospital.
SON: Consider it from the point of view of the new administrators. They think about things like how often you're sick and how obstinate a staff member can be.
(MOTHER purses her lip. She doesn't want to think about the new administration.)
SON: This has been a bad year for you. I remember how active you used to be. You went bowling. You would go to the beauty parlor, have lunch with the girls, go to movies with the girls but now that your gout is so bad what you mostly do is watch television when you're home. Game shows and the prime time soap operas.
MOTHER: All you do is stay in your room and read so I don't know why you should be complaining that I don't go out enough. Working at that hellhole, I don't have energy for anything else. I didn't come here to argue.
SON: I'm not trying to argue. Now concentrate as you shuffle the cards.
(He begins to hand them to her but then has an idea and takes them away before she can grasp them.)
SON: I've been thinking. Tonight I'll do a reading from just the Allegory cards, the Major Arcana, to place the whole of your life in perspective instead of just what will happen next week. The word Arcana comes from the Latin word meaning secret.
(He separates the Major Arcana cards from the rest and holds them up.)
SON: Sometimes the Major Arcana cards are also referred to as 'Enigmas.'
MOTHER: What are the number cards called?
SON: They're called the Minor Arcana.
MOTHER: Where do the Queens fit in?
SON: Into the Minor Arcana with the number cards along with the Kings and Pages and Knights but all of these aren't as significant as the Allegory cards. Tonight we'll just use the Major Arcana cards and see what the Tarot . . . knows about you.
MOTHER: I'm afraid of the Death card turning up. It must increase the chances of the Death card appearing.
SON: The Death card doesn't necessarily signify Death.
(He puts the Minor Arcana cards into the box and places the Major Arcana cards on the table in front of her.)
MOTHER: I hope you know what you're doing.
SON: I've been researching Tarot cards for a while.
MOTHER: You always bring out those two cheap paperbacks.
SON: Just for convenience. I haven't memorized the meanings of all the cards and like life the meanings change along with man's knowledge, perceptions and civilization. It is the sequence that can make a meaning become evident. The Major Arcana are the most significant cards of the Tarot. They show the ever-changing physical and spiritual forces influencing man. They're like a catalog of life's major events and possibilities. The Reader can elect to use only the Major Arcana cards in a reading if he wants to.
MOTHER: That's what I am?
SON: Of course not. You're the Questioner, remember. The Reader is another name for the Diviner, which is the word I prefer. Another name for you, the Questioner, is the Querent.
(a beat)
SON: Now concentrate hard as you shuffle the cards and say to yourself that you want to see the secrets of your life revealed.
MOTHER: I don't know if I want to.
(pause)
MOTHER: Should I say it out loud?
SON: If that will help you. It might make it easier for you to concentrate. Especially after drinking too much beer again.
MOTHER: Shusssh.
(She shuffles the cards slowly.)
MOTHER: Show me my future. I want to find out what's going to happen to me.
SON: Close your eyes and concentrate about the cards showing you important aspects of your life, past present and future.
MOTHER: All I care about is the future.
SON: That's ridiculous. The future is built upon the past and the present.
(Her eyes closed, MOTHER almost drops some cards while she shuffles. This causing her to open her eyes again.)
MOTHER: Oops.
SON: Be careful. Some people think if cards get turned upside down, it reverses their meaning and can get very complicated —
MOTHER: Christ!
SON: — although I personally don't see it that way. I consider the different meanings as polarities.
(pause)
SON: It's also a good idea to ask that only the highest forces should surround us.
MOTHER: What does that mean?
SON: It's something I remember reading in one of the books.
MOTHER: Well you just said it so I guess I don't have to.
(Finished shuffling, she puts down the small stack of Major Arcana cards.)
MOTHER: There. I'm ready.
(She takes a sip from her glass.)
SON: Remember that the cards never lie.
MOTHER: No, but it seems they can be misinterpreted. Where did they come from?
SON: Nobody knows for sure. It's a mystery.
MOTHER: If nobody knows where they come from, how do they know they're really magic?
SON: They've been popular for centuries. They were prominent in Europe as far back as the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century. An Eighteenth Century French writer claimed the Tarot cards could be the lost Egyptian Book of Thoth. It seems that we have generations of Gypsy fortune tellers to thank for preserving the meanings of the cards or perhaps some other initiates were involved. Thoth was the Egyptian god of wisdom and the occult.
MOTHER: I've always loved anything having to do with Egypt. Remember when we saw the King Tut exhibit at the museum?
SON: The only thing that can be said for certain about the cards is that there must be some kind of what you call magic about them to still be around after so many centuries.
MOTHER: People really do take them seriously?
SON: Not everyone but many do.
MOTHER: (mystified) How could the cards work?
SON: Have you ever heard the expression "Collective Unconscious"? When you were shuffling the cards, it was your subconscious mind that was leading you. The cards are fatalistic. It's all according to the realization that everything in nature is interrelated and nothing is insignificant.
MOTHER: Like when we go to a Chinese restaurant and get a fortune inside the cookie?
SON: In some way.
MOTHER: I don't remember what my last fortune cookie said.
SON: (irked) I remember mine. It said "Someone you've been hoping to meet you never will." These types of experiences are perhaps signs to us of our place in the cosmos and a revelation of how the pattern of one's life connects with all the other patterns of people's lives.
MOTHER: But do Tarot cards and fortune cookies reveal the future or just one of many different possible futures?
SON: What a dumb question. You remind me of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol."
MOTHER: What's so dumb about it?
SON: The Tarot suggests that the future is already known.
(a beat)
SON: By the 'Collective Unconscious' and from that perspective there are no variables.
MOTHER: Why not. What about the past? I've seen TV shows where people go back in time to change things.
SON: You're talking about commercial popular diversion for the masses.
MOTHER: But it makes you think?
SON: I don't believe in time being variable. You certainly can't travel through it. Perhaps these cards could help one to change his or her own future. By heeding a warning, one might change one's behavior in relation to the knowledge that is being sought. Look at time also as a philosophical chronology. In terms of human existence there is only and always a 'right now.'
MOTHER: Even when it sounds like you're being practical, I don't know if you are. Are the cards or are they not supernatural?
SON: What does the expression 'supernatural' mean? It combines 'super' with 'nature.' That means 'beyond nature.' Surpassing it. Yet everything is part of nature beyond our ability to understand. There are phenomena beyond our understanding. Like ESP and ghosts and UFOs and prophecy. There are strange accounts of unusual people who have access to knowledge of the future. Have you ever heard of Nostradamus, Mother Shipton or Edgar Cayce?
MOTHER: Nostradamus I have.
SON: The Tarot cards help the Diviner to intuitively interpret the cards. Human beings are supposed to be smarter than the other animals but when it comes to important stuff like life after death, we don't know a thing. There is a vast esoteric horde of esoteric literature that goes ignored because — because why?
MOTHER: Sometimes people get lucky when they make predictions. You can predict just about anything and in this crazy world it will happen sooner or later. I heard about a man who predicted an airplane crash by simply making a chart of the timespans in-between disasters.
SON: What about hunches? Premonitions. You hear those kinds of stories all the time? Haven't you ever had a feeling that something bad was going to happen?
MOTHER: You know that I have! It was that time when you boys wanted to see that horror movie "Tales From The Crypt" and dragged me to the theatre to see it with you. While watching the movie I had the oddest feeling. And that was the night that the father of your best friend when you were in elementary school died. That was a premonition!
(pause)
MOTHER: Sometimes when people predict things it's just a matter of guessing right. They get lucky. Just like when you gamble.
SON: How ironic that so many people spend their time playing Poker and Blackjack instead of thinking about Tarot cards.
MOTHER: What about crystal balls? Do you think crystal balls can show somebody the future?
SON: Looking into a crystal ball stimulates the mind. Similarly a Tarot card reader is stimulated by thinking about the meanings and symbols of the cards. We can even enter into a light trance state and delve into that strange abyss that we call the subconscious mind. But I must admit when I've looked into a crystal ball I couldn't see anything unusual.
MOTHER: The first day she came in was over a week ago and even then she turned on me. I was down having a meeting with a new company officer and she comes walking in and I was answering questions. It was my first meeting with this man, and she jumps in and says why don't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And then he comes back later and he says that what I'm doing is obsolete and why don't you do it this way. This is the system we want. And I told him that wasn't what I had been told –
SON: By your previous bosses.
MOTHER: (a scream) Yes!
(He separates the Queen of Swords from the rest. After finishing with the Swords, he begins placing each of the other suits of cards in the correct order.)
SON: So what did Mitch say after that?
MOTHER: What could she say? She's there for a reason. We all know why she's there. Her job is to try to drive the department heads that are left to quit so the company won't have to pay them full severance pay.
(MOTHER pauses as she gets up with her empty glass and then heads for the refrigerator. She walks with an obvious limp.)
MOTHER: I've had to fight with Mitch constantly. Tooth and nail. We've only been on this new system a week and a half. One time she found out that the bills weren't being dropped. We don't print them. All we do is put the information into the computer. It wasn't our fault that the bills weren't being dropped. Accounting was supposed to come and drop the bills.
(She opens the refrigerator, fills her glass and then closes the refrigerator.)
SON: Did you tell her that?
MOTHER: She loved having an excuse to barge into my office again and begin screaming at me, saying "I hear you haven't been doing your job."
(She sits down again.)
MOTHER: I was so mad that I just started to cry. I didn't know what to say. I mean it was so unfair. I had been busting my buns to make the changeover go smoothly. I wanted to tell her to drop dead but I was too mad to talk to her. I just ran for the ladies room. It was so humiliating.
(She is becoming more distressed.)
MOTHER: It was a whole new system for all of us and we were given no instructions. Nobody knew a thing. Anyway, she knew how difficult it was all and, still, it was a well-run department. That was the first thing we always did. Get our bills out. Even with the nuns. And then, to have her come in there and start screaming like that. I was going to leave when she did that. But then Joan made me come out of the ladies room and told me not to leave. She said I wouldn't qualify for unemployment insurance if I did that.
SON: Did this ladies room episode happen the Friday you came home early?
MOTHER: No, that was the day before. Then on Friday I told the new Controller that I had to leave at noon on personal business. He didn't say right away that I couldn't go. Why didn't he say right away that I couldn't go? I imagine after our talk he discussed it with Mitch because that's the way they operate. The next thing I know Pat's in my office bringing the message that if I left at noon I should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
SON: Personal business? So why did you leave early?
MOTHER: Because if they're going to fire me, they might as well go and do it now and get it over with, so I can get on with my life.
(pause)
MOTHER: Don't you worry.
SON: I'm not worried.
MOTHER: I know I can get another job. I want money. Money money money. I'll never be like your father. I could never sit home all day watching TV. My brain needs more stimulation than that. I am a woman of action. I was one of the first of the new breed of career women. I didn't have any choice. I had to work because your father refused to.
SON: If you're fired, what about the other people in the department? What will they do without you?
MOTHER: I'm sure they'll get somebody in there who does just as well as I did.
SON: They won't get paid as much either.
MOTHER: True. They will have somebody in there, one of those smart asses just out of school who don't know their dingalings from their ding-dongs.
(a beat)
At least after they fire me maybe I'll be able to get a good night's sleep again.
SON: You can't sleep?
MOTHER: I go to sleep early and then I wake up around midnight and from then on all I can do is think of what I can do. Things drift through my mind.
SON: What I try to do in life is not to always be caught up in my exterior reality and not lose sight of my internal reality. I try not to worry about everything. You've always reacted emotionally to things first instead of intellectually.
MOTHER: So much has happened so quickly at the hospital that it makes my head spin.
SON: I still don't understand why you left early on Friday.
MOTHER: I told you. I told him I was leaving early because I wanted him to threaten me with being fired. I wanted to see if they expected me to be a slave who always says yes master, yes master, yes master.
SON: Well you found out.
MOTHER: If I have to do that, I'll do that for somebody. Only I won't do it for this corporation. Certainly not for that Mitch. Do you know what we call her? Mitch the bitch. I think it will be on Monday that I get my pink slip. They would have done it last Friday, I think, if I hadn't left early. They'll have to give me all the vacation pay I have coming.
SON: How much vacation pay do you have coming?
MOTHER: Five months.
SON: Great.
MOTHER: And two weeks severance pay.
SON: That's a lot of money.
MOTHER: It is not.
SON: How long would that last you if you're unemployed?
MOTHER: A while but I would never touch my money in the bank. My IRA's already netted me three hundred and forty-five dollars and thirty-two cents. I will not touch my savings. Even if I have to go to Bullocks and get a job down there, which I know I won't have to do. There are plenty of hospitals around. I think older women are more reliable than kids straight out of college. Young girls meet men, have babies, want to improve their circumstances constantly.
SON: Why didn't you do those things?
MOTHER: Are you kidding? You mean again? After the divorce? It wasn't that I gave up on men. I just didn't want to go through it all over again. I had enough to worry about just taking care of you kids.
SON: Well shall we begin?
(He keeps the stack of the Major Arcana separate from the other cards, placing each suit of Minor Arcana cards on top of one another without any shuffling.
He removes one of the cards and sets it at the edge of the table.)
MOTHER: I guess I can forget about watching the news and you can forget about "The Honeymooners."
SON: It's not on Sunday, anyway. I don't know why you watch the news all the time.
MOTHER: You never know when there's going to be another meltdown or something and I was hoping they would rerun the story about the angry squirrel.
SON: Did you say squirrel?
MOTHER: Yeah, on the six o'clock news they told you about this insane squirrel over in the Hollywood Hills. The squirrel ran up the back of a woman's dress and bit her on the neck. "I'm still sore," she said, "and I'm not the only one who's been bitten."”
(pause)
MOTHER: This squirrel has been terrorizing their neighborhood. The woman told the reporter that she had called the police and animal control but the authorities were downplaying the problem.
SON: They always do.
MOTHER: People living on the woman's block ran away whenever they saw the squirrel.
SON: So what happened?
MOTHER: Somebody from Animal Control shot it out of a tree with some chloroform.
(SON reacts with surprise.)
MOTHER: He took the squirrel away. Either it died in the fall or is under observation. The TV reporter also interviewed the man from animal control and he said he wanted to point out that the squirrel didn't have rabies. He said that it would be far more likely for a meteor to fall on our heads right now than for the squirrel to have had rabies.
SON: Really?
MOTHER: Who knows? He also explained that this is the time of the year when squirrels are protecting their young. Apparently, there have been other reports of squirrel attacks over the years and they all happened in the spring.
SON: If that story comes on again, let me know. Do they show footage of the squirrel?
MOTHER: You don't really get to see it. They flash on these black and white front and profile shots like the kind they take of somebody in jail. They're very grainy. It looks just like an ordinary squirrel.
SON: It's just as well. I don't like watching the news. There are so many terrible things that happen in the world. I always get depressed when I watch the news. They never show good things.
MOTHER: I know what you mean. I had to turn the TV off last week when they were reporting about what happened to that little girl who was missing.
SON: Was she dead?
MOTHER: Of course! And she had been molested, they said, which means she had been raped. And tortured.
SON: Spare me the details.
MOTHER: Can you believe it? I mean this was a five or six-year-old little girl.
SON: Are we going to get started or not?
MOTHER: I'm ready when you are.
SON: Once again you can put aside all the sadness, horror and pettiness that eats away at your day-to-day life and catch a glimpse of the larger scheme of things.
MOTHER: Amen. But I hope there won't be any . . . errors.
SON: There can be an interpretation that is incorrect.
MOTHER: There's a card reader who also reads palms over on Lake Avenue. I bet she doesn't make mistakes. She's within walking distance.
SON: Not with your gout.
MOTHER: Slap! Don't start in. Stop jawwing at me.
SON: You never listen to anything I say, anyway.
(MOTHER notices the card separated from the others that is face-up on the table.)
MOTHER: What does this card mean?
(She holds it up to get a better look at it.)
SON: That's you. I selected a card that represents you as the Questioner. The Queen of Swords.
(He takes the card from her and places it at the center of the space between them on the table.)
MOTHER: I don't think that's fair. I think I should be able to choose my own card. Maybe I want to be King.
SON: All women over the age of thirty are Queens. Don't you want to be a queen?
MOTHER: I thought all men under thirty were Queens.
SON: Stop it. Only you would make a joke like that.
MOTHER: Well I don't understand why I have to be the Queen of Swords. I would like to know why you as the Preceptor – why did you pick this card for me instead of another Queen?
SON: Because it is the appropriate card. For example, the Queen of Wands is a dark countrywoman. You're not a dark countrywoman. I'll read you what the Queen of Swords represents.
(He flips through pages of the Gray paperback.)
SON: Here she is.
(reading from the book)
SON: "Queen of Swords. On a high throne, looking into a clouded sky, sits a queen with a raised sword in her left hand. This suggests, 'Let those who approach who dare!' Her crown and the base of her throne are decorated with the butterflies of the soul, and just under the arm of the throne we find a sylph, the elemental of the air. The queen's face is chastened through suffering.
"Choose this card for a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman.
"Divinatory meaning: A subtle, keen, and quick-witted woman who may represent a widow or one who is unable to bear children. Perhaps she is mourning for those she loves who are far away from her.
"This card may mean widowhood, mourning, privation. Kindness but also firmness. Keen observation. Gracefulness; fondness for dancing."
MOTHER: What about the other queens.
SON: This part of it isn't that big of deal.
MOTHER: Bullshit. I'll pick my own.
SON: You should trust me. By the way, the Tarot card reader can be called the Diviner.
MOTHER: Pfffffffff!
SON: Okay, listen to this.
(He chooses the Waite paperback with a shorter description.)
SON: (reading) "Pentacles. Queen. The face suggests that of a dark woman whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein. Divinatory meanings: Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.”
(studying her reaction)
SON: This card definitely doesn't relate to you.
MOTHER: Okay, so what's the next one?
SON: Then there's the Queen of Wands. The dark countrywoman.
(He turns to the right page and skims the definition.)
SON: (reading) "Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King but –"
MOTHER: I don't need any King. Forget that one.
SON: The only other Queen is that of . . . let's see now. Wands, Pentacles and of course Swords. The last Queen is that of Cups.
(He turns to the page.)
MOTHER: You mean there are only four queens?
SON: Just like with regular playing cards. Here she is.
(reading after turning to the right page)
"Beautiful, fair, dreamy — as one who sees visions in a cup. This is, however, only one of her aspects; she sees, but she also acts, and her activity feeds her dream. Divinatory meanings: Good, fair woman; honest, devoted woman, who will do service to the Querent; loving intelligence, and hence the gift of vision; success, happiness, pleasure; also wisdom, virtue; a perfect spouse and a good mother."
MOTHER: Hey, that's me.
SON: "Beautiful, fair, dreamy?"
MOTHER: Yes!
SON: "As one who sees visions in a cup?"
MOTHER: Definitely. Of course.
SON: What do you see in a cup? You only see beer in a cup.
MOTHER: Put it down.
SON: The Diviner decides what card is appropriate.
MOTHER: I should choose a card for you.
SON: That isn't necessary for the Diviner. Just the Questioner.
(He places the Queen of Swords card back into its place in the deck and removes the Queen of Cups card and puts it on the table.)
SON: I'll let the Queen of Cups represent you this time but you're just being silly and not being cooperative.
(pause)
Now you're supposed to begin concentrating on the questions you want answered. You can close your eyes if it will help.
MOTHER: You know what I want to learn. What will happen on Monday.
SON: You seem to have indicated that you already know that. I don't think you should have left on Friday. Especially when they told you not to.
MOTHER: I don't care. I wasn't going to let them get away with those Gestapo tactics. I won't be treated that way.
SON: When you work for a profit-making company, you can't have much of an ego. Forget about the way things used to be when the nuns were there.
MOTHER: My department is still the best-run department in the hospital.
SON: Consider it from the point of view of the new administrators. They think about things like how often you're sick and how obstinate a staff member can be.
(MOTHER purses her lip. She doesn't want to think about the new administration.)
SON: This has been a bad year for you. I remember how active you used to be. You went bowling. You would go to the beauty parlor, have lunch with the girls, go to movies with the girls but now that your gout is so bad what you mostly do is watch television when you're home. Game shows and the prime time soap operas.
MOTHER: All you do is stay in your room and read so I don't know why you should be complaining that I don't go out enough. Working at that hellhole, I don't have energy for anything else. I didn't come here to argue.
SON: I'm not trying to argue. Now concentrate as you shuffle the cards.
(He begins to hand them to her but then has an idea and takes them away before she can grasp them.)
SON: I've been thinking. Tonight I'll do a reading from just the Allegory cards, the Major Arcana, to place the whole of your life in perspective instead of just what will happen next week. The word Arcana comes from the Latin word meaning secret.
(He separates the Major Arcana cards from the rest and holds them up.)
SON: Sometimes the Major Arcana cards are also referred to as 'Enigmas.'
MOTHER: What are the number cards called?
SON: They're called the Minor Arcana.
MOTHER: Where do the Queens fit in?
SON: Into the Minor Arcana with the number cards along with the Kings and Pages and Knights but all of these aren't as significant as the Allegory cards. Tonight we'll just use the Major Arcana cards and see what the Tarot . . . knows about you.
MOTHER: I'm afraid of the Death card turning up. It must increase the chances of the Death card appearing.
SON: The Death card doesn't necessarily signify Death.
(He puts the Minor Arcana cards into the box and places the Major Arcana cards on the table in front of her.)
MOTHER: I hope you know what you're doing.
SON: I've been researching Tarot cards for a while.
MOTHER: You always bring out those two cheap paperbacks.
SON: Just for convenience. I haven't memorized the meanings of all the cards and like life the meanings change along with man's knowledge, perceptions and civilization. It is the sequence that can make a meaning become evident. The Major Arcana are the most significant cards of the Tarot. They show the ever-changing physical and spiritual forces influencing man. They're like a catalog of life's major events and possibilities. The Reader can elect to use only the Major Arcana cards in a reading if he wants to.
MOTHER: That's what I am?
SON: Of course not. You're the Questioner, remember. The Reader is another name for the Diviner, which is the word I prefer. Another name for you, the Questioner, is the Querent.
(a beat)
SON: Now concentrate hard as you shuffle the cards and say to yourself that you want to see the secrets of your life revealed.
MOTHER: I don't know if I want to.
(pause)
MOTHER: Should I say it out loud?
SON: If that will help you. It might make it easier for you to concentrate. Especially after drinking too much beer again.
MOTHER: Shusssh.
(She shuffles the cards slowly.)
MOTHER: Show me my future. I want to find out what's going to happen to me.
SON: Close your eyes and concentrate about the cards showing you important aspects of your life, past present and future.
MOTHER: All I care about is the future.
SON: That's ridiculous. The future is built upon the past and the present.
(Her eyes closed, MOTHER almost drops some cards while she shuffles. This causing her to open her eyes again.)
MOTHER: Oops.
SON: Be careful. Some people think if cards get turned upside down, it reverses their meaning and can get very complicated —
MOTHER: Christ!
SON: — although I personally don't see it that way. I consider the different meanings as polarities.
(pause)
SON: It's also a good idea to ask that only the highest forces should surround us.
MOTHER: What does that mean?
SON: It's something I remember reading in one of the books.
MOTHER: Well you just said it so I guess I don't have to.
(Finished shuffling, she puts down the small stack of Major Arcana cards.)
MOTHER: There. I'm ready.
(She takes a sip from her glass.)
SON: Remember that the cards never lie.
MOTHER: No, but it seems they can be misinterpreted. Where did they come from?
SON: Nobody knows for sure. It's a mystery.
MOTHER: If nobody knows where they come from, how do they know they're really magic?
SON: They've been popular for centuries. They were prominent in Europe as far back as the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century. An Eighteenth Century French writer claimed the Tarot cards could be the lost Egyptian Book of Thoth. It seems that we have generations of Gypsy fortune tellers to thank for preserving the meanings of the cards or perhaps some other initiates were involved. Thoth was the Egyptian god of wisdom and the occult.
MOTHER: I've always loved anything having to do with Egypt. Remember when we saw the King Tut exhibit at the museum?
SON: The only thing that can be said for certain about the cards is that there must be some kind of what you call magic about them to still be around after so many centuries.
MOTHER: People really do take them seriously?
SON: Not everyone but many do.
MOTHER: (mystified) How could the cards work?
SON: Have you ever heard the expression "Collective Unconscious"? When you were shuffling the cards, it was your subconscious mind that was leading you. The cards are fatalistic. It's all according to the realization that everything in nature is interrelated and nothing is insignificant.
MOTHER: Like when we go to a Chinese restaurant and get a fortune inside the cookie?
SON: In some way.
MOTHER: I don't remember what my last fortune cookie said.
SON: (irked) I remember mine. It said "Someone you've been hoping to meet you never will." These types of experiences are perhaps signs to us of our place in the cosmos and a revelation of how the pattern of one's life connects with all the other patterns of people's lives.
MOTHER: But do Tarot cards and fortune cookies reveal the future or just one of many different possible futures?
SON: What a dumb question. You remind me of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol."
MOTHER: What's so dumb about it?
SON: The Tarot suggests that the future is already known.
(a beat)
SON: By the 'Collective Unconscious' and from that perspective there are no variables.
MOTHER: Why not. What about the past? I've seen TV shows where people go back in time to change things.
SON: You're talking about commercial popular diversion for the masses.
MOTHER: But it makes you think?
SON: I don't believe in time being variable. You certainly can't travel through it. Perhaps these cards could help one to change his or her own future. By heeding a warning, one might change one's behavior in relation to the knowledge that is being sought. Look at time also as a philosophical chronology. In terms of human existence there is only and always a 'right now.'
MOTHER: Even when it sounds like you're being practical, I don't know if you are. Are the cards or are they not supernatural?
SON: What does the expression 'supernatural' mean? It combines 'super' with 'nature.' That means 'beyond nature.' Surpassing it. Yet everything is part of nature beyond our ability to understand. There are phenomena beyond our understanding. Like ESP and ghosts and UFOs and prophecy. There are strange accounts of unusual people who have access to knowledge of the future. Have you ever heard of Nostradamus, Mother Shipton or Edgar Cayce?
MOTHER: Nostradamus I have.
SON: The Tarot cards help the Diviner to intuitively interpret the cards. Human beings are supposed to be smarter than the other animals but when it comes to important stuff like life after death, we don't know a thing. There is a vast esoteric horde of esoteric literature that goes ignored because — because why?
MOTHER: Sometimes people get lucky when they make predictions. You can predict just about anything and in this crazy world it will happen sooner or later. I heard about a man who predicted an airplane crash by simply making a chart of the timespans in-between disasters.
SON: What about hunches? Premonitions. You hear those kinds of stories all the time? Haven't you ever had a feeling that something bad was going to happen?
MOTHER: You know that I have! It was that time when you boys wanted to see that horror movie "Tales From The Crypt" and dragged me to the theatre to see it with you. While watching the movie I had the oddest feeling. And that was the night that the father of your best friend when you were in elementary school died. That was a premonition!
(pause)
MOTHER: Sometimes when people predict things it's just a matter of guessing right. They get lucky. Just like when you gamble.
SON: How ironic that so many people spend their time playing Poker and Blackjack instead of thinking about Tarot cards.
MOTHER: What about crystal balls? Do you think crystal balls can show somebody the future?
SON: Looking into a crystal ball stimulates the mind. Similarly a Tarot card reader is stimulated by thinking about the meanings and symbols of the cards. We can even enter into a light trance state and delve into that strange abyss that we call the subconscious mind. But I must admit when I've looked into a crystal ball I couldn't see anything unusual.
(pause)
MOTHER: Tarot cards might be a good hobby if you could start finding some paying customers.
SON: I wouldn't want to be a professional Tarot Card Reader. That would be too scary when you consider karma.
(MOTHER takes another sip.)
MOTHER: Do you want some Cherry Coke?
SON: Not this late. The caffeine would keep me up too late and I'm working tomorrow morning.
MOTHER: Screw tomorrow. I'm getting you some Cherry Coke.
SON: I don't want any Cherry Coke. I've already brushed and flossed my teeth. I don't want to have to do it again.
MOTHER: Okay, okay.
SON: (vaguely) That's another subject it never does any good to go into.
MOTHER: (emphatically) I'm ready.
SON: Close your eyes and concentrate.
MOTHER: I already did.
SON: Just do it. As I interpret the cards, you should interpret my interpretation because you know more about your own life than I do.
MOTHER: All right. (speaking with her eyes closed) I'll never forget that time when you were just thirteen or fourteen and tried to hold a seance with your brother.
SON: That was the first — and last — time I actually attempted to communicate with spirits.
(She opens her eyes — widely — and continues to talk.)
MOTHER: You've always been interested in the occult. I wonder why.
SON: The earliest thing I can remember is that time when we living in the apartment on Woodlyn Road. I woke up and heard someone calling my name. You and my brother were still asleep. I went through all the rooms but couldn't find anyone. At first I thought a friend from school was somehow playing a joke on me. But it wasn't that.
MOTHER: You and your brother always loved horror movies, comic books and monster magazines.
SON: They were cathartic for me somehow.
MOTHER: One thing led to another I guess.
SON: I mean they're so disproportionately violent and gorier than in real life.
MOTHER: I don't know. Bad things can happen.
SON: It's all an escape from reality. Like gambling during those trips to Vegas.
(pause)
SON: That seance really made me curious about life as well.
MOTHER: What happened then was just a coincidence.
SON: That's what they always say.
(a beat)
SON: That was the only time I've attempted to communicate with spirits. I'd been planning the seance for a while. That night, I took my brother into your bedroom because there was more room on the floor there than in our room. I turned off the lights. I remember lighting the candle. I had a Ouija Board and that glow-in-the-dark skull from Disneyland. All I said was "I call upon the spirits of the dead" and then suddenly all those pebbles struck the window and my brother and I ran out of the room.
MOTHER: They said it was a rare weather condition. A miniature tornado. It ripped the roof off the apartment complex next door.
SON: It wasn't even a windy night. They say that children at the age of puberty have a great deal more psychic energy than usual.
MOTHER: You're still going through puberty.
(He scowls at her.
She laughs and then says — )
MOTHER: The tornado was just a fluke.
SON: But that wasn't my only psychic experience, was it?
MOTHER: (mimicking him) So! You! Say!
SON: I don't think I've ever told you this but once I awoke in the early morning with a feeling — more than a feeling, actually — an awareness of someone or something in the room with me.
MOTHER: It's just your imagination. It has to be. You were having a nightmare.
SON: It wasn't a dream.
MOTHER: Then who was it? A ghost?
SON: I don't know. I tried to turn and face the presence but for some reason I was unable to move at all.
MOTHER: You were too afraid to look?
SON: No, I wanted to see.
MOTHER: Let me know if you start hearing voices.
(realizing)
MOTHER: Doing more than calling your name.
SON: Our conscience is like a voice, isn't it?
MOTHER: There's 'psychic' and then there's 'psychotic.'
SON: We are more than flesh and blood yet we don't understand our own nature. I guess we find out when we die.
MOTHER: I think we just cease to exist. Like going to sleep and never waking up.
SON: The Tarot cards reveal that there is something more happening than the common man has any knowledge of.
(pause)
SON: Ask the cards again what you want to learn.
MOTHER: Tarot cards — wherever you come from — reveal to me my fate. Even if dust be my destiny.
SON: Say — 'And clarify for me my past and the present.'
MOTHER: And clarify for me my past and present.
SON: 'Let me find myself.'
MOTHER: I want to find myself.
SON: 'Who I am beyond the daily trivia. Help me see beyond the fears and regrets, the expectations, hopes and dreams.'
MOTHER: Yes.
(pause)
MOTHER: 'Never victorious, never defeated.' That's what I am. That was the title of a Taylor Caldwell book I read.
SON: Now the Tarot card reading begins.
MOTHER: (jumping up) Just a minute. I have to go to the bathroom first.
SON: (exasperated) There goes my concentration.
MOTHER: You can start concentrating again when I get back.
SON: You were supposed to be concentrating too.
(She goes to her room but pauses.)
MOTHER: Just wait a few minutes.
(SON stands up.)
SON: I guess I'll go to the bathroom too.
(They head for their rooms.
He pauses and goes and picks up the book The Magic Zoo to take with him.
As he goes into his room and closes the door, MOTHER peeks out from the hallway leading to her room. She then hurries, still limping, back to the table.
She peeks at the top card to make certain it isn't the Death card, smiles with a happy satisfaction, and then limps quickly back to her room and adjoining bathroom.)
SON: Now the Tarot card reading begins.
MOTHER: (jumping up) Just a minute. I have to go to the bathroom first.
SON: (exasperated) There goes my concentration.
MOTHER: You can start concentrating again when I get back.
SON: You were supposed to be concentrating too.
(She goes to her room but pauses.)
MOTHER: Just wait a few minutes.
(SON stands up.)
SON: I guess I'll go to the bathroom too.
(They head for their rooms.
He pauses and goes and picks up the book The Magic Zoo to take with him.
As he goes into his room and closes the door, MOTHER peeks out from the hallway leading to her room. She then hurries, still limping, back to the table.
She peeks at the top card to make certain it isn't the Death card, smiles with a happy satisfaction, and then limps quickly back to her room and adjoining bathroom.)
END OF ACT ONE.
(Intermission songs begin with the Tears for Fears song beginning as the house lights come on.
At the conclusion of the Intermission, the lights dim out again.)
ACT II
The dining room is the way it was left. The MOTHER emerges from her room and leans against the wall to take a deep breath.
She whimpers as she steps forward, keeping the weight off the foot with the gout. She breaks into sobbing as she takes another step toward the table.
Her pace is slow, pausing between each step.
The SON enters from his room, not recognizing the MOTHER's distress at first.
He gets a glass of water from the kitchen.
When he is seated, he sees that something is wrong. She is still several steps away from the table.
SON: What's wrong?
MOTHER: I bumped my foot against the bathroom door.
SON: The foot with the gout?
MOTHER: (indignantly) Yes!
(She continues to hobble to the table.
Upon sitting down, she bursts into tears.)
MOTHER: Hand me the tissues.
(The SON gets a box of tissues from the kitchen counter and places it on the table for her.)
SON: Isn't there anything that can be done to help you with that?
MOTHER: Shut up!
SON: Maybe if you stop drinking the beer. It's an alcoholism-related disease.
MOTHER: It is not. Leave me alone.
SON: The swelling is getting worse.
MOTHER: I don't want to talk about it.
SON: Lois at the bookstore says that her husband has gout. Remember — I told you the name of the medicine he takes.
MOTHER: I'm not going to see any doctor.
SON: How can you just let yourself suffer. You work at a hospital.
MOTHER: And I know what happens when those doc
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