Mario Writes For You

Your Home (Act 1, Scene 9)

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Act 1, Scene 9

MELI

There were a lot of apartments in Fede’s mind, and some of them were locked. While I was trying to lock-pick one of those, something important occurred to me: we had to tell our parents we were going to live together.

I know, very liberated feminist of you, Meli, but what you can’t picture is just how easily my family could un-liberate me in a flash, our surname being our surname.

No way around it.

Fede, as the ever-cute nerd, prepared himself with a curriculum of high society books like Great Expectations. Poor guy, he didn’t get that he wasn’t from here, he wasn’t one of us and he never would be in their eyes.

A car took us to the house in the Maria Luisa, which Fede told me reminded him of my head. Made sense, in a slightly unfortunate way for me.

Mom expected someone more in line with my exes, not a docile and mannered sort. Meanwhile Dad measured him from head to toe with his tiny shark eyes and gave him a strange hello: 

(Meli loves her impressions and will employ them constantly and swiftly throughout the play. Meli’s impression of her dad sounds like gravel and tobacco.)

(As Dad) “Good day, Fidel. I’ve been told all about you.”

Dad talked like that ‘cause he had been stabbed in the throat as a teen, you see.

So, that’s the way I found out Fede’s birth name and just how much he hated it, though he’d later claim he didn’t.

Dad then grilled for us, as he always did, and my mom figuratively grilled Fede.

(Meli’s impression of her mom is posh and shrill.)

(As Mom) “Young man, why did you decide to study business? Be honest, kindly.”

Mom asked Fede as we ate.

(The impression of Fede is unsure and overthought.)

(As Fede) “It’s… quite a lucrative career, Ma’am. I don’t think I have any reason beyond that.”

(As Mom) “That’s quite mercenary, only being in it for the money.”

(As Fede) “It’s not like that, not exactly. I’d be good at it, I’m sure, though I’m not sure if it interests me. I’m not sure anything interests me, for the moment. But with capital one can do anything. I guess I’ll just figure out what later.”

There was a sound like a choking boar. Fede had made Dad laugh.

            END OF SCENE

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One response to “Your Home (Act 1, Scene 9)”

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    Anonymous

    As I read through this chapter, it wasn’t immediately clear to me if they were actually going to meet the parents or not…I thought they actually were going, but was confused by the parents’ voices being versions filtered through Meli.

    “There were a lot of apartments in Fede’s mind” made me think of how I initially imagined his Soviet-style consciousness, as a big concrete building. I would like to see Meli maybe get into one of the other apartments, or describe the hallway, just something to take me there more, so the moment when she realizes that they will have to talk with her parents reads a more of a break from this exploration of his mind, if thats what it is. Again, anything you do to describe things more makes the story much stronger, which, in this type of story (where people are exploring each others’ minds and inhabiting the real world) is important. They get picked up in a car…what was the car like? what did it smell like? Did it smell like tobacco, like Meli’s impression of her father? What was the driver like? Did they talk? Her family sounds aristocratic, so was it an Uber or a family car? These are all the questions my mind’s eye is asking…does her Dad have a scar where he was stabbed? I’ll stop asking questions here, heheheh. But whatever you feel you can do to give me a stronger sense of the setting, I think that is always important, especially with the fantastic settings of this piece. I can’t see the play from here, so you have to take me there descriptively. I LOVED the line about the shark eyes…powerful image, I understood exactly how he was looking at Fede and how he felt about him.

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