Time to go
SCENE: A rundown, working class kitchen, clean but worn. Mary is standing at an ironing board, ironing baby clothing. Joe is seated at the table, the newspaper spread out on the table before him with a cup of coffee to one side which he periodically lips from.
MARY: I’m leaving you, Joe.
JOE: Huh?
Don’t start that again, Mary.
We’ve been through that a million times.
MARY: I mean it this time.
I’m taking the baby and going off to see my sister in California.
JOE: (laughs) what’s she gonna do with you?
Let you swim in her pool.
(Joe rises; Mary cringes)
MARY: Don’t you hit me, Joe
That stuff won’t work any more
I’m not afraid of you now.
JOE : (Turns to window with his hands in his pockets) I’m not gonna hit you.
I haven’t hit you in a long time.
MARY: Not long enough for me to forget.
JOE: That was Hollywood.
Things were different back then.
MARY: How were they different, Joe?
You still don’t have a job.
JOE: So that’s what’s eating you.
I told you I’ll get another job.
Just because I quit a slave driver like Bentley doesn’t mean you gotta leave.
MARY: Doesn’t it?
JOE: It was a rotten job.
MARY: That’s what you said about the last job, Joe.
JOE: It was rotten, too.
MARY: And the one before that?
JOE: Most jobs these days ain’t worth being worked.
Working people are treated like shit
It takes time for a man to find a job that suits him right.
MARY: Time?
You’ve been looking for that special job for almost five years, quitting job after job, telling me that it’s the boss or the conditions.
JOE: It was -- is (waves his hand in the air)
I know it when the right job comes along.
MARY: Well, I can’t wait.
I can’t go from week to week wondering if there will be a pay check.
JOE: So you gonna abandon a sinking ship?
MARY: Stop that, Joe.
JOE: Stop what?
I already told you I won’t beat you.
MARY: You know what.
You have that lost puppy look in your eyes again.
The last time I saw that, you went into the bathroom and tried to kill yourself.
JOE: I did not!
MARY: Then how the devil did I get this scar? (She holds up her hand)
JOE: You were careless.
MARY: I come into the bathroom and find you holding a razor against your risk and I’m being careless?
JOE: You shouldn’t have tried to grab the dam thing out of my hand.
You know I didn’t mean it.
MARY: My blood swirling down the drain and you didn’t mean it.
JOE: I was only trying to keep you from leaving.
I figured you would feel sorry for me, that you would come to realize how much I needed you.
MARY: Which means you needed a doctor more than I did, one for your head.
JOE: That’s where you’re wrong, Mary.
That comes out of your fancy upbringing.
Rich folks need head doctors, not poor folks.
MARY: And who do poor people go to? Their mothers?
JOE: Sometimes.
There were times when I was a kid that my momma used to hold me and tell me everything would be all right.
MARY: I’m not your mother, Joe.
I’m you’re wife.
There is a difference.
JOE: I know.
You were hot stuff when all those guys used to hang around you, crooning over you like you was some kind of pet.
MARY: You crooned, too.
JOE: Yeah, I wanted what everybody else wanted. I was always scared you were gonna run off with one of those other guys.
MARY: You married me.
What more could you want?
JOE: I don’t want to be alone.
MARY: You’ve been alone before -- When the police hunted you.
JOE: And I hated every minute of it, hiding in that little room in East LA.
I felt like one of those gangsters from the movies, waiting to blast the first person who came through the door. I couldn’t wait for you to come like you promise.
MARY: I came, didn’t I?
JOE: Three weeks after I called to tell you where I was. Those three weeks was hell. Three weeks of eating tacos, smoking cigarettes, jerking off to Mary Tyler Moore on TV.
MARY: Joe, watch your mouth. The baby...
JOE: They baby doesn’t understand anything.
MARY: Which is why I have to leave now. I don’t want her to suffer.
JOE: (looking out the window) Look at that!
MARY: What is it?
JOE: It’s the old vulture from next door
(shouts out the window)
Mind your own business, you hag!
MARY: If you kept your voice down, Mrs. Greerson wouldn’t know our business.
JOE: She would read our lips.
She’s a nosy hag, and if I ever catch her on the street...
MARY: What would you do, Joe?
Beat her, too?
JOE: Will you get off that.
You act like I do it all the time.
You act like you didn’t hit me back just as hard.
MARY: That was the only way I could make you stop.
JOE: Well, I stopped, didn’t I?
Doesn’t that count for something?
MARY: I didn’t say you were stupid, Joe, just lazy.
JOE: Who’s going to provide for you if you leave?
MARY: That’s the whole point, Joe.
Three isn’t anybody providing for this family now.
You won’t work and you won’t like me wok either -- even if I could trust you to watch the baby while I did.
JOE: So you figure you can do better on your own?
MARY: I’m going to try.
This isn’t the good old days.
This isn’t Hollywood where you could walk out on the Boulevard, make a few deals so that we could make ends meet.
JOE: We make ends meet. We’re not out on the street.
MARY: We didn’t have a baby back then. We ought to be doing better. I’m thinking about the baby. I’m thinking she can’t eat your promises any better than I could.
JOE: I’ll find another job.
MARY: And quit it as soon as you get it.
JOE: There must be something I can say or do?
MARY: Not any more Joe.
Be brave for once, let us go.
JOE: Brave?
I’m just trying to keep our family together like my old man couldn’t.
I never figured you would hate me for it.
MARY: I don’t hate you, Joe.
But I love our baby, and she deserves more than this lousy place in this rotten part of town.
She’s going to grow up and want to feel good about herself, something that won’t happen around here, not with you crawling back from another job claiming the boss didn’t understand you or treated you like a slave.
Now I’m going in the other room to pack. I’ve already called the cab.
JOE: All right, maybe I’m no good like you say.
But I got feelings, too.
Let me go out first.
MARY: I’m not going to raising my baby in this place with or without you.
JOE: That’s not what I mean.
Just let me go out, pretending like everything is all right, like I’m going off to look for another job -- pretending like when I come back everything will be like it ought to be, you, me and the baby like one happy family.
MARY: All right, Joe.
Go for your walk.
But we won’t be here when you come back.
JOE: Goes out the door as MARY inside packs her bags. JOE halts, looks out towards the audience)
What are you staring at, you old vulture?
Didn’t you get an earful enough this time?