Perfect Pie

Judith Thompson

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780369103222
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático

In the course of an afternoon's reunion between two long-estranged women, a buried memory, and two teenagers' wild secret, slams into the present.

When Patsy invites her old friend Francesca, now a glamourous actress, to her home in Marmora after a thirty-year absence the two women reunite with a certain amount of unease. As the day progresses, we learn how their friendship blossomed in their adolescence and how, on one fateful day, it all ended.

Act One, Scene One

Darkness. PATSY WILLET is in the kitchen of her farmhouse, at an old wooden table, making dough for a rhubarb pie. Moonlight illuminates a perfect ball of dough, a pot of tea and a teacup. There is a small tape recorder in front of her on the table. She is preparing to send a letter by tape to her old estranged friend, MARIE. She kneads the dough for a while. A train whistle sounds. She looks up at the window to glimpse the train. The train approaches, and passes.

PATSY: “I will not forget you, you are carved in the palm of my hand.”

Dawn breaks. She presses “Record” on the Tape Recorder.

Marie? Are you sitting down? Cause if you’re not I think you better cause you might just get the dizzies when you find out who I am. Now don’t turn me off thinkin’ I’m some kinda crazy stranger like one of your fans. Because although I am a fan, I am not crazy I don’t think, and I’m not a stranger that is for sure... I am... it’s funny I feel a little shy to say, because I’m sure you know who I am at this point, at least I hope you know: that I am Patsy. (Pause) Willet. Now Patsy McAnn but you would know me as Willet. You know? Of course you do: Big red face, hash brown hair? We hung around together near Marmora, Ontario like Siamese Twins till you left town when you were about fifteen or sixteen? Well Marie I have followed your career of course; and I am proud... to have known you, Marie. And, well, the reason that I am gettin’ in touch with you after all this time, Marie, this thirty some years is I have been... yearning. To... behold you, I suppose. Because I’ll be honest with you, when I have been having a hard day and I’m very tired and it’s the end of the day and I’m makin’ supper or doin’ the dishes and the room fills with oh orange light and I hear the train, the low whistle at the back of our property and I stare out the window and I see – just the glimpse of it, of the train speeding on to Montreal, the crash... does flash out, in my mind; like a sheet; of lightning, and when the flash is over, and all is dark again, I know you did...