10 Days on Earth

Ronnie Burkett

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780369103130
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre canadien

He lived alone with very little and more than enough, and preferred it that way. "Simply simply, " he was oft heard to say. He was alone, on his own, and that was okay...

Darrel is a middle-aged intellectually challenged man who lives with his mother. When she dies in her sleep, Darrel does not realize she is gone, and so, for over a week, he lives alone. Tandem to Darrel's day-to-day routine are the adventures of his favourite children's book characters, Honeydog and Little Burp. Their search for a home leads the dog and duck duo to an understanding of family, while Darrel's ease in the world illustrates just how his mother has paved the path for him to be without her. Episodes from the past, like faded colour snapshots from a family album, illustrate this mother's love for her son in all its honesty and fierce, unwavering will. Simple, tender, funny and unapologetic, 10 Days On Earth asks: If you were alone but didn't know it, would you feel lonely?

10 Days on Earth

Late night, the interior of an old house. Not so old as to be spookily Gothic, or romantically musty like a Victorian, but first third of the last century and plainly North American. If one were to squint, it could pass as an Arts and Crafts home; there’s a lot of oak and miraculously it has never been painted, so it shines modestly with the patina earned by patience and kindness and hand-buffing with a soft rag. Cookie-cutter at the time of its creation, the house has become charming and unique merely by surviving, more or less untouched.

The house lives in the middle of a busy city, although the sounds of that city are not heard inside this place at this hour, only a clock ticking. It does not call attention to itself, nor to the passing of time, which for the most part has been irrelevant to the house. The house is its own well-worn familiar sweater, hugging itself contently, if perhaps no longer fashionably.

An elderly woman appears at the top of the stage left stair landing. She is as old as the house, but worse for wear; wizened and wrinkled and white like a ghost. But she is not dead, yet. And when this apparition appears, it is simply because she walked into place. Like the clock, she is part of the house, her whole life written in this quiet oak. A life in wood, carved out over time, wrapped in the curve of a worn banister, every breath—first to last—held in the tread of a stair. The nearly naked, almost ghost of a woman is as close to being all of her times on earth as she will ever be.

And she knows it.

She walks down the stairs, carefully, slowly, pauses at the bottom to catch her breath and looks across stage to the other stairs, stage right. She walks toward them, pauses at the bottom and stands there, still, without turning toward centre where a younger version of herself has appeared; the youngest we will see, dressed in capri pants and a flattering sweater set. There is also a father, unseen. She addresses him as though he were in front of her.

IVY, 26: I’ll start in London. I think that would be a good place. They speak English there, and the Queen is on the money and stamps and stuff, so it’s like here, but different. And from there, I can go to France and take trains. They have really good trains in Europe, Dad. You’d like it.

Dad, what are you so afraid of? It can’t hurt me, I belong to it. Okay, well maybe not yet. But how can the world not know me, Dad? I’m part of it. How do you know, Dad? How can you know the world? The world doesn’t know you. Well not me, I’m going to introduce myself. Hello world, Ivy Glebeholme at your service!

Dad, I don’t want your money. I have enough. I’ve saved practically everything I’ve made working at the Passport Office. I don’t need your money, Dad. I just need you to say it’s okay.

Listen to me! I’m twenty-six years old and I still need my father’s approval. ...