What I Cooked Last Night

FATHER is now standing over the crib. MOTHER is reading; the elephants have retired for the night. Silence reigns. FATHER gazes at the infant. He turns momentarily back to MOTHER. FATHER: Sure is a big one. You must have a champion hammer-thrower in your family tree. MOTHER: Not that I know of. Maybe a caber-tosser. But I thought it was you. FATHER: Not us. We were distance athletes. Thin as rakes. Except for my grandfather. He used to laugh at us when we'd be madly lacing up our shoes to go out for a run, and tell us he'd never jogged a step in his life. He died a week short of 99. MOTHER: That was the breathing he saved along the way. Actually, my grandmother's responsible. She was tiny, the size of a sparrow. One of my aunts was 10 pounds at birth. That was in Scotland in the 1930s. And born at home. Turned out to be an average sized adult, but she just got off to a good start. FATHER: All that porridge and clootie dumpling during pregnancy I suppose. MOTHER:...

And the stage is in darkness for a second or two, until a soft spotlight falls on a small item of furniture at stage left. It is a crib. In the crib is a newborn infant. The infant is a girl. She is asleep. A soft click is heard. The light over the crib fades low and another spotlight falls stage right on two easy chairs on either side of a round table on which rests a lamp. MOTHER, reading a $9.95 Penguin reissued copy of Brideshead Revisited , and FATHER, reading a newspaper, sit in the chairs. The remains of afternoon tea rest on the table alongside the lamp. The scene remains thus for several seconds until broken by noises off. The noises sound like the approach of stampeding elephants. A door crashes, unseen. A boy, pursued by a smaller boy, gallops onto the stage. The latter boy follows. His arm is outstretched, and his finger and thumb are cocked, as if to shoot. They slide to a stop, glance at MOTHER and FATHER, and remain in position for several seconds. FATHER's ne...