Imaginary Friends Read Free

“the.”
    A beat
.
    MARY : Most people outgrow the feuding, don’t you think?
    LILLIAN : Well, I never outgrew it.
    MARY : Nor I.
    LILLIAN : My anger—
    MARY : My honesty—
    LILLIAN : “You must choose your enemies well.”
    MARY : Who said that?
    LILLIAN : Goethe. It’s my favorite line from Goethe. I once read a book about two U-boats. It was written with alternating chapters, and the first was about the German U-boat. The captain woke up in the morning and trimmed his mustache and spoke to the cook about sausages. Then came the chapter about the English U-boat, and the captain woke up in the morning and looked at the starboard diesel and spoke to the cook about kippers. This went on throughout the day, day after day, alternating, until the boats finally met up with one another.
    MARY : And then what happened? Did they collide?
    LILLIAN : They did collide. Shall I begin?
    MARY : Why not? You came first.
    LILLIAN
looks around. We hear music
.
    Music?
    LILLIAN : Why not? We have musicians.
[Beat.]
I need … a fig tree.
    She exits
.
Scene 2

    Childhood
.
    We see a big wooden house with a front porch. Next to it is a big fig tree
.
    The
ENSEMBLE
does a cakewalk onto the stage as we hear a New Orleans band start to play. Maybe the band comes onto the stage, like a New Orleans parade procession
.
    Projected on the back of the stage, we see the words “New Orleans” and a picture of baby Lillian
.
    And the
ENSEMBLE
starts to sing “The Fig Tree Rag.”
    ENSEMBLE :
    THERE’S SOMETHIN’ HAPPENIN’ IN DIXIE
I’M FROM DIXIE SO I KNOW
WE GOT A RAG WE CALL “THE FIG TREE”
FOR THAT BIG TREE THAT WE GROW
AND WHEN WE’RE HOPPIN’ ON THE BAYOU
I DEFY YOU TO BE STILL
GET YOU A RAGGY TUNE
GET YOU A CAJUN MOON
GET YOU A JACK OR A JILL
    COME ON ALONG
WE’RE GONNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG
YOUR BODY GONNA ZIG AND ZAG
TAKE A LOOK AT
EV’RY CHAP AND EV’RY CHIPPY
ALL ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI
DOIN’ THE DANCE
THEY’RE DANCIN’ TO THE FIG TREE RAG
I WANNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG WITH YOU .
    LILLIAN
enters. She’s playing herself as a child and wearing a white dress almost identical to the one in the picture. The effect should be half baby, half Baby Snooks. She walks toward the tree
.
    LILLIAN : I was the sweetest-smelling baby in New Orleans. You probably heard that about me, and it is one hundred percent true. My father was a traveling salesman, so my mother and I lived in the Garden District with my two aunts, Jenny and Hannah, who owned a boardinghouse. I had a Negro nurse named Sophronia, who took care of me until I was six, when we began to spend half the year in New York and the other half back in New Orleans. Behind my aunts’ boardinghouse was a fig tree, an enormous fig tree. It was quite a ways from the house, and it was so leafy you couldn’t be seen. So I rigged up a seat for myself, and a set of pulleys for soda pop and books, and I would sit up there and read and spy on the orphans down the block, who seemed wildly glamorous—
    ENSEMBLE :
    COME WITH ME
UP IN THE TREE
UP IN THE TREE
ALL OUR TROUBLES ARE FAR AWAY
SWING AND SWAY
UP IN THE TREE
UP IN THE TREE WE’LL STAY
    LILLIAN : There was Frances, whose father had been killed by the Mafia, and Louis, who took me to Mass, and Pancho, who once gave me a lock of his hair and then pushed me into the gutter, which was without question the most romantic thing that had ever happened—so romantic that I put the lock of hair into the back of a wristwatch my father had just given me for my birthday. And my watch stopped.
    LILLIAN
climbs into a seat at the base of the tree and raises herself into it
.
    ENSEMBLE :
    SO IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A HAVEN
WITH A CRAVIN’ TO FULFILL
I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT HEAVEN MEANS
MEET ME IN NEW ORLEANS
I’LL KEEP ON HUMMIN’ UNTIL
YA GET HERE
    COME ON ALONG
WE’RE GONNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG
YOUR BODY GONNA ZIG AND ZAG
YA GOT ME THINKIN’
THIS IS WHERE IT ALL WAS LEADIN’
IN THE GARDEN KNOWN AS EDEN
ADAM AND EVE
WERE TRYIN’ OUT THE FIG