Excerpt from Milk
____________________________________

SHEILA: You’re too complex, that’s your problem. Maybe I should’ve stayed with my first husband. He was simple. He was dumb, but . . . Well, it wasn’t his fault he was a hick redneck who lived in a trailer and drove a truck with big wheels. I was a hick too. Until I de-hicked myself. Is this payback? For leaving him? I didn’t think he’d really care. He didn’t have a single emotion, except when he got excited about hunting deer. What am I talking about? I could’ve never stayed with him. I was a kid, I had no business being married. I could’ve stayed with my second husband, I should’ve. He’s rich now. He was always supportive, he understood me, he was a scientist. But he never wanted to have sex. So I bleeped all his friends. And now here you are, my third husband, out to destroy me, out to make my head explode and my body sprout out with a dozen cancerous tumors.

DES: I better go. I have to meet my mother.

SHEILA: I bet.

DES: For dinner.

     (Pause.)

SHEILA: Des?

DES: Yeah?

SHEILA: Do you remember when we went to the Grand Canyon? Two years ago?

DES: Of course.

SHEILA: It was so beautiful when we got there. So clear. And cold. At night it was so cold. And we got into that horrible fight in the car. You remember?

DES: I remember you hitting me, screaming at me, scratching me with your nails.

SHEILA: I was drunk, it wasn’t my fault. But we made up. And we slept in that little bed. It was so nice to sleep so close to you. In the morning, it was snowing, and we were in each other’s arms. (Pause.) We drove in the snow. I was behind the wheel, because I’ve driven in the snow before. I knew how to deal with hydroplaning. I drove slowly. Other cars passed us by, going fast, honking their horns, angry people in angry cars.

DES: It was funny.

SHEILA: When we did hydroplane, I knew how to control the car. You said to me, you said, “It’s a good thing you’re driving, or we might be dead.” Do you remember that?

DES: Yes.

SHEILA: Good.

From Milk by Michael Hemmingson
Taken from The Art of the One-Act, 2006

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
| Home | Book Index |