A one-act play about a couple dealing with inevitable loss...and breakfast.

1. WAFFLES
A Play in One Act
By
Martha Garvey
123 Willow Ave.
Hoboken NJ 07030
646 236 8910
mgarvey.interport@rcn.com

2. CHARACTERS
JOE: a hip-looking guy somewhere in his 30s.
BETSY: Joe’s wife. Slightly hipper and younger than Joe.
SCENE
An urban diner somewhere in Northern New Jersey.
TIME
The present.

3. ACT I
(A SLIGHTLY RUNDOWN DINER. JOE AND
HIS WIFE BETSY SIT ACROSS FROM
EACH OTHER, PERUSING GIANT MENUS.)
JOE
If I get the waffles, will you get the salmon omelet?
BETSY
The salmon's not good here. Remember? It's the diner in
Edgewater--
(She's prompting him.)
JOE
The one with the chickpeas?
BETSY
No, you know, the one with--
(Awful pause. JOE is flustered.)
BETSY (CONTINUED)
The garlicky...
(Another pause.)
JOE
....spinach? Spinach, spinach, spinach. Why don't I
remember that?
(JOE whips out a 3 x 5 card, smacks it down
on the table. Then begins a frantic search
for a pen. BETSY waits until she cannot
stand it anymore, then offers a pen to Joe,
who lunges at it. JOE writes furiously,
while Betsy looks at the menu.)

4. BETSY
Are you thinking banana, maybe? The strawberries aren't
so...
(JOE keeps writing. Then stops.)
JOE
Oh, shit.
(JOE passes the card over to BETSY, who
examines both sides.)
BETSY
What. So. Well, you forgot.
(JOE snatches the card back, reads from both
sides.)
JOE
"MARCH 1, REMEMBER: salmon omelet, Liberty Diner, SUCKS."
BETSY
Joe. They can hear you.
JOE
"MARCH 2. Liberty Diner, don't forget: salmon omelet.
Major. Sucko."
BETSY
We should eat out less. We're spending too much money. And
I don't know about you, but I'm gaining--
JOE
"MARCH 3, serious suckage--
(BETSY yanks the card out of his hand.)
BETSY
All right.
JOE
Pomerance said it was one of the slow-growing ones. But I
guess it's having a growth spurt today. Maybe we should
pitch it as a children's book, or a cartoon: The Poky Little
Tumor That Could.

5. BETSY
Everyone forgets. And there's the stupid chemo. And you're
not sleeping. Or eating.
JOE
Bets, don't do the Lifetime wife excuse thing. It's not what
I married you for.
BETSY
The social worker told us that stress has an impact on
memory. It doesn't necessary mean...Pomerance said..
(But JOE begins writing again, this time,
practically digging the pen into his hand.
When he is done, he displays the palms of his
hands: SALMON on one hand, SUCKS on the
other.)
JOE
Maybe this will work better. More visceral. Body-centered.
BETSY
Honey--
JOE
Of course, I'll have to pick the most important fact I have
to remember every day, but you'll help--
BETSY
Please, Joe--
JOE
C'mon, Betsy. Hallmark card me. Affirm my awesome coping
mechanisms.
(JOE stands up like a winning prizefighter,
arms outstretched in a V, palms open.)
BETSY
You know, if the owner sees your hands, they'll ask us to
leave. Or: best case scenario: the waitress will spit in
our coffee.

6. JOE
Since when did you get so timid?
(JOE freezes. BETSY addresses the audience
directly.)
BETSY
Pomerance said to me,
(she takes on a Slavic accent)
"Well, it works like this. Think of cancer as syrup, and
your husband's brain, it's like waffle. Even after you tilt
waffle over to remove the syrup, even after you scrape it off
with knife, waffle has drunk deep and irrevocably of
BETSY (CONTINUED)
syrup, inevitably makes waffle grow, expand. And skull...is
finite. And the syrup-drenched waffle? It just goes on.
Infinite waffle...finite skull. I am so sorry about the
syrup."
(JOE unfreezes.)
Joe?
JOE
Yeah, Bets. I guess I nodded off there for a second.
BETSY
Sit down.
(JOE sits. BETSY leans over and unbuttons
one of Joe's sleeves. Slowly, she rolls up
one sleeve to the elbow--the skin of his
forearm is completely covered with scribbled
words. She rolls up the other.)
JOE
Jesus.
(Jokey.)
I'd hate to see what my cock looks like.
(BETSY remains silent for a beat too long,
and will not look at JOE. JOE picks up the 3
x 5 card he scribbled on, and rips it into
tiny pieces.)

7. JOE (CONTINUED)
I'm sorry I let you down. I mean, we all know that you
didn't marry me for my money or my looks.
BETSY
You know what your mom said to me the other day? "Well, it's
a kind of blessing it's happening to Joe. If it were the
other way around, I think losing you would just about kill
him."
JOE
So..are they sick of us yet? At this diner?
BETSY
I told Stavros. "Just promise he won't pee into the soup,
Elizabeth." It hasn't made him fix the salmon, though.
JOE
We've already tried a lot of things?
BETSY
We've already tried a lot of things.
JOE
This is the part in the Hallmark movie where we hold hands
and the violins swell and we promise to fight this thing
until the end. Together.
(They don't look at each other and don't hold
hands.)
BETSY
Joe.
JOE
It's supposed to be pretty peaceful at the end. I'll just be
sleeping, and then my lungs will stop. This is the hard
part, the...middle. The waiting.
BETSY
The..medicine that makes you so sick. The highly annoying
family members with their self-righteous homeopathic
remedies.
JOE
The health insurance forms that make you weep.

8. BETSY
Fighting with our insurer, who has outsourced the pain to
Pakistan.
JOE
The noble battle. The righteous cause.
(JOE picks up the card scraps and lets them
flutter like snow across the table.)
BETSY
Joe?
JOE
Huh?
BETSY
I'm not good at this. The noble wife crap. It's not your
fault some random cells went off the reservation. Your
mind's still there.
JOE
Mostly.
BETSY
But I'm not good at this. I think about leaving you half the
time.
JOE
And the other half?
BETSY
You know, the usual: who's going to walk the dog at night?
Will this really mean that I never have to talk to your
sister again? What if Pomerance is wrong? Wouldn't this be
a great time to start believing in a merciful God again, or
at least, "The Secret?"
JOE
Oh, shit, babe, what I've put you through.
BETSY
Don't make fun of me.
JOE
I'm not. I never meant to put you in a position where you'd
be considering buying an Oprah-approved book.
BETSY
I didn't buy it. I stole it off the Internet.
JOE
That's my girl.

9. BETSY
Joe.
JOE
Bets.
BETSY
Keep writing on your arms, your hands, your forehead if you
have to. Embarrass the shit out of me. Just don't leave me-
-don't forget me--until you absolutely have to. Don't go
under. Fight the syrup.
JOE
What?
BETSY
Never mind.
(The two look up at an unseen waitress. We
hear her say:)
WAITRESS (V.O.)
The salmon omelet is awful good today.
(An endless silence. Then:)
JOE
I think we'll....both...have...the waffles.
(BLACKOUT)