Waiting For The Mail Van

“Cheerio, lady,” says my brother Ben in an imitation of a British accent sure to amuse anyone actually from England. “I‘ve got to pull on my jumper and rush a package to the mail van, Chessy.”

I listen to his performance with a smirk, taking a second to glance up from my phone. “What is it you have to mail, Ben? A jury duty response?”

“No, better, Chessy, old gal,” says Ben. “I’m mailing in a contest entry, for a one act play written in blank verse - you know, iambic pentameter, like Sir William Shakespeare, the Immortal Bard of Stratford-Upon-Avon.” He describes the old playwright, who died in 1616, like Trolius describing Cressida.

“And why did you pick the accent?” I ask, wondering if I chose the very best or very worst day to visit my sibling.

“It just helped me put myself in the mood to write it. I’ve been up all night for the last three nights writing it.” He yawns, and I realize he’s inebriated from sleep deprivation. I give him a hug.

“Found out about the contest three months after it started, three days before the deadline. Just couldn’t pass it up.”

He twists his glasses around on his face for no good reason and musses his hair and beard out of sheer nerves. I rest my hands, clasped together, on my stomach, self-conscious about the bulge - a nervous habit of my own I acquired during the pandemic.

Because I’m curious and I know he won’t forgive me otherwise, I ask to hear the product of his three sleepless nights. He asks me to read Emily’s part, but I decline for my own reasons, gleaned from prior experience. Number one: I take myself way too seriously when I try to be an actress.

Ben’s performance is not only an extremely short one act, it’s a two-character two-page one act play with only my brother speaking, an extended dialogue with “Emily” read in Ben’s falsetto. The dramatic ending comes thus:

Emily: “When COVID put us both in quarantine
We lay on stretchers in the hospital
And held each other’s hand for hours and days
As respirators failed to yield us ease.”

Ben pivots, now playing Adrian.

Adrian: “But now you leave for work in early morning
And I labor in the office we call home
We’re overweight and all I want is fitness
But Emily, I can’t do it alone.”

At the last sentence, he drops down on one knee, as if proposing marriage. Then he gracefully gets up, hands outstretched before him, as he transitions to being “Emily”, who had invisibly pulled “Adrian” to his feet and was holding him gently by the fingertips. Ben’s chirping falsetto was back.

Emily: “I’ll sign us up to see a coach together
And we’ll do boot camp workouts side by side
Oh, even high cholesterol won’t keep me
From being your contented COVID bride.”

He wraps his arms around the empty air, and then takes two bows, one as Emily and another as Adrian. My brother has never been married, and I suddenly wonder whether maybe he wants to. What makes someone want to write this kind of thing?

“Bravo! Bravo!”

I applaud and pull out a book of stamps. I even help copy over the address on the package and make a point of getting it right. Ben really runs out to catch the mail van. Why not? And cherry on top, it actually waits for him.