University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 5-21-2004 The Lilac Cube Sean Murray University of New Orleans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Murray, Sean, "The Lilac Cube" (2004). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 77. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/77 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LILAC CUBE A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in The Department of Drama and Communications by Sean Murray B.A. Mount Allison University, 1996 May 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 1 Chapter 2 9 Chapter 3 18 Chapter 4 28 Chapter 5 41 Chapter 6 52 Chapter 7 62 Chapter 8 70 Chapter 9 78 Chapter 10 89 Chapter 11 100 Chapter 12 107 Chapter 13 115 Chapter 14 124 Chapter 15 133 Chapter 16 146 Chapter 17 154 Chapter 18 168 Chapter 19 177 Vita 183 ii The judge returned with my parents. My mother held her hand out to me, and I got out of my chair to take it, looking up into her pale face. She was wearing a strange, strained smile that 1 CHAPTER 1 When the judge asked me who I wanted to live with, I didn t hesitate. It didn t matter that both of my parents were sitting in the next room, or that I knew whom my brother Travis would probably choose, or even that I was nine years old. It was Dad who had taken me all over the Maritimes in his giant black Kenworth. It was Dad who had paid for my piano lessons for the last two years, always encouraging me but never pushing me. And it was Dad who had held me in his arms and told me in a broken voice, tears standing in his eyes, that he and my mother were not going to be living in the same house anymore. Dad was a big man, but at that moment he looked as if he were going to collapse right there in front of me, all six feet and five inches of him, and just decide never to get up again. I want to live with Dad, I said, almost as soon as the judge finished speaking. She looked a little like the housekeeper in the Scrooge movie that I watched every Christmas Day. Nicer dressed, of course, and without the Cockney accent. She seemed a little surprised at how easily I d come to my decision, but she didn t question me about it. She just gave my shoulder a squeeze and walked me back out of her office and into the antechamber, where the rest of my family was waiting. Somehow I felt I had to prepare myself for a violent flood of emotions as the judge sat me down and told me to wait with my brother while she spoke to my parents. I waited to be slammed like a stream of water from a fire hose, but nothing came. I watched my brother, but he had turned far inward, looking down at his folded arms, his thumbs working furiously at the sleeve of his gray Sunday shirt. I knew enough not to expect him to show much anyway. He was seven years older than me, a sophomore in high school, and he was never around on weekends anymore. I only saw him at dinnertime lately, and he was usually more concerned with wolfing down his food so he could meet his friends at the mall than in talking to a ten-year- old girl. Travis and I sat at the table in the judge s antechamber, each of us lost in our own thoughts, neither willing nor able to break the silence between us. At that moment, I hated everyone: my parents for divorcing, the judge who d forced me to choose between them, myself for choosing, my brother for not caring. I wanted to go live with my grandparents in Annapolis Valley, where I could wake up in a huge brass bed to the smell of apple pie. I wanted to take back my choice, maybe even rewind my life back to the moment when Dad first knelt down and caressed my cheek with his huge, rough hand. I closed my eyes and replayed the moment in my mind: him kneeling down before me, hand touching my face, but then, instead of giving me the news, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a Hershey s Kiss. Or maybe a dollar coin. Pizza, I replied, my voice muffled by the rabbit s pink fur. You got it, he answered, his voice a bit muffled too, and padded away. 2 put a lump in my throat. I realized I hadn t given her a single thought since I spoke to the judge. I knew I d broken her heart, as completely as if I d stolen her wedding ring and sold it for drugs. The look on her face was the look of someone who was watching a tidal wave approaching and knew there was nowhere to run. The black enormity of that thought caused her face to waver and blur as tears I hadn t realized I d been holding back filmed my eyes. As she hugged me, I let them spill, wanting to confess how quickly I d made my choice, but I couldn t speak. She quieted me tenderly, whispering how much she loved me in my ear, telling me not to cry, not to feel bad, that she would never leave me. I d never felt closer to my mother than at that moment. A month before my parents got their divorce, Dad sold the beloved Kenworth W900 he bought in 1979 and finished paying for seven years later, and took a job as a dispatcher with the company he drove for. I guess he wanted to show my mother how committed he was to saving his marriage. It was sad. At nine years old, I d seen most of the Maritimes and Newfoundland, gone all the way out to Alberta and down the Eastern seaboard, knew most of the waitresses in the truck stops along the way, even tinkered a little bit under the semi s huge hood (okay, handed Dad his wrenches). As much as Dad wanted me to go to university and become someone important, I knew that a tiny part of him, buried deep and out of sight, was tickled by the idea of me following in his footsteps and becoming a trucker, maybe even driving the same black Kenworth. And now, all that was left was a dried-up oil slick in the gravel driveway of our bungalow. So, I stayed with Dad while Travis wound up out at my grandparents apple orchard in the Annapolis Valley. My mother had grown up there, and had decided that the best thing for her was to go back home and try to get a fresh start. Travis would have to start at a new high school, but my mother compensated for this by giving him permission to drive her car to school. This smoothed things over, and by the time he and my mother were packed and ready to go, Travis almost jumped into the driver s seat, eager to get onto the highway before the sky grew dark. Walking back inside after watching my mother s taillights disappear into the dusk, I was amazed at how completely she d erased herself from the house. She d packed up most of the glass ornaments that she loved so much, emptied out the closets (most of the clothes were hers anyway), and taken down almost all of the family photographs from the walls. She and Dad had argued softly about those pictures for most of the previous night as I listened through the door of my bedroom. My brother s room was even more barren. He d stripped his bed of its blankets and pillows, and he and Dad just loaded the dresser, clothes and all, into the U-Haul trailer. The only trace that he d left were the tape scars on the wall from all of his AC/DC and Metallica posters. I could only look into that room, with its bare mattresses and pillows for a couple of seconds before slamming the door and running back into my own room to bury my face deep in my collection of stuffed rabbits. As I fought back tears, I could hear the floorboards creaking under Dad s weight. There was a knock on the door. Hey, sugar. What do you want for dinner? membership was the first to go, but then it was my mother s weekly trips to the hairdresser, Travis s karate lessons (not that I felt guilty about that he d stopped going months before and 3 The pizza came at 7:00, the biggest pie they had, and the two of us ate more than half of it in total silence.