Final scenes…
JODI: Mom’s sister died..one of those cancers that give you just enough warning to say goodbye. Mom was devastated.. No, that’s not the word for it. She was nearly destroyed. Mom and Aunt Cindy were a pair… “The Singing Humphreys.” They were only a year apart and they did everything together…they sang together, they planned each other’s wedding. And whenever either of them had a birthday, the trick was to out-surprise the other….male singers in Speedos, a goat tied in our front yard with a birthday sign around his neck, thousands of plastic forks poked into Cindy’s front yard spelling out “Happy Birthday,” and a skydiver with a parachute…I’m not kidding…coming right down outside the church on Mom’s 40th birthday. I’d never seen her like this….not at the death of her own mother…never. It’s a cliché, but Cindy was a part of her. In fact, it was Cindy who went through life soothing the feathers that Mom ruffled. Their friends called them Acid and Ice…Mom burnt and Cindy healed. And that’s when I learned about my father. They’d managed to keep it a secret from the rest of the world but in the days after Aunt Cindy’s death the truth came out. He was the strength of the two. Dad was the one who Mom leaned on…and always had. She’d bluster and blast her way through the day, but he was her comforter after the phone had stopped ringing and the kids had gone to bed. The man…this man whom I’d seldom heard speak….He was her rock. I saw things in him that I’d never seen in my life…that’d I’d never imagined. He held her….he corrected her…he became a father to this child-wife whom the world had imagined to be such a tyrant. … And by learning about my father, I finally got to know my mother. The little girl who just wanted to be loved.
GINA: When Mom died…and it was one of those deaths we all hope for…at home…a little tired but with no pain…just very, very tired. So she sat in her favorite chair at the kitchen table…and didn’t wake up. At the funeral I fully expected her to sit up and apologize to us all for dying on such short notice. And then the cards and letters came in….I couldn’t keep up with them and so many of the names I didn’t even know. She’d touched so many people. But one letter…from Chicago… the Studio LaMour. And a simple inscription: “There’s never been one like you, honey.” Chicago? Studio LaMour? …. After we’d gone through Mom’s things and life had settled down I read the note again. “There’s never been one like you, honey.” What the heck was that? Sometimes the Internet is your friend and sometimes….. The Studio LaMour is one of Chicago’s oldest burlesque houses…a high-class strip joint that’s been a fixture of the city’s hoochie-coochie side since the days of Prohibition. They had a phone number.
MANAGER: Studio LaMour.
GINA: Is uh…is this….
MANAGER: You calling for reservations? Don’t need none, honey. Just show up at nine for the hottest show in Chicago.
GINA: No…no, I don’t need reservations. I received a letter from your theatre after my mother’s death.
MANAGER: Who died?
GINA: My mother. Faye Richards.
MANAGER: Oh! Yeah! Fabulous Faye! That was me sent the note. I seen the notice online. Just wanted to say goodbye to my old pal.
GINA: Your old pal.
MANAGER: Damn. It’d been…what? Forty years? Maybe more. Hell, I lose track. You had quite a mama there, girl.
GINA: Fabulous Faye.
MANAGER: Best damned headliner we ever had at LaMour.
GINA: Every stripper needed a gimmick…a “come on.” You had to do more than take it off…you had to strip with style. The guy told me that Faye’s was the best. She was a musician…a piano player…on a revolving platform. She’d start playing and singing and on every revolution of the piano Faye would take off another item of clothing. The audience couldn’t wait until the final coda. My mother….the stripper. My mother who prayed with me every night…..who went to my prom….who sang duets with me in church…..the burlesque girl. Mom was the last of her generation so there weren’t many living relatives who could help me. It was an old piano student of hers…maybe six months after the funeral…a lady who’d become one of Mom’s best friends, who told me what she knew. It was the Depression, my grandfather was out of work and had nothing to support his five kids… That’s when Mom left home and went to find work with the Chicago Symphony. But nobody needed another piano player during the Depression. When her family started getting letters and money orders from Chicago, it saved them….and always tucked inside the envelope was the program from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra…the list of players was always missing but they knew that Mom must be doing well…she made good money. Fabulous Faye….. I had never imagined…. I had never dreamed…. And I had never loved my mother more. There’s never been one like you, honey.
CATHY: We had no idea that she’d planned her own funeral until the undertaker showed us the notes scribbled on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt. I was blown away. Mom couldn’t organize her own purse. How could she do this? But there is was…the pallbearers, the music, the speakers….Okay, she got her birth date wrong, but everything else…well…I couldn’t believe it. The funeral home said they’d never had The Lovin’ Spoonful played at a funeral but everyone thought it fit Mom to a tee. I’d never seen balloons on a casket, either, but it was a nice touch and so very, very Mom. We followed the hearse to the cemetery….everybody heard the funeral procession. You can’t miss a steam calliope playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” ....and as the weeks went by we started missing things…. The power company calling about another misplaced bill…..onion bulbs planted by mistake in the tulip garden ….ice cream left out over night in a hot kitchen. ….grandchildren left at the county fair And within a year’s time we became a normal family for the first time in our lives. ….. I hated it. (singing) What a day for a day dream, What a day for a day dreamin' boy. And I'm lost in a day dream, Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy. And even if time ain't really on my side, It's one of those days for taking a walk outside. I'm blowing the day to take a walk in the sun, And fall on my face in somebody's new mowed lawn.
MARY: She got where she couldn’t take care of herself and she certainly wasn’t going to agree to living with us so we found one of those retirement places. Then it happened…just…it seemed like overnight. I mean, we didn’t even see it coming, it was so fast. She hadn’t been there two weeks when they called to say they weren’t set up to handle her condition. Condition? Being hateful is a condition. I hurried over to see what was going on and…..she didn’t recognize me. There was maybe a glimmer at first but it died as the days went by….nothing. No sign that she knew any of us. And here’s where it gets strange…here’s where it gets ……hard. (a long beat, then) My mother…. who at least in my memory had never said a kind word to me…who had resented my even being alive….My mother…became a beautiful soul. She was friendly. She had no idea who I was but she’d hold my hand and tell me how much she loved me…. “Karen,” she’d say. “You are such a special, special girl.” Karen? “You’ve been so good to me. Please stay a minute longer.” Where was this coming from? What caused….? I don’t know….I guess it doesn’t really matter. My kids….my kids whom I wouldn’t even allow around their grandmother….I brought them out to see her every week. She’d show them how to make paper airplanes and tell us the wildest stories about her days as a moose guide in Canada…a place she’d never been in her life, but who cared? I had a mother. …and goofy as she was some days, I had a friend. And every afternoon when I’d stand to leave she’d grab my hand and hug me.. “Goodbye Leona,” she’d say…or “Esther” or “Linda” or “Mary Jane.” And I’d look into the eyes of a woman I’d never really known and say something I’d been rehearsing all my life. “Goodbye, Amanda.”
LINDA:
I got too old for beauty contests and Mom started looking at my daughter… her granddaughter…(later: a close relationship)