Pick the lock, p.30
Pick the Lock, page 30
Mother, Marta, and I sit at the dining room table. I’ve told them both that he plans to move in with Finch.
“That’s going to be hard, considering she lives with Milorad, right?” Marta asks.
“I think she lives in both places? I mean, I’ve never been to her apartment, but she’s shown us pictures.”
“Wait. What?” Mother says.
Marta tells me to show her, so I get my iPad and I queue up the “Shape-Shifter” mixtape. She pauses it a few times and rewinds to watch Finch switch and looks surprised and kind of amazed. I can’t describe the look on her face.
“This makes so much sense of my childhood,” she says, and watches to the end, her jaw loose. Her eyes are wet. She shakes her head. “This makes so much fucking sense.”
I never even thought about the fact that Finch is her actual sister—that they grew up together the way me and Henry are growing up right now. How terrible.
As if summoned, Finch arrives through the kitchen door and slams it. If I could stop time, I’d stop it right here to take bets on how she’s going to play this. My money is on her playing the best sister ever and asking why she wasn’t invited to the demolition party.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” she yells—part intimidating and part pretending to joke—as she finds us all in the dining room.
Mother and Marta grimace, and I find words first.
“You’ve just missed him,” I say.
When she pouts in confusion, Marta says, “He’s heading to your apartment, I think.”
“Who are we talking about?” Finch asks.
“Oh, please,” Mother says. “No need to pretend, sister.”
“I’m not pretending,” she says. “Milorad told me you’re about to ruin this house. It’s an historic landmark, you know! Aunt Lily would be appalled!”
“Pretty sure she was appalled when you murdered her,” Mother says.
Finch’s eyes dart around.
“Pretty sure she’d be appalled to know you murdered her parents, too,” I say.
“And your own parents,” Henry adds as he walks in from the study, which makes all of us look at him, shocked.
“How old are you, exactly?” Marta asks.
Henry inhales to say something, but then—
*poof!*
—Brutus scurries through the swinging kitchen door.
“I knew it,” Henry says. ASK HENRY HOW HE KNEW ABOUT FINCH AND BRUTUS SOMETIME.
“We need breakfast,” Marta says to break the silence.
We eat her famous ham-and-cheese croissants alongside yogurt and mandarins. Mother talks about how we’ll do it. Basically, we take out the tubes throughout the house, but we leave one in her basement bedroom so we can access the System, Station Six, and Safe House when we need to.
“I’m moving out of that room,” she says.
“Take mine!” Marta says.
Mother smiles. Henry looks as if he’s going to cry.
I go to hug him and he flinches away. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I was a terrible person. I’ve said and done things that were very wrong. I don’t know why. I just did.” Then the tears come.
He lets me side-hug him as I say, “You did those things to stay safe. Just like I told you before.”
“Where will Marta stay if Mother takes her room?”
“I’m going to take the room next to yours,” Mother says. “But Marta got married years ago, and she and her husband are going to move into a house of their own.”
Henry looks at Marta. “You’re married?”
Marta nods, grinning.
Mother comes to hug him from the other side, now. We hold him up as he sobs.
“I had to stay safe, too, Henry. I know what it’s like,” I say.
“You’re both children I am very proud of,” Mother says. “Neither of you was awful. You were being used. Let’s get a therapist to work all this old shit out and get back to the joyous day.”
“I’m in,” Marta says, holding a stack of what looks like folded clothing.
“I have to pee,” I say, and jog upstairs with the iPad to put it back under the sink even though I don’t have to anymore. As I pee, I think of returning it to Gemma. Seeing Gemma. Getting to be around Gemma. Asking her all the questions I’ve wanted to ask her for years about her chickens, her family, her life. Something tells me I’ll be seeing her a lot more now.
Demolition
When I get back downstairs, Mother is standing next to the tube in the study. She has a chainsaw in her hands and is sporting ear protection and a face shield and is wearing a boilersuit the same color as her eyes. My eyes.
She points to safety glasses on the desk. “You should put those on.”
I do.
Henry walks in from the direction of the kitchen. He is also wearing safety glasses and a boilersuit.
I nod and Mother points to a boilersuit and a crowbar that are sitting on my old desk. I say, as I step into the pant legs, “I do not lie to God.”
“Of course you don’t,” Mother answers.
“It’s important that you trust me.”
“I trust you,” she says.
“This is the final scene in the opera,” I say.
She starts the chainsaw and yells over its engine, “Well then, let’s fucking do it!”
ACT IV, SCENE 3
INT. THE VANDERMAKER HOUSE—ALL ROOMS—AROUND NOON
Music plays in background. Punk or rock. The feeling of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” in the bassline. It will build into “Pick the Lock” once the action and dialogue are done.
JANE, MINA, and HENRY are all dressed in dark gray boilersuits and eye and ear protection. Mina has a chainsaw, Henry has a sledgehammer, and Jane has a crowbar. They start to demolish the tube in the study first. Then the sitting room, then the kitchen, then the dining room. When the last section is ripped out, they stop and remove their safety gear.
MINA
I didn’t think that would feel so…
JANE
Great?
MINA
No. It was like I was dishonoring the history of the house. Even the women who’d been locked up.
JANE
Like some kind of weird Stockholm syndrome.
MINA
Yeah. So weird.
HENRY
I used to feel that way about Vernon. Like I owed him my life.
JANE
Shit. Yeah.
Mina shakes her head.
HENRY
I still don’t understand why we’re not ripping it all out. I don’t want a tube in my room anymore.
MINA
Those are coming out. The one in Jane’s room. All of them.
HENRY
Why not the one in the basement room?
JANE
We have a lot to tell you. But not right now.
MILORAD enters from stage left with a wheelbarrow and starts to load the broken pieces of the System into it. Henry helps.
MINA
Let’s help them get all this outside.
ALL CAST onstage help put pieces of the tubes and capsules in the wheelbarrow. When Mina finds the wet nurse attachment, she walks it outside to the patio, picks up her chainsaw, and cuts it into many pieces. She cries. She smiles. She sits on the patio bench when she’s done. Milorad arrives soon after with the wheelbarrow and loads the pieces into it.
MILORAD
I ordered dumpster for tomorrow.
MINA
Thank you!
MILORAD
Will you allow me to help with upstairs rooms? I will fit plywood in floors first down here. Then help, yes?
MINA
Absolutely.
(marked pause)
One day will you tell me how you and Brutus met?
MILORAD
Brutus is not what he seems.
(marked pause)
I have said too much.
Milorad looks all around, as if being watched. Henry, Mina, and MARTA join MOTHER on the patio.
HENRY
What’s Jane doing?
FREE MOTHER arrives onstage in the foreground as Jane hands out foam costumes to her bandmates.
MINA
I think we’re about to hear a new song.
Each member is a different type of key. ELLIS is a skeleton key. WENDYLISA is a modern metallic blue key. DAVID the drummer wears a foam tubular key as a hat. Jane is wearing a short dress made up of lockpicks that shimmy like a flapper sort of dress.
JANE
Milorad, can you bring that debris over here?
Milorad wheels the wheelbarrow he just filled to Jane, who then dumps it on the patio on the “stage” where the band is about to perform. Milorad sits on a patio bench. His smile is enormous.
JANE (to Milorad)
You look so happy!
MILORAD
I have pulled you off many stages and driven you home from many shows. I am excited to be part of show now, and not big bummer.
Milorad turns to Mina and the others and smiles.
MILORAD
You will like this music. It is good music.
Music fades in…
Song: “Pick the Lock”
Composer notes: THIS IS AN ANTHEM. A punk anthem. It will make the listener feel like part of a family. Warm and safe. Honest. This song is the foundation of the whole opera. No pressure.
JANE
THEY PUT HER ON TV WHEN WE WERE TINY
IN A DRESS AND PUMPS WITH FOUR-INCH HEELS.
THEY HAD HER SERVING UP SOME COOKIES
AND VARIOUS DELICIOUS MEALS.
THEN SHE SHOWED UP IN OUR HISTORY BOOKS
PROTESTING FOR HER RIGHTS.
WENT TO COLLEGE AFTER SHE HAD KIDS.
STUDIED DAYS AND WORKED LONG NIGHTS.
AND NOW YOU SAY SHE CAN’T BE GOOD
AND NOW—OH! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!
AND NOW YOU SERVE HER UP FOR LUNCH
AND NOW YOU DIG YOUR KNIFE IN.
BAND
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE BULLSHIT
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE CLOCK
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE PRISON
COME WITH ME / LET’S PICK THE LOCK.
JANE
THEY GAVE HER BIRTH CONTROL AND CREDIT.
THEY RAISED THE MORTGAGE ON YOUR HOUSE.
MADE IT NORMAL TO FORGET IT.
MADE YOUR DAD INTO A LOUSE.
IT’S HER FAULT FOR BEING WORLDLY
WANTING THINGS SHE SHOULDN’T TAKE,
IF SHE ONLY KNEW HER PLACE IN LIFE
SHE WOULDN’T BE SUCH A FLAKE.
AND NOW YOU SAY SHE CAN’T BE GOOD
AND NOW—OH! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!
AND NOW YOU SERVE HER UP FOR LUNCH
AND NOW YOU DIG YOUR KNIFE IN.
BAND
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE BULLSHIT
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE CLOCK
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE PRISON
COME WITH ME / LET’S PICK THE LOCK.
JANE
ALL THE RULES THEY TOLD YOU—LIES.
ALL THE BULLSHIT EXPECTATIONS
WITHOUT HER TWO-PLUS JOBS AT NIGHT
YOU’D NEVER HAVE HAD VACATIONS.
NOW THEY TAKE AWAY FROM HER
EVERY RIGHT THAT SHE HAS EARNED.
CAN’T MAKE HER QUIT OR CRY ABOUT IT
SHE’S SO USED TO GETTING BURNED.
Jane beckons and Mina steps up to the stage and joins in for the chorus.
BAND and MINA
AND NOW YOU SAY SHE CAN’T BE GOOD
AND NOW—OH! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!
AND NOW YOU SERVE HER UP FOR LUNCH
AND NOW YOU DIG YOUR KNIFE IN.
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE BULLSHIT
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE CLOCK
FREE YOUR MOTHER FROM THE SYSTEM
COME WITH ME / LET’S PICK THE LOCK.
Jane and Mina are jumping, now, each jump with their knees up. This last line is part scream and part song.
JANE and MINA
OH! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!
COME WITH ME / LET’S PICK THE LOCK!
Jane and Mina collapse onto the patio-stage, surrounded by the System debris, out of breath. They have some kind of conversation down there on the ground, and laugh and cry and joke around as the Band walks over to Henry and Marta and Milorad, and Marta asks them to stay for dinner.
END SCENE
LESSON FIFTEEN: FAMILY WALK
Today is still Monday, March 24, 2025
The sky is big. I don’t know if that’s just because I’m allowed to be here. Maybe when people are free, the sky looks bigger. I think Mother was right about getting a therapist. I’m in a faded black T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. I’m wearing the inner-zip combat boots Marta gave me, and I feel like Punk Rock Jane. I’m not ashamed of her. I love Punk Rock Jane. As much as my father wanted me to hate Punk Rock Jane, it turns out, she’s the one who knows me the best.
It’s seventy degrees and Henry has shed his coat. He put it on a bench along the trail and when Milorad said, “Someone could take it,” Henry answered, “If someone needs it more than me enough to steal it, then they can have it.”
Mother beamed at that. He didn’t see it, but I did.
For all of Vernon’s attempts to make us like him, we still ended up like her. It must be infuriating. Poor chap.
“So, what are we doing for spring break?” Mother asks.
“What are we supposed to do?” Henry asks, making it clear that the sky is absolutely bigger when one is free.
“Usually, people travel, I guess,” Marta says.
Mother and I say, accidentally in unison, “I’m not leaving the house.”
We all laugh.
Milorad says, “I would like to travel and see my friend in Ljubljana. He has invited me and I would like to see him.”
“That’s six hours difference,” Henry says.
“Why don’t you go?” Mother asks.
“I have not flown on plane since coming to this country.”
“It’s a really easy flight. And you could see the Dragon Bridge! I love that town. It’s so hip. Did you know it sheltered artists during wartimes? I always feel safe there,” Mother says.
Milorad says, “I will make plans.”
We walk in silence for a while. Then we solve old puzzles.
Ask Henry How He Knew About Finch and Brutus Sometime
Henry shrugs. “I don’t know. I just, you know, felt it?”
“You felt it?”
“Yeah,” he says.
Ask Mother How She Survived the Great Ignoring Sometime
She shakes her head. “I just had to,” she says. “I almost didn’t,” she says. “I’m lucky to be alive.” Marta gently reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. “Sometimes in the end, when we are at the door that might take us away from everything we love on earth, that’s when the best ideas kick in. When I was there, I could see the reclaiming clearly. Not just the demolition of our System, but the reversal of the narrative.”
“What narrative?” Henry asks.
“Start with ‘All girls are liars’ and go from there, I guess,” Mother answers.
“I’m sorry for what we did,” I say.
“Stop, Jane. It wasn’t you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Henry says.
“I appreciate that,” Mother says. “It wasn’t your fault. So many families go through what we did. It’s more common than you think. You’re not alone. And the more you talk about it, the more free you’ll be of it.”
How I Came to Understand Why She Didn’t Just Leave
Me and Henry. That’s why. Because it’s not as easy as that. Because it’s a dumb question. No one seems to ask Why doesn’t he stop hurting his family? Until people are willing to ask that question aloud, then I don’t think Why doesn’t she leave? is worth shit.
Until the people asking have defused a lying, erratic, manipulating bomb, they should probably keep their judgments about explosives to themselves. Our society makes so many excuses for violent men, we have normalized explosions.
That’s why.
It’s all very plain.
Ask Milorad if He Knows About Brutus Sometime
Milorad stays quiet. So quiet.
I do not ask a second time.
OUR PEOPLE IV
It’s an icebreaker!
Let’s Get to Know Marta!
Marta says her earliest memories involved walks with her grandfather. He was a hiker and used to take her to mountains and trails when she was only five or six. “He’s the one who taught me how to make mashed potatoes,” she says. “He’s the one who told me the secret ingredient.” She will not tell us the secret ingredient.
Let’s Get to Know Milorad!
Milorad is quiet and contemplative. He laughs at Marta’s unwillingness to share the secret ingredient, but he doesn’t say a word for the remainder of the walk. He looks up a lot at the sky and nods, as if it’s talking to him. I think maybe the sky talks to Milorad.
When we get home, he walks directly to the pool and peels back its cover. Then he begins to take out the spring and summer patio things—the furniture, the firepit, the hammock stand.
Let’s Get to Know Gemma!
