The Green Room

If you've been over to that superior blog, WWW.House-of-Sternberg.blogspot.com
(and if you haven't been, you must go), you'll know that he's very keen on giving writing assignments. He established that the work this time would be less than a thousand words, take the form of a two character one act play, and reflect a conversation that follows a tragedy.

What follows is my effort.


The Green Room


The curtain opens to a spare room, walls of Paris Green, curtains of ivory satin. There are two chairs facing each other. They are straight backed and severe. Between the chairs is a matching coffee table, bare but for a Bible and a box of Kleenex.

Two men are seated there, both in suits, both in their late forties or early fifties. They are Pastor Pollard and Pastor Kartch. Kartch is slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. He has obviously been crying. It is a cry of despair.


Pollard: Another Kleenex?

Kartch: I should have done it myself, shouldn’t I?

P: No. It was right the way it was. And at the end you led us in the Twenty-third Psalm.

K: Not enough. It wasn’t enough. She is my wife. I should have led the whole service. Shouldn’t I?

P: Honestly, Karl, I don’t think so. I mean you weren’t in much shape to go through with it.

K: Not a very good example for my congregation, was I?

P: Because you cried at your wife’s funeral? You forget, I cried when Jill died. Even though she was only three days old, I cried. Bill Kinney from Faith Temple had to do the service for us.

K: I was here last night. After everybody left. After the visitation. I called and they let me in. Must have been after midnight. I prayed.

P: Of course you did.

K: No. I prayed for her to come back. I prayed to Jesus to raise her from the dead. To sit up in that damn casket and turn her head to me and smile. I could here her little laugh and her asking, “What happened?” I offered every sacrifice I could think of. He could have done it you know. Why wouldn’t He? Why didn’t Becky deserve it as much as Lazarus?

P: I’ve been asked that by parishioners many times, and so have you. What did you tell them?

K: I told them it was an example of His love. I told them it was like giving someone you love a great gift…you don’t need to give the gift every day; you give it and it’s remembered.

P: I like that. A wonderful analogy. Doesn’t it work for you now? Can’t you accept that it isn’t something we can expect every day, or ever at all any more?
K: No. Frankly I can’t. Now I see it as more like somebody standing by while you choke and withholding CPR. I see it as cruel and mean to have once shown us that He could do it and now standing by and refusing. I want Him to do what He can do. He’s done it before. I want it now. I want for my wife what He gave to Lazarus.

P: What did He give to Lazarus, Karl?

K: He gave him life!

P: And then? What happened then? He gave him life and he lived again, and then he died. He died, Karl. He may have lived again for a while, but then he died a second death. And where was Jesus then? Lazarus died, Karl. That’s the lesson. He died and nothing Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit could do would change that. The pain of death, twice. The grief of his wife and daughters, twice. The mourning and the tears and the suffering…twice. And that’s the lesson of Lazarus; not that he lived twice, but that even with divine intervention…Lazarus died.

The two men sit in their straight backed chairs. Pastor Pollard is thumbing through the Bible. Pastor Kartch is crying again. But it’s a cry of resignation.