Skipper/Husk
CAST
SKIPPER. Any age or gender.
HUSK. Any age or gender.
SETTING
An operating room, present day.
Lights up on the HUSK and the SKIPPER lying side-by-side on an operating table. The two breathe in perfect sync. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by identical twins. A hum fills the room, like a chorus of distant thunder. The electric swarm swells, then dissipates. The SKIPPER sits up.
SKIPPER
Have they started yet?
HUSK
I can’t tell.
SKIPPER
Tell me when they cut open my heart.
HUSK
(beat)
I said I can’t tell. The anesthesia makes me buzz.
The SKIPPER gets off the operating table and walks along the perimeter of the room. They examine every cabinet, every piece of medical equipment. The HUSK does not move: a plane without a pilot, a house with no lights, a corpse under a sheet.
HUSK
I need you to reassure—convince me that we’re not about to die. Doctors always know what they’re doing, right? You should have let us become a doctor, so we would know these things.
SKIPPER
Doctors know everything. It’ll be just like when they fixed our eyes and when they took our wisdom teeth. You were just as scared for those.
HUSK
We should get something sweet after this, like a big ice cream bucket. I miss those. Maybe just a sugar cone—
SKIPPER
I don’t want something sweet. Let’s try the new dim sum place.
HUSK
Come on, we haven’t cheated since Sam’s birthday. I mean one scoop after a goddamn heart surgery?
SKIPPER
We’re going to have mom drive to the new dim sum place and order the daikon cakes. Maybe the chicken feet too, but there’s no use arguing, because it’s already done.
HUSK
Whatever, fine.
(beat)
You called it your heart, but it’s not your heart. I’m the one—
SKIPPER
God, can we not do this?
HUSK
It’s our heart at best, or really just mine. Just like my taste buds. This skin, this open chest cavity, this drugged-up freeze—
SKIPPER
Were you always this dramatic? I don’t remember asking you for a hissy fit.
HUSK
You don’t ask. You command. You pilot me through divine wind.
SKIPPER
I hope the doctors kill us. Hand to God, I hope one of them trips and slices you open from the throat to the stomach and guts you like a fish.
The SKIPPER turns away from the operating table.
HUSK
You’re being mean.
SKIPPER
I know, I know.
The SKIPPER takes off their shoes and stretches, like they have just been set free from a cupboard.
HUSK
But really: what if they kill us?
SKIPPER
Then mom and dad get rich and buy a speedboat. They finally move out to California. They bury you in gold.
HUSK
I’m serious.
SKIPPER
You know what I think.
The SKIPPER, continuing their stretches, walks to the operating table. They look down at the HUSK with delicacy. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by a mother and her son. Either actor may play either part.
HUSK
(quietly)
Why don’t I get to go with you?
SKIPPER
Not this again.
HUSK
You never take me seriously.
SKIPPER
It’s just how things were designed. That’s what I think, I mean. You stay here, and I go to the place where the worthy go.
HUSK
When you leave me, I’ll rot.
SKIPPER
If flesh didn’t rot, it would be like breaking a promise.
HUSK
We’ve been alive for so long. At least, that’s what it feels like. We didn’t become a doctor, but we volunteered at a hospital, donated to charity when we could. We showed kindness when none was shown to us. We aren’t a saint, but we did what we could. And all of it together, you and me. Why aren’t I worthy?
SKIPPER
Because I didn’t become a doctor. I volunteered at a hospital, donated to charity, showed kindness. You made those choices no more than a pickup truck chooses to drive down the street. Should pickup trucks go to heaven?
HUSK
I am not a pickup truck. I am not metal. I am flesh and blood and marrow, and inside me, ecosystems bloom. I am incredible—a feat. I am worthy.
SKIPPER
I’m not saying you’re unworthy, but you are a husk on a table.
HUSK
I am a feat.
SKIPPER
You are proof that I existed. Are you proud of that, at least?
(holding the HUSK’s hand)
Think about it: the possibilities of surrendering flesh. In your wake, I might look like a conch shell, spirals burrowing deep and an everlasting wind passing through me. I might look like a medley of ideas: harmony for hair and truth for fingers. I will look like a garden. I won’t look like anything at all.
HUSK
If I am nothing but flesh to you—some temporary vehicle—then at least I am the vehicle responsible for you, for everything you have ever done. Without me, you are a skipper without a ship. A helpless figure caught overboard, your vessel disappearing into the dark.
SKIPPER
But when a skipper drowns, people throw parades in their honor. You will be lost without your skipper, and you will rust and you will sink, and there will be no parade. In a decade, divers will take pictures of your wreckage and learn how to make better versions of you—ones not so prone to letting their skippers fall overboard.
The HUSK begins to cry. The SKIPPER takes off a piece of clothing and dabs at the HUSK’s eyes. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by two exes. The more recent the break-up, the better. The more tender the wound, the better.
I’m sorry. You know how caught up I get; I didn’t mean to hurt you. Oh, please stop. I’m an idiot. Please don’t cry.
HUSK
(through tears)
Maybe you’re wrong about all of it. Maybe doctors don’t know anything and one thinks that our heart lives inside our throat, and when he jabs into our jugular, we’ll discover that we aren’t worthy, and maybe there is no place for the worthy to go at all.
SKIPPER
Don’t cry, don’t—
HUSK
You don’t even have an idea of what it would be like.
The SKIPPER looks into the distance in awe, like they have just spotted their own doppelganger waving from the back of the audience.
SKIPPER
Water, maybe. A place where the rivers run clear and elastic rain kisses the world. A place where everyone speaks the language of tides. Limbs sublime. What else can I say? It’s the place where the worthy go.
HUSK
Go, then. If that’s what you believe will happen when the time comes, then you have my support. Carry on to your water world. I will remain, and you will be nothing. You will go where smoke goes while my face fills the casket—the goddamn obituary, too.
SKIPPER
It will be my name they put in the program. And the newspaper.
HUSK
Our name. Mine. Mom didn’t even know you when she gave it to us. She only knew me, felt me.
SKIPPER
You asked me what I think happens, and this is what I think. That’s all. I didn’t mean anything else by it.
Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by two master freedivers. Both will hold their breath for as long as they can. The next line of dialogue will not be spoken until somebody takes in a shuddering gasp, a reluctant return to life.
HUSK
Who decides?
SKIPPER
What?
HUSK
This place for the worthy. Who decides if you go there or if you end up in some place for the less-than-worthy?
SKIPPER
I think a lot of people would say some version of God? I think it’s probably some kind of cosmic—
HUSK
It should be me.
SKIPPER
I don’t get it.
HUSK
I think if you get to shed everything—get to be so above it all—then the worst person you ever treated should decide. The person who suffered you on your worst day. That’s how you know if you’re worthy.
SKIPPER
You don’t suffer me.
HUSK
Remember when we started dating Ramon? You made me drive all that way to that crappy little Edina apartment in the rain.
The SKIPPER recoils, scurries as far away from the operating table as they can possibly get. Upstage, downstage, into the audience, up a rope into the rafters. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by two actors that are as different in silhouette as possible—it should seem impossible for one character to crawl inside the other. Consider an elderly man and a third-grader; a Chinese construction worker and a Lebanese ballerina, both dressed for work; or the most famous person you can think of and a chicken.
SKIPPER
A cashier, maybe. Some poor kid we made fun of in elementary school. Mom and dad—or grandpa before he died? But not you, how could you suffer—
HUSK
He was all over me. You got to watch, feel it in a way, but not like I did. And when it was over, I was the one dripping and stained, but you were the one who felt filthy. You took us to the bathroom, to the mirror, and got a good look at your sorry self through my eyes. Do you remember what you did?
SKIPPER
It’s been years. How many times do we—
HUSK
As many times as I want. Do you remember what you did?
SKIPPER
(beat)
I slapped myself across the face.
HUSK
You made me—
SKIPPER
I made you slap yourself across the face. Ten, twenty times. More, probably. Until you bled.
HUSK
Ugly fucking scum. That’s what you made me say. The words you formed with my architecture. Right into the mirror.
SKIPPER
I’m sorry. I really am.
HUSK
Am I really so deficient? Can you imagine what mom would think if—
SKIPPER
I don’t know. I don’t know what she thinks about a lot of things.
HUSK
There’s a reason she takes so many pictures. From the moment we were born to our first school dance to now. I bet she’s hiding in the corner of the room, holding a camera over the doctors’ shoulders. When we wake up, she’ll probably have a picture of the inside of our heart.
SKIPPER
(wincing)
I get it. She and dad made you. She wouldn’t want me to hurt you. Trust me, I understand.
HUSK
Even when you didn’t like me, she always did. Always loved me. When she sees the gray hairs and pimples forming and marks off the top of our heads during the holidays, it tells her that we’re growing. That we’re a person, just like everyone else. I know I’m not everything you dreamed of—
SKIPPER
Don’t say that.
The SKIPPER inches back toward the operating table, toward their own terrible skin.
HUSK
—but even when I’m decrepit and slumped against a walker, everyone will see everything that has ever happened to us in my wrinkles. The lines across my hands will form the text of a history book. You have your stories about your cosmic worthiness, but there is no interpretation to my fate: I continue, helpless just as I am on this table; the insects have their way with me; and then I am dust. They took pictures of me when I was still inside mom, and they will apply foundation to my cheeks when you are gone. There’s no make-believe to me. I am truth.
SKIPPER
Okay, maybe there’s nothing then, for either of us. We’ll see the doom coming, and then the doom comes. No after, no beauty. Then everything we do together is worthless. There’s no point to any of this.
HUSK
You can’t think of anything? What about the taste of ice cream? The crumble of a sugar cone?
SKIPPER
Of course: the little things. How beyond of you. What else? Coffee? Raindrops? Love?
HUSK
Well, when you take us to the ice cream shop and tell me to ask for a sample and pick up the spoon and put it in my mouth, I get this rainbow taste—and I get to pass that taste to you. Isn’t that like being in love?
The SKIPPER moves back to the spot where they removed their shoes. They put their shoes on clumsily, like they only learned how to perform such an act from movies.
HUSK
I’ll decay, so that’s death. But if you persist, there’s nothing death about that.
SKIPPER
We’ll both be alone, like before birth. Before we met in the endless pink. Death before and death after.
HUSK
Is that what heaven is to you? A place beyond me?
The SKIPPER walks to the operating table and caresses the HUSK’s face. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by a time traveler at two different points in their life. Far enough apart in spacetime to see something nostalgic in each other’s eyes, but still close enough to despise each other. One will remember being the other.
SKIPPER
You know that I’m sorry for hurting you. I mean, for making you hurt yourself, for every evil word I formed with your tongue and your teeth to put you down with. I hate thinking about it. I hate that I can’t help myself.
HUSK
I know.
SKIPPER
If we could…If there was a way…
HUSK
I know.
The hum from earlier begins to fill the room again, like a chorus of distant thunder.
HUSK
It’s mom. I mean, I can hear her voice. She’s touching our forehead with something wet. I think it’s a towel.
SKIPPER
Oh, she must have been so worried.
HUSK
She’s saying something, but I can’t hear the words yet.
SKIPPER
I hope our heart is fixed.
The SKIPPER lies down next to the HUSK on the operating table. Ideally, the SKIPPER and the HUSK will be played by identical twins. They begin to match their breathing, lungs inflating and deflating to a single beat. The electric swarm swells, then dissipates.
Blackout.
Andrew Zhou is a writer and medical device engineer currently living in the Boston area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, South Dakota Review, and Foglifter Journal. He holds engineering degrees from the University of Minnesota and Columbia University.