Henley, Beth. Crimes of the Heart.

Summary

Characters

Lenny MacGrath (30), Meg MacGrath (27), Babe Botrell (24): sisters

Chick Boyle (29): their cousin, mother of a little daughter (Peekay) and a son (Buck)

Doc Porter (30): Meg's former lover, now married to Joan, father of a little boy (Scott) and an infant daughter

Barnette Lloyd (26): Babe's advocate

Setting

Hazlehurst, a small town in Mississippi. A large kitchen crammed with furniture. One door leading to the front entrance, another to the back entrance, two more doors leading to the dining room and to the bedroom respectively. Autumn 1974, five years after the hurricane Camille.

Act One

Lenny, a plump, timid, and nervous woman, enters the kitchen. She takes a candle and tries to light it on a biscuit. She hears someone coming and quickly slips the biscuit and the candle in her pocket. Chick, a fashionable blond woman wearing bright red lipstick, enters the kitchen. She is furious about the scandal caused by Babe, which was even covered in the newspaper. Chick is anxious about her own reputation. She talks on and starts putting on a new pair of stockings, looking somewhat comically doing so. Lenny hesitantly admits that she sent Meg a telegram asking her to come home. Chick does not welcome Meg's coming because she is afraid that Meg's appearance will only contribute to the scandal. Meg's reputation was never good and it grew even worse after her affair with Doc Porter. Chick blames Meg for her having almost spoilt her chances in good society. Chick gives Lenny a box of chocolates as a present for her thirtieth birthday and rushes out to pick Babe.

Doc Porter, a handsome man with a slight limp, appears at the back door. He has brought Lenny a bag of pecan nuts a sad piece of news. The old horse Billy Boy that belonged to Lenny was struck by a bolt of lightning and died. Lenny is depressed and starts crying. Doc tries in vain to comfort her. Lenny reproaches him for his lasting affection for Meg. Doc heard about Meg coming and wishes Lenny to give him a call when she does so because he would like to see her. When left alone, Lenny procures the biscuit and the candle again. She manages to light the candle, she sings "Happy Birthday" to herself, and forms a wish in her mind before she blows off the candle. She is about to repeat the same action for the third time when a telephone rings. It is Lucilla, sister of Zackery Botrell, who is Babe's husband. She leaves the news that Zackery is recovering.

Meg, a woman with wonderful and sad eyes, enters the kitchen. She has arrived home from Hollywood. The first thing she says when she hugs Lenny is that they are getting old. Lenny is touched by the remark and Meg realizes that she forgot it was her birthday. Lenny explains that Zackery was shot in his belly and that it was Babe who shot him. Babe insists on her having shot her husband because she did not like his appearance. Babe married Zackery when she was only eighteen. He was a great match: an advocate, a member of the Senate, and the most influential person in the town. Babe is to be released from arrest on bail. Lenny also explains that their grandfather grew worse and had to be taken to a hospital. Meg wonders about the news, she has been absent making her singing career in Hollywood for a long time. She admits that she did not read Lenny's letters because they always affected her badly. She has been not singing since Christmas.

Babe, a beautiful and lively woman, storms in the kitchen. Chick, who has brought her, follows. Chick complains about Babe's unwillingness to cooperate with her advocate, the young Barnette Lloyd, who succeeded in getting her out on bail. Chick and Lenny are called away by an alarming phone call by the nurse of Chick's children, saying that Peekay and Buck have eaten some paint. Babe comes down to Meg and they recall their family history. The sisters used to live in Vicksburg with their parents before they went to live with their grandparents. The father abandoned them and later the mother hanged herself together with her favourite yellow cat. Babe wonders why she did it and especially why she hanged the cat too. The sisters pity the nervous and tired Lenny who spends all her time looking after the grandfather and the house. Lenny is very apprehensive about her not being able to have children and she avoids men for this reason. There was one man, Charlie Hill from Memphis, Tennessee, whom Lenny came to know through an advertisement. The affair however ended soon. The sisters realize that it is Lenny's birthday and order a big cake for her.

Barnette Lloyd, an intelligent and eager young man, calls for Babe. Meg doubts his capacities as a lawyer but he explains that he has personal interest in Babe's case because Zackery ruined his father and also because he likes Babe. There is evidence that Zackery is involved in some dirty business and Lloyd plans to expose it. Meg tries to persuade Babe to talk to Barnette. Babe tells her story first to Meg. While she is talking, Meg bites into each candy from Lenny's chocolate box and then gives it back again. Babe explains that she started to hate her husband who was always absent on business. She began a love affair with a poor black boy, the fifteen-year-old Willie Jay. They were surprised by Zackery when they were hanging together at the back door and Zackery slapped the boy. On this Babe shot Zackery. Babe does not want to disclose her affair so as not to put her young lover in danger.

Act Two

Babe repeats her story to Barnette who plans to build up his defence on Zackery's constant physical and mental abuse of his wife. Babe describes that after she shot Zackery, she went to make herself lemonade, only then she called the ambulance. A phone rings. It is Lucille calling from the hospital. Zackery informs Babe that there is evidence against her which will completely shatter her defence, so Barnette zealously rushes out to find out what Zackery plans. When he later returns, he brings committing photographs showing Babe with Zackery in the garage where they used to hide for privacy. The pictures were taken by Lucilla who has been spying on Babe for some time and was only waiting for the right moment to use the photos.

Lenny returns from a visit to the grandfather. She is extremely angry at Meg who was making up lies about her glamorous career as a singer to please the sick old man. Lenny's anger only increases when she finds that Meg was eating her only birthday present. Meg explains that she was looking for nuts though the inscription on the box says these are cream chocolates only. Lenny complains that as it was Meg who found the mother dead in the cellar, she was always indulged and treated the best of the sisters though she behaved the worst. Lenny recalls for a thousandth time the story when they were children and had several jingle bells sewn on their dresses, but Meg was the only of them to have a whole line of the bells instead of the three ones that Babe and Lenny had.

After the mother's death, Meg started spending hours in the library looking in a medical book with terrifying pictures of skin diseases and then going to buy herself a double portion of ice cream. She claimed she was tough enough to bear it but she cried in her bed at night. Also it was her fault that Doc was hurt by a collapsing building during the hurricane. Meg persuaded him to stay although everyone else fled for safety. It took a year for his leg to heal, on which Doc gave up medicine though it was what everyone knew he always wanted to do. Meg left him after the accident because she felt like suffocating in the town. Her singing career was going on quite well but at Christmas she suffered a mental breakdown and was unable to sing any more. She spent some time in a mental asylum in Los Angeles.

Act Three

The Grandfather falls in coma. Chick produces a list of relatives who should be informed about his condition. She is willing to call a half of them, Lenny should phone the remaining half. Lenny feels guilty because one of her birthday wishes was to relieve the grandfather from his pains. Meg enters the kitchen, singing for herself happily. She has just spent the night with Doc and though nothing happened which would displease his wife and children, Meg feels fresh and full of energy after having seen him. Meg is determined to tell the Grandfather the truth about her career but Lenny and Babe inform her about his coma and start laughing hysterically.

The grandfather is likely to die and there is a new life starting for all of the characters. Barnette gives up his personal revenge for Babe's sake and suggests to reach an agreement with Zackery out of court. Barnette could prove Zackery guilty of economic criminality but at the same time Zackery could make Babe's shooting look like an attempt to murder rather than self-defence. Lenny stands up for Meg when Chick talks about her disrespectfully after having seen her with Doc. Lenny takes a broom and chases Chick out of the house. Babe receives a call from Zackery informing her that he will try to prove her mad and place her in a mental home. Babe attempts to hang herself but the string tears in the middle. She then puts her head in the oven. Meg comes in time to save her. Babe realizes why their mother hanged the cat together with herself, it was because she feared to die alone.

Lenny gathers courage and calls her former lover Charlie, telling him that she left him only because she cannot have any children. She learns that Charlie does not like children anyway and so they arrange a date. Meg and Babe call Lenny and surprise her with the gift of the birthday cake. Lenny's wish before blowing off the candle is to see herself and her sisters together and laughing. When she tells her sisters what she wished for, her wish is fulfilled. There is the sound of saxophone playing and the lights go off.

Analysis

The play is based on conversation, there is little outward action. The focus is on the tension among the three sisters, each of whom is coping with some kind of a personal crisis. The audience learns about the nature of the individual problems of the sisters only gradually, bits and pieces of information are scattered throughout the play. The subject is highly serious, but the treatment is at times comic, or rather, grotesque (Lenny and Babe's mad laughing when they inform Meg that the grandfather is in coma; Lenny's chasing the annoying Chick out of the house with a broom; Babe's concerns not so much for the reason of the mother's suicide but for the reason of her killing the cat too; etc.). The sisters are very different from one another, they often offend and annoy one another. The conclusion of the play is however optimistic, the sisters are reunited and for the first time, they look like a functioning family.