Title: “Money is not synonymous with happiness”.
Author: Clara Pérez
3 characters:
- Wife: Interested woman, who exchanges love for comforts and money.
- Friend: She does research for the wife about her old love.
- Husband: Wealthy businessman of bad character and possessive.
SINGLE ACT
Setting: Garden of the husband and wife’s home, sitting at a breakfast table, drinking coffee.
Introduction: Wife has her friend visit her to find out for her some details about the first love of her life, as she is unable to do so due to pressure from her husband.
Wife (smiling kindly): Thank you for coming friend, you don’t know how much I appreciate it.
Friend: You don’t have to thank me, you know you can always count on me, but I noticed you were very anxious when you called me, is something wrong?
Wife (stretching out her hand and putting it on her friend’s hand): Nothing is really wrong friend, but I think I have to tell you something, and then I will ask you a big favor, if you want to refuse I will understand, but believe me it is something I really need.
Friend (smiling slightly as if to reassure the wife): Let’s see friend, tell me whatever it is and you know that if it is in my hands I will gladly help you.
Wife (crossing her legs and adjusting her position in the chair): You know that my mother was a very strict woman, she worked hard for us and wanted us to have a good life, for my mother happiness was not children, or a home and much less a man you loved.
Friend: Yes, your mother was a very self-sacrificing woman, she was always wrong about that.
Wife: Well, I fell in love with a boy whose family was humble, he studied with my brother, he was a couple of years older than me, but when my mother found out, she began to oppose me, she didn’t let me go out, we fought all the time, then my husband appeared, a man with money, business and my mother decided that he was the best match for me.
Friend (Surprised): And she decided and you let her manipulate you?
Wife: No, my friend, she put so many things in my head, about how I was going to live with that man and how happy I could be with him, what I was going to know, what I was going to have, and I, as a young inexperienced girl, let myself be convinced and I married him.
Girlfriend: And you have lived in this hell for years, a despot, mistreating, abusive man who has you here as a useful ornament, how wrong your mother was about what happiness was.
Wife (with a frustrated look on her face): That’s right friend, I have lived in opulence but as a pet of this man, I have not been happy a single day of my life, I gave up my love for interest and how dearly I have paid for it.
Friend: But what do you want me to do, my friend?
Wife: I’m even ashamed to ask you this, my friend, but I read in the press that there is an art exhibition of a very well known painter in other countries, they say he is from here and the name is that of the man I left years ago, I need to know if it is him, to know what happened in his life, but you know I can’t risk it, would you do that for me?
Friend (Smiling): Of course I can, friend, I can’t miss….
Husband (with a bitter face and interrupting the conversation): Good afternoon, love, are you once again wasting your time in chitchat?
Wife (annoyed): That’s no way to treat my friend…..
Friend (Interrupting): Don’t worry friend, I’m leaving, I’m sorry I won’t stay to enjoy your husband’s kindness and hospitality, but I have better things to do. I’ll call you later to tell you, happy afternoon sir, very kind.
The friend gets up from her seat and walks to the door, while the wife gets up and looking at her husband reproachfully leaves him alone in the garden.
Hours later the friend returns
Friend (Stealthily): Can we talk? Where is your ill-mannered husband?
Wife (smiling): Excuse me, my friend, what a shame for you, he is rude and disrespectful, the worst man ever born, but did you find out anything?
Friend: Yes, my friend, he is indeed that man you left a few years ago, I talked to him and he told me that he remembers you fondly, but that he will never forgive you for having exchanged him for money, now he is a renowned artist, he has a good position and is happy.
Wife: And me for listening to my mother and putting money above love, I am the unhappiest woman in the world.
Friend: That’s right friend, a bad decision, now he has the success that your mother would have wanted, but it is no longer within your possibilities, one should get one’s own things and not sell one’s life for interest.
The wife looks at her friend with a resigned face and she gives her an encouraging smile.
END