Florida FAST Practice Test 5

The Inventory

¹CHARACTERS: ALMA, the elder sister, in her forties. FAYE, the younger sister, in her thirties. (A small kitchen in late afternoon. Cardboard boxes crowd the floor, each labeled in thick black marker: KEEP, SELL, DONATE. The cupboards stand open and nearly empty. A radio on the windowsill is unplugged, its cord wrapped neatly around it.)

²(ALMA stands at the counter with a clipboard. She lifts a stack of saucers, counts them, and sets them in the SELL box without looking at them.)

³ALMA: Eleven saucers. Ten cups. One of them chipped. Mom always said she'd replace it.

⁴FAYE: (entering from the hall, carrying a dented tin box) She said that for twenty years.

⁵ALMA: Then it's time someone did. (She writes on the clipboard.) The dealer comes Thursday. If we finish the kitchen today, we can do the bedrooms tomorrow and be on the road by Friday.

⁶FAYE: You make it sound like a moving company.

⁷ALMA: Someone has to make it sound like something. (She holds out her hand.) What's that?

⁸FAYE: Her recipe tin. (She opens it. Index cards, soft and gray at the edges, are packed tight inside.) Look—"Lemon cake, from Mrs. Gale, 1974." She's crossed out Mrs. Gale's sugar and written in her own. Twice.

⁹ALMA: (not looking up) Put it in KEEP.

¹⁰FAYE: That's all? Put it in KEEP?

¹¹ALMA: What do you want me to do, Faye? Read every card? There are three hundred of them.

¹²FAYE: (quietly) I want you to stop counting for one minute.

¹³(A pause. ALMA lowers the clipboard but does not set it down. Outside, a car passes; its headlights sweep across the ceiling and are gone.)

¹⁴ALMA: When Dad died, who sorted his workshop? Who called the bank, the church, the man about the roof? You were in Lisbon.

¹⁵FAYE: I was twenty-two.

¹⁶ALMA: I was twenty-six. (Beat.) Somebody has to carry the clipboard. It isn't because they don't feel anything.

¹⁷(FAYE looks at her for a long moment. Then she closes the tin, crosses to the KEEP box, and sets it inside with great care, as if it held something that could still break.)

¹⁸FAYE: I'll start on the pantry. (She exits.)

¹⁹(ALMA is alone. She looks at the SELL box. Slowly, she reaches in, finds the chipped cup, and turns it in the light. She does not cry. She wraps the cup in a dish towel and slips it into the pocket of her coat, which hangs on the back of the door. Then she picks up the clipboard and writes something down.)

²⁰ALMA: (to herself) Nine cups.