Crimes of the Heart

Lenny Magrath is a thirty-year-old woman. She steps onstage carrying a white suitcase, a saxophone case, and a brown bag. In an empty kitchen she tries to stick a birthday candle into a cookie, but it crumbles. When she hears Chick’s voice outside, she quickly blows out the lit candle and hides the cookie in her dress pocket. Chick is twenty-nine and has yellow hair. When she asks Lenny if she has seen the day’s paper, Lenny nods. There was a piece of very bad news in the paper, although they do not yet say what it is. Chick asks if Lenny picked up new nylons for her, and then takes them out of the brown bag and begins trying them on in the middle of the kitchen.  

The two women start talking about someone named Babe. Babe is going to be home soon, and this has thrown them into a state of worry. Lenny says she sent someone named Meg a telegraph about Babe, which shocks Chick. Chick doesn’t want Meg to come home for whatever drama is unfolding. She says that because Meg had “loose morals” in high school (6), her “appearance” is going to make thing harder for Babe. Chick also mentions that she’ll never understand why Lenny’s mother hung herself, but the subject passes quickly. While they make small talk, there is a knock on the door and a man named Doc Porter enters. Doc is approximately thirty years old and walks with a slight limp. Chick leaves to go upstairs.  

Doc tells Lenny that he read about Babe’s situation in the newspaper. He also tells her that the night before, a horse named Billy Boy—who Doc Porter was keeping at his farm for Lenny—died, struck by lightning. Lenny starts to cry and tells Doc that it’s her birthday today. She’s thirty years old. After he leaves, Lenny sings “Happy Birthday” to herself, alone in the kitchen. The phone rings and she speaks with someone named Lucille. Lucille is Zackery’s sister, although the reader or audience member does not know who Zackery is yet. Lucille is calling with a hospital report: Zackery has stabilized. Lenny promises to pass on the message just as she hears Meg’s voice in the living room.  

Meg is twenty-seven, attractive, and is carrying a suitcase. She asks Lenny about the telegram she sent, which told her that Zackery had been shot. Lenny says that everyone is saying Babe is the one who shot him, right in the stomach. Worse, even Babe has said she did it, so there seems to be little doubt about the facts, only about the motivation for the crime. Lenny says she talked to Babe this morning, and the only excuse their sister gave for shooting Zackery was that she didn’t like the way he looked.  

When Babe gets home, Chick immediately starts questioning her. Babe repeats that she didn’t like his looks; that’s why she shot him. She goes upstairs. The phone rings. It’s Annie May from next door. Her children have eaten paint. Chick and Lenny leave to go help. While they’re gone, Meg talks with Babe, who admits that there is a deeper reason she had for shooting Zackery. She says she’s protecting someone, and that’s why she can’t talk about it. She adds that she was aiming for his heart, but she won’t say more. She changes the subject to Lenny, and hints that Lenny isn’t a virgin like Babe always thought. She tells Meg a story about one time when Lenny joined a Lonely Hearts Club. She went on a date with a man named Charlie. Babe lets the story trail off, but hints that Charlie refused to marry Lenny because she had a missing ovary.  

They realize that it’s Lenny’s birthday and that they’ve forgotten it. They plan to order her a huge cake. There’s a knock on the door. It’s Lloyd Barnette (referred to only as Barnette in the play), Babe’s lawyer. Babe hurries upstairs and tells Meg not to tell him that she’s home. After coming in, he tells Meg that he has a personal vendetta against Zackery and that’s how he knows he’ll win the case as the prosecutor. He shows Meg a file detailing various ways in which Zackery abused Babe. Meg vows that she’ll kill Zackery herself.  

After Barnette leaves, Babe comes downstairs. Meg convinces Babe to tell her what happened. Babe says that she got tired of Zackery. He was mean to her and she began to hate the sound of his voice, and everything else about him. Babe reveals that she began having an affair with Willie Jay, a fifteen-year-old African American boy. When Zackery came home one day and found Willie Jay on the premises—although he did not know or suspect that Babe had been having sex with him—he slapped him viciously and ordered him to leave. That’s when Babe says she got confused, got her gun, and shot him.