A dialogue in one act. The setting is a stone cottage in the woods. A fire burns. MOTHER GOOSE, an elderly woman with reading glasses and the patience of a stone, sits with a large book. DONALD TRUMP enters without knocking.
TRUMP: So this is the goose lady. The famous goose lady. People told me, they said, sir, you have to see her, she’s been doing stories for three hundred years. Three hundred years and honestly? The stories are not good. They’re not good stories.
MOTHER GOOSE: Would you like to sit down?
TRUMP: I’ll stand. I stand better than anybody. Doctors have said it. Let me tell you what’s wrong with your stories, because nobody else will, they’re all afraid of you, the goose people, very powerful lobby. Humpty Dumpty. Egg sits on a wall. Egg falls off the wall. That’s it? That’s the whole thing?
MOTHER GOOSE: There’s a bit about the king’s horses.
TRUMP: The horses couldn’t fix him! All the king’s horses, all the king’s men, total failure, and you wrote it down like it’s a win. If I’m the king, and frankly I’d be a tremendous king, I don’t send horses to fix an egg. What is a horse going to do with an egg? Horses have hooves. Everybody knows this.
MOTHER GOOSE: That’s rather the point of the rhyme.
TRUMP: The point should be the wall. Nobody talks about the wall. Beautiful wall, strong wall, an egg sat on it, which tells you the craftsmanship, and your poem doesn’t mention who built it once. Not once. I checked.
MOTHER GOOSE: You checked.
TRUMP: I had people check. The best people. Here’s how I’d write it. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty did not fall, because the wall had a railing, gorgeous railing, gold, and Humpty signed a licensing deal. The end. That’s a story. That story sells.
MOTHER GOOSE: It doesn’t rhyme.
TRUMP: Rhyming is for losers. You know who rhymes? Poets. You know what poets make a year? I looked into it, it’s very sad, I actually felt bad, and I never feel bad.
MOTHER GOOSE: (turning a page) Was there something you needed, or did you come all this way to workshop?
TRUMP: I came because I’m doing my own book of tales. Trump Tales. It’s going to be the biggest thing in children’s literature since, honestly, since ever. And out of respect, tremendous respect, I wanted to tell you to your face that you’re finished.
MOTHER GOOSE: How considerate.
TRUMP: Take Jack and Jill. Two kids go up a hill for water. Water! Who fetches water? You put in a well at the bottom of the hill, you charge a small fee, everybody wins. Instead Jack falls down, breaks his crown, which by the way, Jack has a crown? Nobody mentions Jack is royalty. Huge buried lede. If Jack’s a king, that hill is a security disaster. Where’s his detail? Where’s Secret Service? Jill? Jill is the detail? One woman with a pail?
MOTHER GOOSE: Crown means his head.
TRUMP: See, that’s confusing. My tales won’t be confusing. In my version, Jack goes up the hill, the hill is a golf course, phenomenal course, he shoots a 68, doesn’t fall, and at the bottom there’s a gift shop. Kids love gift shops.
MOTHER GOOSE: What’s the moral?
TRUMP: The moral is the gift shop.
MOTHER GOOSE: (closing the book on her finger) Mr. Trump, do you know why the tales survive? Humpty falls because everyone falls. Jack tumbles because hills are steep and heads are soft. The cow jumps over the moon because a baby at two in the morning needs to hear something impossible said in a warm voice. The stories aren’t deals. They’re lullabies.
TRUMP: The cow, I’m glad you brought up the cow, the cow is my favorite because it’s the most dishonest one. A cow cannot jump over the moon. The moon is, and I know this better than anyone, I had the space program, the moon is very far. Two hundred thousand miles, maybe more, they’re still counting. A cow jumps, what, a foot? Fake moos. Fake moos, I call it.
MOTHER GOOSE: It’s a nonsense rhyme. Nonsense is the genre.
TRUMP: And the dish ran away with the spoon. Ran away! Together! Nobody’s asking questions. Where did they go? Who paid for it? The little dog laughed, the dog is in on it, the dog knows something, and the fork, where’s the fork in all this? The fork got nothing. Very unfair to the fork.
MOTHER GOOSE: You have strong feelings about the fork.
TRUMP: I have strong feelings about everything, that’s why my tales will be better. Trump Tales, listen to this, first one: The Three Little Pigs, except there’s one pig, he builds all three houses himself, brick, all brick, the wolf shows up and the pig sues him. Wolf pays everything. Pig gets the wolf’s house too. Four houses. That’s a happy ending.
MOTHER GOOSE: And the children learn what, exactly?
TRUMP: Litigation.
MOTHER GOOSE: (a long look over the glasses) You know, I’ve had visitors before. Kings, actual ones. A boy named Peter who put his wife in a pumpkin, which I did not condone, I only reported it. And every one of them wanted the same thing you want. They wanted the story to say they never fell off the wall.
TRUMP: Because I wouldn’t fall. That’s the difference between me and the egg.
MOTHER GOOSE: Everyone falls off the wall, dear. That’s what the wall is for. The tale isn’t about staying up. It’s about what the people at the bottom do when you land.
(A pause. The fire pops.)
TRUMP: ...The horses were a bad choice though.
MOTHER GOOSE: The horses were a terrible choice. I’ve said so for centuries. You send a cooper, maybe a very calm nurse. But “all the king’s coopers” doesn’t scan.
TRUMP: See, we agree. We agree on the horses. I knew we’d make a deal. Look, here’s what I’m thinking, joint project, Goose and Trump, fifty-one, forty-nine, my name first, bigger font.
MOTHER GOOSE: No.
TRUMP: Sixty-forty.
MOTHER GOOSE: You’re negotiating in the wrong direction.
TRUMP: People love the wrong direction. Nobody expects it.
MOTHER GOOSE: (standing, handing him the big book) Take this. Read one to a child. Not at them. To them. Do the cow voice. If you can get through “Hey Diddle Diddle” without adding a licensing deal, come back and we’ll talk about the fork. The fork deserves better, you’re right about that.
TRUMP: (holding the book like it might be subpoenaed) This is a very old book.
MOTHER GOOSE: It’s older than every wall you’ve ever admired, and it’s still standing, because nobody had to guard it. Children just kept asking for it. Three hundred years of “again, again.” That’s the only rating that’s ever mattered.
(TRUMP looks at the book. For one second, one genuine second, he looks like a boy who was read to once, a long time ago, in Queens, before the gift shops.)
TRUMP: My mother did the cow voice.
MOTHER GOOSE: I know, dear. They all did. That’s the whole trick. Now go home. And knock next time. Even the wolf knocks.
(He exits with the book. MOTHER GOOSE sits back down, picks up her quill, and writes: “There once was a man with a tower...”)
(She pauses. Crosses it out.)
MOTHER GOOSE: No. He’d love that.
(Fade out.)
Brian Gerard (Lewandowski)
Brian Gerard (Lewandowski) writes books critics call “aggressively adequate” — better than “aggressively terrible” but somehow more concerning, like a smoke detector that only goes off on Tuesdays.
He once traded a MetroCard for a pitchfork on a subway platform and now uses it exclusively for dramatic pointing. He lives on a farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia, with a partner who smiles politely at his life choices, a pig named Trouble McFussbucket who has opinions about the sofa, and a five-pound dog named Professor Archibald Pickles who appears to be held together entirely by anxiety and unearned confidence.
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