Save Me a Place at Forest Lawn

Book excerpt: SAVE ME A PLACE AT FOREST LAWN is a small but perceptive slice of the lives of two old women, Clara and Gertrude, as they lunch at a cafeteria and face the uncertain interval of life still remaining. Tired, lonely, and weary of it all, they meet daily to discuss their grandchildren, to recall their early life, and to contemplate death, which lurks outside the cafeteria. Yet theirs is a resignation touched with wisdom and humor. When one of the ladies reveals that she had an affair with the other's husband many years before, her friend concedes very casually that she had known about it all along. At the time she had concluded that no great harm would come of it and, besides, it seemed better to protect the friendship which might, in later years, relieve their final, mutual loneliness. -- Dramatists Play Service.