Stephen Sondheim
"You Must Meet My Wife"
[Fredrik]
She lightens my sadness,
She livens my days,
She bursts with a kind of madness
My well-ordered ways.
My happiest mistake, the ache of my life:
You must meet my wife.
She bubbles with pleasure,
She glows with surprise,
Disrupts my accustomed leisure
And ruffles my ties.
I don't know even now quite how it began.
You must meet my wife, my Anne.
One thousand whims to which I give in,
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.
I never dreamed that I could live in
So completely demented, contented a fashion.
So sunlike, so winning,
So unlike a wife.
I do think that I'm beginning
To show signs of life.
Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow--
If you met my wife, you'd know.
[Desiree (speaking):]
Dear Fredrik,
I'm just longing to meet her.
Sometime.
[Fredrik]
She sparkles...
[Desiree]
How pleasant.
[Fredrik]
She twinkles...
[Desiree]
How nice.
[Fredrik]
Her youth is a sort of present--
[Desiree]
Whatever the price.
[Fredrik]
The incandescent--what?--the--
[Desiree (offering a cigarette):]
Light?
[Fredrik]
--of my life.
You must meet my wife.
[Desiree]
Yes, I must. I really must.
Now--
[Fredrik]
She flutters.
[Desiree]
How charming.
[Fredrik]
She twitters.
[Desiree]
My word!
[Fredrik]
She floats.
[Desiree]
Isn't that alarming?
What is she, a bird?
[Fredrik]
She makes me feel I'm--what?--
[Desiree]
A very old man.
[Fredrik]
Yes--no!
[Desiree]
No?
[Fredrik]
But--
[Desiree]
I must meet your Gertrude.
[Fredrik]
My Anne.
[Desiree]
Sorry--Anne.
[Fredrik]
She loves my voice, my walk, my mustache,
The cigar, in fact, that I'm smoking.
She'll watch me puff until it's just ash,
Then she'll save the cigar butt.
[Desiree]
Bizarre, but
You're joking.
[Fredrik]
She dotes on--
[Desiree]
Your dimple.
[Fredrik]
My snoring.
[Desiree]
How dear.
[Fredrik]
The point is, she's really simple.
[Desiree]
Yes, that much seems clear.
[Fredrik]
She gives me funny names--
[Desiree]
Like?
[Fredrik]
"Old Dry-as-Dust."
[Desiree]
Wouldn't she just?
[Fredrik]
You must meet my wife.
[Desiree]
Yes, I must, yes, I must.
[Fredrik]
A sea of whims that I submerge in,
Yet so loveable in repentance.
Unfortunately still a virgin,
But you can't force a flower--
[Desiree]
Don't finish that sentence!
She's monstrous!
[Fredrik]
She's frightened.
[Desiree]
Unfeeling!
[Fredrik]
Unversed.
She'd strike you as unenlightened--
[Desiree]
No, I'd strike her first.
[Fredrik]
Her reticence, her apprehension--
[Desiree]
Her crust!
[Fredrik]
No!
[Desiree]
Yes!
[Fredrik]
No!
[Desiree]
Fredrik!
[Fredrik]
You must meet my wife.
[Desiree]
Let me get my hat and my knife!
[Fredrik]
What was that?
[Desiree]
I must meet your wife.
[Both]
Yes, you must.
Yes, I must.