Shadow at 485 Mapleton Drive

A Suburban Noir of Moral Guilt, Lawn Maintenance and the Abyss

CAST

• The Beaver (Beaver Raskolnikov Cleaver): A brooding 12-year-old philosopher convinced he’s destined for greatness and possibly also grounding.

• Wally: Beaver’s brother, who is pretty sure existential torment is “like, for dweebs.”

• June Cleaver: Makes casseroles and moral guilt with equal efficiency.

• Ward Cleaver: The only man who can deliver a fatherly lecture with the gravitas of a shrewd and cunning investigator. Real name: Porfiry Petrovich.

• Eddie Haskell: A suspiciously polite agent of chaos.

• The Pawnbroker Lady: For legal clarity, an entirely fictitious character who looks like she collects toenails. And does.

ACT I – “The Idea”

INT. CLEAVER KITCHEN – DAY

June fusses with a pie. Beaver enters, dramatically clutching a notebook titled: “White Child’s  Burden.”

BEAVER (voice trembling): Gee, Mom … did you ever feel like maybe society is a swamp of hypocrisy, and the only way to transcend moral malaise is to commit a symbolic act of rebellion?

JUNE (cheerfully, while reading the best-before date on a box of lime Jell-O): Well dear, sometimes I feel that way when the Jell-O won’t set. Maybe it’s because this box is from the Thirties.

Beaver stares into the camera like a tiny, tormented Dostoevsky protagonist. Next door, Clarence (Lumpy) Rutherford tears up while listening to Prokofiev’s March from The Love for Three Oranges, but this is largely irrelevant except as an evocation of Czarist Russia.

BEAVER (whispering): Yes … yes, Mom, that’s exactly the same thing.

Eddie Haskell slides into frame with the stealthy elegance of a greased ferret.

EDDIE: Well hello, Mrs. Cleaver! You’re looking less existentially disillusioned than usual today.

(turning to Beaver) Hey squirt, heard you’re thinkin’ of doin’ somethin’ naughty. Something … nihilistic.

BEAVER: Maybe I am. Maybe I ain’t. Maybe morality is a flimsy social construct propped up by casserole culture!

WALLY (casually eating cereal): … Neat.

ACT II – “The Crime (Sorta)”

INT. PAWNBROKER’S SHOP – AFTER SCHOOL

The pawnbroker lady sits behind the counter polishing something that should really be stuffed.

BEAVER (internal monologue): To act or not to act … that is the question. Well, technically the question is whether trading Wally’s slingshot for bubble gum is a transcendent act of self-assertion or a grotesque crime against family structure …

PAWNBROKER LADY: You gonna stand there broodin’, kid, or you gonna pawn that thing before my soup congeals?

BEAVER: All right! I’m doing it! I’m committing … the deed!

He slams the slingshot onto the counter with tragic flair.

PAWNBROKER LADY: You pawn brudder’s slingshot? Dark act for tiny boy.

BEAVER: It’s not about the slingshot. It’s about asserting my will against the oppressive machinery of —

(pauses) Okay, it’s sort of about the slingshot.

Thunder rumbles despite the weather report predicting “mild, cheerful skies.” The Beaver flees in melodramatic panic, knocking over a display of pocket watches that all start chiming ominously, signifying the struggle between Nothingness and Beingness and also 4:15.

ACT III – “Punishment, or Whatever”

INT. CLEAVER LIVING ROOM — EVENING

Ward sits in his armchair, the universal dad-seat-of-judgment. Beaver stands before him trembling like a child who has read too much Russian literature and can no longer discern whether Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov and Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova in The Idiot possess discernibly distinct personalities.

WARD (stern): Son, your teacher called. She says you turned in a five-page essay titled “Why Morality Is for Suckers.” Care to explain?

BEAVER (breaking down): Oh gee, Dad! I pawned Wally’s slingshot! I wanted to test the boundaries of free will! I wanted to transcend societal norms! I wanted to test whether if there is no God, life has no meaning. But mostly I wanted to inhale the white powder off a chewy pink wad of Double Bubble!

WALLY (casually eating cereal): Yeah Dad, he’s been all weird lately. Keeps muttering about “dual natures” and “crushing guilt.” I think Eddie gave him a pamphlet by Bazooka Joe Stalin and his Gang.

Ward stands, placing a fatherly hand on Beaver’s shoulder with the gravity of the Gulag Archipelago.

WARD: Theodore … guilt isn’t a punishment.

(pause) It’s what happens when you have to tell your brother you traded his stuff for gum.

BEAVER: But Dad! What about my tortured psyche?

WARD: Your psyche is twelve. Also, I just noticed a squirrel in the backyard. Go get the slingshot back and apologize.

EPILOGUE

NARRATOR (warm, suburban voice of the sort Ken Burns would deploy half a century later): And so, little Beaver learned that even the darkest corners of the soul can be illuminated … by a stern dad, a forgiving brother and a pawnbroker lady who now possesses the stack of Ward’s vintage Playboys, whose absence from the Cleaver magazine rack by the commode has yet to be detected.

BEAVER (writing in notebook): “Existential conclusion: Being grounded is worse than Siberia.”

The sun sets behind manicured hedges. A distant lawnmower drones like a mechanical omen. Charcoal burning everywhere. Rows of houses that are all the same, and no one seems to care. It is March 5, 1953, the day Sergei Prokofiev and Joseph Stalin both drop dead. For the next three days, throngs gather to mourn Stalin, making it impossible to hold Prokofiev’s funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composers’ Union. Because the hearse is not allowed near Prokofiev’s communal apartment, next to the Red Square, his coffin has to be moved by hand through back streets in the opposite direction of the masses paying their respects to Stalin. About 30 attend Prokofiev’s funeral, Shostakovich among them.

EDDIE HASKELL (later to serve as the first director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Sincerity): My, that’s a lovely dress you’re wearing, Mrs. Cleaver!