Stephen Sondheim - You Must Meet My Wife

Album:

[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.