Summary
Louie goes to take a shower, but asks Arty to tell Jay to bring him a coffee and a doughnut, saying that he's going to leave that night. Before he leaves, Arty asks him if he's in trouble, and Louie tells him, "I was never not in trouble." As he goes into the bathroom, Jay storms into the apartment railing against Grandma for charging him for 3 pretzels that some kids stole from the store, 2 cents a pretzel.
Jay asks after Uncle Louie, telling Arty he needs to talk to him about "private business." When Arty presses him, Jay says he wants to get Louie to take him with him, calling Louie his "ticket out." Arty is flabbergasted and at first disapproves, but then asks Jay to take him along too. He begs Jay to take him along, saying of Grandma, "I'm afraid of her, Jay. A horse fell on her when she was a kid and she hasn't taken an aspirin yet." Jay promises that if he gets somewhere with a good paying job, he'll send for Arty.
Bella comes in the room and tells Jay that Grandma is looking for him, and that Aunt Gert is coming that evening for dinner. Jay says he'll be right down after he talks to Uncle Louie about something. Bella then tells the boys that she plans to tell Grandma about her fiancé Johnny that night at dinner with everyone. "You are going to back me up, aren't you?" she asks, then reveals that she's been so nervous that she ate 3 pretzels.
Bella goes back downstairs and Louie comes out of the bathroom. Jay tells him he plans to leave that evening and that he wants Louie's advice, but Louie advises him that no one makes money fast without stealing and that he'd be better off staying in school and being a normal kid. "Are there any openings in your business?" Jay asks Louie straightforwardly, but Louie assures him there are not and that the conversation is over.
When Jay offers to come on the road with Louie and carry his black bag, Louie becomes incensed and suspects Jay of snooping in his bag. He challenges Jay to pick the bag up and see how heavy it is, even though Jay doesn't want to. When Jay doesn't, Louie tells Arty to pick up the bag, which he does begrudgingly. Growing angrier and angrier, Louie tells him to open the bag and see what's inside. Arty refuses and Jay confronts Louie, calling him a bully and saying, "What are you doing? hiding in your mother's apartment and scaring little kids and acting like Humphrey Bogart. Well, you're no Humphrey Bogart..."
Instead of getting angry, Louie smiles and tells Jay he has "moxie." He urges Jay to stay and take care of his family members, tells the boys that he has dirty laundry in his bag, then goes to finish getting dressed just as Grandma enters the room. She tells Jay to go downstairs and tells Arty to get dressed, and informs Louie that he has to stay for dinner, as requested by Bella. Grandma comments on the fact that Louie left some money on her dresser by accident, but he tells her it's for her, because her birthday is tomorrow. "Keep your filthy money," she says, storming out.
Scene 2. A letter from Eddie to Grandma with money for the boys' food. The scene begins after the family dinner with Aunt Gert. Louie wants to leave, but Bella insists that he stay, and assembles the family for her announcement. With promptings from Jay and Arty, Bella manages to tell the family about Johnny, but it does not go well. Louie gets upset when he hears about Johnny and doesn't approve of their relationship.
Analysis
The play is full of witty and comedic one-liners. For being a couple of teenagers, Arty and Jay are exceedingly funny and know how to characterize their unfortunate plight in humorous ways. As our protagonists, they imbue the often fraught and intense narrative with much-needed humor. Their assessments are at once harsh and hilariously apt, as when Arty says of Grandma, "A horse fell on her when she was a kid and she hasn't taken an aspirin yet." This 13-year-old assessment of the old immigrants' grimness cuts the tension of the scenario beautifully.
Lost in Yonkers deals with characters who, as the title suggests, are lost—spiritually, emotionally, etc. Each of them longs for an escape from the oppression of their daily lives, but they are all stuck with one another. This, Simon suggests, is the nature of family. While, as Louie points out, family is the only place where one is really safe, it is also its own special kind of prison, a place that can be even more threatening than the outside world.
Jay's petition to go on the road with mobster Uncle Louie doesn't go as smoothly as he would have hoped. While he sees Louie as his only promise of getting out of Yonkers and out of having to deal with his crazy Grandma, Louie finds the idea ridiculous, and almost seems offended by the young boy's identification with him. The more Jay pesters him about it, the more menacing Louie becomes, until he is yelling and bullying the two boys. He is no longer the benevolent, friendly uncle, but a brutish and defensive mobster picking on a couple of kids.
In this section of the play, Bella makes her big announcement that she plans to marry the usher, Johnny. Even sheltered Bella, who behaves like a child and hardly seems able to take care of herself, wants out of the house and to have some independence. Her plan of telling her family doesn't go as well as she hoped, however, and her siblings have a hard time believing that she could possibly have found someone who doesn't have some kind of ulterior motive.
For all its comedy, the play has an undercurrent of melancholy just below the surface. The scenario in which Bella tells her family about her fiancé is humorous because she is being "backed up" by her two teenaged nephews, but it is also deeply sad. Bella is sweet and optimistic about her revelation, but her family does not trust her to be able to make judgments about her own life. The concerns about her safety and her ability to take care of herself are stronger than a faith in her good judgment and her heart's desires, which creates for a tragic scenario in which the well-intentioned Bella's dreams are crushed.
