Summary
Louie challenges Bella on the fact that she wants to marry an illiterate 40-year-old. As he gets angrier and angrier, Gert tells Grandma to tell Louie to calm down. When Louie suggests that Johnny is dangerous, Bella insists that he is not, and tells them that he has lived at the Home, which wouldn't have taken him in if he were dangerous.
Bella begins crying when Louie tells her to forget about Johnny. Weeping, she tells her family that she wants to marry Johnny and have babies. When Grandma doesn't support her, Bella becomes even more upset and insists that she would have healthy children and would be able to take care of them. She says, "I have to love someone who'll love me back before I die..." When no one responds, and Grandma goes into her room, Gert goes and holds Bella to comfort her.
Scene 3. Arty writes Eddie a letter, in which he tells him that things are bad at Grandma's and asking him to come home. Jay and Arty are in the apartment talking about the fact that Aunt Bella has disappeared. Gert comes out of Grandma's room and tells the boys that Bella is at her house, but that they cannot let Grandma know. She tells them that Bella has been crying for two days and is meeting with Johnny soon to talk about maybe getting married.
Gert struggles to talk and the boys ask if there's anything a doctor can do to help her. She tells them that it's only bad when she comes home, gives them her phone number, and goes home.
Grandma comes out into the living room and asks the boys why they don't go for a walk. Jay tells her that Eddie is feeling better and should be coming home in eight months. When they tell her they will come visit her even when their father gets back, Grandma says, "Maybe I von't be here...Maybe I'll sell da store." She dismisses them, telling them she can take care of herself, when suddenly Bella comes into the apartment carrying a suitcase and a cake box. Arty and Jay immediately want to talk to Bella, but Grandma dismisses them.
Alone with her mother, Bella tells her she brought a cake and she understands if she's mad at her. "I know you're very angry with me but I'm not crying. And it's not because I'm afraid to cry. It's because I have no tears left in me. I feel sort of empty inside. Like you feel all the time," Bella says. Grandma deflects and Bella confronts her mother about whether or not she thinks she is stupid. Decisively, Grandma tells Bella that she is a child. She is not sick, but the doctors said that she is a child and will always be. "Stay a child, Bella, and be glad dot's vot Gott made you," Grandma says.
Bella talks back to her mother's assessment, asking her mother why she feels like a woman if she is only a child. "Why can't I be satisfied with dolls instead of babies?" she asks, before adding, "...some children are smarter than grown-ups. Some grown-ups I've seen are very stupid. And very mean." When Grandma dismisses her, Bella tells her mother that she has had many sexual experiences, with men at the movies, the park, and in the store. She tells her mother that Johnny loves her, before taking $5000 out of her purse.
Thinking that Bella stole the cash from her secret stash, Grandma throws her cup of tea in Bella's face and telling her to go if she wants to. Angrily, Bella tells her that Louie gave her the money. "Thieves and sick little girls, that's what you have, Momma...Only God didn't make them that way. You did. We're alive, Momma, but that's all we are...Aaron and Rose are the lucky ones," Bella screams, referring to her dead siblings. This breaks Grandma, who tells Bella that when her children died, she stopped feeling "because I couldn't stand losing anymore..."
Bella is surprised to see her mother express feelings, and tells her that Johnny doesn't want any of the things she wants. Then, she goes back into her room, as Grandma sits "stifling whatever feelings are beginning to overcome her."
Scene 4. Arty and Jay are sitting in the living room in the same costumes as in the first scene. Eddie has returned after 10 months and they are waiting for him to be done talking to Grandma. They talk about the fact that Louie joined the army and is fighting in the South Pacific. Bella comes in with shopping bags and gives Arty and Jay a football and basketball. Eddie and Grandma come out as the boys start playing with the football. They say their goodbyes to Grandma, and she mentions that she knows they were looking for her money. "You should have looked behind the malted machine," she says.
After they leave, Bella puts Bing Crosby on the radio and tells Grandma that she's going out to spend time with a new girlfriend. The girlfriend has a brother who's a librarian. Grandma doesn't know quite how to take it.
Analysis
In this section, Bella announces to her family that she has plans to marry Johnny and live independently in the world, but it doesn't go nearly as well as she had hoped. While Bella is the most nurturing and perhaps emotionally intelligent of the Kurnitz clan, because of her cognitive limitations she is treated like a child who cannot make decisions for herself. Her announcement quickly becomes tragic as she realizes that her family has no intention of supporting her and instead wants to keep her from experiencing life as a full member of society.
After her botched announcement, Bella leaves Grandma's house, which sets things into chaos. Even the stolid Grandma is shaken by the departure of sweet Bella, and she becomes upset by the disappearance of her most helpless daughter. Arty writes to Eddie to tell him that things have gotten very hard and begs him to come back, but it will still be eight months before his father has made the money. This final section of the play strikes a melancholy chord as family members' different needs and desires come into conflict.
In this final section, Bella speaks directly to Grandma about her own emotions, something that seems almost unthinkable in the broader scheme of the family dynamic. When she returns home, Bella says that she cannot cry any more because she feels empty inside, and suggests that that is how Grandma feels all the time. This moment is shocking because it turns the spotlight on Grandma and her emotions for the first time in the play. While the majority of the play has been spent discussing the ways that Grandma's actions have affected her family members, in this moment someone suddenly tries to break through and engage Grandma about her emotions, which she keeps cloistered away under a thick shell of invulnerability.
A major theme in the play—the blurring of the lines between childhood and adulthood—comes to bear in Bella's conversation with Grandma. The play at large has been an exploration of difficult family life shown primarily through the eyes of two comical and precocious children. In many ways, Jay and Arty are forced to grow up and take on responsibility before they are quite ready; they are made to live out their childhoods bearing witness to some rather adult issues. By contrast, Bella is an adult who has the mind of a child, but is 35 and longs for a life of independence and happiness, but who is liberated from her arrested development by the realization that "some children are smarter than grown-ups."
In Lost in Yonkers, the conflicts of the play are not resolved in easy or straightforward ways, and the play maintains a tragicomic tone right up until the end. While Grandma is unable to express her pain and open up to her progeny to express love, there is a certain amount of intimacy and understanding that opens up between them, and their departure is quite sweet. Bella and Grandma do not resolve their differences in perspective, but Bella begins to trust her own autonomy and acquaint herself with the music of life, and Grandma has no choice but to accept her daughter's independence.
