Eileen
(Playaway)

Title from Playaway label.

Issued on Playaway, a dedicated audio media player.

One set of earphones and one AAA battery required for listening.

Performed by Alyssa Bresnahan.

In 1964, Eileen Dunlop is 24 years old, living with her cruel, alcoholic father, and working at Moorehead, a juvenile detention center for boys. She also spends a lot of time hating herself and plotting her exodus from the small New England town where she's been trapped. Eileen's perspective is one of hindsight, some 50 years later, looking back on her final days of quiet, isolated misery before the rest of her life begins, a very different life we know will happen without knowing much more. Eileen lost her mother when she was in high school; her sister is the pride of the family, but the two women have no relationship; Eileen's father is an alcoholic, a cop forced into retirement and now heading toward dementia, a man who has mentally abused Eileen her whole life. Her life is a horror: living in squalor, taking care of her abusive father, driving an old car with an exhaust problem that forces her to leave the windows open, even during those frigid New England winters. She works as a secretary at a boy's prison, a discouraging job at best. She obsesses about her bodily functions, has strange sexual fantasies (although at 24, she is still a virgin), and is stalking one of the prison guards. There is no respite from the darkness here, until Rebecca shows up at the prison, ostensibly to create an education program for the boys. Eileen is enamored of the beautiful Harvard graduate and desperate for a friend. That friendship turns into something truly ugly, which leads to a shocking ending.