All in the Timing

by David Ives

  JACK: Not if I was my kid. If I was my kid I wouldn’t visit me.

  RUTH: Marriage would also lift you up.

  JACK: Out of what?

  RUTH: To the level you belong on. How long are you going to play math teacher at some backwater school?

  JACK: I like paddling around that backwater.

  RUTH: But you have so many possibilities. You know so much. You could be something wonderful.

  JACK: I thought I was something wonderful. A math teacher.

  RUTH: Right now you’re just a cog of the cognoscenti.

  JACK: Well, maybe. But I put the ram in the ram-a-dam-a-ding-dong.

  RUTH: I don’t want to get old, Jack.

  JACK: There’s nothing you can do about that.

  RUTH: I don’t want to get old all by myself. And I don’t want to end up like Elizabeth, getting ugly from loneliness.

  JACK: But you can get married and still end up old and alone.

  RUTH: Yes you can walk into the street and get hit by a truck, too. You have to plan something, for Christ’s sake, otherwise you’re just… You have to plan some things.

  JACK: You’re right. What’s for breakfast?

  RUTH: Can you get serious for just one minute?

  JACK: But I’ve been married, Ruth.

  RUTH: Yes I know you’ve been married.

  JACK: You don’t even know about marriage.

  RUTH: I know what I want from a marriage.

  JACK: You don’t know what you’re chasing after!

  RUTH: I’m chasing after you! Against all reason. Against all the laws of physics. Because we fit so well together, and we have such a good time together.

  JACK: Isn’t that what people are supposed to have together?

  RUTH: Having fun isn’t a marriage.

  JACK: Well that’s for fucking sure.…

  RUTH: Being married to Joan wasn’t like all marriages.

  JACK: It was a very good example.

  RUTH: People don’t have to be unhappily married.

  JACK: What? They don’t?

  RUTH (doesn’t pick up the routine): No. They don’t.

  (Pause.)

  JACK: Look, can I tell you one story about my marriage? Joan and I once went on vacation and we—

  RUTH: But that was years ago, Jack!

  JACK: No, listen to this. We were stopping at a motel in—

  RUTH: All that stuff is ancient history by now! You’re a different person!

  JACK: If I’m a different person, then why does that still hurt? Why is it still burned in?

  RUTH: Because you let it hurt you.

  JACK: No.

  RUTH: It’s old, Jack.

  JACK: Not to me, it’s not. As far as I’m concerned, that shit all happened this morning.

  RUTH: Okay, it happened this morning. Are you going to let it spoil the rest of your day? Can’t you just forget about all previous marriages for a minute and think about us and how happy we could be together?

  JACK: We are happy together.

  RUTH: Right!

  JACK: So why put a ring on it?

  RUTH: If the two of us can’t make a marriage work, who can?

  JACK: What you’re talking about is companionship. And if that’s what’s important to you, you can get that without being married.

  RUTH: Kids are important, too.

  JACK: A friend that you can joke around with.

  RUTH: Kids are very important.

  JACK: Sure, except when they shit in your hand.

  RUTH: Even when they shit in your hand. Especially when they shit in your hand. You teach kids. You love your kids! You always say the fourteen-year-olds are your friends.

  JACK: Yeah, but I don’t have to diaper them and have them spit on my shoulder at four in the morning. And do you really want that? You like your sleep as much as I do.

  RUTH: Jack …

  JACK: Who needs a kid anyway? I’m a child at heart.

  RUTH: You’re a child, all right.

  JACK: Only I don’t spit on your shoulder at four in the morning. Well, sometimes I do, but—

  RUTH: That’s why this is such a great offer!

  JACK: Because I spit on your shoulder?

  RUTH: Because you need somebody.

  JACK: Yes. You. But not married-you. You as you are.

  RUTH: Why? Why? Why? Why am I different now from what I’d be if I married you?

  JACK: Because you’d change.

  RUTH: Ogh!

  JACK: I’d change. We’d both change.

  RUTH: These stupid ideas about marriage …

  JACK: We wouldn’t take the time anymore. We’d take each other for granted, like all married people do. We’d settle in, and be crushed by gravity. We’d turn from Nick and Nora into Dick and Pat Nixon.

  RUTH: This Pavlov reaction about marriage.

  JACK: Yes! It’s a Pavlov reaction! I admit it! And I’m sorry that I have it. But I have it for a very good reason. Because I have been there, and I have seen it, and it is a horror.

  (Pause.)

  RUTH: I won’t live with you if you won’t marry me.

  JACK: Ruth, do you know any couple as good as we are?

  RUTH: Jack, will you marry me?

  JACK: No. Wait. Listen. Do you know any two people who get along as well as we do, minute by minute and inch by inch? Who can hum the Mendelssohn Octet and quote the entire text of Animal Crackers’? Let us live together and be funny! And hum!

  RUTH: Not on six thousand dollars a year we can’t hum together.

  JACK: Well—my six thousand plus your six hundred thousand …

  RUTH: Married or un-married, we can’t. Not on six thousand dollars a year.

  JACK: I do make more than six thousand doll—

  RUTH: Whatever you make.

  (Pause.)

  JACK: Do we have to talk about this now? Couldn’t we wait for …

  RUTH: Wait for what.

  JACK: Wait until…

  RUTH: Wait until what.

  JACK: Wait Until Dark. Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin, 1967. Do I roll again?

  RUTH: I guess I have my answer.

  JACK: No, Ruth—

  RUTH: I have my answer. The same answer I’ve had for six months.

  JACK: Yeah. Happiness. You—me—together—not married. Somehow those conditions have made us happier than Ivory Soap percentages of the rest of the mortals in this world. And I hate to break it to you, but this is what you do well, my dear Nora. This is what you were made for.

  RUTH: I beg your pardon?

  JACK: Don’t you realize that evolution has made you witty for a reason? It’s the next step up the Darwinian ladder from those poor souls who have to bear children! I’m talking biological fact, here! You didn’t see this in the Times’? Funny people are physically unsuited to bearing and raising healthy children because they laugh too much. You get the joke gene, or you get the child gene, it’s one or the other.

  RUTH: I don’t want to joke about this, Jack.

  JACK: You’re laughing now.

  RUTH: I’m not laughing.

  JACK: You’re stifling a chuckle but I can hear it because your Maxipad is rattling. You zee, mein Kind, your agenda and Nature’s agenda for you are different. You are suffering from … agenda confusion.

  RUTH: Can you stop?

  JACK: Marriage and children? A definite health hazard for you. And we’d both be lousy parents anyway, let’s face it. We’d be horrible at the job!

  RUTH: I don’t believe that.

  JACK: You’d be a terrible mother!

  RUTH: I don’t believe you just said that. Do you realize what a lousy thing that is to say to somebody?

  JACK: I still believe it—

  RUTH: I don’t care if you believe it!

  JACK: All right. I’m sorry I said it.

  RUTH: Jack, sometimes you’re so— (The phone rings.)

  Oh shit.

  JACK: Ruth, we are as— (The phone rings again.) We are as good as we are because we a
re free. (The phone rings.)

  RUTH: Shit… (It rings again.)

  JACK: Should I answer it? (They wait. It rings again.) Who could be calling you at one in the morning? (It rings again. Exasperated, RUTH picks up.)

  RUTH: Hello? … What? … No, we didn’t! (Bangs down the receiver.)

  JACK: What was that?

  RUTH: Wanted to know if we’d ordered a pizza. Christ…

  JACK: Was it pepperoni? If it was pepperoni you should’ve taken it.

  RUTH: Marry me, Jack.

  JACK: You don’t know what you’re asking for.

  RUTH: I want a husband. It’s that simple.

  JACK: But why?

  RUTH: I can’t explain it. It’s a given.

  JACK: It’s a what?

  RUTH: It’s a given and I’m sorry but I can’t avoid saying and doing everything your wife did. You made a mistake in getting married at age seven. Admit it and move on. The world isn’t going to stop for you.

  (Pause.)

  JACK: One small problem here is that you want a husband but you don’t seem to care who fills the position. You even invited a spare possibility to your party in case I didn’t work out.

  RUTH: I didn’t invite him.

  JACK: Before you’d even put the question to me.

  RUTH: I didn’t invite him.

  JACK: Is he outside right now? We can call him in here and you can pop the question to him. See if Josh works out.

  RUTH: I didn’t invite him. (Small pause.) So will you marry me, Jack?

  JACK: You don’t even know about marriage.

  RUTH: I know what I want from a marriage.

  JACK: At least I admit that I don’t like marriage. At least I come out and say it. Do you realize that you’ve spent fifteen years steering clear of it, very successfully? And talking out of the other side of your mouth? Do you think that it’s some kind of accident that you’re not married now, with kids? Do you think that that is happenstance, Ruth?

  RUTH: I’ve never met the man I wanted to marry, before.

  JACK: You haven’t been going out with men you could marry. I mean men your parents could accept!

  RUTH: Forget about my parents. This is about us.

  JACK (overlapping her words slightly): There are always Jewish men around of all ages—but you haven’t been going out with them. You’ve been going out with men like me. Men you like. Men your parents could never accept.

  RUTH: Will you forget about my parents?

  JACK (rising rage): Do you think that if they didn’t come to your birthday party, they’d come to your wedding? To me? No fuckin’ way! And you couldn’t live with that. Because when it comes down to it, you are a good daughter. Because you’re thirty-five years old and you still haven’t left home and you won’t tell your parents to just fuck off!

  (Phone rings. The lights change to a soft glow.)

  Will you marry me, Ruth?

  RUTH: What… ?

  JACK: Will you marry me? You are the exception to every horrible thing that anybody can think about this world. And that I, even I, have ever thought about this world. Grass grows in your path where wasteland was before and double rainbows leap into the sky ahead of you. And we will have one hell of a wedding. I’ll wear a sweatshirt that says “Superstition and Slavery” and you will go up the aisle in the bluest pair of shoes you ever saw.

  (The phone rings. Lights change back.)

  RUTH: Hell isn’t other people. It’s remembering other people.

  (The phone rings again.)

  JACK: Okay. So what do we do?

  RUTH: Oh Jesus, Jack …

  JACK: Do I pack up now, or do I get one more night of buss? Do I at least get a cigarette and a blindfold?

  RUTH: Of course you’re going to stay here. Don’t be crazy.

  JACK: Esther is bound to be delighted at this turn.

  RUTH: Please don’t bring Esther into this—

  JACK: I can just see it. She’ll be going around to everyone and saying “It was his fault, you know, it was his fault.” And I won’t even be there to call her an asshole. The triumph of the utterly mediocre.

  (The phone rings. Lights change.)

  RUTH: Tell me that you’ll be miserable without me. Tell me you’ll be as miserable without me as I’ll be without you. Tell me that you won’t forget me and that you’ll He awake at night thinking about me.

  (The phone rings. Lights change back.)

  JACK: Do you want to get married, Ruth? Let’s get married. What am I waiting around for? Let’s marry, have a Baby Ruth, and move on.

  RUTH: You don’t mean that.

  JACK: We have to get married to stay together? Then let’s get married.

  RUTH: Don’t kid around, Jack, it’s not funny.

  JACK: I’m not kidding around. You said you wanted a husband. Here he is! Let’s throw on some clothes and go buy a license. What do you say. Think there’s an all-night marriage bureau open somewhere?

  RUTH: But you don’t believe in marriage, remember?

  JACK: Of course I don’t believe in marriage! I refuse to believe in marriage! But I’ll marry you to keep us together. (She says nothing.) What’s the matter? What is this? Are you turning me down?

  RUTH: How can you get married if you don’t believe in marriage?

  JACK: Fish don’t believe in water, but they swim in it. I’ll be the Kierkegaard of marriage, living in an element I know to be absurd.

  RUTH: I’m supposed to believe you now, after all I’ve heard from you about marriage for six months?

  JACK: Yes, he said, yes I will he said, yes yes yes.

  RUTH: I’m afraid that this is all just a little too easy.

  JACK: Easy … ?

  RUTH: You think that we could just go on as we are. But we couldn’t. Some things would have to change. And you have to realize that.

  JACK: Well hey, this is romantic. I thought when somebody proposed, people started screaming and crying and falling into each other’s arms.

  RUTH: Okay. Let’s think about this in detail. If we decided to get married we’d have to agree on certain things.

  JACK: All right. Like—?

  RUTH: Well I’m not going to marry you if we don’t have kids.

  JACK: I know that. Of course I know that—

  RUTH: But I don’t mean in ten years, Jack. I mean soon.

  JACK: What does “soon” mean?

  RUTH: It means very soon.

  (Small pause.)

  JACK: Are you pregnant?

  RUTH: No. (Small pause.) It also means that we’d have to find a place big enough for a family to live in.

  JACK: But this is a very big apartment.

  RUTH: Not big enough for a family. Ultimately we’d have to think about whether we wanted to live in the city at all. And schools. What kind of school, and where …

  JACK: Hey! The kid’s not even born yet!

  RUTH: And what it ultimately means is that you’d have to find a different job. We can’t live on six thousand dollars a year.

  JACK: But I like my job. You know that.

  RUTH: Yes I know that you like your job, but it’s not what a family can live on these days. If you want to teach then maybe you can find a better school, or teach at a college. I’m sorry, but—

  JACK: Who is this person I’m talking to here? Could I talk to Ruth again, please?

  RUTH: You’re not going to live off of me, Jack.

  JACK: Live off of you?

  RUTH: Okay, I’m sorry I said that.

  JACK: LIVE OFF OF YOU?

  RUTH: Well you might as well be living here, for one thing. The way you’ve settled into this apartment.

  JACK: I thought you liked having me over here.

  RUTH: Since your own apartment is too small to live in.

  JACK: I have lived in that apartment for many years, thank you. And I haven’t been over here for the real estate, you know.

  RUTH: It’s very easy to be a socialist when your girlfriend’s got a nice big apartment. I buy
the food, I buy the—

  JACK: I chip in for food! I pay my own way!

  RUTH (slightly overlapping his last words): I’m even the one who keeps you in liquor, since you can’t afford intoxication on your own salary. Do you realize that I’ve even been providing the friends in this relationship?

  JACK: And I’ve been providing the punch lines.

  RUTH: You don’t have any friends, so you just use mine.

  JACK: Use yours?

  RUTH: Yes, or however you want to—

  JACK (cutting in on her): What, have I been getting dirty fingerprints all over your friends or something? Have I been leaving the cap off your tube of acquaintances? Okay, you have a large circle of friends and I don’t. I’m happy this way. What were we supposed to do when we started going out? Exchange friends, like hostages?

  RUTH: It just says something, Jack.

  JACK: What.

  RUTH: It says something about you, that you have no friends. About the way you live.

  JACK: All right. What does it say?

  RUTH: It says how isolated you are.

  JACK: But there’s no news here. What have you been doing going out with me for six months? If you want somebody normal, toss a brick out the window and you’ll hit one.

  RUTH: It says you don’t try to fit in very well.

  JACK: But you’ve known all these things about me for six months. You’ve known how I live and what I think. And if you knew all those things, why did you ask me to marry you in the first place?

  RUTH: Because I hoped against hope you’d jump in the air and say yes, and actually make me believe you. Which you didn’t. And I had my answer. I had my answer all right. Classic Jack.

  JACK: Well what the fuck have you been doing with me for six months?

  RUTH: Maybe I hoped you were kidding all that time. That you’d do away with marriage, and kids, and cars, and political parties—

  JACK: You joined in that game, too.

  RUTH: Have you ever stopped and just listened to yourself? And realized what an asshole you can be? You don’t believe in this, you don’t believe in that, no private property, no marriage, no religion, no love. Not even love?! Not even the lowest common denominator?

  JACK: What do you want me to say? That I believe in love? Okay. I believe in love. Do you want me to say that I love you? I love you, Ruth. I love you. (Silence.) Are we transformed now? Are we different? Are we better than we were before?