Thom Pain

by Will Eno

  Finally, it is very important that Thom Pain is never pissy, bored, or overly cerebral. He is not even ever mean. Cruel, perhaps, but not mean. He is solemn and grave, often, and can be this way almost effortlessly. He feels large and powerful feelings, which he is usually able to convert into language, or, cover or deny with language. Or a change of topic. We should feel and see Thom’s feelings much more in their suppression than in their expression. We should feel the almost relentless pressure of them, as with the soda can that has been violently shaken. There it sits. Will it explode? Did we just see it trembling?

  LADY GREY

  (in ever-lower light)

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  LADY GREY, possibly British

  Setting: A theatre

  Stage Properties: A chair

  Wardrobe: A simple dress

  LADY GREY

  Lights up on LADY GREY. She regards audience, very still, as if watching a play or, say, in a difficult conversation with a friend, waiting for him to speak. Pause.

  You seem nervous, so, why don’t I start.

  How many are we? (She quickly counts audience, reckons with figure briefly.) You looked like fewer people.

  Pause.

  But, thank you for coming. It doesn’t work, my life, without people sitting there, staring, undressing me with their eyes, then undressing themselves, brushing their teeth in their minds and falling asleep, wishing they were dead. So, honestly, thank you.

  I’ll begin.

  ‘Show-and-tell?’ Do we have any familiarity with the term? If not, allow me. Here we go, and I’ll go slow– not wanting to leave any of you behind, until such time as I– you know– do. So, Show-and-tell: Tradition of the latter days of the waning years of the North American school system. Child brings object into school, a rock he likes or a photo of herself, is called on by the teacher, moves to the front of the room, stands there shaking and childlike, shows object, discourses on same for a few mumbly minutes, closes disappointingly, having forgotten the important parts, managing not to cry, or to only cry a little, and sits back down. And so forward throughout the North American day, rocks and photos, nothing much, keepsakes and little animals, teeth that fell out, an interesting scar. Occasionally, some overachiever with a bodily organ, his tonsils or appendix, floating in a jar of formaldehyde, proudly held aloft, nothing much to add. ‘Thank you very much, please sit back down.’ Show-and-tell helps the child apply language to an object, to see if it sticks. Helps the child grow in his ability to convey an inner reality, assuming any of those words applies. Also, gives the tired teacher a day off, nothing to prepare, he or she can sit back like you and watch the stream of little crap, hear the stream of little sentences, the human human ums and ohs and I-don’t-knows. All meant to express the dearness of the shown object, a dearness that remains, in most cases, unexpressed. There’s something impossible about it. Something soft and accidental. Real. In this simple little structure. That’s all.

  Brief pause. Regards audience.

  Bravo. Let me guess– an ‘audience,’ right? Or, wait, no– ‘friends of the deceased?’ ‘Family of the victim?’ White people in chairs. Cheer up. You’re all very beautiful, in a very general way. Smile.

  Brief pause.

  ‘Um. Oh. I don’t know.’

  You do all look so nice. In this very low light.

  Now.

  Pause.

  My childhood was, what should we say, humanistic. Not that anyone asked. But, yes, it gave the impression of a childhood, while it was going by. Like anyone’s, I don’t doubt. All the bells and whistles, a generally screaming age, skinned knees and girlish pain. I look back on my childhood, in the evenings. I think of things I could have said. I try to picture old things, people’s faces, feelings, get drunk on nostalgia, alcohol. Which leaves me my mornings free, to do with as I despise or like. To recover from the wasted night, do dishes, lacerate the woman back into the girl. I try to read or do watercolors, sinking sidewise and deeper into the life we all agree we thought we would avoid. Do I gather from your polite lack of response that we have some kind of understanding? A little sympathy, do I sense in the silence? Or just a polite lack of response. I could never differentiate.

  Brief pause.

  A girl needs a name, doesn’t she. Jennifer should do, Jen. So. Jennifer has brown hair, completely arresting and sparkling dark– you know what, you’ve seen a girl before. Jennifer is the girl you see when someone says ‘girl.’ She is walking home from school, as she suddenly appears in our story, thinking about her assignment, show-and-tell tomorrow. She is walking past houses, through wheatfields, men watching her pass, then a wide empty road, a pretty dress, she is girly, the days getting shorter. I see this in a rural sort of setting, autumnal. It could happen anywhere, anytime. But I give you waving wheatfields, blue skies, a girl walking through them, under them. I give you horseflies and falling leaves. (Very brief pause.) You’re welcome. We see her blink slowly, push her hair behind her ears. I don’t know why.

  Brief pause.

  She is thinking about her life, possibly.

  Brief pause.

  I like drama.

  Longer pause.

  You too, I can tell.

  Jennifer. A girl, a body, alive in the night and morning. See the girl. You understand what it means to be human. Jen is keeping busy around the house, being human.

  There is nothing we need to pretend.

  Brief pause.

  I caught the acting bug when I was very young. Maybe it was just a rash. The doctors said it was all in my head. Then they said it had spread to my spine. Me and my acting bug, my metal back brace, dreams of treading the boards, eight years old, unable to walk. It turned out to be something viral, something you just get. People came by, stared, told me what I was missing, gave me the homework, filled me in. It hurt all the time but it hurt differently. A little variety, in the laming. I couldn’t do this. (She takes two steps.) I couldn’t even do this. (She takes one step.) I could barely do this. (She does nothing. Pause. Slight bow.) Thank you. Needless to say, as I say it anyway, if someone came by to quote visit, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t run away. And so I bore the attentions of your fellow human beings, on my back in the afternoons in a dark house.

  Brief pause.

  Oh, the miracle of walking, of flight, the beauty of running screaming. And, ah, the miracle of standing still. Be grateful, movers. Shakers. This too, this mobility, shall pass.

  Brief pause.

  So there I was, in bed, and younger. I began to see myself as watchable. It was here, these months, semi-paralyzed and abed, that I was able, in my pain, to hone a skill for something or other. It was from in this position that I learned that the world was something I might lie down for, holding my nose while it enacted its worldliness on me. Similar revelations, anyone? Like hardships? Trouble in the bedroom– shooting pain, shame, paralysis? I’m sure. But you take the bad with the good, ride out the difference. You’ll have some failures, sure, but then you get sick and die. It evens out, yes? I continue, ladylike, but unconcerned with your reply. Which is not to say I don’t need you. Just not really right now.

  You could compare me to a summer’s day, though this really wouldn’t be necessary. I could be compared to a winter’s night, too, though by whom, and why? I’m like last Saturday. Cold, cloudy, over. I can’t be bothered.

  I can be bothered, I lied.

  Life is shocking.

  Unreadiness is all.

  Pause.

  Does anyone know what I need someone to do, right now, quickly? No? It’s not your fault. That you do not hear what I will not say. But, isn’t it? Yes, this is small of me. But so is this: Die, every single one of you, twice. A cancer on all your houses.

  I’m sorry.

  Anyway, I wouldn’t worry. I’ve cursed people before. It never seems to stick.

  Pause.

  Jennifer, we hardly know you.

  Pause.

  Do I seem familiar? I’m looking at you
, with something in mind. Can you stand it? Some people can’t. Some people run for the hills. When I say hills, I don’t think of whatever hills you think of. We can try to overcome that. The fact that we use the same words for things but don’t have the same things for the words. We all think our mothers are named Mother. We may try to specify: Mom, Momma, Mommy, Mummy, Maman, Mum, Ma. To make her feel special, less anonymous. She is merely the thing that gets the name. The body that drifted through the word. Like the woman before you. Who is not familiar.

  I have nice eyes. Dark and sparkling. It is said. Compelling, up to a point. I think these were the words. What do you think? What can you tell me about you? I ask the question– what’s the word– rhetorically.

  Pause.

  I’m with you in your anger, your disappointment, or, quote, whatever. Are you with me, in mine? Where does it come from, think you? This overriding feeling, this smoldering something. Have you your hunches? As have others before you, who had theirs? Who would, after dismounting, smoke, have their hunches, give their notes on my performance as a woman lying down, put on their shoes and then leave. Others might not have been so– what’s the word– as I was. Others might have been even more whatever-the-word-is than I was. I was desperate and confused. I will be again. I don’t know. Who knows. You don’t.

  You’re not the first. Or the last.

  I’ve been looked at, sized up, pored over, before.

  There was an American– or Canadian, I don’t know, one of those grain-producing countries. American, I’m starting to have the feeling. Decent-enough, polite to a fault, also brown hair, seething with rage, hate, average height, promising at tennis. I felt everything with him, for a while. On a scale of 1 to 3– with 3 being only slightly different from 1– he was, I don’t know. In the end? Honestly? Just a blue shirt. Some dark sunglasses.

  Brief pause.

  I loved that shirt. The grown man hiding in it, hunkering down, making his life in it? Never was I to really know. ‘Fine,’ he’d say, if asked how he was. ‘I’m fine,’ his mouth would say, him shaking with some untold pain, some resolvable problem, me staring at myself in his sunglasses. Understater.

  Leaver. Mouse. ‘Fine.’ He was a clumsy man. My tireless efforts in pointing this out did nothing to make him more graceful. He cried constantly, or said nothing. If he talked he talked about the weather, but he never seemed willing to do anything about it. He would stare at me, blankly, waiting, and I would tell him to stop. He would. Fine. The way I go on, you’d think that I was born with minty fresh breath, that I grew money under my arms. No, I had my imperfections. Sometimes, pouring myself into bed, I missed. Sometimes, I woke up shouting, enraged at him for some deficiency in my dreams, or a creak he made the stairs make. Some nights, while he was clumsily trying to express himself, I had trouble pretending I was asleep. I stormed out of places, left-in-the-night sort of thing. Sometimes, I waited all day to leave in the night. I made the most of the silence he provided, and filled it with gory fantasies of betrayal and hate, scenes in which we punished each other, in which I came out, bloodily, on top. I was pretty ugly, sometimes. Still, I have my charms, my qualities.

  Pause. She assumes ‘ballet, fourth position.’

  I studied dance. (Brief pause. She returns to a normal stance.) Then I quit.

  I can sing, if you made me. If you– you know– if you put a gun to my head.

  Brief pause.

  No guns here, tonight, I guess? How very English. Not even some lone drunk with a rusted box-cutter or razor blade in his pocket, to encourage me in my singing career. Well, it’s the thought that counts.

  Pause. Sings.

  ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle…’

  ‘Do, a deer, a female deer; re, a drop of golden sun; mi, a name I call myself; fa, a long long way to run.’

  Speaks.

  Why don’t we forget the singing.

  Long pause.

  I was thinking about something else.

  Brief pause.

  Does this ever happen to you? (Brief pause.) You’re looking for something, a word or some old toy. Something by which you will be revealed, expressed. Wondering what the story of yourself is, and, how to tell it. And why. It did, to her. Jen. Rejected items would include: a dead aunt’s radio, a dead dog’s dog tag, two pieces of glass, and a toy watch. Also, a candle from her baptism, something papery from Japan, an old photo of a man on a horse. All seeming to Joanne– or, Jen, whoever– not-enough-her for her. Her not knowing this is an art of diction and feeling, not objects and props, her not knowing any old thing, a paper clip, a dirty bed sheet, a dog collar, would do just as well as anything else, provided her heart was in it.

  There she is, rummaging through her life. A girl versus the world, coming to terms with what is not in it for her. She is all alone. Look close. See another person clearly. It’s just me, here. Armed with what? Reassured by what? A chair? Take a moment out of your busy life to admire my simple dress.

  Pause.

  There are different kinds of silence. You know the distinction. The silence before someone is going to say something. The silence before someone isn’t.

  She opens her mouth almost imperceptibly, about to speak, stops. Pause.

  Which one was that, I wonder. As we continue in this tale. Of life. The sum of forces that resist death. Life: about which we have all heard and read a great deal, I’m sure.

  Pause.

  Do you want me to take my clothes off?

  Immediately.

  I thought so.

  Pause.

  Jennifer is walking to school, through the Americas, the Western Hemisphere, wherever– empty-handed. Long years of family life, time on earth, experience, and, nothing to show. Are birds singing, on a telephone wire? Is there an airplane in the overly blue sky? Is something moving in the bushes? Does she shiver, wishing she were gone? (Brief pause.) I don’t know, you tell me.

  One day, he told me he was leaving forever, and came back with cigarettes. When he said he was going out for cigarettes, I thought I understood, but he came back with flowers and milk. We did laugh, sometimes. I opened up to him somewhat. We tried to tell each other about ourselves. He liked to look at my face. In a crowded park on a sunny day, he said, ‘I love you. Watch this,’ and turned and walked away. I followed, out of curiosity, hurt, watched him turn corners, double back, saw the second-thoughts, the third-thoughts in his walk, tried keeping up until I lost him or interest and sat down near a fountain.

  And so was that, ladies and gentlemen, that?

  A minor loss, comparatively. A pretty shirt. People come and go. Mothers die. Hard lessons, in which nothing is learned. Fill in your own blanks.

  I’d like to talk about suicide, but, am afraid one or more of you would laugh, yell something mean, try to discourage me from the idea. Of raising such a serious topic, on such a laughable evening. Don’t lose hope, maybe later. But, if someone were to yell something hurtful, that would help me really feel it, really help me be ‘in the moment,’ and that’s surely what we all want. A moment, and somebody in it. I don’t know. Here I am.

  I should stop here.

  Brief pause.

  And start here.

  A girl. Born, of a winter, a mother, crying, and why not? Was scared. Overcame. Was overcome, and, scared again; ruined, effectively. Any worse than anyone else? Who knows. But certainly differently, individually. The things people do to people. The little years better-never-mentioned. Or, just, never mentioned. Or hardly. But to continue, rose again. Tried to stand before her fellow man. Tried and tried. To find love, in any of its forms, even if only fleeting, even if not even love. She sang, danced, spoke, stopped. Ailed. Prayed, for the hell of it. Flailed against her fellow men. Dabbled in thoughts of the above, grew in her inwardness, refined her performance of herself as a loveless wretch. Poor thing, we think, briefly.

  I need to sit.

  She sits. Tries three distinct ways of sitting in a chair. Thoughtful and attentive, first. Relaxed
and open, second. As simply and unexpressively as a person can sit in chair, third.

  I need to stand.

  She stands. Posed as if for soliloquy.

  How to be, or, not, or, what, because, you try, and get hurt, and wait in lines, you stand around humming, and for what for, exactly? And do you want to change, or just leave? Meaning what? Unknown. Except, more being scared, and night sweats and day sweats and overthinking everything and getting whiter all the time, and, didn’t we used to be so enterprising and fine, once, in the mud puddles with the yellow rubber boots and our little bones and the trees and everything so full of ribbons and daylight? Before the losses piled up into a shape as big as we are? I have no idea. What a life, I guess, what a goddamned life, ours. Very pretty, really, if you have someone to talk about it with. I suppose. Don’t know. This is just one person’s opinion.

  Pause.

  A butterfly in Massachusetts flaps its wings, and, a whale dies, off the coast of Iceland. Meanwhile, in Argentina, a man and woman, hand-not-in-hand, look for somewhere to eat. Meanwhile, in another city, two people are on a trampoline, laughing. Or someone is betting on a horse race. Now the butterfly dies, the whale washes up somewhere. No connection, or, none known. This is the world and Jen is at school, rearranging herself in her chair, thinking about herself, her life, everyone else. Her classmates, one by one, come forward with some little something, some hastily arranged half-sentences to describe it. A girl with old ice skates, a boy with a comic book in French. Someone with his brother, who is retarded, another with a photo of her mother on a camel. Jen is thinking of words she can say.

  Brief pause.

  Such faces, yours, so tragic around the mouth. Yes, what a lot of nice white people here tonight.

  Note to self: Dear me. I don’t know what you want from me.

  Brief pause.

  I broke my arm in a foreign country once. No language, the wrong money, couldn’t describe the pain, so, no one could help. I was offered words without vowels, small portions of uncomforting food. I tried to be still, I shook. An animal at the veterinarians. As far away as you could get. I don’t think that country’s even still a country. And now I stand before you now. Believing things are different. Yelp. Bark. Growl. Yawn. Probably Not. Maybe.