In the Wake

by Lisa Kron

  ELLEN: In what way?

  DANNY: In the way of what’s up with you these days, Ellie?

  ELLEN: I don’t know. Kind of status quo. I don’t know.

  DANNY: I think it’s time for you to make a choice.

  (The ground gives way beneath Ellen. She can’t find words. Her mind has gone blank . . . except for this one image.)

  ELLEN: I keep seeing your face, Danny, when you got off that bus, the time you came to see me in Vermont.

  DANNY: Oh, yeah.

  ELLEN: I don’t even remember what that place was called. “The Center for Progressive . . . something,” I don’t know, it was such a miserable place, I’d been there two months writing grants.

  It was the first year we were together.

  (Danny nods.)

  And you came to see me.

  DANNY: Yeah.

  ELLEN: Yeah.

  DANNY: It would have been a seven-hour drive. That bus took eighteen hours.

  ELLEN: I know. It was, like, 1:30 in the morning. (A marvel) You came all that way.

  DANNY: Yeah.

  ELLEN: And I’ll never forget your face, Danny, getting off that bus . . . with your hoodie sweatshirt under that tweed coat I hated from the Goodwill, and the hood pulled up and tied under your chin.

  DANNY: It was . . . cold.

  ELLEN (Looking into the beloved face she is describing): Your face . . . Even when I think of it now, it kills me. How much love there was in that face. I saw you and I burst into tears. That face, that sweet open face with your love for me on it, so . . . open, so clear. And I thought— I thought—no one will ever love me this cleanly, this clearly again.

  DANNY: That’s true.

  ELLEN: I know.

  DANNY: You have to choose, Ellie. You don’t have to choose me. But you have to choose.

  Scene 3

  Projections: Coverage of Bush Administration officials’ commentary on the progress of the Iraq invasion.

  Mid-March 2003. A month later.

  Amy’s apartment in Boston. Amy sits on the bed. Ellen watches her.

  ELLEN: Amy? Amy?

  AMY: What?

  ELLEN: Say something.

  AMY: What?

  ELLEN: I don’t know. What are you // feeling?

  AMY: I saw it coming! I saw it coming! What is there to say about it? I knew this is what was going to happen.

  ELLEN: Amy, it’s going to be okay.

  AMY: For you! You’re fine! You have Danny and Kayla and Laurie and your whole family, and they’re so funny and loving and all your // plans and your—

  ELLEN: I’m not choosing them over you, Amy.

  AMY: You are! Don’t—I can’t stand to listen to you tell me that. Why did I ever listen to you?

  ELLEN (Fierce, honest): You listened to me because I was saying things that were true, and they’re still true. We can’t be lovers—

  (Amy collapses.)

  —but it will be okay. Amy, I’m telling you this even though it’s going to kill me when you fall in love with somebody else.

  AMY: I will. I will find someone else.

  ELLEN: I know you will.

  AMY: No, I don’t want it! I don’t want anyone else.

  (Small beat.)

  Why is it you? Every relationship before you, I’d be okay for a few weeks and then I’d just want out. But I’d think, this relationship is fine. It’s me who’s wrong. And I’d try so hard and it would end so badly. And so I knew it was me. And so I knew I’d always be alone. But my . . . heart . . . my heart . . . was calm with you. And it imagined being with you for a very long time. Why is that? Why did I get the thing I couldn’t imagine with you?

  ELLEN: Amy, it’s going to kill me not to be close to you like this anymore.

  (They are merged in their grief.)

  AMY: I know.

  ELLEN: Feel this! We can practically hold it in our hands, this feeling between us, my God, my God it’s so heavy, it’s, it’s in us.

  AMY: No, I don’t want it.

  ELLEN: Amy . . . There’s love. And there’s desire. But this is something . . . older. Bigger. More. I don’t even believe in things like what I’m trying to describe. But that’s what this is. That’s why this feeling; this has always been here between us. We don’t get to be lovers.

  (Amy collapses, sobbing.)

  I know. It’s unbearable. But we will be something else. I don’t know what that’s going to be, but this doesn’t go away. It won’t go away, it will just be different. It will transform into something else. It will, Amy. It will.

  (Ellen steps away from Amy and back into the present.)

  How do we know when the worst is over?

  You know that saying? Until you hit the ground, falling can feel remarkably like flying.

  Scene 4

  Projections: Fragments of the second Bush-Kerry debate.

  October 2004. A year and a half later.

  Ellen calls Amy from a hotel room in Ohio.

  AMY (Brightly): Hey.

  ELLEN: Hey there. I’m so, so sorry I haven’t called. I’m in Ohio. I’ve been here since last Tuesday.

  AMY: That’s okay. How’s it going?

  ELLEN: Oh God! Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State— right-wing Republican—says voter registration cards will be considered invalid unless they’re printed on eighty-pound paper.

  AMY: That’s terrible!

  ELLEN: Oh, it’s . . . shameless! How are you?

  (Small beat.)

  AMY: Good.

  ELLEN: You sound good.

  AMY: I am.

  ELLEN: I haven’t heard your voice sound like this in a long time. What’s going on?

  AMY: Do you really want to know?

  ELLEN (A fraction of a beat): Yeah.

  AMY: I’ve met someone.

  ELLEN (And the ground is gone. And she is falling, falling, falling): Oh.

  AMY: I like her. And she likes me, too. I can tell.

  ELLEN: Oh.

  AMY: Are you okay?

  ELLEN (Sits on the bed. Can’t hold herself up): Yeah. I’m . . . Yeah. That’s good.

  (She endeavors to keep her voice positive and engaged, even though she is literally collapsing.)

  That’s so good, Amy. What’s her name?

  AMY: Anne.

  ELLEN: Where did you meet her?

  AMY: One of her friends set us up.

  ELLEN: Oh. Oh. What does she do?

  AMY: She works at a preschool. She’s . . . assistant administrator is her title. She kind of runs the office there.

  ELLEN: Oh. That sounds really nice.

  AMY: She’s . . . she’s a single mom. Tween . . . tweens . . . tweenagers, they call them. Twelve and thirteen. They’re not—not too sure how they feel about me.

  ELLEN: Oh. That’s, um . . . That’s um . . .

  AMY: Are you okay?

  ELLEN: Yeah. I’m . . . I’m . . .

  (Ellen is sobbing, but not letting Amy hear her.)

  AMY: Ellen.

  ELLEN: Yeah?

  AMY: You have to stick with me here. It’s going to be okay.

  ELLEN (As brightly as she can): I know. I know.

  AMY: I had to find someone, Ellen.

  ELLEN: I know, I know, Amy, I know, I know.

  AMY: When are you coming back? When can I see you?

  ELLEN: I don’t—I don’t—I will, but . . . I can’t . . . right now . . . I don’t know.

  AMY: Ellen, I need to see you. When you see me you’ll know it’s fine.

  ELLEN: No, I know. I just can’t right now. I’m really okay. You have to just let me take it in. I just need—I’ll call you when I can.

  AMY: When will that be?

  ELLEN: I . . . I don’t know.

  Scene 5

  Projections: Coverage of Bush’s victory with more popular votes than any presidential candidate in history.

  November 2004. Four days after the election.

  Judy and Ellen sit in Ellen’s living room.

  ELLEN: Oh
, Judy. I liked having you close. I don’t want you to leave. It’s so soon. Next week?

  JUDY: Yeah. That might actually be why I took the job. I’ll be far away for Thanksgiving. I hate that fucking holiday.

  ELLEN: This is a particularly bad one, huh?

  JUDY: I can’t say I didn’t see what was coming with Larry.

  ELLEN: Sucks, though. We’re driving out to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.

  JUDY: Why are you driving?

  ELLEN: There’s some big ball of twine out there that Danny wants to see. He’s very excited about it.

  (Beat.)

  It’s so hard on him. The way I am right now. I’m fine and then I just . . . I just . . . I can’t get a hold of myself. It’s horrible. I try to keep it together and not—God!— make him have to deal with my feelings about her.

  (A beat.)

  I knew that it would be hard but I thought I could make myself . . . big enough to deal with what would happen. But I feel . . . ruined. That’s the word that keeps coming into my head—ruined.

  JUDY: I’m so sorry, honey.

  ELLEN (Shaking it off): Ach! I’m okay. (Turning her attention to her friend, taking her in) Judy, I’m so upset about Tessa.

  JUDY: Yes.

  ELLEN: I’m still . . . not clear about what happened.

  JUDY: As far as I can tell, somebody at the school told her they needed records from her school in Kentucky or she was going to lose her financial aid. She asked Eileen, who . . . (Waves it off, no point getting into all the ways Eileen didn’t follow through) And her old school didn’t have her records . . . they lost them. She couldn’t get the papers she was told she needed. So she left.

  ELLEN: Why?

  JUDY: She thought they were throwing her out.

  ELLEN: But they weren’t, were they?

  JUDY: An administrator there told her that without that paperwork she would lose her financial aid.

  ELLEN: And . . . did // you—

  JUDY (With increasing impatience): I wrote to her school. I wrote to Kentucky social services. I assumed it was being taken care of.

  ELLEN: Oh God, it’s unbelievable she’s back in Corbin. It’s so crazy! We could have pulled strings // for her . . .

  JUDY: She didn’t know that.

  ELLEN: No, no, I get it, I get it. I just . . . I know DC was so hard for her at first but I thought she had really . . . risen above it.

  JUDY: She was never not having a hard time.

  ELLEN: Yeah. Well, she has to come back to DC.

  JUDY: To what?

  ELLEN: Oh I . . . I don’t know. I was thinking if she got a job—but I know you’re leaving—

  JUDY (Finally snaps): What kind of job would she get with no high-school diploma that would make her enough money to live there?

  (Ellen nods. A beat.)

  I can’t do it again, Ellen.

  ELLEN: I know.

  (A beat.)

  Well, at least the election went well.

  JUDY (A laugh): Oh yeah.

  ELLEN: I don’t know, Judy. I don’t know. I woke up in that horrible hotel room in Ohio on Wednesday morning and I—I couldn’t turn on the TV. I couldn’t bear to hear them say that he had won again. I felt so sick.

  JUDY: It’s sickening.

  ELLEN: My roommate, this woman who’d traveled from Arizona to help get people to the polls, she and I just lay there. Nobody could talk. I don’t think I’ve ever felt people so crushed politically. So many people worked so fucking hard. How did it happen? I mean when you went to the polls, how many people were in line?

  JUDY: I didn’t vote.

  (Beat.)

  ELLEN: What?

  JUDY: I don’t vote.

  ELLEN: I don’t—I can’t— How could you not vote in this election? How could you—help George Bush to get reelected?

  JUDY: I didn’t do that.

  ELLEN: You didn’t vote. I don’t understand. I don’t know how you, especially—you’re out there seeing firsthand the impact he’s having in the world, how could you not have cast a vote against him?

  JUDY: I don’t vote.

  ELLEN: Never?

  JUDY: No.

  ELLEN: Okay. You have to say more.

  JUDY: I—I don’t want to participate in a system I don’t believe in.

  ELLEN: What system? The American system?

  JUDY: Right.

  ELLEN (Not believing Judy is seriously making this argument): You don’t believe in American democracy?

  JUDY: No.

  ELLEN (Incredulous): You don’t believe in American democracy.

  JUDY: No.

  ELLEN (Dumbfounded): That’s crazy.

  JUDY: Why?

  ELLEN: What system is better?

  JUDY: I don’t know. But I do know that voting is a false exercise. You know this. You’re the one who talks about how the system is skewed so that the votes in rich, white, Republican districts are counted at much higher levels.

  ELLEN: If more people voted they could change that.

  JUDY: How? Gore did get more votes than Bush.

  ELLEN: I know, but—

  JUDY: The Supreme Court handed Bush the election.

  ELLEN: Yes, exactly. This right-wing mob has abdicated from the system. That’s why we have to do everything we can to get them out before they dismantle the whole apparatus.

  JUDY (Obvious): The apparatus is working as it’s meant to work, to facilitate the self-interests of wealthy men in power.

  ELLEN: But that’s not what it’s meant to do.

  JUDY: Ellen, for the first twenty-something years of this country only white male property owners could vote. That’s what this country was set up to do. We can put whatever Band-Aids on that we want, but that’s the setup.

  ELLEN: Okay, yes. The founders reflected the world at the time. But they set up systems that could grow and become more inclusive.

  JUDY (Bemused disbelief that Ellen can’t see what’s plain as day): I think you have a totally romanticized view of their intentions and of any inclusion. My grandmother grew up in a world where she couldn’t vote. The Voting Rights Act wasn’t passed until 1965. When I was in junior high school, black people still couldn’t vote.

  ELLEN (Open to Judy’s arguments, believing they ultimately strengthen her own point): Okay. Yes. Maybe I’m assigning retroactive intentionality. That’s probably right. That’s what we do, right? We look back at things that happened randomly and we assign intentionality to them. But that’s what I’m saying. The genius of the system is that it was set up to allow for the dynamic accretion of those random events which have made the system more inclusive.

  JUDY: Whatever inclusion you see has happened in spite of the system, not because of it.

  ELLEN: What about civil rights? The judicial branch stepped up and the system protected the minority, as it was meant to.

  JUDY: Are you talking about the Supreme Court?

  ELLEN: Yes.

  JUDY: The Supreme Court that said that Dred Scott was not a citizen and could never be one because he was black? The Supreme Court that defended the // Japanese internment camps—

  ELLEN: All right. All right. But as more people, more women and more minorities have gotten power, those things shift.

  JUDY: Where do you see that manifesting?

  ELLEN: Everywhere.

  JUDY: Look, Ellen, the idea that the system leads to a place for everyone is a myth. There has never been a place for everyone. It’s only the people who benefit from that who think there is. But the people at the top are the same people who’ve always been at the top. And the people who are at the bottom are the same people who’ve always been at the bottom.

  ELLEN: But—

  JUDY: But what, Ellen? I see a system that adjusts to maintain that order. Occasionally, a door cracks open for a decade or so, and then it gets slammed shut. Reconstruction lasted twenty years and was crushed by Jim Crow. Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually working. You know that, right? Nixon put Rumsfeld and Cheney in c
harge of it and told them to strangle it. It’s all documented. It’s no secret. Poor people aren’t even part of the political discussion anymore. Have you noticed that? What I see in the wake of civil rights is the population of black men exploding in prison. I see less access to health care, to public schools, to all sorts of public amenities. All the things you rail about. It’s not coincidental that those things are being privatized, being put into the hands of fewer people with more money and taken out of the public sector. Poor people and black people are suffering and that’s not an anomaly. That’s written into the system.

  ELLEN: But, Judy, change is possible here. People can move. Isn’t that what you did? Aren’t you the example of that?

  JUDY: No. I’m an exception that proves the rule. I had a tremendous amount of luck. People who crossed my path, teachers and so forth who pulled me onto a different track.

  ELLEN: But isn’t that the thing? Isn’t that the system?

  JUDY: No. That’s luck. Plus I was smart.

  ELLEN: Right.

  JUDY: Yes. If you’re poor and you’re smart you might get out. Rich people don’t have to be smart. Middle-class people don’t either.

  ELLEN (Really trying to understand): So what are you saying? There’s no special potential in our system? It’s not any better for poor people here than—what? A refugee camp in Guinea? Saddam Hussein’s Iraq?

  JUDY: Yes, I’m saying that for some people there is no more potential here.

  ELLEN: I don’t see that.

  JUDY: Right. Because you’re a middle-class person and you are served well by the system, so you have to believe that change is possible. It’s what American liberals do. Because what could you do otherwise? You’d have to give up your middle-class life or your ideals.

  ELLEN: No. No.

  The difference here is aspirational. Not everyone is treated the same here, of course. But it is the goal. There is an equality of aspiration.

  JUDY: But that’s what I’m saying. There’s not. Look at my sister, staying with a man who beats her. Look at my mother, sabotaging herself and her kid at every turn. You know that stereotype of welfare dependency the right-wing loves to talk about? That’s my family. Do I look at them and think they’re fuck-ups? Yes. Do I blame them for the fact that Tessa couldn’t keep it together long enough to just get a lousy high-school diploma? Yes. That girl broke my fucking heart. I’m ashamed of my family. It’s unbearable to me. I can hardly even get the words out of my mouth because I’m ashamed of being ashamed. The political line on them is they just aren’t trying hard enough. They don’t believe in themselves. And it’s true. And why? Because they don’t have that sense of aspiration you’re talking about. Because they live in an America where, if you can’t get the paperwork you’re told you need for the forms someone tells you you have to fill out, you are shit out of luck. They live in an America that is configured to keep them right where they are. And if you grow up in that place, you understand that—and if you don’t, you don’t.