by Nora Ephron
MARY: This person is the gun over the mantel.
MURIEL GARDINER: Bang.
MARY: Not yet.
BLACKOUT.
CURTAIN.
ACT 2
Scene 1
MARY and LILLIAN come onstage carrying their dolls and sit on the edge of the stage. Behind them is the fig tree and MARY’s house. MARY begins to sing “Imaginary Friend.”
MARY: [To her doll.]
I BELONG TO YOU
YOU BELONG TO ME
YOU PLAY MY FAV’RITE GAMES
NEVER CALL ME NAMES
NEVER DISAGREE
ALL THAT LONELY LONELINESS IS THROUGH
WITH AN IMAGINARY FRIEND
LIKE YOU
LILLIAN: [To her doll.]
WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID?
YOU SAY THE SWEETEST THINGS
YOU ALWAYS MAKE ME BLUSH
WITH THE KINDA MUSH
YOUR DEVOTION BRINGS
CLOSE AS “A” WILL ALWAYS BE TO “B”
THAT’S MY IMAGINARY FRIEND
AND ME
LILLIAN AND MARY: [To their dolls.]
DANCIN’ WITH MY DOLLY DOWN A COUNTRY LANE
YOU’RE JUST PLAIN TRUE BLUE
SWEETER THAN THE CANDY OF A CANDY CANE
YOU REMAIN
IMAGINARY
MARY: [To her doll.]
I BELIEVE IN YOU
LILLIAN: [To her doll.]
I BELIEVE IN YOU
MARY:
YOU BELIEVE IN ME
LILLIAN:
YOU BELIEVE IN ME
LILLIAN AND MARY:
NICE OF YOU TO COME
YOU’LL BE TWEEDLEDUM
I’LL BE TWEEDLEDEE
WHEN I HAVE A THOUGHT, YOU’LL HAVE IT, TOO
YOU’RE MY IMAGINARY FRIEND
’MAGINARY FRIEND
LET IT NEVER END
LET IT NEVER END
’CAUSE I CAN DEPEND
YES I CAN DEPEND
ON—
DOLLS:
ON ME
WHEN WE GO OUT AND PLAY
LILLIAN AND MARY:
WHEN WE GO OUT AND PLAY
DOLLS:
YOU’RE ALWAYS ON MY SIDE
LILLIAN AND MARY:
ALWAYS ON MY SIDE
DOLLS:
YOU NEVER LET ME DOWN
NEVER SIT AND FROWN
NEVER MISS A STRIDE
LILLIAN AND MARY:
WITH ME STRIDE FOR STRIDE
DOLLS:
WHAT’S MORE FUN THAN MONKEYS IN THE ZOO?
LILLIAN AND MARY:
IT’S AN IMAGINARY FRIEND
ALL FOUR:
OR TWO
DANCIN’ WITH MY DOLLY DOWN A COUNTRY LANE
CLOUDS AND RAIN WON’T DO
LILLIAN AND MARY:
WAITIN’ FOR MY DADDY AT THE CHOO-CHOO TRAIN
ALL FOUR:
WE REMAIN
WE REMAIN
SO VERY MERRY
I BELONG TO YOU
YOU BELONG TO ME
SWEETER THAN A YAM
OR A JAR O’ JAM
AT A JAMBOREE
ICKY-WICKY THOUGHTS GO WICKY WOO
WITH AN IMAGINARY FRIEND
’MAGINARY FRIEND
LET IT NEVER END
LET IT NEVER END
’CAUSE I CAN DEPEND
YES I CAN DEPEND
YES I CAN DEPEND
UPON A FRIEND
IT’LL NEVER END
NOT WITH AN IMAGINARY FRIEND
LIKE YOU
MARY sits on the porch steps. UNCLE MYERS emerges from the house. He takes out a razor strop and flicks it against the porch railing with a sharp snap.
UNCLE MYERS: Mary—
MARY: Yes, Uncle—
UNCLE MYERS: I gave your brother a tin butterfly several days ago.
MARY: I know. From a Cracker Jack box. Will you get me one? Please? I would love one so much.
UNCLE MYERS: He can’t find it. Have you seen it anywhere?
MARY: No. So it’s lost?
UNCLE MYERS: Well, that all depends, doesn’t it.…
UNCLE MYERS flicks his strop against the railing again. Then he walks into the house. A beat. UNCLE MYERS comes back out of the house with the strop.
Mary—
MARY: Yes, Uncle—
UNCLE MYERS: Are you sure you haven’t seen the butterfly?
MARY: Of course I’m sure.
The door slams. MARY goes back to reading her book. The door opens. UNCLE MYERS comes back out and stands in the doorway.
UNCLE MYERS: Mary—
MARY: Yes, Uncle.
UNCLE MYERS: I found the butterfly.
MARY: Good.
UNCLE MYERS: Would you like to know where it was?
MARY: Where was it?
UNCLE MYERS: It was under your plate. Did you take your brother’s butterfly and hide it under your plate?
MARY: No.
UNCLE MYERS: Well, someone took your brother’s butterfly and hid it under your plate—
MARY: It wasn’t me. Why would I do that?
UNCLE MYERS: You wanted the butterfly—
MARY: But why would I take it and put it under my own plate?
MARY starts to run away, and UNCLE MYERS grabs her.
UNCLE MYERS: Admit you took it—
MARY: I will never admit I took it. You can beat me until I’m dead, but I will never admit I took it. Never ever.
She squirms out of his grasp and runs into the house. He runs after her. The door slams behind him. We can’t see them, but we can hear that he’s caught her and has begun to beat her. We can hear her screaming. And now we see LILLIAN skipping toward the house. As she comes up the stairs, she hears MARY screaming. She stops. She puts her hand up to her ear in a sort of exaggerated listening pose. Then she marches up and bangs on the door.
LILLIAN: Hey, what’s going on in there? [She knocks louder.] Open up! And stop doing whatever it is you’re doing, or I’ll call the police and you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life!
The beating continues, and we hear MARY screaming in pain. LILLIAN kicks down the door like John Wayne and reaches in for UNCLE MYERS. She hauls him out by his suspenders (it’s an UNCLE MYERS doll) and flings him down the porch stairs. She leaps down the stairs after him, takes the strop from his hand, and beats him with it.
You’re a bad, bad person, Uncle Myers—
She picks him up again and flings him offstage. MARY appears in the doorway.
Run, Mary, run!
MARY: Where? Where should I go? [They look around.]
LILLIAN: We’ll hide. We’ll hide in this fig tree until we figure out what we’re doing.
The two of them scramble up the fig tree. A beat. The branches open, and we see them now.
MARY: I can’t believe you did that.
LILLIAN: I’m amazingly strong for my age.
MARY shakes her head in wonderment.
I saved you.
MARY: Hey, wait a minute. It was my uncle, and my house—
LILLIAN: What are friends for?
MARY: —and my story. And now you’re the queen of it. You’re always doing that!
LILLIAN: Doing what?
MARY: You always take over—
LILLIAN: I do not.
MARY: You do, too.
LILLIAN: No I don’t—
MARY: Yes you do. Look at us—we’re hiding in your fig tree. Guess what? There are no fig trees in Minneapolis!
The branches close over them. We hear a terrible thrashing noise. MARY falls from the tree. Splat.
BLACKOUT.
Scene 2
“Fact & Fiction”
FACT:
I’D LIKE TO INTRODUCE MYSELF
THE NAME IS FRANKIE FACT
FICTION:
HI, I’M DICK FICTION
AND FRANKLY, THAT’S A FACT
BOTH:
AT TIMES WE TEND TO TANGLE
THERE’S FRICTION IN THE
ACT
FACT:
’CAUSE “FICTION” PLAYS IT FAST AND LOOSE
FICTION:
AND “FACT” IS SO EXACT
BOTH:
BUT WHEN WE DO OUR NUMBER
IT’S SOMETHING OF AN ART
AND NOW AND THEN THEY EVEN SAY
IT’S TOUGH TO TELL US APART
FACT:
FACT
FICTION:
AND FICTION
BOTH:
COMIN’ TO YA WITH A SONG AND DANCE
TAKIN’ FOCUS WHILE WE GOT THE CHANCE
SEE THE DAPPER DANCIN’ FELLERS
EACH CAN BE THE BEST O’ SELLERS
FACT:
FACT
FICTION:
AND FICTION
WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE IN SUCH GOOD TASTE?
FACT:
HOW’S IT FEEL TO KNOW YOU’RE “LOOSELY BASED”?
FICTION:
FACT’LL OFTEN ACT OFFICIOUS
FACT:
LEAST I’LL NEVER BE FICTITIOUS
BOTH:
WE’VE BEEN BOOKED AT THE PALACE
WE’VE BEEN BOOKED IN DULUTH
FICTION:
ONCE I SOLOED IN DALLAS
FACT:
THINLY DISGUISING THE TRUTH
BOTH:
WE’RE
FACT:
FACT
FICTION:
AND FICTION
BOTH:
AND SINCE YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH WHICH IS WHICH
SOME PERFORMANCES WE PULL A SWITCHEROO
FACT MAY IN FACT BE FICTION
OUT OF HIS JURISDICTION
SOMETIMES, IN FACT, THERE’S FICTION, TOO
FICTION:
WHAT IF I USE POETIC LICENSE?
FACT:
BETTER TO USE A NAKED FACT
FICTION:
WHAT IF IT NEEDS EMBELLISHING?
FACT:
A FRAUD IS A FRAUD
FICTION:
WHAT IF IT TAKES A FIB
TO GET THE FOLKS TO APPLAUD?
FACT: [To the audience.]
PLEASE, I BEG YA, DON’T PROVOKE ’IM
ALL YOU’LL EVER GET IS HOKUM
FICTION:
WHAT IF I CHANGE THE NAMES A LITTLE?
WHAT IF I FEEL THE NEED FOR TACT?
WHAT IF HER NAME IS EVA AND I CALL HER YVONNE?
FACT:
WHY WOULD YOU CALL IT FICTION WHEN THE FICTION IS
“NON”?
FICTION:
FACT IS GETTIN’ KIND O’ CRANKY
BOTH:
SAIL ALONG WITH DICK AND FRANKIE
BOTH:
WE’VE BEEN BOOKED IN THE CACTUS
WE’VE BEEN BOOKED IN THE SNOW
FACT:
I’M A STICKLER FOR PRACTICE
FICTION:
I MAKE IT UP AS I GO [They dance.]
BOTH:
IT’S WORTH ALL THE CONSTANT FRICTION
WORTH EV’RY CONTRADICTION
WORTH IT WHEN FACT AND FICTION BOW
WHEN WE TAKE A BOW
LET’S HEAR IT FOR FACT AND FICTION NOW
Scene 3
Rich and famous.
LILLIAN: Rich.
MARY: Famous.
LILLIAN: Much more famous.
MARY: Much less rich.
LILLIAN: You said it, sister.
MARY: And much less famous. But famous. [Beat.] In 1963 I published a best-seller called The Group. It was made into a movie. It was a novel about a group of women who’d gone to Vassar together—
LILLIAN: —viciously reviewed by some of your closest friends. In 1969 I published my first memoir—
MARY: You were washed up as a playwright—
LILLIAN: It was a best-seller called An Unfinished Woman—
MARY: I went to Vietnam and wrote about the war—
LILLIAN: No one read it. I wrote another best-selling memoir called Pentimento.
MARY: “Pentimento” is Italian for “I couldn’t really remember, so I just made it up.”
LILLIAN: A chapter in it, called “Julia,” was made into a movie—
MARY: We’ll get to that shortly. I went to Washington to write about Watergate—
LILLIAN: Did you? I’d forgotten that if I ever knew it. I wrote another best-seller about the McCarthy period. It was called Scoundrel Time—
MARY: —in which you canonized yourself. I lived in Europe with my fourth husband, and I really didn’t think about you much at all. I mention this because people are going to think we spent our lives thinking about each other—
LILLIAN: We didn’t. Whole years passed when I didn’t think of you at all. You were, after all, gone.
MARY: I was in Paris.
LILLIAN: A diplomat’s wife. Passing out cheese puffs for the deputy consul of the Norwegian Embassy.
MARY: I was madly in love.
LILLIAN: Always a mistake to fall in love if it means giving up a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City. Always a mistake to choose love over your career—
MARY: I didn’t give up my career—
LILLIAN: But you gave up the world you were part of. It was an awful world, worth giving up, but it was the world you’d lived in your entire writing life. While I stayed in the thick of things—
MARY: And became a celebrity.
LILLIAN: Well, don’t say it as if you didn’t want a piece of it. You even did a People magazine interview. “America’s first lady of letters,” in People magazine.
MARY: I was trying to sell a book.
LILLIAN: And you took a pop at me in People magazine. The interviewer asked you, “What do you have against Lillian Hellman?” Implicitly saying, “Why keep attacking her?” Why did you?
MARY: Because you were such a fraud.
LILLIAN: Nonsense. You were just using me to show off your sharp little tongue. It was lucky for you that I stayed as famous as I did, or you’d have to have found someone else to attack. You virtually sharpened your tongue on my reputation. I was your whetstone. I was part of your routine. “What do you have against Lillian Hellman?” And you answered—
MARY: “Well, I never liked what she writes.”
LILLIAN: But it turned out you hadn’t seen most of my plays, and you hadn’t read my books, either—
MARY: I’d read as much of them as I could. I read that silly story in Pentimento about the turtle—
LILLIAN: What was wrong with the story about the turtle?
MARY: Who could believe a word of it? You and Hammett kill a turtle, you slice its head off, you leave it in the kitchen to be made into soup, and it somehow manages to resurrect itself and crawl away. The next day, when it turns up dead somewhere on your vast property, the two of you have a fantastically elliptical, cutthroat debate over whether the turtle is—correct me if I’m putting words into your mouth here—some sort of amphibious reincarnation of Jesus.
LILLIAN: Everyone liked that story.
MARY: Every word of dialogue in it is cocked up, but of course there’s no way to prove it because everyone is dead, including the turtle. You never wrote about anyone until they were dead and were no longer around to correct you—
LILLIAN: And you never wrote about anyone unless they were alive and you could hurt their feelings. You barely even bothered to change anyone’s name.
A beat.
MARY: We always end up this way—
LILLIAN: On opposite sides.
A beat.
MARY: And yet—
LILLIAN: What?
MARY: We both loved beautiful things—
LILLIAN: And we weren’t ashamed of it. We both loved cooking—
MARY: Yes, I always heard you were a wonderful cook—
LILLIAN: I was. [Beat.] You took yourself out of the running. Big mistake.
MARY: You thought you could feed the beast forever. Even bigger mistake.
VOICES FROM WINGS: Miss Hellman, Miss Hellman, Miss Hellman—
LILLIAN: I can’t talk about this ri
ght now. I’m late for my interview. Could I have some coffee?
MARY: Un café, s’il vous plaît.
LILLIAN is surrounded by interviewers with cameras. MARY sits at a table in a Paris café on the other side of the stage and opens a book. LILLIAN turns from one interviewer to the next and smiles as she’s bombarded with questions.
INTERVIEWER #1: Miss Hellman, tell me about the fig tree—
INTERVIEWER #2: Miss Hellman, did Hammett help you with your writing?
INTERVIEWER #1, #2, AND #3: [Together.] Tell us—
INTERVIEWER #1: —about Sophronia—
INTERVIEWER #2: —about your imaginary playmate—
INTERVIEWER #3: —what “pentimento” means—
INTERVIEWER #1: This ad—advertising ranch mink—what in the world is that about?
LILLIAN: I don’t know. [Laughs.] I don’t know.
On the scrim we see a photograph of LILLIAN as the legend in the “What Becomes a Legend Most” Blackglama mink ad, as LILLIAN poses and preens for the camera and the photographers shout—
INTERVIEWER #1: This way—
INTERVIEWER #2: This way—
INTERVIEWER #3: Over here—
INTERVIEWER #1: I want to know why you did that ad.
LILLIAN: [Laughs.] I got talked into it one bad afternoon. Why? Do you object to it?
INTERVIEWER #1: No, but I don’t quite know what to make of it.
LILLIAN: I don’t blame you.
LILLIAN now sits for a television interview, smoking a cigarette. We see her image projected onto the scrim behind her as the interview progresses.
INTERVIEWER: Miss Hellman, the story of you and your friend Julia is about to be made into a movie. Tell us about her.
LILLIAN: Julia was a childhood friend who moved to Vienna to study with Freud and became active in the anti-fascist underground. In 1936 she called and asked me to bring money—fifty thousand dollars—to Berlin.
INTERVIEWER: Money that was to be used to save people from the Nazis.
LILLIAN: Yes. She knew that I was afraid of being afraid and might be willing to do something dangerous. So I brought her the money.
INTERVIEWER: In the lining of a fur hat.
LILLIAN: Yes. I met Julia in a restaurant near the Berlin train station. I knew she’d been wounded in a demonstration, but when I saw her, and I saw the crutches, I realized she’d lost a leg.…
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever see her alive after that day?
LILLIAN: Never. She was murdered by the Nazis. I went to London and brought her body home to America. She’d left her daughter for safekeeping with friends in Alsace, and I never went looking for her—
INTERVIEWER: Her daughter, Lilly.
LILLIAN: Yes. I suffered terribly for not looking for the child. Hammett always said I got my worst nightmares from not looking for the child. [She starts to cry.] I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This has never happened to me.