Landscape of the Body

by John Guare

  Rosalie goes. We are on the deck of the boat as at the beginning. Holahan and Betty appear at the ship’s railing.

  HOLAHAN You recognize me?

  BETTY Captain Marvin Holahan. Sixth Precinct Homicide.

  HOLAHAN (Pulls off his disguise) What did you write in that note? A confession?

  Betty throws sheets of small papers into the wind. They blow away.

  BETTY A confession. A full confession. I wrote down everything that happened. And it’s all gone. There it goes. There’s your case.

  HOLAHAN I got bounced. From the force. About six days after our meeting. I took a lot out on you. I was on probation at the time of our interrogation. I had a lot of secret pressures on me. I thought if I nailed you, they’d overlook this minor nothing drug bribe extortion rap they pinned on me which if the truth be known everybody on the force is involved with in one way or another. But they were looking for a patsy. I loved the way you stood up to me. I wanted you to be the killer. If I stayed with the force I would’ve found your boy’s killer.

  BETTY No matter. I got on the bus this morning and I started writing on little pieces of paper everything I ever knew. Everything that ever happened to me. Sentences. Places. People’s names. Secrets. Things I wanted to be. I thought maybe out of all that I’d find the magic clue who killed my kid. I’d say I see.

  HOLAHAN I tried to do investigations on my own to find the killer for a present to you. But you can’t investigate outside the force. You need that power. You need … that secret power the force offers.

  BETTY It bothered me at first not knowing who killed Bert. But then I thought of all the things we don’t know. All the secrets in the world got put into a bottle and thrown in the sea and maybe someday I’ll be walking along a beach and the bottle containing the message for me will wash up. If I don’t know the answer, it’s out there and one day maybe an incredible coincidence will occur and I’ll know all I need to know. Or the murderer will come forward. Or I’ll even forget once I had a secret. I’ll remember I had a boy like I’ll remember I once had a mother and once had a father and I’ll try to keep piling the weight on to the present, so I’ll stay alive and won’t slide back. If I don’t know, somebody knows. My life is a triumph of all the things I don’t know. I don’t have to know everything. I read Agatha Christies and throw them away when the detective says “And the murderer is...” The mystery’s always greater than the solution. I was terrified to have a kid. I said before I got pregnant, I’ll have a kid and the eyes will end up on one side of the face and all the fingers on one hand and all the toes on one foot and both ears on one side of the head. And Bert was born and he was perfect. And this is the only thing I know. There’s got to be some order in there. I’m moving to this new place and it has big houses with classical columns and maybe I’ll find a job in one of them in a house owned by an old man who has an art collection and I’ll read up on classical painters and maybe he’ll ask me to marry him or maybe I’ll kill him and get him to sign the collection over to me or maybe I’ll love him and marry him. Or maybe I’ll discover a secret inside me that will make the whole world better. I’m not discounting nothing. Maybe I’ll be transplanted into somebody great who knows the secret, my secret, or maybe I’ll never know and a tornado or a water spout will whisk me up and I’ll turn into rain and end up in that sea.

  HOLAHAN All I know is I know more about you than anyone I know. All those months doing dossiers on you. All disconnected. All disjointed. Still I know more about you. We both have to begin again. Maybe together? I could reveal myself to you slowly. That was not me who interrogated you. That was my job talking. That was unseen pressures talking to you. That was saving my skin talking to you. I feel for you. All what you’ve been through. I feel for you. I read stories people falling in love who threw acid in each other’s faces and they get out of prison and they still love each other. I read stories people try to kill each other and end up loving each other. Give me a chance? I got severance pay? I got enough to get us through a winter?

  Betty looks at him. Rosalie appears. Music: “Voices of Eagles.”

  ROSALIE Last scene. In which Betty remembers the conversation she and I had so many years ago, the intensity of it burned into the Good Humor Man’s head. Betty has tried to remember since that day what Rosalie, what I had told her. She remembers. She and I sat on a summer afternoon on the green porch steps. Our mother over there. Our father over there. We pulled our skirts over our legs.

  Betty and Rosalie sit side by side as young girls.

  ROSALIE Stop shaking. Don’t let them see. (To their parents) It’s nothing, Dad.

  BETTY It’s like my stomach’s going to come up all the time.

  ROSALIE You’re all right.

  BETTY How am I going to get through my life?

  ROSALIE Would you let me explain? Our spirits—it’s so simple—float around in space and it all makes sense when you realize the planet Earth has these fishing hooks on it. What we call gravity is fishing hooks and all the nice things in the world are baited on those hooks and our spirits floating up there all loose and aimless spy those baited hooks and we bite. And we are reeled down onto this planet and we spend the rest of our stay on this planet trying to free our mouths of that hook, fighting, fighting.

  BETTY But what do you do?

  ROSALIE You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to Earth and we’ll look back and can’t even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The Earth is small. We’re gone. We’re dead. We’re safe.

  BETTY But Momma says—

  ROSALIE Oh, Momma says. Momma says. When are you gonna think for yourself?

  BETTY How do you … How can I think for myself?

  Rosalie has no answer. Bells ring.

  BETTY Vanilla? You want vanilla? We hear you, Durwood!

  Rosalie watches as Betty runs toward the ice cream. Betty stops. She turns to Holahan. She considers him. They move toward each other.

  CURTAIN