carmen: . . . do you / even . . . ?
elliot: . . . so I can—yes I like you! I like you and I want to get through this . . . part!
Silence.
You don’t want it.
carmen: No I don’t want it!
elliot: Why not?
carmen: Because it’s not planned / and . . .
elliot: So?
carmen: . . . and . . .
elliot: So?
carmen: . . . and you’re not ready!
elliot: How is it that you . . . ! How do you think people have families? They get loaded and they fuck someone they can barely tolerate. Then they do it again. My parents were miserable: they had four kids. Have you seen a birth? I have, I was six: I watched my sister being born. My mother shit herself. Then we all had cake. You know what the cake tasted like? Blood. That’s how much of it was in the air. There was a placenta in the bathtub. Then my mother decided she was good to walk around the house—this was one hour after the birth—and you know what happened? She fell down the stairs. It—it’s a mess, it’s not some planned . . . thing—!
carmen: Yeah but, Elliot, I don’t want to be like your family or . . . my / family—
elliot: Come on, you know what I’m / saying.
carmen: You’re saying you can’t be ready for this, so you’re ready, but do you get what I’m saying? Do you get that I am by myself most of / the time . . .
elliot: No, that’s not even— / no . . .
carmen: . . . yes it is!
elliot: No, you like being alone, / you . . .
carmen: . . . no I don’t—are you fucking out of your mind!
elliot: You’re a composer! You’re a composer! You work by yourself—
carmen: Elliot, you have a pathological—
elliot: You know exactly why I . . .
carmen: . . . a pathological . . .
elliot: . . . go into my work and don’t come out: you’re exactly the same!
carmen: Yeah but I still know what a phone is for. And yeah—I’m single-minded about my work, and it’s solitary, which means I don’t ask you for much, so why can’t you fucking just give me the very / small amount I . . . !
elliot: Okay okay okay but this is my . . . ! You’re fine with being alone, you just don’t like waiting around for me to call you . . .
carmen: . . . no: no . . .
elliot: . . . because it makes you feel like you’re this clichéd woman who’s at home arranging the flowers . . .
carmen: . . . no I am . . .
elliot: . . . while I’m off somewhere banging my secretary . . .
carmen: . . . I am lonely.
elliot: . . . when this isn’t anything as big as gender politics it’s just me, trying to write my PhD!
They look at each other, pissed off; they’re both breathing a little hard. Then carmen looks down at the pregnancy stick.
What is it?
carmen: Two lines.
elliot: So that’s a yes.
carmen: No it’s one line if I am.
elliot: No it’s two if you are.
carmen: Elliot.
elliot: I’m not kidding.
carmen scrabbles around and picks up the instruction form that’s lying on the ground. She looks at it.
carmen: You’re right.
elliot smiles. carmen nearly punches him.
elliot: (flinching) Don’t, don’t don’t . . . !
carmen: Why are you smiling!!!
elliot: Because I’m happy!
Long silence as carmen considers. Meanwhile, elliot beams.
carmen: (realizing) You’re—you—you’re happy?
elliot: I’m happy.
carmen: (sincere) That’s . . . nice.
Beat.
If you leave me alone with this kid, I’ll throw it in the garbage.
Transition.
Interlude Act One Scene Four–Five.
Scene Five.
sarah jean speaks to us.
sarah jean: Okay: I’m just going to go through my whole . . . romantic history.
Beat.
When I was in . . . high school, I had a crush on . . . K’an, a guy named K’an. He was very quiet and . . . thoughtful, and I liked that his name had an apostrophe in it: “K” apostrophe, “A,” “N.” I . . . liked him so much I couldn’t talk to him, so instead I made out with his best friend. (The best friend kept talking about his balls, and how his balls were bigger than average, and how his balls hung very low. I kept asking him questions about K’an.) In the end, I didn’t even talk to K’an: I just spent a whole lot of time cradling his best friend’s balls, and K’an dated one of the exchange students from Iceland.
Beat.
K’an, yeah . . .
Beat.
I dated the guy with big balls for two, two and a half years, before I told him I was only dating him because of my crush on K’an. He was . . . very angry so I tried to explain my thinking to him, which was: he was friends with K’an, he was the same type of guy as K’an, so what difference did it make?
sarah jean considers. Then, a little hostile:
Fine, I see how that sounds, but: what difference does it make? It’s high school: all the guys are kind of the same guy. No one’s got a personality yet.
Transition.
Interlude Act One Scene Five–Six.
Scene Six.
carmen is standing in the front hall, by herself, holding a diaper bag. There is a stroller in front of her that she’s gazing into. carmen takes a stress breath.
carmen goes back to strapping the baby in. Silence. Then elliot enters with a coat on. elliot puts his arms around carmen, kisses her.
carmen: You were at the office?
elliot: No, a meeting, with a neuroscientist. He said he found my thoughts on time “accessible”—how’s Sarah Jean?
carmen: Cranky.
elliot: How cranky?
carmen: I don’t know: cranky.
elliot: (whispering to the baby) Buster, Buster, Buster.
carmen: She’s going to think that’s her name.
elliot kisses carmen, not perfunctory: intimate, sexual.
Beat: elliot takes carmen in.
elliot: When you say Sarah Jean’s cranky, do you mean you’re cranky?
Beat.
Why?
Beat.
Your mom called.
carmen: She pruned the pear tree in her backyard by herself. She took out an instructional video from the library, and she pruned it.
Beat.
elliot: Yeah?
carmen: That was the part of our conversation that went well. Then I got off the phone, and Sarah Jean cried, and I couldn’t get her to stop, so I cried. Then I wrestled her into the stroller as I was crying and she was crying, and that somehow worked and she’s fallen asleep, and now I’m just standing here like a zombie.
elliot: It was bad.
carmen: It was bad.
elliot kisses and holds carmen.
elliot: Does “accessible” sound like a pejorative to you? “Accessible . . . ”?
Beat: carmen looks at elliot. elliot clocks it.
Oh, okay, I’m taking about myself, and . . . yeah, okay, I’ll—yeah.
elliot puts his arms around carmen and holds her.
He hums music from the final scene of the play.
carmen: (realizing) That’s mine?! That’s my piece.
elliot: Mmhm!
carmen: You . . . know it?
elliot: I—yeah, I like it?
carmen: You do?
elliot: I listen to it for hours.
carmen: How?
elliot: The recording I have of it.
carmen: What—when I played it for you? On
your Dictaphone?
elliot: Yeah.
carmen: Hunh.
elliot: It’s haunting.
carmen: Yeah it’s a little on the tonal side.
elliot: It—no—it helps me to think.
carmen: It does?
elliot: Yeah.
They smile. elliot hums the music.
You’d like what I’m doing now: I’m thinking that loop quantum gravity and string theory are different ways of doing the same thing and it’s all somehow tied together in the deep nature of time: that there’s a possible matrix unification of strings and loops. No one’s going to agree with me: I mean, it’s—that’s a very controversial—
carmen: Yeah.
elliot: I’m going to bring it up in seminar and watch them lose their fucking minds.
carmen: I do like that.
elliot: You do like that.
carmen hesitates.
carmen: I was thinking . . .
elliot smiles, is about to go through to the kitchen.
Wait, wait . . .
elliot turns back.
You home for . . . You home for lunch?
elliot: Just grabbing a sandwich.
carmen: Would you . . . ?
Beat.
We’re . . . not spending . . . much time together, and I wanted to know if you’d meet me for lunch once a week.
elliot: Mm?
carmen: Would you meet me for lunch, once a / week?
elliot: I’m just home to grab a sandwich?
Beat.
carmen: (suddenly pissed off) No, I’m asking . . . !
carmen’s sudden burst of anger means that elliot is paying attention now, looking at carmen. carmen tries again, calmer this time:
You meet your thesis advisor once a week, for lunch, and I want to come and meet you, have a lunch meeting, once a / week.
elliot: That’s for my PhD.
Beat.
carmen: On Thursdays, I could come to campus. I’ll ask one of the neighbours to take Sarah Jean, I’ll come to you, you just have to leave your office for an / hour—
elliot: I’m focusing on finishing my PhD, so it can be finished.
carmen: I know—
elliot: That’s what we agreed I’d be / doing—
carmen: I know, but—
elliot: You said—you said finish your PhD, so you don’t get to make me into the big bad—
carmen: I know, but—
elliot: The big bad—
carmen: I know but when we were coming up with this plan, I didn’t realize that when I don’t get to see you / I—
elliot: I’m a couple of months away from handing it in—
carmen: I know you think that, but—
elliot: I’m working every minute I’m awake to get through / it—
carmen: I know! I know you want to finish it—
elliot: You want me to finish it!
carmen: No, I need us to spend time together because, very soon, I’m going to forget not to fuck other people.
elliot: When’s . . .
elliot looks at carmen and tries to get his temper under control. When he thinks he’s calm:
When’s your mother coming?
carmen: Why?
elliot: I’ll meet you for lunch.
carmen: No, why?
elliot: Because she’s supposed to get you through this.
carmen: If my mother comes she’ll make it . . . so much worse, because she’ll tell me that you are a shitty, shitty husband, and I’ll be like: “I know, Mom, but I agreed—I’m the one that agreed that Elliot could have this time to work.” And my mom will be like: “Elliot is a homosexual. I have nothing against homosexuals but do you know how many lives they’ve wrecked?” And I’ll be like: “Mom, we’ve been over this, he isn’t a homosexual, he’s a PhD candidate.” And then she’ll go on and on about my sister, and how my sister is the light of her life, and how my sister’s little boys are the light of her life, and how wonderful it is to have grandchildren who live nearby . . .
Beat: carmen tries to not cry.
elliot: I’ll call my mother.
carmen: I called your mother.
elliot: And?
carmen: Have you met your mother?
Beat.
I called her—she talked about herself—she has a dress she likes that she tore on a lawn mower, so she talked about that for ten minutes. I asked her if you cried a lot as a baby. She said: “Yes.” She said she used to stand over your crib and watch you cry. I said: “You didn’t . . . ? You didn’t pick him up?”
Beat.
Then she told me she’d planned to abort you. But your sisters talked her out of it.
Beat.
Did you know that?
elliot: Yeah.
carmen: That’s fucked up.
Beat.
Our families are crazy.
Beat.
elliot: And?
carmen: And what?
elliot: Is my mother going to come and keep you company?
carmen: are you listening to me!
elliot: i will meet you for lunch!
Beat.
I will meet you for lunch.
Transition.
Interlude Act One Scene Six–Seven.
Scene Seven.
sarah jean: My first year at Harvard, I shared a room with . . . my big blond American friend, from Iowa. She was very . . . (gestures) . . . outgoing, uninhibited. One time, when I came into our dorm room, she was sleeping face down and naked on her bed. I unlocked the door and I was looking straight into her vagina. It was very large and blond and wrinkled. It had a string hanging out of it.
Beat.
Two days later we were at a party together and she said to me: “If I get so drunk tonight that I can’t take my tampon out, will you do it for me?”
Beat.
I said yes.
Beat.
She hugged me and after that, we were best friends, in a lopsided kind of way. She told me over and over again I was her favourite person at college. But the thing is, the only reason I said “yes” about the tampon was because of that split second when I’d opened the door and seen her vagina with a string hanging out of it and I’d kind of wanted to pull on the string.
Pause as sarah jean tries to think about what that means.
I don’t know. That’s only marginally related.
Beat.
Isn’t it?
Transition.
Interlude Act One Scene Seven–Eight.
Scene Eight.
There is the feeling on stage of being the middle of the night, when suicides peak and the best novels are being written on amphetamines. elliot is working on the floor, papers spread out around him, making notes, searching through piles. There’s a manic quality to what elliot’s doing. carmen enters. She’s in a cute little tank top and baggy sweats, and her hair is messy. She’s rubbing her eyes. She’s holding some old dishes: a glass of wine that’s empty, a bowl with scraps and tissues in it, and a spoon. She stands and looks at elliot for a couple of seconds. Finally, elliot senses her there, turns around, and sees her. He tenses for a second, looking at her, then goes back to looking down at and searching through his papers.
elliot: I’m just . . . sorting through these—these old uh . . .
carmen comes and perches near elliot.
elliot looks up at her.
. . . uh notes . . . ?
carmen: Why?
elliot: . . . I . . . sorry, I uh . . .
Pause.
elliot searches through papers.
Then he remembers that he’s talking to carmen.
. . . I’m just looking for—I jotted it down, it was something about a contr
adiction in my work . . .
Silence as carmen continues to watch elliot.
elliot continues to go through his piles of papers.
He looks up again when he realizes that carmen is still there.
carmen: Do you feel good?
elliot: Mm?
carmen: Do you feel good?
elliot: Yeah, yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about relief, as an emotion, it’s like this . . . unhinged, dense . . . happiness, and yeah I felt that . . . mmm whenever it was, two weeks ago, after my thesis presentation, but uh . . .
Pause.
elliot searches through papers.
(to himself) . . . yeah it . . . (shakes his head) . . .
Beat.
carmen: So what—what is it, what’s the thing that’s making you come in here, in the middle of the night, and . . . crouch on the floor, and . . . sift through . . . those piles, what—what’s . . . ?
elliot: Mm?
carmen: What’re you’re doing in here in the middle of the night: what are you doing, what’s the thing you’re doing?
Beat.
elliot: Work?
carmen: What work. What possible work can you be doing? You’re finished your fucking work—!
elliot: You . . . !
Beat.
You were asleep—you were unconscious! Why are you / yelling?
carmen: what the fuck is wrong with you!!!
elliot: What difference can it possibly make to you if I’m down here at four in the morning, what do you want from me, what’s wrong with you, why don’t we ever talk about what’s wrong with you, what do you want: what do you want? You want to tie a rope around / me?
carmen: No, shut up.
elliot: No: what? We don’t say “shut up” to each other?
carmen: Shut up, you dick.
Beat.
(calmer, vocally less intense) What’s the thing: what’s making you work like this? Why are you like this?
elliot: Like what?
Beat.
I’m just—yeah: I’m having a hard time gearing down—listen, no, listen—I know, I know!
carmen: No you don’t know!
elliot: No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry—
elliot has gone over to carmen, closes the distance between them, and goes to kiss her.
carmen: No!
elliot goes to kiss her again, more forcefully.
Infinity Page 3