Infinity
Page 5
elliot: When you’ve counted to . . . Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and forty-two seconds, that’s when we’ll be going, okay, Buster?
elliot kisses her. elliot starts exiting as she starts counting.
sarah jean: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—
elliot: (over his shoulder) You should count down.
sarah jean: Hunh?
elliot: Count. Down.
sarah jean: Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and forty two, twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and forty-one, twenty-seven thousand . . .
sarah jean keeps counting under her breath.
elliot exits.
carmen goes over to sarah jean and brushes her hair out of her face.
carmen: Don’t count on it though, okay, honey?
sarah jean: Is that a pun?
carmen: Oh.
sarah jean: Is it?
carmen: Uh . . . ?
sarah jean: A pun on “count”?
carmen: Yeah . . . ?
sarah jean: You roll your eyes when Dad makes puns. You roll your eyes and you say he makes bad jokes, and you roll your eyes at him like this . . .
sarah jean rolls her eyes.
carmen: Honey, I’m sorry about all this.
carmen reaches out to touch sarah jean’s cheek and she flinches away.
I could put on some music for you. Would that help you feel a little better—?
sarah jean: Shhhh! Sh!
Beat.
If you talk I’ll lose count.
carmen shoots sarah jean a look.
carmen: Okay . . . !
carmen goes out.
sarah jean: (half under her breath) Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-five, twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-four . . . (mouthing) . . . twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and . . . (mouthing) . . . twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, twenty-seven thousand . . .
Movement. The family enacts a complex and frenetic pattern of relationship. At the end of this, elliot is standing alone, facing the audience.
Transition.
Dance.
Scene Eleven.
We’re in a darkened auditorium.
sarah jean and carmen sit in the audience.
We focus on elliot, who addresses the audience as at a lecture.
elliot: I’m Elliot Green, I’m a theoretical physicist, and I wrote a book about the history of timekeeping. I got a little stuck with my work . . . about seven, eight years ago, after I finished my PhD, and I started to get bummed out, so I wrote this book as a distraction, and it got on a bestseller list, and now it’s proving to be an even bigger distraction.
Pause as elliot looks down at his notes.
He rearranges them a little.
I want to open with an anecdote from the book. It’s from the chapter called “Clock-Wars or Who Has the Biggest Clock?” This is from the period in timekeeping history when the Catholic countries of Europe unilaterally adopted a new timekeeping technology, the Gregorian calendar, our current calendar. This was in 1582, and what happened was: Britain held out. For a hundred and seventy years. Because no one—no one—tells the British what time it is. So for a hundred and seventy years the two calendars got more and more out of sync: by 1751, Britain was eleven days behind the continent, which is to say, if you’d crossed the channel on December 11, 1751, you would’ve arrived in France on December 22.**
Beat.
A British nobleman named Lord Chesterfield lobbied the House of Lords to reform the calendar. He wasn’t a mathematician or an astronomer, but he did have a delightful French mistress living across the channel, and so he became keenly aware of the problem of an eleven-day time difference between England and Europe. What we can determine from this is that the desire for sexual relations, for . . . love, is a determining force in the history of time.
elliot looks at carmen in the audience.
You probably came here to . . . get a little better informed, but you’re very likely going to spend a portion of your time with me thinking about someone you find sexually interesting.
Beat.
If that “someone” is here with you in the auditorium, like mine is, my wife is here, in the front row . . . Lean over and say softly into their ear: “I want to have intercourse with you more than once.” Too scientific? What about: “I would change time for you.”
elliot smiles at carmen.
(to carmen, low) I would.
elliot smiles at her.
Then he touches his forehead.
Okay, enough of that, what I want to . . .
Beat.
What I want to discuss is the . . .
elliot touches his forehead.
. . . the . . . the timeless nature of . . . the universe and why it is that scientists understand that time is an illusion . . . when most people continue to . . . think of time as . . . when they, say . . . lose eleven days, they . . .
elliot touches his forehead.
Pause.
I’m sorry, I . . .
carmen stands up.
I . . .
elliot falls to the ground.
carmen: Elliot! Elliot . . . !
carmen runs onto the stage and kneels over him. elliot is having a seizure. His body spasms. sarah jean has stayed in her seat, paralyzed.
sarah jean: Daddy . . . ?
We hear the sound of people pushing back their chairs, a commotion, and the sound of a microphone being knocked off its stand, distant yells . . .
Blackout.
In the darkness . . .
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two . . .
Transition.
Intermezzo.
In production, replace the day and month in the text with the day and month of the performance (and then count eleven days forward for the second date).
Act Two.
Scene One.
This is a hospital room. There is a hospital bed and elliot is wearing a hospital gown. There is the buzz and glare of hospital lighting and equipment. carmen is sitting in a plastic chair beside the hospital bed. sarah jean enters.
sarah jean: (to carmen) Mom, in the bathroom a girl came out of one of the stalls and she had teeth missing and just . . . blood in her mouth, and the nurse had towels up on the mirrors so she couldn’t see her face, and I was asking what happened to her and . . .
carmen: . . . come sit for a sec . . .
sarah jean: . . . and the nurse was saying to me “go out” and then she said to the girl “he’s not worth it” and I don’t know what happened to her?
elliot: Come sit.
sarah jean: What happened to her?
carmen: Come sit.
sarah jean: What happened to her, though?
carmen: Your dad and I wanted to tell you something, remember we said . . . ?
sarah jean: Yeah?
Beat.
Yeah?
carmen: You know how Dad’s been in hospital this week . . . ?
Beat.
elliot: I have brain cancer. That’s why I . . . had the seizure when I was in the middle of the lecture, and that’s why I’ve been in hospital.
carmen: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard much about cancer . . . ? It’s a sickness, it’s called cancer, like a . . . cold or a flu, but the type of cancer that your dad’s been diagnosed with, it . . .
Beat.
elliot: It kills you.
Beat.
Do you understand “kills you”? From what we’ve read, in your age range, you might not understand that. What it means, in very simple terms, is that, in one to two months from now, I won’t be able to . . .
ellio
t clears his throat, fights a wave of emotion.
I won’t be able to see you . . .
Beat.
And, Sarah Jean, Buster, you won’t be able to see me either.
sarah jean: (holding her shirt away from her) I got some drops of blood! Mom! It’s got little drops on it—
carmen: I see that.
sarah jean: I want to take it off.
carmen: Not yet.
sarah jean: No but I want to take it off.
carmen: Did you hear what Dad said?
elliot: Buster, did you hear what I said?
sarah jean: (to carmen) Please!
carmen: Did you hear Dad?
Beat.
sarah jean: (shy) Well don’t worry about it, Dad.
sarah jean touches elliot’s arm lightly, reassuringly.
Don’t worry—don’t worry . . . !
Beat.
elliot: Do you understand what—what we’re saying, SJ?
sarah jean: (to carmen) Can I have a pop. Can I have a pop from the vending machine?
elliot: She can’t have a pop.
sarah jean: Can I have a juice from the vending machine?
carmen takes out some change and gives it to sarah jean. sarah jean goes out and watches the scene from off.
carmen: She took it in.
elliot looks at carmen.
elliot: She did?
carmen: She’s doing what you do. She’s going to go think about it, by herself, and then she’ll come back and she’ll have questions.
Beat.
elliot: (an understatement) That was hard.
carmen goes over and strokes his hand or hair.
Beat.
When you were pregnant—do you remember this? Our joke was that our kid would turn out to be stupid.
carmen: Yeah.
Beat.
The ultrasound technician didn’t think it was very funny.
Beat.
She’s a lot like you.
elliot: She’s a lot like you. She’s got your talent with string instruments and mine with string theory, and that’s my terrible joke for the day.
Beat.
She twitches her fingers like you do, have you noticed that?
carmen: (low) Yeah.
Beat.
elliot: Is my mother here yet?
Beat.
No?
carmen: No.
Beat.
(low) I’m sorry.
Beat.
Is there anyone else you want to have here who I should call . . . ?
elliot: Uh. Uh . . .
Beat.
My . . . sisters, uh . . . ?
Beat.
carmen: Yeah.
Beat.
It’s—this is . . . hard.
Beat.
Is there anything you want to . . . do, in the next few weeks . . . ? Is there anything . . . you want to talk about . . . ?
Beat.
elliot: I think . . .
Beat.
It’s funny: I think . . . there might be some things about time that I didn’t . . . fully . . . get.
Beat.
carmen: Yeah?
elliot: Yeah: a few things . . . are . . . hitting me, I think this is going to sound so . . . stupid, when I say it, but . . . I think . . . what if . . . time is not a construct, what if it’s . . . real.
carmen: Yeah?
elliot: Yeah.
carmen: Yeah, it is real.
elliot: No, I mean, I think I . . . disagree with Einstein. I think the old physics might be . . . wrong: maybe time’s not mathematical and there is no formula of everything that exists outside of . . . time—I think it’s that the—the—my twister foam theory contains a contradiction with respect to how I’m representing the nature of time. The theory has two . . . dual . . . When I study the bulk in the loop representation the theory is timeless. But when I go to the boundary theory, time . . . reappears. And I think that the . . . contradiction inherent in the duality can only be . . . resolved by declaring time to be really . . . real. The past corresponds to the timeless loop side of the duality, the future to the time-bound quantum-string-theory side. The past . . . is timeless because it’s already happened and so it’s fixed. But the future is not timeless: it’s open, and uncertain.
carmen: Yeah.
elliot: Which means the universe isn’t fixed: change is possible.
carmen: Yeah it is.
elliot: I—yeah—I just—yeah—I think I’ve . . . finally uh—finally . . . worked it out: I want to jot down some notes—I want my laptop.
Beat.
carmen: You . . . ?
elliot: I’d like my laptop.
carmen: You want your laptop. Do you—do you—really? Really?
elliot: Yeah?
carmen: Do you . . . get that you’re dying . . . at all . . . ?
Beat.
elliot: Yeah, I get that—
carmen: Dying: you will be dead, like you will be . . . dead, like this is it, this is your last chance: your daughter’s going to grow up without you.
elliot: I just said that to her: I just said we don’t have much / time!
carmen: This is it for her!
elliot: No, you know what—?
carmen: —her relationship with her father is coming to a close—!
elliot: I have loved her with all my heart, and I have loved you with all my heart—
carmen: That’s a crock of shit—!
Simultaneous text:
elliot: That is not a crock of shit!
carmen: You are dying—you are dying—you are dying . . . !
sarah jean is standing in the doorway. She drops her can of soda pop. It spills on the floor. sarah jean’s face contorts into a grimace, her knees bend together, she brings her hands up to her face, and she starts to cry.
Transition.
Music For Death.
Scene Two.
sarah jean regards the audience. She’s still upset.
sarah jean: The . . . boy I had a crush on in high school—K’an—wrote to me on social media about a year ago. He’d heard through a friend—the friend with big balls—that I was in Montreal.
Beat.
K’an . . . grew up handsome.
sarah jean smiles.
K’an’s . . . very tall and . . . good in bed—we’ve been uh . . . dating, because turns out he had a crush on me too!
sarah jean smiles.
Yeah! Nice, hunh!
K’an asked me recently why I like him. I said: “I think it’s because you used to blush whenever anyone said anything suggestive. So when, say, the gym teacher was putting a condom on a banana, I’d look at you to see if you were going red, and, somehow, getting a sexual feeling and looking at you got mixed up together.”
Beat.
Turns out that’s not what he wanted to hear.
Beat.
Right around then my mathematics professor called me. I’d asked him to write a reference letter for me, for my PhD application: and so of course I wanted to talk about . . . my PhD application, but he wanted to go on and on about how his most persistent regret is me, and how I’m the love of his life. I told him that was bullshit, and then he cried and said he knew it sounded like bullshit but it wasn’t, I wasn’t just a sexy student, I had a brain like my dad’s. Then I said: will you write the reference letter or not? Then he hung up on me. The upshot is: I told all of that to K’an and K’an . . . got a worried look on his face.
Beat.
But come on, “love of his life”! That does sound like bullshit, doesn’t it?
Beat.
(very low) Fuck.
Beat.
Then she leans her
head against the wall. Then she slumps against it.
Transition.
Interlude Act Two Scene Two–Three.
Scene Three.
carmen and sarah jean sit on plastic hospital chairs, waiting. After a silence, during which carmen keeps shaking her head:
carmen: (to sarah jean) I’ve set you a bad example, honey, a very bad . . . !
Pause.
(to sarah jean) I rented a house down the street from us one time, because I was trying to leave your father, but I—for some reason I didn’t and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I paid rent on that house for six months: I want you to know I feel badly about myself all the time because I haven’t left him.
sarah jean: It’s okay—
carmen: No it’s not!
sarah jean: But it’s okay—
carmen: (to herself) I don’t—I don’t—I can’t understand why I—I had a good track record of leaving men who disappointed me.
sarah jean: Can I have a pop?
Beat.
Can I have a pop—?
carmen: Yeah, yeah.
carmen digs in her purse for change for a pop.
He’s—he’s typing—he’s typing in there!
sarah jean: Yeah he is.
carmen: He’s . . . typing!
sarah jean: Yeah.
carmen: We’re sitting . . . outside his hospital room and he’s typing!
Beat.
What—what . . . ?
Beat.
What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I leave that person?
carmen tries not to cry.
sarah jean: Mom? Do you know what? He’s listening to your violin suite on his headphones.
Beat.
Mom?
carmen: Yeah?
sarah jean: That’s . . . nice, hunh?
carmen: (sincere, pulling herself together) Yeah. Yeah, that’s nice.
sarah jean: Yeah!
carmen and sarah jean both try not to cry.
Transition.
Interlude Act Two Scene Three–Four.
Scene Four.
sarah jean speaks to the audience.
sarah jean: Okay . . . ? Okay . . . ? Here’s one.
Beat.
Two . . .
Pause as sarah jean takes a breath, steadies herself.
Two . . . weeks ago, I told K’an: “I’m leaving Montreal, I’m moving to Stanford to do a PhD in mathematics, and so probably our relationship should end.”