BESSIE, whispering with some shock: Look at his bandages! Turning away. Oh, Mother!
THEO: Stop that. Bending to Lyman: Lyman? He can’t get himself to speak. It’s Theodora.
LYMAN, opening his eyes: Hi.
THEO: How are you feeling?
LYMAN: Not too bad now. I hope I make sense with all this painkiller . . . Is that you, Bessie?
BESSIE: I’m only here because of Mother.
LYMAN: Oh. Okay. I’m sorry, Bess—I mean that my character’s so bad. But I’m proud that you have enough strength to despise me.
BESSIE: But who wouldn’t?
LYMAN: Good! His voice starts to break but he controls himself. That was well-spoken, sweetie.
BESSIE, with quick anger: Don’t call me that . . .
THEO, to Bessie: Shhh! She has been observing him in silence. Lyman? —Is it true?
Lyman closes his eyes.
I have to hear it from you. Did you marry that woman?
Deep snores.
More urgently: Lyman?
BESSIE, points: He’s not really sleeping!
THEO: Did you have a child with that woman? Lyman? I insist!!! I insist!!!
Lyman emerges from the upstage side of the bed, hands clapped to his ears, while Theo and Bessie continue addressing the bed, as though he were still in it.
Light change: an ethereal colorlessness now, air devoid of pigment.
LYMAN, agonized cry, ears still covered: I hear you!
Theo continues to address the bed, and Bessie is fixed on it as well, but their attitude becomes formalized as they become part of his vision.
THEO: What in God’s name have you done!
Almost writhing in conflict, Lyman clears his throat. He remains a distance upstage of the bed.
BESSIE, bent over the bed: Shh! He’s saying something!
LYMAN: I realize . . . how crazy it sounds, Theodora . . . Breaks off.
THEO: Yes?
LYMAN: . . . I’m not really sure, but . . . I wonder if this crash . . . was maybe to sort of subconsciously . . . get you both to . . . meet one another, finally.
THEO, with disgust: Meet her?
LYMAN: I know it sounds absurd but . . .
THEO: Absurd! —It’s disgusting! She’s exactly the type who forgets to wash out her panties.
LYMAN, wincing, but with a certain pleasurable recognition: I knew you’d say that! —I admit it, though, there is a sloppy side to her . . .
THEO: She’s the worst generation in our history—screw anybody in pants, then drop their litters like cats, and spout mystic credos on cosmic responsibility, ecology, and human rights!
LYMAN: To my dying day I will stand amazed at your ability to speak in complete paragraphs!
THEO: I insist you explain this to me yourself. Lyman? Lyman!
Leah enters. Theo reacts instantly.
There’ll be no one in here but family! To Bessie: Get the nurse!
LEAH, despite Theo, approaches the cast, but with uncertainty about his reaction to her: Lyman?
THEO, to Tom: Get her out of here! Tom is immobile, and she goes to him furiously. She does not belong here!
LEAH, to the cast, with a certain warmth: It’s me, Lyme. Can you hear me?
THEO, rushing threateningly toward Leah: Get out, get out, get out . . . !
Just as she is about to lay hands on Leah, Lyman throws his arms up and cries imploringly.
LYMAN: I want everybody to lie down!
The three women instantly deanimate as though suddenly falling under the urgency of his control. Lyman gestures, without actually touching them, and causes Theo and Leah to lie on the bed.
LEAH, as she lies down; voice soft, remote: What am I going to tell Benny? Oh gee whiz, Lyman, why did you . . . ?
THEO, lying down beside Leah: You have a bitter smell, you should use something.
LEAH: I have, but he likes it.
THEO: Blah. To Lyman: And what would you say if one of us took another man to bed and asked you to lie next to him?
LYMAN, lifting off her glasses: Oh, I’d kill him, dear; but you’re a lady, Theodora; the delicate sculpture of your noble eye, your girlish faith in me and your disillusion; your idealism and your unadmitted greed for wealth; the awkward tenderness of your wooden fingers, your incurably Protestant cooking; your savoir-faire and your sexual inexperience; your sensible shoes and devoted motherhood, your intolerant former radicalism and stalwart love of country now—your Theodorism! Who can ever take your place!
LEAH, laughing: Why am I laughing!!
LYMAN: Because you’re an anarchist, my darling! He stretches out on both of them. Oh, what pleasure, what intensity! Your countercurrents are like bare live wires! Kisses each in turn. I’d have no problem defending both of you to the death! Oh the double heat of two blessed wives—this is heaven! Rests his head on Leah while holding Theo’s hand to his cheek.
LEAH: Listen, you’ve got to make up your mind about something.
LYMAN: I’m only delaying as long as possible, let’s delay it till we all die! Delay, delay, how delicious, my loving Leah, is delay!
THEO, sits up: How you can still go on talking about love is beyond my understanding.
LYMAN: And still I love you, Theodora, although certain parts of your body fill me with rage!
THEO: So you simply got yourself some other parts instead.
Leah, still lying on her back, raises one leg in the air, and her skirt slides down, exposing her thigh.
LYMAN, replying to Theo, kissing Leah’s thigh: That’s the truth, yes—at least it was all flesh at first.
LEAH, stretching out her arms and her body: Oh, how good that was! I’m still pulsing to the tips of my toes. Theo helps him into shirt and trousers and hands him a jacket.
You’re really healthy, aren’t you.
LYMAN, they are moving out of Theo’s area: You mean for my age? Yes.
LEAH: I did not mean that!
Loud knocking heard. She turns upstage with slight shock. A man’s angry voice, muffled words. She stands motionless.
LYMAN: You okay?
LEAH: It’s nothing! Do you have time for a walk?
LYMAN: My health is terrific; in fact, it keeps threatening my dignity.
A park bench appears.
LEAH: Why!
LYMAN: Well, how do I come to be lounging in a park with a girl, and on a working day! I really hadn’t planned to do that this afternoon. Did you know I was going to?
LEAH: No . . . but I never do.
LYMAN: Really? But you seem so organized.
LEAH: In business; but not in pleasure.
LYMAN: What surprised me was the openness of your laughter with those heavy executives at the table.
LEAH: Well, your presentation was so funny, I’d heard you were a real brain, not a comic.
LYMAN: Well, insurance is basically comical, isn’t it?—at least pathetic.
LEAH: Why?
LYMAN: You’re buying immortality, aren’t you?—reaching out of your grave to pay the bills and remind people of your life? It’s poetry. The soul was once immortal, now we’ve got an insurance policy.
LEAH: You sound pretty cynical about it.
LYMAN: Not at all—I started as a writer, nobody lusts after the immortal like a writer.
LEAH: How’d you get into insurance?
LYMAN: Pure accident. How’d you?
LEAH: My mother had died, my dad had his stroke, and insurance was something I could do from home. Dad knew a lot of people, being a doctor, so the thing just took off.
LYMAN: Don’t take this wrong—but you know what I find terrifically sexy about you?
LEAH: What?
LYMAN: Your financial independence. Horrible, huh?
LEAH: Why?—wr
yly—Whatever helps, helps.
LYMAN: You don’t sound married, are you?
LEAH: It’s a hell of a time to ask! They laugh, come closer. I can’t see myself getting married . . . not yet anyway. —Incidentally, have you been listening to me?
LYMAN: Yes, but my attention keeps wandering toward a warm and furry place . . . She laughs, delighted. It’s funny, my generation got married to show its maturity, yours stays single for the same reason.
LEAH: That’s good!
LYMAN: How happy I am! Sniffs his hands. Sitting in Elmira in the sun with you, and your scent still on my hands! God!—all the different ways there are to try to be real! —I don’t know the connection, but when I turned twenty I sold three poems to The New Yorker and a story to Harper’s, and the first thing I bought was a successful blue suit to impress my father how real I was even though a writer. He ran an appetizer store on Fortieth Street and Ninth Avenue. Grinning, near laughter. And he sees the suit and says, “How much you pay?” And I said, “Twenty-nine-fifty,” thinking I’d got a terrific bargain. And he says, “Pray God keep an eye on you the rest of your life.”
LEAH, laughs: That’s awful!
LYMAN: No!—it spurred me on! Laughs. He had two pieces of wisdom—never trust anybody, and never forgive. Funny, it’s like magic, I simply can’t trace how we got into bed.
LEAH, a glance at her watch: I really have to get back to the office. —But is Lyman an Albanian name?
LYMAN: Lyman’s the judge’s name in Worcester, Massachusetts, who gave my father his citizenship. Felt is short for Feltman, my mother’s name, because my father’s was unpronounceable and they wanted a successful American for a son.
LEAH: Then your mother was Jewish.
LYMAN: And the source of all my conflicts. In the Jewish heart is a lawyer and a judge, in the Albanian a bandit defying the government with a knife.
LEAH: What a surprise you are! She stands, and he does.
LYMAN: Being so silly?
LEAH: Being so interesting, and in the insurance business.
LYMAN, taking her hand: When was the moment?—I’m just curious.
LEAH: I don’t know . . . I guess at the conference table I suddenly thought, “He’s basically talking to me.” But then I figured, this is probably why he’s such a great salesman, because everybody he talks to feels loved.
LYMAN: You know?—I’ve never before with a Jewish girl.
LEAH: Well, you’re my first Albanian.
LYMAN: There’s something venerable in your eyes. Not old—ancient. Like our peoples.
LEAH, touching his cheek: Take care, dear.
LYMAN, as she passes before him to leave, he takes her hand: Why do I feel I know nothing about you?
LEAH, shrugs, smiles: Maybe you weren’t listening . . . which I don’t mind if it’s in a good cause.
LYMAN, letting go of her hand: I walk in the valley of your thighs. She laughs, gives him a quick kiss. When you move away now, would you turn back to me for a moment?
LEAH, amused: Sure, why?
LYMAN, half-kidding in his romanticism: I have to take a small commuter plane and if I die I want that vision as I go down—
LEAH, backing away with a wave: ’Bye, Lyman . . .
LYMAN: Can I ask who that fellow was banging on your apartment door?
LEAH, caught off-guard: Somebody I used to go with . . . he was angry, that’s all.
LYMAN: Are you afraid of him?
LEAH, shrugs in an accepted uncertainty: See you, dear.
She turns and walks a few yards, then halts and turns her head to look back at him over her shoulder. She exits.
LYMAN: Beautiful. Alone: Miraculous. Thinks for a moment. Still . . . was it really all that great? Takes out a cell phone, troubled. Theo?—hi, darling, I’m just about to take off. Oh, definitely, it has the makings of a much bigger operation; had a talk with Aetna’s chief rep up here, and she’s agreed to take us on, so I’ll probably be spending more time here.—Yes, a woman; she’s got a great agency, I might try to buy into her.—Listen, dear, how about you flying up here and we rent a car and drive through Cherry Valley—it’s bursting into bloom now!—Oh, I forgot; no-no, you’d better go to your meeting then; it’s okay; no, it just suddenly hit me how quickly it’s all going by and . . . You ever have the feeling that you never really got to know anybody?
She never has; he resents it, and a sharpness enters his voice.
Well, yes, I do feel that sometimes, very much; sometimes I feel I’m going to vanish without a trace, Theo! Unhappily now, with hidden anger, the romance gone. Theo, dear, it’s nothing against you, I only meant that with all the analysis and the novels and the Freuds we’re still as opaque and unknowable as some line of statues in a church wall. He hangs up. Now a light strikes the cast on the bed. He moves to it and looks down at himself. Bessie, Theo, and Leah are standing motionless around the bed and Tom is off to the one side, observing. Lyman slowly lifts his arms and raises his face like a suppliant. We’re all in a cave . . . The three women now begin to move, ever so slightly at first; their heads are turning as they appear to be searching for the sight of something far away or overhead or on the floor.
. . . where we entered to make love or money or fame. It’s dark in here, as dark as sleep, and each one moves blindly, searching for another, to touch, hoping to touch and afraid; and hoping, and afraid.
As he speaks, the women and Tom move in a crisscrossing path, just missing one another, spreading farther and farther across the stage until one by one they disappear. Lyman has moved above the bed where his cast lies.
So now . . . now that we’re here . . . what are we going to say?
BLACKOUT
ACT TWO
SCENE I
The hospital waiting room. Tom is seated with Theo.
TOM: Really, Theo, I wish you’d let Bessie take you back to the city.
THEO: Please stop repeating that! Slight pause. I need to talk to him . . . I’ll never see him again. I can’t simply walk away. Is my head trembling?
TOM: A little, maybe. Should you let one of the doctors look at you?
THEO: I’ll be all right, my family has a tendency to tremors, I’ve had it for years when I’m tense. What time is it?
TOM: Give them a few minutes more. —You seem pale.
THEO, pressing fingers against her temples to steady herself: When you spoke with this woman . . . was there any feeling about . . . what she has in mind?
TOM: She’s as much in shock as you. The child was her main concern.
THEO: Really? I wouldn’t have thought so.
TOM: Oh, I think he means everything to her.
THEO, begrudgingly: Well, that’s nice. Messes like this are basically comical, aren’t they—until you come to the children. I’m very worried about Bessie. She lies there staring at the ceiling. She can hardly talk without starting to weep. He’s been her . . . her world. She begins to fill up. You’re right, I think I’ll go. It just seemed unfinished, somehow . . . but maybe it’s better to leave it this way . . . Starts for her bag, stops. I don’t know what to do. One minute I could kill him, the next I wonder if some . . . aberration got into him . . .
Leah enters. They did not expect to see each other. A momentary pause. Leah sits.
LEAH: Good afternoon.
TOM: Good afternoon.
Awkward silence.
LEAH, asking: He’s not in his room?
THEO, as it is difficult for her to address Leah, she turns to her slowly: They’re treating his eye.
LEAH: His eye?
TOM: It’s nothing serious, he tried to climb out his window. Probably in his sleep. His eyelid was slightly scratched by a rhododendron.
THEO, making a stab at communication: He must not have realized he’s on the ground floor.
Short pause.
<
br /> LEAH: Hm! That’s interesting, because a friend of ours, Ted Colby, called last night—he’s a commander of the state police here. They’d put up a wooden barrier across the Mount Morgan road when it got so icy; and he thinks Lyman moved the barrier aside.
TOM: How could they know it was him?
LEAH: There was only one set of tire tracks.
THEO: Oh my God.
LEAH: He’s worried about him. They’re good friends, they go hunting together.
THEO: Lyman hunts?
LEAH: Oh sure. Theo shakes her head incredulously. But I can’t imagine him in that kind of depression, can you?
TOM: Actually . . . yes, I think I can.
LEAH: Really. He’s always seemed so . . . up with me, and happy. Theo glances from her, irked, then away. Leah glances at her watch. I just have to settle some business with him for a few minutes, I won’t be in your way.
THEO: My way? You’re free to do anything you like, as far as I’m concerned.
LEAH, slightly taken aback: Yes . . . the same with me . . . in your case. Beat. I mean as far as I’m concerned. The hostility turns her to look at her watch again. I want to tell you . . . I almost feel worse for you, somehow, than for myself.
THEO, gives a hard laugh: Why! Do I seem that old? The second rebuff stiffens Leah. I shouldn’t have said that. I apologize. I’m exhausted.
LEAH, letting it pass: How is your daughter?—she still here?
THEO, a hostile color despite everything: In the motel. She’s devastated.
TOM: Your boy taking it all right?
LEAH: No, it’s wracked him, it’s terrible. To Theo: I thought Lyman might have some idea how to deal with him, the kid’s always idolized him so. I’m really at my wits’ end.
THEO, bitterly angry, but contained: We are his dust; we billow up behind his steps and settle again when he passes by. Billie Holiday . . . She touches her forehead. I can’t recall when she died, it’s quite a while, isn’t it.
TOM: Billie Holiday? Why?
Tom and Leah observe, puzzled, as Theo stares in silence. Then . . .
LEAH: Why don’t I come back in a couple of hours—I’ve got a two o’clock conference call and it’s getting a bit late . . . She stands, goes to Theo, and, extending her hand: Well, if we don’t meet again . . .
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