A WOMAN in her forties. Looking at us.
WOMAN … I’m running away … I mean, what I’ve done and am doing, effectively, would be considered “running away.” Technically. (Beat.) I hope you don’t judge me because of it … write me off too quickly. I’m a good person, I am … most anybody I know or who knows me will tell you that. That I’m a good, regular person. “She’s a very good person,” that’s what they would say, whoever they are … (Beat.) Long suffering is what I’d say but that’s another story. Well, no, I suppose it’s not … it’s part of this story, the reason that there’s a story to tell in the first place … is due to the other story … my first story … my earlier life. (Beat.) I married a man who beat me. I didn’t know this at the time or I wouldn’t have done it—married the guy—but we do things when we’re young and we sometimes don’t even understand why; it’s enough to just do them and hope for the best … that’s what we do … we hope for the very best as we push blindly forward in life. (Beat.) He didn’t do it all the time … certainly not in the beginning … when we were first married he was quite the gentleman and life seemed to happen in the way I always imagined it might … in the way that little girls are taught to believe it would happen for them if they did their homework and listened to their parents and chose a good and kind man to be with. I did that. I did all of the things I was supposed to do and yet I ended up in a bad situation. A really awful situation that didn’t allow me to be safe or live my life or anything like that … I was a prisoner to a man who had the ability to change personalities—that is probably incorrect and not what a real therapist or psychology-person would call it, but—he seemed to change right before my eyes, almost at will, and when all of the hitting started I just couldn’t take it after a while. I couldn’t, and I don’t think I was wrong to leave. To escape. It really did come to that—it was like the kind of thing you read about in a story-book or in newspaper accounts of people during the war. I had to escape that life to find the new me, the real me, but that old life always seems to be there, too. Behind me, only a few steps behind … waiting to catch up to me. To bring me down. (Beat.) I don’t mean to make this sound … so … dramatic or to create the wrong impression in your minds about my past. There were some good times too, I’m sure … I can’t remember any for you right at this moment, but I’m sure I could if I thought about it for a moment. (Thinks.) Disney! We went to Disney World one summer—the one in Florida—and I liked that, but it was the place, not who I was with that I enjoyed so much so that’s not exactly right … but I could … I’m sure I could come up with a memory or two of my time with him that wasn’t terrible. I’m sure of it. (Beat.) I’d met a woman … and before I tell you about her, you need to know that I wasn’t looking, no matter if that’s what it appears to be or not, that was not how any of this happened. It is not. I knew her from years ago—all the way back in high school, actually—and I got an email from her by chance one year, just really by complete chance as she was the one who was putting together one of those reunions that they have every five or ten years … awful things where you go and see how much everybody has aged and lie to yourself that you’re looking so much better than they are … and she sent me the mass email, same thing that they give out to everyone. Her name is “Tess,” by the way. “Tess.” Like the novel, only not as tragic. God, I hope not, anyway … Tess sent that to me and the rest of my class and I sent back a response. Just a quick “Thanks and hope you’re well!” sort of thing … thinking nothing of it, hadn’t seen her in years … and that started it. An email exchange between us—and I mean over the course of several years—and I found out she was living in the East and was with a woman now and so many things, things that I never could’ve dreamed of when I think back to our time together in high school—we were on the debate team one year and I think she sat in front of me in a Chemisty class—and after all of that, so many years of nothing and lost in my own world, my own life of moderate misery … I met someone. Tess. (Beat.) I’m not really happy going into our situation and talking about all of that … many things happened. Yes, we’ve grown close and had … but that did not make me leave my husband. It did not … when I did finally go, after a particularly messy and awful few months … I left to save my life, not to be with someone else or to be … no. The truth is, I fled. Ran away because I was afraid. In fear of my life, like so many other women are—find themselves in that place at some point in their relationships … (Beat.) Yes, I went to Tess and have been with her since that time, but I could just have easily hidden away in some motel by the roadside if I’d not known her and I would’ve—I would be there still, cowering in a cheap bed each night, alone, and waiting for a knock on the door if I hadn’t had her in my life, but I did … and I do … and that’s where I am now. Safe and in another world … away from the danger that haunted so much of my earlier life. (Beat.) I love who I am now. The freedom with which I live each day, spend each moment with this woman who has become my savior and my lover and my friend. We walk down city streets and hold hands and laugh and see movies and sleep next to each other and there is a calm in me now that didn’t exist before this. A desire, too, that I never knew in my marriage—or with any man, now that I think back on it—a “want” that bubbles up in me when I see her face or hear her laugh. A “need” I never felt before this. I’m sure many people, if they knew what had happened to us, how our lives have come together, they would hate it. Hate us. We both come from a very conservative part of the country … quite rural and a little backwards … beautiful lakes and trees and I suppose I’m happy to have grown up there but no, not the most liberal of minds … but that is of no matter to me or Tess. We are together and that’s all that matters. We found each other and this is the life we want to share. Without judgment. Without any hatred. Just two people. Happy. Alive. In love. What could possibly be wrong with that? (Beat.) Still, some nights I think about him. My husband. Knowing that he’s out there. We never divorced … and I know that he won’t give that to me … my freedom … if he knew the situation that I’m in now … he just wouldn’t. Tess is alright with it and is willing to leave things just how they are … but I do think about it. Some nights. With her asleep next to me. I’ll think about him … or see his face in a crowd—the middle of Times Square and a thousand people around me—I’ll catch a glimpse of his face. Watching me. Waiting to get near me again. (Beat.) I’ve changed my email account and all the things that I can think of … ways that he might track me down … one day I’ll have to face this, talk to him, and who knows? Maybe he has taken up with another woman, some younger woman who loves him for what he is and I would be happy for that—so happy for him and to be rid of him—but I am truly and genuinely frightened of this man and so far I haven’t been able to bring myself to get in contact with him. It’s been a year now—over that, actually, more like 18 months—and I can’t do it. Not yet … but I will. I will do it, no matter what I feel because I want to be free of him, of that marriage, and free to marry Tess if I want to, if that’s what we decide. My parents would disown me! God, I can’t even imagine what that would be like … but I love this woman and this life with her. It’s worth it, it is … I promise you that it is. (Beat.) Someday soon.
She stops talking for a moment. Looks at us. Nods. Looks away.
THE END.