ACT I

Scene One

Christmas Eve morning, 2004.

The Wyeth living room. There is a metal fireplace, one of those Scandinavian flying saucer types from the sixties, giving off a nice glow. Desert-French regency is the style, decorated for movie stars circa 1965, but somehow it still works, perhaps better now than it did in its time.

A game of mixed doubles has just ended. BROOKE WYETH, an attractive and dry woman, her oak-like father, LYMAN, who is sturdy in the way of old Californians of a particular type. Brook’s younger brother, TRIP, a bright, funny man, perhaps a decade her junior, and her mother, elegant and forthright and whip-smart POLLY. They are still tired, recovering from the game. In easy, good spirits.

Polly All I am saying Brooke is that I don’t know how the hell you stand those East Coast winters, and in that little village of yours out there on the edge of the sea, it’s just, it really makes us worry—

Brooke (laughing) Sag Harbor is really cozy, it’s quiet, it’s peaceful, my God, I’ve been here less than three hours and you’re starting in on me? About where I live?

Lyman What your mother is saying is that closer to home—we would love to have you closer to home—

Trip I can’t believe you’re doing this. Mom, Dad—she split. She gave up on California, last century. It’s not in her blood.

Brooke It really is true, even when I was a little girl, I knew, I just knew I was going to live back east. I couldn’t do this—this endless sunshine—this—it’s so—predictable!

Lyman But you’re a child of California, you grew up with beaches and orange groves—

Brooke And the weather that never changes. I need seasons to mark where I am. Last winter I was still pretty blue, as you know, but this odd thing—when spring started to just hint—those crazy flowers popping up out of the snow—it matched where I was, I was coming out of it. My winter. I was popping up too.

A moment.

Polly I think you might have that thing where the winter is part of what makes you blue, really, have you ever thought of that?

Brooke I am fine, I’m—is this what this trip is gonna be?

Trip Brooke. The house next door? It’s for sale. They want us to have it. (mock horror) They want us here ALL THE TIME!

Trip pretends to be dying of poison gas. The parents grin. Brooke laughs.

Lyman Yes, we know we bore you two to tears. But . . . (beat) Brookie. What if there were another attack? It’s a rather likely possibility, isn’t it? It’s only been a few years. It’s only been—I mean—

Brooke (moaning) Here we go.

Trip No, no, no. Let’s not do this.

Polly You know, we still have friends in Washington, you wouldn’t believe what they don’t tell you. Well, we hear it, blood chilling. Arabs with all sorts of plans they’re hatching, crazed Indian people with—

Brooke I live in Eastern Long Island, not Times Square, and I refuse to live like some sort of terrified—(beat) This is how you win at tennis, you agitate me—you get me really just—impossibly overheated—

Polly I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you have a lousy serve, you have a lousy serve, darling, and if all it takes to win is to tell you that I think this war is entirely justified, well then, you shouldn’t be playing tennis.

Polly has a smile on her face. She is having fun, it’s light needling.

Brooke (grinning) Do you still own a revolver, dad?

Polly You know I’m not cooking dinner? We’re having Christmas Eve at the country club.

Brooke lets out a moan.

Trip Jesus, Mom, who has Christmas at a country club?

Brooke Jews is who has Christmas at a country club. That’s why God made country clubs, so half-goy hipsters and their aging parents don’t have to cook.

Polly Oh, it’s terrific. Stone crab claws, Bloody Marys, chink food, and a mambo band. If you want to stand here slaving over a hot stove in the desert, be my guest. I can’t face it anymore.

Brooke (smiling) Did you just say ‘chink food’? Cause I’m still stuck back there.

Polly (laughing) Oh stop it! I don’t have a bigoted bone in my body, you’re just so correct about everything, and if you can’t joke in your own home—you’re so—I wanna know this; when did everyone get so damn sensitive about every last thing? When?

Brooke Uhm. Around the time you people started using words like “chink” in public, is when.

Lyman You don’t like the Palm Springs Country Club? Is there anything about our lives you don’t mind? Our politics, our—

Brooke (over him) That country club does not let in—

Polly (over her) Yes they do. Yes they DO! That ended years ago! Stop it!

Brooke Do they? Mom? How many—

Polly Most of the club is! Now. Believe me, I should know!

Brooke Really, please stop talking about it like it’s temple Beth Shalom.

Lyman It’s a great place, and by the way, we heard Colin Powell lecture there last month and if he’s behind the war, you can trust it’s the right thing to do. He knows a lot more than you do, Brooke. Most trusted man in America.

Brooke is about to counter this statement, and is halted by Trip.

Trip Look; we talk politics, it’s only eight in the morning, the whole day will be shot to shit, really. It will just dissolve into stiff upper-lipped thermonuclear family war.

Lyman (grinning) Can’t have that, can we? Look: despite your abhorrent and repugnant lefty politics, we want you to know we’re damn proud of you.

Brooke Proud? What did I do?

Lyman Brooke. C’mon. Your book. You sold it to the first people who read it.

Polly Which is a great relief as you will no longer be known as the girl who had only one novel in her.

Brooke (bursts out laughing) Well, I didn’t realize I was!

Polly Oh come on, dear, after six years, everyone was beginning to wonder. You did bring it, didn’t you?

Beat.

Brooke Yeah, but I have to make copies in town, I wasn’t going to carry a bunch of copies on the plane.

Polly We got the craziest call. Someone’s doing a vulgar little picture book on old Hollywood nightlife, and they heard we had lots of pictures from Chasen’s and the Brown Derby and Ron and Nancy. I said I would be saving them in case I decided to do a book of my own, which I can assure you, I will not. (drinking water) This water needs vodka for flavor.

Lyman picks up the Los Angeles Times.

Lyman (reading) Huh. Look at this: Don Rumsfeld is paying a visit to the troops in Baghdad.

Polly Isn’t that a nice thoughtful Christmas present.

Brooke Maybe while he’s out in the desert he can dig up some of them weapons of mass destruction—

Trip (over her) NO! No! No discussion of the war. This is a cardinal goddamn rule—we’ll be here all day, and I want to get back in time so you can see my show.

He has a sly smile on his face. She looks at him, caught.

Brooke I told you it won’t really mean anything to me, I don’t watch television—

Trip Well, unless you’ve suddenly become Amish, that’s unbelievably pretentious.

Lyman (grinning) Oh, Brooke, you really have to see it.

Polly It’s quite extraordinary really. You’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Brooke I don’t understand even the premise. It’s like a court room thing with a—?

Polly (relishing this) Oh, I can explain. You see—this is what your brother’s talents and education have led him to, Brooke: a fake TV courtroom with fake trials featuring roving litigants out to make a buck.

Trip Hey! Jury of Your Peers is a huge hit. It’s not fake!

Lyman That man is a real judge?

Trip He’s a retired judge from Encino. It’s a regular trial, only, the jury is made up of stars.

Polly Stars? Those are not stars! Gary Cooper was a star! These are what appear to be some very moth-eaten, down-on-their luck has-beens.

Trip (to Brooke) Who basically—you know—roast both the—it’s very funny—both the defendant and the plaintiff—and render a verdict. And if some of them are midgets, well, why not?

Lyman Please! This is how the law is conducted in this country now? A freak show with carnies making mock.

Trip Dad, come on, it’s show biz. Everyone signs a waiver, it’s civil court, the show pays.

Lyman Oh, so there’s no harm, no foul, no matter how wrong the person is, the show pays! What is the name of the judge?

Trip (trying not to laugh, looking down) Uhm. Him? He’s uh, well, yeah, his name is Judge Myron C. Glimmelman.

The three of them stand there, saying nothing. Polly stifles a derisive snort. Brooke is grinning madly, waiting. Shaking her head.

Polly (shakes her head) Oh, my people, my people, my people.

Trip (a smile) He is a great guy! All moral rectitude and good hair.

Brooke Just like you, Daddy.

Lyman (playing straight man) I would never sell myself like some common—

Brooke (laughing over him) Oh really? Mr. Ambassador?

Trip Respectfully, what was being the spokesman for the California Wine Board?

Lyman Public service, something you know nothing about—

Trip (ala his dad, stentorian) “Drink in the wines—

Trip/Lyman —of the Golden State, and taste how the west was won.”

There is laughter. This is an old bit.

Lyman We were trying to promote the state’s growing—

Brooke (over him) And let’s not forget some of those movies you were in before you sold out and became a politician.

Lyman (laughs) I did not sell out, I found a higher calling, you ungrateful little brat!

Trip Hey. People need to laugh today. It’s all so serious and goddamn, you know, horrible out there. We could all get anthraxed any minute—people need a laugh!

Polly It’s our fault, Lyman, we failed at providing normalcy—we had two children, and both of them have entirely abnormal careers . . .

Brooke (cuts her off, tense) Three, actually.

Polly Excuse me?

There is a moment.

Brooke Three children.

Beat.

Polly Three. Of course.

A slight tension, which Lyman labors to climb over.

Lyman So, Trip, you’re basically saying that being right or wrong matters a lot less than being funny.

Trip Funny is all we have left. Yes! They flew planes into buildings! People need funny. I can’t argue with you about this, if you fail to see the merit in what I do, that’s your loss, all of you. We can’t all be hopelessly highbrow like Brooke, some of us have to actually make money. I’m gonna take a shower. Breakfast on me.

He leaves.

Lyman What does he mean, ‘people flew planes into buildings?’ What’s that got to do with Jury of Your Peers?

Brooke Hey—Should we wake Aunt Silda, is she joining us for breakfast?

Polly My sister seems to be sleeping ’til noon or so, at least. Ever since she came back from rehab she stays up all night watching old movies.

Brooke Why did she slip? Do you know?

Polly Please. Who knows. She had been doing okay, you know, that’s the thing, she had five years sobriety—and she went, just like that.

Polly snaps her fingers.

Brooke How bad is it? Exactly?

Polly The woman’s liver needs a liver.

Brooke Owww. So. She’s going to live here? With you.

Beat. Polly looks at Lyman and shakes her head in defeat.

Lyman Yes. I insisted.

Polly Not forever. Only for a bit, ’til she’s back on her feet and we know she’s not going to slip.

Brooke I think she’s very lucky to have you looking after her.

Polly Well, she’s not getting the same level of care we gave you, believe me. (beat) You’re getting your old glow back. See how good it is for you to be out here, darling?

Brooke (laughing) I am NOT moving in next door, forget it!

Lyman smiles.

Lyman It’s nice to see you happy, lighter, you seem lighter. Which is very important to us.

Polly To have lightness. I would say nothing is quite as important.

Brooke Lightness is good.

Lyman Yes. And health.

Polly My knees, thank God, it was bone on bone for years, which is why I was such a bitch through the nineties.

Brooke (grinning) That’s why, Mom? Your knees? Oh. It was your “knees” that made you so very quarrelsome. And what was it in the seventies? Had I known it was your body . . .

Polly I think living on the East Coast has given you the impression that sarcasm is alluring and charming. It is not. Sarcasm is the purview of teenagers and homosexuals.

Brooke Now that I’m single, those are basically my two preferred social groups, so . . .

Polly Yes. We got a letter from Cary, telling us he always loved us and he hoped we would still consider him family.

Brooke (a sigh) Please don’t. He’s not family.

Polly You quit the marriage counseling?

Brooke Well, I mean, yes, it seemed the best idea after Cary stopped showing up.

Polly Did you badger him or something?

Lyman Polly.

Brooke Mom. Mom. Jesus. He’s in London.

Polly When did he leave?

Brooke Two months ago. Three. Four.

Polly And you didn’t tell us?

Brooke (laughing, exhausted) Look. It’s over, Mom. It’s been over since it began, really. We had a decent run, three years in marriage these days is like twenty when you guys were kids.

Lyman We hate you being alone.

Brooke I love me being alone.

Polly If you could just find someone like your brother, funny and fun.

Brooke (a burst of laughter) Like Trip Wyeth? The ADD riddled, junk-food-addicted porn-surfing Trip Wyeth, my little brother?

Polly He is not addicted to junk food; he eats very well. The porn, I suppose, I will give you. I mean—someone younger. Cary was too old. Too old and too British, which is the same thing, really. They’re all so old, the Brits, even the children. You need someone zippy.

Brooke (laughing) “Someone zippy?”

Polly Find someone peppy and youthful. These days, the age difference means nothing. Lyman, apparently it’s very hip, very ‘with-it’ for older women to have younger men. Much younger.

Brooke Stop worrying! I’m fine. Now I’m really hungry, can we go? Can we just for the love of God, go get breakfast?

Polly Yes, yes, fine. I’m going to go get dressed. If you twist my arm, Brooke, we could stop at Saks; because you are never going to meet anyone if you continue to dress like a refugee from a library in Kabul.

Brooke (looks at herself) I’m wearing tennis clothes! To play tennis in!

Polly leaves with her glass, leaving Brooke and Lyman alone.

Lyman Do you have a smoke, we could go outside and sneak?

Brooke Not on my person, Daddy. I thought you quit?

Lyman I did, it’s fun to sneak them. Your mother sneaks them too, it’s a little game we have. We steal each other’s smokes. It is amazing really, what you do to entertain yourself in the desert.

Brooke I have pot for later.

Lyman Are you allowed to smoke pot with the antidepressants?

Brooke Oh, sure, but only with a gin chaser.

Lyman It’s not funny, Brooke. It’s really not. You’re supposed to be careful. Damn it. Really.

Brooke One of the nice myths about pain is that one apparently can’t literally remember it. Which is why women have more than one child. Well, Daddy, I’m here to tell you, I have a very good memory for pain.

Lyman I wrote you last month offering money.

Brooke Yes. You did.

Lyman You have not favored me with the courtesy of a reply.

Brooke Daddy. I don’t need your money—my life works. Just as it is. Simple. Clean.

Lyman But why not? Given how tenuous things are getting—I want only to make your life at least incrementally—

Brooke (laughing) Better? Money does that—how? Has it—ever—for us? No. We all know that much by now. I am pleading with you, don’t make this whole trip about a check from you. Okay?

Lyman What kind of living do you make? Those magazine pieces? Oh, it’s very nice when Gourmet or Travel and Leisure sends you to Sri Lanka, and god knows what you get for an editorial—but at the end of the day? It’s hand to mouth.

Brooke Dad, all my friends who get a check from home—there is not a single one of them—not one—whom it has not crippled in some fundamental way. I have everything I need. Really, please. The balance is so delicate, I can’t screw with it.

Lyman What if it happens again? A depression? You lost—you lost years—we watched, helpless—that hospital.

Brooke Look—I take the lovely little pills, and I see the blessed Doctor Leighton every week, twice a week, and I do yoga, and I eat right, and I have learned optimism just like the magazines told us to. And now I know how to handle it.

Lyman I’m sorry.

Brooke Daddy, look at me. I’ve had tough times and everything that has happened to me—everything—has made me stronger. I’m your child. And mom’s. Two old trees. Two old oak trees. And I’m an oak, too. Okay, got it? Oaks.

Lyman We all have our ways of coping; mine is to be overprotective late in life. You sometimes seem to fail to understand that I lost a child. Therefore I am unable to relax about my remaining two.

Brooke You can’t live like that.

Lyman It’s collateral damage. I don’t expect you could know what that feels like, my darling.

Brooke (quietly) How can you say that. “I don’t know what it feels like.” I lost my older brother. He was my best friend—you know, I don’t make friends easily, he was—most of my world and—then he was gone—

Lyman You still miss him.

Brooke Every day, most of the day, all day.

Lyman (a small, wan smile. An older smile. Plaintive.) For me it’s the holidays; at Christmas, I think of your brother. I think of Henry. Of what’s left. Of time, and of everything. You’d think it would be forgotten by now.

Brooke Just because you moved to the desert does not mean that anybody with a computer couldn’t find out what happened with this family in a matter of moments. It’s part of who we are, we can’t just pretend it never happened.

Lyman A lot of people get through the entirety of their lives, pretending; at a certain point, it’s not the worst thing to do.

Brooke I’m sorry, Daddy, I tried to live that way, and I just can’t. I need to actually talk about it. Not in code, not obliquely, we have never . . .

Lyman (Pained. But sharp, shutting this down.) I can’t. (He stops. Shakes his head.Softens.) Maybe it’s the old actor in me. Maybe I prefer my lines written down. Sometimes I see myself on the TV, late at night, grimacing with a forty-five in my hand, arresting someone. That was so much easier.

Brooke (a sad smile) You should have stayed a movie star. You were so handsome.

Lyman Yes, but it mortified me. I just looked good in a suit.

Polly appears in the doorway dressed in a bright caftan, and wearing bright jade earrings, a sort of David Hockney subject, posing.

Polly (calling out) Well, let’s get moving, I don’t want to be stuck on Palm Canyon Drive in the noonday sun—all that last minute Christmas shopping, and at Saks those people spraying you with perfumes called “Maid’s Night Out” or something. I still have some stuff to get . . . ! My hairdresser needs some Givenchy shower splash and a new wok.

She leaves.

Brooke “Shower splash and a new wok.” What else is there to life?

Lyman looks at Brooke, his face in a small wry smile, knowing, and melancholy.

Lyman Oh, Brooke, you think everything is funny. Even when you were blue, the twinkle. But sometimes you can’t help it, little girl and the twinkle isn’t there.

Lyman exits. Brooke sits alone for a moment. Shaken at being seen so clearly by Lyman, despite her good cheer. She goes to her bag, takes out some pills, swallows them with water, and looks out.

Trip comes out, dressed in old Bermuda shorts and faded polo shirt, old tennis shoes, no socks.

Trip (grinning) Ohh, you’re already staring off into the desert; that’s not good.

Brooke (still looking out) You know that sign on the highway where you can either turn off for Palm Springs or keep going to “Other Desert Cities”? I am always so tempted just to keep on driving, you know. How do they do it? They never even leave anymore. They barely go into L.A.

Trip Not barely enough—enough for me though: when they do come, I have to drop whatever I’m doing to meet them for dinner at some awful old restaurant with goddamn swans in Pasadena.

Brooke The restaurant serves swan?

Trip Shut up. You need tennis lessons, you’ve lost your game and your serve sucks, you used to be good at it.

Brooke Well, I used to be good at a lot of things and the trouble with being good at things is that it takes too much work to stay good at them.

Trip With that attitude it’s a fucking miracle you finished your book.

Brooke My book, my book, my book. What happens if they hate it?

Trip They’ve never hated anything you’ve written.

Brooke I just get the sense that it’s not gonna be so easy—I was kidding myself. It’s so much pressure—

Trip Look, it’s not like you’ve written some poor little Hollywood upbringing shit, is it?

Brooke No, but it is about Henry. Whom we can’t talk about, it’s about our brother, who went to war with our parents, joined a cult, disappeared, and then planted a bomb in an army recruiting station, before killing himself—is what it’s actually about.

Pause. He takes this in.

Trip Okay, so maybe it won’t be the recommendation for their Book of the Month Club. (beat) And he didn’t ‘plant’ the bomb.

Brooke No. Maybe he didn’t. But he was party to it. (beat) I mean, it’s loving and I love them, and how can they see it as anything other than—

Trip Look, if you’re scared of what they might say, I’ll protect you, relax.

Brooke You can’t protect me. Not from her. Not from Polly Wyeth.

Trip Oh yeah? You know what it takes to produce a TV show five nights a week? You have to have nerves of steel. It’s as though having a show on the air turns people into that little creature with the ring in that stupid movie with those little assholes in the middle ages fighting elves and shit.

Brooke looks bewildered.

Brooke I um, literally have no idea what anything you just said means, literally.

Trip (flat) Literally: you don’t know Lord of the Rings?

Brooke Literally, I have no idea.

Trip Shut up. you pretend to hate pop culture, but secretly you fucking love it. Why do you fight it? It’s in our blood. Look at us. Look at dad! A gunslinger and a gumshoe at Paramount, and mom and Aunt Silda wrote those crazy-ass Hilary movies.

Brooke (laughing) Oh my God, Hilary! Over thanksgiving, I lay in bed, I had the flu or like consumption or something the whole time, I watched the DVD box set of all of them.

Trip There’s a box set?

Brooke Yeah. From Here Comes Hilary to Hasta La Vista Hilary. They’re magnificent.

Trip I never saw that last one.

Brooke Yeah, that’s the best, and Mom was, OF COURSE, in a feud with Aunt Silda so Silda wrote it alone, and there’s sort of a suggestion of like, free-love and bad-girl shit to come. Surfing nuns? It really goes out with a bang. Hilary is liberated from Pismo Beach and takes off with some Hells Angels.

Trip Silda must have been really bombed when they made that one. Listen, all anybody wants is for you to just—you know—be like, productive and happy and living in the world again, and they’re sophisticated people, if you see some stuff differently to them, well, everybody is a grown up here, we all know how to live with that, right?

Brooke (a smile) Trip. Have you actually ever met our parents?

Polly comes out, sun glasses, very big ones cover her eyes.

Polly Okay, who’s ready to go into town? I have to say, it is such a relief not to be cooking Christmas dinner this year. I can’t face the idea of slaving over another eighty-pound turkey and a ham the size of a pit bull.

Trip Hey, mom. We were talking about the Hilary movies. Why’d you stop writing pictures? Maybe you should get back in the game.

Polly My full-time job was your father. When he became GOP chair, it didn’t seem appropriate. Also, Hollywood stopped being fun. (beat) At first pictures were fun, being a girl, a smart girl in the pictures. Right out of Bryn Mawr, and into the writer’s building at MGM. And when your aunt and I didn’t want to work together anymore, I never found anyone else to write with. But truly, once it became about drugs and lefties whining, I was out.

Brooke Lefties whining. It always come back to that. Doesn’t it? With you?

Polly Well. You do. All of you! You all whine and lecture and preach.

Brooke Yep, that’s the downfall of us all, Polly, lefties whining all over the place. (exiting) I gotta go. I don’t want to be late for my conference call with Al-Qaeda.

Trip laughs. Brooke leaves. There is silence. Polly stares at her son. He fiddles with his cell phone or something, keenly aware of being observed.

Trip Stop staring at me. You’re giving me hives.

Polly Do you have any cigarettes hidden anywhere, Trip?

Trip No. I am totally smoke free, Mom.

Polly It’s all or nothing with your generation. Either vegans or meth addicts or both at the same time, we have meth labs just outside of town, they blow up every now and then. The labs AND the addicts. (beat) How does she seem to you?

Trip A little on edge, a little nervous, but basically you know, fine?

Polly (scoffs) “Basically fine?” You have no observational skills, none at all. She’s not ‘a little nervous’; she’s dancing as fast as she can, and something’s up. What?

Trip I dunno, don’t ask me, Jeez. I’m not like the family goddamn spy.

Polly Something about her book? Did you read it? What is it, I’d really like it if someone gave me some advance warning of what to—

Trip (over her) I haven’t even looked at it yet! Stop interrogating me, I’m not sixteen, god. She’s a grown-up person, stop studying her like she’s a specimen out of some lab.

Polly She’s hardly a ‘grown-up person’, darling, she’s naive, she’s secretive, very, very private—lots of locked doors in her doll house. No, she’s a little kid, honey. A smart, sly one.

Trip Well, you make people very nervous!

Polly (snapping) I do not make people ‘very nervous’! (beat) Not when they have nothing to be nervous about! But really, I worry about her. She’s tanked the marriage, Cary gave up. Did you know that?

Trip Yeah, but she didn’t ‘tank’ anything. That’s bullshit and you know it, Polly! Cary was a class-A creep. She just liked him because he looked like Lord Byron’s little faggy cousin. That sad wet Brit married her for a fucking green card, Mom. Please. He never loved her: he loved not being fucking English. Why don’t you back your daughter instead of that mossy little prick?

Polly Well, A: please don’t swear so much. And B: it is not out of the question that she has a trace of lesbianism in her, like my sister.

Trip Well, A: that would be fine. What’s wrong with that? And besides—B: (sweetly) why are we having this talk, Polly?

Polly Because you’re a moron.

Trip Yeah. So what about it?

Polly (emphatically) Because when we’re gone, you’re going to have to watch out for her.

Trip “Gone”? Where you going? You going somewhere?

Polly What if she has another breakdown? And we’re gone? It’ll be on you! You!

Trip She’s fine. The meds.

Polly And when they stop working? The brain grows used to them, you know, I’ve read it in the Internet!

Trip You read it in the Internet? Oh well, then it must be true! Why are you saying this? She is fine! She just finished writing a book! She sold it! She’s back on her feet! God, you never worried about me like that.

Polly (snapping) Because I didn’t have to! Life for you has always been easy, despite the horrific habit you have of putting question marks at the end of so many sentences unnecessarily.

Trip (grinning) Thanks?

Polly It runs in the family. The despair. Your brother. He couldn’t outrun it. It made him crazy. It runs in the family, on Lyman’s side, Scots blood, not mine, very cheerful people from my side, Texans, Westerners.

Trip You mean rabbis, don’t you?

Polly Families get terrorized by their weakest member, it’s true. Look at me; I’ve had to take care of Silda ALL my life. She doesn’t have a cent, she is alive thanks to us, and she has to live within spitting distance. Please. Now she has to live HERE. Until I get your dad to buy that house next door and stock it with Philipino nurses I can’t even go to Europe for fear of her having some sort of catastrophe—whenever we go anywhere she does something absurd like cut her hand off in a mixmaster or something. (beat)

Trip She cut off her hand?

Polly (smiling) You know what I mean. God. She was making a mojito and the blade slipped.

The two of them try not to laugh, but really, they can’t help it.

Polly (cont.) She needed about two thousand stitches. (beat) And I always am propping up your father too! Your sister worries him so badly! He just stares out into the desert and frets.

A pause, and Trip decides to go for it. He is simple and clear.

Trip Okay, well, Mom, since we’re being serious here: you know what I think?You’re unbelievably rough on her. You can’t handle it when people hit bumps—it totally freaks you out—you want everyone to be a goddamn marine, okay, Polly?

Polly Yes, I don’t like weakness. I’ve tried to push her, to be hard on her so that she wouldn’t sink. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded. You can die from too much sensitivity in this world.

Trip (a smile) Yeah, well. That’s sure not gonna happen to you.

Polly She has no idea what it means to roll with the punches, to let it ride.

Trip Yeah? Like you do?

Polly Please take me seriously.

Trip Right. Okay. I will.

Polly I dread reading this thing. It’s so much pressure. So much pressure to be fair. I hate being fair.

Trip (a laugh) They should put that on your tombstone. “Here lies Polly Wyeth. She hated being fair.” (Beat. He kisses her.) But you are, Mom.

Polly I’m just telling you that your sister will be your problem one day, Trip. Okay?

Trip She won’t be. Nobody’s anybody’s goddamn problem!

SILDA GRAUMAN enters. A mess. No makeup, hair disheveled.

She wears a muumuu, and carries a pill case marked with the days of the week, and takes some as she talks. Trip gets her a glass of water.

Silda (making an entrance) Hey kids! Oh boy! Wooh. Jesus Christ, you know what happens when you don’t drink? You have dreams.

Polly and Trip stand smiling at her.

Silda (cont.) I hate dreams. I have more Nazi dreams than Elie Wiesel! What does that say about me, always being chased by the S.S.? (she takes in Trip) Hello, Trip sweetie, you look like a million bucks, so cute! (beat) Maybe it’s the pills they have me on. They gave me this antabuse stuff. You know what it is? If you drink you can’t stop throwing up, believe me, I’ve weighed the options. Jesus, what day is it? I’m taking Tuesday for Thursday. I mean, what kinda doctor invents something like that? Huh? Some goddamn avaricious sadist in the pocket of the drug companies, is who. Where’s my niece?

Polly Hello, Silda. Did you sleep well?

Silda (scoffs) Sleep well? How do you sleep well on that farkakte tempurpedic? This not drinking is gonna kill me—remember that great Totie Fields joke: “I’ve been on a diet for fourteen days and all I’ve lost is two weeks”? That’s how I feel about not drinking. Of course, she got so fat I’ll bet she didn’t think it was funny when they lopped her leg off from the diabetes. I guess there’s a cautionary tale in there, isn’t there? Oh fuck! I forgot it’s Christmas Eve today, isn’t it? Trip, I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t get presents, I can’t—I’m not allowed to drive anymore, and—

Trip No, no presents—And I’m broke, of course, so

Silda (a laugh, a bark) there’s that—

Silda (cont.) Well, thank Christ I can still swim. I’m gonna jump in the pool and try and do a couple laps before the end of the day here.

She exits. A dervish leaving them slightly undone in her wake.

Polly looks at her son.

Polly And there you have it, a preview of coming attractions for you, Trip. And that’s as good as it gets, my dear. That’s as good as it gets.

Blackout

Scene Two

The Wyeth living room, late afternoon. Christmas Eve. The sun is going down, an ochre desert light pervades. The Christmas tree is lit, in all it’s splendor. Silda and Polly are wrapping a few last presents. Silda wears a Pucci-like top. The fire is lit. Silda is smoking Virginia Slims. Polly is drinking a scotch, rocks.

Silda Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t smoke, but all these goddamn virtues will just kill us all, really.

Polly Oh, I know you think that, sis.

Silda Don’t be so smug. Helen Bloom quit a year ago and then got mowed down by a garbage truck on Bob Hope Drive and she could a had a hell of a last year. Smoking like a chimney, not being tense, all of it. It was her biggest pleasure and she quit for nothing. A lost year of happiness.

Polly Silda. Is this your way of saying you want to keep on drinking? Is that what this is?

Silda (a shrug) Honey—If I wanted to, I would. I don’t. So I won’t.

Polly Helen Bloom died? I thought she just dropped us.

Silda She did drop you. And then she died.

Polly Maybe they’re connected. Why did she drop us?

Silda Why does anyone drop you? Because you’re not an easy person. I’d drop you too if I could. (beat) Do you like the Pucci I’m wearing?

Polly Do you mean—do I like the quote/unquote “Pucci” you’re wearing?

Silda Please don’t start with me! There was a sale. I had to fight off three old vultures for this Pucci! It was like something from National Geographic.

Polly This Pucci was made in a basement in Rangoon, please! All these phony designer dresses and tacky Hong Kong knock-offs you scrounge for at Loehmann’s; they never fool anybody, really.

Silda This Pucci is quite, quite real!

The gift wrapping ceases.

Polly Darling. I know when I’m being played. I know what’s real and what isn’t.

Silda (dead serious) They don’t have fake at Loehmann’s!

Polly Right. They have originals for fourteen ninety-five. It’s a miracle!

Silda (getting angry) Polly! Stop that! That’s mean. What’s the matter with you?

Polly I’ll tell you what’s wrong: the buttons are wrong! The colors are off! Listen—there’s no shame in being careful, in having to scrounge for bargains, it’s admirable! It’s the trying to pass that gets me! (beat) All I am saying is, don’t try and pull one over on me, I don’t like it when people pretend things are one thing and they’re actually clearly another.

My daughter is tap dancing around about this book of hers and we’re sitting here waiting like nothing is happening. I mean, I could take it out of her goddman bag. If I were to sneak it, which is something you would do, that would put me on the defensive, because the discussion would become about that, rather than the thing itself! So no, we can play that game. Oh, I can wait, but let’s not pretend that those are real buttons.

Silda stares at her sister, nodding. She then starts to laugh.

Silda You know, I am going to have to learn how to deal with you now that I’m sober. Because if I were drinking, that train of thought would make sense to me, but sober, what you just said is totally incomprehensible.

Polly Before she died, Helen Bloom quit my book club, you know.

Silda I know all about it. But that wasn’t a book club; it was a vast right-wing conspiracy! See, your politics are offensive to normal people. You goad people with them.

Polly I like to spar.

Silda That’s what Atilla the Hun said! That’s why you two are so isolated here! Your only social life is with that blue-hair republican crowd. All those fund-raisers you do or go to, all those hopeless squares. You used to be so with-it! When we were kids.

Polly sighs, gets up, pours herself another drink.

Polly Silda. I love those fund-raisers. I believe in them. I believe in that ‘crowd’. They’re my people. They have a stake in upholding the entrepreneurial American spirit. I’m still a Texas girl, Silda. So are you.

Silda (looking at her) Honey. News-flash: you’re not a Texan, you’re a Jew! We’re Jewish girls who lost their accents along the way, but for you that wasn’t enough, you had to become a goy, too. Talk about the real thing? Talk about ‘faking it’. Honey, this Pucci is a lot more real than your Pat Buckley schtick.

Polly Try not to be disagreeable, Silda, it’s Christmas.

Lyman enters, he’s dressed for dinner; country club casual elegance from slightly another time.

Lyman (kissing them both) Hello, my darlings. The two most beautiful women of the desert!

Silda (happy to see him) Hey, Lyman, Submarine Captain was on the Turner channel last night. They’re doing a Christmas of war pictures from the old days.

Lyman A Christmas of war pictures?

Silda What can I say? It cheers people up. This is America, we get warm and fuzzy about war. It took you about twelve minutes to die, not including commercials.

Lyman (a small smile) It’s true. Nobody at Warner’s died like me. It’s the one thing I had a knack for. (He demonstrates dying in a fusillade of gunfire, to the delight of his two girls.) (beat) Before the kids get back, I want to ask that we give Brooke some breathing room this evening. Palm Springs should be a refuge, where she wants to come to when life in New York gets unbearable for her.

Silda Palm Springs isn’t a refuge; it’s King Tut’s tomb. The whole town is filled with mummies with tans.

Lyman I don’t want confrontations. First time she’s been here in six years, and I want her to want to come back. Often. And easily. To feel safe here.

Polly (a sigh) Lyman thinks I am too stark with her.

Lyman (smiling, but pointed) Actually, Lyman thinks his wife doesn’t take well to constructive criticism, is what Lyman thinks. Okay?

He kisses her. She rebuffs him playfully.

Polly I just think—The only way to get someone to not be an invalid is to refuse to treat them as such.

Silda And there it is, folks: the entire GOP platform in a nutshell.

Polly If I were to be gentle with you, you’d never get out of bed.

Brooke and Trip enter, laden with shopping bags, Christmas presents.

Trip Hola and stuff.

Silda Oh good, you’re back!

Brooke (cheerful, maybe somewhat manic) My GOD! It’s insane out there. The Christmas decorations—a papier-mâché reindeer and a menorah fell onto Palm Canyon Drive and traffic is backed up for miles—the lights sparked a fire, and the reindeer burnt up like an effigy of George Bush in Baghdad! I forget how hallucinatory, it can be here on the West Coast.

Silda I gotta get out of this place.

Brooke You can always move east with me. I have room.

Silda (a scoff) Yeah, me in the snow, that’ll work.

Trip Hey, why have we never gone to that Desert Follies thing? Do you realize the world’s oldest living show girl is performing nightly?

Silda (a shrug; they’re pals) Sure—Dorothy Dale.

Trip I wanna—the best Christmas present you could give me, is we go downtown, have funny drinks and watch the hoofers. Please? I mean, she’s in the Guinness Book of World Records!

Polly I think we may have just found the next foreman for Jury of Your Peers.

Brooke puts down her shopping bags. She takes out two boxes, the kind you get from a copy store for manuscripts.

Brooke Okay, here. Two copies. Freshly printed. I know you’ve been waiting. Just let’s get this over with and go on to enjoy ourselves.

And silence. What to make of her?

Trip (flat) Merry Christmas. Santa has come early. Yay!

The family stares at Brooke.

Brooke (brightly) Come on! I don’t want there to be any more anxious stares. No more fear, no more dread . . .

Brooke pours herself a drink. Lyman looks at Trip, who shrugs, “I dunno.”

Lyman “Dread”! (slowly) Should we be dreading this novel, darling?

Brooke No. No, no, no no, no. Sorry! Wrong word. Not dread, but there is something you should know before you read it.

Polly Oh, I love it when people say there’s something you should know—you can just tell it’s something you wish you didn’t have to hear.

Lyman Stop it Polly.

Brooke (quietly) Well first off, it’s not a novel. I know I said it was and it started off as one. But after a few chapters, there was no hiding what it was, no fighting it. It’s a memoir.

Lyman A memoir? Of . . . ?

Brooke Us. The story of everything that happened to us. So I wanted to prepare you for this.

Polly Ah, I see. So you want us to brace ourselves. And that’s why you’ve been hesitant to tell us earlier. You thought we couldn’t handle it?

Brooke I had to finish writing it to make sure, and to know what I had. To sit with it.

Lyman (carefully) Well, it’s not entirely unexpected. May I ask what’s in it?

Polly Actually probably the more piquant question is—what’s not, isn’t it, Brooke?

Brooke Look. (open, clear) Here’s what it is: I was blocked. As the entire world knows. And then something clicked. After you sent me all my old diaries, Dad, you know, all those boxes. Something was triggered. About the life we had. The thing of you being old guard Republicans in Hollywood, that odd and very particular subset. What it was like to be the child of an ambassador. And how that affected us, all of us—how it made us.

Polly In other words, it’s all about your brother, of course.

Brooke Yes. It’s mostly Henry. And yes. Yes. Your relationship with him. (beat) What happened to that boy, who loved music, who made me sit between two speakers and memorize all the lyrics to every Beach Boys song?

Beat

Polly (looks at Brooke) Brooke. I just want to say this: You may of course write whatever you like, but the ice gets thin, the ice gets thin when it involves WE the living. We, the living, would like to go out gracefully.

Trip (impatient) Hey, hey—I have an idea, why don’t we all read it before someone, like, says some shit they might want to retract later or something. You’re all asking questions—they can all be—let’s just have Christmas first please. I mean, can’t we try really hard to muster up some normalcy, for me, as like, a Christmas present. Okay? Huh?

Beat

Lyman (deciding) Well, I don’t need to read it. I can give you my stamp, say what you will. I am at peace.

Polly (astonished) Peace? Lyman! No, you’re not.

Lyman (clearly) Polly. No. Sorry. I bow out. Quite simply, I do not wish to adjudicate what our daughter has written.

Brooke You don’t want to look at it?

Lyman I will not be put in the position of—

Polly “Decider”? Well, I will. You and I have a son. Who was implicated in a horrific and senseless bombing. In which a homeless veteran of Vietnam was burnt to death. Burnt to a crisp. Supposedly by accident. And that is the subject of her book! So, no, I am not at “peace”.

Lyman (a kind of quiet command, not to be contradicted) Polly. Let it be. That’s not how I conduct myself. I never have. It doesn’t work.

Brooke Look, I love you. And nothing in it contradicts that. Really, I don’t think you have anything to be nervous about.

Polly Said the spider to the fly?

Brooke (a bitter laugh) I just love how—right off the bat, you assume that it’s a hit-and-run job on you, Mom. How little trust there is. Look at you.

Polly “Trust”! Didn’t Ronnie say ‘trust but verify’? I kind of would like to verify! Before it shows up on the bedside tables of the liberal elite across the land? Before we’re reviewed by your pal, Ms. Didion, in The New York Review of Books.

Brooke Wow.

Lyman (another gentleman’s smile) Let’s not rush to any conclusions, shall we? If you got a decent advance, we could always give it back. If that’s an issue.

Brooke No. Jesus. (laughing) Knopf bought it. I’d probably make more money selling cashews in Central Park, but it’s something, and it buys me time to do another. This is good! Really, I mean—

Polly That is not in dispute, of course it’s good. You’re a real writer, you shouldn’t have been fulminating in the dark for seven years.

Brooke (blowing up) Jesus Christ, ‘fulminating’? Is that what you call being hospitalized? Is that what you call what was going on with me?

Polly No. I don’t. I know what was going on with you.

Polly looks strained. She glances at Lyman. Silda lights a smoke.

Silda Polly, you’re being really, and I mean really, a hard-ass, even by your standards, which is saying a lot. She’s written a new book, she’s sold it, she’s had tough times, tougher than you understand and—

Polly (over her) Oh, I understand, I was there. I fed her when she refused to eat. I sat there in Sag Harbor in that dark little cottage—don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand my daughter! That is one area, the area of having children, where you can not presume to condescend to me, because when I am called, I show up, okay?

In the wake of that, there is silence. Trip sighs, shakes his head and sits down.

Trip And so much for yuletide cheer.

Beat

Polly A friend of mine’s stepson wrote a book, a lovely San Francisco family; all about his shitty childhood and his boarding school horrors, booze and acne, now there are lawsuits for everyone. And it was in all the papers, she had to move to Andorra, Spain, or some crazy goddamn place and hide amongst the Basques. Of course, the book made the little shit’s reputation and now he’s living it up, you probably know him, you all probably go have tapas together in the fucking Village, right?

Brooke Is this acting, is this schtick? I can’t tell if you’re putting on an act or if this is real.

Polly “Acting or real”? The two are hardly mutually exclusive in this family.

Lyman Stop, please. Please. You’re both giving me a headache. Truce. Okay? Peace.

There is a moment of truce.

Lyman (cont.) Forget the goddamn book. We can take our time. Right? It takes a while to put out a book. SO we can—why don’t we not even look at it until after the holidays? After the New Year. And just enjoy this time together. (slightly furious) This discussion can wait. And it will. Is that clear?

There is silence. Lyman knows how to stop a room; he’s played lawyers and been an ambassador, so even though its performance, it still is jarring, given his gentleness.

Brooke Yes. It does take a while to publish a book. Next fall, in fact. Almost a year.

Lyman (he’s won) So WHY are we doing this? There’s time. Good, so let’s bank our fires. We really don’t have to do this now at all.

Brooke Well.

There is a long silence. Lyman looks around. “What?”

Brooke (cont.) The New Yorker.

Lyman Yes?

Brooke Something fell out and there was a slot and my editor gave it to them, and they’re going to run it in February.

Lyman I see. Two months away. Ahhh. I see.

Brooke They close the issue a bit ahead so there isn’t so much time. They have a deadline and it’s right before the first of the year, you see, if there’s anything you really need to have your say about, it’s got to be soon.

There is a stunned silence. Polly lets out a laugh of disbelief.

Polly The New Yorker is publishing sections of a book about us?

Brooke Yes.

Polly (shaking her head, wry as hell) And a Happy New Year. (to Lyman) Two seats for Andorra please.

Brooke (looks at Trip) Sorry.

Trip (surprised, annoyed) Pretty selective in what we share, aren’t we, Brooke? Jesus.

Lyman (somewhat hardened) I don’t know that I entirely like the way this is happening. I don’t see why this has to be hurriedly—I appreciate that you’re asking us for our blessing, and giving us the opportunity, as scant as it is, to weigh in here but . . .

Brooke (quietly) I don’t understand what there is to be afraid of. I am not allowed to—am I not—is there a blanket ban on writing about my life if it involves anyone else?

Polly I could sue you, but that would make an even bigger splash.

Brooke (bursts into laughter) You could sue me?

Polly (good natured) Sure. Families do it all the time. Ask Trip! Half the goddamn people on his show are families suing each other over unpaid parking tickets and negligent fratricide or something! Why shouldn’t we get in on the act? Maybe we could do it on Trip’s show! We could be part of the freaks!

Trip Ours is small claims, you’d need the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, mom.

Polly laughs, she likes it.

Polly Trip. Let me ask you something: A girl shows up on your TV show, having exploited for profit a personal tragedy without consulting the people who were also affected by it; what would your jury of peers say to that? Would they approve? Or would they say ‘stone her’?

Lyman Jesus, please.

Brooke “Stone her.” That’s great.

Trip You know what? All of you—there are at least three places I could have been right now: Cape Town, Punte del Este, or Bahia. There are girls with fun families in beach-houses where you can swim and drink and laugh and nobody is trying to fucking, you know, assassinate each other over a goddamn book. (beat) Over a BOOK! That is of almost zero-point-one conceivable percent interest to ANYONE I know! And I know a lot of people. I have learned so much about families from my show. (he laughs) The way in which the bored and the damaged ruin whatever little bit of happiness they happen to have. And I always want to tell them ‘hey, you schmucks, you have wasted one more day of living better’.

There is silence.

Trip (cont.) But me? I’m pretty goddamn happy, and I’m not going to let you all take that away from me. (beat) I have reservations on three flights to distant cities for tomorrow and I will only be cancelling two of them at this rate. (He looks at his mother) So as to “would I stone her?”. See, I’m not asking for peace like Dad is. Mom, I’m just telling you, I love everyone here, and I won’t be played. Not by any one of you.

Brooke I’m so sorry, Trip. I don’t mean for you to be in the middle of it. This. Mess.

Trip Yeah, well. (beat) You’re a really good writer, Brooke. Seriously. But you . . .

He stops, shakes his head. He walks out. Brooke sits down, nodding. Silence.

Lyman (to Silda, gently) Silda, I wonder if you would make me some tea? Would you mind, please?

Silda Of course, sweetie. Two sugars? Milk?

Lyman Lemon. Honey.

Silda Anybody else?

Brooke Please. Thank you.

After she gives Brooke a quick look of solidarity, perhaps even a gesture, Silda exits to the kitchen.

Brooke (cont.) Okay. So.

Polly Why is it that children are allowed a sort of endless series of free passes in this life, you know, and we’re expected to be the parents of children forever? This is a new phenomenon; once I was an adult, all of my parents’ indulgence ceased. You all want to stay children forever, doing whatever mischief you can think of. All you entitled children of the “me” generation.

Brooke (delighted) By free-passes you mean “free-will” of course? And I don’t particularly remember feeling indulged, but that’s just a matter of point of view I suppose; but let’s really clarify something—I am not looking for a free-pass from you, or any sort of pass at all.

Polly (emphatic) Then what do you want? Tell me exactly what you want!

Brooke stands there. Tortured and considering the question.

Brooke I don’t know. I don’t know if I can go ahead with it without your blessing. But I might have to try and do just that.

Polly Honey, you want our blessing? If this book is what I think it is, you’re gonna get a lot of attention, and you’re going to have to be able to handle it, and if you get flustered with me, how are you going to handle the public, strangers?

Brooke (laughing) How? Strangers are a cake walk compared to you, Polly.

Polly I knew before you got here that this is where it was going. I could tell because you’re my daughter and everything else you ever wrote you sent us before the ink was dry on the paper!

Brooke Well, you certainly always took your time responding! What’s the goddamn rush NOW? All of a sudden, huh?

Lyman (finally pissed off) Oh, Jesus, both of you stop it, this is absurd.

Polly The story of your brother. It’s drugs. Your whole generation, awash in drugs. The provocations, the absurd beard, the refusal to shower, to bathe, to adhere to the basic civilities of family life. He was stoned from the age of fifteen on, it made him dumb and it triggered his depression. Three generations, three generations of escapism. Lost. Drugs. Drugs actually destroyed the American century. Up the hill there, up the hill in Indio, the meth addicts, and you see them coming into town, wrecks.

She lights up. Thinks.

Polly (cont.) I can quite honestly say I dread this. Really, really, dread this.

Brooke I’m sorry. I can not write again about ephemera, about Paul Bowles’ haunts in Tangier for Travel & Leisure, I can’t interview one more Iranian filmmaker, and I can’t try to dissect Salt Lake City for Manhattanites. It’s all I’ve got you see. (suddenly furious) I don’t have an imagination! WE are all I have.

Polly You used to believe in yourself! How did you learn to think so little of your powers? Your novel, your first book, it’s beautiful, exquisitely observed.

Brooke (gently, over her) Thank you, but I don’t want to talk about my powers, I want to talk about Henry until it makes sense. The silence where he once was. His part in something terrible. (a growing anger) How when he came to you for help, you didn’t. You sent him away. He was your son. No matter what he did. He was your son!

Polly (not to be overrun by her daughter) Okay then! Okay! Okay, then so, that’s your take.

Brooke Yes it is. (beat, hardened) I imagine his suicide. His last day. I try to understand the note he left. I do that, that’s in there, too.

Lyman You imagine his suicide.

Brooke To try and make sense of it. What that day was like for him. Drowning.

Lyman (bewildered) Why?

Brooke Because I think I died too.

Lyman (imploring) But you didn’t, darling. Look at you. You’re right here. You have a life. You struggled. Yes, I know you were scarred but all things considered, haven’t you prevailed?

Brooke This is prevailing? (beat) My brother killed himself. He was my best friend and he didn’t even leave me a note. Why did he leave you a note, and not me? That doesn’t make any sense. To jump off a ferry in freezing water? Never found. You don’t leave people that way. It’s stealing their life as well.

Brooke stops, composes herself. Polly looks stricken, tortured, briefly, seeing her daughter in such evident pain. Lyman takes in the scene; it is slipping out of his hands.

Lyman (quietly) We shouldn’t be doing this. We haven’t even read it.

Polly That is true. (getting up) Well. I’m gonna go do me some light reading, kids.

Polly crosses to Brooke.

Polly (cont.) Whatever it is, whatever you do, you’re our daughter, and I will love you. I can’t stop you from doing what you will, I can’t prevent it. But you must know that whatever you do, there are consequences to your actions.

Brooke What does that mean?

Polly How could I trust you? How could I ever be in your presence, my dear? If you betrayed the trust of the family? A family that has so valued discretion and our good name in the past three decades. You would still be my daughter, but the meaning of it would change. You needed us. We came to the East Coast. A year of our lives, I thought of nothing but your well-being, your recovery. I could never in quite the same way avail myself—I know who I am. That is who I am. You would lose us. So you understand.

Polly kisses Brooke, exits to the bedroom. Lyman stands there, smiling, tense. Lyman goes over to the Scandinavian fireplace.

Brooke (a laugh) Wow. That was a scary kiss. Is that right, Dad? I would lose you?

Lyman looks at the suspended fireplace, shakes his head.

Lyman Never ceases to surprise me how cold it gets out here in the desert at night.

He puts some logs in the fire. The glow is intense.

Lyman (cont.) So, is this going how you expected?

Brooke (helpless) I thought, as in all things, you would give me your blanket support, cheer me on. “What did I expect”? I don’t work that way, I follow my stupid impulses to the bitter end.

Lyman (quiet, but direct) You could postpone the magazine piece. So I could slowly persuade your mother that it doesn’t matter.

Brooke looks at her dad. And then he is negotiating, seamless.

Lyman (cont.) Brooke. I am looking for room to navigate, for this to feel less like we are cornered. You have to give people room to navigate, you must leave people options.

Brooke Politics has given you the idea that all things are negotiable, Lyman. It’s why people can’t bear politics anymore. Everything is forever on the table.

Lyman (frustrated) This has nothing to do with politics. I’m frightened. In two months, the most painful part of our lives will be in the glossy pages of a magazine, and then a few months later, a book.

She goes to him and hugs him, a daughter’s sudden impulse, to ameliorate this. He doesn’t know what to do, and slowly pulls away, torn.

Lyman (cont.) I’m going to go outside for a bit. I need to smoke. Get some more firewood.

Lyman exits. Brooke is alone onstage. Lost in a kind of dread. Silda enters. Bearing tea on a tray.

Silda So . . . ?

She gives her niece a cup.

Brooke I miscalculated. Badly. Polly basically threatened to never speak to me again.

Silda Really? I’d take that deal in a goddamn heartbeat, kid.

Brooke (can’t help but laugh) Did you know, Silda? When I kept sending you pages—did you know that this was how they’d react?

Silda Of course I did. You’re surprised?

Brooke I’m always surprised.

Silda What? You thought there would be no consequences to telling the truth? Telling the truth is a very expensive hobby. At least yours leaves you with something. My little hobbies left me broke.

Brooke I could hold off. I mean, I finished it. Maybe that’s enough for now—just knowing it was done—without needing it out in the world for a bit—

Silda (appalled, cuts her off) Don’t you dare!

Brooke It’s not that I’m scared, it’s just that I don’t want to be unkind—

Silda (sharp and bitter) To these terribly kind people?

Brooke My father, Silda, is not unkind. That’s the part I just can’t . . .

She stops, shakes her head. She looks stricken. Silda nods. Giving her niece that.

Silda I wish you’d let me give you some concealer, you have those dark circles under your eyes. You just need some TV Touch, honey.

Brooke (bursts out laughing) You and your TV Touch. Jesus, you think that’s what I need? A goddamn makeover?

Silda delves into her purse and comes out with a little pot of makeup, which Brooke submits to.

Silda Hold still, you’re so jumpy. What? You want a Xanax or something? I have a whole goddamn Halloween bag of the stuff.

Brooke (exhausted but smiling) Please—I beg you. Stop trying to make me laugh—this is not in the slightest bit funny.

Silda (quietly, while applying makeup) Okay. No. Lyman is not unkind. But. (beat) But life is chemical. And a chemical reaction happens when two people get together, and in this case, a certain kind of ambition, and striving overtook the actual human beings. Your parents are holding onto the last bits of power and influence they had, and they can’t imagine a world in which you have the right to speak of it. Critically. (beat) They tried so hard to turn Henry into one of them; cut his hair, sent him to a boarding school for delinquents, forbid him to express any antiwar sentiment in their home, forbid his friends to enter the house—they tried to clean him up, but he fought as hard as he could. I tried to protect him—to give him something. But I was no match. (beat) These people, driven by fear, have taken ownership of an entire country. And fear—fear led to punishment and in the case of your brother, even at the cost of a life itself—just to hold on to the ‘way things were’. You managed to explain in one little book, in one book. And you did it just by telling the story of this family. (beat) Isn’t that something?

Silda stares at Brooke, not doing her makeup for a moment. When she goes on, it is with great clarity, specificity, urgency.

Silda (cont.) So, please. I am begging you. Don’t back down. Brooke: you are stronger than Henry was. Your book gives him everything I couldn’t. And I am telling you what I told him! “Do what you must! Fight on.” (beat) Don’t back down. Do it for him, for Henry, do not back down! You’ll win, because you have ideas, and they only have fear!

Brooke (looking around the room) There are no pictures of him. How do you do that? Have no pictures of your son? Look around: Sinatra, Rock Hudson, you, Barry Goldwater, me, me and Trip in Mexico, Nancy, Dad in any number of movies. Look at him. Mom and Dinah Shore.

Silda I introduced them. They had chemistry.

Brooke (she picks up a picture) One picture of Henry. Age seventeen. In Ojai at school. Look. He looked like the best of both of them. He was supposed to be an actor. He played Hamlet in high school. He understood that play. All that ambivalence. All that rage, God, he understood it. Tall, long shock of hair, silent, quiet, royal. But this surfer version, this California golden boy Hamlet.

Lyman has returned with an armful of firewood. He drops it next to the fireplace.

Lyman (quiet, dark) He was wonderful. He would have been a movie star.

Silda Your tea.

She points to the cup and saucer. Lyman nods.

Silda (cont.) Are you okay?

Lyman (something distant about him, keeping his own counsel) I think I might be catching a bit of something. A little bug of some sort.

Silda goes to the bar and pours whiskey into his cup.

Silda This’ll help. God knows.

He takes a sip.

Lyman (beat, quietly) I never wrote my memoir, because it would have hurt our friends, how hard it was, after Henry was implicated the way he was, how they all vanished and your mother refused to accept it. She circled the wagons. Around me. Borne out of thinking I’m easily bruised. I am not easily bruised. (Beat. There is a certain intense, lost quality in his telling of this. It is not easy; a story never shared. It is an illustrative story, meant to draw her in.) But she would not let them off the hook, she’s the only woman to have faced down Nancy Reagan, Betsy Bloomingdale, and Mrs. Annenberg at the same lunch and reduced them all to tears. Tears of shame for their unconscionable behavior—(a growl). As though I had placed that bomb. Your mother reminded them all who we really were, and of their obligations to honor loyal friends—Nancy went to Ronnie and sat him down, they had a dinner for us at the L.A. Country Club and everyone came out. Yes. Now they were our friends again. And by the time Ronnie was president, they made me ambassador . . .

His eyes well up, he grins through it, the way older men do, when telling these sorts of stories.

Brooke I didn’t know it went down like that. That mom did that.

Lyman (imploring) Please don’t do this. I can not embarrass those people. They’re, some of them, alive still—! You can do what you like after we’re gone! Do you not understand that? It’s simply good manners. It’s as simple as that!

Brooke (serious and quiet) Well, let me tell you, good manners have got me into a lot of trouble, Dad. Probably you too. I am past the point of good manners.

Lyman (and finally, knowing he lost, letting the bitterness come out, unmasked, no longer the diplomat) You have so much of your mother in you. You don’t like any weakness, especially in yourself. You can’t forgive it. (beat) It is why you ended up in a damn hospital! Well—if you can’t forgive yourself, I suppose it’s futile to ask that you to forgive me! No. (his voice rises) So you’ll publish your book and punish us all, and a reporter will call me for a comment! (his voice choking) And I will say “no comment.” (furious) I will keep saying it until I die! “No comment”!

Lyman exits. Silence. Brooke is shaken.

She has not seen this Lyman, this side of him, directed at her.

Silda finally picks up Lyman’s empty tea cup, and deeply smells the residual booze in it. She breathes deeply.

Silda God, I love that smell, that vapor, if I could just live in that scent, I’d be happy. I’d never need to take a drink again, I’d just breathe it in.

Blackout

End of Act One