SCENE FOUR
Lights up on BEC. She is not chubby. She is in fact strong and beautiful and hale, though she is also somewhat strung out. She may wear a puffy vest over a sweater. She may wear hiking boots. She may have a Nalgene bottle.
She stands uncomfortably for a long time. VERA enters, walking slowly with a cup of tea. She sees BEC is still standing.
VERA: Take a load off.
BEC sits. VERA very gingerly, shakily, places the tea in front of her. She thinks of something.
You take sugar?
BEC: (She does.) Oh—no—
VERA sees through this and frowningly exits for sugar. BEC drops her head in her hands. Silence. VERA returns, slowly, with a sugar bowl and a few packets of Sweet and Low.
VERA: My neighbor across the hall is a diabetic, so I keep this stuff around. In case you watch that sort of thing.
BEC: Thank you.
BEC helps herself to two heaping spoonfuls of sugar while VERA watches disapprovingly.
You don’t have to—if you have something else you need to do—
VERA: You want me to leave you alone, is that it?
BEC: No, just, I don’t want you to feel you have to, like—
VERA: What?
BEC: I don’t want to be in your way!
VERA: Well, you’re not. Particularly.
VERA sits as well. They don’t know what to say to each other.
So you’re having second thoughts, is that it?
BEC: What?
No, I…no.
Another silence.
VERA: When I was first married. Not to Joe, to my first husband, Arthur. It was a week or two we had been married and a woman showed up at our apartment with luggage. Arthur said to me, “Oh I forgot to tell you, before we were married I promised I would take her away for the weekend and I didn’t want to fink on a promise.” (BEC horrified, VERA laughing.) So I said all right, and they went away, and I left my key on the piano and went home to my parents.
BEC: And you divorced him?
VERA: Oh no. He came to my parents at the end of the weekend begging and pleading and I thought it was funny that he had been so stupid so I went home with him. It wasn’t the last time he cheated.
BEC: Of course not!
VERA: When we had been married six months he went out to Hollywood with a woman…oh God, what was her name. She was rich, and neurotic. Muriel. He and Muriel went out there to write a screenplay and her father bankrolled them and Arthur never sent me a penny. And I guess they were having an affair because when he tried to end it she threatened to kill herself, and that was a terrible mess. One time we were all at Café Society…
I guess they were back from California…?
And she followed me into a cab and said, “Can’t we be friends? It eats away at me that you’re angry at me,” and so forth. And I said, “Listen, Muriel, there are people you like and people you don’t, and I don’t like you, and I want you out of this cab.” And she cried and carried on, this woman who had been sleeping with my husband for two years…
Long pause. BEC drinks her tea.
Then there was the waitress he met in Arkansas. And he came home and confessed he was in love with her, and I said, “Listen, she’s a hick, you have nothing in common, I’m sure the sex is terrific and whatnot but why don’t you go back there and spend a few weeks with her and see if there’s really enough there for you to leave our marriage.” And he did. And sure enough he came back and said “You’re right, we ran out of things to talk about.” And that was that.
He was a cheater and a drunk, but I liked him till the day he died.
BEC: (Blurting it out.) I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.
VERA: What?
BEC: I don’t know what you want me to—why are you telling me this?
VERA: I was just making conversation. I wasn’t getting much help from you.
BEC: But you’re going on and on about these—like, parables of tolerance and forgiveness—you should have left him!
VERA: I did, eventually.
BEC: But you put up with like—and you tell these stories like you’re proud of them.
VERA: (Seeing that BEC is truly upset.) Okay, listen—
BEC: This woman, who you tried to push out of a cab, you should have pushed him out of a cab, she was coming to you / for understanding—
VERA: I see I’ve struck a / nerve.
BEC: I’m not going to forgive him!
VERA: All right. All right.
BEC struggling to get control, VERA totally unsure what to do.
BEC: I’m sorry, I’ve been really…
And I can’t believe he’s fucking late, I can’t believe…
VERA: Listen, I wasn’t trying to say forgive him or don’t forgive him. I don’t know what you should do, that’s your affair.
I was trying to say…men sometimes do things that can be very…but you have to remember that it’s more out of stupidity than anything else. It’s not, whaddayacallit. Malicious. It’s just stupid and childish.
BEC: I guess, um… (Searching for the inoffensive way to say this.) I don’t make those kinds of allowances, based on gender? I wouldn’t want anyone to make those kinds of allowances for me, so…
VERA: I suppose you think I’m very backward.
BEC: No—
The sound of a key in the lock. BEC hears it immediately and prepares herself, VERA looks around suspiciously to see what she heard. LEO enters, his pants covered in dirt. Both women look at him. He grins.
LEO: I found a community garden.
VERA winds up and stands.
VERA: Excuse me.
She exits into her bedroom slowly. LEO heads in for a kiss, BEC dodges him.
BEC: I told you I have class at two.
LEO: Am I late?
BEC: I can’t miss any more class.
LEO: I said I’d come up to you.
BEC: And I said I didn’t want you in my apartment.
He grins.
LEO: I brought you something.
He produces a small, sad, dirty pumpkin from his hoodie pocket. He approaches her very slowly and extends it to her. She takes it.
BEC: What do you want me to do with this, Leo?
LEO: Love it. Nurture it. Teach it what you know.
Make a pie.
She throws it back at him. He catches it. It is unclear whether some of the tension is broken or if she is angrier than ever.
I miss you all the time. I think of you in college. I think about whether they have left-handed desks for you.
BEC: They do.
LEO: That’s good.
BEC: Sometimes right-handed people sit at the left-handed desks and I get really pissed.
LEO: Bastards.
BEC: Yeah. I’m like, you’re not just hurting me, you’re hurting yourself.
They smile. This is their thing.
LEO: You like it?
BEC: I don’t want to talk about college with you, Leo.
LEO: Why not?
BEC: Because you’re just gonna be, like, disdainful.
LEO: I’m not!
I wanna hear.
BEC: It’s…I don’t know, everyone’s so much younger than me, I mean just two years, but it seems like…so it’s lonely. But I’m taking this class on global health that I think is really…I met with the professor a couple times and I might help her with some research next summer in Mumbai, if the money works out.
LEO: Man, you work fast.
BEC: I walked into her office and I was like, “I’ve built houses in Ecuador and taught English in Mali and installed solar panels in Kathmandu and I want to know how I can work with you.”
And she was like, “Wow, it’s so refreshing to meet a female undergraduate who doesn’t end every sentence in a question mark.”
So…
LEO: You always wanted to go to India.
BEC: It’ll be so nice to travel somewhere not on my parents’ dime, you know?
LEO: I could come.
BEC: …to Mumbai?
LEO: Why not?
Pause. The next two lines are simultaneous:
BEC: I want to break up. |
LEO: I’m so happy to see you. |
LEO: Whoa. Oh. Okay.
Pause.
Okay.
He grins at her.
BEC: The other night when I said I needed some time to think, that wasn’t true, I want to break up. Sorry, I know the timing is shitty. I was gonna do it no matter what when you finished the bike trip, it’s not…it’s not about you going AWOL this summer, even though I’m really fucking pissed about that.
LEO: So you—huh. You were planning this for a while.
BEC: Yeah. Yes.
LEO: That’s why you backed out of the bike trip.
BEC: Ummmmm…no, I backed out of the bike trip because I—I didn’t back out of the bike trip, I was never definitely coming on the bike trip.
LEO: Uh, okay, I remember it differently but it really doesn’t matter now, so.
BEC: You knew I was applying for internships, you knew that.
LEO: Yeah, and I knew you were buying gear and training and, like, telling me you loved me and it was important we got to spend this time together before you left for school. That’s all.
BEC: Well when Allison backed out—
LEO: Allison tore her ACL, dude, that’s / totally—
BEC: Fine, but it wasn’t gonna be the trip we’d planned, it wasn’t gonna be the four of us.
LEO: But you admit that we had planned a trip, you planned to come with us, that was the plan. But I guess you were already planning to break up with me, you just didn’t let me in on that.
BEC: I’m sorry I didn’t come on the bike trip, okay?
LEO: No, it was good, it was amazing, actually, to have that time with Micah, so. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
BEC: Well good.
Brief pause.
LEO: I mean, it would have been nice to have you there when he was killed, it would have been nice to not be alone for that.
BEC: Yeah, it would have been nice if you’d showed up at the funeral, I really needed you then. Do you know how hurtful that was, and humiliating, that everyone was like, “Where the fuck is Leo?” and I was like, “I don’t know, he hasn’t even called me.”
LEO: But you were already planning to break up with me. (Off her look.) What? I’m just, I’m trying to master this time line, Bec, it’s a little confusing.
BEC: You’re laying this all on me, but we had problems. We never had the kind of relationship Micah and Allison had, I think we should just face that.
LEO: We—? I don’t even know what that means.
BEC: They were like actual grown-ups in love, like really in love.
I’m not saying we didn’t love each other—
LEO: No, you’re saying I’m not a grown-up.
BEC: I’m saying—even my mom still talks about it, what a mature, and, like, evenly-balanced—
LEO: Oh, well, if Ellen / thought so—
BEC: Don’t be an asshole, you know what I mean, they just had this serenity that we—
LEO: I actually thought it was the other way around, that we were the ones with the real deal because I thought about you basically all the time when you weren’t there and talked about you like some kind of pathetic lovesick idiot whereas Micah never thought about Ally at all.
BEC: That’s because he didn’t have to.
Brief pause.
LEO: I think you have some very weird very idealized picture of their relationship, because it might interest you to know that he cheated on her, actually.
BEC: Okay.
LEO: Like several times. With some extremely questionable specimens.
BEC: It’s not cheating when it’s an open relationship and it’s really none of my business and I don’t think it’s cool at all to talk about him that way.
LEO: I just think it’s interesting that your idea of a perfect relationship involves your boyfriend getting a BJ from the 15-year-old girl whose uncle owns the campground.
BEC: My idea of the perfect relationship involves feeling like I don’t have to justify myself all the fucking time to someone who claims that they love me but is constantly disappointed in me. I am so tired of disappointing you, Leo.
And fuck you for telling me that about Micah, I did not want to know that.
VERA has entered with a laundry cart.
VERA: Excuse me. I was going to the basement to do some laundry, I wondered if you have anything that needs to be washed.
LEO: No.
VERA: Are you sure? I haven’t washed your sheets since you’ve / been here.
LEO: No!
Thanks.
VERA exits slowly, with dignity.
BEC: You know Micah’s parents are back together, right?
BEC: I know.
LEO: Oh, no.
BEC: I actually tried to talk to them about it, I was like, you know I love you both, but is this really a good idea? For you guys, and for Ethan? It was so weird, I felt like such an adult.
LEO: What did they say?
BEC: He cried, and told me how proud he is of me, and how lucky Micah was to have me in his life, and she got super huffy and passive-aggressive and they both assured me that it’s what Micah would have wanted. Which seems to me both patently false and completely irrelevant.
LEO: They’re gonna destroy that poor kid.
BEC: And he’s such a / sweet kid.
LEO: He’s a good kid. He / really is.
BEC: It’s a shit show, I give up.
Pause.
I gotta get back uptown.
LEO: Hold on, I want to read you something.
BEC: Leo, I’m already late.
LEO: It’s short.
He exits, then returns with a book of Rumi poetry. He takes a few moments to find the page.
“There Is a Field.”
That’s the title.
BEC: Leo—
LEO: You have to promise to listen with an open heart.
LEO: Please.
She breathes, tries impatiently but earnestly to listen with an open heart.
LEO: (Reading.)
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.
He swallows. This is hard for him.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about.
Pause. She sees he is almost overcome, puts a hand on him. He takes the opportunity to grab her and kiss her. She pushes him away.
BEC: I have to go.
LEO: Let me touch you.
BEC: No.
LEO: You’re forgetting how our bodies are together.
BEC: No I’m not.
She gently disentangles and moves away.
When I’m not furious at you I’m really worried about you. I don’t want you to become someone who makes me sad every time I think about you.
LEO: Okay, Bec, I’ll go to college.
BEC: Fuck you.
LEO: One of us has turned our back on everything the four of us used to believe and it isn’t me.
VERA reenters from the hall, without the cart but carrying detergent. BEC gathers her stuff angrily, tearfully, while LEO looks at the ground.
Hey.
He extends the pumpkin toward BEC, smiling idiotically. BEC ignores him and walks past VERA out the door without speaking. A silence.
VERA: Well.
Are you all right?
LEO: Yeah, I’m good.
VERA: She’s lost weight.
Pause.
She could lose / some more—
LEO: (Quietly.) Shut up.
VERA: What?
LEO: (With his grin, loudly.) It makes me sick to hear you talk about her body so just fucking stop, okay? Did you hear that?
She is stunned. He exits into the bedroom.