Act One, Part C

 

 

CAT: What does everybody want to drink? Assuming I’ve got everything.

NINA: Bailey’s Irish Creme.

CAT: …okay: Assume I’ve got everything but.

NINA: Coffee’s fine, if there is any.

ROAN: Do you have any white wine?

CAT: Yeah, about that much left—no, wait, I’ve got another bottle. Yeah, okay.

NINA: Oh, wait, I’ve changed my mind. Wine does sound good right now.

PIN: Do you have any beer?

CAT: Sure; one can of beer. Savannah?

SAVANNAH: I’m still nursing my tea, but I could see some wine in my future, please.

CAT: …okay.

(Cat heads over to get all the drinks)

NINA: …Place looks good, Cat. You still going to paint?

CAT: Yeah, eventually. It’s just finding the time.

NINA: Potato blue would look good.

PIN: Yeah, or Rose Rose.

NINA: Oh, Cat, my mom says hi. I tried explaining everything to her, but she…she says hi. And she’s praying for you and stuff. She wanted me to tell you that.

CAT: That’s nice of her. I wouldn’t have thought—

NINA: Me either. Me either.

SAVANNAH: You’re becoming quite the topic in my class. Anonymously, of course. Seems like it’s half and half, though.

CAT: Hmmmm…?

NINA: We stuck the clipping on the wall at work, but a lot of the customers found it…distracting? So, we put it at about waist level. Looks much better there.

PIN: Oh, jeez, we had this guy come in today; saw it, read it once, read it again, and just…didn’t say a word. He just whipped out his wallet. Flinchless. Totally flinchless.

NINA: How is your mother doing, Cat? Is she hanging in there?

CAT: She’s doing really well. She’s got a lot of support and…she’ll pull through. She knows she can.

NINA: She can still recognize things?

CAT: Well, sometimes she’ll look at me but call my mother’s name. Then when I leave she calls out my name…things like that.

PIN: Well, isn’t that supposed to be the highest form of compliment? To be mistaken for somebody else?

NINA: …something like that.

CAT: But, I think we’ve still got a long way to go. Quite a long haul.

NINA: Well, do you need any help with anything, Cat? What needs to be done?

CAT: Well, thanks, but everything’s pretty much taken care of. We might as well start in on hors d’oeuvres while we wait for Maria. (Goes to get vegetable tray from fridge.)

(Six beats)

NINA: …Jesus, Cat, I can’t believe you’re doing this.

(embarrassing pause)

NINA: I’m sorry, I mean, Jesus, I can’t imagine what you must be going through, but I guess you’re not going through it if you’re…going to go through with it…if that makes sense.

CAT: Perfect sense. Don’t worry, Nina, I know what I’m doing. Or, at least I tell myself that.

NINA: But, Christ, I HAD to have mine and I just couldn’t live with it. For the nine months I couldn’t live with it, but after that…it got better…but I still can’t look at if for very long before I start…thinking about it.

PIN: If I hadn’t had mine it would have been a lot worse. I never really learned to accept, I just…agreed to it. It was like, "okay, if this is what I have to do to get out of here, then, okay," I could handle that. But, yeah, I damn near felt like my mind was turning inside out most of the time.

NINA: It’s like junk food. If I’m going to feel that nauseous afterwards, then I’d just as soon make myself throw up rather than have to go through all that.

CAT: But that’s your punishment for eating junk food: having it corrode your stomach.

NINA: You’re right. I hope Jesus watches me every time I eat junk food. Then he’d see real suffering. And you didn’t know who it was? That’s the first time I’ve heard of anyone being raped by a complete stranger. That’s really strange.

SAVANNAH: When it happened to me, just because it was someone I knew, I just couldn’t look at any of my male friends for a long time. Even, you know, really good friends, or, what I assumed to be friends.

CAT: This is going to sound really strange, but maybe its better when it’s a stranger because then you can focus on one person rather than on all of your friends.

ROAN: Well, then it’s either all strangers or all friends.

NINA: Yes, that does sound very strange, Cat. I’d just as soon not have it happen.

CAT: But, I mean, if it’s going to happen….

PIN: I think they call that fatalism.

NINA: Manifest destiny.

PIN: Yeah, manifest destiny.

SAVANNAH: But, I see her point. It’s like, once it’s happened, or even before it happens, it’s like an accident you’re told that will eventually happen. So your mind just…waits for it to happen. Which, I guess, implies that it IS a relief when it does happen.

NINA: Maybe THAT’S why they think we’re supposed to entice it. Because it’s a relief. Boy, that sounds downright medieval.

PIN: Yeah, it does. It’s like battered wives. "Oh, they must like it, otherwise they wouldn’t stay with them." Right; change the system so they CAN leave and survive financially and don’t screw their self-image up so much with the media so the only thing they feel they can do is play the game. That grand and glorious game.

NINA: Careful you don’t fall off your soapbox, Pin.

PIN: Well, you know what I mean…

NINA: I know, I know.

PIN: You know what’s really strange? Now that all my friends and lovers are women it’s like a big yoke has just been taken away. It was so much of a chore just to be able to communicate with a man, but now its like...when we were kids. Remember buying valentines in second grade, and the boys always used it as their excuse to give a valentine to the prettiest girl? It was like, the more homely the boy, the prettier the girl was that he’d give the valentine to. And then you were really weird if you gave a valentine to a boy. It was like, "What do you want to do that for? You’ve got us." It’s like, you’ve got these feelings anyway, and if its that tough to communicate with a guy, like they tell you you’re supposed to do this and do that…then, you know, who cares?

NINA: Really. If anything we ought to get medals for keeping the population down.

PIN: Some of us. Some of us still like babies.

NINA: It’s like my life just started over again, and it took 25 years of hell just to get here. I guess that means I believe in reincarnation.

CAT: No. Cycles.

ROAN: What are you writing these days, Cat?

CAT: Well, I wrote something this morning—actually I just jotted it down—that I’m still working on. No major projects, just morning verse that always comes to me as I wake up in the morning. (Goes to a desk and hunts for the journal she keeps this stuff in.) It’s really weird because half of this I had in a dream and then half of it has just been in my head for a long time, and it…I don’t know, it’s just…at the top of the page it says:

He goes to the graveyard to learn how to die
Learns how to lip read to teach himself how to kiss

then the title is

She Sells

and it goes like this:

She came with us; she never knew
we were all going there alone.
She always heard her name
she learned how to lip read
she taught herself how to kiss at night

She looked through her eyes and
said "Gypsy boy, give me your fingers,
I think I know what to do"
and I said, "No, your hair is too busy,
your throats are empty
and you believe me."
But I did show her that there was an outside
and she showed me there was indeed an inside.

She thought she could only talk with words
and sing behind their backs
She was always told why
instead of what for.

She tried designing the wood for our fire.
When she couldn’t be the wind as well, she cried.
She picked up all the stars
and put them back on her ceiling.

When it all comes rushing by
she’ll talk herself to sleep
she’ll say she’ll never close her eyes
the water had whispered "dream"
she had whispered "I can’t close my eyes"

She left it for us, she never knew
We all went back alone
We all came back alone

(slight silence)

NINA: It’s called "Sea Shells"?

CAT: No, no: "She sells."

SAVANNAH: Oh, "She sells;" I heard "Sea Shells," too.

ROAN: Same here. It reminds me of sea shells.

NINA: But, I could see how it could be "She Sells," too.

CAT: It’s not finished or anything, but—

ROAN: Oh, I think it is. I think it’s fine as it is.

PIN: I think you’re right. I think it still needs something. Not much, just a shade or two, but, yeah, I really like it, too.

CAT: It’s kind of…I don’t know.

ROAN: Kind of speaks for itself.

CAT: Well, it just kind of came to me, and I just happened to jot it down. So, that’s what’s been happening for about the last five or six weeks.

SAVANNAH: Sounds like a long poem.

CAT: It’s been a long five or six weeks.

ROAN: Do you ever get the feeling when you’re doing something like that, like writing or drawing, that no matter what you try to do, if you just let it do what it wants, then it turns out all the better? It makes more sense if you just let it…something like that.

CAT: I always think it knows more than I do, so I trust it much more. I think if I didn’t trust it, I wouldn’t have any reason to follow it.

SAVANNAH: Do you trust it, Cat?

CAT: That’s why I’m following it.

NINA: What if it turns out to be lies?

CAT: Then I probably put the lies there in the first place, right?

NINA: I suppose.

CAT: What I always stumble over is why I put the lies in from of me in the first place.

PIN: There’s no such thing as original sin.

CAT: I know. That’s where I always stumble.

NINA: Maybe you’re stumbling over someone else’s lies.

CAT: But, if I know they’re not my own lies, if I KNOW they’re someone else’s…why do I bother to stumble?

PIN: Sounds like you need new shoes. A pair of nice leather shoes.

CAT: (I think you’re right) But, I mean, if you keep stumbling over something, if you keep walking over the same stones, eventually they’ll get smooth, won’t they?

ROAN: Eventually; Evennnnnnntually.

CAT: But, what if all the lies were just all in one place at the same time? What if you could look inside that coat of mirrors? What would you see?

PIN: A very heavy coat.

CAT: (laughing) Yeah.

NINA: Why don’t we play Scrabble or something until Maria gets here?

ROAN: Sounds fun.

NINA: (Getting up to get it) Where is it now, Cat?

CAT: Bottom shelf of the bookcase.

(Beat, two, three four)

NINA: What’s this?

CAT: What’s what?

NINA: This box on top of it.

CAT: Oh, that. That’s my own version of Trivial Pursuit, in the making. Whenever I find out a real juicy bit of trivia, or else when I can’t remember a really obvious tidbit, I jot them down.

NINA: (reading the first card she grabs) Who wrote "On or About the First Day of June"?

CAT: Obscure out of print erotica I read in 8th grade. I still can’t remember who.

NINA: (Reading next question) How did Immanual Kant die?

SAVANNAH: A virgin.

CAT: Really?

ROAN: Touché.

NINA: Champagne glasses are shaped after whose breasts?

PIN: Lady Godiva?

NINA: Close. Marie Antoinette. Where were you when you heard John Lennon was killed?

CAT: Paul was watching Monday Night Football.

SAVANNAH: Coming home from "Kramer Vs. Kramer."

PIN: Waiting on a table of old Beatle fans.

ROAN: Writing in my journal.

NINA: I was reading a book on the Warren Commission. Here’s a good one: Name all ten commandments.

SAVANNAH: Hmmm. I think the first one is… "Be good to thine belly, thine liver and thine ass."

ROAN: Never enter a shopping mall or department store unless you have to buy underwear.

CAT: Never sleep with anybody whose child you wouldn’t want to have.

PIN: Dance. By all means, dance.

CAT: Spend as little time in cars as possible.

NINA: Never let anything come between me and my children.

SAVANNAH: Try not to pick favorites.

ROAN: Avoid using yellow or pink in water colors.

CAT: Know you’re not alone.

PIN: When all else fails, lower your standards.

NINA: When all else fails, raise your standards.

SAVANNAH: When all else fails, bathe.

NINA: Are we forgetting any?

PIN: …count it all good.

NINA: I think that’s almost all of them. What about the seven deadly sins?

 

Widowspeak, Act One Part D