America Finding Her Way

by Karen Sunde

looking.

  Mike: About time we met up?

  Kate: Could have been the checkout at Wal-Mart.

  Mike: Not a chance.

  (Strong feeling between them; Alan watches. Jen opening bag of food, pulls out champagne)

  Jen: We never ordered this.

  Mike: Comes special tonight with every seventeenth order of sesame noodles.

  (Kate erupts laughing)

  Jen: Ice it, Mom?

  (Jen hands bottle to Kate, who takes it to kitchen)

  Jen: Did I used to untie your shoelaces or something?

  Mike: Something.

  Jen: Before or after Canada.

  Mike: (Beat. Mike looks at Alan) Mostly before.

  Jen: Good question, huh?

  Mike: Astute young uh, woman.

  Alan: Not much escapes. (Checks watch, uneasy pause) So what you been up to?

  Mike: Not much.

  Alan: Still no woman to bring to the door?

  Mike: To bring here? Know one good enough?

  Alan: (Pointed) We both do.

  Mike: But you’ve already got her.

  Alan: Right.

  Mike: (Beat) Did try it for size, though. Nice girl. Whole thing – rings and silverware.

  Alan: I’m sorry.

  Mike: Nahh, pinched something awful. Not my style.

  Alan: Never was.

  (Kate is returning to stand in doorway)

  Mike: Look...Mimi's chandelier! She made me stand up there and clean every one of those crystals.

  Jen: She can't come down off the hill anymore.

  Mike: I heard. I'm sorry.

  Jen: She gets along. If you were a "mostly before" Canada, then...

  Mike: Bet she hates what Kate's done to her house.

  Kate: What Kate hasn't done is more to the point.

  Mike: You never did belong in a house.

  Kate: No.

  Mike: Your dad would be proud of the paper, Alan.

  Alan: Mike, don’t even...

  Mike: I mean it.

  Alan: (To Mike) What's this about! Can we eat, Kate?

  Jen: (Scrambling to her feet) I'll get the stuff.

  Kate: No we can’t.

  Jen: (Running to kitchen) Don't talk without me.

  Alan: Come on, It's past nine.

  Kate: We're not all here!

  Mike: I see some angles coming together, Alan.

  Alan: And you've been lying in wait? You didn't let us pick sides; I didn't even know there was a game.

  Mike: Maybe I was just...getting up nerve.

  Alan: Like "Whitman, Benuto & Lang"?

  Mike: Got a swing to it?

  Alan: Platinum. What else do you need?

  Mike: You. (Beat) The whole structure here is stuck. Not only this Project. Course the Council's deadlocked over it, but urban renewal is just a symptom.

  Alan: Nothing to do with me. Your firm is handling the condo plan?

  (Jen returns carrying tray with plates, chopsticks, cups)

  Mike: Yes, but I wouldn't skip a beat over this if it weren’t pointing to something darker.

  Alan: What? It’s simply old money versus main street.

  Mike: But when neither has a candidate to run, where are we?

  Alan: Forget it.

  Kate: Why doesn't anybody consider the real need?!

  Alan: The Project is prime real estate, Kate. It has to make big profits, to draw big taxes or there won't be any social programs.

  Kate: You're getting good at this. (She moves away to look out window)

  Alan: Ask Jen. She aced urban planning.

  Kate: Jen's a capitalist.

  Alan: The Project isn't stuck, Mike; it's just that there's a blind tract left.

  Mike: Blind?

  Alan: As soon as the owner's uncovered, it will be slugged out accordingly. Whichever side that owner decides to give the nod to...

  Mike: Why would anyone be anonymously hanging onto lots?

  Jen: Whether or not I’m a capitalist, it is embarrassing that post-industrial society has a whole class of people labeled "unsheltered."

  (Back door slam)

  Kate: Thank God. (Calls) Jamy!

  Mike: Jamy. About...(Measuring with hands)...this long, with fat cheeks?

  Jen: If you knew Jamy, how come I don't remember you?

  (Mike looks at Jen, takes a breath, doesn't answer)

  Kate: Jamy!

  Jamy: (Pause. Off) Yeah?

  Kate: Come out here! Where have you been? (Pause) Jamy?

  Jamy: (Off) Nowhere.

  Alan: Jamy! Get out here.

  (Jamy appears in the doorway – dirty, torn clothes, his arm and hand scraped, bleeding. He's "cool" at all costs, but hurting, and painfully withdrawn)

  Kate: (Standing) My god.

  Jamy: Whadda you want?

  Kate: You've been at the Project, haven't you.

  Jamy: Yeah. So?

  (Kate moves to him, reaches for his arm. He shies away)

  Kate: Let me see it.

  Jamy: It's nothing.

  Kate: Yeah, I know.

  (Kate examines Jamy's arm; he bites his lip to hide his pain)

  Jen: Hello, yourself.

  Jamy: Jen.

  Jen: You smell like a burned-out building.

  Jamy: Thanks.

  Alan: Your mother expected you at the lab. Right after school.

  Jamy: I forgot.

  Alan: Again? What do you suppose we can do about that?

  Jen: What do you want at the Project anyway? It's an abandoned slum.

  Jamy: Not abandoned. They were kicked out.

  Kate: What happened to you?

  Jamy: Nothing. I just slid...

  Kate: By the excavation?

  Alan: Those lots are fenced for a reason. No one's supposed to be there.

  Kate: What if you fell?

  Jamy: Aww, Mom.

  Kate: Aww, Mom, nothing. Look at you!

  Jamy: Lots of guys go in.

  Kate: To do what? Who were you with?

  Jamy: Nobody. A friend.

  Kate: From school?

  Jamy: (Beat) I'm going up.

  Kate: Yes, go on up. I'm coming.

  Jamy: (Going) Forget it. I don't need anything.

  Kate: Yeah, I know.

  (Jamy disappears upstairs)

  Jen: There you have it – The Brady Bunch goes slumming.

  Mike: He wouldn't know me anyway.

  Jen: Can we finally eat?

  Kate: Rick said he hasn't seen Jamy for days. The rest of the guys won't go near the Project – because of the pushers.

  Alan: Terrific. You need anything?

  Kate: We did lay in a gallon of peroxide, didn't we? (Goes upstairs)

  Jen: (Reaching to open cartons) We'll save you some, Mom.

  Mike: (As they begin eating) So that's baby Jamy.

  Alan: Basically.

  Mike: I didn't expect him so tall.

  Alan: Happens.

  Jen: If you were a "mostly-before" Canada...

  Alan: Jennel.

  Jen: ...how'd you make the transition from long hair to Scottish wool suits.

  Mike: (Stares at Alan) By way of a uniform, Ma'm.

  Jen: (Looking from Mike to Alan) Ah-oops.

  Mike: (Breaks stare by shaking his head at Jen) Amazing.

  Alan: Reminds you of Kate?

  Mike: Yes and no. Same impudent fire.

  Jen: Mom had fire?

  Mike: What's happened to her Alan?

  Alan: Happened – because you’re M.I.A. for what, fifteen years...

  Mike: Not quite.

  Alan: ...you think she should be sitting here…

  Mike: Kate used to dream for us all, then we'd make it true.

  Alan: And?

  Mike: She's shut down, locked up.

  Alan: Took you f
ifteen whole minutes to perceive that? God, you’ve got nerve!

  Mike: Alan. I know her.

  Alan: And I know you!

  (Alan cuts short his anger, breathes, lets down. Mike waits. Jen wide-eyed– )

  Alan: (Admitting) She never accepted the way people think here.

  Mike: But she went back to medicine. That should release...

  Alan: But not to practice or teach, God forbid she make money; she's locked on a damn machine all day.

  (Brain waves – electrical impulses tracked through brain – appear on scrim. Jen ventures, light– )

  Jen: Come on, she's still with dreams. She's just gone internal – (Rattles off– ) dreams, hallucinations, isolation, hyperventilation, memories...

  Alan: To prove what?

  Jen: ...syphilis, marathons, voodoo, yoga, starvation...

  Alan: That they lead nowhere.

  Mike: Nowhere?!

  Alan: The brain signal from each of these states goes up on her screen, and she's busy proving they're all the same.

  Mike: But that’s the opposite of what she wanted to prove. Brain signals are only part of what she...

  Alan: Electrodes don't lie.

  Mike: But that’s not Kate! Her thing was – if we used just 10% more of our brain we’d be able to cross into other dimensions at will!

  Jen: Whoa!

  Alan: Tell her that now, she’d hoot you out of her lab.

  Jen: “Other dimensions” are as dead to her as the Democratic Party.

  Mike: Don’t tell me…

  Alan: I’m telling you – bring her a fantasy, and she'll fry it.

  Jen: And it’s working. I cross-referenced her on the library's data base. Four hundred fifty one entries, sports fans! They're quoting her like mad.

  Alan: Remember acid visions? She's got 'em graphed – merely nerve tracks on the back of your eyeball.

  Jen: And the big boys are about to admit she can hook into people's dreams.

  Mike: You trying to tell me there's no "expanded" consciousness?

  Alan: No brave new universe.

  Mike: No messages from the great beyond?

  Alan: You got it.

  Mike: Now wait a minute. You can't explain away premonitions. People do get them.

  Alan: She has that on the agenda for tomorrow: Zap premonitions.

  (They all laugh. Above, Jamy yowls, and is spot-lit as Kate cleans his wound, binds it)

  Kate: Hold still.

  Jamy: Aren’t you done yet?

  Kate: Almost. Gotta clean it. (Pause) You knew we’d be angry, Jamy.

  Jamy: Yeah...

  Kate: Then why did you go there again?

  Jamy: I had to help, Mom. I had to.

  Kate: Help who?

  Jamy: (Little yelp, then– ) My friend Gaia.

  Kate: Lift up now.

  Jamy: Mom, It’s bad in there.

  Kate: I know. That’s why we don’t want you out…

  Jamy: Who owns it?

  Kate: The Project?

  Jamy: Who made it like that? Who gets to say?

  Kate: I don’t know – developers, the city…

  Jamy: People live there, Mom.

  (Below, Jen pipes up, while Kate looks at Jamy, and their light fades)

  Jen: What was Nam like?

  (Mike, thrown off guard, looks to Alan)

  Alan: You’re excused, Jennel.

  Jen: All right, all right. Thank you, and yes, I have studying to do.

  (Kate comes quickly down the stairs. Mike stands)

  Alan: How is he?

  Jen: He's not coming down?

  (Kate moves to food without answering, and begins to fill a plate)

  Alan: Kate?

  Kate: He doesn't want to.

  Jen: You spoil him rotten. He needs his head bashed in.

  Alan: Is he all right?

  Kate: I think so. Did he get a Tetanus this fall?

  Alan: Last year, wasn't it? It's twelve that gets everything.

  Kate: Twelve. God, twelve. I'm just glad he's home.

  Alan: Did he say what he's up to?

  Kate: No. Hanging out, “helping”.

  Alan: Great. You know what kind of characters are...

  Kate: He's not telling the whole story. And something about it is very important to him.

  Alan: Did you find out who he was with?

  Kate: Someone he met there, named Gaia. He wants to go out again.

  Alan: What!

  Kate: I told him no, he's grounded, that's it.

  Jen: Good. How long?

  Kate: So he's staying upstairs.

  Alan: Here. You sit. Let me take that. (Takes plate Kate filled for Jamy)

  Kate: Great. Good luck.

  Jen: How long?

  Alan: You said you have studying, young woman?

  Jen: Yeah sure. You done, Mike?

  (Kate flops, exhausted, shuts her eyes. Jen clears plates, goes to kitchen. Mike watching Kate. Alan starts up the stairs)

  Alan: You can ask her yourself.

  Mike: Sure.

  (Kate opens her eyes. Silence while they look at each other)

  Kate: Ask her what?

  Mike: (Begins filling remaining plate) You haven't eaten.

  Kate: Thank you, not now.

  Mike: Won't let me feed you? (Puts plate down. Pause) So. You're into people's heads?

  (Kate laughs lightly, then laughs more – it's a release)

  Mike: What's so funny.

  Kate: Are you putting on for the occasion or do you still talk that way?

  Mike: Bit of both. But, no – "into people's heads" was deliberate. That was calculated.

  Kate: To do what.

  Mike: To make you laugh?

  (She looks at him and away quickly)

  Mike: Ooo, keep it light, Benuto. (Beat) So: Yes. Well – the phrase could be taken practically-spiritually, technically-metaphorically, objectively-subjectively, but let me put it this way: Have you anywhere in your excursions into the brain stumbled upon the mind?

  Kate: Ohh, Michael.

  Mike: Or, have you decided it isn't in the brain at all, but maybe...

  Kate: I haven't time to daydream. I've too much to learn.

  Mike: About circuits and charges – which cells govern what?

  Kate: If you like.

  Mike: Whether if we graft this slab of tissue to that, I'll wake up writing with my left hand?

  Kate: I wouldn't waste my time on you.

  Mike: But if, if, on the way to making my odd-hand coordinate, you happened to misplace my imagination or intuition, you would say it was "beside the point" of your experiment. Right?

  Kate: It would be.

  Mike: And so I submit: your immortal soul is in danger.

  Kate: (Locking eyes, pause) And I bet you think we had a deeper relationship with the ocean before we'd seen its bottom, whereas...

  Mike: ...whereas the more we learn, the more I believe there are sea monsters.

  (Kate erupts laughing)

  Mike: Stop laughing. This is serious.

  Kate: I know, I know. But there are!

  Mike: There are what?

  Kate: Giant creatures. On the bottom of the sea.

  (Both laugh to a stop)

  Kate: What are you doing here, Mike.

  Mike: (Looks at her, beat, challenges– ) Your daughter doesn't know you're made of fire?

  Kate: Because I'm not.

  (A thump, above. Kate jumps)

  Kate: (Calls) Alan?

  Alan: (Appears at the top of the stairs) Just shut the hall window. (Starts down) It's starting to blow out there. Remind me to weather-strip before it freezes. This place is leaking at the seams.

  Kate: Is he quiet?

  Alan: Yeah. He's impressed with the bandage. Nice work.

  Kate: What did he say?


  (Jen entering with champagne, three glasses)

  Alan: Made no sense at all. He doesn't admit to the pushers.

  Kate: He may not know.

  Alan: If the other guys know, he knows. (Picking up champagne bottle) He just went on and on about the Project. Who owns it anyway? And before that? And before that?

  Kate: Indians. (Beat) Right?

  Jen: Wrong. Indians believe that land cannot be owned.

  Alan: I'm supposed to get that? (Fumbling with seal) Damn this thing. (Carries bottle to the kitchen)

  Kate: Half the time I can't follow him. You just have to hang in there till it comes clear.

  Alan: (Disappearing) Well I don't have your perception...

  Kate: Just prepare for shock, and don't second guess.

  Alan: (Off) ...or your patience!

  Jen: (Starting up the stairs) Hey, guys.

  Mike: You won't join us, Jen? We agreed to share, remember?

  Jen: Later. Might have to drive you home.

  Mike: God, kids have changed.

  Alan: (Off) Nah, they've just done it all. They're old and bored.

  Jen: I called off David, Mom. He wanted to hang, but I've got Expansionist History to crack. Besides, it's nasty out there. (Disappears above)

  Mike: (Calling after her) That's just when your mother'd have gone out.

  Alan: (Off, cork pops) Mike tell you he was married?

  Kate: (Surprise) No.

  Alan: (Off) But I take it it's "was" with a capital W.

  Kate: Oh.

  Mike: Happens to the worst of us. Just after I got out. Short-lived.

  Kate: No children?

  Mike: No.

  Alan: (Entering with open bottle) That's well. One should not bring children along on a sometime thing. Should they. Now: let each one speak his true mind, as we gather in the name of the innocent, or was it the nation…let's get down to it.

  Mike: Yea, team!

  Alan: (Handing them glasses, pouring) Mike. My dear. Myself. Here's to what was. And isn't. And never shall be. Amen.

  Mike: Ooo, that’s harsh – expecting me to down that.

  Alan: You came; you asked; I poured. And now you drink.

  Mike: (Clinking glasses with them) I hate to be the evil witch at the christening, but...

  (They drink, except for Mike, who raises his glass without drinking)

  Alan: Not bad stuff.

  Mike: Looks like I have to offer my own blessing. (Pouring again for them) Here's to the once and future king.

  Alan: Are you trying to embarrass me?

  Mike: Nope. Saw the old blaze in your eye. We could win.

  Alan: Sure. "Draft-Dodger for Governor!" (Drinks)

  Mike: Means nothing now. Ask Jen. Guys like you, revolters on principle, that's hero material. We could win.

  Alan: Back off, Benuto.

  Mike: (Pouring again for Alan) Why'd you come back from Canada? And why here?

  Alan: (Sharp explosive-- ) You don’t get to ask that!

  Kate: Alan...

  (Alan reins himself in, collapses)

  Alan: Why I’m back? – wish I knew. It was easy. It was a way to make peace...

  Mike: With your father? Jacob was already gone. You came back to your birthplace, took up his newspaper, and blossomed - a pillar of the community, chairman of half a dozen public service projects, advisor on the board of famine relief, city planning...

  Alan: (Finishing his thought) ...and it was here.

  Mike: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in?" You’re nobody’s prodigal, Alan. You are who you are now.

  Alan: (Pressured, strikes ) And who the hell are you? You have yet to wet your lips on this drink you're plying us with. Still all flash and no steel, huh Mikey?

  Mike: Chill now. I know power is scary, but you’ve stepped up, and you’re the man.

  Alan: I should chill?! Aren't you Mister "Me-first" to burn the draft card, but "Oh dear me no" to the cross-the-border bus?

  MIke: OK, let's touch down and get past, OK? Cause "then" has nothing to do with now.

  Alan: Nothing to do...!

  Mike: I was a naïve self-immolating kid! And it cost me, bigtime. We can’t all be steel like you. But we're not talking insurrection any more, we're talking rescue. Or don't you detect the gigantic black hole where our leadership should be?

  Jamy: (At the top of the stairs) Mom?

  Kate: (Startled, looks up) What is it, Jamy?

  Jamy: Where's the extra blankets? The heavy ones.

  Kate: The hall cupboard. Are you cold? I'll show you. (Gets up) He may be feverish. He was out in that rain. (Goes up stairs)

  Mike: I want you in the middle, Alan, because you can draw the sides together. There's a vision problem here, a lack of center.

  Alan: Look Mike, I'm flattered by your confidence, but all I want...

  Mike: …is to stay buried in the anonymity of a masthead. But you can't bury the grade of stuff you've got to offer.

  Alan: I'm not offering, Mike.

  Mike: Bullshit! It's me, Buddy. I've been "reading" you for three months. You’re not howling in the wilderness. (Glancing upstairs) Look at her. See the flowers in her hair?

  Kate: (Coming down) Silver threads among the flowers? I don't go backwards.

  Mike: No, forward! (Sings) "They're rioting in Africa, dum dada dada dumdum. There's strife in Iran." Nothing's changed! “Hell no, we won’t go. Bring the war home!” Remember Kate – full throat engaged, hoarse in the sunset?

  Kate: While you curled up with some chippie under the TR III's rain tarp?

  Alan: I don’t remember her getting hoarse.

  Mike: I picked up this tab; I get to make the speech, Ok? (Beat) Fourscore and seven years ago...oh, they were tough times, yeah, when bright young journalists and sparkling young physiologists tossed away their futures for the nobler fight, stamped in the blood and muck of combat boots. And we took a stand. And we shook the land.

  Alan: Until you buzzed off.

  (Bang of kitchen door shutting. They're startled)

  Kate: It's a draft.

  Mike: You buzzed first, my friend.

  Alan: Talk and talk, and then Fssssss – enlist.

  Kate: Stop this.

  Mike: Stick with the present. How are things at the paper, Alan?

  Alan: Kicking balls, is it?

  Mike: The people are hearing you, and they're desperate to believe in someone. What you should do is fuck your timid advertisers, and...

  Kate: Michael!

  Mike: Kate the accomplice! You let him creep into a monument to die.

  Alan: (Cool) And you say "the people" too smoothly for a licensed killer.

  Mike: (Stopped dead, stung) I killed no one but me! You really want to go there? You’ve right – I don't drink this champagne, because going to Nam made me a junkie alcoholic. Happy now?

  Kate: Oh my god Mike.

  Mike: Stay out, Kate! (Attacks Alan) So you gotta have a replay; can’t leave it alone? Which of us ran: Did she want you to go to Canada? Did you even ask her? You left her holding the bag!

  Kate: Shut up!

  Mike: You expected her to jump and join you, drop the fight, leave everything...

  Alan: If running to Canada was so easy, why didn’t you do it? Or if you had to prove you loved her more, or had more balls than me, why didn’t you just go to jail!

  Mike: (Rage breaks, he nearly weeps) Because we were kids! How could we know what to do, when any choice there was was sure to ruin us. Laws can’t apply – when you believe so much in your country, and you know it’s going wrong, you can’t hide; you have to face it. And when the pain of that, and her, and you became insane, my way to stop it all was to enlist!

  Jen: Hey, guys. (She's at the top of the stairs in a robe)

 
; (Alan and Kate look up at Jen)

  Jen: The hall window's standing open. Did you know – Jamy's not here?

  Kate: What? (Running to the stairs)

  Jen: There was a draft. I came to look. He's not here.

  (Blackout)

  ________________________

  (Lights up on Jen, dressed elegantly, going through lists, talking toward kitchen. Bottle sounds, off. Mike is changing offstage as he talks; Jen's dress was under her robe)

  Jen: Eckdorf?

  Mike: (Off) Yes.

  Jen: Bernstein.

  Mike: (Off) Yes.

  Jen: Johnson.

  Mike: (Off) Yes.

  Jen: Baker.

  Mike: (Off) Maybe.

  Jen: O'Reilly?

  Mike: (Off) Yes.

  Jen: Herman.

  Mike: (Off) Yes.

  Jen: Donato.

  Mike: (Off) No.

  Jen: No? How can there be a no?

  Mike: (Off) Well, I can't persuade everyone, can I?

  Jen: Can't you?

  Mike: (Leans in doorway with champagne bottle, in tuxedo) No.

  Jen: Oooh you sly...

  Mike: I did my part. Did you get enough of the bio-profile and pics printed?

  Jen: Yes yes yes. But I don't see why you had to use that family softball shot.

  Mike: Grow up, kiddo. Learn to lead with your strong suit.

  Jen: It's so frigging obvious.

  Mike: It's the clincher!

  Jamy: (Head in kitchen door) Is Dad here? Hi Mike.

  Mike: Hullo!

  Jen: Listen you – 5:45 is not 4:30. Get in here and get dressed.

  Jamy: Just tell me, is Dad here?

  Jen: Not yet, but...

  Jamy: Somebody wants to see him.

  Jen: There won't be time for that, Jamy.

  Jamy: (Leaving) I'll be right back.

  Jen: Jamy!

  Mike: Aah yes, Mr Wonderful. How's he doing?

  Jen: I don't think I'll have kids, you know? (Throws some flyers down, begins folding them)

  Mike: (Picking up a flyer) Whatever happened to "love thy brother?"

  Jen: I mean, this one is like some-where-else! He only listens when he's tied down, nd then, only long enough to get loose.

  Mike: Maybe it's girls.

  Jen: You kidding? For girls he'd wash.

  Mike: Didn't I read someplace "thirteen is the nastiest month?"

  Jen: Year, dumbo.

  Mike: Year.

  Jen: There was nothing nasty about me – I captained the basketball team, made honor roll, and worked my butt off at the paper. Did every job on the place.

  Mike: Daddy's ink-stained darling, huh? This is good of your mother. (Referring to picture on flyer)

  Jamy: (Re-entering