by Nora Ephron
LILLIAN: So you were an accidental Trotskyite, just as you were an accidental Mrs. Edmund Wilson. Just out of curiosity, what decisions in your life did you actually make?
MARY: What I believe is that the decisions we agonize over are often the most insignificant—what to have for dinner, beef or chicken. What color to make the rug. But the big things almost seem to choose you. I was like “Stendhal’s hero, who took part in something confused and disarrayed that he later learned was the Battle of Waterloo.” I had no idea that I was making the most important decision of my life—to be serious, to be involved with public affairs, to be an intellectual. And I had no idea that I was choosing not just to be a Trotskyite but to be an anti-communist. Of course, I wasn’t a right-wing anti-communist like Senator McCarthy, I was a liberal, you understand the distinction—
LILLIAN: Well, I don’t, as you know. I don’t understand that at all. Are you done?
MARY waves to LILLIAN to proceed.
I don’t have a little story that makes my politics make sense. But there was nothing whimsical about my ending up where I did, even though it’s hard to be explicit about why. But I suppose—growing up in the South, seeing the way blacks were treated—well, that’s probably too simple.… Once I was with Sophronia, and I refused to sit in the back of the bus. The driver threw us off, and Sophronia was very angry with me, because she thought I was showing off.…
MARY: Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Rosa Parks—
LILLIAN: When I got older and realized I probably would never make much of a radical, I was nonetheless attracted to them. And then I got involved with Hammett, who was committed, no question, and we all hated the Nazis and we all cared about the workers.… [Beat.] Too simple, too simple.… And guilt, guilt played a part. Because I was successful during the Depression.… [Beat.] And, of course, I’d gone to Russia before the war, and it was hard to go there and not have feelings for the Russian people. They were our allies at the time. I wanted the revolution to work. Sue me. [Beat.] And I had a kind of impatience with … splitting hairs … with people who were always finding ways to get around believing in something, people who were looking for loopholes—
MARY: Finding pimples—
LILLIAN: Seizing on technicalities and using them as an excuse to avoid taking a position on something that was worth taking a position on. Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on. I didn’t want to be on your side, quibbling—it seemed like quibbling—I wanted—
MARY: —to be one of the boys.
LILLIAN: We all wanted to be one of the boys.
MARY: I never wanted to be one of the boys—
LILLIAN: But you wanted to be the only woman at the table, which is practically the same thing. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be on the side of change and equality—
MARY: We were for change and equality—
LILLIAN: But it didn’t feel that way. It felt as if you were just a bunch of critics. Being against things was easy. I wanted to be for something. That was the hard part.
MARY: So you overlooked “the bad stuff.” The technicalities. The purges, the murders, the Nazi-Soviet Pact—how could you have remained sympathetic after the Nazi-Soviet Pact?
LILLIAN: Miss Hellman does not wish to discuss the Nazi-Soviet Pact—
MARY: I know. And you never did. You just said, “We were wrong,” as if that was that, as if that took care of the fact that you looked the other way when it was all staring you in the face—
LILLIAN: You’re just angry because we became heroes—
MARY: What?
LILLIAN: Think about it. It’s true. The war ended, the Russians were no longer our allies, I was blacklisted, thousands of people were blacklisted. And all of you—all of you who were so “right” about things didn’t lift a finger to help. And then the House Un-American Activities Committee came along and gave us all a chance to do something brave. [Beat.] And I went there on that bad morning—
MARY: In your Balmain dress—
LILLIAN: Yes. In my Balmain dress and a brand-new hat and a beautiful pair of white kid gloves. I was fabulous.
MARY: And lest anyone forget, she wrote an entire book about it. You’d have thought the woman had gone to jail. Years later there was a play on Broadway—the testimony of the people who’d appeared before the committee, all of it in the public record, and of course her statement was read, it was the high point of the play, and she actually asked to be paid for it.
LILLIAN: I did. And guess what? They paid me!
She laughs. MARY laughs, too. A knock at the door. LILLIAN stands and goes over to a door. She opens it. A SUMMONS SERVER is there.
SUMMONS SERVER: Are you Lillian Hellman?
LILLIAN: Yes?
He hands her a subpoena. LILLIAN opens the envelope. Then she puts on her hat and her white kid gloves.
ENSEMBLE:
GIVE US NAMES
DO YOU SWEAR
ARE YOU NOW
DID YOU EVER
THE COMMITTEE IS IN ORDER
GIVE US NAMES
ARE YOU NOW
HAVE YOU EVER EVER BEEN
STATE YOUR NAME
SO HELP YOU GOD
ANNOUNCER: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
LILLIAN: [From her letter to the committee.] “I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive.… To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.… I would, therefore, like to come before you and speak of myself. I am prepared to tell you anything you wish to know about my views or actions if your Committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the Committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the Fifth Amendment at this hearing.”
MARY yanks at the red parachute drop, and it vanishes.
Scene 5
What happened at Sarah Lawrence.
MARY emerges from the wings, pulling a rope that brings a porch onto the stage.
LILLIAN: What’s this?
MARY: Sarah Lawrence College. You skipped right over it.
LILLIAN: It wasn’t that important.
MARY: It’s where we met.
LILLIAN: [Referring to her letter to the committee.] As far as I’m concerned, that was the first-act curtain.
MARY: But first Sarah Lawrence. It’s 1948.
LILLIAN: I suppose I have to get the tea.
MARY: I got the porch.
LILLIAN goes offstage and returns pushing a table with a large silver tea service of cups and saucers. MARY arranges the women in the ENSEMBLE. She calls in HAROLD TAYLOR and places him to the right of LILLIAN’s chair.
LILLIAN: There were many more people than this.
MARY: We don’t have many more people.
LILLIAN: Well, then use some of the men to fill in.
Some of the men in the ENSEMBLE sit with the women.
Where was I?
MARY: Over there.
LILLIAN walks to her chair.
Are you ready?
LILLIAN: Are you ready?
MARY: All right. Stephen Spender invited us to speak—
LILLIAN: I don’t think so. Harold Taylor, the president of Sarah Lawrence, invited us to speak. Not that it matters.
MARY: You’re talking to the students when I come in. Stephen is there.
STEPHEN SPENDER waves hello.
You’re out on the sunporch at the president’s house—
STEPHEN SPENDER: No, no, that’s not right—
MARY and LILLIAN look at STEPHEN SPENDER.
It wasn’t at the president’s house—
MARY: Where
was it, then?
STEPHEN SPENDER: It was at my house—
MARY: On Stephen Spender’s sunporch, then—
STEPHEN SPENDER: We didn’t have a sunporch.
MARY: It was definitely on a sunporch. So it must have been at the president’s house—
STEPHEN SPENDER: I’m positive it was at my house—
LILLIAN stands.
LILLIAN: Never mind. What am I saying?
MARY: You’re talking about John Dos Passos.
As LILLIAN sits back down:
LILLIAN: You have to explain who John Dos Passos is—
STEPHEN SPENDER: [By way of explanation.] A famous novelist and radical—
MARY: You were saying that John Dos Passos had gone to Spain during the Spanish civil war and turned against the loyalist cause because he didn’t like the food in Madrid. And you didn’t notice me, probably because I looked quite young at the time. I couldn’t bear it. All those lies, so smooth, as if they were coming out of a tube. And you were so clever. You weren’t being hostile at all. “Oh, that Dos,” you were saying—
LILLIAN: [Repeating.] “Oh, that Dos.” Like that?
MARY: Just like that. “He did love his food.”
LILLIAN: [Repeating.] “He did love his food.”
MARY: Is it coming back to you?
LILLIAN: No. It doesn’t sound like me at all.
MARY: And I interrupted. And I said—[To the STUDENTS, heatedly.] “John Dos Passos didn’t turn against the loyalists, he turned against the communists. And it wasn’t because of the food in Madrid—it was because one of his closest friends in Spain, an incredibly brave man named Andres Nin, had just been tortured and murdered in a communist prison by Stalinists, that’s why.” [She has moved herself to tears.]
LILLIAN: Were you actually crying?
MARY: I was very upset. And then you jangled the bracelets—
MARY signals for the bracelets to descend. They do. LILLIAN looks up to see them.
LILLIAN: But I never wore bracelets.
MARY: Of course you wore bracelets.
LILLIAN: You must have me confused with someone else.
MARY: There are pictures of you wearing bracelets—
LILLIAN: Nonsense. Get those goddamn bracelets out of here. [They vanish.]
STEPHEN SPENDER: [Thinking it over.] I’m starting to wonder if I was even there—
MARY: Of course you were there—
LILLIAN: Maybe he wasn’t—
STEPHEN SPENDER: [To MARY] I do remember that afterwards she said we’d arranged the entire episode so we could redbait her.
MARY: Well, how could we have red-baited her? How could we have arranged for her to say something so perfectly idiotic?
LILLIAN: Are you the only person who’s allowed to say that people sometimes do serious things for shallow reasons?
MARY: But in his case, it wasn’t true.
LILLIAN: How do you know? How do we know why anyone does anything? In real life, I mean.
STEPHEN SPENDER: If I could just throw something in here that is only going to confuse things, I’m afraid. A few months earlier, before any of this happened, I had dinner with John Dos Passos. He had been in England, which had just elected a socialist government, and he announced that he no longer believed in socialism because he’d gone to a restaurant in London and found a bug in his chicken.
A beat.
LILLIAN: A bad moment for your team.
MARY: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for that.
STEPHEN SPENDER: It doesn’t mean your version isn’t accurate—
MARY: It’s not “my version.” It’s what happened.
LILLIAN: It’s not what happened.
STEPHEN SPENDER: What do you think happened?
LILLIAN: What do I think happened? I thought you’d never ask. [She stands and moves some of the furniture around.] I was here. [She sits down.] Harold—you’re next to me.
And the sunlight was coming into the room, like so—[A light hits her.] Even more sunlight. [The light gets a little brighter.] Lovely. And the students were sitting on the floor, because so many of them had turned up to see me that there weren’t enough chairs—
The STUDENTS sit on the floor.
They sat cross-legged, looking up at me like little fish—no, like baby birds in a nest, waiting to be fed—[She motions to the STUDENTS to tilt their chins upward slightly.] When I suddenly noticed—over there—
She motions to MARY to move to the other side of the room. MARY crosses and the STUDENTS turn to watch her.
The students never took their eyes off me—
The STUDENTS turn back to LILLIAN.
—a quivering dark cylinder of rage. [To the lighting person.] Even darker. [The light on MARY dims.] She was holding a teacup and saucer—
MARY is handed a teacup and saucer, or perhaps a teacup and saucer are lowered from the ceiling on a hook.
I was talking. I’d been asked a question—
A STUDENT raises her hand.
STUDENT: Did you ever meet Ernest Hemingway?
LILLIAN: “Did I ever meet Ernest Hemingway?” And I was answering. I was saying … [To the STUDENTS.] I would have starved to death in Spain but for Ernest. Because when I told him I was going there, during the war, he said to me, “Bring food, there’s none.” And when he and I had dinner in Madrid, in someone’s apartment, I brought sardines and pâté. And Ernest said thank God I had, because Dos Passos had just been there and hadn’t brought any food at all and ended up eating everyone else’s. That’s what I said, it was completely harmless, and Madam over there began shaking—you could hear her teacup rattling against the saucer. [To MARY.] Go ahead. I did your version. Do mine.
MARY starts shaking her teacup against her saucer.
And she said—
MARY: How can you say that about Dos?
LILLIAN: Dos. So she would be sure I would know she knew him. “How can you say that about Dos?” What had I said? And perhaps I said something like “Well, Dos loved his food,” and she reacted quite bizarrely. She said—
MARY: [Shaking her cup and saucer.] You’re just saying that because you can’t stand that he went over to the other side—
LILLIAN: Good. Keep shaking the cup.
MARY: You’re just saying that because you’ve never admitted what the Stalinists did in Spain—[MARY continues, overlapping with LILLIAN.]
LILLIAN: I had no idea what was going on. I turned to the president of the school and said—[Turning to one of the people in the room.] “Who is that girl?” And he said—
PRESIDENT: Mary McCarthy.
LILLIAN: And I said “Oh.” I said, “Oh, the one who married Edmund Wilson for his looks.” And some of the students laughed—the ones who knew what Edmund Wilson looked like—
Many of the students laugh. So does LILLIAN.
And she dropped her cup and saucer on the floor—
MARY: What?
LILLIAN: And they shattered into a million tiny pieces.
MARY: Never happened—
LILLIAN: Go ahead, do it—
MARY drops the teacup and saucer on the floor, and they break into tiny pieces.
And Harold Taylor’s maid came rushing in to sweep it up.
MARY: I knew a black maid would enter the scene. [To the audience.] She could never write a play that didn’t have a black maid in it, speaking in the most appalling way—
BLACK MAID: Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, it ain’t right to let young’uns use the good china, Mistah Taylor. Ah tol’ you this would happen—
LILLIAN: Actually, the maid said nothing.
MARY: Well, had she spoken, that’s the sort of thing you would have had her say.
STEPHEN SPENDER: I don’t remember any of this. Where was I?
LILLIAN: You weren’t there, Stephen. We went to your house afterwards. [To MARY.] You came to pick a fight. Why? Was it because I slept with Philip Rahv?
MARY: You never slept with Philip Rahv—
LILLIAN: Fine. Sc
ratch Philip Rahv as a possible explanation. Were you jealous of me?
MARY: [Incredulous.] Jealous? Of what?
LILLIAN: I know. What can it be? Not my looks, certainly. So: my money? My fame? My farm!? Tell the truth, you always wanted a farm—
MARY: I am not a jealous person.
LILLIAN: Nor am I.
MARY: It’s just too easy to say that the reason women fight with each other is because they’re jealous.
LILLIAN: Absolutely. We had plenty of reasons to dislike each other. Good reasons.
MARY: Real reasons. I’m just not a jealous person.
LILLIAN: Hmmmph.
MARY: Although I have to say I have never known a jealous person who admitted to being a jealous person.
LILLIAN: Neither have I. [They nod. A small moment between them, perhaps.]
STEPHEN SPENDER: [Trying to find some common ground.] So are we in agreement about something?
MARY: We are.
LILLIAN: We had a fight.
MARY: Exactly.
LILLIAN: And you dined out on it for years—
MARY: You dined out on it for years—
LILLIAN: [Imitating MARY.] “I was so young, she thought I was a student”—
MARY: “They came there to red-bait me”—
LILLIAN: “Dos”—
MARY: “Ernest”—
LILLIAN: Was there ever a moment we could have been friends?
MARY: Friends? Hard to imagine.
STEPHEN SPENDER: Ladies! Ladies!
MARY: We had a fight.
LILLIAN: A skirmish, really.
MARY: And the captain of the first U-boat straightened her stockings and drove back to her home.
LILLIAN: And the captain of the second U-boat straightened her stockings and drove back to her farm. Which was a farm.
A woman enters from the wings. This is MURIEL GARDINER.
MURIEL GARDINER: Oh. Am I in the right place?
MARY: Hello. You’re early. I didn’t expect you for an hour—
MURIEL GARDINER: I know. I had a cancellation and nowhere else to go, really—
LILLIAN looks at MURIEL GARDINER, curious.
LILLIAN: Who is this person?
MARY: Have you ever seen her before?
LILLIAN: Never.
