Empathy
Page 5
She tried hard to remember.
“Let’s see. Well, I didn’t like being told what to do. I didn’t like being told that lesbians were the only group I could pick from.”
“What else?”
“I’m in competition with men, clearly,” Anna said. “Why should they be able to just walk in and have something that I can’t have?”
“And what’s that?” he asked.
“Straight women, of course.”
“Well, that does sound logical,” he said. “But it is also way off. What else?”
“Well, there’s also that big lie about homosexuality. I don’t believe that it’s just this tiny little band of deviants. I’ve been crossing the thin line all my life on a regular basis. If they’ll sleep with me, how straight can they be?”
“What else?”
“If a straight woman falls in love with me, she must really love me. If a gay woman loves me, she’s just a lesbian looking for a girlfriend.”
“You do amazing things with logic,” Doc said, writing furiously. “What else?”
“Well, men who are much less than I am get a lot of breaks. They’re judged differently. I wanted to be judged like they are judged.”
“What else?”
“It’s hard to love a beggar.”
“Do you prefer pornography or sex?” Doc asked.
“Sex,” Anna said.
“Anything else?” Doc asked.
“Yes,” she said. “On top of all my personal problems there are these social problems. There are these facts about my friends dying of AIDS. I’m thirty-one years old, Doctor, and I read the obituary page first.”
“I think we need to start at the beginning,” Doc said. “Let us start with your family. How do you feel about your family?”
Anna crossed her legs and arms in an unconscious attempt to protect her genitals.
“My family seems so unreal to me. And when I am with them, I also am not real. I am a character in some movie and someone else wrote the script. Doc, did you ever read Delmore Schwartz’s In Dreams Begin Responsibilities? In the opening piece a man walks into a movie theater, and there on the screen is the story of his parents’ lives. The story of how they met. He watches, amazed as he sees his parents’ courtship projected before him. They walk along the Coney Island boardwalk. They’re young, in love. Finally, Schwartz can’t take it anymore. He leaps up from his seat in the dark and yells, ‘Don’t do it. It’s not too late to change your minds. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous.’”
“Now, Anna, I know that patients often reveal unconscious wishes in seemingly casual anecdotes. So tell me, if you imagined that your family was a movie, what would it look like? What would happen on the screen?”
“Well, Doc,” she said, “it would go something like this.”
Chapter Six
FADE IN
EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREET. EARLY SUNDAY MORNING 1990.
The streets are empty but covered by the garbage left over from Saturday night. ANNA, a thirty-year-old woman, is crossing the street toward the subway entrance. She is dressed up awkwardly, so that she stumbles slightly in high heels.
She passes a MAN leaning against the subway entrance smoking from a crack pipe.
MAN
I want to lick your pussy.
ANNA
I’m going to a funeral.
MAN
I hope it’s not someone close.
INT. HALLWAY OF AN OLD-FASHIONED APARTMENT BUILDING.
ANNA rings the bell. Her mother, RUTH, opens the door. RUTH is simply but appropriately dressed. She does not dye her hair and she wears no makeup beyond a little lipstick.
RUTH
Thank God you wore a dress.
ANNA
Hi, Ma.
RUTH
But your hair is too short.
INT. RUTH AND IRV’S APARTMENT. MODESTLY DECORATED AND COMFORTABLE BUT FINANCIALLY SECURE.
ANNA
Where’s Pop?
RUTH
He went to rent a car.
INT. RUTH AND IRV’S LIVING ROOM. PHOTOS AND OTHER MEMORABILIA ON THE MANTELPIECE. BOOKS VISIBLE ON THE SHELVES INCLUDE PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT, ISAAC SINGER, AND TWO ROWS OF BOOKS BY FREUD.
STEVE, Anna’s brother, enters the room. Although he is two years younger, he is much more comfortable in his funereal garb. Yet he is generally uncomfortable personally.
STEVE
Hi, Anna.
They kiss.
STEVE
I flew in as soon as my secretary gave me the message.
ANNA
Where’s Pop?
STEVE
He went to rent a car.
BARBARA, their younger sister, enters the room. She is twenty and, in addition to being chronologically younger, she also plays the role of the baby of the family.
ANNA
Hi, Barb.
BARB
Hi, Anna. Pop went to get a car.
STEVE
Barb, your shoes aren’t shined.
ANNA
Steve, give her a break. She’s old enough to dress herself.
STEVE
Then why doesn’t she?
BARB
Mom’s been trashing Morris all morning. I think she feels guilty that he croaked.
RUTH
Guilty? I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. The man was a fascist pure and simple. I know he was your father’s childhood friend, but he was a Republican. He was against busing but for the wrong reasons.
ANNA
Where’s Pop? It’s almost two hours to the cemetery.
RUTH
He had to take care of a patient who is suicidal and then he had to rent a car.
ANNA
A what?
STEVE, BARB, RUTH
A car!
INT. A RENTED CAR. ONE HOUR LATER. DRIVING TO LONG ISLAND.
IRV is driving. RUTH is sitting next to him. The three children are in the backseat.
RUTH
He was a real Republican. He voted for Goldwater. I remember I told him I voted for Henry Wallace and he said, “Who?” Whenever a black person came into his travel agency he would follow them around to make sure they didn’t steal anything.
BARB
What can you steal in a travel agency?
STEVE
Mom, you should see what it’s like living in the South. If you pull over at one of those rest stops on the highway, they sell little salt and pepper shakers of black mammies eating watermelon.
ANNA
What do your students say about it?
STEVE
They don’t notice. The university is all white so the students’ lives are all white. Black people are something they see on television or public transportation.
IRV
I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
BARB
What don’t you get, Pop?
IRV
He was sitting in a chair and then he slumped over, dead. Was it cardiovascular arrest or an aneurism? I don’t know.
INT. THE CAR DRIVES UP TO THE FUNERAL CHAPEL IN SUBURBAN LONG ISLAND.
RUTH
Here we are.
STEVE
Where do we park?
BARB
Pop, pull into the shopping mall across the street.
RUTH
Irv, park in the mall.
IRV
Where should I park?
RUTH
In the mall.
ANNA
There’s Sylvia.
RUTH
There’s Morris’s sister.
IRV
She’s the oldest and she had to watch her younger brother die.
BARB
I hope I die first.
RUTH
Her husband died. Her daughter’s in the Peace Corps.
EXT. IN FRONT OF THE FUNERAL HOME.
SYLVIA, very distraught, is standing i
n front of the funeral home. ANNA is the first to reach her as the others walk over, one by one, from the parking lot.
ANNA
Sylvia.
SYLVIA
I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how I feel. I’m not feeling anything. I can’t cry. I just can’t cry.
STEVE
Sylvia, how are you doing?
SYLVIA
I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t cry. I’m not able to cry. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know.
BARB
Hi, Sylvia.
SYLVIA
I was just telling your sister and your brother how I don’t know what I feel. I’m not feeling a thing. I was just telling them. Not a thing.
RUTH
Sylvia.
SYLVIA
Ruthie. I was just telling the kids that I haven’t been able to cry. Not a tear. Where’s Irv?
RUTH
He’s parking the car.
SYLVIA
Look at you, you’re all so broken up. Me? I don’t know what I feel.
INT. THE LOBBY OF THE FUNERAL HOME.
The three siblings are standing together awkwardly, surrounded by short relatives.
HILDA FRIEDMAN
You don’t remember me but I’m your daddy’s second cousin, Hilda Friedman. This is my husband, Izzy, and that’s my sister Frieda Shluvsky. You’re such a big girl now, how old are you?
ANNA
Thirty.
SOPHIE PEARLMAN
Remember me? I’m your cousin Sophie Pearlman from Glendale. I remember Stevie when you were just a little boy. You came to my store in the Bronx and you wet your pants, wee-wee all over the floor. What are you doing now?
STEVE
I teach semiotics.
SOPHIE
And you, you’re still the baby.
BARB
Yeah.
IRV enters the room.
HILDA
There’s your father. Irv, can you believe it?
IRV
Hilda, how are you?
HILDA
Eh, the diabetes. You shouldn’t know.
IRV
Are you taking medication?
HILDA
Yeah, but the real problem is Izzy.
(Loud voice.)
Izzy, wake up, it’s Irv, the doctor. Irv, Izzy had a psychotic break.
IRV
No kidding?
IZZY
Could you believe it?
IRV
How are you feeling?
IZZY
Not too good.
SYLVIA enters.
SYLVIA
Irv, I’ve been looking all over for you. I’m all alone here.
IRV
How are you doing, Sylvia?
SYLVIA
I can’t cry. I just can’t cry.
INT. THE WAITING ROOM OF THE FUNERAL HOME. PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT THEIR WATCHES.
IRV is talking to two old men in polyester suits and yarmulkes.
JOEY WARSHOFSKY
So, Irv, then she had the radium implants.
IRV
That must have been difficult for you.
STEVE
How are you doing, Pop?
IRV
Steve, you know the Warshofsky boys, Yankel and Joey.
STEVE
How are you?
YANKEL
Not so good.
STEVE is obviously embarrassed by the whole scene. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with these people and can’t understand why his father is so connected to them.
IRV
Stevie, Yankel was just telling me about some illness in his family.
YANKEL
Yeah, Irv, it’s the circulation. Look, my leg, it only goes this far.
STEVE
Dad, we’ve got to go into the chapel now.
IRV
One minute.
JOEY
I tell ya, Irv, it was a big shock to have Morris go so quickly.
IRV
I am shocked.
JOEY
That guy was built like a horse. He took his pressure five times a day. He never touched a piece of meat. A real vegetarian.
YANKEL
I could have sworn you’d go first, Irv. What with your lousy history and all. To tell you the truth, this is quite a shock.
IRV
I am shocked.
INT. IN THE CHAPEL.
All the mourners are seated in pews. RUTH, IRV, and SYLVIA are on one side of the first row. ANNA, STEVE, and BARB are sitting together in the back.
BARB
Who are all these people? I can’t believe I’m related to them. Who’s that?
ANNA
That’s Shirley Weintraub. She married a Christian and her father never spoke to her again.
BARB
Which one is her father?
ANNA
Walter, the dissipated one in the third row.
BARB
What a jerk. What is he, religious?
ANNA
No, he’s a shmuck.
STEVE
Now Morris is dead and Shirley and Walter are in the same room for the first time in ten years.
RABBI
Morris Levine had a life. He was born in the Bronx in 1923. He worked hard for his parents in their small shoe repair shop. He was a perfect son. When his country called him to duty he fought bravely at D Day. And true to his sense of responsibility Morris returned to the shop. Twenty-five years later when his father died, Morris took over the shop and turned it into a thriving travel agency. Years from now when we think of Morris we’ll say, “Morris, thanks for the memories.” Morris Levine will be laid to his eternal rest at Beth Sefer Torah, on exit fourteen.
EXT. OUTSIDE THE CHAPEL AS THE MOURNERS ARE FILING OUT. LATE AFTERNOON
RUTH
Look at Walter. He looks awful. He should, the way he treated his own daughter.
IRV
What can you do?
RUTH
Who, Walter?
IRV
No, Morris. He just fell over and he was dead. He didn’t even know it was happening.
WALTER comes running over.
WALTER
Irv, Irv, come quick. It’s Sophie Pearlman. She passed out.
RUTH
Don’t tell me.
IRV
I’m coming.
ANNA
Dad, you’re running around taking care of everybody and no one is taking care of you.
IRV
That’s what happens when you’re a doctor - you get used to it.
INT. MORRIS’S SMALL BRONX APARTMENT.
At the shiva. Lots of close-ups of the deli platters. The relatives are gobbling smoked meat.
JOEY WARSHOFSKY
Good tongue. The best.
AUNT MOLLY
Anna, do you remember me? I’m your Aunt Molly from Chicago.