The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

  HANNIMAN: They have yelled at, screamed at, threatened, insulted, castigated, crucified every person on our staff. In every publication. On every network. From every street corner. Useful?

  NED: Who is she? I’ve been infected for so long, and I still don’t get sick. What’s that all about? Everyone thinks I am sick. Everyone around me is sick. I keep waiting to get sick. I don’t know why I’m not sick. All my friends are dead. I think I’m guilty I’m still alive.

  TONY: Not everybody dies in any disease. You know that. Your numbers could even go back up on their own. Why is my hospital surrounded by your army of activists? Am I going to he burned at the stake if I can’t restore your immune system?

  NED: I’m not so active these days.

  TONY: You?

  NED: (Softly.) They don’t know I’m here.

  HANNIMAN: Why don’t I believe that?

  NED: What have we achieved? I’m here begging.

  (NED suddenly reaches out and touches TONY’s face, HANNIMAN’s back is turned.)

  This new treatment—you can’t even stick it into me legally. Can you?

  TONY: Ned—I do think I’m on to something. You’ve really got to keep your mouth shut. You’ve got to promise me. And then you’ve got to keep that promise.

  NED: The world can’t be saved with our mouths shut.

  TONY: Give me lessons later.

  NED: How long can you keep me alive? I’ve got work to finish. Two years. Can you do that?

  TONY: You know there aren’t any promises. Two years, the way you look now, doesn’t seem impossible.

  NED: How about three? It’s a very long novel. Why are you willing to do this for me?

  HANNIMAN: Because if it works, you’ll scream bloody murder if anyone stands in his way. Because if it doesn’t work, you’ll scream bloody murder for him to find something else. That’s his reasoning. Now I would just as soon you weren’t here. Period.

  TONY: (To HANNIMAN.) Give him the double d.d.b.m. (Leaves.)

  NED: What’s a double d.d.b.m.?

  (From the cart, HANNIMAN wields an enormous needle. ALEXANDER, a young boy, is seen dimly on the side. He’s wet from a shower, and wrapped in towels. He comes closer to see what’s going on.)

  HANNIMAN: Mice and chimps were easy. You’re our first one who can talk back. Drop your drawers and bend over.

  ALEXANDER: What’s she doing?

  NED: I want my mommy.

  ALEXANDER: Mommy’s not home yet.

  HANNIMAN: You even wrote in The Advocate you’d heard I was a lesbian.

  NED: You’re Mrs. Dr. Della Vida?

  (She rams the hypodermic into his ass.)

  (Screams.) We consider that a compliment!

  ALEXANDER: Why are you here? (No answer.) Please tell me what’s happening!

  HANNIMAN: (Still injecting him.) I think it takes great courage for you to set foot anywhere near here. My husband works twenty hours a day and usually sleeps the other four in one of these rooms. I’m pregnant and I don’t know how. Or why. With the number of patients we’re seeing, I’m bearing an orphan. (Extracts the hypodermic and takes a larger one.)

  NED: That wasn’t it?

  (She laughs. She administers the second needle even deeper. He screams again, louder.)

  ALEXANDER: Tell me what’s going on!

  NED: I’m starring in this wonderful play about euthanasia.

  (HANNIMAN finishes and leaves.)

  ALEXANDER: Where’s Benjamin? Where’s anyone? Don’t you have any friends? At a time like this? Something awful’s happening. Isn’t it? (No answer.) Will you give me a hug?

  NED: Get lost, Lemon.

  ALEXANDER: Just remember—I was here. (Leaves.)

  NED: (Changing from his street clothes.) What do you do when you’re dying from a disease you need not be dying from? What do you do when the only system set up to save you is a pile of shit run by idiots and quacks? What do you do when your own people won’t unite and fight together to save their own lives? What do you do when you’ve tried every tactic you can think of to fight back and none of them has worked and you are now not only completely destitute of new ideas but suddenly more frightened than you’ve been before that your days are finally and at last more numbered and finite and that an obit in the New York Times is shortly to be yours? Why, you talk yourself into believing the quack is a genius (Massages his sore ass.) and his latest vat of voodoo is a major scientific breakthrough. And you check yourself in. So, here I am. At the National Institutes of Quacks.

  They still don’t know how this virus works inside our bodies. They still don’t know how this disease progresses and what really triggers this progression. They still don’t know if the virus could be hiding someplace else—its major home might not even be in the blood at all. Finally, in total desperation, my kids out there prepared a whole long list of what they still don’t know; we even identified the best scientists anywhere in the world to find the answers.

  When we were on the outside, fighting to get in, it was easier to call everyone names. But they were smart. They invited us inside. And we saw they looked human. And that makes hate harder.

  It’s funny how everyone’s afraid of me. And my mouth. And my temper. They should only know I can’t get angry now to save my soul. Eight years of screaming at one idiot to wake up and four more years of trying to get another idiot to even say the word can do that. They knew we couldn’t keep up the fight and that eventually they’d be able to kill off all the faggots and spics and niggers. When I started yelling, there were forty-one cases of a mysterious disease. Now a doctor at Harvard is predicting a billion by the new century. And it’s still mysterious. And the mystery isn’t why they don’t know anything, it’s why they don’t want to know anything.

  So what does all this say about the usefulness of. . . anything?

  Yes, the war is lost.

  And I’d give anything to get angry again.

  ALEXANDER: (Reappearing, still wrapped in towel.) You are not going to die!

  NED: Go away.

  ALEXANDER: If you die I die!

  NED: Please go away.

  ALEXANDER: I kept you alive for quite some time, thank you very much!

  NED: Lemon—get the fuck out of here.

  ALEXANDER: I was here first! Are you rich and successful and famous? Two of them? One? Did you fall in love? (No answers.) Every single second of my entire life I’ve wanted there to be somebody! I gave you great stuff to work with. How did you fuck it up? Excuse me for saying so, but I think you’re a mess.

  (He goes to his Eden Heights bedroom. The walls are plastered with theatrical posters from hit shows—South Pacific, Mister Roberts, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie.)

  (To NED and the audience.) Alexander the Great ruled the entire known world, from east to west and north to south! He conquered it, with his faithful companions. He was very handsome. He was very fearless. Everybody knew who he was and everybody loved him and worshiped him and cherished him. He was king of everything! (Singing.) “Give me some men who are stouthearted men who will fight for the right they adore!” Good evening, Mr. Murrow. Thank you for coming into my home. This is where I wrote my Pulitzer Prize play and this, of course, is where I practiced my Academy Award-winning performance. An Alexander can be anything he wants to be! Dressed up for battle in shining armor and a helmet and plumes, or a gorgeous purple royal cloak. (Singing.) “Who cares if my boat goes upstream, Or if the gale bids me go with the river’s flow? I drift along with my fancy, Sometimes I thank my lucky stars my heart is free—And other times I wonder where’s the mate for me?” (Speaking dialogue.) “Hello .”

  NED: “How do you do? Are you an actress?”

  ALEXANDER: “Oh, no. But I’d give anything if I could be.”

  NED: “Why?”

  ALEXANDER: “Because you can make believe so many wonderful things that never happen in real life.” (Singing.) “The game of just supposing is the sweetest game I know, Our dreams are more rom
antic, Than the world we see.”

  NED: (Singing.) “And if the things we dream about, Don’t happen to be so . . .”

  ALEXANDER: “That’s just an unimportant tech-ni-cality.” Show Boat was the first show I saw on Broadway. (Singing.) “Only make believe I love you . . .”

  NED: “Only make believe that you love me . . .” Oh, get dressed. Before Pop catches you.

  ALEXANDER: I can be Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts or Cornelia Otis Skinner in Lady Windermere’s Fan. The second balcony of the National Theater is only ninety cents and I go every other week when they change the show. I can be Ezio Pinza or Mary Martin in South Pacific. “One dream in my heart. One love to be living for . . .” And I am performing on the biggest stage and everyone is applauding me like crazy. (Bowing.) Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, Ned! Nobody I know is interested in what I’m interested in. And I’m not interested in what they’re interested in.

  NED: And you’re never going to be able to accept or understand that.

  ALEXANDER: Do you get in trouble when you try to find out things?

  NED: Only if you’re nosey.

  ALEXANDER: I’m nosey.

  NED: The best people are nosey.

  ALEXANDER: Thank you. I ran away once. To New York. I used all my baby-sitting money. I’d see a Broadway show every day for the rest of my life. Mom traced me to Aunt Fran’s just as I was leaving to see Judith Anderson in Medea. Ma said under no circumstances was I allowed to see a play about a mother who murders both her children.

  NED: I said, Why not?

  ALEXANDER and NED: Pop wants to murder me all the time.

  ALEXANDER: (Making a turban from a towel and singing.) “I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair, And send him on his way.”

  (Sounds of RICHARD WEEKS coming home.)

  My God, Pop’s home! (Furiously getting dressed, NED helping him.) I always say Hope for the Best and Expect the Worst. Ned, Alexander means Helper and Defender of All Mankind. Why’d you change my name?

  NED: Alexander the Great died very young.

  (RICHARD WEEKS enters. He is almost the same age NED is now, but he looks much older. He is impeccably dressed. He puts down his newspaper and takes off his jacket and tie and cufflinks and rolls up his shirtsleeves. He keeps on his vest with its gold chain that holds his Phi Beta Kappa and Yale Law Journal keys. He comes across some of

  ALEXANDER’s comic books.)

  RICHARD: Come here, you!

  ALEXANDER: (From his room.) I’m not home from school yet!

  RICHARD: I warned you if I caught you buying comic books one more time I’d take away your allowance. You’ll never get into Yale.

  ALEXANDER: I’m going to go to Harvard.

  RICHARD: You are not going to go to Harvard.

  ALEXANDER: (To NED.) What am I supposed to say? Poppa, this strange man who lives down the block gives me the comic books. If I let him stick his finger up my tushie and suck my penis. He says he’s in medical school and I’m helping him learn. Isn’t it all right to have comic books if I don’t spend my own money on them?

  NED: Mordecai Rushmore.

  ALEXANDER: Why do I have to lie? (Entering dressed.) Hi, Pop. What’s a penis? (Grabbing the offending comic books.)

  RICHARD: (Leaving to wash up.) Look it up in the dictionary.

  ALEXANDER: It isn’t in the dictionary.

  RICHARD: Then ask your mother. (Exits.)

  HANNIMAN: (Enters with a large bottle of pills.) Take two of these every two hours. You have a watch. I won’t have to remind you.

  NED: (As ALEXANDER stuffs the comics behind a book on a shelf.) What are you doing?

  ALEXANDER: I always hide them here.

  NED: (Reading the book’s spine.) Psychopathia Sexualis by Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

  HANNIMAN: There seem to be more and more unusually dressed people gathering outside. What are they going to do?

  NED: Look, can we please try and be friends?

  ALEXANDER: Hey! I think if you’re going to be with me, you really should be with me.

  NED: I’m sorry if I upset you.

  HANNIMAN: You’re not sorry. You’re scared shitless. (Leaves.)

  RENA’S VOICE: Somebody please help me!

  (RENA WEEKS manages to open the front door, carrying large bags of groceries. She is in her forties. She wears a Red Cross uniform—skirt, jacket, and hat.)

  ALEXANDER: (Helping her.) Hi, Mom. Dad says to ask you what’s a penis.

  RENA: I told you.

  ALEXANDER: Tell me again.

  RENA: When you grow up, you’ll insert it into the woman’s sexual organ, which is called the vagina. The penis goes into the vagina and deposits semen into my uterus, and, if it’s the right time of the month, pregnancy occurs, resulting, nine months later, in a child.

  ALEXANDER: That’s all?

  RENA: What else would you like?

  (RICHARD returns, drying his hands on a towel, which he then puts around his neck. The telephone starts to ring.)

  RICHARD: Why are you so late?

  RENA: You want to eat, don’t you? Can’t anyone else ever answer the phone?

  RICHARD: Who calls me? (Takes out some new money, peels a bill off.)

  RENA: (Answering the phone.) Hello.

  RICHARD: I’m raising your allowance from fifty cents to one dollar.

  ALEXANDER: (Surprised.) Thanks, Pop.

  RENA: Oh, Mrs. Noble! This is Rena Weeks, Home Service Director, Suburban Maryland Chapter American Red Cross.

  RICHARD: (Trying to give the rest of the money to RENA.) Count it. I got a raise!

  RENA: (Taking the money and putting it down.) Could you possibly send some of your wonderful Gray Ladies to help us out driving our paraplegic vets to the ball game this Saturday while our regular volunteers work the monthly Bloodmobile?

  RICHARD: I hate it that you work.

  RENA: Yes, it is hard finding volunteers now the war is almost over.

  (ALEXANDER accidentally drops some canned goods.)

  RICHARD: That table cost two hundred dollars!

  ALEXANDER: One hundred and seventy-five.

  RENA: Yes, some other time. (Hangs up.)

  RICHARD: They fired fifty more. Abe Lesser and his wife moved out of their apartment in the middle of the night. Nobody heard them leave. How could anybody not hear them leave?

  (ALEXANDER sits down and reads part of RICHARD’s newspaper, unconsciously jiggling his leg up and down with increasing speed. RENA puts out a cold meal; in a hurry, she’ll rush through the serving, eating, and clearing.)

  RENA: It’s been a terrible day for tragedy.

  RICHARD: Abe Lesser is no more a Communist than Joe DiMaggio.

  RENA: We had a dreadful fire in Hyattsville.

  RICHARD: I went to Yale with Abie.

  RENA: Six entire families were burned out of everything they owned.

  RICHARD: I don’t want to hear about it.

  RENA: I found shelter for all of them. Six entire families, Richard.

  RICHARD: That’s enough! I asked you not to talk about it.

  ALEXANDER: Louella Parsons is very angry at Rita Hayworth.

  RENA: (Telling ALEXANDER.) And I had to call a lovely young bride and break the news that her husband—he was just drafted, they didn’t even have time for a honeymoon—he was killed on his very first training flight.

  ALEXANDER: Louella says playing bold hussies only gets Rita into trouble.

  RENA: His plane just fell from the sky.

  RICHARD: Didn’t you hear me!

  RENA: She hadn’t even started receiving his paychecks and he’s dead!

  ALEXANDER: Louella says she should start playing nice girls like Loretta Young.

  RENA: Somebody has to take care of them!

  RICHARD: And I never get a hot meal!

  RENA: Oh, you do too get hot meals!

  RICHARD: I like my tuna salad with egg and you know it!

  RENA: I didn’t have time to boil eggs!

>   ALEXANDER: But Rita says the bold and the brazen are the only parts they offer her.

  (RICHARD suddenly and furiously swats ALEXANDER’s leg with his part of the newspaper.)

  What’d I do now!

  RICHARD: You’re boring a hole in the rug!

  ALEXANDER: Four hundred dollars.

  RENA: Alexander, eat.

  RICHARD: Five hundred dollars!

  ALEXANDER: Four hundred and forty-nine ninety-five.

  RICHARD: Isn’t Ben coming home again?

  RENA: I don’t know.

  RICHARD: Four hundred and ninety-nine ninety-five! Tax, delivery, and installation. He’s Alexander again?

  ALEXANDER: At least seven full weeks ago I changed my name to Alexander. Alex, which I thought suited me, was only the whim of a foolish child, a mere moment in time. And Benjamin has always, always, preferred Benjamin. You’re the only one who insists on shortening him to Ben. And no, Benjamin is not coming home. He had football practice this afternoon, tonight he puts the school paper to bed, and then he’s sleeping over at one of his chums. And, and, he has told me confidentially that he hates eating at home. With us. Everyone fights too much. (Salts his food vigorously.)

  RENA: He didn’t say any such thing.

  RICHARD: (Slapping ALEXANDER’s band.) You cannot put so much salt on everything! Do you want your stomach to fall apart when you grow up?

  ALEXANDER and NED: I’ll let you know when I grow up.

  NED: It did.

  RICHARD: (To NED.) What did I tell you? (To ALEXANDER.) Ben your bosom buddy? He doesn’t even know you’re alive.

  ALEXANDER: He does so! (Salts his food vigorously.)

  RICHARD: Do you see what he’s doing?

  RENA: Richard, please don’t say things like that to the boy.

  RICHARD: Am I talking to the wall?

  RENA: They love each other very much. Benjamin was dying for a brother. He ran all the way to the hospital.

  ALEXANDER: And when he saw me he said, “God, he’s ugly. What a lemon!” Why do you always have to tell that story? (Salts vigorously again.)

  RICHARD: I wash my hands of him. He’s your son.

  RENA: He’s your son, too. I forgot to put any salt in, I was in such a hurry.

  RICHARD: You always take his side.

  RENA: There aren’t any sides. We’re all on the same side. We’re a family.