The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

  BENJAMIN: What else is there to know when your own son says he’s innocent?

  ALEXANDER: Benjamin, I must talk to you.

  NED: He really does have something important in his own life right now. Try and understand.

  RICHARD: How did you plead?

  BENJAMIN: Not guilty.

  RICHARD: I didn’t expect you to listen to me. (Pause.) I almost died. Did you know that?

  BENJAMIN: That’s why I’m here. They don’t just let you out of beast barracks. How do you feel?

  RICHARD: They cut out my insides. I had a hemorrhage. I almost bled to death.

  RENA: Then the nurse left a window open and he got pneumonia. There was a sudden summer storm. By the time we finally got back here this room was flooded. Alexander and I got down on our hands and knees and sopped up water all night.

  BENJAMIN: If either of you has any notions of my staying at West Point, please disabuse yourselves of them immediately. Ma, please put on a robe.

  RENA: That’s very thoughtful of you, darling. (To ALEXANDER.) Get me my robe.

  (ALEXANDER rushes in and out so he won’t miss anything.)

  RICHARD: Why are you deliberately choosing to fight the system!

  BENJAMIN: Where do you find choice? I’m accused of turning my head all of two inches during a dress parade because the man next to me tripped. For this a lieutenant colonel, a major, a captain, eight cadets have spent two months haggling over whether it was really four inches instead of two inches. But in reality I lose a year of my life not because I turned my head at all but because my drill inspector, Lieutenant Futrell, hates Jews.

  RICHARD: That’s right. They don’t like Jew boys. Why do you want to make so much trouble?

  BENJAMIN: Why do you take their side?

  RICHARD: It’s your word against theirs.

  BENJAMIN: He lied.

  RICHARD: Yes, he called you a liar.

  BENJAMIN: He called me a kike. At four-thirty in the morning, I was pulled out of my bed, and hauled naked out into the snow by a bunch of upperclassmen, and forced to stand up against a brick wall, which was covered with ice . . .

  ALEXANDER: Poor Benjamin.

  RENA: Such a good education going to waste.

  BENJAMIN: Please stop saying things like that.

  RICHARD: Can’t you see how impossible it is to be the only one on your side?

  BENJAMIN: Can’t you see I don’t mind being the only one on my side?

  ALEXANDER: Neither do I! (As RICHARD is about to turn on him.) Why can’t you believe my brother!

  BENJAMIN: Thanks, boy. I guess it was too much to expect I’d have the support of my parents.

  RENA: Don’t say that.

  BENJAMIN: Why not? You’re asking me to say I’m guilty, when I’m not, and to allow such black marks to enter my permanent record, and to carry on as if nothing has happened. The only thing that keeps me going is some inexplicable sense of my own worth and an intense desire not to develop the habit of quitting.

  NED: Where did we come from, Ben?

  ALEXANDER: He’s magnificent!

  RICHARD: Go to bed!

  ALEXANDER: Never!

  BENJAMIN: I am going to force them into declaring me guilty or innocent. They will be compelled to disprove the validity of my word.

  ALEXANDER: It’s the only way.

  BENJAMIN: And unless you are willing to back up my judgment, we shall be coming to a parting of the ways.

  ALEXANDER: (To NED.) How can he not help me?

  RICHARD: I thought you came home to see me because I almost bled to death. (Starts to leave, then turns.) My own brother! We were going to be partners for life. He threw me out at the height of the Depression. Your mother says I quit because he made my life so miserable that I had no choice but to resign. Her and her peculiar version of the truth. My own brother fired me! I loved him and looked up to him like he was God and that’s what he did. Your mom and I couldn’t afford the rent so we had to default on our lease and move to someplace cheaper and Leon, for some reason I could never understand, buys up the remainder of that apartment’s lease and twenty years later when Mom dies and leaves her few bucks to me, Leon, my brother, sues me for the $3000 back rent we didn’t have in our pocket to pay plus interest for the twenty years. What kind of brother is that? We were going to be partners for life. Yes, I sent for him to help save you in your troubles. He has connections in high places that I’ll never have. He’s the best lawyer I know, the best lawyer I ever knew and ever will. Even if I don’t talk to him. (Leaves.)

  RENA: (Kissing BENJAMIN good night.) Everything will be fine. (Kissing ALEXANDER good night.) I love you both very much. (Picking up plate and offering brownies.) I made your favorites. I warned him Grandma Sybil should have left her money equally to both her sons. The funny thing is, after Leon was paid back, all it bought me was a new winter coat. You would have thought she’d left us the Hope Diamond. There’s nothing in the world my sons can’t do. (Leaves.)

  (BENJAMIN strips down to his undershorts. ALEXANDER tries not to look at him, but peeks anyway.)

  ALEXANDER: Do you have a favorite song? (No answer.) “One dream in my heart, One love to be living for. . .” You’re not coming home, are you?

  BENJAMIN: (Looking out the window.) There’s not much safety around. As best we can, Alexander, we’ve got to tough it out. I left home a long time ago.

  ALEXANDER: How do I get out? (No answer.) “One love to be dreaming of. . .” Honestly, sometimes I think I live here all alone.

  NED: You do.

  ALEXANDER: Oh, shut up. Benjamin, I need help.

  NED: Boy, you have some mouth on you.

  BENJAMIN: I’m going to go to Yale. It’s the surest way I know to get rich.

  ALEXANDER: It didn’t help Pop.

  BENJAMIN: Yes, it did. He found his job down here through some classmate. He’d still be unemployed.

  ALEXANDER: What am I going to do?

  BENJAMIN: You’ll be at Yale soon enough.

  ALEXANDER: I can’t wait that long!

  BENJAMIN: You’d be better off at some small liberal-artsy place where they don’t mind you being different.

  ALEXANDER: (Pause.) You can see I’m different?

  BENJAMIN: A blind man can see you’re different.

  ALEXANDER: (Pause.) How am I different? (No answer.) Please tell me.

  BENJAMIN: Lemon, I’m in trouble. Let’s get some shuteye. (Turns out light.)

  ALEXANDER: “Close to my heart he came, Only to fly away, Only to fly as day flies from moonlight. . .”

  (HANNIMAN enters and yanks open the blinds, letting in the light. She has equipment for drawing blood.)

  HANNIMAN: Not a morning person? Now we take some tests. I thought you would be out there directing your troops. There are twice as many. Thousands. Speeches. Firecrackers. Bullhorns. Rockets. Red glares. Colored smoke. It actually was very pretty. Lots of men dressed up like nurses. There don’t seem to be any TV cameras.

  NED: That’s too bad.

  HANNIMAN: Isn’t it. Over fifty arrests so far. Mounted police and tear gas. One of the horses crushed somebody’s foot. Why don’t you like my husband? Is it some sort of sin to work for the government? Do you have any idea how much work all this involves? Tony’s been up all night, culturing healthy cells to mix with your unhealthy ones. Then they’ll be centrifuged together so they can be put into your blood. Then, from this, additional cells will be drawn off, which then are also genetically altered, so that the infecting part is rendered harmless before it’s put back into you. That’s for the anti-sense part. To sort of fake out the infected cells and lead them over the cliff to their doom. If it works . . . Well, it’s worked with a little girl with another disease. If it works on you . . . I don’t let myself think how proud I’ll be. Why don’t they know out there that you’re in here? (No answer.) Would they think you’d crossed over to the enemy? (No answer.) They hate us that much?

  NED: Too many of us have been allowed to die.
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  HANNIMAN: Allowed?

  NED: There’s not one person out there who doesn’t believe that intentional genocide is going on.

  HANNIMAN: So. Their saint is now a sinner.

  NED: A sinner. My late lover’s ex-wife, Darlene, whom Felix hadn’t seen for over fifteen years, and who had remarried immediately after their divorce an exceptionally rich man, turned up at the memorial service. She brought her own preacher from Oklahoma. Uninvited, he got up and delivered a sermon. To a church filled with hundreds of gay men and lesbians, he yelled out: “Oh, God, take this sinner, Felix Turner, for he knew not what he did.” There was utter silence. Then I stood up and walked over and stood right under his nose and screamed as loud as I think I’ve ever screamed: “Felix Turner was not a sinner! Felix Turner was a good man! The best I ever knew.”

  ALEXANDER: (Rushing in.) Who’s Felix Turner!

  NED: In due course.

  (ALEXANDER withdraws.)

  Darlene drew herself up and marched right over to me and shouted even louder: “I now know that I have been placed on this earth to make you and all like you miserable for your sins.” And we’ve been in court ever since, fighting over his will, which left everything to me. I was in love for five minutes with someone who was dying. I guess that’s all I get.

  HANNIMAN: (Finishes taking blood.) “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.”

  NED: “Not to be born is the best for man.” W. H. Auden.

  HANNIMAN: I know.

  NED: He was a gay poet.

  HANNIMAN: Well, I agree with him anyway.

  NED: How do you know that poem?

  HANNIMAN: If I were one of your activists, I would respond to that insulting question: Go fuck yourself. But I am only a beleaguered nurse, with a B.A., an M.S., and a Ph.D., who is breaking her butt on the front lines of an endless battle, so I reply: Go fuck yourself. “This long disease, my life.”

  NED: Alexander Pope.

  HANNIMAN: Not a gay poet.

  NED: (Taking more pills.) These are making me sick to my stomach.

  HANNIMAN: Take an Alka-Seltzer. (Leaves.)

  ALEXANDER: (Rushing back in.) Did I hear you correctly? You were only in love for five minutes? That’s terrible! What did you mean, That’s all you get? Mommy! What’s wrong with me?

  (ALEXANDER runs into her bedroom. RENA wears only a half-slip and is having trouble hooking her bra up in the back. He automatically hooks her up.)

  RENA: I need new brassieres. It’s time to visit Aunt Leona. What’s wrong?

  ALEXANDER: I’m different! Even Benjamin says so.

  RENA: Her company won’t give her one extra penny from all the millions they make from her designs. They’re hers! You see how impossible it is for a woman to be independent? “Different” doesn’t tell me enough.

  NED: Ma, why don’t you put on a dress?

  RENA: If you’re going to become a writer, you must learn to be more precise with words.

  NED: Do not sit half-naked with your adolescent son. Is that precise enough?

  ALEXANDER: (To NED.) Why does it bother you guys so much? She does it all the time. I don’t even look. (To RENA.) I don’t want to be a writer anymore. The Glass Menagerie didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize. Ma, how could they not know it was such a great play? They gave it to a play about a man who talks to an invisible rabbit. I’m going to be an actor.

  NED: What do you mean, you don’t look?

  ALEXANDER: I look at Ponzo Lombardo. In gym. He’s growing these huge tufts of pub-ic hair. Around his penis. Around his huge penis. Which she doesn’t know how to tell me about and he tells me to look up in the dictionary.

  NED: Pubic hair.

  ALEXANDER: Pubic hair.

  RENA: I was going to be an actress.

  ALEXANDER: Around his huge penis.

  NED: That you pronounced correctly.

  RENA: I had an audition for a radio program. On NBC. Coast to coast.

  ALEXANDER: You never told me that. What happened?

  RENA: I was summoned to the station. Oh, I was so excited.

  ALEXANDER: Then what happened?

  RENA: I walked round and around the block.

  ALEXANDER: Then what happened?

  RENA: I walked around again.

  ALEXANDER: You never went inside?

  RENA: Benjamin was just a baby. I couldn’t leave him.

  NED: You were going to tell her how you feel so different.

  ALEXANDER: But she could have become a star of the airwaves!

  NED: She didn’t become a star of the airwaves.

  ALEXANDER: Mommy—isn’t it a good thing . . . being different?

  RENA: We’re all different in many ways and alike in many ways and special in some sort of way. What are you trying to tell me?

  ALEXANDER: Is it okay for me to . . . marry a. . . for instance. . . colored girl?

  NED: Oh, for goodness’ sake.

  RENA: You know how important it is for Jewish people to marry Jewish people. There are many famous Jews—Jascha Heifetz and Dinah Shore and Albert Einstein and that baseball player your father’s so crazy about, Hank Whatshisname. But we can’t name them out loud.

  ALEXANDER: Why not?

  RENA: If they know who we are, they come after us. That’s what Hitler taught us, and Senator McCarthy is teaching us all over again.

  ALEXANDER: What if I find a colored girl who’s Jewish?

  (She puts her hand to his forehead to see if he has a fever.)

  (Breaking away.) All I know is I feel different! From as long ago as I remember! You always taught me to be tolerant of everyone. You did mean it, didn’t you? I can trust you?

  RENA: Give me an example of what makes you think you’re different.

  ALEXANDER: I don’t ever want to get married.

  RENA: Of course you do. Everyone gets married. That’s what you do in life. You get married. You fall in love with someone wonderful and you get married.

  ALEXANDER: Are you really happy with Daddy?

  RENA: Than with whom?

  ALEXANDER: Cary Grant.

  RENA: I never met Mr. Grant.

  ALEXANDER: He’s gorgeous.

  RENA: Alexander, gorgeous is. . . well, it’s a word that’s better for me than for you.

  ALEXANDER: Why can’t I say gorgeous?

  RENA: It’s too . . . effusive for a man, too generous.

  ALEXANDER: What’s wrong with being generous? You would have been happier with Cary Grant, too. We could all have lived happily ever after in Hollywood—you and me and Benjamin and Cary. Why’d you settle for Richard Weeks?

  RENA: Don’t you think I love your father?

  ALEXANDER: I don’t.

  NED: I actually said it out loud.

  ALEXANDER: No, I said it out loud.

  NED: Once again, I remind you, this is not what you set out to talk about.

  ALEXANDER: But doesn’t it fit in nicely?

  RENA: I had lots of beaux. One was very handsome. But your father took me in his arms on our very first date and looked deep into my eyes and said, You’re the girl I’m going to marry.

  ALEXANDER: (Cuddling seductively close to her.) Tell me about the handsome one.

  RENA: (Running her hand along his leg.) You’re growing up so.

  NED: Please, Ma.

  RENA: You never tell me how much you love me anymore. You used to tell me all the time, Mommy, I love you more than anyone and anything in the whole wide world.

  ALEXANDER: (Touched and guilty.) Oh, Mommy, I’m grown up now and I’m not supposed to say things like that.

  RENA: Oh, silly billy, who says?

  ALEXANDER: Please tell me what to do!

  RENA: About what!

  ALEXANDER: I’ve got to get ready for my Halloween Pageant.

  (He breaks away and runs into the living room, where he opens an old trunk.)

  HANNIMAN: (Entering with medical cart.) Now we take some blood.

  (She will take blood and put some in ea
ch of four containers.)

  NED: The straight path has been cleared?

  (HANNIMAN nods.)

  I am transfectious and not infectious?

  HANNIMAN: Transfected. Now I didn’t say that. That’s our goal. And by all Tony’s measurements and calculations, you appear to be—so far—a good candidate.

  RENA: (Pulling on a housedress and joining ALEXANDER.) That’s all that’s left from when we were in Russia and they came after all the Jews and we had to run if we wanted to stay alive. You’d think they’d give us a rest. Why does someone always want someone else dead?

  ALEXANDER: I’ll bet the handsome one wasn’t Jewish.

  RENA: No, he wasn’t.

  ALEXANDER: What was his name?

  RENA: Drew.

  ALEXANDER: Drew.

  RENA: Drew Keenlymore.

  ALEXANDER: Drew Keenlymore! Oh! What did he do?

  RENA: He was my professor.

  ALEXANDER: A poor gentile.

  RENA: No, he wasn’t. He was from one of the oldest families in Canada and his brother was Prime Minister.

  ALEXANDER: Oh, Mom! Did he take you in his arms and kiss you all over and say he wanted to marry you?

  RENA: They didn’t do things like that in those days.

  ALEXANDER: You just said Pop did.

  (He is putting on Russian clothing from the trunk—a peasant blouse, skirt, sash, babushka, from RENA’s youth)

  RENA: Your Aunt Emma married a gentile. Momma wouldn’t talk to her for twenty years. (Helps him.)

  ALEXANDER: Did you love Drew?

  RENA: I had long auburn hair. Everyone said I was very pretty. I had many chances.

  (HANNIMAN exits.)

  ALEXANDER: What happened to him?

  RENA: I met your father.

  NED: Who comes home and finds you in a dress.

  RENA: No, I knew him already.

  ALEXANDER: And you never saw Drew Keenlymore again. (Stuffs Kleenex from NED’s bedside table into the blouse to make breasts. To NED.) Mickey Rooney did this in Babes on Broadway.

  NED: You hate Mickey Rooney.

  ALEXANDER: I’m not so crazy about Pop either.

  NED: That is a motivation that had not occurred to me.

  ALEXANDER: That’s what we’re here for, kid. (Tosses him back the Kleenex box.)

  RENA: No. I saw him again.

  ALEXANDER: You did?