The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

RENA: He wrote me he was coming to New York. This was before you were born and Richard was still with Leon and it wasn’t working out, Leon bullied Richard mercilessly, the one thing I always pray is you and Benjamin will never fight and always love each other—will you promise me?

  ALEXANDER: Don’t worry about that—what happened!

  RENA: He took me to Delmonico’s. I didn’t have a nice dress. But I dressed up as best I could. I felt like a child, going back to my teacher, with a marriage that was in trouble, I shouldn’t be telling you all of this, I wish you could like him more. . . There was no money! In the bank, in the country. Everyone was poor, except your Uncle Leon, he and Aunt Judith living so high off the hog, you should have seen their apartment, in the El Dorado, with two full-time maids. (Gets some makeup from her vanity and puts some lipstick and rouge on him.)

  ALEXANDER: Go back to Delmonico’s.

  RENA: After lunch, Drew asked me to come back to his hotel. The Savoy Plaza.

  ALEXANDER: And?

  RENA: I didn’t go.

  ALEXANDER: Not again! Alexander Keenlymore, farewell!

  RENA: I had a baby to feed.

  ALEXANDER: Benjamin could have had two full-time maids! Momma, don’t you want to be different?

  (RICHARD suddenly appears, home from work, exhausted. He is furious at what he sees.)

  RICHARD: What are you doing to him?

  RENA: Don’t use that tone of voice to me.

  RICHARD: Look at him! He’s a sissy! Your son is a sissy!

  RENA: He’s your son, too!

  RICHARD: If he were my son, he wouldn’t be wearing a dress. If he were my son, he’d come with me to ball games instead of going to your la-de-da theater. Your son is a sissy! (Hits him.)

  RENA: Richard!

  (RICHARD hits him again. ALEXANDER is strangely passive. RICHARD corners him and can’t stop swatting him.)

  Stop it!

  RICHARD: Sissy! Sissy! Sissy!

  NED: Why aren’t you fighting back?

  ALEXANDER: When he hit me last week I vowed I’d never talk to him again. (Singing to himself.) “Waste no time, make a switch, drop him in the nearest ditch . . .”

  RENA: This time I won’t come back when you turn up begging.

  NED: Never run from a fight.

  ALEXANDER: “Don’t try to patch it up, Tear it up, Tear it up . . .”

  RICHARD: That was a million years ago in another lifetime.

  ALEXANDER: “You can’t put back a petal when it falls from a flower. . .”

  RENA: I can do it again!

  ALEXANDER: “Or sweeten up a fella when he starts turning sour. Oh, no! . . .”

  RENA: It’s never too late to correct our mistakes.

  ALEXANDER: “Oh, nooooo!”

  NED: (To RICHARD.) Daddy, why did you hit me?

  RICHARD: You have an awful life ahead of you if you’re a sissy.

  NED: How do you know?

  RICHARD: Everybody knows. (To RENA.) You want to see something? You who always defends her darling son. You want to see what he does to himself?

  ALEXANDER: “If you laugh at diff’rent comics, If you root for diff’rent teams . . .”

  (RICHARD rips the skirt and underpants off him.)

  RENA: Stop tearing my dress! It’s all that’s left!

  ALEXANDER: “Waste no time, Weep no more . . .”

  RICHARD: I come home from the ball game, I smell this awful smell, like something died. I caught him. Rena, I really let him have it.

  (RICHARD is trying to get ahold of ALEXANDER’S penis. It becomes a tussle of him almost getting it, and ALEXANDER evading his grasp just in time.)

  RENA: You hit him?

  RICHARD: Of course I hit him!

  ALEXANDER: “Show him what the door is for . . .”

  RICHARD: He had his privates all covered up with depilatory cream!

  ALEXANDER: “Rub him outa the roll call and drum him outa your dreams!” LET GO!

  RICHARD: (To RENA.) Don’t you even care?

  RENA: I do care!

  ALEXANDER: I’m the only boy in my entire class except Ponzo Lombardo who has any puberty hair and everybody laughs at him!

  RICHARD: (Starts ripping down the theater posters from the walls.) Thank God at least I’ve got one son who’s a man.

  ALEXANDER: Don’t! They’re the most precious thing I have!

  RICHARD: So this is what it takes to get you to talk to me.

  RENA: Don’t do that to the boy!

  RICHARD: This is what we do to sissies.

  (ALEXANDER crawls around trying to smooth out his beloved posters and piece them back together.)

  ALEXANDER: It’s Halloween! I wrote a play. Mr. Mills divided my scout troop, half into boys and half into girls. I didn’t have any choice!

  RICHARD: You wrote a play?

  RENA: Tonight’s his opening night. He invited us.

  ALEXANDER: (Screaming with all his might.) I hate you!

  RENA: Don’t say that!

  ALEXANDER: You taught me to always tell the truth!

  NED: Go for it! (Feels dizzy. Swallows more pills.)

  ALEXANDER: (To NED, furious.) Get me out of this!

  RENA: Apologize to your father immediately!

  ALEXANDER: (To RENA and RICHARD.) I hate both of you!

  RICHARD: (Really hitting him.) Do what your mother says!

  ALEXANDER: (Grabbing the Russian shawl, stepping into women’s shoes, and standing up to both of them.) Go to hell! (Running off, as best he can, yelling.) Trick or treat! Trick or treat!

  (HANNIMAN rushes into the room. Her white coat is heavily bloodied.)

  HANNIMAN:Are you happy now? Look what your people did to me!

  End of Act One

  Act Two

  (NED enters in a wheelchair, singing an Andrews Sisters’ song. HANNIMAN, in a clean white coat, wheels in a cart with a small insulated chest. DR. DELLA VIDA follows. NED carries a huge poster that reads TONY AND GEORGE, YOU ARE MURDERING US over big blow-ups of DELLA VIDA and George Bush. He holds it in front of the window, which provokes cheers from outside.)

  TONY: Why do they hate me?

  HANNIMAN: These are all over the hospital. Plastered on the corridor walls, in the johns, in the cafeteria, in the Director’s office. On the X-ray machines!

  NED: (Putting up the poster on a wall.) I had my CAT scan lying under a picture of you. It was very sexy.

  TONY: You wish. Get into bed.

  (NED does so. HANNIMAN pulls back a curtain along the wall, revealing elaborate equipment—a high-tech orgy of gleaming cylinders, dials, tubes, bells, and lights, all connected to a computer.)

  NED: This is it? Wouldn’t it be easier if I just checked into a monastery and took sleeping pills?

  TONY: You drown my wife in fake blood. You chop the legs off my lab tables. You’ve got some crazy gay newspaper up in New York that claims I’m not even studying the right virus. They call me Public Enemy Number One. Why aren’t you guys proud of me? If I’m not in my lab, I’m testifying, lobbying, pressuring, I’m on TV ten times a week, I fly to conferences all over the world, I churn out papers for the journals, I supervise hundreds of scientists, I dole out research grants like I’m Santa Claus—what more do you want?

  (HANNIMAN carefully takes a sack of blood from the container and gives it to TONY. He inserts it into part of the machine. They repeat the procedure for two more sacks.)

  NED: A cure.

  TONY: I’m not a magician.

  NED: Now’s not the time to tell me. There’s no end in sight. That’s why they hate you. You tell every reporter you have enough money. That’s why they hate you. You tell Congress you have everything you need. That’s why they hate you. You say more has been learned about this disease than any disease in the history of disease. That’s why they hate you. You say the President cares. That’s why they hate you.

  (TONY and HANNIMAN attach NED to the machine.)

  TONY: He does care! He tells me all the time how much he car
es!

  NED: You asked me, I told you. You’re the one in charge and you’re an apologist for your boss. That’s why they. . .

  TONY: If I weren’t, do you think I’d get anything! You don’t understand the realities of this town.

  NED: The reality of this town is that nobody can say the word “penis” without blushing.

  (RENA, ALEXANDER, and RICHARD enter. It’s evening, shadowy, at a seaside boardinghouse in Connecticut, on Long Island Sound.)

  HANNIMAN: The President named him a hero.

  NED: No comment. On the grounds he might murder me. Wait!

  TONY: (Pulling a lever to release the blood into NED.) This construct is the first transfect of anti-sense. Competing protein mechanisms will effect a cross-reactive anti-self.

  RENA: (Talking into a pay phone on the wall. Dropping in coins with each call.) Jane, we’ve finally made it!

  NED: That’s what we want?

  TONY: That’s what we want.

  RENA: Get your date book out. You’re first!

  TONY: If we’re lucky, it will screw up your reproductive process.

  NED: I’d assumed that already was screwed up.

  TONY: Of your viral load.

  RENA: It’s been the longest year.

  NED: Tell me again there isn’t any down side.

  TONY: I never told you there wasn’t any down side.

  NED: You did too!

  TONY: It’s too late now.

  ALEXANDER: (To NED.) Come with me.

  TONY: (Taking NED’s hand.) Relax.

  NED: (Grabbing TONY.) Tony, I’m afraid.

  TONY: We’re going to be just fine.

  RENA: Friday night at seven! Perfect! We can hardly wait! (Hangs up, enters the engagement in her date book.)

  ALEXANDER: Ned, come back. Only two more weeks to Yale! No more Eden Heights. My new life! We don’t have much time left before I grow into you and you kick me out. (Pulls NED with him.) Come on!

  (TONY and HANNIMAN leave. ALEXANDER helps NED, still connected by tubes to the machinery, get out of bed and walk to sit beside RICHARD on a porch swing.)

  NED: (Applying salt liberally to some food.) Hi, Poppa.

  RENA: (To RICHARD, as she dials another number.) Jane, and Barney are taking us to their new country club that costs a thousand dollars a year per family just to join. (Into phone.) Grace, darling, this is Rena! Just this minute! Tell me when you’re free!

  ALEXANDER: (To the audience.) Every summer we come back to Connecticut for two weeks at Mrs. Pennington’s Seaside Boarding House, and every year everyone Mom and Pop grew up with has become richer and richer.

  (RICHARD grabs the salt away from NED.)

  (To NED.) Did I say that well?

  NED: First-rate. And every summer you feel more and more different.

  ALEXANDER: (To the audience.) And every summer I feel more and more frightened. Of what I don’t know.

  RENA: A swim in your new pool and lobsters for luncheon! Saturday at noon. We can hardly wait! (She hangs up, enters the engagement, checks her address book, and dials another number.)

  (NED grabs the salt back from RICHARD.)

  Grace and Percy bought that big estate in Westport.

  (RICHARD grabs the salt back from NED.)

  Cole Porter wrote some famous song there.

  (NED grabs the salt hack from RICHARD.)

  NED: I want to eat it the way I want to eat it.

  RENA: Percy sold his business for a million dollars and retired.

  RICHARD: Who’s going to pay the bills when you get sick?

  NED and ALEXANDER: I’ll let you know when I get sick.

  ALEXANDER: Tradition means a great deal in our family.

  RENA: Dolores, darling, this is Rena! Quiet, both of you! Oh, my God! (To RICHARD.) Dolores and Nathan are going around the world for an entire year.

  RICHARD: I can’t take it anymore. (To NED.) Why are you always so ungrateful?

  RENA: I’ve always dreamed of a trip like that.

  NED: Everything you always blame me for demands I defend myself.

  ALEXANDER: You’re playing me really well.

  RICHARD: Blame? What are you talking about? (Grabs the salt back.) Blame!

  RENA: An informal candlelight dinner for fifty on your outdoor terrace under the stars! Saturday at nine. You’ll send a car and driver! We can hardly wait! (Slamming down the phone.) I’ve heard this fight for the last time! This is supposed to be a wonderful vacation! I’ve been on the phone calling people I haven’t seen or spoken to or heard from in a year. Why don’t you ever call them? They’re your old childhood chums, too. I feel like such a suppliant. Inviting people to take us out and feed us. (Having dialed another number.) Tessie, it’s Rena!

  RICHARD: What I need’s a vacation from him.

  RENA: Are you free on Sunday?

  ALEXANDER: Just two more weeks you won’t ever have to see me again.

  RENA: Don’t say that!

  RICHARD: Maybe then I’ll feel better. Where’s Ben?

  RENA: You think he confides in me? (Into phone.) A cruise on your yacht? Cocktails at five to watch the sunset. We can hardly wait. (Hangs up.) Tessie and Isadore have a yacht.

  (NED suddenly feels a little woozy. He stands up uncertainly. A bell rings softly. A yellow light goes on. He indicates to a concerned ALEXANDER that he should carry on. He makes his way back to bed.)

  ALEXANDER: Benjamin is driving from New Haven in the new second-hand Ford he bought with his own money. He has jobs and he has scholarships and he’s paying his own way and he’s free, he’s a free man, ever since he beat West Point and they said he wasn’t a liar. So what do you know what’s right for him or me or anybody? He won! My brother, whom you said wouldn’t win, won!

  (RICHARD is standing directly in front of him. ALEXANDER holds his ground. RICHARD turns and leaves.)

  RENA: Who.

  ALEXANDER: Who. (Trying to kiss RENA.) A kiss for the cook. (As she pointedly ignores him.) Now, Alexander, you know I don’t like it when you talk back to your father like that. Yes, Momma, I know. I know you didn’t mean it, dear. But I did mean it, Momma. Oh, boy, did I mean it. And I don’t think I did anything wrong. Well, you can do your mom a great big favor. Even if you don’t mean it. Just do it for me. For the Mommy you love. I will not apologize! Ever!

  (The yellow light goes off.)

  RENA: You used to say, Mommy, I’ll do anything you ask me.

  ALEXANDER: Ma, every kid says that.

  RENA: Oh, do they? What else do they say?

  NED: Mommy, I am going to become so famous someday, just so I can get away from here!

  RENA: My last case before we left was a family without a father. They lived in a shack. The lovely young mother. With two adorable children. Who threw up all over the house. And bled all over the sheets. From some strange illness.

  NED: And I must never forget that those two diseased babies might have been me and Benjamin.

  RENA: The point is we’re all healthy and together and he loves you very much.

  NED: The point is in my entire life I never believed for one single minute that my father ever loved me. The point is I can’t even figure out if I’ve ever been loved at all.

  (ALEXANDER is troubled by this.)

  RENA: The point is I love him and I love you and he loves me and he loves you and we all love each other very very much!

  (ALEXANDER goes to sit on the swing.)

  I was so proud, being asked to be an official hostess. But you didn’t dance with your own mother at your own graduation prom, not once.

  ALEXANDER: Nobody danced with their mother!

  RENA: Bernie Krukoff did. Neil Nelson did. Skipper with the red hair did. Do you know how much I wanted you? Do you? Mr. Know-It-All. You think you know it all. Some things you don’t know.

  ALEXANDER: You told me about Drew Keenlymore.

  RENA: I did not.

  NED: You did, too.

  ALEXANDER: Before I found his letters.
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br />   RENA: I don’t even know where they are.

  NED: Hidden in a navy crocheted purse inside an old Macy’s hatbox at the back of the top of your bedroom closet, over on the far right.

  ALEXANDER: The purse is cable stitch.

  RENA: Your great-grandmother crocheted that purse. She was married three times and she divorced each one of them. She traveled all over the world. And then she came home and my poppa took care of her until the day she died. She was ninety-nine. She was one gutsy lady.

  NED: She was one scary lady. Always reading her Bible out loud, day and night, and barking orders in Hebrew.

  ALEXANDER: Grandma Sybil was the scary one!

  RENA: (Sitting between them.) After we got married, your Grandmother Sybil made Daddy promise he’d never leave her, that one of her sons would always look out for her. Richard kept his promise, which is why she left him the money. He worshiped her. Her great sinful secret was her husband’s infidelity. What was his name? I can’t even remember his name. She would never let his name be said out loud. She threw him out for sleeping with another woman. Kicked him out. Just like that. Judith divorced Leon, too. He kissed his mistress in his and Judith’s very bedroom. I caught them accidentally. He laughed at me! “Why don’t you go out and have some pleasure in life? Why are you always so faithful to that loser?” Imagine saying that about your own brother? I’d been to a doctor. The doctor examined me and told me I wasn’t pregnant. Richard—where was Richard? Well, he wasn’t there and I’d gone to spend the night with Mother Sybil. She terrified me, too. She was a mean, unloving, self-centered . . . bitch. Grandma Sybil only had one bed. I had to sleep with her. Oh, her smells! Her old-lady unguents and liniments. Don’t open the window. I feel a draft. I feel a draft. She started talking to me in the dark. Telling me how much she’d loved him. Her husband. When they first came to America they scrubbed floors together. They’d meet in the middle and kiss. I don’t know why but I thought that was very romantic. Then one day someone told her he was cavorting with a woman in Atlantic City. She didn’t even let him pack. Her heart was still broken, she said, and she fell asleep crying. I kept waking up. I had to go to the toilet. I tiptoed in the dark. I didn’t even flush. I was terrified I’d disturb her. The third or fourth time I smelled a bad smell. Like something spoiled or rotten. The fifth time I turned on the light. The toilet bowl was filled with blood. And lumps of stringy fibers. Like liver. Pieces of raw liver. From the butcher. I was so sleepy. The doctor had given me something to sleep. Why was liver coming out of me? And this awful smell? I went back to her bed. I had to go to the toilet again. And again. By morning I must have been close to death. She demanded her tea in bed. I pulled myself to the kitchen. I fell on the floor in a heap. What must have saved me was the kettle whistling. I couldn’t reach up to turn it off. Where’s my tea? What’s wrong with you, girl? You can’t even make my tea. I woke up in a hospital. I’d had a miscarriage. So you see how much I wanted you. Can’t you? Can’t you see how much I want you? (Clutching ALEXANDER physically.)