The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

  ALEXANDER: Momma, don’t. I’m beginning to feel really unhappy.

  RENA: Can’t you see?

  ALEXANDER: (Breaking away from her.) It comes out of nowhere.

  NED: I get scared.

  RENA: Can’t you see?

  (ALEXANDER runs away from her. RENA has no arms to go to but NED’s; he accepts her reluctantly.)

  NED: Don’t cry, Momma. (In ALEXANDER’s direction.) Come back!

  RENA: (Clutching NED.) You’re leaving me. What am I supposed to do?

  (BENJAMIN enters; he doesn’t like what he sees. RENA quickly relinquishes NED.)

  BENJAMIN: Hi, Mom.

  RENA: I made your favorites. Remember when you were captain of the football team and drank three quarts of milk every meal?

  BENJAMIN: I’m not on any team anymore. (To ALEXANDER.) Lemon, come help me.

  (BENJAMIN and ALEXANDER go off. NED returns to bed; he’s not feeling well. Several yellow lights go on. The soft bell rings. He presses his buzzer.)

  RENA: (Alone.) Aren’t you glad to see me?

  (RENA sits on the swing. After a moment, RICHARD enters.)

  RENA: Your other son has arrived.

  RICHARD: I hate using everyone’s toilet.

  RENA: Year after year, you’re the one who insists on coming back here to Mrs. Pennington’s. We could go to that place in New Hampshire Manny and Teresa rave about. You even told me to send for a brochure. I’ve never been to Europe.

  RICHARD: I’ve been to Europe. Leon and I tried to find where Pop was born. We couldn’t find it. I like it here. Except for the toilet. (Angry.) We can’t afford Europe, for Christ’s sake!

  RENA: I can dream! Let’s have a nice time.

  RICHARD: I didn’t come here not to have a nice time. Why couldn’t he have turned out like Ben?

  RENA: You want another Ben? A son who never comes home. Who never writes except when he wants something. This is the first time the family has been together in years. I should’ve bought flowers. I wonder why he’s come.

  RICHARD: Come here.

  RENA: What do you want?

  RICHARD: (As she sits beside him.) You’re a good egg. It hasn’t been easy for you.

  RENA: Why are you talking like this all of a sudden?

  RICHARD: I’m just trying to be nice.

  RENA: I don’t even recognize it anymore.

  RICHARD: You wanted more.

  RENA: Everybody wants more.

  RICHARD: I’ve always been crazy about you.

  RENA: What’s wrong with wanting more?

  (NED presses the buzzer more urgently.)

  RICHARD: Things will be better soon. Four more years and we’ll have nothing to spend money on but ourselves.

  RENA: Just the two of us again.

  RICHARD: It will be better. We’ll move back here for good.

  RENA: You’ve never stopped loving me for one minute, have you?

  RICHARD: No, Mommy, I haven’t. And I never shall.

  RENA: Richard, they’re both gone now. I want to go out on my own now, too.

  RICHARD: Don’t start those dumb, stupid, asinine threats one more time!

  (BENJAMIN and ALEXANDER enter, carrying a tennis racket, books, a suitcase.)

  BENJAMIN: You could show a little more enthusiasm.

  ALEXANDER: (Offering his hand.) Congratulations, Benjamin. I hope you’ll be very happy.

  (But BENJAMIN’s hands are full.)

  RICHARD: Hey, son!

  BENJAMIN: Who won?

  RICHARD: We slaughtered you. Yankees ten, Red Sox two.

  BENJAMIN: We’re still ahead in the series.

  (HANNIMAN runs in.)

  NED: I’m boiling! I feel like I’m going to explode!

  (She feels him, then quickly checks the monitoring devices.)

  RENA: (Trying to kiss BENJAMIN hello.) Tell me all about Yale. I want to know everything so I can be proud. What’s your thesis on?

  BENJAMIN: Ma, I’ve told you a dozen times.

  RENA: Tell me again.

  ALEXANDER: Twentieth Century Negro Poets.

  (HANNIMAN leaves quickly.)

  RENA: Isn’t that fascinating.

  RICHARD: Studying all that literature stuff is crap!

  RENA: Don’t be such a philistine!

  BENJAMIN: It’s my money and my education and my life.

  (HANNIMAN returns with DR. DELLA VIDA. NED begins to convulse slightly.)

  TONY: (Checking the computer, then NED.) He’s going into shock! (Turns off the machinery.)

  (HANNIMAN hands him a huge syringe, which be injects into NED’s groin or neck.)

  ALEXANDER: Benjamin doesn’t want to go to law school. He wants to be a teacher or a writer. He wants to help people. Ned, what are they doing to you?

  BENJAMIN: I’ll be all right, Lemon. Law is helping people, too.

  ALEXANDER: That’s not what you told me! Ned, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you answering?

  RICHARD: (To BENJAMIN.) Listen, mister smart ass big guy, don’t make it sound like such a holy sacrifice! I got you this far. I got both of you this far. I got all of us this far.

  RENA: Stop it, stop it, stop it!

  ALEXANDER: NED!

  RICHARD: You and your ungrateful prick of a brother!

  RENA: We are not going to fight!

  ALEXANDER: Why do you bring us back to this stupid place every year anyway? Just so we can feel poor? Benjamin is going to marry a rich girl he doesn’t even love!

  RENA: You’re getting married?

  RICHARD: Hey, I always say it’s just as easy to marry a rich one.

  BENJAMIN: You promised me you’d keep your mouth shut. Let’s go for a swim. (Throws ALEXANDER his suit.)

  RENA: Don’t go. It’s getting dark.

  BENJAMIN: (Gets his own suit.) Fast!

  RENA: It’s too dark. Wait until tomorrow. I’ll go with you.

  RICHARD: (Grabbing ALEXANDER as he starts out.) Every time I look at you, every single time I see you, I wish to Christ your mother’d had that abortion!

  RENA: (A wail.) NOOOOOO!

  RICHARD: She wouldn’t have another one. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.

  RENA: I beg you!

  ALEXANDER: Ned, help me! Where are you?

  (NED tries to get up, but is restrained by DR. DELLA VIDA.)

  (BENJAMIN physically lifts ALEXANDER away from RICHARD and they start out. RICHARD grabs RENA, who is also leaving.)

  I’m going to be sick. (Runs to sink.)

  TONY: It’s okay, Ned. We’re going to get through this.

  RICHARD: Where do you think you’re going? We can’t afford another child, Rene. He’ll just take all our pleasure away. All our money and all our hope.

  RENA: Let go of me, Richard.

  RICHARD: Listen to me, Rene. It’s the Depression.

  RENA: This time I mean it. This time I’m going for good.

  (RICHARD restrains her from leaving.)

  I only came back because you begged me! What else could I do? A woman can’t get a decent job to use her brain. I had to sell lace and pins at Macy’s for twelve dollars a week. I lost my chance with Drew Keenlymore.

  RICHARD: We’re back to him again? Miss Flirt! Miss Goddamn Flirt!

  BENJAMIN: (helping ALEXANDER at the sink.) Lemon, are you all right?

  ALEXANDER: Please don’t call me Lemon anymore.

  RICHARD: What does anyone know about not taking it anymore? Spending each day of my life at a job I hate, with people who don’t know how smart I am.

  BENJAMIN: Come on.

  ALEXANDER: I can’t throw up.

  RICHARD: Not seeing my sons turn into anything I want as my sons—the one I love never at home, the other one always at home, to remind me of what a sissy’s come out of my loving you. Don’t leave me, Rene!

  RENA: I am, I am. Let me go!

  (RICHARD is trying to hold a woman who doesn’t want to be held. He hits her. She screams.)

  RICHARD: I don’t want to live w
ithout you!

  RENA: I’m supposed to stay here? For the rest of my life?

  (RENA breaks loose and runs off. BENJAMIN runs after her. RICHARD yanks ALEXANDER away from the sink and hurls him to the floor, falling on top of him, pinioning him beneath him and letting out all his venom and fury on his younger son.)

  RICHARD: You were a mistake! I didn’t want you! I never wanted you! I should have shot my load in the toilet!

  ALEXANDER: Mommy!

  NED: (Screaming out.) Ben!

  (BENJAMIN runs back in. He somehow separates his father from his brother. He carries ALEXANDER off in his arms.)

  BENJAMIN: It’s too late. There’s nothing we can do. I shouldn’t have come.

  (RICHARD pulls himself up off the floor. He doesn’t know which way to go. He stumbles first in one direction, then in another, finally going off.)

  NED: It’s too late. There’s nothing we can do. I shouldn’t have come.

  HANNIMAN:Why, we’re just starting.

  TONY: You just had a little imbalance. It’s a good sign. It means we’re knocking out more of your infected cells than we expected. I think we just may be seeing some progress.

  NED: That was awful. You sure it’s not just poison? Would you tell me it’s working, even when it’s killing me? Did anyone anywhere in the entire history of the world have a happy childhood?

  TONY: I’m sure George Bush was a very happy child.

  HANNIMAN and NED: He still is.

  (They all smile. TONY turns the switch to the equipment on again and leaves. HANNIMAN wipes NED’s damp brow.)

  NED: In eighteenth-century Holland—a country and culture that had never acted this way—there was a hysterical uprising against gays that resulted in the most awful witch hunts. Young boys were condemned, persecuted, throttled, executed . . . a fourteen-year-old boy was found guilty and drowned with a two-hundred-pound weight. Who was that kid? What was his name? What could he possibly ever have done to deserve such punishment, and in a Christian land?

  Centuries later, historians, searching for a reason, discovered that, when all that happened, the sea walls along the Dutch coast were collapsing because of massive, unrelenting pressure from floods, accompanied by a plague of very hungry pile worms consuming the foundations.

  The people, in that perverse cause-and-effect way that never seems to stop, had blamed the destruction of their coastline and its fortifications on the gay kids. God would inun date their Republic until it was punished and penance was paid to relieve the wrath of the Almighty.

  When I was a little boy I thought colored girls were much sexier than white girls.

  HANNIMAN: What happened?

  NED: Boys. Any color. How did you meet Tony?

  HANNIMAN: I was head nurse of this division when he was appointed director.

  NED: Was it love at first sight?

  HANNIMAN: None of your business.

  NED: You don’t seem very happy. Is it because he’s such a . . . Republican?

  HANNIMAN: You think anyone black has anything to be happy about?

  NED: It seems more personal.

  HANNIMAN: Everyone in this entire hospital in every room on every floor is dying from something. They all come here to be saved. This is the new Lourdes. Congress gives us nine billion dollars a year to perform miracles. And God’s a bit slow these days in the miracle department. You don’t think that’s enough to get you down?

  NED: Still not personal enough.

  HANNIMAN: You always say just what you want to?

  NED: Pretty much. No matter what you say, x number of people are going to approve and x number aren’t. You might as well say what you want to.

  HANNIMAN: You obviously don’t work for the government.

  NED: So marrying a white man didn’t solve any of your problems?

  HANNIMAN: Did not marrying a colored girl solve any of yours? (Starts to leave.)

  NED: Hey! I thought we were seeing some progress!

  HANNIMAN: We are. (Leaves.)

  ALEXANDER: (Entering his Yale room, dressed most collegiately.) The first thing upon entering a new life is to change one’s name.

  BEN: (Entering with brownies and milk, wearing a Y athletic sweater.) Ned?

  ALEXANDER: Ben?

  BEN: But Ben is logically the nickname for Benjamin.

  ALEXANDER: I read this play called Holiday where there’s a Ned. It could be a nickname for Alexander. It sounds very fresh and spiffy, don’t you think? Ned. She still makes a good brownie.

  BEN: (Noticing some papers.) What kind of dreadful way is this to start out? What happened?

  ALEXANDER: What happened? I’m flunking psychology. And astronomy. And geology. And German. So far. What do I do?

  BEN: Study.

  ALEXANDER: That’s very helpful. What did you win that letter for?

  BEN: This one? Boxing, I think.

  ALEXANDER: Boxing. Football. Squash. Tennis. Dean’s List. Phi Bete. A after A after A. Prom committees, elected offices, scholarships, friends, girls. . . You have done your parents and your alma mater and your country proud. You’re even marrying a rich girl.

  BEN: It’s time to get married.

  ALEXANDER: Do you love her yet?

  BEN: She’s as good as anyone.

  ALEXANDER: What kind of dreadful way is this to start out? I don’t want to be a lawyer.

  BEN: Nobody’s asked you to be a lawyer.

  ALEXANDER: I always dreamed we’d be partners in something.

  BEN: Why aren’t you going to Europe with Theo?

  ALEXANDER: Boy, is Moby Dick a bitch to get excited about. Are you sorry Pop made you go to law school?

  BEN: I don’t believe anybody makes you do anything you don’t really want to.

  ALEXANDER: That’s good to know.

  BEN: Why aren’t you going to Europe this summer with Theo all expenses paid? It sounded like a wonderful offer.

  (NED has left his bed and moved closer to ALEXANDER.)

  NED: This is one of those moments in life we talked about. Would life be otherwise if you did or didn’t do something differently? You’re about to tell your brother . . . something both painful and precious, something you don’t understand, something you need help with. You want him to understand. Oh, how you want him to understand! He’s not going to understand.

  ALEXANDER: Will it be better if I don’t tell him?

  NED: I’ve always thought it would have been. I don’t know. Why do you have to tell him at all?

  ALEXANDER: Why not? Is it something so awful?

  NED: (Helplessly.) But Ben is going to . . .

  ALEXANDER: Going to what?

  NED: (Feebly.) Make you . . .

  ALEXANDER: Make me what?

  NED: Make you do something I’d rather not have done. Just yet. They didn’t know enough then!

  ALEXANDER: How much do they know now! In my limited experience, so far as I can see, you don’t have a very good record on just about anything concerning me. Or yourself. Why are you even here? Why are you letting them do all this to you? Do you trust that doctor? I don’t. He’s much too gorgeous. (To BEN.) We were lovers.

  BEN: We were what!

  ALEXANDER: Me and Theo!

  NED: And so the journey begins. Do you feel any better?

  BEN: Did he ask you?

  ALEXANDER: (To BEN.) Yes. (To NED.) Yes!

  BEN: He shouldn’t have done that.

  ALEXANDER: Oh, I wanted to do it.

  BEN: How can you be so certain of that?

  ALEXANDER: I don’t believe anybody makes you do anything you don’t really want to.

  BEN: This is about you, not me. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to.

  ALEXANDER: Like become a lawyer and get married to someone you don’t love?

  BEN: Look, Sara and I are just getting started, and, listen, get off my case. What happened with Theo?

  ALEXANDER: We made love. Right here. I went to Theo and asked him: I’m flunking out of your German class, coul
d I do something for extra credit, and we went out and drank beer, and we came back here, and he asked me: would you like to make love, and I walked to this door, and opened it, and said: I think you’d better go, and I closed the door, and ran right back into his arms. And I passed.

  BEN: I believe this is something they now think they can change.

  ALEXANDER: It felt wonderful!

  BEN: It’s unhealthy, it’s caused by something unhealthy, it’ll do nothing but make you unhappy.

  NED: How are all the men in my family such experts in these matters?

  BEN: Everybody knows.

  NED: Everybody does not know! Everybody is told!

  BEN: What’s the difference?

  ALEXANDER: Unhealthy? (BEN nods.) Caused by something?

  BEN: A possessive mother. An absent father.

  NED: That’s what they thought then.

  ALEXANDER: Absent? Richard was always there. That was the problem. Possessive doesn’t sound precise enough for Rena. (To NED.) Where do I get more up-to-date information?

  BEN: You see a psychiatrist.

  ALEXANDER: See him do what?

  BEN: You talk to him.

  ALEXANDER: Talk to him?

  BEN: About this.

  ALEXANDER: I’m talking to you.

  BEN: What do you expect me to say?

  ALEXANDER: “I don’t care if you’ve got purple spots, I love you.” Theo said there are lots of us. We can tell each other like Jewish people can.

  BEN: Horseshit!

  ALEXANDER: We mustn’t fight, Benjamin.

  NED: Why not? If you don’t agree, fight, Alexander. Fight back! Never run away from a fight.

  ALEXANDER: Which one of you am I supposed to fight? It’s like Richard and Rena—each one is pulling so hard in opposite directions I’m being torn in two. (To NED.) Please call me Ned.