JEFF: It’s inconceivable that he would be
. . . The second maybe.
BEN: . . . Not that I’m copping to your premise.
Scotty can be a beachcomber for all I—
JEFF: Sure: Gauguin.
BEN: Or a guy playing with coconuts.
He’s his own man
. . .
It’s a family joke: the “president.”
A gag.
(Beat.)
JULIE: Is it?
(Beat.)
BEN: Why do I keep eating these?
JULIE: Because you lack control.
(He slides the bowl of nuts away.)
JEFF: I think I’ve cut every vegetable.
JULIE: And like an artisan!
JEFF: I should probably go call my parents
JULIE: Oh your lovely parents! I wish they’d been able to come. They know they were invited, don’t / they?
JEFF: Yeah, oh yeah, they just . . . you know
JULIE: I know. Next year.
JEFF: Maybe so. Well, I’ll—
BEN (Abrupt): Tell us about Scotty’s girlfriend!
JEFF: Oh Ilana? She’s amazing.
JULIE: You don’t blunderbuss your / way into that topic
BEN: Scotty’s gonna come out of the shower one of these days; seize the opportunity
JULIE: God.
JEFF: You’ve never met her?
BEN: She’s always someplace else.
JULIE: She always seems to have other accommodations
BEN: This business of skipping her graduation
JEFF: Her summer program started / before grad—
JULIE: Her parents are very international, / I think?
JEFF: Yeah, she’s amazing . . .
She’s coming tonight, right?
BEN: We trust
JULIE: Our fingers are crossed.
You met her before Scotty did, didn’t
JEFF: We were in the same Twentieth / Century History class.
BEN: She’s very pretty in the one photograph we’ve been vouchsafed
JEFF: Yes: spectacular. Extraordinary, unprecedented. It’s very hard to concentrate in lecture.
BEN: . . . Ah.
JULIE: How did you—
JEFF: Well. She made this statement? In class?
That I thought was . . .
Anyway, she made this remark that the Holocaust
was the most sentimental event of the twentieth century.
Which I thought was bullsh . . . bull
JULIE: Yes, that’s not a new theory.
JEFF: Which, oh okay, I guess I was wrong about.
But I didn’t realize that at the time, so
I went up to her and erroneously told her that I thought what she said was . . .
bull.
And I was really proud because she was scary and not just because of her unbelievable um beauty.
But she just looked at me.
And laughed. But not in a mean way, in this kind of “good for you, I like you. You’ve got bal . . . moxie” way?
And she kissed me.
It was the most amazing thing.
So I introduced her to Scotty.
And the rest is . . . and so forth.
She knows how to build a bomb!
JULIE: I don’t understand.
JEFF: One time, for class, she built this bomb?
She showed it to me in my dorm room.
She said, “Guess what I’ve got?”
And then she took out this bomb that she had built. Like for extra credit?
I mean, it was just the three of us: me, a beautiful girl, and this bomb. It was . . . utter.
Later, she told me she didn’t actually have the, um, full, the incendiary? The accelerant or—the thing that would make it detonate. But still it was, like, the greatest moment.
I just felt so crisp.
(Beat.)
JULIE: My.
JEFF: You shouldn’t take that story to be indicative?
JULIE: What we’re wondering is
BEN: Is he gonna marry her? That’s what we’re
JULIE: Let’s not skip steps: Is it, would you say, a great love?
Would you say it was an amour fou?
JEFF: Um.
Well.
I would definitely say it’s an amour.
I don’t know how fou it is.
BEN: He seems distracted.
Less motivated than I’d like.
He still hasn’t knuckled under to going to law school next year or serious paying work.
He’s just . . . / adrift.
JULIE: No the thing is you know, we haven’t met the girl and while she certainly seems very interesting in your description, we’re afraid he might sort of whimsically elope with her some evening for lack of a conflicting appointment.
JEFF: . . .
I don’t know.
In a way, it’s hard to imagine Ilana doing anything
that . . . um . . . legal?
But you never know.
. . .
Why?
Do you want me to find out for you?
BEN: No, no, not at all.
JULIE (Simultaneous with Ben above): Goodness, no! That’s not what we’re suggesting.
(That’s exactly what they’re suggesting. Pause. They stand around in it, caught. Doorbell rings.)
The Rappaports!
JEFF: I’m gonna call my parents.
(He exits.)
We go to the vestibule. Mort, Faye, Shelley, Julie, Ben.
MORT: What’s news, what’s news?
JULIE: Hey, there!
SHELLEY: Hi-i-i-i
FAYE: Are we interrupting?
JULIE: Not at all.
Oh, you all look so pretty! Shelley, look at you! You’ve lost a person and I love your Doctor Zhivago hat.
SHELLEY: Thanks.
JULIE: You have a face that can carry it.
FAYE: You cooking? It smells ambrosial.
(Meanwhile hugs, coats collected.)
JULIE: I am: You know me, the / kitchen slut.
BEN: How was the traffic, Mort?
MORT: Not so bad. I took the Midtown / Tunnel.
FAYE: I love what you’re wearing, Julie.
JULIE: This?
Oh, thanks.
FAYE: Is it your mother’s?
JULIE: Yes.
Vintage.
FAYE: You can tell.
Her designs.
They have a signature.
Yet they’re so contemporary
JULIE: Do you think?
FAYE: Timeless.
She was timeless.
Take the babka.
JULIE: Oh! Babka! My favorite!
FAYE: Is Timmy still with the sniffles?
JULIE: He is. Poor tyke. But starting to feel better.
FAYE: We’ve brought him comic books
JULIE: Oh, thank you— Isn’t that great?
FAYE: Maybe later we’ll take a peek, he’s so adorable
JULIE: He’s pretty cute
BEN (Simultaneous with above): There’s something I want to give you, Mort.
MORT: Okay
FAYE: And Scotty?
JULIE: Showering, I think?
FAYE: Give? What are you giving?
BEN: Something for Mort.
FAYE: What?
BEN: It’s a surprise
FAYE: Uh-huh . . . I need to talk to you, Benny.
BEN: Okay.
FAYE (Simultaneous with above): Julie, is it okay if I talk to Benny?
JULIE: Yes I need to look in on my little boy. / Then cooking cooking cooking
BEN: Mort, Shelley, set yourselves up in the living room. There’s—what—pigs-in-the-blanket?
JULIE: Pigs-in-the-blank—oh there are actually!
(And on the waft of her laughter, they disperse. Shelley has just stood there the entire time.)
A sitting room with a bar. Faye and Ben.
FAYE: I don’t know at this point—I
just don’t know anymore.
BEN: What is there to say?
FAYE: It’s like a “What’s the worst that could happen?” joke
BEN: I agree
FAYE: He wasn’t even a good actor. And he wasn’t really handsome. He was B-movie handsome. I couldn’t believe it when they made him Governor of California, and those people don’t care what they do. But this: Leader of the Free / World
BEN: Things turn around.
FAYE: But in four years—the damage!
BEN: We’ll organize
FAYE: Who? You and me?
BEN: Sure.
FAYE: Nonsense.
BEN: Of course it’s nonsense; I meant it as / nonsense
FAYE: And who’s left to organize?
The Jews? The Jews are all turncoats. “Republican Jews”—
What is that? It’s like “skinny fat people.”
The kids? These kids? Scotty?
BEN: Scotty marched.
FAYE: Where did Scotty march?
BEN: At Princeton. Divestment from South Africa—
FAYE: Divestment at Princeton. Seven sophomores at lunch hour, round and round they go. Please. Sometimes I think the war ending was the worst thing that could have happened
BEN: Bite your tongue
FAYE: No one feels imperiled on a bodily level anymore. I’m just grateful I’m apolitical. And thank God Moishe and Bernice are dead, they’d be spitting nails if they saw what was happening. I’m fearful.
BEN: Don’t pull your Cassandra crap, Faye.
FAYE: Cassandra was right. Nudnik. That’s the whole point of
BEN: Do you want a drink?
FAYE: A bissel vodka.
BEN (Gets her drink): You seem agitated
FAYE: This is good by contemporary standards.
BEN: I hate to hear that.
What does Dr. . . . Erlich?
FAYE: Eren / reich
BEN: Erenreich! Say?
FAYE: I don’t know. Who knows?
(She starts fiddling absently with tchotchkes on the table.)
He finds my nostalgia for Miltown winsome.
Life was so good during Miltown, Benny
BEN: Maybe there’s some new
FAYE: That’s the hope
BEN: Well then
FAYE: But let’s not reduce me to this. I’m not a House of Chemicals, I’m a person coping with real-life issues that persist and gnaw and what is all this goyishe chazerai I’m playing with here?
BEN: Season’s Greetings. Julie likes tchotchkes.
FAYE: Mom would have a knipsh.
Good for Julie—provocateuse.
Mom never liked her anyway.
BEN: She liked Julie.
FAYE: Only as a person. Not as an entity.
BEN: Rivka on the German Jews was a case for Menninger’s.
FAYE: “The worst Jews in the world.”
BEN: “Yes, Mom. And the fewest.”
FAYE: That never somehow got to her. She didn’t stumble over that.
BEN: She was a complicated woman.
FAYE: Is.
BEN: . . .
To a degree.
FAYE: Go. Go to her.
BEN (Sighs): I am.
FAYE: She’s dying
BEN: She’s been dying as long as we’ve known her
FAYE: Now she’s dying worse. When are you going?
BEN: Tomorrow.
FAYE: That’s all I wanted to know.
BEN: Thank you.
FAYE: Because if you don’t, God help you.
BEN: I said I’d go. Stop hoching me.
FAYE: And what do you have for Mort all of a sudden?
BEN: I’ve got this box of Havanas that
FAYE: Really? Why?
BEN: I can’t give my brother-in-law a box of cigars?
FAYE: After thirty years? No.
BEN: You’re a termagant.
FAYE: I don’t like the sound of these Havanas.
BEN: So what are these real-life problems that are
FAYE: What?
BEN: What are these real-life problems that are at the “root of your malaise.”
FAYE: Ugh, I don’t want to talk about them
. . .
Shelley.
BEN: She looks terrific. She’s lost a lot of weight.
FAYE: She troubles me.
BEN: Has it ever occurred to you you underestimate her?
FAYE: Every benefit of the doubt has been extended.
I’m terrified something will happen to us—
Terrified? You don’t need an actuary: Eventually something will happen to us and who’s going to take care of her? The Temple?
BEN: Does she—don’t jump down my throat, Faye—does she date?
FAYE: . . . Others at her level.
BEN: So?
FAYE: I don’t want her to be one of those couples—the Patronized: Isn’t it nice? They found each other. People like that, they find each other, they compound the oddness.
BEN: This is all exaggeration, Faye.
FAYE: I don’t know anything about her. What she does.
The gynecologist won’t tell / me.
BEN: Oh God, Faye.
FAYE: She’s thirty years old.
She goes places.
Dances and Temple . . . sponsored . . . dances . . .
That sort
I mean . . .
Do they even know what goes into what?
BEN: Have you talked to her about contraception?
FAYE: Imagine that discussion, Ben.
She’s an oppressor. She oppresses me.
When will it lift?
BEN: It will lift
FAYE: But when?
BEN: That I can’t tell you.
(Beat.)
FAYE: She knows how long you haven’t been.
BEN: Shelley?
FAYE: Don’t kid. Mom.
BEN: Mad as a hatter, fogbound in senility, and she
FAYE: The sense of neglect is the last to go
BEN: You’re a pisser, / Faye—
FAYE: You haven’t met the woman?
You go to see her, she’s in a coma, she’s dead, she’ll wake up expressly to make you feel terrible
BEN (Sighs): Our mother.
FAYE: A genius of affrontedness.
BEN: . . . When did you last visit?
FAYE: Two days ago.
BEN: Was she
FAYE: Suddenly she wakes up geshrying about Ruchel.
BEN: Oh God.
FAYE: And somebody named Duvid and a dance of all things
BEN: What dance?
FAYE: What do I know? The prom.
Who knew in Galicia they were going to dances and stealing each other’s boyfriends? I thought they were too busy toiling.
They put her in restraints.
BEN: What?
FAYE: A mini-straitjack / et
BEN: I’ll sue
FAYE: You’re not suing, she was violent
BEN: She weighs four ounc / es
FAYE: She’s grabbing the attendants, shaking them, she’s a broken sparrow of a woman with the grip of Rocky Marciano.
BEN: Jesus. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good / Night”
FAYE: And has there ever been a more useless piece of advice?
Who goes gentle into that good night? Certainly none of our relatives.
Those White Horse Tavern drunks, trust me: I knew them; they were shmucks; don’t listen to anything they say.
BEN (Referring to the vodka): Do you want another?
FAYE: I’m saving room for a sedative. (Pause) What was the point, Benny?
BEN: I don’t know, Faye.
FAYE: Why did our mother choose me for an enemy?
Who benefited?
BEN: No one.
FAYE: And say she dies.
Does that mean it’s over or that
it’s never over?
BEN: . . . There’ll be a pill eventually.
(Jeff wanders in.)
JE
FF: Oh! Sorry!
I didn’t mean to inter / rupt
BEN: You’re not—
JEFF: I was looking for Scotty’s room—I can’t get the hang of this place, it’s very big
FAYE (Snapping out of her mood, social performance): It’s very big
BEN: Have you met?
FAYE (Continuous): Remember, Ben, Gussie, describing when she was brand-new in America?
BEN: Sure
FAYE: “It’s a bewilderness,” she said
BEN: A bewilderness
FAYE: I felt it too, twenty years ago: here.
Come often enough, you’ll figure it out.
There are only six or seven dozen rooms
BEN: Fourteen, four of them / small
FAYE: I’m Faye the sister.
JEFF: I’m Jeff.
FAYE: Scotty’s friend from school.
JEFF: Yes.
FAYE: Nice to meet / you
JEFF: Nice to meet you.
I think your husband was wandering in some hallway looking for Mr. Bascov.
BEN: Ben.
JEFF: For yes (Mutters) Ben.
BEN: I’ll find him
(Shelley wanders in.)
SHELLEY: Hi.
FAYE: Why are you here, Shelley?
SHELLEY: I was in the bathroom. I still get lost in this apart / ment
BEN: You haven’t met Jeff, have you?
SHELLEY: Who?
BEN: This is our houseguest, Jeff Bornstein.
He also gets lost.
JEFF: I do.
FAYE: You have that in common.
BEN: I’m going to talk to your dad now
FAYE: I need to talk to Julie.
JEFF: Nice to meet you.
SHELLEY: Nice to meet you
FAYE: She’s back in the kitchen, right?
JEFF: I think so. I can look if you—
FAYE: No no, sit, sit.
JEFF: I also need to call my
FAYE (Simultaneous with Jeff above): You two young people talk.
(Faye and Ben go.)
JEFF: I—oh. (Sees he’s alone with Shelley)
(Shelley sits.)
Oh. (Now he must too. At length)
So . . . Do you . . . go to school?
SHELLEY (Unhinged laughter): College? No! (It abates)
JEFF: . . . Oh.
SHELLEY: I work at Alexander’s.
JEFF: Oh! That’s nice.
SHELLEY: Yeah
JEFF: . . .
The one in King’s Plaza?
SHELLEY: Roosevelt Field.
JEFF: Oh!
Of course.
Roosevelt Field.
SHELLEY: Yeah.
JEFF: I’ve been to
—I mean, I know it well, of course.
I loved it when I was a child.
SHELLEY: Yeah. Roosevelt Field Mall.
(Beat.)
JEFF: So is that your
The Assembled Parties Page 2
