by James Reston
CHERYL:I can’t talk to you.
NADINE:He’s trying to judge himself.
One time we were together after a
long period of incredible, sharing times.
I said: “You’re so wonderful.”
And he started to cry.
MARK: (To NADINE)
I’ve done terrible things.
NADINE:(To MARK)
I know.
(Long pause)
Christ, I hate this country.
I can remember everything.
Back to being two years old,
and all these terrible things they taught us.
I can’t believe we obeyed them all.
MARK: (Very quiet)
I had two cousins who went through Vietnam.
One was a truck driver and got through it.
My other cousin was in the army.
His unit, about one hundred men were climbing up a hill.
They were all killed except for him and another guy.
And they were lying there.
The VC were going around putting bullets
into people’s heads.
Making sure they were dead.
And he had to lay there wounded faking he was dead.
He and I never talked.
Ever.
Someone else communicated his story to me,
and I know he knows my story.
Pause.
V
CHERYL:I feel so sorry for Margie, my brother’s wife.
I told you about.
You wonder why there’s so much more lesbianism around now?
Look at the men!
You can see where that’s turned a lot of women the other way.
NADINE:He possibly is overpowering.
I don’t know. She was proud to be his woman.
So he said frog, and they all jumped.
Well, that’s terrific.
It cost him a lot
to have that power where he abused it.
CHERYL: Christ!
Mark pushed me into that, once, too.
We were doing this smack deal,
he brought this woman into our room.
He wanted me to play with her.
He wanted me to get it on with her, too.
It just blew my mind.
I mean it just blew me away.
NADINE:I know, I know, I know . . .
But I see when he talks about his wife,
I feel encouraged that there are men that can be that way.
He has never, ever said an unkind word about her.
God, I mean it’s incredibly civilized
the way he talks about her.
In fact, had he ever said anything foul about her,
it would have grated on me.
Maybe he just knows what I require.
But I have yet to hear him say
anything bad about anyone;
even those terrible people he had to deal with
in the jungle.
MARK: I saw my cousin at his dad’s funeral last December.
CHERYL: Now it’s so complex
every time I look . . .
Oh, God . . . every time I look
at a piece of furniture,
it reminds me of something.
MARK: Wherever we moved,
we knew where the other was.
Something radiates between us.
NADINE:I think he’s quite superior.
I really do.
I think he’s got it all figured out.
MARK: Our eyes will meet, but we can’t touch.
NADINE:I think he’s gonna make it.
(Nervous)
I wonder how you perceive him.
MARK: There’s no difference between this war and World War II.
I’m convinced of that.
Maybe it was different in that it was the race thing.
(Admitting)
We referred to them as zips, or dinks, or gooks.
But I don’t think I would have had any trouble shooting anything.
We weren’t freaks out there.
Guys in World War II cracked up, too.
We’re their children.
I would like to play you a song.
Music: “No More Genocide” by Holly Near. MARK turns on tape recorder.
End of Act Two
ACT THREE
I
MARK: (Snaps on slide of him and R.J.)
This is a picture of me and R.J.
We look like a couple of bad-asses.
It was hot. Shit, I miss him.
We were so close.
We talked about everything.
We talked about how each of us lost our
virginity, we talked about girls.
CHERYL:(Agitated)
My girlfriend across the street told me
how babies were made when I was ten years old.
I just got sick. I hated it.
MARK: We talked about fights, getting back on the streets, drugs.
CHERYL:From that moment on,
I had a model:
I wanted kids . . .
MARK: We talked about getting laid . . .
CHERYL:But I didn’t want the husband that went along with it.
I still feel that way.
MARK: We talked about how we would be inseparable
when we came home.
We never would have, even if he hadn’t died.
We knew too much about each other.
CHERYL:And this spooks me because I said this
when I was ten years old.
MARK (New slide)
This is the place, the Alamo.
That’s where the rocket came in and
killed a man . . . uh . . .
(Indicates in the picture)
We got hit one night.
Some several people were sleeping, this fellow . . .
(Picture of him)
A rocket came in and blew his head off.
NADINE:I said to Mark:
“You’re still pissed off because they let you go.
Even assholes stopped their kids from going.
Your good Catholic parents sent you to slaughter.”
MARK It was near dawn.
We moved his body out of there.
We put his body on a rice-paddy dike.
I watched him. He was dead and he was
very close to me and I don’t know.
NADINE:His parents pushed him into going.
They believed all those terrible cliches.
MARK: I didn’t want him to lay in that place where he died.
I didn’t want him laying in the mud.
And I think I was talking to him.
I was crying, I don’t know.
NADINE:Do you know, to this day his father
will not say the word Vietnam.
MARK: His dog came out and started . . .
The dog was eating him.
I just came out and fired at the dog.
I got him killed.
(Snaps picture)
Later, I took that picture.
NADINE:But his father talked to everyone but Mark about the war.
He’s got his medals on his wall.
MARK: I don’t know.
It became a sacred place. It was “the Alamo.”
That’s what we named it.
I shot the dog because it was desecrating.
The dog was eating our friend . . .
I would have done anything, if I could have,
if I could have kept flies off of him, even.
NADINE:His father’s ashamed of himself.
When you let your son go to war
for all the wrong reasons,
you can’t face your son.
MARK: (Crying)
I just wanted him . . .
He coulda gone home the next day.
The war was over for him.
I wanted him to get home.
Pause.
<
br /> II
CHERYL:I want to go home.
To the church, to my family.
The sixties are over.
NADINE:The sixties . . .
You know, a lot of us went through that whole
decade pretending to ourselves we were pacifists.
MARK: I wanted to get home so bad.
CHERYL:Well, I mean I’m gonna have another kid.
I’m gonna have to take him to the Cathedral to be
baptized ’cuz our wedding wasn’t blessed.
It wasn’t in a church.
We had to get married and we had to do it fast.
In South Dakota.
In the clothes we’d been in for three days.
NADINE:As if we didn’t know what violence was.
MARX:You know, the biggest thing I had to adjust to
coming home was I didn’t have my gun.
CHERYL:My dad had just died so I didn’t really care.
My dad and I were really close.
He was the only one who mattered . . .
MARK: I mean, that gun was mine.
CHERYL:I don’t know why I’m remembering all this
all of a sudden . . .
MARK I knew every part of it.
NADINE:God, we hated those vets.
MARK: The barrel burned out of it.
You know, I had a new barrel put in,
but I mean that gun was mine.
I took that gun everywhere I went.
I just couldn’t live without that gun.
NADINE:All that nonsense about long hair, flowers and love.
CHERYL:I mean, my family just dug my father’s hole
and put him right in there.
NADINE:And the women were exempt!
They were all supposed to be Mother Earths making pots.
CHERYL:My brother’s wife went nuts and shot her two-year-old son and killed him,
I told you.
I mean—all the things we did to him.
He had to come and get me out of jail
at three in the morning and he’s not—
he wasn’t a strong man.
So my father just jumped into that bottle
and nobody could get him out of it.
NADINE:I think I knew then what I know now.
MARK: When I got on the plane coming home
I was so happy. I didn’t miss my gun then.
It was my birthday.
NADINE:I don’t know.
MARK: I turned twenty-one.
I did my birthday coming home.
NADINE:Oh, Jesus.
MARK: I did my birthday across the dateline.
I was incredibly happy.
We hit Okinawa.
R.J. was there.
We saw all these guys who were just going over.
NADINE:I only hope I would have done exactly what Mark did.
MARK: All these guys were asking us how it was.
We were really getting off on the fact
that we were done.
These guys were so green and fat.
We were brown, we were skinny.
We were animals.
NADINE:I think he survived
because he became an animal.
I hope I would have wanted to live that bad.
CHERYL:I used to stay up all night with my dad.
I was doing a lot of speed then
and I used to stay up all night with him and talk.
I’d be sewing or something like that at the kitchen table
and he’d be sittin’ there drinking and bitching.
MARK: I don’t know why I couldn’t talk to my parents when I got back.
NADINE:We just can’t face that in ourselves.
MARK: I told my dad everything when I was over there.
CHERYL:My dad was an intelligent, common-sense-type man.
He had no college education, but judging characters . . .
NADINE:Oh, God.
CHERYL:Oh, God.
MARK: The only way I could cry was to write to my dad.
“God, Dad. I’m really scared. I’m really terrified.”
CHERYL:Oh, God. He could pick out people.
MARK: When I sent somebody out and they got killed,
I could tell my dad.
CHERYL:My dad told me: Stay away from Mark.
MARK: I got into L.A. . . . , called:
“Hey, I’m back. I’m back.”
My dad said: “Oh, great. We’re so relieved.
I’m so happy.” My mother cried, she was happy.
I said: “I’m going to buy a hamburger.”
CHERYL:He told me: Mark can’t communicate, his style of dress is weird, the war . . .
MARK: I just got on this stool going round and round.
“Hey, I’m back.”
No one wanted anything to do with me.
Fuckin’ yellow ribbons.
I thought I was tired.
NADINE:The problem now is knowing what to do with what we know.
CHERYL:My dad said:
I want you to forget him.
Just forget him.
Get out of this now, while you can.
MARK: I waited around until 3 A.M.,
caught a flight, got out here.
6:30 in the morning.
Beautiful, beautiful day.
Got my stuff, threw it over my shoulder,
and started walking.
CHERYL:I saw Mark occasionally, anyway.
Shortly after that, my dad had a stroke.
You know, my dad and I are identical.
MARK: I walked in the door and set everything down.
I was home.
My dad looked at me, my mom looked at me.
I sat down. Said:
Could I have some coffee?
That’s when my mother started raggin’ on me
about drinking coffee.
The whole thing broke down.
NADINE:Oh, God . . .
CHERYL:My sister had a baby when she was seventeen.
They put her in a home, you know, the whole route.
Shortly after that, I was five years younger than her,
I was just starting to date.
MARK:“Well,” my mom said, “you better get some sleep.
I’ve got a lot to do.”
I said: like I don’t want to sleep.
I got incredibly drunk.
CHERYL:I remember—I’d come home from a date.
The only time I saw my father was late at night.
He would take a look at me and say:
Well, I hope you learned from your sister
that the only way to stay out of trouble
is to keep your legs crossed.
MARK: My mom and dad had to go out that night.
I thought, well, I’d sit down
and talk with them at dinner.
They were gone.
CHERYL:End of conversation.
MARK: We didn’t see each other that day.
We never really did see each other.
CHERYL:I mean, he got his point across . . .
more or less.
MARK: I had no idea what was going on.
This was 1970.
My hair was short.
I got really crazed out on junk and stuff.
Then when I was totally avoiding going home
somewhere in that I wanted to . . .
I really wanted bad to . . .
communicate with a woman.
NADINE:You know, all Mark did was—
He brought the war back home
and none of us could look at it.
MARK: I wanted to fuck my brains out.
CHERYL:God, I was naive.
I was naive as they come.
And to sit here and say that now knowing what I know
and what I’ve been through
just gives me the creeps.
MARK: No one wanted anything to do with me.
NADINE:We
couldn’t look at ourselves. We still can’t.
CHERYL:Because I am so far from being naive.
I mean, just the idea if I ever divorced Mark . . .
I don’t think I could ever find anyone who
could handle my past.
I mean, I have a hard time relating to it myself.
III
NADINE:Oh, God.
I’m worried about us.
I keep this quiet little knowledge with me every day.
I don’t tell my husband about it
I don’t tell my kids,
or Mark.
Or anyone.
But something has fallen apart.
I’m having trouble being a mother.
How can you believe in sending your children to special classes
when you know it doesn’t matter?
Oh,
I worry, I worry,
I worry one of my daughters
will be walking down the street
and get raped or mugged by someone who is angry or hungry.
I worry I have these three beautiful daughters (pieces of life)
who I have devoted my whole life to,
who I’ve put all my energy into—bringing up—raising—
and then somebody up there goes crazy one day
and pushes the “go” button and
phew! bang, finished, the end.
I worry that my daughters won’t want to give birth
because of my bad birthing experience.
And I worry that they will want to give birth.
I worry that—
Well, one of my daughters does blame me
for the divorce
because I have protected them from knowing
what kind of man their father really is.
(I worry that I worry too much about all this
and I worry that I really don’t worry enough about it all.)
I worry so much it makes me sick.
I work eighteen hours a day just to pay the bills.
This year, I work on the feminist caucus,
I do my portraits, run my magazine, organize civic events.
I hold two jobs and more.
I invited my dear, sweet, ninety-one-year-old uncle
to come die at my house.
I go to recitals, shopping, graduation,
I don’t go through the ritual
of getting undressed at night.
I sleep with my shoes on.
My husband’s alcoholism has ruined us.
(Forty-five thousand dollars in debt.)
I don’t dare get angry anymore.
Can you imagine what would happen,
if I got angry?
My children . . .
(Can’t go on)
MARK: My wife means so much to me.
I don’t want to jeopardize what she’s giving to me.
I don’t want to jeopardize her.
It’s like the Marine Corps.
Cheryl is like a comrade. She’s walking wounded now.
You don’t leave a comrade on the field.
NADINE:It’s all out of control.
MARK: Sometimes I think Nadine loses sight of things.
