The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (26 page)

BEN:
I didn’t run away.

ALEXANDER:
You were never there.

NED:
Answer him!

BEN:
(
After a long pause.
) I didn’t have a mother.

ALEXANDER:
You never had a
mother?

BEN:
You asked me why I never came home. That’s why I never came home.

ALEXANDER:
You thought Rena didn’t love you?

BEN:
She doesn’t.

ALEXANDER:
Mommy doesn’t love you? (
To
NED
.) Did you know this?

NED:
That’s what he believes.

BEN:
She was never there! She had so many jobs. She was always out taking care of everyone in the entire world except me. So I went out and did a thousand projects at a time because I thought that was how I’d get my mother’s love. If I got
another
A or headed up
another
organization, she’d notice me and pay attention to me and I’d win some approval from her. I needed her and she wasn’t there and I resent it bitterly. (
Long pause.
) And I’ll never forgive her for that.

ALEXANDER:
(
Shaken, feeling he must defend her.
) She had to work! Pop didn’t make enough! She was doing her best.

BEN:
That’s all she cares about.
Her
best. She
made
Daddy quit working for Uncle Leon. It was a good job. All through the Depression, Leon was rich. Pop had been making big bucks. Suddenly he’s no longer the breadwinner, with no self-respect. He was out of work for something like seven, eight years before the war finally came and there was work in Washington for everybody. So we moved to Washington where he made ten times less than he’d made with Leon.

ALEXANDER:
You can’t blame that on her!

BEN:
Why not! She had to be the star. She never stopped. She had a million jobs. She had a few spare hours she ran over to take dictation from a couple of bozos who repaired wrecked trucks. Leon found Pop a job as American counsel in the Virgin Islands. A big house, servants, tax-free salary. A fortune in those days. They turned it down.

ALEXANDER:
She said there wasn’t any milk for babies. You were just born.

BEN:
You boil milk. You use powdered. What did all the tens of thousands of babies born there drink? Have you heard about any mass demise of Virgin Island babies? She didn’t want to go! She felt so “useful.” And so he stayed home, unemployed, playing pinochle with the boys.

ALEXANDER:
Why didn’t he hustle his ass like she did?

BEN:
You’re not listening to me. She took his balls away! Why are you defending her so? She almost smothered you to death.

ALEXANDER:
She was the only one interested in me!

BEN:
Interested in you? What did she ever do to help you develop one single ability or interest or gift you ever had? You wanted to act, sing, dance, write, create . . . whatever. That’s what parents are supposed to do! Richard crucified every single one of those desires and she stood by and let him. All she does is talk endlessly and forever about herself!

ALEXANDER:
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t! It was him. It was all him. It was Richard. Why aren’t you mad at him for being so weak instead of her for trying to be strong?

BEN:
She called all the shots and she called them from her own selfish point of view.

ALEXANDER:
You don’t like her as much as I don’t like him. What happens when a kid is chosen for the wrong team? It’s as if we each took one parent for our very own. And each of them chose one of us. The whole procedure had nothing to do with love. Can you say “I love you?” Out loud? To anyone? And mean it? (
No answer. To
NED.
) Can you? (
No answer.
)

BEN:
There’s just an anger inside me that never goes away. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m late. Walk me back to the office.

ALEXANDER:
How’d you figure all this out? (
No answer.
) You have just told me I shouldn’t love my mother. How did you figure this all out!

BEN:
(
Another long pause.
) I’m being psychoanalyzed.

ALEXANDER:
(
Pause.
) I don’t know why but that scares the shit out of me.

BEN:
It should make you feel better you’re not the only one.

ALEXANDER:
It’s all the decisions I let you make for me because you were the only one. What happened? God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were another man.

BEN:
You know how Richard always yelled at you, no matter what you did, you couldn’t do anything right? That’s how Sara treats Timmy. She says I. . . I withhold. I don’t show how I feel toward anyone and that makes her overreact and overreach and vent her anger on young Timmy. My son . . . he . . . she . . . she’s so hard on him, she takes everything out on him that’s meant for me. I called her. . . a controlling bitch. She says she can’t stop herself from doing it. Alexander, it’s a mess. The poor kid’s got some kind of stomach ulceration now. He’ll suddenly start bleeding, he can never be out of range of a toilet, and he’s only a kid, he’ll have this all his life. He’s such a good kid. He came into my room and started crying. I want him to be smart in school and the kid just isn’t. And he knows it disappoints the shit out of me. Ned, why doesn’t he do better? He’s smart. I just know it! He was crying. He started
screaming I didn’t love him. And I’d never loved him. Why are you looking at me that way? We’re working on it! Sara’s in therapy, too. She’s learning. I’m learning. Richard and Rena couldn’t learn. We can learn. We mustn’t stop trying to learn.

NED:
“And the sins of the fathers shall visit unto the third and fourth generations.”

BEN:
No! I don’t believe that! We
can
change it!

NED:
And all those years you told me it was worse for me and I believed you!

BEN:
It was. It was worse for you.

NED:
No, it wasn’t. Why was it so important for you to hold on to that? Why was it so important to you to make me the sick one? Were you so angry at Rena that you had to make my homosexuality so awful just to blame her? It wasn’t so hot for either of us! It made you stay away from home. And it didn’t make me gay. It made both of us have a great deal of difficulty saying “I love you.”

BEN:
Ned—go and call Peter back.

ALEXANDER:
Thank you, Ben. I called Peter back. I asked him to meet me. Which he did. At the Savoy Plaza. I took this grand suite and ordered filet mignon and champagne and flowers, tons of flowers. I apologized over and over again for what I had done. He said he recalled our time together as very pleasant. I practically pounced on him and threw him on the bed and held him in my arms and kissed him all over. He told me he was very happily in love with someone else and he thought it best that he leave. Which he did.

BEN:
I’m sorry. I have to get back to the office. I really am sorry. I have a meeting. Good luck in London. Maybe you’ll meet someone.

ALEXANDER:
Are you saying loving a man is now okay?

BEN:
Keep fighting. Keep on fighting. Don’t give up. The answers will present themselves. They really will. For both of us!

(
They go off.
)

NED:
I haven’t been honest with you. I left out the hardest part for me to talk about. It was done by another Ned, someone inside of me who took possession of me and did something I’ve been terrified, every day of my life ever since, he might come back and do again. And, this time, succeed. After my father beat me and Mom up and told me he’d never wanted me and after I told my brother I was gay and after my brother got married and before my first year’s final exams that I knew I’d flunk, I pulled a bottle of some kind of pills which belonged to my roommate whose father was a doctor out of his bureau drawer and swallowed them all. I had wanted to take a knife and slice a foot or arm off. I had wanted to see blood, gushing everywhere, making a huge mess, and floating me away on its sea. But there were only pills. I’m only going to take two for a headache and two more to help me sleep. I have finals on Monday and there’s no way I can pass. Where else can I go? Back to Eden Heights? I’d rather be dead. So where? Every social structure I’m supposed to be a part of—my family, my religion, my school, my friends, my neighborhood, my work, my city, my state, my country, my government, my newspaper, my television—tells me over and over what I feel and see and think and do is sick. The only safe place left is the
dark. I want to go to sleep. It’s Friday. I want to sleep till Tuesday. (
Swallowing
HANNIMAN’
s pills with
BEN
’s champagne.
) This couple of pills will take me till tomorrow and these until Sunday and . . . Monday . . . now I can sleep till Tuesday. Might as well take a few more. Just in case. Pop’s right, of course. I’m a failure. (
Looking at himself in the mirror over the sink.
) You even look like Richard. You’ll look like him for the rest of your life. I am more my father’s child than ever I wanted to be. I’ve fought so hard not to look like you. I’ve fought so hard not to inherit your failure. Poor newly named Ned. Trying so hard to fight failure. Now increasing at an awful rate. I woke up in the hospital and Ben was there beside me.

ALEXANDER’S VOICE:
Help! I’m drowning! Don’t let me drown!

NED:
That night at Mrs. Pennington’s when Benjamin stopped Poppa from beating me up, he put me on his shoulders and carried me down to the shore. We swam and played and ducked under each other’s arms and legs. We lay on the big raft, way out on the Sound, side by side, not saying a word, looking at the stars. I held his hand. He said, Come dive with me. I dived in after he did and I got caught under the raft and I couldn’t get out from under. I thrashed desperately this way and that and I had no more breath.

ALEXANDER’S VOICE:
Help! I’m drowning! Don’t let me drown!

NED:
When I thought I would surely die, he rescued me and saved me, Benjamin did.

(
BENJAMIN
carries in a limp
ALEXANDER
and lays him on the ground. Both are wet from the ocean.
)

He got me to the shore and he laid me out on the sand and he pressed my stomach so the poison came out and he kissed me on the lips so I might breathe again.

TONY:
(
Entering.
) Ned, I’ve run the tests. The new genes are adhering. We’re halfway there. We can go on with the final part. Say “Thank you.” Say “Congratulations.” You begged for a few more years. I may have bought you life. (
Leaves.
)

NED:
Okay, Ned—he happy. Be exuberant! You’re halfway there. (
Singing.
) “Hold my hand and we’re halfway there, Hold my hand and I’ll take you there. Someday. Somewhere. Somehow . . .”

End of Act Two

(
HANNIMAN
removes three more sacks of blood from the small insulated chest on her cart and inserts them into the wall machine.
DR. DELLA VIDA
,
wearing the white dress uniform of a Public Health Service officer, checks that everything is in readiness.
NED
,
wearing a navy blue robe with a red ribbon on the lapel, looks out the window.
)

NED:
Three hundred and seventy arrests and not one lousy reporter or camera so no one sees it but a couple hundred of your scientists with nothing better to do than look out their windows because their microscopes are constipated.

TONY:
I thought your soapbox was in retirement.

NED:
You bought me life.

TONY:
Nice robe.

NED:
Navy blue and red. The smart colors Felix always called them.

(
TONY
wheels in from the outside hallway a new machine—the Ex-Cell-Aerator, another elaborate invention, replete with its own dials and switches and tubings and lights.
)

What’s that?

TONY:
(
Proudly.
) I call it the Ex-Cell-Aerator. Your reassembled blood will be pumped through it so it can be exposed to particles of—

NED:
That’s it? I thought it was the other one.

TONY:
It’s both of them.

NED:
It takes two? Did you dream all this up?

TONY:
I try to be as creative as the law allows.

NED:
(
Re: the sacks of blood.
) The little buggers went and multiplied.

TONY:
Enriched. They got enriched. Hey, don’t touch those.

NED:
Do genes get loose and act uncontrollably, like viruses?

TONY:
You bet. It’s scary trying to modify nature.

NED:
Despite everything I know and said and stood for, I have fucked with the enemy and he has given me hope.

TONY:
I’m not your enemy.

NED:
Why are you all dressed up?

TONY:
The President wants to know all about this. (
Indicates that
NED
should get in bed.
)

NED:
Any of my blood you want to slip him, hey . . . You’re going to the White House!

TONY:
Yes, I am. I go quite often.

NED:
(
As
TONY
and
HANNIMAN
reconnect him to the wall tubing.
) Tell me . . . you’re a doctor, but you’re also an officer in the service of your country. You’re compelled to obey orders. How can research be legislated? You’re an artist. How can you be free enough to create? It’s like asking writers to write not using any vowels.