Empathy (19 page)

One morning Anna woke up to Dora kissing her on the cheek.

“Do you know why you've been so confused?” Dora asked.

“Do you know why you've lived with such dread and undefined anticipation? Why the world changed so fast every day that you didn't know how to help it? Why you had no explanation?”

“Why?” Anna asked.

“Because, darling,” she said, “we've been living in a country on the brink of war.”

It was January 16, 1991, the day after Martin Luther King's birthday. Never before had Anna experienced the beginning of a war. As far as Vietnam goes, she had been born into it. Never before had a president announced exactly what day the war would begin and then the people waited for that day to come. Anna and Dora woke up
that day
and turned on the radio waiting for the war to start. Anna regretted, for once, not having a TV, but there was something comforting about huddling around the radio just like her parents did in 1942.

It was a little after six and Anna was boiling water. The radio mentioned a flash over Baghdad and that it had begun. Then, at nine o'clock, the president came on and declared his contempt for his own people. At ten-thirty Anna and Dora went out in the slight drizzle, the kind that was much too warm for January. They walked up First Avenue to the United Nations for the first demonstration on the first night of the war.

There were so many fears in Anna's heart. She feared for her own life. She feared for the lives of others. She feared her own complicity
and the complicity of others. She feared all their lives changing faster without the knowledge of how they would change. She feared there would be no change.

“I thought I was going to die of AIDS,” said the man protesting next to her. “But now it seems I might die more communally.”

This is what it was like, that night, to be an American.

Wherever people are at the moment of war, that is where they have placed themselves. It is a big spotlight.

People sat on buses and in audiences with earphones listening to the news, then focused only on the tiniest details. Little forget-menots, forget-mes. Some warm water. A nap. A sweet tooth. A little scratch. A moon for a minute. A soup.

“I would give anything to fuck her,” is an apocalyptic thought.

Anna and Dora stood together in the light of the United Nations facing two hundred policemen in riot gear, listening to boring speeches and feeling panic. They could not know that the fear and anticipation they felt would be quickly surrounded by an institutionalized narcoleptic nationalism and widespread boredom. They could not know that all Americans would spend the next few weeks glued to twenty-four-hour news reports that told them absolutely nothing. They could not know that within three days the entire nation would be wearing little yellow ribbons on their lapels as though their children were playing football instead of imposing mass death.

Soon, one hundred and seventy-five thousand Iraqi people would be massacred in a computerized war that would be presented to the American people like a video game. The numbers of Iraqi dead would never be mentioned. Their destruction would never be acknowledged. More Americans would be killed by guns in New York City during the war than would be killed in the Gulf. But afterward, soldiers who had used tanks to plow desert sands into trenches where Iraqis were buried alive, these same soldiers, would be hailed on those New York City streets as heroes. All over America, these soldiers would be paraded and rewarded and then forgotten to the
unemployment lines, with no health insurance and no future. In fact, the entire war would be forgotten. It would inspire no books, no songs, no metaphors for right and wrong. A year later a famous fashion photographer would do a fabulous spread on the generals for an exclusive glamour magazine. Anyone remembering to ask what the war was like would probably hear a drunken regurgitated slogan like: “If you want freedom, you gotta fight for it, man.”

The entire shape of the world's geography would change. The meaning would not be clear and its beneficiaries would remain obscured. Huge numbers of people would lose the rights they had only recently won on paper, and which had never had time to actually be enforced. There would be a shift in the way people lived.

But Dora and Anna could not know this on the night of January 16, 1991. They were living in a prewar period that could not be identified until the war itself was acknowledged. But the real war was ongoing. The real war was at home. The real war had not been televised. All Anna and Dora knew was that this was a moment in history whose outcome could not be imagined. And so they looked through the drizzle into the lights with very simple and simplistic understanding.

“I just figured out the reason for the Cold War,” Anna said.

“What?”

“The reason for the Cold War was not to keep the Soviets in check. The reason was to keep us in check.”

“I was just thinking something like that myself,” Dora said.

FADE IN
INT. RUTH AND IRV'S APARTMENT. LATE EVENING. PASSOVER.

 

 

RUTH

(
Getting up to clear the table
.)

Anybody want more coffee? I'll make another pot.

 

ANNA

Ma, let Stevie clear the table. Steve, clear the table.

 

STEVE

Don't tell me what to do.

 

ANNA

(
Getting up to clear the table
.)

I just don't see why, in this family in 1991, men still don't clear the table.

 

BARB

I'll clear the table.

ANNA

What's the matter, Barbara? You don't like conflict?

 

RUTH

You, you shouldn't lift a single plate. You didn't eat a thing. You didn't even eat the parsley. What's wrong with you?

 

ANNA

Obviously she's anorexic.

 

SYLVIA

Remember the way my Zeyde used to dovan all night?

 

IRV

Yeah. Those were the good old days.

 

SYLVIA

You and me and Morris would fall asleep under the table.

 

STEVE

Let's start on the second part of the seder. I have an hour on the subway after all of this.

 

SYLVIA

Okay, you gotta find the afikomon. Find the matzah and Daddy will give you a big reward.

 

IRV

Yeah, you can have anything you want under a dollar.

(
Laughs
.)

RUTH

There's no more children in this family. Where are the grandchildren?

 

SYLVIA

Ruthie, it's a new age.

 

RUTH

No grandchildren is a new age?

 

SYLVIA

What do you want? That's progress.

 

STEVE

I'm gonna be thirty in two weeks. I'm a full professor in Cinema Studies and I have a book on Paul DeMan coming out in the fall. I'm too old to look for the matzah.

 

ANNA

But you're not too old to clear the table.

 

IRV

We can't start the seder without the matzah.

 

SYLVIA

You're all a bunch of stinkers. I'll find it.

 

SYLVIA
starts looking for the matzah
.

 

IRV

I remember when my Zeyde used to hide it in his butter churn. A butter churn! Steve, I bet you don't even know what that is.

STEVE

I know more than you think.

 

BARB

What's a butter churn?

 

SYLVIA

I got it! Irv, that was too simple. You put it in the most obvious place.

 

IRV

Where? I forgot where I put it.

 

BARB

What's a butter churn?

 

SYLVIA

I forgot too.

 

RUTH

Okay, Sylvia, what do you want?

 

BARB

Yeah, Sylvia, come up with something good.

 

SYLVIA

I want everyone around the table to say their seder wish. I'll start. I wish my daughter will be safe and happy in the Peace Corps.

 

IRV

Where is she again?

SYLVIA

Gabon.

 

IRV

Gabon.

 

SYLVIA

And I hope she comes home soon and that next year she'll be here with us at seder. Now, Barbara, what is your wish?

 

BARB

I wish for all wars to end. I wish for peace on earth for everyone.

 

RUTH

I wish the Israelis would give back the land already. But only the West Bank. For years the Arabs threatened to bomb Israel. But only George Bush could actually make them do it. And that the whole family should be healthy and that I should have grandchildren while I'm still healthy enough to enjoy them.

 

STEVE

I wish that the whole family should be healthy. I think that's a good wish.

 

SYLVIA

Irv?

 

IRV

Physical health is very important. But, more important is how you feel about yourself. Like Ruthie says, we all need to be free inside. Even the Palestinians must be free.

BARB

Anna?

 

ANNA

I wish my friends would stop dying of AIDS.

 

RUTH

You always have to bring that up.

 

SYLVIA

Shush, Ruthie, it's her turn.

 

ANNA

And I wish something I'd rather keep private.

 

IRV

Okay, that's it. You know, it's very interesting. Seders are not really about telling the story of how we were slaves in Egypt.

 

BARB

What are they really about, Pop?

 

IRV

I think that they are more of a way of ensuring that the family psychology is kept dynamic. We all sit down together and take a good look at each other.

 

SYLVIA

And, God willing, we'll all be here next year to do it again.

 

RUTH

God has nothing to do with it.

 

IRV

I'll get it. It may be a patient.

 

IRV
exits
.

 

RUTH

And I hope I never see a yellow ribbon again for as long as I live. Ron Silliman calls them “soft swastikas.” That's what they are, soft swastikas.

 

IRV
comes back.

 

BARB

What is it, Pop?

 

IRV

It's an emergency. I've got to go to the hospital.

 

BARB

Not again.

 

STEVE

Well, that about wraps up this seder.

 

RUTH

Irv, take a cab.

 

IRV

Of course I'll take a cab.

INT. HALLWAY OF THE BUILDING

 

IRV
is waiting for the elevator
. ANNA
comes down the hallway, still holding her napkin
.

 

IRV

What's the matter?

 

ANNA

Pop, I want to tell you something.

 

IRV

I've got an emergency.

 

ANNA

Pop, I just wanted to let you know that I realize you believe in Freud and everything, and I'm not going to go into that right now.

 

IRV

I don't have that much time right now.

 

ANNA

I know. But I Just want to tell you that, despite what Freud says, the reason I am a lesbian is not because of wanting to hurt you. It's not about you in any way. I really love you, Pop, and I'm a lot like you and being a lesbian is about me. Okay?

 

IRV

I'm glad to hear that you love me. Sometimes I'm not too sure.

 

IRV

Ooops, gotta go. I have an emergency at the hospital. I think I'd better take a cab.

 

ANNA

Pop, it's after eleven. Don't take the subway, take a cab.

 

THE END

That night Anna put her head on Dora's breast and something changed. It had to do with the dusty apartment and the expression in the other's face. It was the opposite of talking.

If I doubted you, I'd be glued to the floor by fear
.

But instead there was a bending at the neck and Dora's two hands flat up against her lover's chest.

So, Anna decided not to be an asshole anymore, which meant having to ruin her own reputation. But the verbal police were talking and she couldn't say, “No, officer, what contraband?” Because … because … because she had a chance for happiness and so put out her hand to reach for the real right thing.