The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (27 page)

(
HANNIMAN
leaves.
)

TONY:
(
Connecting the Ex-Cell-Aerator to the wall apparatus.
) I run the premier research facility in the entire world. The American people are very lucky to have a place like this. And you got him all wrong. He’s a good guy. He’s got a heart. He really wants this disease to go away.

NED:
He’s brain-dead and you’re brainwashed.

TONY:
Lay off my wife, will you? Any fights you got with me, pick them with me. (
Hits a computer key to start everything going.
)

NED:
Tony, all your top assistants are gay. What’s that all about? When I bring down all my young men for meetings, you look at them so . . . (
Can’t find the word.
)

TONY:
So what?

NED:
You can’t take your eyes off them.

TONY:
It’s very sad. . . what’s happening.

NED:
Yes, it is. What kind of life do you want to he leading that you’re not? Why is everyone down here afraid to call a plague a plague? Are you punishing us or yourself? (
Calling after him as he leaves.
) You get away with murder because you’re real cute and everybody wants to go to bed with you! Nobody wanted to go to bed with Ed Koch. Him we could get rid of. (
Talking to the Ex-Cell-Aerator.) You’re the
cure? I hope you come in a portable version, like a laptop. Can you find me a boyfriend while you’re at it? Way to win the charm contest, Ned. You’ll never get them in your arms that way. Mom, you said there wasn’t anything in the world your son couldn’t do.

(
HANNIMAN
comes in and pulls a curtain around the bed.
RENA
,
now about seventy, sits in a hospital waiting area trying unsuccessfully to read some old magazines. Occasionally she gets up to look inside a room through an open door.

After a moment,
NED
,
wearing an overcoat and carrying a suitcase, enters. They are strangely distant with each other. Sounds of baseball game on the TV.
)

RENA:
(
To the unseen
RICHARD.
) I’m closing this so I don’t have to hear that ball game. (
Does so.
) When he sees you here he’ll put two and two together and realize we sent for you.

NED:
Doesn’t he know?

RENA:
Some things you don’t want to know, even if you know. How’s London? You never write to me.

NED:
It’s great. Very productive. Where’s Ben?

RENA:
They took a break. Sara’s been wonderful. She hasn’t left my side. So.

NED:
You always wanted to travel.

RENA:
He isn’t dead yet.

NED:
I’m just saying you’ve got something to look forward to.

RENA:
How about giving me a chance to mourn first? Why are we talking like this to each other? I haven’t seen you in six, seven years. Are you still going to a psychiatrist?

NED:
I can go every day for seventy-five dollars a week.

RENA:
That used to be three months’ rent. How in God’s name do you find enough to talk about every day?

NED:
I fall asleep a lot.

RENA:
You pay someone to fall asleep? You kids, you and your psychiatrists think you know it all. Then why aren’t we perfect after all these years?

NED:
Did you and Richard have a good sex life?

RENA:
That’s none of your business.

NED:
I just thought I’d ask.

RENA:
Well, don’t.

NED:
Did he want sex more than you, or did you want it and he wouldn’t?

RENA:
Stop it!

NED:
You used to tell me everything.

RENA:
Well, here’s something I’m not going to. Our lives weren’t about sex. Is sex what controls your life?

NED:
I don’t know. Why don’t you try and look up Drew Keenly-more?

RENA:
Why don’t you try and stop being so fresh?

NED:
Didn’t you love him?

RENA:
Why are you so obsessed with Drew Keenlymore?

NED:
One should be able to have the man one loves.

RENA:
Life should be a lot of things.

NED:
Did he ever ask you to marry him? Did he?

RENA:
I was invited to the Keenlymore private island estate in Western Canada for the entire summer. What does that tell you?

NED:
But you didn’t go.

RENA:
He was ready to marry me. There! Does that make you happy?

NED:
If you’d listened to your heart, and not been so afraid, that would have made me happy.

RENA:
Listen to my heart. You’ve seen too many movies. Have you listened to your heart? I don’t hear about any secret long-lost love you’re keeping in a purse on the top shelf of your closet.

NED:
I don’t fall in love. People don’t fall in love with me.

RENA:
That’s too bad.

NED:
I want to love them. I want them to love me back.

RENA:
Everyone should have someone.

NED:
Kids are some sort of sum total of both their parents. We pick up a lot of traits from whatever kind of emotional subtext is going on.

RENA:
I’m supposed to understand that mouthful of jargon?

NED:
We’ve got both of you in us.

RENA:
Are we getting blamed for all of this?

NED:
I’ve just finally got the courage to say what I want to say.

RENA:
I don’t recall your ever being delinquent in that department. Well, I always tried to instill courage in you. But you can’t always just say what you think.

NED:
You saw how much Pop hated me. You must have had some sense that if you’d only left him, I wouldn’t have had to go through all that shit.

RENA:
Don’t use that language. I tried to make up for it by loving you more.

NED:
It doesn’t work that way.

RENA:
It would appear it doesn’t.

NED:
Why didn’t you leave him for good?

RENA:
You don’t run away when things don’t work out.

NED:
You ran away from Drew.

RENA:
Some courage I had and some courage I didn’t have. I don’t cry over spilt milk.

NED:
Are you admitting you didn’t love your husband?

RENA:
I am not! You don’t have so many choices as you seem to think!

NED:
I’m homosexual. I would like you to accept that but I don’t care if you don’t, because I have.

RENA:
You don’t care? So I was a lousy mother.

NED:
Don’t do that.

RENA:
Why not? You just said I was. Not very good value for all my years, is it? Some psychiatrist, some stranger, turns your son against you and declares me a bad mother.

NED:
The preference now is to stay away from judgmental words like “good” or “bad.”

RENA:
Of course it’s judgmental! Is this some kind of joke? You think any mother likes her son to be a. . . I’m not even going to say the word, that’s how judgmental I think it is. I never criticized my parents. I worshiped the ground my mother walked on. I respected my father, even if he wasn’t the most affectionate man in the world.

NED:
Your father never smiled a day in his life.

RENA:
Life was hard! They ran a tiny grocery store in a hostile neighborhood where neither of them spoke English and all the customers were Irish Catholics who hated us and never paid their bills. My parents didn’t marry for love. They married to stay alive! Most kids grow up and leave home. You left home and found new parents called psychiatrists. I’m sorry the old ones were so disappointing. Sum total? Of both of us? You can also be so much more than that. I always told your father he should show his feelings more. He couldn’t do it. He never would talk about his dreams. I don’t even know what his dreams were. I guess they were taken away from him before I even knew him. He really did love you! I knew someday we’d reap the whirlwind. Why didn’t Ben become one, too? He was there, too.

NED:
I’m beginning to think it isn’t caused by anything. I was born this way.

RENA:
I don’t believe that.

NED:
I like being gay. It’s taken me a very, very, very long time. I don’t want to waste any more, tolerating your being ashamed of me, or anyone I care about being ashamed of me. If you can’t accept that, you won’t see your younger son again.

RENA:
He has to die for you even to come home as it is. It makes you happy? Anything that makes you happy makes me happy. Miss Pollyanna, that’s me. Go say hello to your father. Please don’t tell him your wonderful news that makes you so happy.

(
She takes his suitcase from him and goes off.
NED
pulls the curtain around the bed, revealing
RICHARD
in it, half-asleep, with the ball game still on.
NED
comes in and turns the TV off.
RICHARD
wakes up.
)

RICHARD:
Who won?

NED:
Hi, Pop.

RICHARD:
This is it, boy. I’m not going to make it.

NED:
Sure you are.

RICHARD:
I’m ready to go.

NED:
Hey, I want you to see my first movie. I wrote it and produced it. It’s good!

RICHARD:
My goddamned Yankees can’t break their losing streak. Ben’s goddamned Red Sox may win the pennant.

NED:
It cost two million dollars. I was paid a quarter of a million dollars.

RICHARD:
Movies. The thee-ay-ter. When are you going to grow up?

NED:
I’ve discovered how to make a living from it.

RICHARD:
At least Ben listened to me. He’s raking it in. He’s senior partner over two hundred lawyers. Two million dollars. That’s a hot one. I’m glad it’s over. What’s your name now?

NED:
I’ve been Ned since I was eighteen.

RICHARD:
Eighteen. That’s when your mother started signing over her paychecks to your psychiatrist. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She could have bought lots of nice clothes. She could have looked real pretty. I never felt good. I’ve felt sick all my life. In and out of doctors’ offices and still the pain in my bloody gut. Nothing ever took it away. I never had a father either. So long, boy. (
He rolls over, with his back to
NED.
)

NED:
What do you mean, you never had a father either? (
No answer.
) Pop? Poppa? (
RICHARD
doesn’t answer.
NED
starts out. . .
)

RICHARD:
My father was a mohel. You know what that is?

NED:
The man who does the circumcision.

RICHARD:
It was supposed to be a holy honor. God was supposed to bless him and his issue forever. One day he cut too much foreskin and this rich baby was mutilated for life. My mom and pop ran away and changed our name. Then Pop ran away. Forever.

NED:
Mom said Grandma Sybil threw him out for sleeping with another woman in Atlantic City.

RICHARD:
That’s what she told people. He ran away when the kid he mutilated grew up and tracked him down. He couldn’t have an erection without great pain and he was out for Pop’s blood. I never told anyone. Not even your mother. I was afraid if I told her she wouldn’t marry me. Maybe I should have told her. I wanted her more than she wanted me. I thought I could convince her and I never could. I helped my father. I was his assistant. All the time, the blood. Bawling babies terrified out of
their wits. Tiny little cocks with pieces peeled off them. I had to dispose of the pieces. I buried them. He made me memorize all the Orthodox laws. If I made a mistake, he beat me. “You are forbidden to touch your membrum in self-gratification. You are forbidden to bring on an erection. It is forbidden to discharge semen in vain. Two bachelors must not sleep together. Two bachelors must not gaze upon each other. Two bachelors who lie down together and know each other and touch each other, it is equal to killing a person and saying blood is all over my hands. It is forbidden . . . It is forbidden . . .” He made me learn all that and then he ran away. I never stopped hating him. It’s hard living with your gut filled with hate. Good luck to you, boy. Anything you want to say to me?

(
RICHARD
rolls over and turns his back on him.
NED
stands there, trying to work up his courage to say what he has to say. Finally, finally, he does so.
)

NED:
I’m sorry your life was a disappointment, Poppa. Poppa, you were cruel to me, Poppa.

(
There is no answer. He pulls the curtain closed again.
)

Poppa died. I didn’t cry. My movie was a success. I made another. I realized how little pleasure achievement gave me. Slowly I became a writer. It suited me. I’d finally found a way to make myself heard. And “useful”—that word Rena so reveled in trumpeting. I would address the problems of my new world. Every gay man I knew was fucking himself to death. I wrote about that. Every gay man I knew wanted a lover. I wrote about that. I said that having so much sex made finding love impossible. I made my new world very angry. As
when I was a child, such defiance made me flourish. My writing and my notoriety prospered.