Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: Instruments on which to play my problems.

EMILY: Who said that?

MARSHA: Me.

EMILY: Very good. If art makes visible that which is invisible, you can imagine what problems do. Seriously, what if Zeke Sutherland at some point really turned around and did an about— I mean an a-belly face?

MARSHA: Well the classic example of that was Eliot Simon. Our relationship lasted about three weeks of love.

EMILY: Real love? Mutual give and take?

MARSHA: Mutual love. We met and we were stunned and knocked out by the presence of each other. Fantastic opening night scene: we stayed up until dawn and talked, getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

EMILY: Fantastic closing morning scene. Did you go to bed with him right away?

MARSHA: No, I was recovering from an abortion, I wasn’t allowed to. All right, so soon after he rejected me, and for two years I was moaning and groaning for all I was worth.

EMILY: It was worth two years.

MARSHA: I’m not so sure. Finally, at some point after years and years of this, he suddenly decides he’s in love with me. I must have told you that story.

EMILY: One morning he decides you’re the person he’s loved all this time?

MARSHA: He just looked at me and saw an entirely new person and fell in love with me.

EMILY: Who were you sleeping with at this point?

MARSHA: All his best friends.

EMILY: Oh. What number is he on the list?

MARSHA: About seven. So he wakes up that morning and he says a very strange thing has happened to me, Marsh. I said what? He said I fell in love with you during the night.

EMILY: All alone?

MARSHA: I was with him. So I said what ? You’re pulling my leg, you’re not serious, you’re joking. And he said I mean it, I mean it more than anything I’ve ever meant. Please don’t go to work today, don’t get out of bed, don’t ever leave me. I want to be with you the rest of my life, I want to marry you.

EMILY: And you said—

MARSHA: I said sorry darling, you know I have to go to work.

EMILY: You can’t give up your job.

MARSHA: Right, I can’t risk my position in life. So I went to work and he called me I might say nine or ten times during the day. I have to see you tonight, I have to be with you, blablabla. I said I’m supposed to have dinner with my father. He said cancel it. I canceled it. I came home, and you know I had made him all these fancy gourmet dinners before — well that night I didn’t even feel like cooking an egg, I didn’t want to do thing one for him. I just wanted to be alone. I was very nervous.

EMILY: What were you nervous about, Marsha? Here the person you’ve always loved is finally loving you back.

MARSHA: Oh, guess I didn’t realize that. So when he came, I managed to cook some flimsy dinner, and he just sat there, staring at me all through it, he could hardly eat, telling me how he had never had such a fantastic day of work in his life, he had had this giant erection all day and he couldn’t wait to see me, but he had worked at fever pitch because his life’s dreams were all resolved now.

EMILY: Did you tell him there was only one catch?

MARSHA: I was ready to crawl into the wall. There was no fighting, nothing going on. He’s not baiting me, he’s very serious, very sober. We had absolutely no idea how to entertain ourselves.

EMILY: Why didn’t he simply put his arms around you?

MARSHA: He was just in love with me and I didn’t know how to deal with it so I took a bath. I said okay, I’m taking a bath now, a long bath. I go into the bathroom, and you know my tub, how it takes two hours to fill.

EMILY: Is it your bathtub or his?

MARSHA: Mine. He’s in my house, everything is for me.

EMILY: Life has changed.

MARSHA: Finally the bath is ready, the water has dripped in, and I get into it. My idea is to stay there as long as I conceivably can, for the rest of my life if possible. Then he walks in with a huge tray of snacks for me to eat in the bath.

EMILY: I though you already whipped up such a terrific dinner.

MARSHA: This was after dinner. He’s bringing me peaches and peeled grapes and everything else. Then he comes and sits and stares at me while I’m taking the bath.

EMILY: Did he give you bath salts and peppers? Go ahead, he’s staring at you in the bath.

MARSHA: He’s staring at me as I wash and I’m hiding myself among the bubbles. The next night, the same thing happens.

EMILY: Wait a second. Did you fuck?

MARSHA: Yah, and I think he even looked at me while we fucked.

EMILY: Why did you fuck?

MARSHA: Yah, while we fucked, he even glanced my way.

EMILY: Why are you fucking, why are you doing it? Not while: why?

MARSHA: Are you kidding? This is the love of my life, he finally falls in love with me, what do you want me to do? Keep taking baths? The next day it’s the same thing, he’s calling me up at work, I come home, repeat performance at night, he doesn’t want to see anyone but me.

EMILY: He just wants to sit and stare.

MARSHA: He’s still staring at me.

EMILY: Even on the phone?

MARSHA: So for about two days he doesn’t want me to go to work, staring on the phone and everything. The third day I go to work, I’m waiting for the normal ten calls, I get…

EMILY: Zero.

MARSHA: And I panic. Finally, as I’m ready to leave work, I call him . The service tells me where he is, at one of his basketball friends’. I call him there and he says darling — he’s crying — darling? Just the way it came, that’s the way it went. Our love.

EMILY: Did he really say that?

MARSHA: He really did. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, went home so I could suffer in private, and lived happily ever after.

EMILY: And that was it? You never loved him again?

MARSHA: Of course I did, immediately thereafter. Picked right up, took me about twenty minutes: he never loved me, I love him so much.

EMILY: And you believed it and felt it and everything?

MARSHA: Sure.

EMILY: So sad. You know you really were mad about him.

MARSHA: There are still some vestiges, like I just realized looking at that Spearmint gum — that’s the only kind of gum I can chew, because it was his favorite.

EMILY: I saw you sneaking some Frosty Mint in the supermarket today.

MARSHA: That was for you, darling.

EMILY: It was for me, all for me? How come there seemed to be a couple of pieces empty and gone when we got home?

MARSHA: I chewed them for you too.

EMILY: You know I’ve taken LSD. And let me tell you, at a certain point — it’s really impossible for you to understand, you might be able to comprehend it in your head, but you can’t experience it — all of a sudden my mind was where this boyfriend was, where that best friend was, all of a sudden I didn’t understand their sickness, I had it. I was there, right where they were. If I took it now I could go maybe where Michael Christy is. It’s incredible. I for instance thought of Jonquil. Jonquil my cat: instant tears, instant total emotional value of the thought. My mind the next moment is on that bathing suit on the line and it’s hysterically funny to me that the bathing suit is drying there, and I can feel the pull, the water going into the air.

VINCENT: My God! How fantastic!

EMILY: The next thing I’m a mother in her loneliness, and there’s a whole kind of gloomy feeling, but there’s no working yourself into, it’s instantly touching all the notes of the instrument.

VINCENT: Then when you talk about love, you’re talking about like total empathy and compassion.