Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: I love Zeke Sutherland’s eyes when they’re not cut off.

EMILY: I like Christy’s eyes even when they are cut off.

MARSHA: I love Vinnie’s voice.

EMILY: Love Vinnie’s voice. His may be the greatest voice. Beautiful voice, so does Michael.

MARSHA: So does Zeke. I love the way Tim Cullen dances.

EMILY: I love the way Tim Cullen’s getting famous.

MARSHA: I love your gestures of kindness.

EMILY: You do? Isn’t that the sweetest thing?

MARSHA: It’s one of my great loves.

EMILY: Do I make gestures of kindness?

MARSHA: Of course, you’re very kind to me. I also love it when Vinnie has faith in me.

EMILY: I love it when Vinnie has faith in himself and can accept criticism.

MARSHA: I love Vinnie’s paintings.

EMILY: I love Vinnie’s paintings.

MARSHA: I love Cimabue.

EMILY: I love certain people being disliked.

MARSHA: What do you mean?

EMILY: Just that.

MARSHA: I love getting tan. I love my body when it’s tan. And thin. I like my body generally.

EMILY: I like myself, actually.

MARSHA: Me too. We’re lucky we do.

EMILY: We’re not lucky; that’s a prime requisite.

MARSHA: I love it when I’m able to talk in public places.

EMILY: I love to relate to people and I love to laugh. God, I love to laugh.

MARSHA: You laugh all the time; I hardly ever do.

EMILY: I laugh a great deal.

MARSHA: I love the end of a dinner out of doors, with the candlelight, after you’ve had wine, and you’re smoking a cigarette, you’ve just had a great meal, and you’re with people you love, listening to the country noises.

EMILY: There’s nothing like a group of people who love each other and are having a good time.

MARSHA: I also love to be alone.

EMILY: I love the vision of Venice, by all my dreams attended.

MARSHA: I love Venice, I love Sicily.

EMILY: I love Sicily and I love Venice. I love New York.

MARSHA: I don’t, I hate New York.

EMILY: What people do I love? Who do I feel for? I love Joan, I love my sister.

MARSHA: I used to love my sister a lot until she deserted me for her husband. I’m crazy about my parents.

EMILY: I love my father, I think that’s a very important thing in me. He didn’t take care of me, he didn’t prepare me for life, and that’s probably why I do have such a strange love for him. I love my mother, I love my brother Barry, I feel a different kind of love for my brother Arthur. I love my old analyst.

MARSHA: I don’t love Merrill Johnston.

EMILY: I love you and Vince, I love Tim, I love anybody who makes me feel warm. I don’t love Zeke anymore, I don’t think.

MARSHA: You didn’t say Joan.

EMILY: Of course I did, she was the first one. I love Michael, I love Nathan Fass.

MARSHA: Maybe Tim is right when he says we have too many loves.

EMILY: He’s real low-class, isn’t he?

VINCENT: No, he goes to college.

EMILY: He’s looking at you, did you get that?

VINCENT: My feeling is this: all summer long I’ve been attracted to that boy.

EMILY: Is he the one you’ve been having hard-on dreams about? You’re really attracted to him, with that Butch-Jenkins-who’s-never-grown-up face?

VINCENT: What do you want? He’s only eighteen.

EMILY: Butch Jenkins was four.

VINCENT: I’m just saying that I haven’t gone near him all summer, I’ve reserved myself, completely disciplined myself, I didn’t even go near the store he works in.

EMILY: You mean you could have picked him up.

VINCENT: I could have gotten involved with him.

EMILY: Is he queer?

VINCENT: Yes.

EMILY: Is he a nice healthy boy?

VINCENT: Yes.

EMILY: Then what’s wrong with it?

VINCENT: It’s jail bait.

EMILY: There’s my car. Someday I’m going to ride in a fucking car like that. Do you know where that line comes from? Do you have any grasp of literature whatsoever?

VINCENT: Emmy, Marsha and I were talking about how well you are.

EMILY: How well am I? I should be well, I’ve spent thirteen thousand on my analysis.

VINCENT: Was it worth it?

EMILY: It’s been an awful lot of sacrifice and pain, darling, but I had no choice. All of a sudden at one point in my life I was having a fucking breakdown, I didn’t have a husband, I didn’t have a love, I didn’t have a dime and I had lost my father — I lost everything in one fell swoop. I couldn’t stand on my fucking feet.

VINCENT: When was that?

EMILY: I was married in 1959, then my father died, then Roy went away to summer stock and I fell in love with Emil Reinhardt. As soon as that happened, I knew my marriage couldn’t survive. Not because I was going to run off with Emil, but just because it was all wrong. I told Roy and he got violent, he went crazy, he was ready to murder. After that I couldn’t see Emil anymore, I couldn’t stay with Roy and my father was dead; I had no one to turn to and I started falling apart. Roy got very alarmed, he wanted to keep the marriage together, so he took me to a doctor and the doctor said I should go away, to rally my forces.

VINCENT: Be put away?

EMILY: Yeah, he diagnosed the beginnings of a breakdown. You didn’t know me then. If you think Joan is bad, I had involuntary tremors — my entire body was spastic, completely shaking. So I went to Bermuda and when I came back I started seeing this doctor five times a week.

VINCENT: That cop is coming towards us.

EMILY: Vinnie, I’m very upset. I have no license and neither do you.

VINCENT: I know. Listen, you’re Marsha Zoxbaum. He’s coming straight towards us.

EMILY: Towards you , not me — he saw that crazy big fat face of yours.

VINCENT: He’s very attracted to us.

EMILY: He’s Marsha’s boyfriend, he always says hello to her. You know, I don’t get why you and Marsha suddenly think I’m healthy. Our whole relationship is based on the premise that you have to take care of me because I’m so sick.

VINCENT: Are you getting sad? Go slow. Tell me about your feelings.

EMILY: I’ll tell you about one thing that happened the other day when I saw my mother.

VINCENT: I wish you would.

EMILY: My mother called me three times in one week, asking me to come over. I never see her, you know, she makes me very sad. She said I realize you’re very ambivalent towards me, if I could only undo all the wrongs I’ve done you, but I do love you very much and I really want you to come. So I said okay. I haven’t been there in about five months. I walked in and the television set was on. I told this to Marsha — the television set was on the entire time and she didn’t deal with me once. When I sat down to smoke a cigarette, the ashtray was gone the next minute into the kitchen.

VINCENT: Meaning?

EMILY: Meaning that her need for neatness was greater than her sensitivity to my need to smoke and feel relaxed.

VINCENT: Maybe she wanted you to follow the ashtray into the kitchen where she was preparing you some lunch.

EMILY: She wasn’t preparing me anything, she was sitting in her room watching television. Listen, I’m telling you, I know the possibilities, I know the truth. But the thing was I didn’t think my mother has her own problems and she has to have that television set — I just felt, for the first time in my life that I’ve ever really been aware of it, I felt all those feelings I had when I was a little girl of needing something from my mother and not getting it. The need was there and it was overwhelming. It drove me to look at Vogue magazine, it drove me to talk to my mother about some movie, but the need, that little-girl need, still remained. But you see I’ve been in analysis, so that the anger and the hurt, even though they were there, they didn’t cloud me and push me under. The feelings were very pure and I acknowledged them, I understood them. I think a girl like me — it’s not as true of Marsha, Marsha’s more complicated because of the relationship with the father — but my being unsuccessful and my passivity and hopelessness in that cheap little apartment, it’s all about remaining faithful to my mother. If I went out and got the things I want and really need, you know what I’d be admitting? It’s a very profound thing. I’d be admitting that I’m losing my mother’s love.