Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

EMILY: You were in a beautiful mood before you came.

VINCENT: I was, I was in a rare mood, and then I was treated very shabbily when I got here.

EMILY: Not by me. I love you very much.

VINCENT: I was in such a rare mood.

EMILY: You know I’m beginning to get just a little bit tired of your rare mood. How about me? I was in an even rarer.

VINCENT: You were crude, you were absolutely raw, you were so rare. See how I’m helping you around the kitchen? Mommy’s little helper. Do you think part of my relationship with you and Marsha these days is like my two sisters? It is.

EMILY: You have two sisters?

VINCENT: You know it’s brilliant what you said about my painting, about the honesty involved. It is more honest than anyone else’s work.

EMILY: That’s why Nathan Fass, when he says it’s obscene, he’s attaching to you a certain kind of social awareness.

VINCENT: He hates homosexuals. Don’t get angry at me, Em, I can’t bear it.

EMILY: What’s the matter, darling?

VINCENT: I’m so sad.

EMILY: Why?

VINCENT: Because that’s what being alive is.

EMILY: I know it, I’m sad all the fucking time, you have no idea.

VINCENT: I heard something last week about what makes humans different from animals, some gorgeous basic thing, like that humans have memories, but it’s not that.

EMILY: What is it?

VINCENT: Something absolutely beautiful. Are you putting garlic powder in too? Wow, is that cheap. Why use fresh garlic then?

EMILY: Completely different tastes. They are, as one might say, complementary.

VINCENT: Marsha darling, I can’t bear it when you’re sad.

MARSHA: I’m not, I’ve just got a lot of work to do.

VINCENT: Who hasn’t? I began a new painting today.

MARSHA: Yes, and were you interrupted?

VINCENT: Yes, continually, by my memories. Do you want to get married, Emily?

EMILY: When?

VINCENT: Not when— do you?

EMILY: You’re looking at me and wondering if I ever could, right?

VINCENT: Boy are you sick. You want to know what I was thinking? I was thinking how alive and beautiful I feel and how alive and beautiful you are, and I was thinking of all the people we know who are married and how in their eyes we’re lost.

EMILY: They don’t think that.

VINCENT: Yes they do.

EMILY: I’m testing the broccoli to see if they’re right.

VINCENT: Marshie, we’re going to eat in five minutes, you and I. Get in there and work in the meantime. Emily, you’re looking at me with love and I can’t bear it. Marsha’s falling in love with me sexually and now you are too, and I’m falling in love with both of you. Doesn’t Marshie look good in those colors? Shall I tell her to come have the soup now?

EMILY: Yes.

VINCENT: Come have the soup now, Marshie.

MARSHA: Oh no, it’s not five minutes.

VINCENT: Oh yes it is. Should we have it in cups or little saucers? You know something, I’m very elegant. But I’m really not. You know what I am?

EMILY: What?

VINCENT: I’m basically a good kid. Give Marshie her scotch broth, will you please?

EMILY: One scotch broth coming up.

VINCENT: Marshie, you don’t know how much you hurt me last night about the cockiness.

MARSHA: You hurt me twenty times a day.

VINCENT: Can we have that lesson now of teaching you how to eat soup?

MARSHA: I know how.

VINCENT: No you don’t. First of all you don’t start there. Put it down, you’re not going to eat until you do it right. Like this.

MARSHA: Oh no, that’s wrong. You don’t shovel it like that.

VINCENT: Yes you do, you scoop it up. The American way to drink soup is not to put anything in your mouth, like this. We’re going to do it like the Italians.

MARSHA: Can I blow on it?

VINCENT: Don’t ever blow on your food. And never show your teeth when you’re drinking soup.

EMILY: When you’re drinking anything. What’s so good about this scotch broth? I’m tasting it.

VINCENT: Isn’t it nice?

EMILY: Yeah, like you’re a sick child.

VINCENT: It’s homey, it makes it like a cold winter night outside. Do you think women are different from men? I do, and I think they should be. I think women are wonderful.

EMILY: Do you like women better?

VINCENT: I don’t know.

MARSHA: I like men better than women.

VINCENT: What I like best is a man who has much of the woman’s sensibility.

EMILY: Like you.

VINCENT: I know, I like myself.

EMILY: A healthy state of affairs.

VINCENT: Bring glasses for the wine, Cinderella. I suppose my meat will be done before the dinner’s over. I’m sure of it, I just have that feeling.

MARSHA: Things were so calm here before he came.

VINCENT: Why did you invite me over then, if I’m such an uncalming influence? Let’s be honest, you didn’t invite me over, I invited myself. But no one made you say yes, you could have had courage for once in your life.

MARSHA: I get what you’re trying to do, you know.

VINCENT: What?

MARSHA: Sever your dependency on me before the summer’s over, so it won’t be such a harsh blow in the fall.

VINCENT: Can I ask you a question? Do you really think I’m more dependent on you than you are on me? The car aside, do you really think so? You’re a pathetic little bitch, you really are, with your mechanical appliances, your credit cards, your rich Mommy and Daddy and your car, you’re absolutely crazy. Just because your Daddy made some money during the war, you act like a society deb. It could make a person puke at the dinner table. You know she really got upset about what I just said, Em? I gave her a whole cataloguing of what her life is about, and it completely discoveted her.

MARSHA: That is not what my life is about.

VINCENT: Tell me what it is about, princess.

MARSHA: I’m not interested in talking to you.

VINCENT: So mature. You must have been terrific with Dwight MacDonald the other night.

EMILY: Are these the kinds of discussions you two have?

VINCENT: No, let me follow this through. You really think I’m dependent on you? And you like being in that position, don’t you? That’s why you’re treating me so badly these days.

MARSHA: May I have the bone if no one’s eating it? I’m ignoring you, I refuse to play into your whims.

VINCENT: What kind of Victorian prose is this? ‘I refuse to play into your whims.’

MARSHA: You better behave yourself.

VINCENT: Why?

MARSHA: Because you’re getting me angry.

VINCENT: Why am I getting you angry?

MARSHA: Because you’re not behaving yourself.

VINCENT: You know I helped her out of two very important things this summer, and now I’m dependent on her . First with her whole reaction about the fact that her analyst happens to be sleeping with women, and then her crying and clinging with Tim Cullen. How much have you helped me out of?

MARSHA: Nothing.

VINCENT: You’ve driven me to Riverhead three times for driving tests, that’s all.

MARSHA: Right, I’m not a giving person.

EMILY: Can I tell you something about the nature of your relationship which you seem to forget?

VINCENT: Go on.

EMILY: That Marsha’s a girl and you’re a boy.

VINCENT: I’ll tell you something about our relationship — it’s getting into a very precarious position. I mean it, it’s gone too far.

MARSHA: You know what I said to Emily today? We were talking about Italy, saying how well we got along, and I said you were much more mature then.

VINCENT: Are you serious? Marsha, I love you more than anyone in the world, I really do, except for one thing: you’re very dumb. Don’t you realize I was half a person then? What you cannot accept about me — you think it’s immature and you think it’s sickness and you think it’s defense — is that I am the only person you know who is absolutely willing to expose his wounds, and to show what he’s not. I don’t care if you call this immaturity, but don’t call that maturity . That was someone who was guarded, someone who was just growing up. I wasn’t mature then, I was frightened. And just because I’m open now — you know there are very few people as open as I am? Don’t get cocky, I know.