Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

MARSHA: Yeah, I think you’re healthier.

EMILY: I am.

MARSHA: Healthier is nicer.

EMILY: Healthier is nicer.

MARSHA: I wonder what Merrill Johnston’s doing for sex these days.

EMILY: He’s probably fucking someone, that’s what he’s doing.

MARSHA: The last time I went to him I said what are you doing for sex these days? No I didn’t. I said you’re waiting for me to ask you what you’re doing for sex. He said well why don’t you ask me if you want to? But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

EMILY: You know it’s very far out. I had completely forgotten the fact that you do have a Negro analyst. Is he Negro though? Can I ask you a question, is he really a Negro?

MARSHA: Oh you saw him, Emily, you saw him out there last summer. Did he look Negro to you, sitting in the car with a little blond baby?

EMILY: You mean if you see him you don’t know he’s a Negro? You can’t tell? I didn’t realize that.

MARSHA: You looked him in the face — what did you see?

EMILY: Yeah, I looked at him, but I looked at him when I was surrounded by people who were all tan, like from three months of East Hampton.

MARSHA: Well, he looks just as tan now. He looks racially disturbed.

EMILY: I’m serious.

MARSHA: I am too. He looks like some kind of mixture.

EMILY: He looks like a mulatto, you mean. He looks like something beautiful, but he doesn’t necessarily look like a Negro?

MARSHA: What’s beautiful about him?

EMILY: He’s very attractive.

MARSHA: He doesn’t look beautiful — I mean he doesn’t look Negro. He does, but you don’t think of him say if you want to invite a Negro to a party. It’s more conceptual than anything else.

EMILY: Do you want some more ice water with your fudge brownie?

MARSHA: Let me ask you something. Is ice lighter than water? How come it floats, how come it’s lighter?

EMILY: I don’t think it is.

MARSHA: Of course it is. Look at it.

EMILY: It’s just more porous. Look, do you think soap is lighter than water?

MARSHA: Soap?

EMILY: Yeah, Ivory soap, it floats.

MARSHA: Do you know why things float?

EMILY: Why? You’re telling me they float because they’re lighter.

MARSHA: No.

EMILY: Then why does it prove they’re lighter?

MARSHA: They are lighter.

EMILY: But why is it proof?

MARSHA: It isn’t.

EMILY: Okay.

MARSHA: Then why do things float?

EMILY: It has to do with the amount of water they displace in terms of their weight, the ratio to the displacement of their weight, density to displacement. For instance, big Ivory soap, you put it in water and it floats. That doesn’t mean it’s lighter, it has to do with surface tension, the amount of water that’s displaced. Look, boats float, don’t they? Jesus, are we dumb!

MARSHA: A boat isn’t lighter than water.

EMILY: Don’t you know anything about surface tension? I’ll show you, it’s fascinating. It’s one of my favorite scientific things. Do you have a bobby pin?

MARSHA: It’s holding my head together. Oh no! I cannot stand that phone! I’m hanging up immediately.

EMILY: Absolutely, no matter who it is, absolutely get rid of them.

MARSHA: Hello?… Hi, Vinnie darling, what’s up?… Don’t be ridiculous, I’m packing…. Who’s there?… No! We wouldn’t dream of leaving the house.

EMILY: Is he at the Dom? Who’s there?

MARSHA: Are we dreaming of leaving the house?

EMILY: I want to know who’s there… Absolutely not, we’re not leaving, but I have to know who’s there.

MARSHA: I’m trying to find out… Who’s there, darling?… Who?… Just tell me or you may be killed with your ankle broken… Nobody, right?… Who else?… No Zeke? No Michael?… No, sweetheart, I’m packing and Emmy’s helping; we wouldn’t dream of leaving the house.

EMILY: What does he want to do?… I hate that fucking Philippe Rocheau.

MARSHA: She says she hates Philippe Rocheau. Who are you with? Clem?… Just the two of you, sitting? That’ll get me down there all right…. Okay, darling, goodbye, we can’t talk now… All right, darling, bye.

EMILY: What did he say?

MARSHA: They’re at the Dom, him and Clem Nye. Great couple.

EMILY: Great. Let me ask you something. Would you say Vinnie was very well liked generally? I mean there are some people who are not well liked and there are people who are very well liked.

MARSHA: Well, when he meets new people, they’re usually crazy about him.

EMILY: That’s not what I mean. I mean is he popular? I would think he’d be fantastically well liked, but at the same time he has a lot of the same faults I have and although I’m very well liked, I’m also very disliked.

MARSHA: Yah, I think you’re about equal.

EMILY: We’re both very egocentric, like to talk about ourselves, very dominating, aggressive, all that stuff. A lot of people hate it. I guess it’s much worse in me though, because I’m a girl and I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut.

MARSHA: What was Diana Reinhardt saying about me the other night?

EMILY: Oh, we were talking about being neurotic. She said she thinks I’m the sickest of the three of us, you, me and Vince. She was watching me at the party and she thought my behavior was very, very sick. She said it looked mad, wild, out of control. She thinks I have a lot of problems. But still I have so many friends who think highly of me that obviously I have some great, really strong things going for me, even though I appear this sick. She didn’t say it in a hostile way. In fact, I encouraged her to say it.

MARSHA: It sounds like she was honest and I think that’s nice. What about me?

EMILY: I forget exactly what she said. I think she thinks you’re the least sick. And I said…

MARSHA: That she was wrong.

EMILY: No, I agreed, but I said you weren’t so much sick as you were originally, in some traumatic ways, damaged.

MARSHA: Set in my crazy mold.

EMILY: In a freeze. Deep, deep as deep can possibly go.

MARSHA: Originally I was probably the sickest. But I’m healing up. I think my prognosis is good.

EMILY: Certain things about you are still very sick. You know what I think is the sickest thing about you? That never since I’ve known you have you had a really deep and meaningful love relationship.

MARSHA: I think it is too.

EMILY: But that’s about the only thing I can think of. And the fact that Vinnie, the person you love most in the world, is a homosexual. But your relationship to your job and those things, they’re not sick at all

MARSHA: No, not the way they used to be. You know it’s very funny. I was so worried about public opinion when I decided to go back to my job, but every person I’ve spoken to has said I don’t see why you even wanted to quit — with your long vacations and everything.

EMILY: You never have to worry about public opinion. You know why? Because public opinion isn’t worried about you.

MARSHA: I know.

EMILY: Someone said to me the other day — I forget who — they said don’t worry, Emily, if you go into one of your drunken reels at a party and you think you made a fool of yourself, don’t worry, because people are such egotists and so selfish, they don’t even know you’re alive. They don’t know anybody’s alive.

MARSHA: I hate thinking that way.

EMILY: Marsha, when was the last time you wore all those things?

MARSHA: These? I never wear them.

EMILY: Then why don’t you throw them out? You have no idea what a marvelous feeling it is to get rid of the things you never wear.

MARSHA: All right, you tell me which ones I might wear. I’ll let you decide.

EMILY: First of all, can I pick something for myself if I do all that work? Can I borrow a scarf? I need one desperately.