Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

MARSHA: Okay, make piles.

EMILY: This you don’t wear, this you might wear, this you don’t wear.

MARSHA: How about this? This I definitely will wear.

EMILY: That is without question one of your more beautiful objects — throw it out!

MARSHA: No, I love it, I’m very fond of it. You want to see the great bargain I got? A big enamel tray for East Hampton barbecues. Don’t look at the price.

EMILY: No, I’m not looking at the seventy-nine cents. Is that dress what you’re wearing to the Museum tomorrow night?

MARSHA: Yeah.

EMILY: Beautiful.

MARSHA: You don’t think it’s too dressy?

EMILY: Not at all.

MARSHA: It isn’t that dressy.

EMILY: Will you go to the Dom in it though? Everyone’s going to the Dom afterwards, you know.

MARSHA: Yeah?

EMILY: I think you should look as elegant and beautiful as possible.

MARSHA: I don’t want to be the only one. You know they couldn’t go to the Dom last night, Vinnie and Clem, so they had to go tonight.

EMILY: Yeah. If anybody important arrives, they better call us. Michael Christy or anybody.

MARSHA: They’re not calling and you’re not leaving.

MARSHA: So in other words this is really your ancestral family territory.

VINCENT: Yah, these are my sand grains — it’s too wet for roots out here. Seriously, it’s very important my coming to this part of the island this summer, particularly now, right after my father died and everything. As a matter of fact, my analyst said a very scary thing to me before I left. I had been having a lot of sexual dreams with my sisters near the cemetery where my mother is buried, and my analyst absolutely terrified me, she rephrased the dreams and said you have sexual anxiety about going back to where your mother is. It absolutely terrified me because even though my mother’s body may be under the ground somewhere, I don’t think of her as present in that place. I mean when all of a sudden someone says to you seventeen, eighteen years after she dies, you are going back to where your mother is, it makes it as if she were sitting out there in a rocking chair or something… Now how do we know when it’s ten minutes?

MARSHA: When we get bored we’ll ask the radio.

VINCENT: I’m not bored, I like the sun. Why did you ask Merrill Johnston the other day if I seemed homosexual? Is it such a moot question?

MARSHA: No, but what I really wanted to say was isn’t Vince attractive, and that seemed too silly, so I said what was your impression of him, did he seem homosexual?… What does your doctor think of our relationship?

VINCENT: She’s never said anything about it.

MARSHA: Nothing? What do you say about it?

VINCENT: She knows how close we are and everything.

MARSHA: Has she ever asked if I was feminine?

VINCENT: Why, just because you asked your doctor if I was masculine? What kind of question would that be? I mention a girl and my doctor says is she feminine? I say no, she’s got a moustache… I’m going to lie down and get some sun on my face. I have to leave in ten minutes. Does your doctor, say you tell him a dream at the beginning, and then you go to things which seem to have nothing to do with it, does he bring it all back to the dream?

MARSHA: Yeah.

VINCENT: That’s scary, because it seems like everything you say in there really does count. I mean there’s no getting away from it, it’s not just theory, it’s all true. Because after that I proceeded to talk about your doctor being out here and how you thought he was interested in me at that party or something— I couldn’t even remember what it was.

MARSHA: I never said that.

VINCENT: Yes you did. You said he was watching me, studying me, to see what I was like.

MARSHA: I did not.

VINCENT: You did so.

MARSHA: I did not.

VINCENT: You did not?

MARSHA: No. Go ahead.

VINCENT: If you did not, what’s the sense in going ahead?

MARSHA: I’d still like to hear what you have to say.

VINCENT: That’s all there was. She asked me his name and I said Merrill Johnston. She said she never heard of him. Then I put her down for that, I said many people in New York know Merrill Johnston.

MARSHA: Is she supposed to know every good psychiatrist?

VINCENT: No, is she? Anyway, she said I was using the fact that he was out here and at a party—

MARSHA: Against her.

VINCENT: Against her, because she lives a very stable Connecticut garden life. You know at one point I got very scared. I looked down at her desk and I saw the notes she had been taking on me. There were two doodles — does your doctor doodle?

MARSHA: He doesn’t take notes.

VINCENT: Two completely schizophrenic, psychotic profiles, very hard, etched way into the paper. One was a grotesque woman’s face. I got terrified, Marshie.

MARSHA: I hate note-taking. Does she laugh?

VINCENT: She laughed a lot until I told her to stop because she was always laughing when I told her sad stories. It’s true. Now she doesn’t laugh anymore, but I have a riot of a time.

MARSHA: I’m always trying to make Merrill Johnston laugh, to entertain him. Do you laugh?

VINCENT: Never.

MARSHA: Do you smile?

VINCENT: No, I go into funks. I only smile when she says something clever. She’s very eerie, you know, she always can tell what I’m thinking.

MARSHA: So can I.

VINCENT: As brilliant as she is, though, I think she gets very upset when I criticize her.

MARSHA: No, that’s your projection. I used to think he did too, I used to feel sorry for him and think he’d be crushed. They know it’s part of the thing, darling. It’s defensive.

VINCENT: Is it really?

MARSHA: Yeah, I always used to tell him he didn’t know his business. Remember the time I went to Harlem? Did you ever hear that story?

VINCENT: You did really? Oh that’s so Lost Boundaries .

MARSHA: I had been feeling that I couldn’t establish any contact with him. I left his office and I went to the subway. Now I certainly know which subway takes me home! Suddenly I found myself on the A train past 59th Street and the next thing I knew I was at 125th Street. It was a cold snowy night, I was surrounded by Negroes, and I just wandered the streets, looking for my Negro doctor, who’s probably never been in Harlem in his life.

VINCENT: Boy, the sun’s fantastic.

MARSHA: Gorgeous.

VINCENT: I hate the beach though.

MARSHA: I don’t.

VINCENT: So what did you talk to him about for two hours?

MARSHA: I found the time went very quickly. There was no pressure, I didn’t look at the clock every minute. Do you look at the clock always?

VINCENT: Never. I don’t want to know if she’s keeping me overtime because then I’d have to go.

MARSHA: He’s never kept me a second overtime, so that’s no problem.

VINCENT: Maybe you need that kind of discipline, maybe you need somebody who doesn’t give in to you all the time. Your parents would give you three hours if they were your psychiatrist. I’m going to teach you how to swim this summer, Marshie. Please, please let me touch you.

MARSHA: No!

VINCENT: They’re so beautiful in the bikini. How come you never say anything about me?

MARSHA: I don’t see as much as you do.

VINCENT: Look. It’s not bad, is it, with a bathing suit on, not hard?

MARSHA: Can I touch it?

VINCENT: No, it might get hard. Marshie, get your hand away— you’ve never done that before. Are you going to tell your doctor what you just did?

MARSHA: Sure, after all, life is risk.

VINCENT: Life is a bris. Do you know that my life really began for me when it became Jewish? The first part of it was awful when it was only with Christians. It was horrible, I used to hate to come home for lunch, I was afraid of being beaten up by all the rotten Catholics on the street.