(Curtain. Lights up on Scene 3, CONSULTATION ROOM of DR. CRAIG. LEONARD sits, head in hands.)
DR CRAIG Glad to see you, Mr. Woolf. I am eager to hear your opinion of the progress of our patient.
LEONARD Virginia and I have been talking and I must admit she does not sound altogether mad to me.
DR CRAIG My dear fellow, insanity of the mind merely means whatever derangement disables a person from thinking the thoughts, feeling the feelings and doing the duties of the social body in, for, and by which he lives. Insanity is nothing more than a want of harmony between the individual and his social medium. That individual sadly becomes a social discord of which nothing can be made.
LEONARD She speaks frequently of her home life where her brothers took advantage of her.
DR CRAIG You are referring to her delusions. You will have noticed that patients, particularly intelligent ones, are very cunning as they seek to involve their caregivers into sharing their beliefs of persecution and misfortune. It is much better not to allow oneself to re-hash a history that must remain forever uncertain but to forcefully insist on a calming, healthful daily regimen starting now.
LEONARD Surely, you’ll agree that being resentful of bad treatment hardly constitutes insanity.
DR CRAIG My dear sir, your wife is under doctors’ care because she tried to take her own life. We are obviously not dealing with a healthy person here. No, taken by themselves, delusions do not necessarily indicate insanity but when they are found in conjunction with broad evidence of failure to conform one’s general conduct to the ordinary rules of life and society such a diagnosis must be made. Clearly such an obligation places great responsibility on the keen insights and experience of professional men rigorously educated to the highest standard and admitted by the demanding qualifications of the Royal Society of Medicine. As a man of the world you must know that is always very common for weaker beings to resent those on whom greater fortune has been showered and to feel their gains are somehow ill-gotten. This resentment stirs up a host of fantasies that must be very firmly rejected. Successful work never leads to this disorder but unsuccessful work shows a very different etiology.
LEONARD But in the case of Virginia’s upbringing –
DR CRAIG Mr. Woolf, in every case the instinctive impulses of children must sooner or later clash with the social regime, to the infant’s sorrow and momentary discomfiture. Elders must be recognized as the authority in such matters or chaos would result. Therefore, no airing of childhood wrongs can ever constitute a fruitful line of inquiry.
LEONARD It seems the situation was so severe that Dr. Savage was consulted at the time –
DR CRAIG My good fellow, it would be better for you to face the fact that delusions never require any other support than the conviction of the deluded. A man may believe, for example, that his head has been opened, his brains removed and some other substance substituted. That is a very common delusion, I can assure you.
LEONARD Virginia is an intelligent woman. I believe she must be handled intelligently. I may even say she has a touch of genius. In fact, I believe she is the only true genius I have ever met.
DR CRAIG Are you arguing that geniuses are in some way above or beyond the law, Mr. Woolf? I certainly hope you are not.
LEONARD Her family was considered the highest intellectual intelligentsia of their day. It seems obvious to me –
DR CRAIG What is obvious to me, is that the degree of education and the social status of the person whose conduct is under consideration are indeed important facts, for habits that would be decidedly eccentric in the upper classes may pass unremarked in the lower reaches of society. The sex of the patient is even more critical to diagnosis. Outbursts of emotional weeping in men, for example, are a symptom of grave import but among women occasion no remark. Any woman’s effort to escape her true femininity places her moral hardihood at peril. Imagine some up to date woman adopting a divided skirt under the belief that it is a healthier form of apparel and permits greater freedom of action. Very well. But should she indulge in so subversive a notion as to think that male attire is even more hygienic and to actually carry her belief into practice, the arm of the law will at once reach out to warn her. If the warning is not heeded, society will place her in safekeeping until she has learned to conform to the ideas of the majority. This is the situation in which your wife finds herself at the current time. Before her marriage, I am given to understand that your wife frequented a rather louche artistic bohemia. Now that she is a married woman you have acquired a unique opportunity to place her feet on a more secure footing. I understand you have rejected the possibility of committing her to an asylum but want to give her another chance in the wider world. It is accordingly crucial that you not indulge her in useless analysis of who or what was at fault in her upbringing but encourage her to commit to a fresh new life, with you, where she submits to a healthful pattern which you will lay out for her.
LEONARD What you say makes a good deal of sense, but Virginia has always had her own ideas about everything. Her reading alone, even from childhood has been voluminous. I think I can say that she’s read everything and everybody.
DR CRAIG Now I think you are laying your finger on a much likelier culprit in your wife’s hysteria than the boyish behaviors of exuberantly boisterous, youthful males. Most women’s minds are simply not capable of absorbing and processing the histories and theories of men who lived in more pernicious times. As a Cambridge graduate you do not need me to point out which books might be especially dangerous. We may even disagree on which authors have a nihilist or even Bolshevik bent. But if you are committed to keeping your wife out of the asylum you must make it your life work to supervise your wife more closely in future. I understand there is family money?
LEONARD Some money. We will both need to seek employment.
DR CRAIG I think you will find your wife far too fragile for the hurly burly of economic exchange. These patients are frequently considered brilliant in conversation. But on inspection this seeming brilliancy will be found in large measure to be due to the unconventional nature of their chatter. Patients such as your wife are often considered more entertaining when ill than when in health for through loss of control they make remarks which the healthy would fear to utter. A sane person is inhibited in both speech and action. I think you must reconcile yourself to having a saner, healthier but possibly duller wife who partakes of a less unsettling society.
LEONARD But can it ever be right to subject an intelligent person to regimes designed for the mad?
DR CRAIG My dear sir, there is really no distinction between physical disease and mental disorder. Mrs. Woolf must learn to practice equanimity and you are the best judge of how to assist her in that course. In any given individual where nothing more than exaggerated and uncontrolled normal characteristics may constitute mental disorder, we realize how narrow is the margin between those whom we call the sane and the insane. You are her husband. Have faith in your power to exercise benevolent dominance. It is a husband’s obligation.
LEONARD But Virginia is so sensitive! I am concerned –
DR CRAIG I cannot suggest too strongly, my dear sir, that you focus more on your wife’s bowels than on her brains. Constipation is not only a common symptom of the insane, it is the rule rather than the exception. Another symptom which appears early and which stands out in strong relief, is hypersensitivity. To me this is the symptom of all symptoms which may occasion unsoundness of mind.
LEONARD Virginia becomes so excited when I approach her –
DR CRAIG I will prescribe Hyoscynamine. It is a wonderful relaxant which has given excellent results in quieting the most difficult patients.
VIRGINIA Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.
LEONARD I’m not lying when I say I want you to get well more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.
VIRGINIA Don’t bother making me feel guilty, I already know I’m wasting your life. If only I weren’t so stupid a Mandrill, so unworthy of her poor, virtuous outsider Mongoose who is so thin, who trembles so much and who tries so hard. You have headaches too, you suffer from recurring malaria. Why should you toil so that I can be idle? I know these doctors’ bills are crushing us. Nessa sold the silver, I sold the jewelry, Thoby sold the Thackeray letters. What’s left, Leonard? Will you scheme with them to isolate me until there’s nothing left?
LEONARD I can earn money writing. I’ve proved that. You can earn money writing, you’ve proved that. But to get back in the fight we must be hardy and strong.
VIRGINIA I should never have married you. What kind of a wife can I ever be? Save yourself, Leonard. It’s too late for me. Let the wind blow, let the poppy seed itself, let the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build her nest in the drawing room where the thistle thrusts between the tiles. Let all civilization be like broken china tangled over with blackberries and grass.
LEONARD That you demand so much of existence, still fighting as you sit among George’s flowers, shows you’re feeling better. What we must do is keep up the strengthening. A few more days, Virginia.
VIRGINIA But how can I return to you? There’s the undisputed fact of my sexual cowardice. Perhaps it’s really nothing but my terror of real life that keeps me in this nunnery. I tried telling my parents but they didn’t want to hear. Parents have forgotten their own childhood. Or they don’t want to remember.
LEONARD What did you try to tell them? You can say anything to me.
VIRGINIA I saw the spirits of evil as soon as I could speak, but because I was a girl child I was not supposed to know. Each child hugs its vice, brooding over the swollen vein, the bruised flesh that was white and sweet but yesterday.
LEONARD I told my parents that life is unquestionably vile and humanity’s nothing but an ant heap. Parents never want to hear that.
VIRGINIA That’s what I love about you, Leonard. You at least will speak the truth. Sometimes.
LEONARD It’s a fallacy to think that children are happy. They’re not. I never suffered so much as when I was a child. Children never forget injustice. But here is the heart of it, Virginia. What we write depends upon what we think. What “spirits of evil” did you see?
VIRGINIA Going to practice Dr. Head’s talking cure on me, are you? Is that the plan? I could make up a dozen stories – I see a dozen pictures. But when I open my mouth I am locked up and shut away. What is my true story? Something lies deeply buried. Shall I grasp it or let it mortify in the depths of my mind? I want to describe the world seen without a self. But I am afraid that there is no future. There are no words.
LEONARD There are words, and there is a future we shall make. Tell me. Tell me everything.
VIRGINIA When I was young, I dug furiously to uncover myself. When I discovered that I was me and not anyone else it seemed a wonderful achievement. Once I sat beside my stepsister Stella on roots as hard as skeletons, and the next day she was a skeleton. It’s strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners or in dreams. Don’t you remember that morning at breakfast when I saw my mother? You said she wasn’t there.
LEONARD I saw nothing.
VIRGINIA Cambridge educated everything but your eyes. What is the hope of talking to you? That was the morning was when I first became aware of the enemies who change but are always present; the forces we must fight even though we suffer terribly becoming separate bodies. Don’t you recognize the enemy advancing against us, pawing at his pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy.
LEONARD Marriage is the opposing force against death. A marriage of true minds can fight all enemies. Once upon a time we shared our thoughts, and fell in love. I needed someone who could hold her own, and there you were. You are the only wife I ever wanted, the only woman I have ever loved. Please, Virginia, I want you to come back to me.
VIRGINIA
(dazzled)
Oh to be a wife, to be wanted, would be so complete! Is it possible, Leonard, after the terrors, the disgusting dangers we have seen?
LEONARD If it isn’t I don’t want to live either.
(She holds out a hand to him. They clutch hands briefly)
VIRGINIA Sit down, Leonard. You look silly on your knees.
(She looks away. LEONARD sits)
VIRGINIA I used to make the family laugh. They thought me clever. But when I chased the evil spirits through a hole in the escallonia hedge, I resolved to tell the exact truth and write down the phenomena I’d seen. But no one believed me, and at that moment the laughter turned against me. I said, must not we find some way to get outside ourselves, to give our brains a wider scope? My parents declared God was dead and the world empty and meaningless. Father said to be weak is to be wretched. He said that Society is a ravenous appetite, and Nature is a state of war. You’ve laughed at me behind my back, I know you have. You, my own husband, want to get rid of me, to lock me up forever and steal my money.
LEONARD I love you, Virginia. Maybe it’s a bad thing to love you as much as I do – it cuts me off from the outside world. But the outside world is worthless and your world is so rich. When I went away to school for the first time I was shocked and appalled by the horrifying corruption of dirty-minded schoolboys. It marked me. Then I realized all of humanity are mean, nasty, untruthful, cowardly, and cruel. Perhaps I’ve been searching for a world that doesn’t exist.
VIRGINIA Perhaps we both have.
LEONARD If you will care for your health – if you will allow me to care for your health – you’ll recover. As you’ve recovered before.
VIRGINIA Nessa won’t rest till I’m brought low. When she was ill with typhoid Savage wanted to put her in a home but I backed her up! I told Savage I would care for her. Now look at what she’s done to me. You betrayed our secret, telling Nessa I’m a frigid failure as a wife. She told Clive and now everyone knows. They’re all laughing, jeering. plotting behind my back. You were sent to Ceylon to break the natives and now you’ve been sent to break me. I have been derided, insulted, sacrificed and betrayed, by all of you.
LEONARD Virginia, I am on your side. My eyes were opened in Ceylon. I was an anti-imperialist wallowing in the fleshpots of imperialism. But I changed. Now I support the independence movement with all my heart. All problems can be solved by science and logic, Virginia. It was I who was a failure as a husband. It was my marital duty to arouse you but you seemed so afraid of me. At my wit’s end, I asked your older sister for help.
VIRGINIA Does she offer lessons in humiliation? She knows how better than anyone. Is it my fault that I hate my legs being pried apart? I should never have married you, but I couldn’t bear to remain a spinster. I was struggling at everything, and you seemed so different. You said you liked women. You said you admired women’s minds.
LEONARD It’s true. Women feel more deeply, think more deeply, talk more deeply.
VIRGINIA Yet men demand obedience. You want me to obey you but I never will. You know nothing about me. Did you know that before I tried to die I read a book? Would you like to know which one?
LEONARD Which book did you read?
VIRGINIA It was your book. Your book that I read.
LEONARD My book?
VIRGINIA Your book about me.
LEONARD (a gratified author, in spite of everything)
You read The Wise Virgins? What did you think?
VIRGINIA So you admit it’s about me!
LEONARD Virginia, please. I’d love to discuss my book with you.
(She hesitates, turning away her face, then facing him with rage)
VIRGINIA
You locked me away so I’d never find out!
LEONARD You were ordered rest cures long before you met me! I don’t believe in guilt or blame. Honestly, I wanted you to read my book as soon as you were well.
VIRGINIA I won’t be stamped and stereotyped. You have publicly lampooned me as a frozen, dowdy, fussy, futile woman.
LEONARD Not true at all. I called you my Aspasia.
VIRGINIA “Cold and snowy, like the rocks.” You said.
LEONARD I’m a bad writer. I agree. I’ve got nothing of your genius. I can never explain what I really want to say. If it’s any comfort to you no one else likes or understands it either. Sales are awful. All I was attempting to do was contrast the world of a poor Jew from Putney with the rarified aristocratic Olympus for which he yearns.
VIRGINIA You hold my world in contempt because you can never be a gentleman.
LEONARD Virginia, you hold “your world” in contempt.
VIRGINIA And then the hero marries the other girl. The stupid, cow-eyed one! It’s a betrayal.
LEONARD It’s just a bad novel, I’ll give you that. Don’t laugh at me. Not everyone is born with your gifts. Consider my perspective. Any rational mind must inevitably face disillusion and depression. I tried to show how poor Harry just couldn’t escape his past. He couldn’t but I think we can. I probably shouldn’t have published it but Arnold was willing and I couldn’t bear to waste all that work and all that suffering.
VIRGINIA What can you, a prizewinning Apostle from Cambridge, an imperialist potentate of a subject country, possibly know of real suffering?
LEONARD Virginia, I’m a Jew from Putney. All my life I’ve been spat upon. Job is the only book of the Bible I ever understood. Who ridiculed who first? I trained myself to avoid personal feeling. Admit you despised me. Your set. You made me into a joke.
VIRGINIA My set despises everyone. That’s what we do. It’s self-defense, from growing up amongst the most monumental hypocrites.
LEONARD You despised me personally. Be honest. You hated kissing me. You could barely bring yourself to marry me.
VIRGINIA But I did it, didn’t I!
LEONARD You wanted to shock them. You were competing with Nessa to see who could be most scandalous.
VIRGINIA I wouldn’t dare compete with Nessa. Competition is a male thing. It’s a brutal, endless game. I think all competition should be abolished.
LEONARD But it’s all you ever do! Your flirtation with her husband –
VIRGINIA (cringes visibly)
Oh God, not that. Somehow that memory turns a knife in me more than anything. How it catches at me, the fangs of that old pain. I know I lost Vanessa forever. She will never forgive me. I simply couldn’t comprehend why she married such a strange, intolerable creature with his twitching pink skin and a jerky laugh. Before Clive, Nessa and I drifted together on a sea of seducing half-brothers, hiding together beneath the dining room table. We spoke a special animal language.
LEONARD But you were no longer children. Vanessa waited till twenty-eight to marry.
VIRGINIA Who would willingly grow up? I never wanted to. As soon as you’re pushed out of the nursery, the happy moments vanish. Vanessa was the bowl of golden water that brims but never overflows. I lie prostrate at her shrine and still she won’t forgive me. When she brought home friends from the Slade they laughed at me behind the door. You can’t think what it feels like, having one’s self so thoroughly extinguished.
LEONARD I do know it. That was my exact experience at both St. Paul’s and Cambridge. St. Paul’s was a disgusting brothel, but at Trinity I met G. E. Moore. He taught me how to ask the important questions.
VIRGINIA
And what are the important questions?
LEONARD The most important question is why. Why can’t Vanessa forgive a mere flirtation? She must know by now that Clive sets out to bed every woman he meets. You at least resisted him.
VIRGINIA But I did wrong. Clive and I made common cause against my sister, his own wife. Some things should be sacred.
LEONARD
Wasn’t it true that he respected your intellectual work more than he could ever appreciate Vanessa’s daubs?
VIRGINIA Leonard! How can you!
LEONARD
If it’s the truth, shouldn’t we say so?
VIRGINIA
I tried speaking the truth, yet here I am locked up among the imbeciles. And weren’t we just arguing whether all imbeciles should be killed?
LEONARD You’re hardly “locked up with the imbeciles” at Dalingridge Hall!
VIRGINIA You’re wrong. In this castle beats the very heart of idiocy and evil. Aren’t you the one who said the most dangerous imbeciles are running the nation? Here I am at home among the hunters, where the miner sweats and dies and maiden faith is rudely strumpeted.
LEONARD But you used to love George! He told me you’d make an adorable wife.
VIRGINIA Perhaps I’ve been given too much time to think. Get a sense of proportion, the doctors keep telling me. So now I stare for the first time into the very mouth of doom. Look your last on all things lovely.
LEONARD Virginia, if you don’t want to be called crazy, you really must explain yourself. Whatever do you mean?
VIRGINIA George behaved little better than a brute. He never let me alone for a moment. That he was the pet of duchesses hardly excuses him. And yet it was Gerald who broke my hymen, when I was six years old. It’s a painful process. and now I freeze like ice. Give up on me, Leonard, there’s no awakening the dead. I’m ruined by incest, I’ve even desired my own sister. I’m locked up because I stew in murder, just as Laura did. I long to slice Gerald’s fat, transparent flesh, to take a rifle and shoot George directly in his smug, piggy face. Or could I bag him with a net and killing bottle? And why shouldn’t I turn on my tormentors? I suffered, I was helpless, why should I be the one forced to writhe with shame? I longed to be petted but instead was trapped in a cage with lions as sulky and angry as they were ferocious. I’m just a little monkey and little monkeys are too easily squashed and trampled. It’s too late for me, Leonard. My body is spoiled forever by George and Gerald.
LEONARD (shocked)
George? Gerald? These are pillars of society, your own half-brothers! It’s so unbelievable.
VIRGINIA George drowned us in kisses, me and Vanessa. Each kiss was an amputation. I used to sign my work, “One of the Drowned.” Oh, those horrible parties! The oppressive gatherings of Stephenses ground one to a pulp. Because I wanted to discuss Plato I was told I had no conversation. George was so angry! After I removed my ball gown and stripped off my gloves and stockings, he would come into my room and lock the door.
LEONARD But how can any of this be true? How could nobody have noticed it?
VIRGINIA Everyone did notice it. People contrive to bend it to the conventional heroic shape because he kept insisting on the purity of his love. I saw him kissing Countess Carnarvon behind a pillar at the opera! And now she’s his mother-in-law. I asked to join the British Sex Society, dedicated to the study of parent/child incest, but they wouldn’t let me in. Now that you know, you’ll have to spit in George’s face at the club.
LEONARD We don’t belong to the same clubs.
VIRGINIA Then when you thank him for this execrable house, challenge him to a duel. Will he at least feel some regret? Will he take the pigeon gun and blast himself instead? Then the aristocracy will hate me because it’s all my fault. Yet is it not a noble work, letting light in upon the evil Duckworths? Probably he’ll feel nothing. Possibly some vague imbalance.
LEONARD Let’s try to be objective, Virginia.
VIRGINIA If only I could! What a luxury that would be! How I hunger for the objectivity of beloved Macaulay or the stern analysis of cherished Carlyle. Lockhart’s ten volume Life of Scott was the best present I ever received. Reading relieves all my pain, but they won’t let me read anything here. In spite of them I’m continuing to learn. Only life itself matters, nothing but life – and the process of discovery, the everlasting perpetual process, and not the thing itself at all.
LEONARD
Virginia, I am speechless.
VIRGINIA
Now you know how it feels. I used to think it would be enough to have someone share my loneliness. But if no one believes me, the solitude is total. The Duckworths are guilty of nameless atrocities, and you’re complicit. You locked me away here, so I couldn’t speak. As soon as I open my mouth they try to destroy me. It’s a conspiracy of hush.
LEONARD If this is something you’ve only just remembered how can it possibly be true? It sounds mad.
VIRGINIA I don’t think memory is always at the forefront, Leonard. There’s only so much a human being can bear. Memory comes and goes. One requires tools to think with, to make sense of one’s experience, and these tools are alternately dull and sharp.
LEONARD Well, there are some things no one wants to think about.
VIRGINIA It’s clearer in my mind than the bad, stodgy meal I was force-fed yesterday. Our summer place at St. Ives, in the dining room; I must have been six years old. Eighteen-year-old Gerald lifted me up to a high ledge and explored my private parts. I fought and I struggled but I couldn’t get away. I could see his face in the dining room mirror. It was the face of a demon. I’ve seen that face since, on the drooling men who expose themselves in the park. Now I no longer look in mirrors. I can’t cross a puddle. The depth looks back at me, concealing malicious, hairy arms to reach out and grab. I can’t go forward, I am stuck in the loop of the six, no power even to lift my legs.
LEONARD The loop of the six? I don’t understand.
VIRGINIA
I was learning numbers. Six was my number. But I couldn’t close the loop.
LEONARD
This was Gerald you say? But Gerald is your publisher!
VIRGINIA I know! If I am not a madwoman, then the world itself is mad. What was I to do? I wrote a book and my incestuous brother was a publisher! Who else would even look at my work? When I delivered my manuscript to Gerald I was in such acute despair – so near the precipice!
LEONARD Did you tell anyone?
VIRGINIA I told Nessa and she told Dr. Savage. Who is an idiot, as you well know.
LEONARD I can’t believe it. Gerald seems so – so – well, ordinary. So completely controlled.
VIRGINIA Get out of here! I’m sorry I told you. I wish I was dead!
(She is tearing at her own throat – he rushes forward to hold her hands down, lifting her body out of the chair)
The use of force is all you know!
LEONARD Virginia, I love you.
(He kisses her neck, she becomes a dead weight. He lowers her carefully into the chair, arranges a blanket on her knees)
VIRGINIA When you touch me, I feel nothing. My body goes dead. That’s how I froze when George came into my room, night after night.
LEONARD Oh, Beloved!
VIRGINIA Don’t. He called me that. I don’t want to be loved, I want to be believed.
(Scene 2. The Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall. VIRGINIA sits slackly in an old-fashioned wheeled chair, gazing into nothingness.)
LEONARD How are you today, Virginia? Sleep well?
VIRGINIA
(galvanizing)
How can there be sleep for those of us who see the flesh melted off the world? Have you come to gloat over the shattered splintered fragments of my body? You care nothing for what they do to me! You macerate my soul. With sleep comes horrible dreams. I was trapped in a drainpipe with the savage hairy man who squats, gobbling and belching, dabbling at my entrails. Soon I will be shrouded in snail slime sticky from the hollow stalk. Get away from me! I don’t want to see you!
LEONARD
(humbly)
I’ve brought chocolate creams. You used to love those.
VIRGINIA You are a shadow. You torment me with shadows of the people I might have been, all my unborn selves. Go away, Leonard. Your cause is hopeless.
LEONARD No cause is hopeless as long as we can talk.
VIRGINIA I have nothing to say to you. Your kind disgusts me.
LEONARD You can’t realize how utterly you would end my life too if you died or ever dismissed me. Aren’t I still your precious Mongoose? Aren’t you my beloved Mandrill?
VIRGINIA Any real relationship between men and women is unattainable. It’s all nonsense and lies.
LEONARD Weren’t we going to create our own special relationship? A real marriage, unlike everyone else’s, a vital, living thing. That’s what we promised.
VIRGINIA And then you brought me to George’s house, you traitor.
LEONARD Officialdom requires certification following suicide attempts! You’d be a ward in chancery! This is the only way!
(He seems about to sit down, she stops him)
VIRGINIA If you sit I’ll start screaming and I won’t stop.
LEONARD I’m so afraid of the future, Virginia, if you can’t get strong.
VIRGINIA You want me to tolerate filthy fingers stuck down my throat! That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?
LEONARD Is eating chocolate creams so terrible?
(He offers the box)
VIRGINIA Don’t come near me.
(He sets the box on the little table, kneels)
LEONARD I would grovel to you and kiss your toes if you would only listen to me, Virginia. Aren’t you better now? Aren’t you getting stronger? Look, you’re free and out of your straps. You’re sleeping some and eating a little. Have the hallucinations gone away?
VIRGINIA I’m terrified of sleep. I’m terrified of chloral and the nightmares it provides. When I wake at night and understand all the terror, violence and unreason still presiding over the universe it is worse than death. I am nothing. I am nobody. I am I-less.
LEONARD Didn’t you always say that only writing that brings order to madness? You called art humanity’s one defense.
VIRGINIA Art is a conspiracy among the civilized. Yet how can we call people civilized who insist on enslaving half their populace? Behold myself, empty-handed and force-fed, by your order. I know I have a good mind, but you have surrendered me to the very people bent on destroying it.
LEONARD Civilization is largely humbug, Virginia. That may be the only thing I’ve learned. I always felt I’m playing a part upon a stage. You’re the only honest person I’ve ever met and now you’re at risk. I just want you to get well, Virginia, so we can plan our hundred books.
VIRGINIA You care nothing for my plans! Shall I ever write again one of those sentences that gives me the most intense pleasure? For years now, people jerked wires to make me jump like a jack in the box when all I want is peace. I long to be ten miles beneath the sea. Here I am stuck in polar ice, harassed by barbarians.
LEONARD Your ice drifts toward home.
VIRGINIA
I have no home.
LEONARD
You will get well and our life will become possible again. As soon as you gain weight and master some calm and some cheer, we are free!
VIRGINIA Calm and cheer in a world like this one! Don’t treat me like some retarded infant. When we walked together at Asheham you inveighed against the world as a stupid, corrupt brothel.
LEONARD And I still believe that. I wanted to go into politics but politics is brutal and discouraging. Now I think I must change the world through workers’ cooperatives. We must stand up against all the evils that we see.
VIRGINIA You said writers are born to be unhappy.
LEONARD I fear to some extent that must be true. It’s harder on you, because you’re a sensitive, poetic writer. But if we swear to support each other –
VIRGINIA My punishment is unending. Mother didn’t approve of school for girls. Boys should go everywhere and know everything, and girls should stay home and know nothing. All my brothers were sent to school, where I must say they did horribly. George and Gerald were incurably stupid and Thoby jumped out a window rather than write his prep. But I learned Greek! I learned Latin! I read every book in Father’s library, all on my own! And here I am, sentenced to Bedlam for it.
LEONARD When you have seen the squalor that I have, you will realize that Dalingridge Hall is no punishment, Virginia.
VIRGINIA It’s a punishment for me. Think of its owners, in their smug pride, rulers of the universe. How can you of all people, abide them? But they seduce even you with their privilege, luxury and glamor. What is the use of the finest education in the world if it teaches people not to hate force but to use it? Why can’t we learn the arts of understanding people’s lives and minds? All that the professions preach is worship of the sacred tree of property.
LEONARD The doctors say you pushed yourself too hard.
VIRGINIA Is that what you really think, that diving deep is dangerous? Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.
Following her honeymoon Virginia Woolf attempted suicide and was sent to recover at her half-brother’s estate, Dalingridge Hall.
CHARACTERS
Virginia Woolf: a sensitive young artist having a breakdown
Leonard Woolf: her new husband, nervous, forceful, an “outsider”
Dr. Craig: bluff, elderly, genial, doctor to the wealthy
Dr. Hyslop: a fashionable eugenicist
Two orderlies: rough & tumble Cockneys ALF & BOB (orderlies & doctors played by the same actors)
(Scene 1: Dalingridge Hall, An ostentatious faux British castle with all the updated luxurious mod-cons. A pair of white-coated orderlies maneuver a stretcher into a sickroom.)
ALF Hold up a mo, let’s have a fag.
BOB Buckle her in, and then we’ll have a fag.
ALF Now that’s right stupid, that is. Tie her up, the job is done. No time for a fag then.
BOB Oh, right. I get you. Where can we stow her? She’s heavy.
ALF Tall as a man and strong like one, so they say. Prop her up over here. Careful, now, you got me shin!
(They lean the stretcher against the wall facing the audience. Fumble with cigarette packs. ALF sits on the bed.)
BOB I don’t like her looking at us.
ALF Oh, she’s well out of it. Off to dreamland. Took the mickey out of her, they did.
BOB So what’s up with this one? Trying on hats and ordering jewelry too much for her?
ALF I heard it was her honeymoon what sank her!
BOB Oh, Lord!
(they both guffaw)
BOB Wonder it doesn’t happen routine-like, what with the shock and all. I mean, she’s not used to seeing the farm animals getting frisky in the spring. She’s not walking to church with the village lads. She’s not sharing a bed with the brothers and sisters. So everything seems right and proper until the big night and then –
ALF All hell breaks loose!
(they laugh uproariously)
BOB So, you seen the husband?
ALF Oh yes, he was hanging about. Wringing his hands.
BOB So what’s he look like, then? One of them muscle-bound rowing blues?
ALF No, no, no. Nervy bloke. Just back from the East where he’d been sorting out the blacks.
BOB Oh, Lord! Used to carrying a big stick is he?
(they gasp, cough, laugh and fall about)
VIRGINIA
(groggily)
What is this place? What vast forces of good and evil dropped me here? I burn, I shiver. I turn, I tumble, I am stretched. I am nailed like a stoat to the stable door.
ALF Oh my jugs and jiggers, she’s coming out of it. Look here, you take that end.
BOB Hold her up, hold her up!
ALF She’s heavy, I’m telling you. They feed them women up like Strasbourg geese. Look sharp now.
BOB There’s hell to pay if she’s not buckled in.
(They get her on the bed. Much buckling and strapping.)
VIRGINIA Who are you? Where am I? I have been diving through seas of horror to come up rotting in dirty ditchwater. Don’t touch me!
(She starts struggling when it’s too late. She’s already buckled in. The men rest, gratified but exhausted.)
ALF Nothing to fear, my lady. You’re all right now. You’re safe here at Dalingridge Hall.
(His last words reverential)
VIRGINIA Dalingridge Hall! Now the agony begins, horror has seized me with its fangs! I am turned, I am tumbled, I am stretched and everyone pursuing!
(She starts screaming)
ALF Hypo! We need a hypo!
(ALF and BOB rush about panicked. Enter LEONARD. Exit orderlies.)
LEONARD What is it? What’s happened?
VIRGINIA Dalingridge Hall! They’ve taken me to Dalingridge Hall!
LEONARD Virginia, your brother Sir George and his wife Lady Margaret have kindly lent us this splendid mansion. They’re staying up in London and have left it all to us. Up to date comfort. Plenty of servants – French chef – the food is magnificent. Eleven bathrooms! Spotless, hygienic, – the nurses are impressed I can tell you.
VIRGINIA Now this monstrous ugliness is explained. I hear the crack of antlers as if the beasts of the forest are rearing, plunging among the thorns. One has pierced me. One has driven deep within me. You have left me to undergo this squalid humiliation served out like soup by greedy, casual scullions, coarse, ogling, brushing, destroying everything, smearing even our love with impure fingers. “What is this secret sin, this untold tale, that art cannot extract nor penance cleanse?” Don’t you understand? ALL DEATHS ARE ONE DEATH.
LEONARD
Would you like to see Sir George?
VIRGINIA
George! That obese alligator who used to roll me round my bed of an evening as if I were a minnow shut up in a tank with a frenzied whale. I would rather touch a decaying dogfish than that man’s body.
LEONARD Hush, Virginia. George is an Adonis, a true man of the world, adored by great ladies and parliamentarians alike.
VIRGINIA George has the eyes of a sow! Or is it an elephant? Sows look so much like elephants on the Duckworth side of the family. He used to fondle me so I couldn’t read my Greek. The very locusts deform the trees with their lusts.
LEONARD George claims chastity until hi marriage. That’s more than I managed.
VIRGINIA What liars men are! George was a pig, snuffling, rolling, grabbing, calling me Beloved. How he tortured both of us, me and Vanessa alike, Greek slaves in the harem promised him by Eton. He smothered us with caresses until Nessa told Dr. Savage and Dr. Savage made him stop. George told Dr. Savage he was only comforting us for the illness of our father.
LEONARD Virginia, you’re romancing. Dr. Head says longing for adult attention creates a wish-fulfillment leading to ideas like these. He says the only way out is the talking cure.
VIRGINIA So it’s wish fulfillment that has trapped me in George’s house? Dr. Head is another booby, Leonard. We were right to dismiss him. He knows nothing.
(she grabs him)
Don’t you understand that we are poured to the very edge of the abyss, Leonard, where we shall be broken together into nothingness and flames? Help, help! Get me out of this thing!
LEONARD Dearest, you threatened to harm yourself, remember? You attempted suicide.
VIRGINIA You left the veronal unlocked. I thought it was an invitation. My father praised the Duke of Bedford for having the courage to shoot himself. Surely you longed to be rid of me. I’m a bad bargain all around.
LEONARD
No Virginia, no. I love you. I moved heaven and earth to save you.
VIRGINIA But I’m already dead, Leonard. I am certainly in hell. Fallen in a duck pond and strangling in duckweed! Quack, quack!
LEONARD Virginia, why do you reduce me to madness too? If you could only comprehend how insane you sound.
VIRGINIA You can’t think what a raging furnace it is to me, madness and doctors and being forced. I am bent like a tree under a remorseless gale. The crass blindness that poisons childhood still threatens bitter storms. Children will be trodden under. Speech is false. The demand to submit must always be returned with cries of pain, hate and rage because that’s all they understand.
LEONARD You were violent, Virginia. You attacked your nurses. Don’t you remember?
VIRGINIA I was defending myself. They attacked me! Forcing food down my throat. I will go down with my colors flying. Father used to say, “Face the inevitable with eyes wide open.”
LEONARD You vomited on Lily and you struck Susan with a platter of cold meat. You must eat to gain weight, Virginia. Then the voices will subside, the doctors say. That’s why they’ve ordered a rest cure.
VIRGINIA Those doctors! My life is a constant fight against doctors’ follies. That cretin, Savage? He’s not fit to be about. Borrowed from another century.
LEONARD Four doctors and all of them in agreement. You know this, Virginia. You chose Head yourself – because Roger Fry recommended him – Vanessa suggested Craig and I found Hyslop.
VIRGINIA Really, a doctor is worse than a husband. I’ve given up expecting doctors to listen to reason. If only those pigheaded sawbones could see I speak the sober truth without excuse! Alienists know absolutely nothing. Their vanity is as profound as their ignorance. What does their “treatment” amount to? It is all eating and drinking and being shut up in the dark, sequestered with lunatics.
LEONARD The food here is delicious. May I bring you some?
VIRGINIA Once when we travelled by train to St. Ives the lemonade spilled on the sandwiches and turned them into mush but Nurse still made us eat them and I was sick and then I was punished. Leonard, don’t you see that when I am weighted with food I can no longer make the moments flow together. I become an excreter, an excretion. No, of course you don’t see. You’re in a conspiracy, plotting against me. I see your grinning, I know your subterfuge, I hear you sneering behind my back.
LEONARD Virginia, the people who love you are trying to decide what’s best for you. I’m trying to make the best decisions I can.
VIRGINIA You’re punishing me for disappointing you. For being a bad wife.
LEONARD When you’re well, you admit you’ve been mad.
VIRGINIA My sister wanted to be rid of me. While she threw away our father’s possessions I lay in bed and heard the birds singing Greek.
“What bird so sings, so yet does wail? Tis the ravished nightingale Jug, jug, jug, tereu she cries And still her woes at midnight rise.”
LEONARD You’re hurting yourself with all this wild talk. No one can understand anything you say.
VIRGINIA People know very well enough but it’s a secret. King Edward spewed the foulest possible language amongst the azaleas and yet they crowned him. “Swallow, my sister, O Sister Swallow,” I sing. If I become king of the lunatics shall I escape molestation? God, I wish I were dead. I will soon have to jump out of a window.
LEONARD These violent oscillations, Virginia! If I could only get you to see! A whirlwind brings madness in its wake!
VIRGINIA How long can any man love a woman without driving her mad? How long can I protect my clean visions from the odious masculine point of view – from the egotism of men? You crack my brain like a thrush cracks a snail – hammer, hammer, hammer.
LEONARD I am not your enemy, Virginia.
VIRGINIA Then who else is? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? I wanted to spend my life innocently indifferent among the trees and rivers but instead men expose themselves whenever I step out doors. I saw a woman pinned beneath a car and horses falling in the street. Outside our scullery a man cut his own throat. His jowls were whitened as codfish. The human face is hideous. What are you doing? Don’t touch me!
LEONARD Trying to loosen your straps. You’re getting excited. Doctor!
(Lights up on Hamptons cottage, as before. WHITNEY assaults the door.)
WHITNEY Charmayne!! Charmayne!!
(Her stepmother opens the door. Slower, less confident; accusatory)
CHARMAYNE You’ve been avoiding me, Whitney. Why haven’t you returned my calls? I thought we were besties.
WHITNEY I wanted to bring you something.
CHARMAYNE (Haughty, but momentarily excited in spite of herself)
And what could you possibly give the woman who has everything?
WHITNEY Just this.
(Tenders a bullet)
CHARMAYNE Ooooo, scary! And what’s this supposed to represent?
WHITNEY It’s a bullet, Charmayne. It matches the bullets in your gun, the bullets all over this beach and the bullets in your stepfather.
CHARMAYNE My stepfather!
WHITNEY Yup. I’ve been to visit his grave.
CHARMAYNE Well, thank you for this –
(Mockingly, as she throws it out to sea)
I was never was two-faced as you, Whitney. My stepfather – who’s in hell, as you very well know from the personal, confidential disclosures that I made to you during a Girls Night Out – doesn’t have a grave. Anyway, nobody cares about that old stuff anymore.
WHITNEY There’s no statute of limitations on murder.
CHARMAYNE (Tries to grab her)
Statute! Limitations! Whit, do you need cash to go to law school?
WHITNEY (Evading her neatly)
It’s time to answer for what you’ve done.
(CHARMAYNE walks past her towards the ocean – crossed arms, thinking)
CHARMAYNE Your father wouldn’t want this.
WHITNEY I’m not doing it for him. I’m doing it for me.
CHARMAYNE This feels so odd. It’s not what I expected, at all. You never fail to surprise me, Whitney. Your enmity is so flattering. I feel… courted.
(Turns around to face WHITNEY, back in control)
So you think you know everything about me now?
WHITNEY I know all I need to know. For example, that you’re wondering right now whether it’s worth your while to get rid of me. Whether I have a partner in my researches who knows everything I’m doing. And the answer is yes.
CHARMAYNE I was not wondering how to get rid of you, Whitney! As if! I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried. You’re one of the Immortals.
WHITNEY Am I supposed to know what that is?
CHARMAYNE We Immortals have been here since time immemorial. We recognize each other. We are transformable, but essentially indestructible.
WHITNEY Wow, that’s so comforting. Lucky for us! And now it’s time for my second gift. I’m going to tell your fortune.
(Sits at the patio set table and starts shuffling cards)
CHARMAYNE (Approaching nervously, interested in spite of herself)
You can’t tell my fortune.
WHITNEY I’m the only one who can.
CHARMAYNE But that’s not my deck. So you can’t use it.
WHITNEY No. It’s my deck. You have to play the cards the goddess deals, right? Sit down. First, I’ll tell you your past.
(Produces a card – Hermit leaps up on the screen. Cards seemingly tremble, shimmer in the air) Recognize him?
(CHARMAYNE sits down)
CHARMAYNE It’s the Hermit.
WHITNEY There he is, with his broom and his light. Don’t you recognize him?
CHARMAYNE That’s a staff.
WHITNEY It’s a broom. It’s holding him up more than he’s holding it up. I saw him. I spoke to him. Mr. Butterbatch.
CHARMAYNE (Sounds delighted)
Old Butterbatch! Is HE still ticking! I can scarcely believe it – he was a hundred when I knew him. How is the old geezer?
WHITNEY Fine and dandy. I must say he remembers you very well, Destiny. He told me all about how the police have been longing to find the source of the female DNA all over the frog gigger they found sticking out of Burt’s throat. You must have cut yourself! Imagine that! Probably just a little nick. How would you even have noticed it, when there was so much blood?
CHARMAYNE Burt was vile, Whitney. Vile. Anyone would have done it. He needed to be put down.
WHITNEY Maybe, Charmayne. Who can judge? O, right, this guy! Justice!
(Tarot card leaps up to screen and trembles in the air)
CHARMAYNE Justice is female, Whitney. But I have faith in you. You’ll figure it out.
WHITNEY Must be where the phrase “stings like a bitch” comes from. And see that box she’s sitting on? That’s the box they’re going to put you in.
CHARMAYNE No one’s putting me in a box. Never.
WHITNEY Oh, they’re going to put you in a box, Charmayne. They’re going to put you in a series of boxes, like some kind of dangerous Matrushka doll. That’s three separate states you’ve unleashed mayhem in and they’re all going to want a crack at you. And who’s this? The Lovers!
(Tarot card onscreen)
There’s your girlfriend, Charmayne Carr. You must have known the cards would turn on you someday, Charmayne. Why don’t you just tell her family where you stashed that body? The prosecutor’s going to get it out of you, one way or another. After a few weeks of instant mashed potato mix, egg substitute, baloney and wonderbread you’ll tell them anything they want to know.
CHARMAYNE (Mocking) Shows what you know! I wonder if your much-vaunted “classical education” isn’t a pair of distortion goggles after all. Dr Carr’s family rejected her and she never gave a damn for any of them! She was free of all that. And for your information, the Lovers was never was her card. She was the Empress.
WHITNEY You said you weren’t two-faced like me, Charmayne. But you were careful, weren’t you? Did you give her the honor of confronting her the way I’m confronting you now or did wait until her back was turned?
CHARMAYNE She gave me her life! She was longing for me to absorb her! It was her free choice, one I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I was an Immortal! She recognized it and she yielded.
WHITNEY Sure, sure. That’s what always happens. The fish throws himself into the boat to save you from spearing it. Tell yourself anything that lets you sleep at night. Oh, wait, you can’t sleep, can you? It’s starting to show on your face.
(CHARMAYNE stands up and turns away, touching her face)
CHARMAYNE That was just mean, Whitney. That was uncalled for.
(WHITNEY produces another Tarot card – it leaps to the screen and shimmers in the air) Who’s this? An Emperor with the long white beard! Who can that be, I wonder!
CHARMAYNE (Turned away from the card, forces herself to sit down, put her feet up and make a show of relaxing)
Let me guess. A certain cardiac surgeon of our acquaintance?
WHITNEY Thoracic.
CHARMAYNE Thoracic surgeon. Now we get within sight of your real problem, Whitney, the real fountain of your rage. Your father was such a charming man, even in extreme old age. The Lady of Life met the Lord of Death: it was just the way he wanted it, it had to happen. He was so touchingly eager to enrich me, to pass along his acquisitions. You’re just jealous because he found a new pupil.
WHITNEY You thanked him by killing him!
CHARMAYNE I did reward him, Whitney. Your father was suffering. He begged me to put him out of his misery. Would you like me to summon him from the grave so you can ask him? You’ll see I’m right! I think from the first moment our eyes met in the job interview he knew I was the only one who could get the job done exactly the way he wanted. He begged me for that extra dose of morphine. Having a body became a torment to him. He could no longer enjoy anything.
WHITNEY As your body will torment you, while you rot away in jail. But at least somebody will get to enjoy it – whatever bullies or “Immortals” you’re lucky – or unlucky enough to run into. They’ll pass you around like a pizza.
CHARMAYNE (Snatches her feet off the table) I’m not going to jail, silly Whitney! Not ever! I served my time!
WHITNEY (Pulling herself forcibly together she produces another card – Judgment on screen – hugely vibrating )
Sorry, Pearleen – or whoever you are this week – childhood doesn’t count. Now here’s a lady you’ve never met. She showed me your stepfather’s grave.
CHARMAYNE (Labored change of tactics)
I like this new you, Whitney. So forceful, so ablaze.
(Pretends to shiver)
It’s so sexy. Pity it’s all wasted, that you’ve been so misled. Judgment is not the card you’ve been looking for all your life.
(Picks it up and sends it spinning – onscreen card – which she avoids looking at – seems to swell)
WHITNEY But this is the one card we have in common. The lady who tends your stepfather’s grave – saving it for the investigators – she brandished a trumpet and everything. Looks like the goddess has given up on you, Charmayne.
CHARMAYNE Nice try, but my stepfather doesn’t have a grave. He didn’t deserve one.
WHITNEY Yeah, he does, and I took a picture of it. See?
(Shows her phone)
The Hidden Glade developers found him when they paved over Dead Lake and they treated him to a nice box of his very own. There he is, just waiting for someone to find a match to those bullets.
(She pulls a bullet from a chain around her neck)
This bullet, for example. I chose it from the many bullets you’ve sprayed around this beach. You’ll never find them all.
CHARMAYNE (Crossed arms) I never transitioned anyone that didn’t want it or deserve it.
WHITNEY Transition! Now there’s a word! But the law doesn’t respect your private language, you know. They have a language all their own. You killed Charmayne Carr to steal her identity. You killed my father to get rich. You killed the night manager to steal his stash. You killed your stepfather to steal his wheels and run away.
CHARMAYNE (Firing up immediately)
None of that is true and you of all people –
WHITNEY That’s what they’ll say. I’m just trying to prepare you. That’s what prosecutors always say, based on what they can prove. It’s worst case scenario right at the beginning, Pearleen, so prepare yourself. I’m sure your oh-so-expensive defense attorney will explain to them about your “Immortals” theory. That’ll sound good to the jury. Or maybe he’ll just give up and plead insanity. Possibly you should represent yourself in court – after you’ve had all that plastic surgery you’ve been thinking about.
CHARMAYNE I ‘m not bothering with the law, Whitney. Don’t you see that the law’s a charade? A puppet dance for marionettes? I was greedy for life, Whitney. For ecstasy, for joy. For experiences and possessions, so I took them. I’m not ashamed. I’ve had everything I ever wanted.
WHITNEY Then isn’t it time?
CHARMAYNE For what?
WHITNEY To give up.
CHARMAYNE I’ll never give up!
WHITNEY (Produces a final card)
Because here’s your future. The Hanged Man. He sees the world upside down. And it’s the last thing he sees.
(Card onscreen)
CHARMAYNE You’re young, Whitney. Nothing wrong with that! You know nothing about the real world, by which I mean the invisible world that pulses beneath the visible. Your father kept you from it with that “classical education”. You need to take your time figuring out who – and what you really are. I could help you. We could share all this.
WHITNEY No.
(Throws a card at her – Death appears onscreen)
Death, Charmayne. That’s your future. Your future is Death.
CHARMAYNE (Upends the table, scattering everything – rises from her chair)
I can’t die. It won’t happen. Didn’t I explain it to you? Listen, Whitney. We make our own reality. You’re my mirror.
WHITNEY I’m your parabolic mirror, sent to fry you to a crisp.
CHARMAYNE Don’t say it like that. What if I admit you’ve won? Here, take the dagger. Now you’re the new Queen of Swords.
WHITNEY Someone told me never to “settle”.
CHARMAYNE (Kneeling beside her)
It’s breaking my heart that I can’t explain this to you.
WHITNEY Don’t kid yourself, Destiny. A heart was one of the encumbrances you left behind.
CHARMAYNE Is this what love feels like? I’m not used to wanting things I can’t have.
WHITNEY You just tried to convince me you’re immortal, you’ll never talk me into thinking you’re human!
CHARMAYNE It’s so strange! You feel about me the way I thought about them. Murder kills feeling. And if you can’t feel, you can’t enjoy. If you can’t enjoy, you might as well be dead.
WHITNEY I guess there’s a limit to everything, and you’ve reached yours.
CHARMAYNE (Turns to face the audience)
Maybe it is my time to find out my next stage. I’ve always wondered who I really am. Your father called me a “living doll,” Burt said I was cold as ice, the Empress named me “the marble-hearted”. My step-dad said I wasn’t a little girl, I was a cockroach like him.
(Touches WHITNEY)
Help me.
WHITNEY I’m helping you to see that it’s the end. You’ve had a good run, but it’s over.
CHARMAYNE You don’t even know what you’re rejecting! Let me show you what you’re missing –
(Tries to embrace WHITNEY who pushes her away)
WHITNEY (Roughly)
You’re not my type.
CHARMAYNE Isn’t there anything I can give you to change your mind? Think, Whitney. Aren’t I the only person in the universe who really understands you? Sees you for what you are?
WHITNEY Actually, you aren’t. But there is something you can give me.
CHARMAYNE (Such relief)
What? Anything! Name it.
WHITNEY I want you to prove your immortality.
(Points out to the audience)
Swim out there. Keep swimming. And don’t come back.
CHARMAYNE Are you sure that’s what you really want?
WHITNEY (Gesturing)
Challenge your Goddess to a swimming match. Be my guest. Bye-bye.
CHARMAYNE A swim? That’s all you want? When I am willing to share everything? All the secrets?
WHITNEY A swim to eternity. That’s all that I want.
CHARMAYNE (Brittle laugh)
You can see me naked any time, Whitney. No need to go through all this.
WHITNEY Just swim. I don’t care how.
CHARMAYNE But it’s freezing!
WHITNEY You swim here every night.
CHARMAYNE But the weather’s changed. It’s gone dark and cold. Still, they say beyond the water lies a place where all waters part. I could re-invent myself.
(Looking out)
So once again I’m the initiate, am I? It’s funny how things come around.
(Comes closer peering way, way out beyond the audience’s eyes.)
I wonder what’s out there. A little tequila before I go? For old time’s sake?
WHITNEY You’ve had all the tequila. Go.
(WHITNEY’S implacable so CHARMAYNE starts undressing.)
CHARMAYNE Look at my beautiful body, Whit. Won’t it be a shame to waste it?
WHITNEY Stop begging and save your strength.
CHARMAYNE (Insulted)
Begging? Is that what you think I’m doing?
(To herself)
The Empress told me that to find your dominant was heaven. I see it now. You’re the goddess who can never be denied.
(Bows at her feet – WHITNEY steps away in agitation)
WHITNEY Stuff it. Soft soap won’t work on me. I’ve never had it and I don’t want it. Your goddess is out there. Go find her.
CHARMAYNE (Kicking her clothes away)
This is all so different from what I imagined. I’m so different. It’s the ultimate surprise.
WHITNEY You may have more surprises waiting just around the corner.
CHARMAYNE I can feel myself getting younger. Like a child, begging for that one last story before lights out! Who knew after all this time that sacrifice – that giving up my strength would prove to be the missing fountain of youth! Will the Goddess reveal herself to me unveiled? Whose face will she wear, I wonder?
(Shivers)
WHITNEY You knew this was coming! You had to know!
CHARMAYNE I thought if my past ever caught up to me I’d…be destroyed. Disemboweled like the Hanging Man. Poison. The asp. Who knew it would feel so sweet? Relief.
WHITNEY (Somewhat shaken)
More cons.
CHARMAYNE What relief to concentrate on the physical challenge ahead. Oh, the blessing of the physical!
(Steps into the “water”, clutching her arms.)
There was always another freedom, right around the corner. What new thing comes next? Freedom’s the lover I pursued all my life, and still she evades me. There’s always a greater freedom… somewhere.
(Steps down into the audience. Swimming)
Suddenly I feel so shy. It’s like being thirteen again. If my stepfather had never existed, who would I have become?
WHITNEY (Coming down to the water to watch)
Maybe you’ll find out.
CHARMAYNE The Empress recommended surrender. She said it felt so good! They all told me…or tried to tell me. Who could predict that Death would come to me as a beautiful young woman?
(Breaststroke)
Is this right? Am I doing it right?
(WHITNEY gestures “farther out”. CHARMAYNE blows her a kiss.)
Goodbye, my nemesis.
(Faces outwards.)
Hello, Virginity!
(Swims away through the audience. Exit.)
(WHITNEY drops her “Judgment” pose, leaps to her feet, paces up and down the beach, peering out to sea. Increasingly anxious. Enter EIGHT to stand behind her and put his arms around her. She shakes him loose. Pacing.)
EIGHT Is she gone?
WHITNEY
I’ll never know! I thought it was all an act! I never thought it would work! She can’t be gone if I don’t feel she’s gone, can she? I’m so scared she injected herself inside me, like a brainworm! Am I a murderer now, too?
(Calls loudly)
Wait, wait! I’ve changed my mind! Come back! Let’s talk!
(EIGHT tries to calm her, she collapses into bitter weeping.)
EIGHT You’re acting like you lost your best friend. Don’t forget she was your bitterest enemy. She was the world’s enemy.
WHITNEY You confused her with your demon, but she was my demon.
(Shaking her head)
No, no. It was over too fast. What did I say? I blurted out a bunch of lies, just like she did. I had to turn myself into her in order to catch her! What if I can’t change back? I did everything wrong.
EIGHT (Hugs her)
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re decompressing. You were in an impossible situation. It worked! You did everything right.
WHITNEY But I miss her. Now I have nothing. No offense, but now I have nobody.
EIGHT No offense taken. You’re just feeling the emptiness where the anger used to be. Let it melt away. Of course it’s going to hurt. There’s a whole wide world out there and it needs you. The universe is full of treasure.
WHITNEY Didn’t I tell you I hate it when you talk about treasure?
EIGHT No. Sorry. Maybe I need a new expression.
WHITNEY I need a lot of new expressions. New words. I need a whole new language.
EIGHT It’s out there, Whitney. When you can’t manage forgiveness, just let go.
WHITNEY That’s what she said! It’s myself I can’t forgive.
EIGHT It takes awhile. You’ll figure it out. It’s like being born all over again. I have faith in you.
WHITNEY She said that too!
EIGHT She doesn’t own ideas, Whitney. She doesn’t own emotions, or the past, or even the future. She used those things as camouflage for her greed. For her appetites. Come. Walk with me.
WHITNEY No. No. I can’t leave. She might come back. You’re just trying to re-make me in your image.
EIGHT Absolutely not. The thing I like most about you is, you’re not me. Take your time, Whitney. This is your chance to be you. You’re telling your own fortune, now.
WHITNEY (Looking out over the ocean)
If I’m telling my own fortune I might as well give myself a really good one. Do you think she’s really gone?
EIGHT She’s less than nothing now. Hold my hand.
(Touching her)
You’re cold. Don’t you want to go inside?
WHITNEY No. I have to stay right here. For awhile.
(Sits down.)
In case she comes back. She might come back. Will you wait with me? At least till dark? Or till I get used to missing her? There were so many things I forgot to say.
EIGHT Rehearse them. Tell them all to me. I’m here.
(Sits beside her, they clutch hands, staring out into the audience. Lights out)
(Behind WHITNEY’S back appears an old man dressed for fishing. He carries a tackle box and two fishing rods.)
WHITNEY (Shouting after EIGHT) Some “master of the elements” you are. Scared of a little chill!
DR. QUANTREAU Whitney? Ready to go fishing? The bluefish are running.
WHITNEY (Overcome)
Dad! Dad! Oh, my God! Dad!
DR. QUANTREAU Don’t touch me. I’m covered with hooks.
(He casts a line)
WHITNEY (Confused)
Dad, you can’t catch bluefish from here!
DR. QUANTREAU Whitney, you’re forgetting that I’m dead. I can do anything I want.
WHITNEY (Collapsing emotionally)
Dad, you’ve left everything in a mess!
DR. QUANTREAU I don’t think so. You seem fine to me.
WHITNEY Dad, Charmayne is some kind of monster! She kills people who get in her way! She probably killed you!
DR. QUANTREAU What does that matter now? It was my time to go.
(Casting, moving up the beach.)
WHITNEY This is NOT the way I imagined it.
DR. QUANTREAU Nothing ever is.
WHITNEY Let me put it this way, Dad. You married a lying, greedy, murderous stripper!
DR. QUANTREAU Not bad for a deteriorating old geezer, huh?
(WHITNEY is gob smacked. Watches him silently for a while.)
WHITNEY (Mustering all her energy)
Well, I’m not letting her get away with it.
DR. QUANTREAU Forget it, Whitney. Allow an old man to have his fun. I made plenty of money for everybody. Let it go.
WHITNEY Dad! She made you beg for water! I saw it!
DR. QUANTREAU Adults play games, Whitney. Conflict makes life interesting; keeps the fish fresh. I guess you wouldn’t understand. You were always so serious.
WHITNEY You made me serious! You wanted me serious! You said life was serious.
DR QUANTREAU (Reflects)
Besides, I probably deserved it. Ever heard that expression “what goes around comes around?” I made your mother beg for money. We all did it. I regret it now.
(Shrugs)
You should have seen the faces on the other guys when I brought Charmayne to the club!
(Cackles gleefully)
Were they jealous! Didn’t know I had it in me!
(Wandering away into the “water” – into the audience)
WHITNEY (Calling after him despondently)
Dad, don’t go! Let’s talk about…things. We never talked about real things. We only talked about…history. Why Alexander the Great didn’t need armies as big as the people he attacked.
DR. QUANTREAU Honey, I don’t have to worry about “things” any more. Or Alexander the Great. You could come fishing with me. I love fishing. I get to fish all the time.
WHITNEY (With a passion)
I see now I’ve always hated fishing. It’s the most boring activity on the planet.
DR. QUANTREAU I like it. It relaxes me. It’s just a game, Whit. Our games define us. Elevate your game, Whit.
WHITNEY You against some nine pound fish! Like that’s fair!
DR. QUANTREAU Honey, no one cares about fairness. Fairness is impossible. Expertise, that’s the thing. Self-improvement. Mastering whatever it is you set out to do.
(Casts)
WHITNEY But you keep leaving me, again and again, over and over! Don’t you still love me?
DR. QUANTREAU Of course I love you, Whitney. And Darby and McKenzie and Charmayne and your mother – what was her name? Doris. I loved Doris and before her I loved Edna. But the fish are running! See them go? If the fish are running, I’ve got to follow! Goodbye, Whitney! Be a good girl.
(Exit.)
WHITNEY (Shouting after him)
You’re just a figment of my adolescent imagination!
(Bursts into tears sobbing her heart out.)
I refuse to take advice from ghosts.
(Dries her tears, sighs, takes out her phone)
Unsolved murders in Branson, Missouri…what was it? Fourteen years ago?
(Goes to sit disconsolately on the beach behind the boulder, hidden from the house. EIGHT appears, wielding his metal detector.)
WHITNEY (Sarcastically)
Well if it ain’t the Prince of Wands.
EIGHT Excuse me? Name’s Eight. Like pieces of eight?
WHITNEY Well, I found out the demon’s name. And it got me exactly nowhere. It’s Creature from the Black Lagoon one, and Firewalkers zero.
EIGHT One battle ain’t a war. What happened?
WHITNEY She stole someone’s identity! And then that person disappeared! She killed her mentor. Probably robbed her into the bargain.
EIGHT That one’s a piece of work all right.
WHITNEY It’s real bad. But it was fourteen years ago. The missing person’s been declared dead even though no one ever found the body, my father’s trust says it doesn’t matter who he was married to when he died, and if Charmayne hasn’t already legally changed her name now she’s probably going to.
EIGHT Nothing works when you give up that fast.
WHITNEY She even had the nerve to accuse ME of Black Magic.
EIGHT She did? Oh, Whit! Don’t you see how great that is? You recognized the demon, called it by name, and it recognized YOU! You’re on your way, girl!
WHITNEY I thought you were the one warning me against descending to her level.
EIGHT (Hunkers down beside her)
She believes this stuff, is all I’m saying. She’s not your ordinary con. You can’t get her where she’s fake, so you have to get her where she’s real.
WHITNEY Well, I’m going to need a lot more magic. You got any on you?
EIGHT (Running his metal detector over her body – it rattles excitedly)
You don’t need my magic. You’ve got plenty of your own!
WHITNEY (Collapsing disconsolately)
Prove it.
EIGHT Look. I’d say there’s at least two reasons to steal an identity. One is, you actually want to be that person. The other is, you don’t want to be yourself.
WHITNEY Because?
EIGHT Do I have to spell everything out for you? I’m saying, if you’re willing to get rid of one person…
WHITNEY (Starting to get worked up)
You mean maybe she’s done it before? My stepmom, the serial killer!
(Lights up on The Library Basement Stacks at Dead Lake Community College a mini set with bookcase and elderly woman – MRS PREECE – wearing coke bottle glasses perched atop library ladder, putting books away. )
MRS PREECE Why are all these students so freakishly tall? I’m going to kill myself, one of those days, trying to approximate the eye line of some basketball-playing mutant. (WHITNEY appears shyly around the bookcase.)
WHITNEY Are you Mrs. Preece?
MRS. PREECE No need to shout. I’m half-blind, not deaf. Depends who’s asking.
WHITNEY I’ve been researching past Dead Lake students and the girl at the front desk said you know everything.
MRS. PREECE (Coming down the ladder) Then I’m that Mrs. Preece. For all I knew you were looking for my mother in law and she’s been dead these forty years. And believe you me, she was no picnic when she was alive, and now that she’s dead she’s been particularly troublesome.
(Looks WHITNEY up & down)
Aren’t you a nice young lady! Most girls these days look so terrible I pity them. They want to look terrible is what I conclude. It’s all I can do to keep from jumping back and gagging when I see one coming – it’s like some vision of the Apocalypse. They’re arming up for something – God knows what.
(Crosses herself)
You look like a strong healthy girl. Not like those female zombies.
WHITNEY I missed a lot. I guess I’ve been… held back.
MRS. PREECE Well, stay in school forever, that’s my advice. You, – you play hockey? What’s your sport?
WHITNEY God no. I hate sports.
MRS. PREECE Don’t say that, girl. Games are all we have to look forward to. The only time we get to win. I was a left wing in my time. But you can’t even say “left-wing” these days. Teatime!
(She swivels the ladder & bookcase to reveal two basket chairs and a squat bookcase holding a smoking kettle, which she unplugs. She pours two mugs of tea and settles into chair with a sigh.)
WHITNEY (Accepting a mug) Do you live down here?
MRS. PREECE Might as well. They’ve got facilities, haven’t they? Heat, light, the whole ball of wax. I’ve got a home but why go there? The spirit of my dead mother-in-law makes it clear she doesn’t approve of my housekeeping. No, libraries are where it’s at! Temples of learning, sanctuaries of knowledge. And they’re too cheap to hire a security guard for all this treasure. Scary. All they’ve got is little old me. When I go, it’s “poof” for all these memories. If I’m going to be haunted by somebody, I choose Emerson. Or any of the Transcendentalists, really.
(Waves a hand)
Education is SO wasted on the young. And it don’t stick long on the old folks, neither. People remember the way things SHOULD have happened. But I –
(Taps her head)
Been blessed in the brain-basket. I like the past. I remember the way things REALLY happened. So, long story short, you’ve come to the right place. Sit down and make yourself to home.
(Long sip)
Such a pleasure having company I’d smoke if I thought I could get away with it, but they’ve got them damn detectors. Interested in the Lake, you say? Good riddance to it! The Black Lagoon, we used to call it! Oh, it was a pile of muck after all the frogs died. You one of those conservation nuts? An echo-terrorist?
WHITNEY Eco-terrorist? No. Actually I’m looking for a person. I’m Whitney Quantreau, and I’m looking for Charmayne Carr. She claims she attended this school. Charmayne Carr?
MRS. PREECE I should have guessed right away that’s what you wanted! EVERYBODY’S looking for that one. Nobody knows what became of her. She just abandoned her house and walked away! But she wasn’t a student, she was a teacher. Health Ed.
WHITNEY She was? Who – who’s looking for her?
MRS. PREECE Her family. They need to know where she’s at! Got no idea in hell what’s become of her! And she used to support the lot of them. So it came as a shock. Does make a motive for sneaking away, having that pack hounding after you, I’d be thinking. And the cops say adults can go where they please. It’s a free country. You know what became of her?
WHITNEY Well – she got married. That’s all.
MRS. PREECE Married? To a MAN?
WHITNEY (Flustered) To my father, actually. What did you think?
MRS. PREECE Well, I’m not sure what’s the PC word for it, but she was one of them long-time dykes. Dressed like a man most of the time! Oh she was miserable when they tried to get her up into any sort of skirt. Nowadays she’d just go and get her sex fixed to something matching her desires.
WHITNEY (Shows her phone)
Is this her?
MRS. PREECE (Clutches her heart like she’s seen a ghost) Oh my goodness!
(Takes the phone)
Never thought I’d see HER again. So she’s a blonde now? She was a redhead when I knew her.
WHITNEY Isn’t that Charmayne Carr?
MRS. PREECE No, it most certainly isn’t! That’s Pearleen Purdy – Charmayne’s – I don’t know WHAT you’d call her. Doctor Carr’s girlfriend.
WHITNEY Are you certain?
MRS. PREECE How could a body be wrong about a thing like that? Nobody ever forgot Pearleen once they saw her. I’ve even got a picture of them together here somewhere.
(Produces a pile of college yearbooks from squat bookcase and shuffles through them)
These are my own personal Firewalkers. I don’t let them out of my hands.
WHITNEY Firewalkers!
MRS. PREECE Name of our basketball team, you know, the Firewalkers. Ought to be Airwalkers, but that was taken and we’re obligated to honor the Indians since we took their land whether they like it or not. Everyone walks through fire around here. Burning up the countryside’s practically a ritual. Let’s see, fourteen years ago, wasn’t it? The two of them were in a play together. “The Real Inspector Hound.”
(Offers the book)
Charmayne’s the one with the moustache. She was playing a man of course. Inspector Foot of the Yard.
(Agitated)
Now don’t you get stains on that!
WHITNEY (Puts mug down respectfully)
She – Pearleen looks so different!
MRS. PREECE Pearleen was older than most of the students. Word was she’d been a stripper out of Branson, Missouri. You’ve heard of Branson, Missouri? At The Gentleman’s Secret. Well, Dr. Carr had a nice big house out on the Heights and poor Pearleen grew up on that sorry lake. She came home when the developers passed out education money. Dr. Carr liked to invite girl students – poor students – I should say PRETTY students out to the Heights to live with her. She “helped” them. Folks around here called her place “The Opium Den” because it was so – I don’t know what you’d call it. Eastern-like. Cultish. With draperies and bronzes and incense. The works.
WHITNEY Cult-ish?
MRS. PREECE Yeah, Dr. Carr had one of them goddess religions she was the queen of. To each her own, I say. Live and let live.
WHITNEY Isis? TAROT? Let me guess, was she…the Queen of Swords?
MRS. PREECE Bingo. That’s it exactly. She played the cards and Pearleen played her. Dr. Carr made a pot of money with one of them role-playing games. Dr. Carr was the Queen and Pearleen was supposed to be a Princess, I think that’s the way it went. But Pearleen got rid of all those other girls one by one. Reminds me of a cat I used to have. He just couldn’t share. He chased all the other cats right off my bed. Couldn’t abide the competition. We try to turn the other cheek to promote a professional atmosphere but I‘m telling you, it was the scandal of the campus!
WHITNEY (Produces phone, uses zoom)
Did Charmayne Carr – Dr Carr – ever wear this necklace?
MRS. PREECE That dagger there? Well, it looks familiar. She had lots of totem like materials. But Dr. Carr had all these folds around her neck, you see… No one wants to gaze at that too closely! No, she was never one of the “pretty ones!”
WHITNEY And then she disappeared! Didn’t anybody find it suspicious?
MRS PREECE Suspicious! Wasn’t I telling you her family had a meltdown! They came out here screaming like banshees! Finally declared her legally dead so they could sell her property!
WHITNEY Do you remember any of their names?
MRS PREECE Her brother had some very ordinary name. Like John. But I’m telling you, they don’t care anymore. The estate’s settled! They’ve even got a fake gravesite established somewhere – had a service with shrieking and wailing. Be quite a shock to them when she comes back. They’re not wanting to resurrect the dead. You’ve got a different problem than that.
WHITNEY My stepmom’s an identity thief!
MRS. PREECE Your poor dad’s the one got trouble, bless his heart. Play and then pay, I say! Usually through the nose. I demand all my bills up front.
WHITNEY Too late for that. He’s dead, too.
(MRS PREECE drops her Firewalker with a resounding bang. Lights out.)
I’d like you to tell my fortune. Give me a reading. You know. With the cards.
CHARMAYNE
(Instantly interested)
Oh, you’d like that, would you? Why the sudden change of tune?
WHITNEY
(Graceless shrug)
I don’t want to come back on Thursday.
CHARMAYNE
(Rippling laugh)
I like you, Whitney. You shouldn’t be so teasable. I guess it’s Ramon who will have to come back Thursday. Surprises refresh me. You’ve never availed yourself of my gift of cartomancy before. Let me get my cards.
(Door snaps shut)
WHITNEY
(Seats herself in a patio chair)
Here goes nothing.
CHARMAYNE
(Appearing with a full tray)
Here, take this.
(Lumbers WHITNEY with enormous tray while CHARMAYNE carefully closes door behind her)
Careful with that!
(WHITNEY unloads tray onto patio table)
CHARMAYNE
I’m so pleased about this little tête a tête. Choose your poison. Kids these days drink only vodka. Vodka! (She snorts) Youth is so wasted on the young.
WHITNEY
I drink tequila.
CHARMAYNE
Oh, I bet you do. Care to knock back some shots?
(She mimes it)
In vino veritas, Whitney. I’ll save you the worm.
WHITNEY
Please don’t quote Latin at me. It makes me feel I’m back at boarding school.
CHARMAYNE
Life’s one school after another, Whitney. Endless initiation into unimagined horizons. All birth’s painful. A little medicine eases the transition.
WHITNEY
No thanks. I still have to drive home. Water’s fine.
CHARMAYNE
You always were as stubborn as a mule. So be it! Ready to concentrate on the future?
WHITNEY
I still have some questions about the past.
CHARMAYNE
(Sits, bounces a leg impatiently)
Oh, Whitney, Whitney! If I could only get you to see that your obsession with the past is so self-defeating! Here you are a young girl – an almost beautiful young girl who could be better than beautiful if she made any effort – and all you do is look back. On a mere nineteen years of life!
(Shakes her head)
If I’d stayed stuck like you, I’d still be gigging frogs down by the lake.
WHITNEY
What lake?
CHARMAYNE
(Immediate self-protection)
Oh, I grew up on a lake. Didn’t I mention? A sad sleazy little lake surrounded by wooden cabins – some of them actually on wheels. It’s all gone now.
WHITNEY
Maybe, but surely the lake is still there.
CHARMAYNE
Oh no. It’s all gone now. Paved over. Things change, Whitney. Get used to it! The past is always more disgusting than people are willing to concede.
WHITNEY
But who would pave a lake?
CHARMAYNE
The water was attacked by some invasive…they had to get rid of it. I would have walked through fire to get out of that place.
WHITNEY
(Very stubborn)
But how could you still be at the lake if it’s gone?
CHARMAYNE
I would have fought the changes, that’s my point. But what would I get? A dead lake and a dying life ! Instead, look at this!
(Waves over the audience)
I have the ocean! The whole Atlantic Ocean…
WHITNEY
So tell me about that dagger you wear around your neck.
CHARMAYNE
(Playing with it)
A girl after my own heart! No sooner do I give one gift than you want another. This golden dagger is a dear memento given to me by my mentor years ago. On completing my study of tarot.
WHITNEY
(Flat footedly)
What was her name?
CHARMAYNE
Oh, Whitney…Whitney…You can never bathe in the same river twice! I only care about the future. All this could be yours someday… if you play your cards right.
WHITNEY
Depends which deck we’re using.
CHARMAYNE
(Silvery laughter)
My deck of course! You don’t have a deck! Whitney, I want to be your friend. I treasured my own mentor – she made all the difference in my life – I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a protégée. I never knew it would be you.
WHITNEY
Why do you think so?
CHARMAYNE
You’re so young, so unformed. And you have such a thirst for knowledge! I was that way once, wondering how things work.
(Reaches out to touch WHITNEY’S hair – WHITNEY steels herself)
If only you knew how much I want to give you things.
WHITNEY
You do?
(This disturbs her)
Like what?
CHARMAYNE
I could show you the lynchpins of the universe if only you would let me. Very few of us were born with a silver spoon in our mouths and a golden rattle clutched in our chubby baby hands the way you were, Whitney. You need to see the world for what it really is. You don’t accept what’s on offer – you go your own way – I was like that, too. I can teach you how to never be defeated. But first I must know. Are you a Querent or a Firewalker?
WHITNEY
A what?
CHARMAYNE
Is this idle curiosity or will you accept the challenge that is offered – whatever it requires? Can you stand up to what must be revealed?
(She produced and shuffles the tarot cards – with threatening skill)
The time is never riper. Open your mind, Whitney and accept. IF that’s what you’re here for.
WHITNEY
I’m definitely a firewalker.
CHARMAYNE
I thought so! Welcome to the Way of Fire. Enter the temple. Cut.
(Offers cards to WHITNEY who cuts the deck and selects one.)
CHARMAYNE
Don’t just take a card. Wait for the proper moment.
WHITNEY
Did you ever wait?
CHARMAYNE
(CHARMAYNE takes the card from her and studies it)
Touché!
I suppose you chose the card most eager to speak to you. Look, it’s The Fool!
(Tarot of The Fool springs up as a hologram or on projection screen)
WHITNEY
That’s supposed to be me?
CHARMAYNE
It’s the card you chose so yes, it has something to say to you. Look at it.
WHITNEY
That I‘m a number zero? Is that what it’s telling me? I don’t like your tarot language.
CHARMAYNE
You’re always braced for insult, Whitney. In your private language you can never be defined by someone else. Open your cage. The Fool is stuck, he can’t move on. Moving on is the First Principle of Life.
WHITNEY
(Leaning across the table)
My father is gone.
CHARMAYNE
He was almost ninety, Whitney. Death happens. You had him longer than I did. Get over it. I never question the past.
WHITNEY
I was raised to appreciate history because if you don’t understand it, you repeat it.
CHARMAYNE
We all were born graceless and angry, raging and accusatory. It’s only a shame if you stay that way. Look at the fool’s face. He thinks he’s free. See the rose he picked? All the while he’s standing on a cliff edge!
WHITNEY
I reject this card. I demand another card.
(Snatches one up. CHARMAYNE is unflustered.)
CHARMAYNE
That’s not the way this game is played.
WHITNEY
Maybe it’s the way I play. You don’t get to define me.
CHARMAYNE
Fortunately the tarot is wiser than you. Look what you’ve chosen! The Tarot laughs!
(Queen of Swords card appears onscreen – bare breasted and swinging double knives)
WHITNEY
You put that there!
CHARMAYNE
You chose it yourself!
WHITNEY
You probably had that card up your sleeve. Here’s my card – I’ll turn it up myself.
(Priestess Tarot card onscreen)
CHARMAYNE
The High Priestess! How appropriate!
WHITNEY
What’s appropriate about that?
CHARMAYNE
The High Priestess is a woman pretending to be a man, Whitney. She abhors feminine wiles. Because you’re so interested in history you might as well know she’s base on Pope Joan, the only female Pope. She’s the guardian of hidden knowledge. See, she’s holding the Torah with the last letter hidden.
(WHITNEY bridles)
WHITNEY
She looks like a little old man.
CHARMAYNE
Don’t take everything so personally. Seekers are often forced to wear disguise. Life’s a contest and the weak go to the wall. Look at the Priestess standing on the moon between the lotus pillars and ask yourself, how does that make you feel?
WHITNEY
Weak.
CHARMAYNE
Well don’t admit it ever. Never spill your guts. The first law is bluster. After awhile it comes naturally.
WHITNEY
I thought the first law was moving on.
CHARMAYNE
(Irritated)
That’s the first principle. Try to keep up.
WHITNEY
Doesn’t bluster risk losing yourself?
CHARMAYNE
There is no self! We are self-created. Your father always used to say – oh, never mind. The Priestess reveals her secret when the time is right.
WHITNEY
What did my father always say?
CHARMAYNE
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Now allow me to choose a card for you.
(Prince of Wands appears. He looks a lot like EIGHT)
CHARMAYNE
I knew a man would show up sooner or later. Do you know this handsome devil? What do you suppose is the meaning of his big, big stick?
(She laughs)
(WHITNEY works hard to stay cool)
WHITNEY
I‘ve met him.
CHARMAYNE
(Surprised and nettled that there’s anything she doesn’t know)
Oh? Where? Is he your boyfriend?
WHITNEY
(Smug)
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
CHARMAYNE
Still waters run deep! Possibly he’s your power card, Whitney. The elegant Prince of Wands has been pushed out of his home and sent on a journey with no weapon to protect himself other than sticks he picks up. He’s a dowser.
WHITNEY
He’s a treasure seeker.
CHARMAYNE
Well I’d very much like to meet him. We could have a tequila party. Would you like that?
WHITNEY
No. Just tell me what it means.
CHARMAYNE
This must be very new – I don’t blame you wanting to keep him to yourself. The Prince of Wands is about developing intuition, cultivating talents. He’s a wily character, not well born like the Prince of Swords. He’s scrappy, like me, came from nothing. He’s had to learn to excel at something – to master it. He presages sudden changes of direction, even a journey. It could be a lucky card, Whitney, especially since you rejected The Fool. But like everything else in life, you must claim it. Claim your power, Whitney, I can show you how. Should you fail; the card’s power is reversed. Then it presages devastating loss, capture, and imprisonment.
WHITNEY
Imprisonment?
CHARMAYNE
(Exasperated)
I could say more if you would tell me about him.
WHITNEY
Forget it. Give me another card.
CHARMAYNE
You’re entitled to an eight card spread.
WHITNEY
Eight?
CHARMAYNE
Is that your lucky number?
WHITNEY
Maybe.
(WHITNEY spreads cards messily over the table)
CHARMAYNE
This isn’t slapjack, Whitney. We all have to play the cards the goddess deals. You’ll cancel out the reading!
(WHITNEY throws cards to the ground.)
CHARMAYNE
Some reverence if you please!
WHITNEY
(Produces a card triumphantly)
Here’s the one I want! Judgment!
(The Judgment card appears onscreen)
Even this one’s not very impressive. Why does the Tarot show nothing but little old men?
CHARMAYNE
It doesn’t. The Major Arcana is strongly female.
WHITNEY
Well the Judgment Card looks like my Dad to me.
CHARMAYNE
That shows your ignorance. Some have eyes but are too blind to see.
(Wearily picking up cards)
The Tarot won’t be mocked, Whitney. You’re asking for trouble.
WHITNEY
I don’t think I’m the one in trouble.
CHARMAYNE
Believe me, you are.
WHITNEY
I DON’T believe you. Your threats are vague – you can’t even be specific.
CHARMAYNE
(Threateningly)
It’s whatever you most fear that stalks you. Behind the fear lies…the wish.
(She laughs)
The ignorant are so helpless! This card doesn’t even signify what you think it means.
WHITNEY
So what does it mean, then?
CHARMAYNE
It’s the regeneration card. See the dead rising on the bottom of the card there? That angel’s going to suck them right up into her trumpet!
(She laughs wildly)
WHITNEY
You don’t think the dead can rise?
CHARMAYNE
Depends on how they died.
WHITNEY
What do you mean, HOW?
CHARMAYNE
(Threateningly)
They can’t rise if they’ve lost their souls.
WHITNEY
(Shaken)
Oh, that’s bullshit. Who says that?
CHARMAYNE
The Book of the Dead. They’re the experts. Your firewalk is just beginning, Whitney! I’ve been doing it for years. My feet are well-hardened. There’s so much you don’t know.
WHITNEY
(Overturns the table standing up)
I guess the reading’s over.
(They face each other across the mess)
CHARMAYNE
I guess it is. Some people can’t be helped.
(As CHARMAYNE bends down WHITNEY pretends to leave but hides behind the boulder, trying to calm her breathing).
CHARMAYNE
(Calling after her)
That was a one-time offer! Let me know if you ever get serious about claiming your power!
(Shrugs)
Kids. They insist on leaving the field to me. Which is fine, knowing how I hate to share.
(Clears the table, takes tray into house EXIT).
WHITNEY
(Pulls out her phone and starts typing)
Book of the Dead, eh? I have some magic of my own and it’s called Google. I remember now, that faked up résumé said something about Dead Lake Community College…
(Getting up her nerve…calling after CHARMAYNE …too late)
Like you speak French!
(Goes to sit disconsolately on a boulder.)
This is MY story and I’m not letting her tell it.
(A beachily dressed; closely shaved man with a metal detector comes up the beach slowly. Investigating.)
WHITNEY
Hey! Don’t you know this is private property?
EIGHT
Only to the waterline. No one owns the ocean. Which means it belongs to everyone. This your place?
WHITNEY
No. Belongs to my stepmother. The place she sold to buy this one was the house I grew up in.
EIGHT
So now you’re free. Like me.
WHITNEY
(Watches him work)
Who are you? What are you doing?
EIGHT
I’m a beachcomber and a treasure hunter. Name’s Eight. Like Pieces of Eight.
WHITNEY
Is that what you find?
EIGHT
I find everything eventually. Look at this.
(She comes closer)
WHITNEY
What is it?
EIGHT
Prehistoric shark’s tooth.
WHITNEY
Looks like an arrowhead.
EIGHT
They could have used it for that. You want it?
(She shrinks from contact)
WHITNEY
I don’t know. What would I do with it?
EIGHT
(Lifts his arm)
Treasure seekers help other treasure seekers. It’s the beachcomber’s code. Otherwise it goes back to the sea.
WHITNEY
Then I’ll take it.
(Turns it over in her hands.)
I wish it was a magic charm.
EIGHT
Really? Why’s that?
WHITNEY
I need magic to fight her.
(Gesticulates at house and whispers)
She’s a demon.
EIGHT
You mean demonic? Or an actual demon?
WHITNEY
I mean an actual demon. Like from another planet.
EIGHT
Most demons are homegrown.
WHITNEY
This one cultivates magic. Reads Tarot. Calls herself The Queen of Swords.
EIGHT
That’s nothing but a pack of cards. No magic there.
WHITNEY
She murdered my father. I know it.
(A beat. Game change.)
EIGHT
You sure of that?
WHITNEY
Absolutely certain. He had this neurological condition, and he hired her to be his attendant. She wasn’t qualified – not at all. He had me sit in the interviews since I lived there too. I could see how taken with her he was. I begged him not to do it but –
(she shrugs sadly)
EIGHT
Let me guess. She was a sight for sore eyes.
WHITNEY
(Nodding)
Yeah. But so fake, though! Fake everything: hair, breasts, accent. Fake résumé, even. But he didn’t want to see through her. He just didn’t care.
EIGHT
I get it. He wanted to take his own path to health.
WHITNEY
He wanted to grab for the gusto. As soon as they were married –
(Slits her own throat with a finger.)
EIGHT
Any idea how she did it?
WHITNEY
Smothering? Drugs? It wouldn’t have been hard. She cremated him right away and there wasn’t even an autopsy.
EIGHT
Did you tell anybody?
WHITNEY
I told everybody. But she has them all under her spell. People were relieved he was gone! Less trouble for everybody. Even my sisters who – neither of them can stand Charmayne – said, “Well, at least he died happy!” I was the only one who even missed him. He was already old when we were born, you see. Darby – that’s my oldest sister – said – “Oh, he’d been gone a long time already. Can’t you see that?” And McKenzie – she’s the other one – said – “Everyone dies “unnaturally” nowadays. That’s what death is.” I was the only one who thought it was wrong. My dad said the only education worth having is learning to tell right from wrong.
EIGHT
I get it. You thirst after righteousness.
WHITNEY
Justice. Justice is what I want. People keep telling me it doesn’t exist.
EIGHT
Are you certain it’s not revenge you’re looking for?
WHITNEY
Well, that would be nice too. I mean, she makes me so mad. Don’t you feel it? Wouldn’t anyone? But justice is what I’ll settle for.
EIGHT
It’s a bad situation.
WHITNEY
You don’t know what a relief it is to have someone actually listen to me. I even – one day – I saw him.
EIGHT
You saw him? Your father’s – ghost?
WHITNEY
(Nodding vigorously)
I did.
EIGHT
Was he all about vengeance?
WHITNEY
He didn’t speak.
(Tears up.)
He just showed up in my room at college – probably the same moment she was killing him – and looked at me so sadly. I knew it was some kind of vision because he was his younger self – from before he had his stroke. I thought he was angry at me. Going away to school and leaving him alone with Charmayne – maybe I let him down.
EIGHT
Hey, you told him not to hire her. I mean, you were just a kid! What could you do?
WHITNEY
He admired people who “spoke truth to power”. He wanted me to be self-sufficient, use logic and hone my own instincts. She was awful to him! She made him beg for water. I saw it.
EIGHT
Sounds like a demon all right.
WHITNEY
“Withholding hydration” they call it. I should have protected him, the way he always protected me. He said I was his intellectual heir.
EIGHT
Are we talking money?
WHITNEY
No, I don’t mean that. We already had trust funds and things. What I mean is, he told me I was like him, that I had the same kind of mind. He said knowledge is everything and you have to cultivate a bullshit detector. Even though I was the youngest – me and my sisters have different mothers – he told everyone only I was fit to stand in his shoes.
EIGHT
Well, I’m starting to see why your sisters might not want to cooperate.
WHITNEY
People have to stand up for what they believe!
(Very earnestly.)
EIGHT
You blush when you’re angry.
WHITNEY
I blush whenever there’s another person in the room. But what do you think I should do? I’m scared of her. She threatened me.
EIGHT
How?
WHITNEY
She said I’m nothing and she created everything. She’ll send me back into the darkness. She wants to “tell my fortune” so she can predict all the terrible things that are going to happen to me. When she calls herself Queen of Swords, she tries to sound like she’s Master of the Universe.
EIGHT
Sounds like a con artist to me. They just feel around for anything someone will believe. Don’t let her get the drop on you.
WHITNEY
But what if those cards tell the future?
EIGHT
Tarot’s just another dead language, Whitney. You could learn it if you really wanted to. Language shapes how people think.
(Taps his head)
Don’t meet her on her turf. Predators like their prey frozen. And confused.
WHITNEY
How did you know my name?
EIGHT
I hang around. I hear things.
WHITNEY
So, you’re an eavesdropper.
EIGHT
Treasure seekers are serendipitous. We pick up what we can find.
WHITNEY
Well, you can’t pick me up.
EIGHT
(Still working his stretch of beach)
I wouldn’t dream of it.
WHITNEY
(not thrilled to hear this)
But what if she really is magic? It seems that way sometimes. I don’t know how to stand up to her.
EIGHT
Don’t sideline yourself so quick. You’re here, aren’t you? A person who can see the dead can do anything. Magic’s a game and anyone can play. Games are about rule-making – about control – gaining advantage on somebody, Whit.
WHITNEY
My father said never to play a game that’s rigged.
EIGHT
What if its rigged in your favor? And this one is. You know what happens to murderers?
WHITNEY
I’m hoping they get caught.
EIGHT
The truth will out.
WHITNEY
(Looking nervously up at the house)
Charmayne thinks she’s indestructible.
EIGHT
Wow. Sounds like a dare. I’m partial to dares myself.
WHITNEY
She says anything anybody tries to do to her comes back on them a million times. That it’s pointless to fight her. But I’m not giving up. You see why (looks at the tooth) I might need all the magic I can get?
EIGHT
Make her play your game.
WHITNEY
I’d love to see that! What do I do? Exactly?
EIGHT
Today’s your lucky day. I just happen to know some magic.
WHITNEY
Is that part of being a treasure seeker?
EIGHT
Sure. First, you master the elements. That’s way bigger magic than flipping cards and cutting off old men’s hydration.
WHITNEY
(Skeptical)
So how’d you that?
EIGHT
I’ve been swept out to sea. I’ve been buried in sand and I’ve been frozen in snow.
WHITNEY
We’re going to need way bigger magic than that.
EIGHT
See this mark on the top of my head?
WHITNEY
(Rubbing his head)
Looks like scars! Where did they come from?
EIGHT
I had a demon of my own. Once.
WHITNEY
You did?
EIGHT
Yeah, and he was hard to destroy. Took a piece out of me, I can tell you. He marked me right here.
WHITNEY
(Very hopeful)
Did you mark him?
EIGHT
I told you I destroyed him. And then I marked myself.
(Opens his Hawaiian shirt to show tattoo)
WHITNEY
(Reading)
“Be not Afraid.” How’s that help anything?
EIGHT
It’s a reminder.
WHITNEY
But you defeated him?
EIGHT
Sure did. He’s locked in a box and he’ll never get out. That’s what sent me wandering.
WHITNEY
How come?
EIGHT
Because every action produces an opposite reaction. He’s static, I’m in motion. Searching.
WHITNEY
But if he’s still alive…can’t he still hurt you?
EIGHT
No. He’s lost all his power. But I did have to take control. And I had to work on setting myself free.
WHITNEY
(Flouncing down onto the beach)
I’d rather just kill her. Serve her right.
EIGHT
No, no; don’t give her that. That’s what she wants.
WHITNEY
Trust me, that is NOT what she WANTS.
EIGHT
(Nodding vigorously)
Trust ME, it is. She’s hoping to turn you into HER. She’d have a new young life, a new young body. I’m not sure anyone could rescue you then.
WHITNEY
So tell me what you think I should I do.
EIGHT
Play it by the Bible. You’ve got to call a demon by its name.
WHITNEY
(Unimpressed)
Really? The Bible? That’s all you’ve got?
EIGHT
Hey, the Bible’s full of demons.
WHITNEY
So how do I learn her name? Tell me.
EIGHT
You said she had a fake everything. If that fake résumé still exists. I’d start there.
WHITNEY
(Arms crossed)
She probably destroyed every copy. Then what?
EIGHT
Don’t be a “yes, but”. You know she’s got secrets. The past’s the best predictor of the future. Find out her past and make sure she knows you know. Believe me, suddenly she’ll find you the most interesting person on the planet.
WHITNEY
Why’s that?
EIGHT
Because here’s the secret. Demons long to be revealed. If she invites you to dance –
(Does a little dance, waltzing the metal detector)
Dance with her. Then – suddenly, at the time of your choosing you – step aside.
WHITNEY
Step aside?
EIGHT
(Involving her in his dance)
Step aside. Let her own momentum bring her down.
WHITNEY
(Very frustrated, dancing like she has two left feet)
I‘ll never get it.
EIGHT
First you have to tell your own fortune. Then you tell hers.
(Heads off down the beach while she’s thinking about it)
WHITNEY
She’ll try to put ideas in my head!
EIGHT
But if she’s a demon, your ideas are stronger than her ideas.
WHITNEY
You don’t know how persuasive she can be.
EIGHT
(From the end of the beach)
Oh, I know.
WHITNEY
Wait! Where are you going?
EIGHT
I’ve got to get moving. I only found one treasure here.
WHITNEY
And you gave it away.
EIGHT
(Looking at her meaningfully)
That’s not the one I mean.
(Resumes his quest)
WHITNEY
Wait, wait! Give me your phone number!
(Pulls out her phone)
EIGHT
I don’t use those things.
WHITNEY
But where can I find you? When will I see you again?
EIGHT
Don’t worry. I’m always around. I like this beach.
Alysse Aallyn 