Dry Your Smile (39 page)

Julian:

For that matter, it's time you goddamned learned how to take decent criticism—and I
mean
decent. I'm sick of your emotional blackmail in claiming that any criticism of you at all undermines your frail self-confidence at this point in your frail life! Which has been for
years
. It's time you actually put records back in their jackets. Every time I want to play some music, I find records—some of which I had before I knew the eternally promising young Lenin, Laurence Millman, and others of which I went to delighted lengths to acquire for you—left in heaps, scratched beyond use, or stacked on the floor with cat-hair crudded over them. Because you apparently believe in vacuuming only on the equinoxes and solstices. This isn't fragility. It's
plain male bullshit and laziness
. It's
time
you put the toilet seat down, don't you think?
Time
you changed the bed linen
on your own
, without its being a major production or waiting until the bed is ready to get up and walk or
out
waiting my waiting to see if you'll notice until I give up and finally do it myself. Petty,
petty
complaints. Just like “The Politics of Housework” noticed so long ago in some damned feminist anthology or other. Just like you yourself proclaimed on the radio in order to receive the curtsyed praise of feminists, grandstanding for the sake of appearances!

(They circle each other, combatants. Cut to long-shot of them pooled in reddening light:)

Laurence:

Appearances! Look,
look
world!
(He spreads open his arms in appeal to invisible witnesses:)
Look who's talking about appearances! This is
real life
, Julian! It's scummy and unromantic! It's filled with shit and piss and cum! It ain't pretty! And Julian Travis is
not
the star of it all, with everybody else relegated to playing Rosencrantz or Guildenstern or Hope in her various ugly faces or the phantom daddy David! People live and work and get depressed and try again and fail and have kids—

(Quick flash-shot of The Child, about age three, running laughing through a park; cut to close-up of Laurence:)

—and love and suffer and die! You go through life like some infant yowling for its mommy's arms,

(Quick shot close-up of The Mother's face, smiling, suffused with love; cut back to Laurence:)

some infant lying in its crib while the muscles in its face try on expressions it doesn't even know how to feel yet. I've
watched
babies, I know!
(Laurence begins to cry.)
I'll never have one of my own, I know that. I know I'll never be a father. But I watch 'em—in the street, in carriages and strollers, in the supermarket carts—other people's kids, other people's lives, other people's …
(He breaks down and sobs.)

(Dolly in to loose two-shot of them standing, his head hanging like a beaten dog's. She too cries, soundlessly. Slowly, as if heavy weights were attached to each wrist, she raises her arms toward him. As she touches him, he changes, lifts his head, and snarls at her:)

And I don't want your pity-garbage, either. Why are you
doing
this to me? You wouldn't
be
who you are if it wasn't for
me!

(Flash-shot of The Mother's face, shouting, crying; quick cut to Julian in close-up, her expression hardening. She yanks back her hands as if singed.)

Julian:

Why am I doing this? The question I've asked myself for the last ten years of our exercise called a marriage. For love? Larry, you wear down my love day after week after month with your sulks and your fourteen-hour depressive sleeps. For sex? Don't make me laugh, I might get truly hysterical!

(As she continues the following J'accuse, her voice level drops to almost inaudible, with only the emphasized words coming through clear; her image fades in slow dissolve as we get another rapid montage: a younger Laurence in tight close-up, smoking a pipe and talking; Laurence in blue jeans and T-shirt dancing with a broom; Laurence chairing a meeting, looking at Julian suddenly and grinning; Laurence shouting into a bullhorn, finishing to rally-cheers, turning to Julian with a roguish wink.)

Does it never occur to you that whenever you express interest in what I'm doing, it's in the power and public aspect of what I do for our survival? You love what you attack me for:
appearances
. The same tacky kid doing her tap-dance Portia routine to support another version of the same loving
family
which in turn will claim it has Given Its All to Make Her What She Is Today. That's not
me
. I have my own business being alive on this planet and in this skin and in this brain—and it's
not
to provide
you
with a lifelong fellowship-grant and confidence-boosting.
Never, never, never
consideration from
you
, never any courtesy, any kindness.

(Montage continues: Laurence giving Julian a back-rub while she sits at her typewriter; Laurence hauling shopping bags of groceries; Laurence presenting a bunch of flowers from behind his back with a flourish; Laurence grabbing the telephone receiver out of Julian's hand as she sits weeping, and hanging up with a bang; Laurence interposing his body between Julian and three white men menacing her in a civil-rights march:)

Never never any communication or intimacy
anymore

(Montage: Laurence and Julian in a rapid-fire series of two-shots at different ages over the years—hunched together over an open book, necking on the floor before a Franklin-stove fire, walking together down the street—always animatedly talking, talking, talking.)

God! The
waste
, the living death of this situation! I'm so tired of being the decider, the doer, the energy source, the strong one!

(Quick flash to The Mother's face, and bring up fragments of her words: “He's a weakling! They all are! You could be anything you want!”)

I could be anything I want! I don't have to choose this death-in-life that began with you!

(Rapid cut to Laurence, stunned, his face turning almost unrecognizable with hurt and hate:)

Laurence:

Began with
me! You
began it! I was a full and happy human being before you!

(Quick flash-shot to Laurence in bed, angrily turning away from Joyce, who stands crying, her outstretched hands open in a plea.)

I
began it?
You
began it!

(Tight combination shot, first of Laurence over Julian's shoulder, then of Julian over Laurence's shoulder:)

Julian:

You
began it!

(Rapid montage: street riots in Northern Ireland; Arabs lining up at West Bank checkpoint for strip search; missiles rising in silos. Both their voices at the same instant, crying out in voice-over:)

Laurence voice-over:

Jule!

Julian voice-over:

Larry!

(Quick dissolve to loose two-shot again, wide-angle of them still circled by darkness. The light cools from red to blue-violet. Julian and Laurence freeze. Superimpose over their figures, in slow-motion, lyrical, soft-focus: a younger Laurence and Julian walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and following the action described in the ensuing voice-overs:)

Laurence voice-over:

We finally walked over it, the great keening Brooklyn, the span of passage. She phoned me in her despair and shock, the child of her trying to balance gamely on Hope's quicksand of lies. And I went with her—

Julian voice-over:

—hand in hand under the Gothic arches through the hum of energy along steel ropes expertly stretched to carry whatever weight necessary without breaking—

Laurence voice-over:

—that was the day after, I remember. After the night I'd seen Joyce again, for the first time in three years, and knew I still wanted her. Told her I'd finally even marry her now. But it was too late. She told me it was over. For all time. And I went into hell and finally fell asleep after dawn—

Julian voice-over:

There was one human being on the planet who could understand, still be able to see something real about me. One person who knew that if you could turn it into art, turn it into politics, save the whole vile hateful lying brutal bloodsick world with it, then you could forgive it, not repeat it—

Laurence voice-over:

—but how could she have known? Feral child, driven by her own loss: “I need to talk to you,” she said, “Can we—

Julian voice-over:

—walk across the Brooklyn Bridge like you always said we might someday? I've still never been.”

Laurence voice-over:

Tidal wave, ship's prow bearing down on me while I was drowning, no way to resist her.

Julian voice-over:

“Meet me in fifteen minutes on the Manhattan side?
Please?
”

Laurence voice-over:

And to my own astonishment, I did. Heaved myself up from my bed of mourning and I did. Whatever words poured out of her that day, I hardly heard. I was too busy seeing her: ship's figurehead into the wind, hair rushing backward like plumes from the warrior-queen helmet of her skull. The wise child who knew enough to want something different from what she'd been trained to want. The virgin who'd trusted me and already given herself into my hands. The friend who loved me. Seeing her as if we'd just met. The raw possibility of her, vibrating—

Julian voice-over:

We swayed toward each other, so slowly. And the Bridge swayed in the wind. And the gulls wheeled bloodwinged in the twilight, and the towers of the city loomed toward us in envy. Everything—bridge arches wings waves current concrete granite translucent grains of air everything yearned toward us at that moment, toward who we were and who we might become—

Laurence voice-over:

—where we stood, eye to glistening eye, mouth against mouth, body to body shaking with the wind and the force of that touch. And I said

Laurence:

Julian
—

Laurence voice-over:

“Julian,” I said. “Julian,” shouting above the wind and the shrieking of the gulls, “Julian,” I yelled in recognition in full joy and never abandoned not by anyone all grief evermore struck from me by the dazzle of her face, “Julian,” I said, “Will you marry me?” And—

Julian:

Yes
—

Laurence voice-over:

—she said. “Yes,” she sang back through wind and river-rush. “Yes.”

(Fade out superimpose of Bridge scene. Hard focus back on the two of them in the livingroom. The blue light fades and the light around them begins to come up. The features of the room return. Both are utterly spent, arms hanging at their sides, shoulders sagging, expressions drained. They turn from each other and stumble back to their original seats on chair and sofa. Pan back with them, then dolly in and up to a high-shot to emphasize the fragmentation. A long pause. Then:)

Laurence:

(In a low voice, no energy:)
I don't care. You decide. Do whatever you want to do. Live your life any way you want.

Julian:

(Also with no energy:)
You think I'll ever escape your judgment if I leave? Then this passive-aggressive torment will turn into how I took the best years of your life and threw you out to starve.

(Cut to tight-shot of Laurence's face with his voice-over saying in his mind:
“She'll never leave. Practice losing her. You'll have to drive her away.”
Cut to Julian, medium-shot, as she sits with her hands limp in her lap:)

Julian:

I'm no kid anymore. I can't keep up the fight.

(Quick flash to The Child, age nine, in a street brawl, falling down in the gutter but still fighting from a prone position. Cut back to Julian:)

So where does that leave us? This cowardly clinging together on the wedding cake? Larry, if you won't try to change us together
with
me, then I
will
do whatever I have to to change us by myself.

(Cut to Laurence from over Julian's shoulder, her perspective, as he rises wearily and goes to the cupboard for another drink.)

Laurence:

Big surprise. 'S what I already said. You decide. You always do.

(Camera stays with him, but we see in the foreground Julian's hand reaching out in a desperate gesture toward him:)

Julian:

I haven't been fair tonight. I haven't talked about “not assigning blame” or about “our pattern.” I haven't apologized for all the ways
I've
been wrong, cruel, responsible for this mess-up. But Christ, you yourself used to tell me I had an “overly developed capacity for self-contempt.” I want to
be, do, live
, something else now. I want more time to myself—not just stolen minutes in a taxi or plane or motel. I want some
fun
, some sweetness in my life. I've only ever wanted that with
you
. But if I can't have it with you, I want it
some
where, somehow.

(Laurence turns, stands with glass in his hand. Dolly in to close-up of him. A grief-stricken smile haunts his face.)

Laurence:

Where does it go to when it goes? Those tender magnificent mescaline trips you and I used to take back in the Sixties. I remember one early trip when we lay in bed while dawn came through the loft windows in flakes of light. There was a full-blown rose, creamy white, in a glass on the orange-crate bedtable. We looked into it and then at each other. I saw both the rose and you overlapping on my retina, your petaled face unfolding before my eyes, your cells bleeding out love for me. We turned into everything we wanted to be for each other. A young Viking warrior queen. An ancient Zen master. An old peasant couple serenely working their fields. Then you were suddenly Joan of Arc and I was just as suddenly your best girlfriend—someone you called Bunker—and we were female and male all mixed and twining …