Imaginary Friends (10 page)

Come on, tell me.

He touches her gently. She softens
.

Come on.

FIZZY
: You said you’d send me a postcard from Chicago and you didn’t—

MAX HELLMAN
: How could I send you a postcard with that nosy child of mine poking into every crevice—

FIZZY
: I know. She spies on me when I’m getting dressed, and she tells lies, too, Max, she tells lies all the time, everything she says is a lie, including—

The branches in the tree start to rustle wildly
.

LILLIAN
: I hate you!

MARY
: I hate you!

LILLIAN
: I hate you more!

MARY
: I hate you more!

And both of them fall out of the tree. Splat
.
FIZZY
screams and runs off. The
MAN
playing
MAX HELLMAN
is left onstage with the two dolls. He takes off his
MAX HELLMAN
costume and starts to sing “I Would but I Can’t.”

MAN
:

I CAN’T FIX THIS
I CAN’T HELP YOU
ALL NIGHT LONG
I’VE PLAYED ALL THE MEN
AND NONE OF IT HAS MADE A BIT O’ DIFFERENCE
NONE OF IT HAS EVEN MADE A DENT
I CAN’T FIX THIS
I ADMIT IT
HIT IT

IF I COULD MAKE YOU HAPPY
I WOULD, BUT I CAN’T
IF I COULD SLAY YOUR DRAGONS
I WOULD, BUT I CAN’T
NO NO
I’VE GIVEN YOU MY ALL
WHENEVER YOU WOULD CALL
I DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE
LORD, HOW I’VE RUN
NOT TO SAY IN ANY WAY
YOU GALS AIN’T FUN

BUT IF WE NEVER DID THIS AGAIN
I’D BE FINE
AND THOUGH YOU’VE GOT YOUR TROUBLES
WHAT’S YOURS ISN’T MINE
NO NO
SO HERE’S THE NEWS
GET BACK IN YOUR SHOES
AND TAKE THIS GHOST OF A CHANCE
WE’RE HERE UNTIL YOU FIGURE THIS OUT
JUST DANCE
LET’S DANCE
LET’S DANCE
LET’S DANCE

DON’T KEEP ME PLAYIN’
EVERY TOM DICK AND BEN
I’VE RUN THE GAMUT
FROM RAHV TO HAMMETT

I LIKE A DOLL
WHO LIKES TO FOLLOW
NOW AND THEN

SO HERE’S THE THING
GET BACK IN THE RING
AND LET ME SAY IN ADVANCE
YOU’RE HERE UNTIL YOU FIGURE THIS OUT
FIGURE WHAT THE BOUT IS ABOUT
AND UNTIL YOU FIGURE IT OUT
YOU’LL DANCE
JUST DANCE
LET’S DANCE

BLACKOUT
.

Hellman versus McCarthy
.

We see
LILLIAN
and
MARY
.
Both of them are older now
.

MARY
: Hellman versus McCarthy.

LILLIAN
: It was huge.

MARY
: She sued me for two million dollars.

LILLIAN
: Two point two five million dollars.

MARY
: It was on the front page of
The New York Times
.

LILLIAN
: They called all my old enemies.

MARY
: And mine, who were suddenly my friends.

LILLIAN
: At some point Norman Mailer got involved.

NORMAN MAILER
enters
.

NORMAN MAILER
: If I may—

LILLIAN
: Get out of here, Norman—

MARY
:
[At the same time.]
Go away.

As
NORMAN MAILER
disappears
.

He wrote an article—

LILLIAN
: In
The New York Times Book Review
—

MARY
: I knew he would be on my side.

LILLIAN
: And I knew he would be on mine.

MARY
: But he attacked us both.

LILLIAN
: He said you were stupid to have said what you did.

MARY
: He said you should drop the lawsuit.

LILLIAN
: I stopped speaking to him.

MARY
: So did I.

LILLIAN
: And I certainly didn’t drop the lawsuit.

MARY
: Although you offered to if I took it all back. Your lawyer had lunch with my lawyer—

MARY
walks over to a table with a tea service on it and sits down with her
LAWYER
.

MARY’S LAWYER
: I had lunch with her lawyer.

MARY
: Milk or lemon?

MARY’S LAWYER
: Neither. Look, Mary, you don’t want to go to court with this. Just to answer the papers she filed will cost thousands and thousands of dollars. So if you’re willing to say something in the form of a retraction—

MARY
: Something like what?
[She passes a tray of cookies.]

MARY’S LAWYER
: Something like “I didn’t mean to suggest that Lillian Hellman was a liar.”

MARY
: But I did.

MARY’S LAWYER
: I know you did. But just say it.

MARY
: But it wouldn’t be true—

MARY’S LAWYER
: Everyone will understand—

MARY
: Every day I get another letter from someone documenting yet another lie. Do you know what Gore Vidal said about her and Dashiell Hammett? He said, “Did anyone ever see them together?”

MARY’S LAWYER
: You can’t win the case by proving she’s a liar—

MARY
: Nonetheless, I am collecting her lies. I am pinning them, like dead butterflies, on a wall of cotton.

A beat
.

MARY’S LAWYER
: So I should call and say you won’t apologize.

MARY
: Never ever. I’m not sorry I said it, I’m not. I’m sorry it didn’t sell more copies of my book. I’m sorry it will bankrupt me. And I’m sorry about the sleepless nights—
[She lights a cigarette; then, re: the cigarette.]
—one of my three a day—

MARY’S LAWYER
: Some people love sleepless nights. Some people thrive on litigation.

MARY
: Presumably they’re people with more than sixty-three thousand dollars in the bank. In case anyone asks, tell them I’m sleeping like a baby. I can’t apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong.

MARY’S LAWYER
: But you’d just be saying it to make it go away. Everyone will understand.

MARY
: I could never do that. And not that it matters, but they wouldn’t understand. Not in my world.

MARY
stands and walks over to a table. We see a witness stand and a table on the other side of it
.

We had two arguments to make in court. One was that Lillian Hellman was a public figure. If you’re a public figure, you’re expected to take more criticism than if you’re a housewife.

She sits down at the table
.
LILLIAN
enters and walks over to the other table
.

LILLIAN
: A public figure, according to my lawyer, is a person who assumes roles of special influence in the affairs of society. I don’t try to influence anyone but my friends—

MARY
: And the second argument was that you cannot treat hyperbolic language as if it’s intended to be taken literally. But, of course, I did mean for it to be taken literally.

LILLIAN
: Exactly. Which is why I sued you.

MARY
: Here’s what I don’t understand—didn’t you know she was going to turn up?

LILLIAN
: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

MARY
and
LILLIAN
sit down at the tables on either side of the witness stand. And now we hear a gavel pounding
.

ANNOUNCER
: The case of Lillian Hellman, plaintiff, against Mary McCarthy, defendant.

MARY
: I call Muriel Gardiner to the witness stand.

ANNOUNCER
: Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?

The spotlight hits
MURIEL GARDINER
in the witness stand
.

MURIEL GARDINER
: I do.

MARY’S LAWYER
: State your name, please.

MURIEL GARDINER
: Muriel Morris Gardiner. Dr. Muriel Morris Gardiner—

MARY’S LAWYER
: You are a doctor of—

MURIEL GARDINER
: I’m a psychoanalyst.

MARY’S LAWYER
: Could you tell us a little about yourself?

MURIEL GARDINER
: I was born in Chicago in 1901. I was the heiress to the Armour meatpacking fortune. I was graduated from Wellesley College and studied at Oxford. I then went to Vienna to study psychiatry at the Freud Institute. This was in 1934. My first marriage had just ended, and my daughter came with me to Austria.

MARY’S LAWYER
: Can you tell us what happened to you as war approached?

MURIEL GARDINER
: I was a socialist, and I became increasingly concerned as the Nazis came to power. And I was in a unique position—I had both American and British passports, and considerable wealth. So I joined the anti-fascist underground, and I was able to help a number of people escape from Austria. I fell in love with a man who was a leader of the resistance, and we were married and returned to America just before World War II.

MARY
: Have you ever met Lillian Hellman?

MURIEL GARDINER
: No.

MARY’S LAWYER
: When did you first hear of her?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Soon after I came back to America. She was a well-known playwright. And for a while we had the same lawyer.

MARY’S LAWYER
: In 1941 Lillian Hellman wrote a play called
Watch on the Rhine
. Did you see it?

MURIEL GARDINER
: No, I didn’t.

MARY’S LAWYER
: Did you know that the main characters in it were an Austrian resistance leader and his American heiress wife?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Really? I didn’t know that.

MARY’S LAWYER
: When did you hear about Lillian Hellman again?

MURIEL GARDINER
: It must have been about 1972 or 1973. A friend called me on the telephone and said had I read a book by Lillian Hellman called
Pentimento?
I said I hadn’t. And she said did I know Lillian Hellman? I said we’d never met. And the friend said, “You must read this book, Muriel. She has stolen your life.” It was all very dramatic. So I went out and bought a copy of the book, and I read the chapter in it that was the one she was apparently referring to—

MARY’S LAWYER
: The chapter called “Julia”?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Yes.

MARY’S LAWYER
: Could you tell us about that chapter, in your own words?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Well, it’s about a woman Lillian Hellman was friends with, a woman named Julia—

MARY
: Was Julia her real name?

MURIEL GARDINER
: No, according to the book, Lillian Hellman changed her name. Julia was a rich young American woman who’d gone to live in Austria to study with Freud—

MARY
: At the exact same time you did—

MURIEL GARDINER
: Yes. She began working in the anti-fascist underground—

MARY
: At the exact same time you did—

MURIEL GARDINER
: Yes—

MARY
: And she, too, had a daughter—

MURIEL GARDINER
: Yes, she did, a daughter named Lilly—

MARY
: After Lillian Hellman. Presumably the daughter’s name was not changed.

MARY’S LAWYER
: Please continue—

MURIEL GARDINER
: At a certain point in the story, Julia asks Lillian Hellman to bring some money into Germany that’s to be used to smuggle people out of the country. Which she does. In a fur hat. And she meets Julia at a restaurant, and they have some caviar, and Lillian gets back on the train and goes on to Moscow, I believe.

MARY’S LAWYER
: According to the story, what happened to Julia?

MURIEL GARDINER
: She was killed by the Nazis.

MARY’S LAWYER
: And what happened to Julia’s daughter, Lilly?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Killed by the Nazis.

MARY’S LAWYER
: After you read “Julia,” what did you do?

MURIEL GARDINER
: Well, first I thought, “Who knows? Perhaps …” So, on my next trip to Austria, I asked my friends if by any chance they knew of any other American woman involved in the anti-fascist underground.

MARY
: And did they?

MURIEL GARDINER
: No. So, when I came home, I wrote Lillian Hellman a letter.

MARY
: And did it say, “You’ve stolen my life”?

MURIEL GARDINER
: No, no, heavens no, not at all. And I didn’t write her the letter right away. But it kept happening. People kept coming up to me and saying, “Have you read this story? It’s your story.” “You must be Julia.” And so forth. So I wrote Lillian Hellman to say that I was struck by the many similarities between Julia’s life and my own and couldn’t help being curious because I had never met her Julia. It was very polite, I assure you.