28

Scene 2: Several hours later. Rain is dripping from the awning over the patio, and

outside it can be heard coming down steadily. The light has retained some of the

glow of late afternoon, suggesting that the rain is only a passing shower. The room is

still and silent. Finally Olivia enters, hurriedly, leaving the door ajar. She is soaking

wet. Strands of hair have fallen from the top her head. There are smudges of dirt on

her blouse and a bruise on the side of her face. She paces back and forth, seems not

to know what to do with herself, preoccupied with something far beyond the room or

even her own appearance. She is limping slightly, but seems unaware of this too.

She crosses to the patio doors, bites on a fingernail while looking out with that

faraway gaze that focuses intently but sees nothing. She pulls herself away, goes to

her smaller bag, digs deep inside and removes a small gift-wrapped box. She takes it

to the dresser and places it carefully in a drawer beneath some items of clothing.

Suddenly a chill runs through her. She strips off her blouse, hangs it inside the

bathroom door, grabs a towel and begins drying herself. She takes another blouse

from the pile on the bed and puts it on, then pulls off her pants, dries herself some

more, chooses another pair and begins to put them on. While crossing the room she

again passes in front of the mirror, and something about her face catches her eye.

She stops, stares at her reflection, rubbing her hands over her face as though there

was something she was seeing for the first time. She moves away and suddenly a jolt

of pain shoots through her. She stiffens, grabs the side of her hip, hobbles to the bed

and slips off the pants to reveal an ugly bruise on the side of her leg. She tries to

extend it but it is still too tight so she draws it back before trying again. In the middle
 29

of this Helen appears in the doorway, holding both of their purses and jackets. She is

nowhere near as drenched as Olivia.

Helen: Liv!? Are you all right?

Olivia: I'll be fine.

Helen: You were out of the car so fast . . .

Olivia: I wanted to get it moving again. It was stiffening.

Helen: But you shouldn't have—

(Olivia gets up, starts to move over to the chair. Helen steps toward her impulsively.)

Let me—

Olivia: No—!

(Olivia attempts to move and stiffens in obvious pain.)

Helen: Oh, Liv!

(For the first time Helen sees the extent of the bruise.)

God!

Olivia: It isn't that bad.

Helen: It isn't that bad?!

(Olivia attempts to take another step but the muscle has seized.)

Liv!!

Olivia: It was just a spasm.

Helen: A spasm??

(Olivia hobbles, clutching the back of the chair for support. She collapses into the it.

Helen begins prowling through the drawers.)

 30

Olivia: What are you doing??

Helen: I think I have a plastic bag somewhere.

Olivia: Helen, don't!

Helen: We need something to wrap it in.

Olivia: Helen, no!

(Olivia attempts to stand but can't. She is unable to stop Helen before she discovers

the gift-wrapped box. She takes it out halfway, then discreetly slides the drawer

closed. She takes a cloth from the top of the dresser.)

Helen: God, right in front of me!

(Helen reaches for the phone, pushes a button.)

Olivia: What are you doing?

Helen: You better get that down, otherwise you'll have some explaining to do.

Olivia: Like what?

Helen: Like how you got a bruise like that at a poetry conference.

Olivia: Evidently you haven't been to many poetry conferences.

Helen: (into the phone) Jeffrey, do you have some ice?

Olivia: Helen . . . !

Helen: (into the phone) Olivia's horse threw her and she has an terrible bruise on the side

of her leg. . . . About an hour ago. . . . No, nothing's broken, but she hit the ground

pretty hard.

Olivia: Helen—!!

Helen: Thank you.

Olivia—there's probably some in the fridge.

 31

Helen: (into the phone) I think there's some in the fridge. (pause) But we could use some

aspirin. . . . That's sweet of you, but don't go to any trouble. . . . Only if it's no trouble.

. . . Well, all right. (to Olivia) He's going to bring the tea up.

Olivia: Thank God, I was afraid we were going to miss it.

Helen: Do you need anything else?

Olivia: No.

Helen: He could bring it up with the tea.

Olivia: No . . . !

Helen: (back into the phone) Jeffrey, we don't need anything else. . . . Oh, that's very

thoughtful of you, but I don't think it will be necessary. . . If we do we'll let you

know. . . . Oh? . . . Well, we will. . . . Yes. . . . We will. . . . Yes. . . . Thank you. . . .

Yes. . . . Bye.

(She hangs up.)

He said he would call his doctor in town if we needed one.

Olivia: We don't need one.

Helen: He broke his hand once playing softball and he set it perfectly.

Olivia: My leg isn't broken, we weren't playing softball, and the ice will do fine.

Helen: God, the ice! (She goes to a small refrigerator standing in the corner of the room.)

I hope he remembered to fill it.

Olivia: How long have we been coming here? Of course they remembered to fill it.

Helen: It's filled.

 32

(Helen removes an ice tray, sets it on the dresser, and then begins shaking the cubes

into the cloth. She has the ice pack prepared and it is a fairly professional job, bound

tightly, corners tucked in, etc.)

Olivia: If you ever leave the firm you could always start a new career as a field nurse.

Helen: And what, work my way up to tank commander?

Olivia: You'd never make tank commander.

Helen: Why not? Pretty soon there will be women tank commanders.

Olivia: No, you have to kill to be a tank commander. Those who kill always outrank

those who heal.

(Helen sits next to Olivia and pats the top of her thigh.)

Up here.

(Olivia hesitates.)

Here.

(Olivia obliges, moving her leg into Helen's lap. Helen applies the pack to Olivia's

leg and Olivia flinches.)

Olivia: It's cold.

Helen: It's ice. Ice usually is cold.

Olivia: Not that cold.

Helen: You're lucky you didn't break anything. The trail was almost mud.

Olivia: I know. I brought some of it back.

(Helen's hands begin to move slowly, tenderly, up and own Olivia's leg. As she does

so, Olivia gradually surrenders to her touch. The motion of Helen's hands becomes
 33

more of a caress, but it is subtle to the point of being unconscious. Olivia relaxes

some as she absorbs the soothing effect.)

Helen: How's that?

(No response.)

Better?

(No response.)

Hm?

(Silence. Helen continues to rub.)

I’ve been thinking lately. (pause) Do you know what?

(No response.)

When we were at school. When you first started writing. (pause) Remember your

first poems? You were always writing them. Everywhere. On napkins in the

cafeteria. Inside the covers of your books. In the margins of your notes. Hundreds

of them. But you wouldn't do anything with them. They just lay there. Your untended

garden. (short pause) I think that's what you called it. (pause) “My untended

garden.” I asked how you got so many ideas. What did you say? "They just come to

me, I don't know why." But you wouldn't show them to anyone. You just kept

writing them. Words with no voice. I told you they were beautiful but you didn't

believe me. Then we read them out loud, and you heard them for the first time. And

then we worked on them. Some were easy, some were hard, but they became poems.

Before that they acquired a sound. (pause) Like a tuned instrument. The day the first

was one accepted was the first time I ever saw you happy.

(Longer pause. Olivia is visibly uneasy.)

 34

You were good for me as well.

(Pause.)

Very good.

(Pause.)

You know that, don't you?

(No response.)

Remember the time I came back from that weekend. (pause) That memorable

weekend. (short pause) The weekend to end all weekends. When I finally said what I

said. What I should have said long before. (pause) Or maybe never said. (pause)

But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I did what I did and there was no turning back.

(Helen has released Olivia’s leg and stepped away to rub her hands with lotion from

a bottle on the dresser. She pauses in the middle of the action, reflective for a

moment. Olivia makes no effort to move away. She’s frozen, observing Helen

intensely.) But when I came back I was . . . how does that go? (pause) When I was

frightened you calmed all my fears. When I was hungry you gave me bread. When I

was thirsty you taught me to drink. (pause) When I was naked you gave me your

coat. (pause) When I was wandering you brought me home. (pause) When I was

lonely you dried all my tears. (Helen has returned to Olivia’s side and is about to

resume her massage. She reaches for Olivia’s leg but Olivia pulls away, steps away

from the bed.)

Olivia: That's probably enough.

Helen: We just started.

Olivia: It was getting cold.

 35

Helen: That's the point.

Olivia: It feels better to move around. (pause) The ice was starting to melt.

Helen: Jeffrey could bring up some more. (She reaches for the phone.)

Olivia: No—!

(Silence. Helen puts the phone down. Olivia finds a dry pair of pants and begins

putting them on. Helen watches, places the ice trays back in the refrigerator. Then

she then moves around the room, picking up and folding clothes, but rather than

putting them away she leaves them on a pile on the bed. This is done absentmindedly

—she even picks up and refolds some of the clothes a second time.)

Helen: Well . . . ?

Olivia: Well, what?

Helen: Have you had a chance to think about it?

Olivia: About what?

Helen: The Fourth of July.

Olivia: (cool) What about it?

Helen: Should we confirm the reservation?

Olivia: Why are you asking now?

Helen: When I asked before you just took off across the meadow.

Olivia: I didn't just "take off."

Helen: It sure looked that way. I turned around and you were already halfway across.

Olivia: (pause) We were going to get wet.

Helen: That's better than falling.

(Silence.)
 36

Do you think we can keep it?

Olivia: It's still over a month away.

Helen: We shouldn't cancel at the last minute.

Olivia: A month is hardly the last minute.

Helen: They'll probably be booked.

Olivia: Then they could give the room to someone else.

(Helen stares at Olivia, waiting for an answer. It is a long silence, and Olivia feels

it.)

Jack has been talking about going up to the lake.

Helen: Oh, Liv!

Olivia: The whole family is supposed to be there.

Helen: You know what that will be like.

Olivia: I know what that will be like.

Helen: Fifteen people crammed into two cabins. If it rains the bugs will be terrible, and

in the evening you can either walk around the lake and get eaten alive or sit behind

the screen listening to Marilyn brag about Heather's scholarship to Yale.

Olivia: Princeton.

Helen: Same difference.

Olivia: Not if you're at Yale or Princeton.

(Pause.)

Helen: You haven't forgotten the publication date, have you?

(No response.)

Have you??
 37

Olivia: No.

Helen: Do you have a lot of work to finish?

Olivia: Oh, Helen, there's so much unfinished I can't tell you.

Helen: What will you get done at the lake?

(No response.)

Then how could you even consider it?

Olivia: Sometimes . . . other things are more important.

Helen: Right now there couldn't be anything more important. (pause) This isn't one of

those small literary presses. Who knows what it could lead to?

Olivia: Maybe . . . Jennifer and I could spend some time together.

Helen: If we came you could bring your work along. We could get one of the rooms

overlooking the marsh. You could take it down to the cove. By the end of the

weekend you could have enough poems for the book.

Olivia: What about you?

Helen: What about me?

Olivia: What would you do?

Helen: (dismissive) Go riding. Walk along the beach. You don't have to worry about me.

I can look after myself.

(Pause.)

Olivia: (carefully) Your office is supposed to have some kind of picnic that weekend,

isn't it?

(No response.)

Isn't it?
 38

Helen: I heard something about it.

Olivia: It is. You told me so yourself. In the park. Out by one of the beaches.

Helen: Sounds like you know more about it than I do.

Olivia: If I went up to the lake you could go to that.

(Helen turns away.)

Helen: Why are we discussing this now?

Olivia: You brought it up.

Helen: Well, there was no reason to. It's still over a month away.

(Silence. Helen gravitates to the patio doors, looks out.)

Liv what do you say we go for a walk?

Olivia: It's raining.

Helen: Not anymore. It's going to stop. Look, there's a little light in the sky, off to the

west. There's still some of the day left. We should use it. (pause) We could take the

trail out to the cove, watch the sun go down. You said it feels better to move around

a little. We'll go slow. It will give us a chance to talk.

Olivia: (with deep apprehension) What do you want to talk about?

Helen: I didn't say there was anything to talk about. We just never had a chance to talk.

All the way up in the car you were so quiet. (pause) Even when you weren't reading.

Olivia: I . . . was tired.

Helen: Would you rather stay in? We don't have to go out. We could send out for

something, have a quiet evening here.

Olivia: (quickly) No—let's go.

Helen: If you don't feel up for it. . . .

 39

Olivia: I'm up for it. (pause) It's your birthday.

Helen: It's just a birthday. (pause) Next year there will be another.

Olivia: You wanted to try the Spanish place.

Helen: They might not even be open.

Olivia: They wouldn't have put the flyer out if they weren't open.

(Pause.)

Helen: All right. You're right, we should go out. That's what we came here for, isn't it?

If they don't have a deck we'll get a table by the window. We'll open them wide and

feel the breeze over the water and watch the sun slip over the horizon. (at the

window) It's going to be a beautiful evening. The rain has stopped. That's a sign. It's

telling up we should go out and have a wonderful evening.

(Olivia turns away, removes the blouse she had been wearing, reaches into the closet

and puts on a different, dressier one. Helen eyes her curiously.)

Olivia: Oh . . . this is Jennifer's.

(Pause.)

She was sitting on the edge of the bed when I was packing. She saw me throwing all

these old clothes together so she went to her room and came back with it.

(Pause.)

She insisted I take it.

(Pause.)

She says it makes me look more "literary."

(Silence. Olivia hesitates, then turns away. Helen watches, then digs in her bag,

produces a dark blue silken blouse with white buttons.)

 40

Helen: Liv . . . ?

(Olivia turns back.)

Try this.

(No movement.)

Try it.

(Still no movement.)

Try it.

(Short pause. Olivia steps forward, apprehensively. She removes her blouse, takes

the blue one and puts it on. Pause. Helen steps closer, brushes Olivia's hair back,

laying it on the back of her shoulders. Olivia is about to step away.)

Wait.

(Olivia does. Helen adjusts some other small detail of her appearance.)

There. (pause) That's better. What do you think?

(Pause. Olivia is still for a moment. Then she moves over to the mirror, looks into it.

Helen approaches her from behind, caresses her shoulders.)

Remember, at school, we would look through my art books and cut out pictures of the

Greek goddesses. We'd tape them to the mirror and spend hours trying to fix

ourselves the same way—Athena, Persephone. Diana. Goddesses. That's what we

were. (pause) On summer evenings we'd sit on your balcony and watch the stars

come out, and take turns picking out constellations. We'd find a group that had no

name at all and give it our own, and for the rest of the night that would be ours.

(pause) That's what you look like, still. A constellation. And tonight, an hour after
 41

the sun goes down you'll be the color of the sky, a constellation, up there with the

stars.

(Helen turns away. Olivia continues to stare into the mirror, transfixed, frozen.

Helen begins to change, swapping her blouse and shorts for a pair of slacks and a

dressier top. She reaches in her bag, selects some jewelry, puts it on, finishes with a

pair of earrings. As Helen adds the final touches to her appearance she begins to

look much more attractive. Finished, she turns to Olivia.)

Helen: Well . . . ?

(Olivia pulls herself away from the mirror.)

How do I look?

(Long pause.)

Olivia: Wonderful.

Helen: You mean it?

Olivia: Yes. (short pause) Yes I do. You look absolutely wonderful.

(They exchange a long look. Then Helen turns away, picks her jacket up off the bed,

her purse from a chair. Olivia is still, watching her without movement. Then she

returns to the drawer where she had hidden the gift-wrapped box and reaches into it

while Helen's back is turned.)

Helen: (at the window) Look, the rain clouds are breaking up. In a minute the sun will be

slanting through the trees. We'll take a walk along the rocks and then go out and feast

on paella.

(She turns to Olivia.)

Well? (pause) Are you ready?

 42

(Olivia closes the drawer, but not before Helen has noticed.)

Olivia: (looks at Helen) Are you ready?

Helen: . . . Yes.

Helen: What are you looking for?

Olivia: Just my . . . here it is.

(She picks a bracelet up off the dresser, puts it on.)

There. (pause) Okay. Let's go.

(Helen does not move.)

Helen: Pull the car around. I'll be right down.

Olivia: (pause) Aren't you ready?

Helen: I'm . . . just going to call Jeffrey and tell him to hold the tea.

Olivia: We could tell him on the way out.

Helen: He might be on the way. (pause) Go ahead. By the time you're out front I'll be

there.

(An awkward standoff. Then—)

Okay.

(Hesitantly, Olivia picks up her purse and jacket, exits. Helen goes to the patio, waits

till Olivia is outside, then comes back in, returns to the dresser, opens the drawer and

removes the box. She places it on top, stares at it a long moment, is about to unwrap

it, stops. She picks up the phone, speaks while holding up the box, delicately, eyeing

it.)

Jeffrey! . . . I'm so glad I caught you. . . . We won't need the tea after all. . . . We

decided to put it off until later. . . . Yes, she's fine. We're going to take a walk down
 43

to the cove and then go out to dinner. . . . Yes, the new Spanish place. . . . I'm sure it

is. . . . If you say so I'm sure it is. . . . Jeffrey, I wanted to ask you, could you save us

one of the suites for the Fourth of July? Maybe one overlooking the marsh—the one

on top, with the view looking out to the sea. Liv will be bringing a lot of work along

and she does much better when she has a view.

(Silence. Suddenly, Helen slowly appears disturbed. She stands, picks up the phone,

begins pacing around the room.) When was this? . . . Are you sure? . . . There must

be some mistake . . . We were just talking about confirming it. . . . Just now. . . . I'm

sure there it's some mistake. We must have gotten our signals crossed somewhere.

We'll straighten it out later. . . . Yes, put us down for the suite. . . . Oh, thank you, but

it's . . . it's just a birthday. . . . We will. . . . Thank you. . . . We surely will. . . .

(glances toward the window) I know, it's looking much better. . . . Thank you. . . .

Thanks again. . . . (She is about to hang up but stops.) Jeffrey?? . . . You know, I don't

know what I'd do without you. . . . I don't. . . . I do mean it. . . . I do. . . . You know I

do. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Bye.

(She hangs up—slowly—and sits down on the bed. She stares at the box, torn,

confused, numb. She is about to reach for it when outside the sound of a car horn is

heard. She freezes. It sounds again. She runs to the patio door, looks out, comes

back inside, picks up the box, agonizes over whether or not to open it. The horn

sounds again. She hesiates, finally stuffs the box into her purse, picks up her jacket

and a collapsible umbrella from the bed. She is about to leave when she stops at the

door and leans against it, setting the umbrella down on the end table. She speaks

with self-assurance.)
 44

It is looking much better. (pause) It is.

(The horn sounds a final time and Helen exits, pulling the door shut. The lights linger

on the empty room before they begin to fade, focusing for a moment on the umbrella,

left behind on the table. Then the stage slowly goes dark.)

44