MARSHA: You are? You’re out of Sick Joan?
EMILY: Totally out of Sick Joan. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in my apartment, in my darkroom, typing up my letters. These are things I can do, that I’m interested in doing. I’m not going to run away from them, but you know I do have a fantastic facility for running away. You might call me the genius kid.
MARSHA: I well might.
EMILY: I knew Joan would never stay in that hospital. But why was she calling me out here? What was in the heart that was being poured into the phone? How did she sound?
MARSHA: Sober. I hated lying to her that you weren’t here.
EMILY: I know. When she used to call me in Europe, I very often wouldn’t talk to her. She’d call me at five o’clock in the morning, after she’d been drinking all night or all week.
MARSHA: I bet Philippe loved the calling.
EMILY: Drove him wild, wall-to-wall crackers. I still don’t know whether she belongs in a hospital. You know she has a facet to her sickness, I don’t know how common it is, but it’s very alienating, and that is she plays on it all the time, the tune of her sickness, that’s the song she sings, I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m an alcoholic, I’m drinking myself to death, I’m suffering, I know all about pain. To spend a lot of time with her when she’s like that is to get ultimately very depressed.
MARSHA: Immediately, I’d say.
EMILY: You get immediately depressed. You know I was thinking something very interesting about your trusting me now, knowing I won’t get drunk, the way I did before Woods Hole. It was that the demon in me, that terrible thing that had to be expiated, was made visible in the form of Joan, which is why we had to drive her out when she was here. It’s almost true, isn’t it?
MARSHA: It is.
EMILY: I think that on so many levels, almost anything can be true.
MARSHA: What language are those guys speaking?
EMILY: I’m trying to figure it out. It sounds like Afghanistan or something. Marsha, say you got married to a man who lived very far away, like in Japan or Africa, and you went off with him, maybe you’d come home once a year for a visit. I’m sure you would, because your father, if nothing else, would pay for you to come home once a year. Can you imagine how your relationships would change? To me, to Vinnie, to everyone?
MARSHA: I’d like it.
EMILY: You would? That’s very positive. I couldn’t ever marry a person who didn’t speak English, not for anything. I suffered like a lunatic with the language when I was in Europe, you know.
MARSHA: I know. You just have a conversation with words and you really can’t tell what people feel about themselves or about you.
EMILY: That’s very true. I remember, because I’m a person who first of all, aside from being very verbal, tends to be expansive and my use of words is very peculiar to me, I was completely frustrated in French. I almost preferred to say the simplest things. It’s such an entirely different sensibility anyway. I sometimes get the feeling that in a way the pain of analysis in us is the equivalent of the war experience to the Europeans.
MARSHA: What do you mean?
EMILY: Well, the American sensibility is fairly flat, the nuance of it, the cadence, the depth; it doesn’t have the tradition or the culture or any of the things of history that the European has, right? But what we do have is a certain kind of psychological awareness that somehow corresponds. I’d like to know who that man with the moustache is.
MARSHA: He keeps looking over here every minute.
EMILY: I’m definitely suspicious of men who hide behind moustaches and beards from now on.
MARSHA: Darling, that man has five children — what do you want from him?
EMILY: I was talking philosophically, generically. I’m steering clear of them, except that my analyst has a moustache.
MARSHA: What kind?
EMILY: Completely uneducated and unpretentious; the kind of moustache a man just has on his face, that looks like it’s part of it.
MARSHA: Do you really think they have a beautiful life, that gorgeous beard and his wife?
EMILY: I wouldn’t want to be her, but at the same time there is something beautiful about it, that she’s married to him and they have those children they love, that he carries into the water on his shoulders. I need that, I want it desperately.
MARSHA: I don’t want it desperately anymore.
EMILY: I never wanted it desperately before.
MARSHA: She’s horrible, that wife. Did you see her hit the little boy?
EMILY: I don’t have to, darling, I know that girl from years ago. She just wrote a book on Chekhov.
MARSHA: What could she possibly know about Chekhov? Emily, your hair is turning white, golden white. What I have to do is get to work on the whole superego area.
EMILY: I was the first person to point it out, wasn’t I?
MARSHA: Yeah, but at the same time Tim had put this big photograph of me up on his wall and said it was like his conscience looking down on him.
EMILY: But I stated it very simply, that you function as a superego.
MARSHA: All I do is tell him what he should do, what he should do, what he should be doing.
EMILY: Yeah, you’re fantastically critical. And the sun’s really playing games.
MARSHA: Can I borrow your sunglasses?
EMILY: Yeah, but I’m going to take them off pretty soon.
MARSHA: I’ll wear them while you have them on.
EMILY: You want me to tell you what I think about the superego thing?
MARSHA: I thought we weren’t getting into that shit anymore, but we’ll get into it.
EMILY: No, not on a depth level. First of all, your being so critical has to do with anger and disappointment. It’s almost as if you’re making some kind of moral judgment, because the degree to which you get involved is completely out of proportion to reality.
MARSHA: I am very moral, I’m scared to do anything wrong.
EMILY: That’s not moral, that’s scared.
MARSHA: Maybe most morality is based on fear.
EMILY: Most morality, like puritanism and stuff like that is based on tightness and fear, sure. And anxiety.
MARSHA: I’m afraid to lie, afraid they’ll find out.
EMILY: You do lie though, don’t you?
MARSHA: Very rarely.
EMILY: You see, this all goes together with the superego stuff. You don’t lie, you don’t steal, because you’re afraid to be caught. You have this big censor thing, like irresolute judge, judger, judgment.
MARSHA: I don’t think it’s a good idea to steal.
EMILY: It’s a very bad idea.
MARSHA: But you’re criticizing me, you say I’m not free enough to steal.
EMILY: No I’m not. I’m saying it goes together with your other superego things.
MARSHA: Do you have a pimple here that you picked?
EMILY: No, I must have scratched it in my sleep — I don’t pick my pimples. I’m not saying you should steal, Marsha. I don’t think stealing and lying are good, but I think they’re bad for the right reasons, not because of being afraid. Joan steals.
MARSHA: So do you.
EMILY: Not anymore.
MARSHA: You did, you stole from Bloomingdale’s.
EMILY: Macy’s. I certainly did. But it’s very bad to steal because of how it makes you feel. If you were a man, what kind of bathing suit would you wear?