VINCENT: It’s not a dwarf, he’s got the size face of a normal man.
MARSHA: Is it a person or a bundle?
VINCENT: A person.
MARSHA: It’s not blinking.
VINCENT: Why should it? The sun’s not in its eyes.
MARSHA: Last autumn, Zeke was making pumpkins in my house for his children.
VINCENT: Did you just fart? You did, didn’t you? Marsha, I’m asking you please not to do it.
MARSHA: How can I stop?
VINCENT: You can hold it in until we get to New York.
MARSHA: That’s ridiculous.
VINCENT: You’re so self-indulgent, and then you look at me with some sort of sweet face. Do you really think the sweetness of your smile can possibly make up for the acridity of that smell?
MARSHA: Yeah. Did I ever tell you the dream I once had about Nathan Fass, that he farted and a great orchestrated rhapsody came out? You can smile even though you hate him.
VINCENT: I don’t hate him, I hate what we’ve been through.
MARSHA: Look, look at the sun!
VINCENT: It’s split by a cloud, it’s beautiful.
MARSHA: You know where Zeke lives now is closer to L.A. than New York.
VINCENT: So?
MARSHA: So that’s where he belongs, that’s more what he is. He has a surfing sensibility. He hated your big painting, you know.
VINCENT: You never told me that. How much did he hate it? Let’s be open about it. I’m very open.
MARSHA: You’re not that open.
VINCENT: Are you kidding? I’m one of the most open people I know.
MARSHA: Besides, I thought we weren’t getting into these things again, picking each other apart.
VINCENT: No, we’re just being honest, it’s as simple as that. When it goes wrong is when one of the parts can’t take it and lately I haven’t been able to take it, so this ride may end up the same way.
MARSHA: Well I don’t want it to, I can’t go through it. I only meant you’re not just some simple, sweet open person.
VINCENT: What’s it got to do with sweetness? Because you’re open doesn’t mean you’re good. I’m not a good person.
MARSHA: Sick Joan thinks she’s one of the most open people in the world.
VINCENT: To her way of thinking, she is.
MARSHA: She’s open to her way of thinking, but she’s closed in terms of a circle. She says she drinks to communicate, but when she drinks she communicates zero.
VINCENT: I’ll tell you — I think I’m open, I think I’m direct, I think I give, but I don’t feel I necessarily give the truth.
MARSHA: Maybe the truth isn’t what has to be given.
VINCENT: Exactly, that’s my whole point in life. But I want to know how much Zeke Sutherland hated my painting.
MARSHA: Very much. He stared at it for hours and hours. Of course he couldn’t avoid it, it filled the room.
VINCENT: He could have looked the other way. Why did he hate it?
MARSHA: He thought you had hopped on the pop bandwagon.
VINCENT: Everyone thought that. Besides, we know about boyfriends criticizing other boyfriends’ work. He was right though; it was closer to the bandwagon than what I was doing before, but that was because it was transitional. Now I’m very singular, there’s no one in New York doing work like mine. I had to go through that to get where I am. That’s why it was such a fantastically painful period. I’ll tell you one thing about this summer, Marshie, and you’re not going to believe me, but I’ll tell you anyway — at the beginning of the summer, I thought of you and me as boy and girl, and now I feel of us as man and woman.
MARSHA: Really?
VINCENT: Yes, definitely, I mean it, and it’s a very important thing.
28. MARSHA UNPACKS FROM THE SUMMER
EMILY: Can I buy this light bulb from you? It’s crucial — my big bulb just broke.
MARSHA: Yeah, how much is it?
EMILY: Two for sixty-two; thirty cents.
MARSHA: Thirty-one in my book.
EMILY: Your book is the book of the crooks.
MARSHA: You know I’ve completely forgotten about Vincent Miano? I haven’t thought about calling him once since I’ve been back. I’m cured, I can go on to real-life mock sex.
EMILY: You didn’t forget about him — you just remembered. Vinnie’s a very pure person, you know, but don’t think for one minute he’s not a cool operator, because he is. I didn’t realize that he had never said word one to Michael Christy.
MARSHA: I’ve never met him either, even though he plays such a leading role in my book.
EMILY: Well finally Vinnie did, talked to him for five minutes last night and said he’s a great guy. You know sex with Michael Christy was very strange, but I better not talk about it.
MARSHA: Why?
EMILY: You shouldn’t talk about those things. Do you have hair on your toes?
MARSHA: Yeah.
EMILY: I do too, and it’s disgusting. I feel like chewing it off. When I was a child, I used to be able to bite my toenails. I must say, it’s not every day you go to your best friend’s house and get served warmed-over scotch.
MARSHA: Darling, have some fresh scotch.
EMILY: I don’t want any, darling, I’m not drinking, believe me.
MARSHA: I’m not believing you.
EMILY: You know I had a boyfriend once who owed me five dollars, so he sent me a check. But I loved the signature so much that I didn’t cash it for a long time. When I finally succumbed, got rid of my romanticism and cashed it, he had closed his account.
MARSHA: Zeke gave me a check once and it broke my heart to cash it. Oh no, I wrote him a check — that’s more like it.
EMILY: And it broke his belly to cash it.
MARSHA: And I treasured the countersignature on the backside.
EMILY: I’ve got a countersignature from Emil Reinhardt dating 1956. How could that be? I didn’t marry Roy until 1959. I guess it’s dated 1959.
MARSHA: All this work is getting me depressed.
EMILY: I’m surprised you’re not depressed about the summer being over.
MARSHA: I am.
EMILY: Who helped you move all this stuff?
MARSHA: Tim.
EMILY: He’s a very good boy. What’s the name of this Sutherland sculpture?
MARSHA: Alice. You know the full name, don’t you?
EMILY: Alice, the Dawn is Breaking?
MARSHA: No, Zeke named it for me and what I represented to him: “A my name is Alice and my husband’s name is Alfred, we come from Alabama and we sell apples.”
EMILY: Oh I love that, it’s beautiful. Here comes the army of underpants, the army of drips, back into action. Onions she moves in from East Hampton, onions and a carton of Gauloises.
MARSHA: You’re what?
EMILY: Oy, the deafness, it could drive a person buggy. That’s definitely not your strongest sense, the sense of hearing. I lost mine with my ear infections, but I used to hear brilliantly, they would test me all the time.
MARSHA: Did you pass? What’s Vinnie doing tonight? Staying home?
EMILY: I think so.
MARSHA: I told Merrill Johnston today I feel very cool toward Vinnie, very unclingy.
EMILY: You feel that way toward everyone. You know your relationship with Vinnie did get a little weird this summer, you know that.
MARSHA: Yeah. Sick.
EMILY: I’ll tell you, Marshie, I still have some very bad problems and I don’t know what to do about them. Like the way I felt glad to see Michael again the other night? I did, Marsha, it’s like you with Tim, because they’re men we’ve gone to bed with and we’re certain they can function that way, they’re still alive. You know I really don’t have any opinions anymore, I just have ideas. From drugs and a lot of pot, the big thing I’m trying to find out now is what I feel, not what other people feel or what they think about me, I’m trying to find out what I feel vis-à-vis any particular stimulus or situation. For instance, in a love affair, in a relationship with a man, if I’m afraid of doing something because of being rejected, then I’m not dealing with my own feelings. I don’t see human behavior anymore in terms of passive and responsive; I see it only as active. And that’s maybe one crucial, definitive step I’ve been able to make towards being a woman. And I think that’s our business; if we have any business being anything, it’s being women. All I can say is I want a man in my life and I need one very badly. I’m lonely and I’m frail, but I think I’m strong enough to take on someone else’s demands, because I’m beginning to know what my own are. It’s very tough, Marshie.