Alice in Bed Read online

  (ALICE has gone to the ladder. She climbs several rungs, scrutinizes books on a high shelf, reaches for one—it is a brick—and slowly dismounts.)

  You have only to decide to use your abilities and a vast terrain of fulfillment will open up before you. Even if you are a woman. Yes, I think you are not best suited for family life. You must use that keen mind of yours. Put it to use without fear of intimidating men.

  (ALICE stands behind him, holding the brick over his head. FATHER looks around, smiles, holds out his hand. She puts the brick in it.)

  What a heavy tome. I’d forgot. Volume Three. Would you care to borrow it.

  (ALICE shakes her head.)

  It’s not without interest. And I know you like to read books that are too difficult for you. Like your brothers you were reading at three.

  ALICE

  Father what did I tell you.

  FATHER

  That you’re unhappy. Or that you don’t want to borrow the book.

  ALICE

  Listen to me Father. Despair is my normal state.

  FATHER

  That’s what artists say. Maybe you are an artist.

  ALICE

  An artist is someone who finishes something.

  FATHER

  My poor child. All that talent. Our talent, the family’s talent. What can I do. You truly want my, my permission.

  ALICE

  You know what I want.

  FATHER

  But you’re not trying to want something else.

  ALICE

  Aren’t you impressed Father by how unhappy I am.

  FATHER

  Make an effort. See things differently. With more distance.

  ALICE

  Distance.

  (ALICE starts to move to the rear of the stage.)

  FATHER

  I will tell you a secret Daughter.

  ALICE

  Secret.

  FATHER

  Nothing that actually occurs is of the slightest importance.

  (ALICE stops, surprised.)

  ALICE

  Nothing?

  (FATHER turns his back to audience, unscrews his right leg, then turns back, brandishing it. Or: he takes a hammer and brings it down on his right leg—thunk—showing it to be wood.)

  FATHER

  You see this wooden contraption that serves me for a leg. I used to wonder what it would be like to have two real adult legs, I was a child when, then, but now I don’t. I’m so far inside the way my life turned out I can’t see the edge.

  (Lights start to dim. FATHER hastily reaches in desk drawer, takes out miner’s lamp, and affixes it to his forehead. Blackout, except for roving beam of light from FATHER’S head.)

  Alice?

  ALICE

  Father.

  FATHER

  Oh don’t. I can’t bear it. Where are you. I can’t see you.

  ALICE

  Here Father. You read stories to me. You carried me on your shoulders.

  FATHER

  Yes. Have I been a bad father. I told you to think for yourself. Not a bad father. I didn’t tell you to play with your dolls and leave the books to your brothers. I didn’t put my hand under your dress and ask you not to tell your mother.

  (Beam from lamp finds ALICE in a swing in rear of stage, pushed by M I: M II standing by. Lights up.)

  I asked you questions, showed an interest.

  ALICE

  Here Father. Waiting for your answer.

  FATHER

  To what question.

  ALICE

  May I kill myself Father.

  FATHER

  Why do you ask me. Could I stop you if you’ve really set your mind to it. Your willful mind.

  (Lights start to dim in front half of stage.)

  ALICE

  Yes. Perhaps. Probably not.

  (Only rear of stage—ALICE on the swing—is illuminated.)

  FATHER’S voice

  I gave you life. I must be for life.

  ALICE

  My mother gave me life.

  FATHER’S voice

  Would it help if I were your mother.

  (Lights up. FATHER is now wearing a dress.)

  Ask me again. Ask your mother.

  ALICE

  Father may I kill myself.

  FATHER

  Your mother who bore you says no.

  ALICE

  And my father.

  FATHER

  Your father says you must do what you want.

  ALICE

  (Dreamily) Want to. Want to …

  (She is swaying on the swing, not being pushed.)

  FATHER

  I ask only one thing. Do it gently. So as not to distress those you leave behind …

  ALICE

  Is there a hole I can fall into. Do I have to go to sleep first.

  (Music up. She flings herself backward, falling into the arms of M I and M II. Blackout.)

  SCENE 4

  ALICE’s bedroom, a different angle (preferably reverse angle) from the set as presented in Scene 2. ALICE asleep, under normal amount of bedding. HARRY sitting by the bed, holding her hand; he is in his late forties, obese, and wears a caftan. NURSE near the door.

  NURSE

  She’ll wake up soon. She was too excited about your visit.

  HARRY

  My poor duck.

  (ALICE wakes. NURSE tiptoes out.)

  ALICE

  Oh. How long have you been here. You should have awakened me.

  HARRY

  I just—

  ALICE

  Was I sleeping with my mouth open. Did I drool on the pillow.

  HARRY

  Just arrived only—

  ALICE

  The pillow is wet. (Takes his hand, pulling him toward her) Feel it, feel the pillow. I was drooling, I was disgusting.

  (HARRY stands.)

  HARRY

  This is too pitiable. Nurse!

  ALICE

  No, no please Harry, don’t please.

  HARRY

  You’ll stop being hysterical. You’ll stop making me feel wretched. (Sits) You promise.

  ALICE

  I promise.

  HARRY

  You’ll be the malicious amusing brilliant little sister that your unworthy brother loves so devotedly.

  ALICE

  Promise. Look.

  (She puts on a red crocheted nightcap. HARRY laughs.)

  HARRY

  And what has my dear rabbit been thinking, safe and protected in her lair, while her owl was out in the world suffering the slings arrows et cetera.

  ALICE

  Harry what’s your idea finally why I am like this. And don’t tell me because I’m so sensitive.

  HARRY

  But I’m not. (Warmly) I think it’s because you’re so intelligent.

  ALICE

  I don’t think I’m intelligent at all, that’s the truth. If you want the truth.

  HARRY

  Ah mouse. You wrong yourself. Perhaps you’re the most intelligent of us all.

  ALICE

  Don’t mock me. Don’t mouse me.

  HARRY

  I’m not.

  ALICE

  Don’t patronize me.

  HARRY

  I’m not dear heart.

  ALICE

  You know you don’t think I’m more intelligent than you are Harry.

  HARRY

  What is intelligence but a form, the form, of intensity. And, yes dear heart, I’m not your match in the extraordinary intensity of your will and your personality. That would create enormous practical problems of life, if you chose to live in what is called, in a permanent fit of overvaluation, the real world. Your disastrous, your tragic—

  ALICE

  Tragic.

  HARRY

  “Her tragic health was in a manner the only solution for her of the problem of life—as it suppressed the lament of equality, reciprocity, etc.”

  ALICE

  What a
terrible thing to say. Why should equality, reciprocity be more of a problem for me than for you. Tell me. Are you saying this of me.

  HARRY

  Not yet. It’s what I will say of you two years after you have died, at the age of forty-three—

  ALICE

  Don’t tell me.

  HARRY

  Of course not.

  (He leans forward to caress her cheek.)

  ALICE

  No no I don’t mind. I find I am more curious than I thought. Well let’s have it all. Do I, I mean will I, tenses are strangely potent aren’t they, commit suicide.

  HARRY

  You don’t take your life.

  ALICE

  After all that talk. I should be ashamed of myself.

  HARRY

  (Smiling tenderly) Yes.

  ALICE

  So I didn’t commit suicide. And I’ll have, I gather from your discreet silence, a real illness. Much preferable to this tiresome neurasthenia. I never quite saw myself as Elizabeth Barrett, being unable to envisage for myself either the literary gift or the ardent rescuer. (Pauses) Cancer.

  HARRY

  Alas.

  ALICE

  There is agony I’ve been told.

  HARRY

  Don’t brood my dear. It is not possible that your admirable spirit, your heroism, will fail you.

  ALICE

  Did Father also think my tragic health, as you call it, a good solution.

  HARRY

  Will call it.

  ALICE

  Did he. A good solution. Did he.

  (She knocks over the lamp on her night table.)

  HARRY

  How can I know my dear. Father is dead. I never detected in him our bleakness of vision.

  (He rings bell.)

  You know what a congenital optimist Father was. It is we who see things with such shadows.

  (M I and M II enter. Sweep up lamp. Put one mattress on ALICE. Exit.)

  ALICE

  I’m not really tired.

  HARRY

  Shall I call your sainted nurse.

  ALICE

  No no, don’t begin to go. You promised me. Have you brought some chapters of the new book. Will you tell me some gossip. Will you—

  (He reaches out to stroke her forehead.)

  HARRY

  But take your laudanum.

  ALICE

  Yes. It makes me dream.

  (He offers her the bottle and a spoon. She swallows the medicine.)

  Harry answer me this truthfully.

  HARRY

  Of course dear heart, aren’t you my precious turtle.

  ALICE

  Harry did you ever use, I think they say eat, but isn’t it smoke, opium. Now don’t lie. Tell me.

  HARRY

  Of course not.

  ALICE

  Never. Not even wanted to. Harry! Harry. Look at me. Look at your Alice.

  HARRY

  (Laughs) Well I did envisage it. But no. Never. I’m not, like our Wim, one for experimenting with the mind.

  ALICE

  I would, if I could.

  HARRY

  Why.

  ALICE

  Dead fish have to swim.

  HARRY

  I see no dead fish, I see a limpid stream, a spontaneous irrigator of which the snags of doubt have never interrupted nor made turbid the easily flowing current.

  ALICE

  You quote me. Yes dear brother you quote me. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or flattered.

  HARRY

  Have I ever ceased to tell you how much I admire your eloquence.

  ALICE

  My resignation.

  HARRY

  But how you have struggled dear heart. What you call resignation I call a newfound victory: that you, even you, can allow that agitated spirit some rest.

  ALICE

  Resignation. Defeat.

  HARRY

  No.

  ALICE

  Exhaustion. “Long ceaseless strain and tension have worn out all aspiration save the one for Rest! The shaping period is past and one is fitted to every limitation through the long custom of surrender.”

  HARRY

  Dear heart!

  ALICE

  I can’t help it. Now I’m quoting myself. Oh.

  (HARRY looks about anxiously.)

  Oh. Oh.

  (M I and M II enter swiftly. Another mattress.)

  HARRY

  Be calm dear heart.

  ALICE

  How sick one gets of being good and how much, oh, I would respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours.

  HARRY

  Only twenty-four hours.

  ALICE

  Ah you are a man, while my thoughts women’s thoughts are diminutive. You’re right. Twenty-four years. (Laughs) Twenty-four lifetimes.

  HARRY

  Try it. Maybe you’re not as good as you think. Maybe you make us wretched quite regularly.

  ALICE

  Yes perhaps I’m not good. Just stupid. Now Father is gone and we live here rather than there though I live in a room and I see you when you’re so kind as to visit me and I’m dependent for mental stimulation on Nurse, well, is it any wonder I’m getting stupid. I have these grand thoughts, moments when my mind is flooded by a luminous wave that fills me with the sense of potency of vitality of understanding, and I feel I’ve pierced the mystery of the universe, and then it’s time for an emetic or to have my hair brushed or a sheet changed. Or these mattresses … . I think I’ve reached some singular peak from which all is clear and it turns out to be just one of the countless ways in which I “go off” as Father always called it.

  HARRY

  Let me remove one of the mattresses. I can do it myself.

  ALICE

  Don’t breathe so hard, you need more exercise. Listen I’ve botched it. Now the question is how to end.

  HARRY

  I told you what the end was. We’re not going to talk about it anymore.

  ALICE

  I can talk about what I like. It can have a different ending. Perhaps I shall have a narrow escape. Perhaps everything will change at the last minute.

  HARRY

  You’re insisting.

  (Gets up.)

  Don’t.

  ALICE

  I told you about the conversation with Father. I was twenty.

  HARRY

  Many times.

  ALICE

  I’m not asking you for permission Harry. You’ve given me so much.

  HARRY

  I would never have answered as he did.

  (Sits.)