Dry Your Smile (38 page)

Laurence:

I know what you mean.
(A pause.)
Mail's on your desk.

Julian:

Can't cope with it right now.

Laurence:

The, uh, phone calls … well, I've been ignoring the phone for about three or four days. On Monday the utility company called—some Mr. Fiorno or something. Says we're a month overdue, if the bill isn't paid in five days they'll cut us off. Told him you were away and I, uh … I said I was just staying here. Said I'd give you the message. Then I decided to hell with the phone and didn't answer it anymore. Nobody ever calls for me, anyway.

Julian:

(Eyes closed, wearily:)
Okay. Okay.

Laurence:

(They sit in silence for a long pause.)
So. How'd it go.

Julian:

Usual. I arrived to find Middle Cal State had titled my speech “Gender Roles: Progress in the 1980's and Beyond.” They knew I was going to cover rape, battery, child molestation, poverty, the works. Plus do international issues like genital mutilation, suffrage, dowry murder, and and and. Gender Roles my ass. What a euphemism. Revolution has become a dirty word all over again.

(Cut to Laurence:)

Laurence:

Yeah. But the audience liked it, huh? I mean—

(Cut to Julian:)

Julian:

Oh sure. There's always that moment of connection, like an electric charge. But these days you get the feeling you're a radical fix that'll wear off soon after you leave town.
(She sighs.)
And there was the other moment, good ol' reliable. Just as I was finishing the talk, a young woman leapt to her feet—unfaded blue jeans, newly hacked-off hair, combat boots still shiny from the army-navy store, uniform complete—and heckled, “How can you call yourself a feminist and still be married?” Little did she know how major a part she plays in keeping this marriage defensively intact merely by virtue of her opposition.

(Cut to Laurence, close-up:)

Laurence:

Thanks. That's a helluva thing to just walk in and lay on me.

(Cut to Julian, close-up:)

Julian:

(Wearily, as if by rote:)
Sorry sorry sorry. Didn't mean it that way. Just meant it's such special purgatorial fun—being virtually the sole publicly known married radical feminist “spokesperson.”

(Wide-angle shot, while Laurence rises abruptly, goes to cupboard and pours himself a shot of brandy. Cut to close-up of Julian watching him. Her face changes to guilt with a fleeting shade of panic:)

Larry, all I meant was—Oh shit, you
know
what I mean.

(Cut back to two-shot, as he wheels on her, angry:)

Laurence:

You think it's paradise being my half of some model feminist marriage? I just wanted us to be
us
, not worshipped or attacked or made goddam responsible for anybody else's life. So here we have me—remember
me?
—who thought feminism “made sense.” Shared housework, shared politics, save the world, all that crap. But who began to realize, somewhere back in the Pleistocene Age of our coupledom, that all the changes I've gone through would never be sufficient. The affirmative-action
feminist
double standard—which in less civilized days used to be known as revenge.

(Cut to two-shot:)

Julian:

What's the
matter
with you? Why are you dumping this on me when I'm barely through the door?

Laurence:

(A beat, then:)
I got fired from the station.

Julian:

Oh my god. Oh Larry—

Laurence:

Mr. Shit-for-Brains, our program director, decided I should be the vanguard of the cut-backs. Just like that. Nothing political about his motivation, of course.

Julian:

They can't do this to you. We'll fight it. I'll call him first thing in the morning—

Laurence:

I don't want you coming to my rescue. I don't want your tactical advice, either. It works fine for you but when I adopt it it turns rancid. Like the time you advised me not to take on being co-director of the Mobilization Against Poverty campaign because a woman should get the job and because the other director was Winston Peterson and
he's
a notorious
sexist
. Not only would that have given me back a national forum, but it was a year-long project—with a salary, I might add. Then you managed to lower yourself to speak at the same rally with old Win—because “it was important that a feminist presence be there.”

Julian:

That's not quite how it—Larry, be fair.

Laurence:

Why? You wring your hands over my predicament and tell me how “Life is unfair.” You confuse life with yourself, Julian. The two are not necessarily equivalent.

(He drains his glass. Cut to Julian, biting her lip. Then, in a controlled voice:)

Julian:

Larry? Don't let's do this to each other. I'm beat, and I know you must be flattened by this double-cross at the station. It's rotten. Maybe we can both think more clearly tomorrow. I know there must be
some
way to fight it. If you don't want me involved, okay, fine. But—well, one way or another … something'll come up, you'll find something else, or—

(Cut to two-shot, as Laurence leans forward from the sofa:)

Laurence:

Oh for crying out loud, Jule! Cut the crap! Little Ms. Supportive! Go write out more checks to the women's movement. Leave me in peace. Go sit for another session with Iliana, so she can drool over the object of her lust. Another book, another jacket photo, another admirer to feed your omnivorous ego.

(Cut to tight-shot of Julian's hands gripping the arms of her chair. Quick cut to Laurence in close-up, wincing at what he's just said. Quick cut to Julian, her jaw tightening:)

Julian:

Watch it, Larry. I'm so tired I might say what
I
feel for once. Don't take out your wretchedness on me.
Or
on the one friend I can trust.

(Cut to Laurence, seeing it's too late to take it back, unable to stop now:)

Laurence:

Wow, I'm pleased to know that twenty-one years together don't earn us a friendship we can trust, whereas the properly credentialed Third World dyke can waft in out of nowhere and become the one friend you can trust. Sorry about the boring decades of commitment, ma'am. I guess I haven't washed enough dishes, given back to you enough flattering images of the great Julian Travis to qualify.

(Quick cut to Julian:)

Julian:

God
damn
you, Larry! Iliana's not your rival,
you
are! I'm still so gripped by the person you
were
and could
still
be that I can't confront the you that
non
-exists
now!
I'm so bloody tired of bottling up my rage I could burst! The fact that I'm so
little
potentially lesbian has helped me stay with you in spite of enormous pressure from within
and
from without. And you
know
it!

(Widen to long two-shot, to emphasize the space between them and their smallness in the loft livingroom. Julian buries her face in her hands, but the voice that comes out of her leaks rage:)

Iliana
loves
me—and she knows how to
show
it. She's never approached me sexually, though Christ knows what that's cost her. The so-called flattering images she gives back to me happen to be of a me I've never
seen
before—

(Cut to Laurence, his rage open now, meeting hers:)

Laurence:

—not dreary and drained by
me
, I suppose. No, for me you save the tight-lipped long-suffering saint face, the silent accusation. Never once in over twenty years celebration never …

(Bring down his voice level to barely audible except for the refrain of “never,” and fade up superimposed over his furious face montage clips in fast-paced sequence:)

You never trusted me. Never loved me. Never let your tight puritan self go with me. You always held back. There are places in me you've never touched, never dared reach for. Never never never …

(Montage: Julian and Laurence flat on their backs in bulky coats, lying on snowy ground, waving their arms and laughing wildly. Dissolve to: Laurence and Julian, hammers in their hands, flailing at tearing down a wall in the loft, giggling at one another through clouds of plaster dust coating their hair. Begin rapid montage: Julian tearing herself out of a helmeted cop's clutches and racing toward Laurence, who is being nightsticked by another cop; Julian running offstage from a lecture into Laurence's arms where he waits in the wings to welcome her with a hug; waist-shot of young Julian sitting cross-legged on the loft floor, looking up at Laurence with adoration; Laurence and Julian striding down the street, arms around each other, singing at the top of their voices; Julian at stove, stirring, as Laurence comes from behind and embraces her; Julian naked in bed, her arms lifted, reaching up. Dissolve montage down and bring up Laurence's close-up face and voice:)

Never a moment of joy never a simple giving of the self never a trust!
That
you save for others! That was never on the Larry Agenda, never.

(Cut to close-up of Julian, dry-eyed with equal fury:)

Julian:

Sorry I was such a failure as Mrs. Red Menace, not providing you with rose-covered wife, child, home. Poor little boy, terrified of his daddy, lonely for his momma, out to change the world
not
to save humanity but because he was scared shitless of functioning minimally in it as an adult.

(Medium two-shot:)

Laurence:

(His face contorting deliberately:)
Gribbitz.

Julian:

What did you say?

Laurence:

Gribbitz. Gribbitz grunt oink gribbitz.

Julian:

Are you insane or what? What are you
say
ing!

Laurence:

Croak. Gribbitz. It's no good talking to America's. Darling; she's deaf to anything but praise—except when she's doing self-lacerating self-criticism in order to co-opt anybody else from it. So I won't talk. The Feminist Prince is dead. Long live the Frog. Gribbitz.

(Julian rises. Dolly back to show her starting toward her suitcase.)

Julian:

I won't descend to this. I'm going to bed. Maybe tomorrow we can talk in real lang—

(Laurence follows her, shouting:)

Laurence:

Gribbitz! Croak! Gribbitz!

(Julian spins to face him. Fast up superimpose shot of The Mother's face, screaming with anger, then Julian in close-up, her features following the same lines:)

Julian:

You wanna croak instead of talking, then
I'll
talk, by god. Except it's hard to know where to start, considering all the items I've shredded in the Unspeakable Bin for years—

(Cut to close-up of Laurence:)

Laurence:

—and saved like stored-up ammunition for just such a moment! The little martyr shows her hand? The victim picks up the electrodes she's actually wielded all along?

(Cut to: rapid montage of students rioting in the street, throwing Molotov cocktails; The Mother's face; a Chinese mother binding the feet of a weeping child; The Mother's face; a
chador
-garbed figure spreading the legs of a girlchild and bending over her with a razor to clitoridectomize her; The Mother's face. Bring up close-up of Julian, spitting venom now:)

Julian:

It's time.
Time
, Laurence. Time you grew up and became an adult. Time you hung up your clothes. Time you hung up your clothes. Time you answered your mail. Time you earned a living, yeah. Time you remembered to do a laundry yourself without it getting so bad I have to remind you we don't have any clean clothes left. Time you came out of catatonia and made some contacts which could actually godforbid I know the thought alarms you come through with some actions, projects, better jobs for a change. Time you learned how to wash a glass
clean
, not just as a reward for nagging old me. Time you stopped leaving dirty sox and shoes and underpants strewn through rooms that I happen to share—which do
not
contain piles of
my
clothes all over the place—

(Cut to two-shot:)

Laurence:

This whole
loft
used to be mine! First we had to tear
down
walls to accommodate the great Travis. Then the terms changed and we had to
build
'em so
you
could have a study. Now we have The Julian Sector. The Laurence Sector.

Julian:

(Undeterred from her assault:)
Time you learned that the dropping and breaking and losing of tools and cups and gloves isn't a cute trait but shows stupidity and contempt for other people's consideration, comfort, even basic rights. It's time you
noticed
, after twenty years, where the wooden spoons go in the kitchen, and where the knives go. If you don't like their placement,
say
so and
change
it. But the truth is that all along the Feminist Prince has been too froggishly busy proclaiming allegiance to the abstract politics to give a shit for such “petty” details!

(Top-shot down from catwalk, showing each of them isolated in a pin-shot of intense light, the room around them now in darkness. They face each other as adversaries.)

Laurence:

You're a loveless robot. You're a leech. Christ, you've stolen my soul! What'd you do, fold it and put it away in a drawer 'cause I left it lying around somewhere?