Laura-2a

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS--LAURA

ACT II--WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

[Christine in the New York apartment, with Laura and Henry.]

CHRISTINE
You told me about getting acquainted with Mother and Dad through doing The Glass Menagerie last evening. Now how about the other two plays he said he did there with you two.

LAURA
And with your mother! Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf . . . then A Doll's House. We did tell you about that first cast party--the first time I met you
. . . the first time I held you.

CHRISTINE
Yes . . . and something you said to Dad about Solomon's wives.

HENRY
[Laughs.] Yes . . . Laura's parting comment to Jack. I'm still not sure I understand it, but it set the echo of that old song going in his head, as I well know. [Sings, off key.] "Solomon had a thousand wives, and I think that he was very wise, 'cause some girls do and some girls don't, and some girls will and some girls won't, and you're takin' a chance all the time." Jack said that tune kept coming back to haunt him over those next few months . . . when he would least expect it.

CHRISTINE
And made him think of Laura?

HENRY
I suppose. He and I talked about it, for that was the period of our closest friendship. I was teaching a course with the title "The Psychology of Moral Decision," and we discussed all kinds of problems in the office . . . with Laura, sometimes.

CHRISTINE
Oh? So he did let you continue to work in the office.

LAURA
Oh, yes. And that worked fine. I made sure of that. But Henry couldn't resist contributing to our education, feeding us books on things like Freudian patterns of libidinal motivation, though I read more of it than your dad did. We three spent a lot of time between classes in his office--since it was bigger, handier, and, thanks to me, neater than Professor Gordon's--talking about books or plays we'd read or seen, or, in off-hand fashion, any of the big questions of philosophy. We became very comfortable with one another, Henry and I sometimes starting a discussion before Jack got back from class, that he was sure to join in on, or continuing one after he had gone home for lunch.

CHRISTINE
Uncle Henry still enjoys that . . . is really talking to himself, and, since he's blind, may not even know if you happen to leave the room. But he's still a teacher . . . expounding his theories. [To Henry.] You know Jordan and I visited Wellington, and had lunch with Marge in the country club there. Looking at the campus from that dining room, I thought it was a beautiful little college, situated on a hill, or not exactly a hill, but overlooking the town, with its sweeping carpet of green grass and all those large, beautiful oak trees. You all must have loved it there.

HENRY
I did enjoy it there . . . thought I had very good students. And I know that Jack enjoyed it. It was an intense year for him.

LAURA
And I have very happy memories of Wellington.

HENRY
The buildings looked right, too--seemed to belong there--but were already a mixture of old and new. Darvey Hall, which dominated the center of the campus, where all my classes were, dated from about 1890, I think, while the gymnasium, and the married student and faculty housing--where your mother and dad lived for a while--had been built after World War II. And the Fine Arts Center, that housed the new theatre that brought Jack there, had just been finished.

CHRISTINE
Jordan and I visited that theatre, too. We did our Juliet scene right up there on that stage . . . with Marge as audience.

HENRY
Back in those innocent days the school was still naively affirming the liberal arts out there in the middle of the Nebraska corn fields. I'm sure it's still a charming campus . . . but most of those little schools have had serious financial problems, and, even worse, have lost their morale, and that faculty commitment to the uncomplicated pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The school was small . . . only about a thousand students. Probably not many more now, but now they'll be taking courses in social work, and accounting, and criminal justice--not French, or biology, or the kind of psychology I taught there. They probably take public opinion polls, about buying soap or paying taxes, in their psychology classes, instead of reading Freud and Jung and James . . . or even reading about Pavlov and Skinner.

CHRISTINE
Those things change . . . but I'll bet it's still a good school. And I was born there, after all . . . in Wellington, Nebraska.

LAURA
And I was in plays there . . . on that brand new stage. But Henry was a professor. He had come with his new Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell two years before--so was already at home there. Jack called him a "harmless eccentric," and liked to kid him about the crazy house he'd built.

HENRY
Well, I did build a house, on the outskirts of town, almost entirely by myself--and there was nothing crazy about it. I did most of the work the first summer I was there--foundation, framing, roof, everything--enough to be able to move inside to work by winter. I spent part of the second summer painting and landscaping--before and after going to France--and had a house. It was two stories . . . plus a walk-out basement.

CHRISTINE
Dad said it was built into the side of a hill, so that, as you approached from downhill, it looked like an observation tower, or, in that country, a silo--except that it was absolutely square.

HENRY
[Laughing.] I liked to say that each floor was "dichotomized," designed by, and for, a bachelor. The basement was for practical work, half garage, for my MG roadster, which I tuned myself, and half darkroom. The first floor was for company, a kitchen, where I concocted exotic foreign dishes, and a large living room, the up-hill wall on that side all fireplace and bookcases, and the down-hill wall, looking out over "the green fields of Nebraska," all window. Following the example of Thomas Jefferson, I built my bed right in the middle of the top floor, "the tower," so I could get up on the "bedroom" side, with its walk-in shower, or on the "study studio" side, designed

for my academic work. I even built a desk there which had two levels, so I could type either sitting or standing. More than anything else in Wellington, I hated to leave that house. I never had it so good . . . until I settled at the lake with Shoko.
LAURA
I remember the day we were talking about Kant's antinomies, the fact that, though we can't conceive of the limits of space, or time, we have to pretend to . . . and you were insisting that it was the same with free will--that we assume it for the future, but deny it to the past. [To Christine.] Your dad was fascinated by that . . . and so was I . . . so that we spent the rest of the afternoon discussing it--after Henry had left! And since Henry was single, and had that nice house--he was an eligible bachelor. Jack said he'd had hopes for us at the time, but, from the time Jack came to Wellington, I never wavered, and Henry seemed more interested in analyzing our libidinal impulses than in his own. He was resident guru--but with a nice sense of humor. We three did get to know each other pretty well, as I settled into what they called my "watchful mode."

HENRY
[To Christine.] But from the time she first picked you up, Laura was more like your mother than Betty was. Jack was confused by that . . . and asked my help. I'd never thought much about the dangers of childbirth before. As I'd read the biographies of men from earlier periods of history, I was struck by the number who'd been married several times, their wives having "died in childbirth." But I'd thought that was a phenomenon of the dark ages, before doctors knew what they were doing, that now women must have babies more or less routinely. Then, when I got to asking, I was surprised to discover how many of the women I saw every day had had

serious problems in giving birth--Caesarian deliveries, female complications requiring surgery, life threatening problems with the baby. But, as I understood it, physically, the hysterectomy had posed no great problem for Betty--the surgery had gone well, and she was healthy. Psychologically it had to be more complex, however. Jack tried to be more attentive, and she still had Emma Brigot. But, finally, your dad turned to me.
CHRISTINE
Professionally? As a psychologist?

HENRY
Well, he was puzzled by Betty's strange moods, and looking for any help he could get. He said he'd hardly considered what it meant to him that they could have no more children--he had no plans about family size, no thoughts of a son to carry on the family name. And you were a perfect doll. Jack took more care of you from the first than most fathers do, not because Betty wasn't willing to, he said, but because he was the lighter sleeper, responding to the least whimper, and was fascinated by you. But, ironically, the distance between them seemed to have been increased by your birth--as if their reason for being married had been diminished, not enhanced--almost as though Betty were the one who might doubt you were her child.

[The key is heard in the lock and Jack comes in.]

JACK
[Looking from one to another.] What's going on here . . . some kind of conspiracy? I heard Betty's name mentioned.

CHRISTINE
We were talking about you and Mother just after I was born.

JACK
[Sits down.] Well, yes. By two months after you were born she had become so restless and moody she had us all baffled. Living in the same house, she withdrew from me--some days would hardly let me touch her. But the strangest thing was that she didn't retreat into a world shared with you, as most new mothers might. It was as if she were rejecting you, too, as if you were on my side of the wall. I'd see her standing by your crib, looking at you as if from a distance, or look up from my reading to see her looking at me, from across the room, lost in thought, her own book in her lap. She still had Emma Brigot, but they didn't seem as close as they had been, either. She got advice from her on how to care for you, and I'd still hear them laughing together occasionally, but now she was seldom over at Emma's when I came home from school.
CHRISTINE
So you two decided she was having psychological problems.

HENRY
Not exactly, but in a way the problem didn't seem to be between Betty and Jack as much as between Betty and herself.

JACK
I really did love her, and had promised myself not to let the job trap me into neglecting her again. By that time I was pretty comfortable in the job, in fact--knew the people I was working with, the resources, and my own capacities. I had made my peace with Laura, with Henry's help, and really enjoyed the by-play in the office. I was already working on the spring play, and remained deeply involved in my teaching, but could already see the job's inherent limitations, expecting to have exhausted what it had to offer in two . . . maybe three . . . years.

CHRISTINE
But Mother wasn't interested in waiting that long.
JACK
I tried to talk to her about our future--thinking the main problem might be a fear of getting stuck in a "hick town" with nothing to do--as bad as Dodge City--but 'our' future was not a concept that seemed to engage her attention--though nothing else did, either. Or strange things did. She read a lot, and very miscellaneously--the travels of Marco Polo, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Shakespeare's plays, Dashell Hammett mysteries, long things in French--Proust and Stendhal. She'd go to the college library and come home with a pile of books so random I thought she must be closing her eyes to pick them from the shelves. She'd go for long walks on the low hills behind the campus, or down along the river, and preferred to go alone, might take a book and be gone all afternoon, leaving you with Emma or Peg. She expressed little overt hostility--didn't start fights, or poison my food--but I came to sense an under-current of scorn. "Scorn" may be too heavy, suggesting curled lips and cynical laughs from above--but "from above" is right.

CHRISTINE
Mother always did manage that superior air.

JACK

And the sexual withdrawal--though never complete, for she had strong appetites of her own--bothered me, too, but I thought it might be related to the fact she couldn't have any more children. The passion might be there in the body, but the spirit was somewhere else, and when it became most intense for her, I'd feel like I'd been left behind. At breakfast, across the room in the evening watching a movie on television, lying

in my arms at night, the feeling of distance increased--and that sense of muted scorn with it, all the more severe because unarticulated. So I finally asked Henry for help. Henry and Betty had always gotten along well. Of course everyone got along well with Henry. I had appealed to Marge first, thinking a woman could get at what was troubling a woman. But she was no help at all, became as frustrated at being "shut out by someone you're standing right there talking to," as I was.
HENRY
Yes, shut out--without antagonism or rancor, but firmly--by someone erecting a psychological barrier that couldn't be penetrated by someone in the same room.

JACK
That's what Betty appeared to be doing, all right, systematically shutting everyone out, and, given that eclectic and omnivorous reading, and the pervasively pensive quality, her mood might have been termed meditative, as if she were withdrawing into herself to contemplate the mysteries of the universe. [To Christine.] And the most puzzling thing, to me, was that she was shutting you out, too! A new mother might naturally be expected to take her baby with her--but not so with Betty. Scrupulous about your care, she seemed to hold back her affection. I asked her once, when I saw her looking at you with that abstract, calculating look she had come to assume, "Don't you love your baby?" She looked up at me a little startled, and her eyes went wide, as if she were going to flare out in anger, then narrow, before she replied with a laugh so hollow it was a little frightening. "Love? 'What is love?' said doubting Pilate . . . or somebody. How do I know? I know this baby is not me anymore--is out there. That's what I feel most strongly about her. She was part of me, but now she isn't."

CHRISTINE
That's an interesting concept . . . and true.
JACK
While for me, you were a rare delight, were becoming my great consolation. So I did finally ask Henry for help, appealing to him in professional terms. He resisted at first, saying he was an academic psychologist, not a clinical practitioner. Then I put the appeal as friend to friend, arguing that Betty would certainly refuse to go to a professional psychiatrist . . . and where would we find one? Omaha? He said he'd think about it. It was Betty who initiated the meeting. Or I guess I did, but I was surprised by her positive response when I suggested inviting you over for dinner one evening, saw it as a sign that she might be coming out of this unapproachable mood . . . but also attributed it in part to the fact that she'd always enjoyed your company. [To Christine.] In spite of this, Betty's reaction was still a little unsettling. She said she'd wanted to talk to Henry anyway, and just hadn't made the effort to call him. When I asked her what about, she wouldn't tell me. I thought it might involve you, and asked if it did. "Yes," she said, "in a way it does, and you, too--but mostly me. I'd like his opinion on an idea I've been thinking about." That was all she'd say, left it in mystery.

HENRY
So she really had been brooding about something.

JACK
So it seemed--but what was it? "Well," I thought, "Henry may be just the answer. If she still has confidence in him." It was a Thursday evening when Henry came over, an evening when I had to go back to school by 7:30 to discuss a set of Middle English plays we might do as an Easter program, in conjunction

with the music department. I'd arranged it this way on purpose, to give us an hour or so together, through dinner, and then leave them alone, to talk without my interference.
[Jack and Henry move to join Betty in a living room set, while Laura and Christine settle back as audience.]

JACK
This is a little embarrassing, Henry, but I've got to go back to school for an hour for a meeting on that Easter program, so will leave you two alone. I'll be back in an hour and a half, say.

BETTY
The main reason we invited you, Henry, was that I have an idea I want to ask your advice about--before I talk to Jack about it.

JACK
As I backed out of the driveway I could see them through the picture window, Betty leaning forward from where she sat on the arm of the sofa talking non stop. Henry had settled back in my favorite chair, listening with his hands folded behind his head. He said she didn't actually ask for much advice . . . she almost never did, of course. The meeting with the people from Music didn't last long, and nothing was settled, perhaps because I was so preoccupied. When I got back home, a little after 9:00, Henry was still there, standing, hands behind his back, looking out of the big front window as I drove in, nodding to me as I came up the walk. I had hardly gotten in the door when he hit me with . . .

HENRY

Well, are you ready for this? It's Betty's idea, but I'm fascinated by it myself. She wants to get back on the stage again, which is

not so surprising, is it? But what is especially interesting is that she wants to do the new Albee play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's a great play. You've read it, haven't you?
JACK
Yes, I have . . . and I do think it's a great play . . . but for Betty? Martha must be about fifty. Don't you think . . .

BETTY
That would require a little work, but is part of the challenge. I want to do something demanding, and I tune to that role, Jack, to the passion in that play. But it's more than that. I think it would give me a chance to confront something I can't seem to get at any other way--as a kind of therapy. Henry agrees. And . . . and this is the difficult part . . . for you, I mean. I want you to play George. That's important, as a way of exploring our marriage, if you want to put it that way, who we are . . . what we might become . . . by the time we're fifty. It's hard to express, but going through what George and Martha do should help to bring some things into focus. What do you think?

JACK
I don't know. My first instinct is against it. If Martha doesn't seem right for you, George seems absolutely wrong for me. I don't like the character--or the language. [To Henry.] But I don't want to kill this new spirit in Betty, either. [To Betty.] I was never that strong an actor . . . you know that. Suppose I direct, this play or one of the others you wanted to do, Hedda Gabler, or Antigone, or something. [She just looks at him.] Okay, this play. Maybe Henry could play George.

HENRY
I'd be willing to try, Jack, but Betty has made up her mind.

BETTY
No. Let Henry direct, or even Marge. There are only four characters. Your little girl there at school . . . your Laura . . . should be fine for the mouse, and the other male part is well within the range of any good looking college boy . . . her Gentleman Caller, for example. It's a one-set play and we wouldn't need much direction. Henry should be the perfect director, in fact. The play is a psychological study, after all. We could think of it as psycho-drama, or group therapy. It should be just what we need, just what both of you would want for your patient. That's what I've become, isn't it?
HENRY
Well, you seem to be looking for a project--and this would be one. [To Jack.] Betty told me that, after weeks of feeling lost she had found herself in this play. What do you think, Jack?

JACK
I'm not sure, Betty. I want you to be happy . . . and, yes, doing something you can get excited about . . . so, maybe. Is it true that you support this idea, Henry?

HENRY
Yes, I do. I'm almost as enthusiastic as Betty is. I can hardly wait to see you two work your way into that script. But a play is just a play--let's understand that, Betty. I'm not endorsing all your theory about psychotherapy behind the footlights . . . though I think it's harmless enough, and interesting--like the Stanislavski stuff. I say let's do it. What do we have to lose, except all of our evenings for the next two months?

BETTY
A play is never just a play.

[Jack and Henry move back to join Laura and Christine.]
JACK
I knew that she meant that, and began to understand that that had become a central principle in her life. But it surprised me when Laura was willing to take the part of Honey. I would've bet she wouldn't--wouldn't have wanted to get caught in the middle. I hesitated to ask her--in part because it's such a nasty part--but decided it might be good therapy for her, too, if that's what we were into. I was re-reading the play in the office when she came in the next day, told her what we'd talked about, then passed it to her, with the question of whether she might be interested in doing Honey.

LAURA
I read the play that night . . . and hated it.

JACK
But, next day, gave me your blandest look, and said, "I have a vested interest here, too, you know," which left me as puzzled as I was by Betty. But when I told her Laura would take the part, she just smiled and said, "I thought she would. That should be interesting, shouldn't it?"

CHRISTINE
And Uncle Henry directed the play?

JACK
Yes, he did. It turned out to be a surprisingly simple play in most respects--to be such a traumatic experience. Marge handled the set, with a couple of her community theatre people. I was still working on that Easter play at school, but, after I had re-read the Albee play, I assigned it in my American Drama

course the week before Easter break, so I'd have a chance to think about it before settling down to serious rehearsals during vacation week. Laura was in that class, and more or less led the discussion, while keeping her own reading ambiguous.
LAURA
We agreed that it was a provocative play . . . even if none of the characters were very attractive.

JACK
And Betty was already learning her lines. It was as if she'd had half of them before she'd even confronted us with the question . . . and began practicing them on me immediately. From being so withdrawn she'd hardly been talking to me at all, within a week she was badgering me constantly, in the snottiest terms Martha could manage. She belittled what I was doing at school as a cross between accepting my inherent mediocrity and embracing spiritual prostitution. She'd use actual lines from the play, and call me George most of the time, but might shift from that right into references to our immediate situation and calling me Jack. She said she hoped I understood this was just her way of getting into the part, and that Martha really loved George, of course--just found him disgusting--then she laughed, so I wasn't sure just how I was being made fun of. I told her that, whatever kind of therapy this might be for her, I wasn't sure I'd survive it. Her response was that that wasn't absolutely necessary . . . but that our poor child would be the more likely victim. She even began to talk to you, there in your crib, as if you were a boy, smiling strangely, or looking off in the distance when she was holding you, as if she was doing her best to turn our actual child into an abstraction, or as if, looking right at the baby, she was trying to invoke a spell to make you disappear, or at least take on illusory dimensions.

CHRISTINE
So I became part of the play, too.
JACK
She talked to you a lot now, in the same bitchy way she was talking to me, saying insulting things you couldn't possibly understand, but in a tone one would think would communicate even to a baby. But the most ridiculous thing of all was that I could pick you up, cooing the standard nonsense, and you'd break out in tears, while Betty could let you sit there in wet diapers, snarling obscenities at you, and you'd smile and shake your rattle. In the process, we were becoming a delightful American family--all in the interests of the play, of course. But where would it go from there? This mixture of illusion and reality might not be that easy to sort out after the play was over, I thought. Yet I trusted we could work that out, and it soon became clear that Betty was going to be a strong Martha--very different, but, in my opinion, as strong as Elizabeth Taylor was in the film that was made some time later--which is a great film, too, as you know. All of her mannerisms were broadening into the role very effectively, and, as usual, she had her lines pat before rehearsals began, which is intimidating enough to everyone else to set just the right mood for this play.

LAURA
Martha does dominate the play--no doubt why Betty chose it.

JACK
It forced me to reflect upon what an accomplished actress she was, how right she was to feel she had no business being exiled there in a little town in Nebraska. I'd have to get her someplace where she could exercise her craft, tempting as it might have been to try to make a wife out of her, and comfortable as I was

becoming at Wellington with my own three year plan. And I had to admit that what was happening was interesting--which does have its own value--as Betty stayed in character, even in her sleep, it seemed. I tried to talk to Henry about what was going on at home, but he was surprisingly little help. He would wax academic, all very learned, about therapeutic and cathartic impulses applied to the larger function of the drama--invoking a little of the Aristotle I had almost forgotten.
HENRY
You agreed that it might be important as therapy for her.

JACK
But I had the feeling that you two might just be putting me on, perhaps as part of some psychological experiment of your own, for none of that theory even remotely touched upon what I saw in Betty's eyes when she was tuned to that wave length of total ambiguity--when Jack and George became one for her, and was none too sure who he was himself. I had a stronger identification with the George I despised by the time that play went on than with any other character I've ever played, thanks to Betty. But that was nothing compared to what was going on with Betty/Martha herself. It actually frightened me at times. The only thing I can compare it to is that fleeting experience you sometimes have with another actor on stage, when some passion becomes real for an instant, and you know it from what you see in his face, and feel in your own guts. That's the way it was with your mother and me; the only clear reality came to be in the make believe of these roles. She would tease me in the same sarcastic way, with references to George's impotence mixed with comments on intimate experiences in our marriage. I came to respond as George, fighting fire with fire, at times, at other times trying to insist on our own identities and memories.

LAURA
While she obviously enjoyed it--as a game.
JACK
It seemed she had entered this imaginary world, somewhere between the one we lived in and the one Albee's play offered, a thing we all do as we respond to any literature, but was then insisting upon staying there. And, by the superior force of her spirit, even acting subconsciously, she was pulling me into that world with her. I wondered what I might be able to do to protect myself before I was finally sacrificed there . . . by this diabolic priestess. She seemed determined to extend the ambiguity every way she could. When we began rehearsals she insisted we all call her Martha, for example. Actors who do this are usually tolerated with a kind of mild amusement. But Betty was absolutely serious, and Henry, as director, backed her up, suggesting that all four of us assume the names of our characters in the play. So I became George with a vengeance. The boy playing Nick was a senior--a biology major--with no previous experience swearing on stage, as I recall--but this seemed fine with him, part of the theatre mystique--so "Nick" it was. I don't even remember his real name.

LAURA
Art Jacobs, I believe. I knew him pretty well, and he didn't care. But it wasn't that easy with me. My first response was, "I think that's ridiculous! A play is a play. Stanislavski, or any of these screwball theories about living your way into the character just confuse me. You act--you stop acting. My name is Laura. I think that was part of the trouble I had with The Glass Menagerie--I wasn't sure who everybody was talking to, me or her." But I wasn't sure Betty was even listening to me, and, "Honey" or no, I wasn't about to drop out of the game.

JACK
So, like it or not, she became "Honey." Martha called her that without batting an eye, with sweeping condescension. George called her that because he was under Martha's eye, spinning patterns of identity crisis that both fascinated and intimidated him. Henry called her "Honey" as he might have called her "Dear," smiling benignly, as if oblivious to her frowns. And Nick did in an amused, be a good sport fashion, not sure whether these people knew what they were doing or not, but getting a kick out of bugging a good-looking college girl. He looked like he was tempted to pat her on the rump each time he called her "Honey," but I don't think he ever did--Laura was fairly formidable herself--up that close. I watched her very carefully, and was sure, for days, she would finally blow up and drop out--but she didn't. She had her agenda, too, it seemed.
CHRISTINE
[To Laura.] How were you in that part? You're not like Sandy Dennis at all. She's the one most to be pitied in that play.

JACK
Looking back, I see that it was much like it had been with The Glass Menagerie. The character is so timid that Laura seemed too strong for the part at first--and certainly not 'slim-hipped' enough. But in submitting to the role, she managed to inhabit the weakness, finding ways to shunt much of this rehearsal by-play into modes that strengthened the character. As Martha borrows Nick from Honey in the play, to a whining resistance, it came to seem, rather, as if she were borrowing me from Laura, with an "If you please, Honey." Martha's attitudes toward both of us were keyed to lines and situations in the play, but subtly insisting on a relationship between us she was playing cat and mouse with--and Laura seemed to enjoy that.

LAURA
Yes, she was suggesting a relationship between me and your dad that I assure you didn't exist at that time . . . except perhaps in her mind . . . and maybe mine . . . and it did become a game.
JACK
So, in spite of my personal involvement, I frequently felt like an observer watching these two women. Martha was aggressive and dominant, but there was this tough resiliency in Honey, a resistance up to a point and then concession that wasn't concession, just calculated retreat--and that fascinated me. It was a short step into the role of George at rehearsals, for I found that all of this gamesmanship had indeed helped draw me into the play. As theatre theory, I would say, "Don’t knock the method if you haven't tried it." When it came to furnishing the set and providing props, for example, Martha insisted upon using as much of our own furniture as we could, and I was past resisting. Honey complained, said it gave her the weird feeling she was in our living room, but Henry endorsed that idea, too. It made me a little uncomfortable at times to pick up my own book or cigarette lighter on stage--but not Martha. She moved right in, using every point of contact to play "this is your life." It also got me to thinking about the themes of the play in terms of our own life. I would sit staring out of the window in my office at school considering how the play progresses from "Fun and Games," through "Walpurgisnacht," to "The Exorcism." We were having the fun and games all right, and I knew it was going to get worse--she might well put us through hell--but would the exorcism occur? Would we be purged of the devils haunting us, or just generate our private hell? Would the catharsis come in performance, as Henry laughingly theorized, perhaps in three great waves, to leave us pure, all passion spent, on the final night?

LAURA
[Laughing.] Henry's version of Aristotle.
JACK
I might hope so--but had little faith. I couldn't see the future for Betty and me but knew that major changes were inevitable. What would it be like on the other side of this play? What would we have? But, then, what did George and Martha have? Well, I was pondering these imponderables one afternoon, when Laura came into the office. I had relieved her of most of the office work for a time when she took this part, so I swung my feet off of the desk with, "Hi, Honey, what brings you by?"

[Jack and Laura moving, as if to his office.]

LAURA
To ask you what you think your wife is doing? I know it's more than a crazy way to get tuned to the play. She's always picking on you and me! And Dr. Gordon--our good friend--is helping her, lets her have her way on everything.

JACK
Don't let it get to you, Hon . . . Laura. It's an interesting experiment. Take it in that spirit and try to be tolerant. Betty has some real adjustments to make, not just with the baby but in going from campus queen to faculty wife here. I feel a little guilty, like I owe her a chance to do her thing. And I had needed to be reminded just how good an actress she is. That's worth putting up with a little nonsense for, isn't it? To see her do Martha. Too bad she won't be seen by more people.

LAURA
She's certainly bitch enough for the part! And you say I don't

have anything to worry about, and I say, "Oh, don't I?" I came to play, too. I'm a theatre major, "seeking occasion." Isn't that what Coleridge said about Iago? [Smiling, as to herself.] And I may have more to gain from all this nonsense--in real, honest to God, down to earth reality terms--than anybody. [He gives her a puzzled look.] I'll explain it after the play's over--since you seem to like mysteries. Like last time, it should give us something to talk about at the cast party. In the meantime [Laughing as she leaves.] I'm glad we had this little talk, George, and I'll do my best not to break the spell.
JACK
[Walking back to Christine.] And "spell" it increasingly became, until by opening night I was mesmerized by a part that had only seemed onerous to me at first. I was George, fighting for my psychological life, with a woman who somehow meant to absorb it. I had lost the initiative. I tried to strike back, as George does--went through hell, as George does--and finally felt that whatever had been bedeviling me had in fact been exorcised. Not that I was free of Betty. It was more like she was free of me, so didn't have to torment me any more. She was most remote from me the week of the performance--except on stage, of course. Then she came alive, as only Betty at her best could do, and I responded in kind, probably did give the best performance of my life as an actor. It was my last major role, in fact . . . so that as I now try to become Prospero, with the thought of the Prospero that Jordan would have been in mind, I really am apprehensive. I think we both knew we were good, that it was a powerful play, and that this was our life. So I did begin to think that I saw how it was working for her. She was an actress, not a housewife, and had found a way to demonstrate that clear out there in Wellington, Nebraska. No man would ever have more than a piece of her, for a brief

interlude, and it was almost as if my interlude was over on that closing night. I had nothing more to give her--she had used me up. But I have to admit that I didn't get quite that far at the time. At the final curtain she was almost gentle, as if all passion had been spent where she chose to spend her passion, before perhaps forty people--but applauding like a hundred.
CHRISTINE
I believe that of Mother--I’ve seen her like that after a play.

JACK
The cast party was at the theatre--an everybody-bring-something- and-we'll-strike-the-set affair--typical community theatre. I was sitting on the sofa on stage, as if in my own living room, unwinding and talking to Laura, when Betty came in, after changing and removing her wig and make up. She sat down between us, taking possession of the middle, and took me by the hand. Then, ignoring the mild resistance, she took one of Laura's hands in her other, saying, "Now, Honey--or Laura, honey--it's all over. Sorry if I've been hard to get along with, but I really do wish you well." She looked from Laura to me with a remote, satisfied look on her face. "I have to do some things my way . . . and think I know what I’m doing."

CHRISTINE
So you think she already had her plan in mind.

JACK
As I looked back, I did. Henry was standing at the table by the punch bowl, watching. They looked at each other, and I got a kind of electric communication through Betty's hand that was predicting something. I once asked Henry, "In view of what happened later, what kind of plot was already taking shape?"

HENRY
There was no plot, Jack. I had supported Betty in doing the Albee play, and, in spite of the crazy games we had played, thought it had gone very well. I hadn't thought beyond that.

CHRISTINE
But you're probably right about Mother . . . that she knew by then . . . and knew what Henry would do . . . but he didn't.

JACK
I thought I could read more, in Betty's manner, in her vibrations, but didn't want to read it--decided not to. Betty got up and went over to Henry, and he filled her cup with a gallant flourish--no more than one would expect from a director for a star who had just given him the kind of performance she had. And I just sat there confused, looking at Laura and then back over to where Betty and Henry were talking. I had a premonition that that was it, that the play was the thing through which we had inexorably worked out the unworkability of our marriage. But all I said was, "I guess that the game's over, Honey. Thanks for being such a good sport."

CHRISTINE
[To Laura.] But you didn't think it was over.

JACK
I think she said, "Don't you believe it!" But she started smiling as she took both of my hands in hers and said, "She may have managed to preempt me at the cast party, too," then suddenly got as serious as I'd ever seen her to add, "but the game's not over until the prizes have been awarded. I plan to stay around until I get my prize." It was a line I've had reason to remember, and to reflect on many times over the years.