Scene 1
Lights come up in
Bethany’s area as BETHANY enters from the outside carrying a bag. She's sixteen, and her style is a mild case of
teenage alienation and defiance, with baggy black cargo pants, a ring through one nostril, and a green tint on one side of
her spiky red or auburn hair. She tries to swing the door closed behind her, but it doesn’t latch. She puts her bag
down heavily on the counter. She takes off her hat and throws it.
BETHANY: Fuck!
She pushes backward to close the door.
BETHANY: Fuck!
She
comes into the room and takes off her scarf and throws it.
BETHANY: Fuck!
She takes off her coat and throws it.
BETHANY: Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
She sits at her table, puts her head in her hands.
BETHANY: Fu—u—u—u—u—u—c—c—c—k—k—k!
She stands abruptly, takes some books from her bag, and crosses to her father’s area. He’s asleep, but
she doesn’t care. She puts the books down in front of him. Seeing a bust of Abraham Lincoln lying in the abundant Lincoln
rubble, she carries it back to her area and places it on a high stool facing the table. She straightens up the table and kitchen
as she talks to the statue.
BETHANY: Abe, I’m glad you came….
Busy with her back to him.
So… let’s talk about you.
Wherever you are. Up in a castle with all the Immortals. Angels keeping the big stone halls warm and calling you
for dinner.
Like here. Right.
Hey, is it true that when you first
met your wife Mary at a party you said, "Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way," and you did? We
studied that in Great Biographies course. That’s where I got interested in you.
That and
Dad. He’s got so much Lincoln stuff in this place you can’t see the dirt.
So, Abie,
I gotta talk to you in the worst way…
and I probably will.
Fuck….
Busying herself hanging up her coat, hat, and scarf.
I wish I knew what you were
really like.
But you can’t tell me, eh?
Join the crowd. What
I hear lately, nobody can tell me much of anything.
Anyway, Megan and Crystal and I… they’re
my friends… or they were my friends… well, Megan still will be… I mean I think she will be…. Anyway,
the three of us used to look at your pictures in Great Biographies class? And Socrates and Madame Curie, y’know? And
play "What’s He Really Like?"
Great eyes, Abe! I thought with big sad eyes like
that you could understand anything.
Crystal got into how big your feet were… you know,
from that outline you drew for ordering shoes? She said… you’d think Crystal and not me would end up where I
am now… she kept saying, "Big feet mean big meat!" Gross, hunh? I couldn’t tell you that except you’re
dead.
Goes to the statue.
But I don’t want to get
all serious.
Moves away again.
But hey! What am I going
to call you? I forgot you didn’t like people calling you "Abe." But "Mister Lincoln’s" too
formal,
Back to the statue.
I mean, now that we’re….
She rubs noses with the statue.
Hey, let’s use "Abe."
I can’t tell my secrets to a "Mister."
Like about Dad over there…. He's
sick, Abe. Weird sick…. But that's his problem. The thing about me, Abe, is.... Well, I took this test today.
And the trouble is I passed it.
It was a pregnancy test.
Lights
dim on Bethany and come up in the Doctor’s area, as Bethany's father, the DOCTOR, wakes in his chair.
When he stands, the Doctor is bent over, and his arms dangle like clubs or weighted wings. The sleeves of his white
shirt are rolled up; the legs of his black pants are too short. Cloth gloves cover his elongated fingers. His stooped posture
hides for a while a slight protrusion on his chest.
He squints to see his reflection
in a mirror as he combs his unruly black hair.
DOCTOR: (Still combing his hair reflected
in the monitor, he speaks with irony, not humor.) Look good, feel good!
The Doctor does
a double-take, studies his eyes closely in the mirror, then holds one of his hands before one eye and closes the other. He
repeats this test with the other eye, then shake his head slowly in dismay. He reaches for an oversize book, misses at first,
then picks it up from the table and searches through it.
Now it's my eyes. And it is
fulfilled: the whites of the eyes shall turn blue... the lenses dislocate, the eyes wander… that he may lose control
of what the eyes see. And what they say.
He finds a page in the book and holds it up –
a photograph of the face of Abraham Lincoln.
Here. The right eye looking straight at you:
"I know the world we're standing in…." The left lost, ascending: "Thy will be done…."
Looking heavenward.
Behold then, whoever…. Behold thy work:
Demonstrating features of his body.
Limbs lengthening as connective
tissue grows!
Joints going floppy!
Toes and fingers splay like spider
legs!
Oh, and the curvature of the spine is thine… and is mine…!
The chest deforms as the spine twists and the heart expands!
Distracted by a question,
he turns to look at a Lincoln photograph.
Was he spared this part by assassination?
Returning to his grand tone as he clutches his heart.
The heart expanding, rapacious:
give me more pain!
Shifting to ironic pleading.
Physician,
heal thyself.
Looking back into his monitor and losing altitude.
And
now it’s my eyes….
Concentration wandering, voice vacant, lights dimming.
As it is written…
As it will be done….
Lights
out.
Scene 2
Lights
come up in Bethany’s area as Bethany again comes in from outside, puts down a bag of groceries and library materials,
and takes off her coat and hat while she talks to her statue. A soft and feminine black sweater contrasts with her tough-looking
black cargo pants. It’s the next afternoon.
BETHANY: The whole school fucking found
out.
She lights a cigarette.
Fuck!
Yes,
I’m smoking, Abe, and don’t give me any shit! I deserve to smoke! And I’m not quitting!
Except that fucking school!
Bethany angrily sorts out canned goods, bread, coffee,
and toilet paper for her dad, as well as a stack of books and a tape cassette in a mailing box. She puts her own groceries
away and gets something to eat.
Lights come up on the Doctor, once again looking at his eyes
in the mirror.
DOCTOR: School, Beth? Is there a school that explains me?
Bethany looks over at her dad’s area.
BETHANY: Fuck!
DOCTOR:
Origin of the Species: It was last year and I was doing my duty back in Boston. Saving sprawling humanity. Like my father
before me. "He gave his life…. He gave his life…." That’s what my mother used to say.
BETHANY: Bastard Bobby….
DOCTOR: Dad wasn't a Doctor, though….
BETHANY: (To the statue.) I told him this morning before school….
DOCTOR:
A soldier boy: high school, wedding…
BETHANY: He didn’t believe me.
DOCTOR: …then the infantry.
BETHANY: I was just getting fatter, he said! It couldn't
be his.
DOCTOR: I never told you, did I?
BETHANY: He always pulled
out in time, blah, blah, blah.
DOCTOR: Dad sent Mom checks and came home once from a fort in
Georgia…
BETHANY: And then he pulled out for good.
DOCTOR:
…not that I remember him…
BETHANY: Bye, bye, bastard.
DOCTOR:
He brought me an iron helmet too heavy to wear.
BETHANY: But as much as I hated him, y'know,
I kept hoping Bobby was right?
DOCTOR: Got shipped to Korea and shot in a muddy trench.
BETHANY: Like: "This isn’t happening."
DOCTOR: "He gave his life,"
my mother kept saying.
BETHANY: I was throwing up in the toilet before first period saying that.
DOCTOR: And, "You’ll never be what your daddy was." Or was it just her eyes?
"You’ll never be…. You’ll never be…."
BETHANY: I
had amnesia, I was somebody else, it wasn’t happening, please God, and so on….
DOCTOR:
"He gave his life…. He gave his life…."
Working his way into the grand.
Then Mom gave her life for me, six days a week at the J.C. Penney store. And I grew up and went to college and medical
school, and I knew what life was for. So I gave… I can see it now…. I became a doctor and seven days a week
until ten at night I gave my life to Boston General that old men in the ghetto not die too soon of heart disease and welfare
mothers get shots for their babies….
BETHANY: I couldn’t have a baby. No. But where
was my period? And then my belly button popped out.
I was leaning back in my desk in Science
class today, and my sweater was too short and it came up? And my belly was showing and I didn’t know it? And I was leaning
back and I heard this little "Flup!" And Jenny Fregetti was pointing to my belly button and laughing! …and
then everybody else was looking and laughing too…. All laughing at me!
DOCTOR: We didn’t
laugh much at the hospital.
BETHANY: So… after class, Abe? It was first period, y’know?
DOCTOR: And then came the cosmic joke!
BETHANY: And I’d gone out in first period
a couple times the week before... to be sick? And after class Ms. Wilson like got me against the wall… I mean I’m
one shoulder against the chalky blackboard trying to get to the door and I couldn’t get past Wilson… she’s
big… and I bump something and I stop and look down… It was the wastebasket. And I wished I could go down it.
I thought: the trash... that’s where my life goes…. But Ms. Wilson was really nice about it, and she made me
admit it… we were crying and hugging each other….
DOCTOR: Last year….
BETHANY: Hugging! Such a relief, Abe!
DOCTOR: I was telling you….
BETHANY: I’m telling you, Abe, I almost felt good! I almost felt good about being pregnant!
DOCTOR: It was all wrong!
BETHANY: But don’t get the wrong idea, Abe.
DOCTOR: How could my arms and legs grow longer?
BETHANY: Not everybody got euphoric
about my blessed event.
DOCTOR: I was 53!
BETHANY: A lot of teachers…
York the Dork and our bad-breath principal Mr. Coburn…
DOCTOR: I had symptoms like Marfan
Syndrome, but there is no adult-onset Marfan Syndrome.
BETHANY: …they treated me like a
social disease.
DOCTOR: The disease comes on when you’re young or you never get it. But
the symptoms: connective tissue lengthening, joints weakening, fingers and toes grow long and thin….
BETHANY: So Wilson says it’s up to me, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of quitting school.
DOCTOR: And then my wrists grew so floppy and I gashed a chest with a scalpel, and I lied about it, and then I fell
apart. I yelled at a nurse for doodling on a chart and blasted a patient in the snack bar for poisoning her kid with Coca-Cola.
She looked at my dangling hands and I hid them in my pockets and turned and went straight to the Administrator’s office
and told him I needed a leave.
What was happening to me? I went to medical journals and: Lo!
There was Abraham Lincoln! Some said Lincoln had Marfan, but dormant until the Civil War, when he was what? In his fifties!
BETHANY: She says I’m being stubborn.
DOCTOR: Like me! Adult-onset,
no family history. Did the stress of the Civil War bring it on? Vague problem with his heart, eyes wandering, blurry vision,
gangling limbs and thin fingers…. Retired doctors turned Lincoln buffs battled in the journals: "Yes, Lincoln
had it." "Absurd," came the reply.
BETHANY: Would you stay where you’re
not wanted, Abe?
DOCTOR: And so I did I flee from Boston and come unto Springfield, Illinois.
The Land of Lincoln! To outrun what was coming? To meet it at its source?
BETHANY: I don’t
have to have the baby either.
DOCTOR: But did Lincoln have it? Did I?
BETHANY:
Wilson’s getting me information.
DOCTOR: My spine was bending to a question mark! But now
my eyes are going, and the answer surges in my swelling heart. Marfan! Terminal… terrible….
BETHANY: Dad didn't stay.
Bethany goes to the counter and picks up the groceries
and library materials to take to her dad.
DOCTOR: Treatment, Beth? A specialist?
BETHANY: When Dad got weird he got out.
DOCTOR: Beth! Doctors hate to be patients. (Shouts.)
I’m a care-giver, not a victim!
BETHANY: Out of reality….
DOCTOR:
(Whispers.) And I’m alone with it.
BETHANY: He said he was what he was…
She takes the things and puts them down on his table, but pays no attention to him.
DOCTOR:
Alone….
BETHANY: …and he wouldn't be seen by a world that couldn't understand.…
Bethany leaves his area before his next line.
DOCTOR:
…as I was before Amy...
BETHANY: Right, Dad?
DOCTOR: Before
Amy and you…
BETHANY: "…not be judged by ignorance," he said....
DOCTOR: Alone is home, I’m used to it….
BETHANY: I remember that.
DOCTOR: …alone with my fate!
BETHANY: (Mocking her father.)
"…alone with my fate!" Right, Dad.
But that really is me at school, Abe.
DOCTOR: You don’t understand, Beth.
BETHANY: I'm getting out of there.
DOCTOR: (As if he can justify by explaining to someone not listening.) When I went to college, I found myself
in a dorm room with a roommate? One night in that room and I transferred to a single to be alone, even though it meant a day
a week in the sweating laundry for the higher cost.
BETHANY: But if I don't go to school....
DOCTOR: No one looking at how I brushed my hair or laughing at my boxer shorts. No one to get close and mixed up
with.... and you’re not just yourself, and you... are... lost?
BETHANY:
I’m scared, Abe. I feel cold.
DOCTOR: Do you see what I mean?
BETHANY: Who wouldn’t in an Illinois winter, right?
DOCTOR: I'd given everything….
BETHANY: But like standing right next to the heater my arms are cold…
DOCTOR: Gave my life as a doctor to my parents’ gods.... What life? What was mine?
BETHANY:
…like I need something wrapped around me.
DOCTOR: But this… this, some
Devil Meaning whispers, is mine!
BETHANY: Do you know what Crystal said?
DOCTOR:
I clutch it close to my swelling heart.
BETHANY: After avoiding me for a fucking week…
DOCTOR: Mine! Mine!
BETHANY: She comes up to me in the hall
and says like…
DOCTOR: To change my life!
The Doctor’s
area goes dark.
BETHANY: "Do you know who the father is?"
Bitch!
Like I took on the football team blindfolded! Makes me feel so fucking immoral. Maybe I am immoral. Do you think so, Abe?
You probably think I’m a little slut like everyone else. Like Mr. York at school: "This wasn’t just
a mistake, Bethany. This was a question of character."
You’re probably not
even listening to me. Nobody’s listening.
Maybe I’m not even talking… maybe
I’m not even here!
I wish I wasn’t! I wish I wasn’t!
Throws herself down and cries. Her area goes dark.
