Raised in Captivity. Nicky Silver
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You think you can erase your past and live without roots.
KIP (To Sebastian): It was nice meeting you—
BERNADETTE (Cutting him off): Well, Sebastian, I wasn’t going to say anything, because I don’t know if this is really the right place, but I think it is patently immoral of you to disappear from our lives and return, show up just in time to claim half of everything. You think you’re entitled. I’m sorry, but I don’t! Why should you be? You didn’t have to deal with her. No! You have your glamorous literary friends. You sit around the Russian Tea Room all day eating blintzes and trading bons mots! You never suffered her venomous glares and the constant insults, the barrage of insults pecking away at my self-confidence. She adored you. You were some perfect abstract figure in the alcoholic haze of her imagination. You have a perfect life, don’t you? I don’t care. I have a perfect life too.—You didn’t endure her epithets and the black stream of complaints about my life and my husband and my wardrobe. She hated this dress! That’s why I wore it!!! So, so, so I think it is just in the worst possible taste for you to come marching up, making demands for things to which, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you’re entitled! I hope I haven’t hurt you. But that’s how I feel.
SEBASTIAN: I don’t want anything. You can keep it all.
(Pause.)
BERNADETTE: Kip and I have discussed it and we would be so happy if you came for a visit. A week, say, or two. A month.
SEBASTIAN: I really have to go.
BERNADETTE (Mumbled): Why do you hate me?
SEBASTIAN: What?
BERNADETTE: Why do you hate me?
SEBASTIAN: I don’t hate you—
BERNADETTE: Oh please.
SEBASTIAN: I just have to be someplace.
BERNADETTE: You look at me and hate shoots out of you, out of your eyes.
SEBASTIAN: It does not.
BERNADETTE: I’m blinded by your loathing. Rays of hate! You burn holes of hate in my flesh!
SEBASTIAN: What do you want from me!!?
(Pause. Bernadette sits to think.)
BERNADETTE: Well, Sebastian, I would like, if I must be honest, I would like... to know...that your life is not perfect.
SEBASTIAN: What?
BERNADETTE: I would like to know that you have problems.
SEBASTIAN: Everyone has problems.
KIP (Offering an example): I hate teeth.
BERNADETTE: I would like to know something—terrible. About you.
SEBASTIAN: Why?
BERNADETTE: It would make me feel better.
SEBASTIAN: You’re insane.
KIP: She hasn’t eaten.
BERNADETTE: You asked me what I wanted and I told you. It would mean a great deal to me. Please. Please, Sebastian, tell me something sad. Tell me something all painful and pitiful and embarrassing. I don’t care what it is. I don’t! Anything. As long as it’s grim and pathetic.
SEBASTIAN (Uncomfortable): I’m late now.
BERNADETTE: I’m begging. Is that what it takes? I’m begging you, tell me something awful about your life. Please.
SEBASTIAN (Stoic): I’m forty-five thousand dollars in debt. I haven’t sold anything since that Vanity Fair piece you disparaged. I live entirely off of credit cards. I charge my rent and my food and I pay the minimum on one card with a cash advance from another. I haven’t had sex in eleven years. I haven’t held or kissed or cared for anyone, in anything but the most superficial way, in so long that I no longer know if I know how.
(There is a long pause.)
BERNADETTE: It was wonderful to see you!
(Bernadette, quite at peace, stands and kisses Sebastian on the cheek. She extends her hand to Kip, who stands and takes it.)
SEBASTIAN (Bewildered): Thank you.
BERNADETTE: Tragedy brings us together. We mustn’t wait so long next time.
KIP: It was nice meeting you. Again.
SEBASTIAN: Likewise.
(Kip and Bernadette exit. Sebastian stands alone.)
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