A Delicate Balance, Page 2

  AGNES

  None.

  TOBIAS (Mock sadness)

  Hélas …

  AGNES

  You have hope, only, of growing even older than you are in the company of your steady wife, your alcoholic sister-in-law and occasional visits … from our melancholy Julia.

  (A little sad)

  That is what you have, my dear Tobias. Will it do?

  TOBIAS

  (A little sad, too, but warmth)

  It will do.

  AGNES (Happy)

  I’ve never doubted that it would.

  (Hears something, says sourly)

  Hark.

  (CLAIRE has entered)

  Did I hear someone?

  TOBIAS

  (Sees CLAIRE standing, uncomfortably, away from them)

  Ah, there you are. I said to Agnes just a moment ago …

  CLAIRE

  (To AGNES’ back, a rehearsed speech, gone through but hated)

  I must apologize, Agnes; I’m … very sorry.

  AGNES

  (Not looking at her; mock surprise)

  But what are you sorry for, Claire?

  CLAIRE

  I apologize that my nature is such to bring out in you the full force of your brutality.

  TOBIAS (To placate)

  Look, now, I think we can do without any of this sort of …

  AGNES

  (Rises from her chair, proceeds toward exiting)

  If you come to the dinner table unsteady, if when you try to say good evening and weren’t the autumn colors lovely today you are nothing but vowels, and if one smells the vodka on you from across the room—and don’t tell me again, either of you! that vodka leaves nothing on the breath: if you are expecting it, if you are sadly and wearily expecting it, it does—if these conditions exist … persist … then the reaction of one who is burdened by her love is not brutality—though it would be excused, believe me!—not brutality at all, but the souring side of love. If I scold, it is because I wish I needn’t. If I am sharp, it is because I am neither less nor more than human, and if I am to be accused once again of making too much of things, let me remind you that it is my manner and not the matter. I apologize for being articulate. Tobias, I’m going to call Julia, I think. Is it one or two hours’ difference? … I can never recall.

  TOBIAS (Dry)

  Three.

  AGNES

  Ah, yes. Well, be kind to Claire, dear. She is … injured.

  (Exits. A brief silence)

  TOBIAS

  Ah, well.

  CLAIRE

  I have never known whether to applaud or cry. Or, rather, I never know which would be the more appreciated—expected.

  TOBIAS (Rather sadly)

  You are a great damn fool.

  CLAIRE (Sadly)

  Yes. Why is she calling Julia?

  TOBIAS

  Do you want a quick brandy before she comes back?

  CLAIRE (Laughs some)

  Not at all; a public one. Fill the balloon half up, and I shall sip it ladylike, and when she … glides back in, I shall lie on the floor and balance the glass on my forehead. That will give her occasion for another paragraph, and your ineffectual stop-it-now’s.

  TOBIAS

  (Pouring her brandy)

  You are a great damn fool.

  CLAIRE

  Is Julia having another divorce?

  TOBIAS

  Hell, I don’t know.

  CLAIRE (Takes the glass)

  It’s only your daughter. Thank you. I should imagine—from all that I have … watched, that it is come-home time.

  (Offhand)

  Why don’t you kill Agnes?

  TOBIAS (Very offhand)

  Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.

  CLAIRE

  Better still, why don’t you wait till Julia separates and comes back here, all sullen and confused, and take a gun and blow all our heads off? … Agnes first—through respect, of course, then poor Julia, and finally—if you have the kindness for it—me?

  TOBIAS (Kind, triste)

  Do you really want me to shoot you?

  CLAIRE

  I want you to shoot Agnes first. Then I’ll think about it.

  TOBIAS

  But it would have to be an act of passion—out of my head, and all that. I doubt I’d stand around with the gun smoking, Julia locked in her room screaming, wait for you to decide if you wanted it or not.

  CLAIRE

  But unless you kill Agnes … how will I ever know whether I want to live?

  (Incredulous)

  An act of passion!?

  TOBIAS (Rather hurt)

  Well … yes.

  CLAIRE (Laughs)

  Oh, my; that’s funny.

  TOBIAS (Same)

  I’m sorry.

  CLAIRE (Friendly laugh)

  Oh, my darling Tobias, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see you in the role, that’s all—outraged, maddened into action, proceeding by reflex … Can you see yourself, though? In front of the judge? Predictable, stolid Tobias? “It all went blank, your honor. One moment, there I was, deep in my chair, drinking my …” What is that?

  TOBIAS

  Anisette.

  CLAIRE

  “Anisette.” Really? Anisette?

  TOBIAS (Slightly edgy)

  I like it.

  CLAIRE (Wrinkles her nose)

  Sticky. “There I was, your honor, one moment in my chair, sipping at my anisette … and the next thing I knew … they were all lying about, different rooms, heads blown off, the gun still in my hand. I … I have no recollection of it, sir.” Can you imagine that, Tobias?

  TOBIAS

  Of course, with all of you dead, your brains lying around in the rugs, there’d be no one to say it wasn’t an act of passion.

  CLAIRE

  Leave me till last. A breeze might rise and stir the ashes. …

  TOBIAS

  Who’s that?

  CLAIRE

  No one, I think. Just sounds like it should be.

  TOBIAS

  Why don’t you go back to your … thing … to your alcoholics thing?

  CLAIRE (Half serious)

  Because I don’t like the people. …

  TOBIAS

  What is it called?

  CLAIRE

  Anonymous.

  TOBIAS

  Yes; that. Why don’t you go back?

  CLAIRE (Suddenly rather ugly)

  Why don’t you mind your own hooting business?

  TOBIAS (Offended)

  I’m sorry, Claire.

  CLAIRE (Kisses at him)

  Because.

  TOBIAS

  It was better.

  CLAIRE

  (Holds her glass out; he hesitates)

  Be a good brother-in-law; it’s only the first I’m not supposed to have.

  TOBIAS (Pouring for her)

  I thought it was better.

  CLAIRE

  Thank you.

  (Lies on the floor, balances glass on her forehead, puts it beside her, etc.)

  You mean Agnes thought it was better.

  TOBIAS (Kindly, calmly)

  No, I thought so too. That it would be.

  CLAIRE

  I told you: not our type; nothing in common with them. When you used to go to business—before you became a squire, parading around the ancestoral manse in jodhpurs, confusing the gardener …

  TOBIAS (Hurt)

  I’ve never done any such thing.

  CLAIRE

  Before all that …

  (Smiles, chuckles)

  sweet Tobias… when you used to spend all your time in town … with your business friends, your indistinguishable if not necessarily similar friends … what did you have in common with them?

  TOBIAS

  Well, uh … well, everything.

  (Maybe slightly on the defensive, but more … vague)

  Our business; we all mixed well, were friends away from the office, too … clubs, our … an, an envir
onment, I guess.

  CLAIRE

  Unh-huh. But what did you have in common with them? Even Harry: your very best friend … in all the world—as far as you know; I mean, you haven’t met everybody … are you switching from anisette?

  TOBIAS (Pouring himself brandy)

  Doesn’t go for a long time. All right?

  CLAIRE

  Doesn’t matter to me. Your very best friend … Tell me, dear Tobias; what do you have in common with him? Hm?

  TOBIAS (Softly)

  Please, Claire …

  CLAIRE

  What do you really have in common with your very best friend … ’cept the coincidence of having cheated on your wives in the same summer with the same woman … girl … woman? What except that? And hardly a distinction. I believe she was upended that whole July.

  TOBIAS (Rather tight-mouthed)

  If you’ll forgive me, Claire, common practice is hardly …

  CLAIRE

  Poor girl, poor whatever-she-was that hot and very wet July.

  (Hard)

  The distinction would have been to have not: to have been the one or two of the very, very many and oh, God, similar who did not upend the poor … unfamiliar thing that dry and oh, so wet July.

  TOBIAS

  Please! Agnes!

  CLAIRE (Quieter)

  Of course, you had the wanton only once, while Harry! Good friend Harry, I have it from the horse’s mouth, was on top for good and keeps twice, with a third try not so hot in the gardener’s shed, with the mulch, or whatever it is, and the orange pots …

  TOBIAS (Quietly)

  Shut your mouth.

  CLAIRE

  (Stands, faces TOBIAS; softly)

  All right.

  (Down again)

  What was her name?

  TOBIAS (A little sad)

  I don’t remember.

  CLAIRE (Shrugs)

  No matter; she’s gone.

  (Brighter)

  Would you give friend Harry the shirt off your back, as they say?

  TOBIAS

  (Relieved to be on something else)

  I suppose I would. He is my best friend.

  CLAIRE (Nicely)

  How sad does that make you?

  TOBIAS

  (Looks at her for a moment, then)

  Not much; some; not much.

  CLAIRE

  No one to listen to Bruckner with you; no one to tell you’re sick of golf; no one to admit to that—now and then—you’re suddenly frightened and you don’t know why?

  TOBIAS (Mild surprise)

  Frightened? No.

  CLAIRE (Pause; smile)

  All right. Would you like to know what happened last time I climbed the stairs to the fancy alkie club, and why I’ve not gone back? What I have not in common with those people?

  TOBIAS (Not too enthusiastic)

  Sure.

  CLAIRE (Chuckle)

  Poor Tobias. “Sure.” Light me a cigarette?

  (TOBIAS hesitates a moment, then lights her one)

  That will give me everything.

  (He hands the lighted cigarette to her; she is still on the floor)

  I need. A smoke, a sip and a good hard surface. Thank you.

  (Laughs a bit at that)

  TOBIAS (Standing over her)

  Comfy?

  CLAIRE

  (Raises her two arms, one with the cigarette, the other the brandy glass; it is a casual invitation. TOBIAS looks at her for a moment, moves a little away)

  Very. Do you remember the spring I moved out, the time I was really sick with the stuff: was drinking like the famous fish? Was a source of great embarrassment? So that you and Agnes set me up in the apartment near the station, and Agnes was so good about coming to see me?

  (TOBIAS sighs heavily)

  Sorry.

  TOBIAS (Pleading a little)

  When will it all … just go in the past … forget itself?

  CLAIRE

  When all the defeats are done, admitted. When memory takes over and corrects fact … makes it tolerable. When Agnes lies on her deathbed.

  TOBIAS

  Do you know that Agnes has … such wonderful control I haven’t seen her cry in … for the longest time … no matter what?

  CLAIRE

  Warn me when she’s coming; I’ll act drunk. Pretend you’re very sick, Tobias, like you were with the stomach business, but pretend you feel your insides are all green, and stink, and mixed up, and your eyes hurt and you’re half deaf and your brain keeps turning off, and you’ve got peripheral neuritis and you can hardly walk and you hate. You hate with the same green stinking sickness you feel your bowels have turned into … yourself, and everybody. Hate, and, oh, God!! you want love, l-o-v-e, so badly—comfort and snuggling is what you really mean, of course—but you hate, and you notice—with a sort of detachment that amuses you, you think—that you’re more like an animal every day … you snarl, and grab for things, and hide things and forget where you hid them like not-very-bright dogs, and you wash less, prefer to be washed, and once or twice you’ve actually soiled your bed and laid in it because you can’t get up … pretend all that. No, you don’t like that, Tobias?

  TOBIAS

  I don’t know why you want to …

  CLAIRE

  You want to know what it’s like to be an alkie, don’t you, boy?

  TOBIAS (Sad)

  Sure.

  CLAIRE

  Pretend all that. So the guy you’re spending your bottles with starts you going to the old A.A. And, you sit there at the alkie club and watch the … better ones—not recovered, for once an alkie, always, and you’d better remember it, or you’re gone the first time you pass a saloon—you watch the better ones get up and tell their stories.

  TOBIAS (Wistful, triste)

  Once you drop … you can come back up part way … but never … really back again. Always … descent.

  CLAIRE

  (Gently, to a child)

  Well, that’s life, baby.

  TOBIAS

  You are a great, damn fool.

  CLAIRE

  But, I’m not an alcoholic. I am not now and never was.

  TOBIAS (Shaking his head)

  All the promise … all the chance …

  CLAIRE

  It would be so much simpler if I were. An alcoholic.

  (She will rise and re-enact during this)

  So, one night, one month, sometime, I’d had one martini—as a Test to see if I could—which, given my … stunning self-discipline, had become three, and I felt … rather daring and nicely detached and a little bigger than life and not snarling yet. So I marched, more or less straight, straight up to the front of the room, hall, and faced my peers. And I looked them over—all of them, trying so hard, grit and guilt and failing and trying again and loss … and I had a moment’s—sweeping—pity and disgust, and I almost cried, but I didn’t—like sister like sister, by God—and I heard myself say, in my little-girl voice—and there were a lot of different me’s by then—”I am a alcoholic.”

  (Little-girl voice)

  “My name is Claire, and I am a alcoholic.”

  (Directly to TOBIAS)

  You try it.

  TOBIAS

  (Rather vague, but not babytalk)

  My name is … My name is Claire, and I am an alcoholic.

  CLAIRE

  A alcoholic.

  TOBIAS (Vaguer)

  A alcoholic.

  CLAIRE

  “My name is Claire, and I am a … alcoholic.” Now, I was supposed to go on, you know, say how bad I was, and didn’t want to be, and How It Happened, and What I Wanted To Happen, and Would They Help Me Help Myself … but I just stood there for a … ten seconds maybe, and then I curtsied; I made my little-girl curtsy, and on my little-girl feet I padded back to my chair.

  TOBIAS

  (After a pause; embarrassedly)

  Did they laugh at you?

  CLAIRE

  Well, an agnostic in t
he holy of holies doesn’t get much camaraderie, a little patronizing, maybe. Oh, they were taken by the vaudeville, don’t misunderstand me. But the one lady was nice. She came up to me later and said, “You’ve taken the first step, dear.”

  TOBIAS (Hopeful)

  That was nice of her.

  CLAIRE (Amused)

  She didn’t say the first step toward what, of course. Sanity, insanity, revelation, self-deception. …

  TOBIAS (Not much help)

  Change … sometimes … no matter what …

  CLAIRE (Cheerful laugh)

  Count on you, Tobias … snappy phrase every time. But it hooked me—the applause, the stage presence … that beginning; no school tot had more gold stars for never missing class. I went; oh, God, I did.

  TOBIAS

  But stopped.

  CLAIRE

  Until I learned …

  (AGNES enters, unobserved by either TOBIAS or CLAIRE)

  … and being a slow student then in my young middle-age, slowly … that I was not, nor had ever been … a alcoholic … or an. Either. What I did not have in common with those people. That they were alcoholics, and I was not. That I was just a drunk. That they couldn’t help it; I could, and wouldn’t. That they were sick, and I was merely … willful.

  AGNES

  I have talked to Julia.

  TOBIAS

  Ah! How is she?

  AGNES (Walking by CLAIRE)

  My, what an odd glass to put a soft drink in. Tobias, you have a quiet sense of humor, after all.

  TOBIAS

  Now, Agnes …

  CLAIRE

  He has not!

  AGNES (Rather heavy-handed)

  Well, it can’t be brandy; Tobias is a grown-up, and knows far better than to …

  CLAIRE

  (Harsh, waving her glass)

  A toast to you, sweet sister; I drink your—not health; persistence—in good, hard brandy, âge inconnu.

  AGNES

  (Quiet, tight smile, ignoring CLAIRE)

  It would serve you right, my dear Tobias, were I to go away, drift off. You would not have a woman left about you—only Claire and Julia … not even people; it would serve you right.

  CLAIRE (Great mocking)

  But I’m not an alcoholic, baby!

  TOBIAS

  She … she can drink … a little.

  AGNES

  (There is true passion here; we see under the calm a little)

  I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU!

  (Softer but tight-lipped)

  Oh, God. I wouldn’t mind for a moment if you filled your bathtub with it, lowered yourself in it, DROWNED! I rather wish you would. It would give me the peace of mind to know you could do something well, thoroughly. If you want to kill yourself—then do it right!