Infinity Read online

  They struggle.

  No!

  elliot: Let me—

  carmen: No—

  elliot: Let me . . . kiss you—

  elliot forces the kiss. carmen pushes him off and backs up and looks at him.

  Pause.

  carmen: (calmly) I . . . don’t want this. I want to watch a little TV, I want to have a little sex, I want to follow a little politics, just enough to vote for the wrong fucking party, I want to take my daughter to soccer practice and flute concert, or whatever instrument or sport she likes—

  elliot: No you don’t.

  carmen: Yes that is what I want!!!

  elliot: You—no! You’re a—no.

  carmen: Elliot, you know what I’ve called my latest piece? The Unaccompanied Violin Suites because it’s one violinist . . .

  elliot: . . . yeah and . . .

  carmen: . . . playing by herself!

  elliot: . . . and you can romanticize being ordinary all you like but the truth is . . .

  carmen: One lonely violinist!

  elliot: . . . you’re not ordinary, and you didn’t want an ordinary husband so just . . . !

  carmen: Just . . . what?

  elliot: (new tone) Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about your mother. She loves your sister more than she loves you. Let’s talk about why you think I love my work more than I love you in the context of—

  carmen: Don’t—

  elliot: —your fucked-up family—

  carmen: That’s not—that—that’s—that’s a fucking awful thing to say—she doesn’t love my sister more than me—

  elliot: Yeah she does.

  carmen: She wants me to live closer / to her, that’s—

  elliot: She loves you less. It makes you think I love you less but I don’t, I . . .

  carmen: . . . Okay don’t . . .

  elliot: . . . just came into my office in the middle of the night because I felt like it!

  carmen: Don’t wake her up!

  carmen is holding up a hand and listening intently, tensely. We hear a far-off sound that might be a baby. Then silence.

  I thought I heard her . . .

  carmen listens.

  But the house is quiet now.

  Pause.

  elliot: Listen, I’ll stop now, I’m finished my . . . PhD—and I will . . . stop now, I said I would and I . . . meant it when I said it.

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: Yeah.

  Beat.

  carmen: Can you stop?

  elliot: Yes.

  carmen: Can you?

  Silence as elliot considers the question.

  Can you?

  elliot: (shrugs) Maybe . . . maybe . . . look, maybe . . . ? I don’t know—I don’t know: yeah, I . . . don’t know. I like to work, it yeah—it gives me something—I have this sense that I can contribute something that’s . . . substantial and I want to—I don’t know, sometimes, it almost surfaces. And my PhD was . . . I did feel relief, and I . . . know the department was . . . happy with it, but I don’t think I went far enough with it—

  carmen: You unified string theory and loop quantum gravity / using—

  elliot: I—yes—I know, fine, good, yes, but it’s limited. Like I can’t broaden my . . . I have this sense that it’s just out of reach, I don’t know, it’s . . . bothering me, it’s . . . and I feel like if I keep going, I’ll get there.

  Beat.

  And that thought, it’s . . . not leaving me alone.

  Beat.

  (hesitating) Yeah . . .

  Beat.

  I—yeah—if I’m being—if I’m being . . . very—I do still have something to . . . prove.

  Pause.

  carmen: Elliot?

  elliot: Yeah?

  carmen: You know that when I talk to the secretary of the Harvard physics department she tells me that they’ve never had a PhD candidate who’s as talented as you in the whole time she’s been the secretary—which is thirty-seven years.

  Beat.

  Did you know that?

  elliot nods.

  It . . . doesn’t make it . . . better?

  elliot shakes his head.

  elliot: No.

  carmen: No, hunh.

  Beat.

  Do you think it’s because your mother didn’t want you.

  Beat.

  elliot: (low) Maybe.

  Silence.

  carmen: Do you think I should leave you?

  Beat.

  elliot: Yeah.

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: (very low) You’re not happy.

  Beat.

  carmen: There’s a house down the street that’s for rent. On the south side: it had a rent sign on it so I went and looked at it . . .

  elliot: When did you . . . ?

  carmen shrugs.

  carmen: Monday?

  Beat.

  elliot: Is it nice?

  carmen: Yeah, it is nice.

  elliot: The narrow one?

  carmen: Yeah.

  elliot: The roof looks a little run down, but that could be fixed.

  Silence as carmen and elliot look at each other. Then elliot turns back to his work, his papers. elliot works. carmen stands there, struggles with herself, and then, finally, she starts to break down and cry. She puts her hands over her face:

  carmen: (low, beaten) Don’t you . . . love me?

  elliot turns and looks at her.

  Don’t you even love me a little?

  elliot: I love you, I—of course I love you: I love you so much, but is that germane . . . ?

  carmen goes to elliot and holds him.

  Of course I love you.

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: How can you think I don’t love you?

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: I love you so much: I love you . . . so much, so much . . . (repeat at the actor’s discretion) . . .

  Then elliot is gathering carmen up and kissing her, a little as though he’s giving her CPR, breathing life back into her. The transition here is larger; it suggests a larger durational change, the passage of more time than all the past transitions.

  Music For Life.

  By the end of the music, sarah jean will arrive in the story of her parents. carmen and elliot will kiss and hold each other. sarah jean will force her way between them.

  Throughout the music we hear sarah jean speaking little words in a toddler’s voice, a two-year-old’s voice:

  sarah jean: Miwk! Miwk! Mmmmmmuuuuuhhhh! Miwk!

  Then sarah jean progresses to little phrases in a four-year-old’s voice:

  Mommy, mm, where’s my milk, I can’t find it, it’s . . . oh it’s right here! (giggling) It’s right here! It was here all along on the table the whole time, Mommy!

  Then sarah jean progresses to longer phrases in a seven-year-old’s voice:

  Oh no, Mom: oh come in here, please! There’s an . . . emergency, I spilled milk on my . . . music, oh no I need a little cloth, can you bring it, it’s going everywhere into the cracks in the floor and it’s on the . . . bottom of my shoes! Ah! Ahhhhh! Mom!!!

  sarah jean dissolves into giggles.

  Transition.

  Scene Nine.

  sarah jean: When I was in my . . . final year of college, I gave a hand job to a guy I didn’t like very much. I just got so lonely.

  Beat.

  My big blond American friend had transferred to a public university in Wisconsin because her grades weren’t high enough, and my mathematics professor had ended our affair when his wife found out about it. So I went to a film noir appreciation club and this . . . person kept talking to me so I gave him a hand job. He was the type of guy who’d put tick marks in a volume of Kafka wh
en he approved of the turn of phrase.

  Beat.

  After that, I was his girlfriend for . . . nine months, because . . . he kept saying he was horribly in love with me and then he . . . started moving his things into my apartment . . . ?

  Beat.

  Then one evening we went to the symphony, and he held the program in one hand and a pen in the other, and after each movement he crossed it out in the program.

  Beat.

  Later that night I picked a fight with him. We were at my apartment and I was making him dinner, and sometimes when I make dinner for men I feel resentment irrationally rising in me. I told him it was terrible when he talked about how haunting the sound of the female orgasm is because how would he know?

  Beat.

  He looked . . . stunned and he said he thought he gave me lots of orgasms. I said: “Fine, fine that’s true, but they’re not haunting.”

  Beat.

  I said it was disgusting he pretended he didn’t watch pornography. It didn’t make it any better that he watched vintage pornography from the seventies, with all the pubic hair. It wasn’t a highbrow hobby: it was pornography. I mean, he jerked off to it. Was he jerking off ironically?

  Beat.

  He started ripping a hole in my sofa. Then he put his head down and cried. He said he was sorry, a couple of times.

  Beat.

  I couldn’t stop—I couldn’t . . . stop: he was face down in the sofa and I said: “Music is my solace!” But I yelled it, like, “music is my solace!!!” Which is a dumb, incomprehensible thing to yell at someone.

  Beat.

  When he stopped . . . crying, he said he’d send a friend for his things.

  Beat.

  He crept out: he . . . crept out.

  Beat.

  So, yeah, I guess that was a little . . . cold of me. Yeah. But he was only crying like that because I made him feel like a loser. It wasn’t heartbreak.

  Beat.

  It wasn’t.

  Transition.

  sarah jean goes and picks up her violin . . .

  Scene Ten.

  sarah jean is staring at an electric alarm clock, one of those old ones with big bold white numerals that click over. The clock reads 6:44 a.m. sarah jean is holding her violin and her bow’s poised in the air, ready to play, but she’s waiting. After at least twenty seconds the clock stutters a little—tries to click over—and then it clicks over to 6:45 a.m., and sarah jean starts playing the violin.

  Tantrum.

  She’s playing it furiously, loudly, and at a frenetic pace. She’s throwing a sort of musical tantrum. After twenty seconds to a minute of horrible sound elliot stumbles in, in a shirt and boxers or pyjamas: he’s in the clothes that he sleeps in.

  elliot: Buster! Buster! No, come on: what’s happening?

  elliot snatches the bow out of sarah jean’s hands. sarah jean starts jumping and grabbing at it to try and get it back from elliot.

  sarah jean: Give it to me! Give me my . . . bow . . . ! I’m practising! I’m practising: this is my practice time!!!

  elliot: This is not your practice time.

  sarah jean: Yeah it is!

  elliot holds the bow even higher. It’s well out of her reach. elliot and carmen stare at each other, panting.

  elliot: It’s 6:45 a.m.

  sarah jean: I know it’s 6:45 a.m.! Mom said I could start practising at 6:45 a.m.!

  elliot: That can’t be true.

  sarah jean: It is true—!!!

  elliot: No, I’m not giving you back the bow: you’re going to snap it—

  sarah jean: (jumping for it again) I want to snap it!

  elliot: No!

  sarah jean: I want to snap it uuuhhhhhhhhhrrrraaaaaahhhhhhh!

  sarah jean struggles with him again. When she fails to get her bow back, she throws herself onto the floor.

  elliot: Sarah Jean—

  sarah jean: Fuck off!

  elliot: Whoa!!!

  sarah jean is sobbing on the ground. elliot looks at her for a second, and then:

  (calling) Carmen!

  sarah jean: (muffled) She can fuck off too!

  elliot: Okay, Buster, this is . . . ! What’s happening?

  sarah’s tantrum worsens.

  Please don’t swear like that.

  sarah jean: (muffled by the tantrum) You swear!

  elliot: I swear in lectures—

  sarah jean: Uuuhhhhhhhhhrrrraaaaaahhhhhhh!

  Beat. sarah jean stares at elliot: waiting for a response.

  elliot: I swear in lectures because it’s funny when scientists swear, and I’m trying to introduce a little humour into theoretical physics.

  And the momentary lull in sarah jean’s tantrum is over. sarah jean responds to elliot with an even bigger tantrum. elliot looks down at her for a few more seconds.

  (to himself, as sarah jean freaks out) Okay.

  elliot picks up a piece of paper and a pencil off the ground, and then he draws on the paper. sarah jean’s tantrum winds down. She sits up, wipes her face, and looks at what elliot’s doing. sarah jean hyperventilates as she talks.

  sarah jean: Y . . . you’re . . . you’re drawing?

  elliot: Yeah.

  sarah jean: Wh . . . wh . . . ?

  elliot: What am I drawing?

  sarah jean: Y . . . yeah.

  elliot: Time.

  sarah jean: Why?

  elliot: Tell me, Buster: is time a road, or a hospital, or a prison?

  sarah jean: Mm.

  elliot: Mm?

  sarah jean: It’s a w . . . war.

  elliot: Yeah? Why?

  sarah jean: I don’t know.

  elliot: Yeah, and what does it sound like?

  Beat. Then as elliot draws:

  If I listen very closely, I hear it.

  sarah jean: Yeah?

  elliot: Mmmhmm, yeah.

  Beat.

  For a long time it was . . . very faint.

  sarah jean: Yeah?

  elliot: Yeah, and it sounded . . . like students, pushing back their chairs . . .

  elliot touches a hand to his forehead: pain.

  . . . and like a little girl counting backwards from ten . . .

  sarah jean: Yeah?

  elliot: But then I met your mom, and I could hear it clearly for the first time. It was your mom whispering my name over and over and over—Elliot, Elliot, Elliot—like that, and it—it was the most beautiful—the most beautiful sound.

  Beat.

  Do you think time has a sound?

  sarah jean: Mm . . .

  elliot: Can you hear it?

  sarah jean: Mm. Sometimes.

  elliot: And what does it sound like to you?

  sarah jean: (shy) Mmmmmm . . .

  elliot: Most people think time sounds like a clock.

  elliot realizes.

  Oh shit, oh crap, I’m sorry—

  sarah jean: You were supposed to get me a new alarm clock. And Mom won’t get me a new alarm clock because you’re supposed to do it. And I have a very crappy alarm clock, Dad. It’s broken: it doesn’t go off. So I got up late. It’s six forty-eight and I haven’t had my shower, I haven’t had my breakfast, I won’t have time to practise . . . (hyperventilates) . . .

  Beat.

  (very sincerely upset) I can’t . . . g . . . get the morning back . . . (hyperventilates) . . .

  elliot: No, you can’t.

  Beat.

  You know you’re eight years old, right?

  sarah jean: Yeah I know I’m eight years old!

  elliot: Okay, okay, you know that time’s a construct? It’s made up?

  sarah jean: What are you even talking about?!

  elliot: I’m saying, don’t get ups
et about time, because it’s . . . fake. The universe is timeless, and there are timeless laws. Time itself doesn’t have substance. When you’re older you’ll read Newton and Einstein and you’ll see it’s like religion: it’s just a dumb story that got repeated too much.

  Pause: sarah jean stares at elliot.

  sarah jean: (low) You are making me very angry.

  elliot: Okay, Buster, I’m sorry, let me give you the schedule, you and Mom are coming to the keynote lecture I’m giving today at the University of Toronto, do you remember that—

  sarah jean: Uuuhhhhhhhhhrrrraaaaaahhhhhhh then . . . then when are you getting me the clock?!!!!!

  carmen enters.

  sarah jean looks at carmen and then moves to the door.

  carmen: (to sarah jean, as she’s exiting) Honey . . .

  sarah jean storms out.

  carmen and elliot look at each other.

  elliot makes a not totally sincere “I give up,” “I have no idea what that was about” hand gesture—he’s lying to cover his ass.

  elliot: I . . . don’t know . . . !

  Beat.

  carmen comes over and holds him.

  carmen: I think she’s still upset you forgot her at school.

  elliot: I’m a . . .

  elliot touches a hand to his forehead: pain.

  I’m a shitty father?

  Beat.

  I’m a shitty father, is that the . . . ? Is that where this is going, because let’s just get to it.

  carmen: You’re a good father who occasionally forgets to pick his daughter up from school—

  elliot: I’m a shitty father.

  carmen: (smiling) You’re a somewhat shitty father, but you have other qualities. You’re also “a mediocre scientist . . . ”

  elliot: Ha ha.

  carmen: “ . . . who, despite potential, has failed to make a significant contribution to his chosen field.”

  elliot: (sincerely searching) Are you quoting . . . something . . . ?

  carmen: Yeah: you.

  elliot: I said that?

  carmen: Yeah.

  elliot lifts a hand to his forehead again: pain.

  (kind) You okay?

  elliot: I—my head aches.

  carmen: She was yelling very loudly.

  elliot and carmen smile a little.

  sarah jean comes in.

  SJ, I’m going to take you to get the clock after the lecture.

  sarah jean: Okay but how long from now?