Imaginary Friends (6 page)

MARY
: So you overlooked “the bad stuff.” The technicalities. The purges, the murders, the Nazi-Soviet Pact—how could you have remained sympathetic after the Nazi-Soviet Pact?

LILLIAN
: Miss Hellman does not wish to discuss the Nazi-Soviet Pact—

MARY
: I know. And you never did. You just said, “We were wrong,” as if that was that, as if that took care of the fact that you looked the other way when it was all staring you in the face—

LILLIAN
: You’re just angry because we became heroes—

MARY
: What?

LILLIAN
: Think about it. It’s true. The war ended, the Russians were no longer our allies, I was blacklisted, thousands of people were blacklisted. And all of you—all of you who were so “right” about things didn’t lift a finger to help. And then the House Un-American Activities Committee came along and gave us all a chance to do something brave.
[Beat.]
And I went there on that bad morning—

MARY
: In your Balmain dress—

LILLIAN
: Yes. In my Balmain dress and a brand-new hat and a beautiful pair of white kid gloves. I was fabulous.

MARY
: And lest anyone forget, she wrote an entire book about it. You’d have thought the woman had gone to jail. Years later there was a play on Broadway—the testimony of the people who’d appeared before the committee, all of it in the public record, and of course her statement was read, it was
the high point of the play, and she actually asked to be paid for it.

LILLIAN
: I did. And guess what? They paid me!

She laughs
.
MARY
laughs, too. A knock at the door
.
LILLIAN
stands and goes over to a door. She opens it. A
SUMMONS SERVER
is there
.

SUMMONS SERVER
: Are you Lillian Hellman?

LILLIAN
: Yes?

He hands her a subpoena
.
LILLIAN
opens the envelope. Then she puts on her hat and her white kid gloves
.

ENSEMBLE
:

GIVE US NAMES
DO YOU SWEAR
ARE YOU NOW
DID YOU EVER
THE COMMITTEE IS IN ORDER
GIVE US NAMES
ARE YOU NOW
HAVE YOU EVER EVER BEEN
STATE YOUR NAME
SO HELP YOU GOD

ANNOUNCER
: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

LILLIAN
:
[From her letter to the committee.]
“I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely
innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive.… To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.… I would, therefore, like to come before you and speak of myself. I am prepared to tell you anything you wish to know about my views or actions if your Committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the Committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the Fifth Amendment at this hearing.”

MARY
yanks at the red parachute drop, and it vanishes
.

What happened at Sarah Lawrence
.

MARY
emerges from the wings, pulling a rope that brings a porch onto the stage
.

LILLIAN
: What’s this?

MARY
: Sarah Lawrence College. You skipped right over it.

LILLIAN
: It wasn’t that important.

MARY
: It’s where we met.

LILLIAN
:
[Referring to her letter to the committee.]
As far as I’m concerned, that was the first-act curtain.

MARY
: But first Sarah Lawrence. It’s 1948.

LILLIAN
: I suppose I have to get the tea.

MARY
: I got the porch.

LILLIAN
goes offstage and returns pushing a table with a large silver tea service of cups and saucers
.
MARY
arranges the women in the
ENSEMBLE
.
She calls in
HAROLD TAYLOR
and places him to the right of
LILLIAN
’s chair
.

LILLIAN
: There were many more people than this.

MARY
: We don’t have many more people.

LILLIAN
: Well, then use some of the men to fill in.

Some of the men in the
ENSEMBLE
sit with the women
.

Where was I?

MARY
: Over there.

LILLIAN
walks to her chair
.

Are you ready?

LILLIAN
: Are you ready?

MARY
: All right. Stephen Spender invited us to speak—

LILLIAN
: I don’t think so. Harold Taylor, the president of Sarah Lawrence, invited us to speak. Not that it matters.

MARY
: You’re talking to the students when I come in. Stephen is there.

STEPHEN SPENDER
waves hello
.

You’re out on the sunporch at the president’s house—

STEPHEN SPENDER
: No, no, that’s not right—

MARY
and
LILLIAN
look at
STEPHEN SPENDER
.

It wasn’t at the president’s house—

MARY
: Where was it, then?

STEPHEN SPENDER
: It was at
my
house—

MARY
: On Stephen Spender’s sunporch, then—

STEPHEN SPENDER
: We didn’t have a sunporch.

MARY
: It was definitely on a sunporch. So it must have been at the president’s house—

STEPHEN SPENDER
: I’m positive it was at my house—

LILLIAN
stands
.

LILLIAN
: Never mind. What am I saying?

MARY
: You’re talking about John Dos Passos.

As
LILLIAN
sits back down:

LILLIAN
: You have to explain who John Dos Passos is—

STEPHEN SPENDER
:
[By way of explanation.]
A famous novelist and radical—

MARY
: You were saying that John Dos Passos had gone to Spain during the Spanish civil war and turned against the loyalist cause because he didn’t like the food in Madrid. And you didn’t notice me, probably because I looked quite young at the time. I couldn’t bear it. All those lies, so smooth, as if they were coming out of a tube. And you were so clever. You weren’t being hostile at all. “Oh, that Dos,” you were saying—

LILLIAN
:
[Repeating.]
“Oh, that Dos.” Like that?

MARY
: Just like that. “He did love his food.”

LILLIAN
:
[Repeating.]
“He did love his food.”

MARY
: Is it coming back to you?

LILLIAN
: No. It doesn’t sound like me at all.

MARY
: And I interrupted. And I said—
[To the
STUDENTS
,
heatedly.]
“John Dos Passos didn’t turn against the loyalists, he turned against the communists. And it wasn’t because of the food in Madrid—it was because one of his closest friends in Spain, an incredibly brave man named Andres Nin, had just
been tortured and murdered in a communist prison by Stalinists, that’s why.”
[She has moved herself to tears.]

LILLIAN
: Were you actually crying?

MARY
: I was very upset. And then you jangled the bracelets—

MARY
signals for the bracelets to descend. They do
.
LILLIAN
looks up to see them
.

LILLIAN
: But I never wore bracelets.

MARY
: Of course you wore bracelets.

LILLIAN
: You must have me confused with someone else.

MARY
: There are pictures of you wearing bracelets—

LILLIAN
: Nonsense. Get those goddamn bracelets out of here.
[They vanish.]

STEPHEN SPENDER
:
[Thinking it over.]
I’m starting to wonder if I was even there—

MARY
: Of course you were there—

LILLIAN
: Maybe he wasn’t—

STEPHEN SPENDER
:
[To
MARY
]
I do remember that afterwards she said we’d arranged the entire episode so we could redbait her.

MARY
: Well, how could we have red-baited her? How could we have arranged for her to say something so perfectly idiotic?

LILLIAN
: Are you the only person who’s allowed to say that people sometimes do serious things for shallow reasons?

MARY
: But in his case, it wasn’t true.

LILLIAN
: How do you know? How do we know why anyone does anything? In real life, I mean.

STEPHEN SPENDER
: If I could just throw something in here that is only going to confuse things, I’m afraid. A few months earlier, before any of this happened, I had dinner with John Dos Passos. He had been in England, which had just elected a socialist government, and he announced that he no longer believed in socialism because he’d gone to a restaurant in London and found a bug in his chicken.

A beat
.

LILLIAN
: A bad moment for your team.

MARY
: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for that.

STEPHEN SPENDER
: It doesn’t mean your version isn’t accurate—

MARY
: It’s not “my version.” It’s what happened.

LILLIAN
: It’s not what happened.

STEPHEN SPENDER
: What do
you
think happened?

LILLIAN
: What do I think happened? I thought you’d never ask.
[She stands and moves some of the furniture around.]
I was here.
[She sits down.]
Harold—you’re next to me.

And the sunlight was coming into the room, like so—
[A light hits her.]
Even more sunlight.
[The light gets a little brighter.]
Lovely. And the students were sitting on the floor, because so many of them had turned up to see me that there weren’t enough chairs—

The
STUDENTS
sit on the floor
.

They sat cross-legged, looking up at me like little fish—no, like baby birds in a nest, waiting to be fed—
[She motions to the
STUDENTS
to tilt their chins upward slightly.]
When I suddenly noticed—over there—

She motions to
MARY
to move to the other side of the room
.
MARY
crosses and the
STUDENTS
turn to watch her
.

The students never took their eyes off me—

The
STUDENTS
turn back to
LILLIAN
.

—a quivering dark cylinder of rage.
[To the lighting person.]
Even darker.
[The light on
MARY
dims.]
She was holding a teacup and saucer—

MARY
is handed a teacup and saucer, or perhaps a teacup and saucer are lowered from the ceiling on a hook
.

I was talking. I’d been asked a question—

A
STUDENT
raises her hand
.

STUDENT
: Did you ever meet Ernest Hemingway?

LILLIAN
: “Did I ever meet Ernest Hemingway?” And I was answering. I was saying …
[To the
STUDENTS
.]
I would have starved to death in Spain but for Ernest. Because when I told him I was going there, during the war, he said to me, “Bring food, there’s none.” And when he and I had dinner in Madrid, in someone’s apartment, I brought sardines and pâté. And Ernest said thank God I had, because Dos Passos had just been there and hadn’t brought any food at all and ended up eating everyone else’s. That’s what I said, it was completely harmless, and Madam over there began shaking—you could hear her teacup rattling against the saucer.
[To
MARY
.]
Go ahead. I did your version. Do mine.

MARY
starts shaking her teacup against her saucer
.

And she said—

MARY
: How can you say that about Dos?

LILLIAN
:
Dos
. So she would be sure I would know she knew him. “How can you say that about Dos?” What had I said? And perhaps I said something like “Well, Dos loved his food,” and she reacted quite bizarrely. She said—