Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz

Author:Jon Robin Baitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2012-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

Blackout

End of Act One

ACT II

Scene One

Some hours have passed.

It is night.

The fireplace glowing. Silda is asleep on the sofa, a throw covering her. Brooke and Trip alone in the living room. They are drinking whiskey. Trip is reading the manuscript, and Brooke is pacing, anxious, making herself known.

Trip (finally, exasperated with her, stops reading) I could make us a sandwich. You haven’t eaten since breakfast.

Brooke (brightly) Oh god. Not really very hungry, actually.

Trip You’re not supposed to not eat, Brooke. (beat, a sigh) I was looking forward to all that strange food at the country club. Crab legs. A whole roast pig. And then there’s suddenly like Pad Thai and rellenos. Crazy mix.

Brooke I think I have successfully demolished Christmas Eve. (looking toward her parents’ bedroom) They’ve been in there far too long.

Trip (smiling) Preparing the attack.

Brooke (a tense smile in return) How can you stay so neutral on this?

Trip Who said I was neutral? I just said I’m still absorbing it all.

Brooke So you support me?

Trip I didn’t say that, did I? Look, I haven’t read the whole thing from start to finish, but enough. You (probably) have the right to publish anything you like, pretty much about anyone, whether it’s decent or cool or not, and they have the right to push back whether that’s decent or cool or not.

Brooke You’re like Mom. It’s like you learned chess in her womb and are playing against yourself and everyone else is only a pawn.

Trip (he stares at her, amazed) What do you want? For me to say ‘Oh boy sis—sure—“art” comes before life’?

Brooke No. That’s the worst kind of oversimplification.

Trip (grinning) But you sort of think it does. And so, you have to accept the consequences of ‘art over life’, which in this case is likely to be losing the trust of the people you love, for the sake of these opinions, these bewildering portraits of these people who seem totally unrecognizable to me.

Brooke Well, maybe your powers of observation . . .

Trip (over her) Let me finish, since you wanna know. (beat) Opinions: you turn Henry into a saint of the seventies, all patchouli and innocent questioning and reacting to the stultifying oppressiveness of these Waspified GOP zombies in the other room—and it just seems to me that maybe he was really, really sick and fucked up and needed a lot of help, and was hanging out with mad bombers at very least. I mean, Christ, I was five when this happened and reading it made ME feel guilty. But Mom and Dad: you think they don’t blame themselves?

Brooke They let him go. They weren’t helping him, they kicked him out—

Trip But—did they let him go? Or did he just fly off in rage and fury. It seems you’re looking for an apology, well, maybe they have apologized and you just haven’t noticed it. (the last is said very emphatically)

Brooke An apology? You don’t write a book because you want apologies, Trip, you write a book because of who you are—a person who writes books—the only obligation I have is to myself.

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