Listening to Medea and Listening to Myself Listening to Medea

by Mildred Antonelli

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Medea, a character in Greek mythology, is a powerful sorceress, the niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and daughter of King Aetes of Colchis.  Jason is a great Greek hero, son of the king of Iolchis who has been killed by Jason’s uncle, who has usurped the throne.  Jason’s uncle promises to give him his inheritance and the throne if he accomplishes a number of seemingly insurmountable tasks, among which is to retrieve the golden fleece, which was guarded by a powerful dragon on the island of Colchis, a kingdom regarded as less civilized than Iolchis..

Medea falls in love with him and promises to help him in return for which, if he succeeds, he would take her with him and marry her.  Medea puts the dragon to sleep with her narcotic herbs, enabling Jason to take the fleece and sail away with her.  The king and her brother pursue them.  Medea kills her brother so that their father has to bury him, giving them time to flee.  The king of Iolchis, who is old and infirm, reneges on his promise.  Medea persuades his daughters that if they kill him she will have them reborn as young and healthy, a promise she does not keep.  Rather than this winning Jason the throne they and their children are forced to flee.  They settle in Colchis where the king offers Jason his daughter in marriage, and he accepts.

Betrayed and abandoned, Medea takes revenge first by sending Jason’s future bride a beautiful dress and golden crown covered in poison.  She dies and her father dies trying to save her.  Medea continues her revenge by murdering her children by Jason, after which she leaves Colchis and flies to Athens in a golden chariot driven by dragons sent by her grandfather Helios, god of the sun—the triumph of primitive emotion over reason..

Medea is a mythical fictional archetypically drawn character created to represent a universal human dynamic.  Euripides warns of the danger of focusing too narrowly on the veneer of civilization, which may hide or obscure but does not change the reality of our powerful, primitive, often irrational but natural human emotions.  In this play emotional truth prevails.  Euripedes did not create the character of Medea in his play in order to explore her intrapsychic development and organizing principles.  Other than the concrete events related, which everyone in his audience knew, we know little of her past history, and nothing of her early childhood,.    Events of early childhood, of course, are often the primary focus of psychoanalytic inquiry.  Euripides’ play is successful because Medea’s issues are universal, resonating through the ages, lending themselves to identification over a wide range of subjectivities.  Since my interpretation of Euripides’ Medea is of necessity through the prism of my time and place in history, this adds another element to the subjectivity through which I understand her. Nevertheless she feels real to me.

First I will speak about our imagined therapeutic encounter.  Later I will speak about my own experience as related to that encounter.  I imagine meeting Medea  for the first time after her meeting with Aegeus in which she has arranged for her reception and protection in Athens, and after she has described her plan of retaliation, to which the chorus responds,  “This   way will bring you the deepest misery.”  For my reading purposes, she is a victim, not yet a patient.  Having  been  humiliated ,   hurt and betrayed by someone on whom she counted to protect and cherish her, and given her personality, character, and mood,  it is unlikely that at this moment that she would enter psychoanalysis.  And yet I imagine her as my patient nonetheless.

Medea has been traumatized.  Her trauma is personal, meaning that her trauma is caused by her close relationships with others.  In this way it is different  from traumata caused by natural phenomena, such as an earthquake or a tsunami, or traumata caused by shared historical events, such as war.  And her response to the trauma is unique to her, her history, her current organizing principles, and the particular circumstances in which she finds herself.  Medea needs an empathic listener, someone who mirrors her experience.  She feels alienated from most of Corinth, and though there is some sympathy for her, and outrage at her plight, as an analyst I wonder if Medea feels she has been heard.  I wonder how much she has allowed herself to say.  Her pride is helpful in maintaining her sense of herself as a cohesive whole; and it is central in the image she wants to present to her world.

Medea dissociates and conceals her feelings of inner emotional vulnerability.  Her audience, who care about both Medea and her children, are understandably horrified by what she plans.  They  want  to dissuade her from her chosen path.  Given that intent, can they really listen?  Can they empathize without judgment?  Would an analytic audience respond differently?

Though I understand Medea is strong and confident, I believe she is deeply in need of mirroring. It would be helpful for her to know that someone can: 1) empathically connect with the depth and pain of her experience, 2) affirm  her perceptions, 3) feel compassion for her, and 4) understand how she made her decisions.  That listener might not necessarily agree with her plan.  If  Medea felt understood, felt able to voice her concerns, might it not be possible that some reordering might take place? Viable alternatives might emerge.   I believe that  as Medea and I interact with one another in a psychoanalytic mode, our empathic connection would be deepened.  Both of us would expand our understanding and her fragmented sense of self would be strengthened.

Medea has been abruptly betrayed and abandoned.  She has been discarded for opportunistic reasons by Jason to whom she has given so much.  While the earth did not shake for the community, Medea suffered an emotional earthquake.  Such traumata evoke terrors deeply buried in the unconscious.  On a preconscious preverbal level such traumata evoke fear of disorganization, fear of loss of tenderness, and fear of death.  Divorce and moving are among the highest stresses people experience.  Add to that total emotional abandonment, turnoff and disconnection for no apparent reason intrinsic in the relationship.  Add to that moving when you do not know where you can go.

Medea has been violated by someone she trusted.  The proverbial rug has been pulled out from under her.  Jason’s unexpected coldness is not only painful, it is frighteningly disorienting.  It challenges her deepest held beliefs and expectations concerning herself and her relationship to her world.  Medea’s trust in her world has been challenged–an experience common to trauma victims.  Paradoxically at such terrifying moments there is potential for change.  Were I her therapist, I believe I would  create a holding environment in which hope might be engendered.

Medea has been treated as if she didn’t exist.  Such an experience evokes unconscious nonverbal memories of early infancy experiences of  non-response to a need.  Non-response is more frightening than negative response. Non-response evokes fear of disorganization and death.   A child would much rather be reprimanded and punished than forgotten.  Being forgotten is much more dangerous to a child’s existence and well being.

Medea’s confidence in her own reality has been shaken.  The Jason she knew disappeared.  She does not know the Jason who replaced him.   This new, unrecognizable person makes light of her plight.  Her feelings have no validity to him.  Even her sexual feelings are dismissed and derogated.  The spotlight shines blindingly on Jason’s deceptiveness, his coldness, his ruthlessness.  People to him are means to his ends.  He exploits her passion for him.  And worst of all is his glibness and ability to smoothly rationalize his behavior.  Jason is self centered and self serving.  He rationalizes, perhaps to deceive others and to maintain his illusions as to his own altruism.

With conviction he says black is white and day is night.  He dismisses the importance of anything she has done for him,  saying in fact that taking her away from her own land where she was a princess, and bringing her to Corinth, to be an alien with no status,  seen as a barbarian, he has done more for her than she for him.  This repudiation of Medea’s significance in his life is not only frightening.  It is    annihilating.  It is an attack on her sense of self.

We risk when we love.  We hope we know who our lover is, but we  never can be sure what we will find out.  Medea says, “When we need to know bad men over good the flesh bears no revealing mark.”  This too evokes the fear of disorientation carried from our earliest days.  Was the Jason she knew real or fiction?  If Medea is so mistaken about Jason, how can she believe in her own reality?

Medea, like other trauma victims, discovered how little control she has over her own life and how few assumptions she can make about her own future.  Natural forces impinge on us. Intentional and unintentional acts of others also impinge.  Such impingements are especially difficult for people who perceive  themselves to be responsible, conscientious, organized, and in control.  In my practice people often come to me because they have been traumatized by accidents.  These people are victims, not perpetrators.  The awareness that things happen beyond one’s control is overwhelming: “No matter what I do, how careful I am, I can’t control other people.”  And thus they suffer severe narcissistic injury, even if they are not necessarily narcissistically organized.

Caught in this maelstrom of the dreaded disorganization and disorientation, fear of death and loss of the source of tenderness, there is hope.  Ferenczi says, “Great need, and especially mortal anxiety, seem to possess the power to waken up suddenly and to put into operation latent dispositions, which uncathected, waited in deepest quietude for their development.”  I agree with Ferenczi because of my work with people deeply traumatized by events beyond their control.  This is why I find work with these patients so exciting.  There is the seed of this awakening when Medea says she chose “with much love and little wisdom.”  Later she says, “My folly was committed long ago when I was ready to desert my father’s house won over by a Greek.”  Listening to these words,   I see a ray of hope where Medea does not.

As Medea’s therapist I wonder how can I leverage this ray of hope?  In my imagined role as Medea’s  therapist, I would do what I could to create an atmosphere that could lead to her letting me in on her emotional and cognitive processes, memories of choices made and how they were made.  When she says she showed “much love and little wisdom” coming to Iocus by Mount Pelion, I would be gently curious.  Behind those few words there is a world of feeling and thought.  My gentle questioning might allow Medea to stop for a moment.  We begin to know one another.

Where appropriate I would echo Medea with my own words.  I would be careful to mirror rather than to add or change.   I would be observing her pattern of being brilliantly calculating in terms of her goal, not visualizing or dismissing the fallout, and burning her bridges.  It seems to emerge in intense relationships as when she fell intensely in love with Jason, and now, when she is immersed in intense hatred.  At those times, she cannot conceive of other people existing as centers of their own lives.  Her perspective becomes narcissistic, a narcisssism called into existence by trauma, as a necessary defense against loss of self.  People become for her nothing but obstacles in her path or instruments for her use in achieving her objective.  Her children have no independent existence for her, and are seen by her as her only weapons in her determination to do to Jason the equivalent to or worse than what he did to her.

I would understand that at this moment only her rage matters to her.  When one’s survival is threatened, as is hers, one dissociates thoughts or feelings that do not implement the anticipated course.  I would need to be very alert to any opportunity to express my curiosity about what she refers to as her folly and lack of wisdom.  But I would also need to be very sensitive to when it would be disjunctive.  I would need to be very patient and understand that what I think might be inaccurate, but may be more of an effort to provide myself a structure in an upsetting and disorienting atmosphere.

I am now going to talk about my own imagined experience while listening to Medea.  Listening to Medea is an extreme and urgent challenge to the limits of one’s empathic capacity.  How much of the depth of her pain, despair, unacknowledged terror and confusion, and anger am I capable of allowing myself to feel?  I know that when one is in danger survival requires focus on the task at hand, and dissociation of other thoughts and feelings.  But Medea has disowned other possibilities.   She sees evoking horror in others as necessary for her physical and psychological survival.  She chooses increased alienation when what she needs is stronger empathic connection to others.  Or does she feel suicide is her only option, and can accept it, if she can deal Jason an emotionally mortal blow in the process?   Can I listen to the horror she is envisioning and feel empathy, even compassion?  I can identify with her hurt and rage.  But a part of me is very judgmental.  This is a tendency I am capable of transcending, but could I in this case?  And how would I?

My desire to fix it, to alter the course of events, to influence her would emerge.  The pull might be overwhelming.  Much as it would be to her benefit were it possible, it would subvert my efforts to develop a co-created therapeutic relationship.  I would be listening to chinks in her armor. Encountering them I would need to be very finely tuned to my own inner sensations to know what to try to do.  Should I do nothing now but just reflect on what I have observed?   Should I be curious? Does my curiosity come from my desire to fix it? When I feel I do not know what to do or say should I just listen?   Just sitting there not knowing what to do or say, but just listening, might be the best way to create space for Medea to express more.

I would be thinking about different aspects of her personality and character, and Jason’s.  I would tend to be imagining the interplay between them in developing their relationship, comparing and contrasting them as people in developmental terms.  I would want to know more to answer all these questions in my mind.  It might be useful for me to think about this while I am away from her.  In her presence it would divert me from listening. Perhaps all this thinking is a retreat for me from the empathically shared emotional turbulence into the safer harbor of intellectualizing.

There are other voices I hear when I listen to myself.  It’s hopeless.   She will never change.  What is there to work with?  Is there any potential interest or will to engage in this process?  And then my mind goes to revenge.  Seeing Jason more clearly as someone by whom she is   repelled, could lead her to say, “Good riddance, thank the gods I have children.”   She could then occupy herself with getting on with her life.  Why does she cling to the bad object?  Why does she not consider the advice of her friend Aegeus? He says, “If–as you say–he’s a bad lot, let him go.”  Why are retaliation and revenge, with its negative consequences to herself and others her only option?  And here I find myself changing my mode of listening.  I have moved from being primarily subject oriented to the more distant role of analyst as participant observer, effecting by doing and being but not manipulating.

I can understand the feelings involved in thinking and fantasying about revenge.  I have gone over in my mind what I remember of people talking to me about revengeful feelings, desires and plans.  I have thought about my own anger.  I cannot identify with carrying out such fantasies.  Perhaps if my listening brought out more of Medea’s feelings I might be able to feel what she felt.

I especially have difficulty with regard to her children.  I have not been a perfect mother.  In fact I have many regrets about my mothering.  I have worked intensively with mothers.  I have been able to emotionally understand much that I myself never experienced.  But I cannot understand Medea’s hatred for her children as described by her nurse early in the play.   I cannot feel the feelings that could lead to their murder.  I feel there is nothing in the play to explain it.  Perhaps this is because Medea’s character was created to depict universal dynamic tendencies, not to understand a particular individual.

I do not feel empathic resonance when she says, “Not that I would think of leaving my sons behind me for those who hate me to insult.”  I do not feel it when she says, ”No one will take my children from me.”

I do not feel cherishing behind those words.  On the contrary, in the context of the intense emotions stirred up by Jason’s behavior, her children have become possessions–objects, projections and extensions of herself. The children are no longer human beings with their own reality.  They have become means to her ends, in this case to hurt Jason, to make him feel her reality.  It seems to be another expression of her patterning in an intense relationship, whether of love or of hate.

As a clinician with a legal and ethical obligation to report intention to do physical harm to one’s self or to another, and as a human being with concern for the safety and well-being of children, I would have to consider carefully how to intervene with Medea once I heard directly her plans to take revenge by destroying her children, or how to intervene if I intuited her plans.

Medea’s decision is an individually determined one. We know nothing about the developmental experiences that shaped her personality. I wonder, what are some of the dynamics that might feed into her determination to wreak revenge “by any means necessary”?

I can think of a few.  One could be her response to being dismissed as someone not even to be considered by Jason, Creon, and his daughter.  As if she did not exist, or as if she would not have a voice were she there with them, they have made a decision that undercuts her life completely.  This could impel her to want to show them that she is not a nonentity or completely helpless and powerless.   She is an individual with a mind, a will, emotions and power even if  the only power she has is to destroy.  Medea wants to have an impact.   She may feel that her acts will restore her sense of self.  She believes they may  provide for her safety by terrorizing those who might seek to harm or disrespect her.  She would   rather be feared than pitied.  She says, “The laughter of my enemies I will not endure,” and “Let no one think of me as humble or weak or passive.  Let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends.”  And when she finds herself wavering as she thinks of her children, she says to herself, “You must not invite laughter from Jason and his allies.”

Phillip Vellacott, who translated and introduced the edition I read, writes, ”And the ending of Medea , with the sun himself, the source of all life and warmth, vindicating the cause of passion, disorder, violent cruelty, against the cold , orderly, self protective processes of civilized man is a reminder that the universe is not on the side of civilization; and that a life combining order with happiness is something men must win for themselves in continual struggle with an unsympathetic environment.”

A second strong motivation is the quest for justice.  There is no legally sanctioned punishment for what was done to Medea.    This is another often difficult to accept reality of our lives.  Nature is not just.  We try to create systems of justice to more effectively live and control our lives, but these systems are flawed, and the frustration engendered by this reality may at times seem unendurable.  Medea says, “None of them shall hurt me and not suffer for it.  Let me work in bitterness and in pain they shall repent.”

A third trigger to revenge is Jason’s dismissal of Medea’s feelings and his complete denial of the impact on her of his behavior.  He deepens the wound, intensifies the pain and thereby further fuels the fire.  Studies have found that a significant factor in recovery from trauma inflicted on one individual by a trusted other, is acknowledgment or non-acknowledgment by the perpetrator.

As I thought about Medea I found myself  thinking more about my own life and my own relationships, central and peripheral.  I feel or hope that it has led me to be clearer, more caring and accepting of myself and the other, and more patient. I feel it has deepened and expanded my understanding of human nature.  In individual relationships and in history we see that oppression seeds and nurtures violence.  And when the oppressed rise up they can be cruel, vengeful and unjust, meting out punishment to the innocent and the blameless for the deeds of those who oppressed them over time and generations.

I would like to make two final points.  One is an example from more recent history.  Recent interest in understanding and acknowledging the important role the Soviets played in defeating Hitler has led to looking into records not looked at before.  These records also reveal that many thousand German women were raped by Russian soldiers out of vengeance for the most extreme sufferings of their people during that war.  But not all victims reacted that way. Visiting Leningrad I heard a survivor of the 900 day siege of that city say, as he described their ordeal, “I would not want that to happen to my worst enemy.”

The second point I would like to make is that there is a strong feminist strand in Medea.  Women had no rights or privileges then except as bestowed by their relationships to men.  Medea bitterly refers to this often in the play.  There is no wrath like the wrath of a woman scorned.  In the role of participant observer, that I slipped into in trying to relate to Medea’s revenge I observe who we are as human beings, and the playing out of cause and effect.  The way we treat others leads to feelings in them.  These feelings may or may not be expressed.  They may be acted out in different ways, sometimes symbolically. Or they may not be acted out.  Or they may be expressed in different seemingly unrelated symptoms or behaviors.  It is who we are.

Mildred Antonelli, Ph.D.
June 2004

REFERENCES

Euripides.  Medea   and Other Plays. (1963).   Translated  with an Introduction by Phillip Vellacott.  Penguin Books.  pp. 17-61.

Ferenczi, Sandor., M.D. (1988).  Contemporary  Psychoanalysis.  P.204

Van der Kolk, Brand A.,  McFarlane, Alexander C, and Weisath Lars, Editors. (1996) Traumatic Stress.

Guilford  Press. New York, London.

Dr. Mildred Antonelli originally trained at an institute that taught Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, graduating in 1970.  She practiced in that mode from the sixties until 2000, when she belatedly discovered Self Psychology and Intersubjectivity.  She began training at, and graduated from the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity.  She has worked with adults, adolescents and children of all ages in a variety of settings, including private practice.  In recent years she has worked with many patients who are victims of various kinds of trauma.  She has also taught in the framework of Interpersonal Theory privately and in Psychology and Education Departments, in graduate and undergraduate university programs.   She has read papers at conferences in the United States and abroad.

Flying Blind

By Elizabeth Singer

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Grammy’s house sits between Unkie’s and Mrs. Backus’. Unkie’s house smells like old sweaters and there’s nothing to eat there. Mrs. Backus always has date nut bread and cream cheese. Her husband keeled over before we got here. Mrs. Backus whispered the Act of Contrition in his ear.

I used to take the bus to school, but here I can walk in five minutes and come back to Grammy’s for lunch. My job is to find Grampy and tell him it’s time for lunch. Grampy doesn’t go far because he has bad lungs from smoking. I can hear him breathe all over the house, even at night. When we first got here, his breathing seemed so loud. Now I only notice when I don’t hear it.

“Grammy says come to lunch.”

He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t come either.

Back to the lunch table, I sit with my sister Maryrose, my mother, my little brother Tommy and Grammy. Nobody is allowed to start until Grampy gets here and nobody knows when he’s coming. My sister Bette used to do this job, but since she had her tonsils out, she only eats buttered noodles and sleeps. If she ever gets better, she can have her job back.

And then his breathing comes closer. He sits down, and now we can eat.

School’s okay. I sit in the back because I am tall, but to see the homework assignments, I have to walk up the aisle and put my nose on the blackboard. Mary Ann Cloonan said it looked like I was smelling the chalk. Sister Magdelene called Mom and told her, “Take John to the eye doctor.”

After school, Mom makes me play cards with Bette. When I’m done with cards, Maryrose has to play checkers with her. Tommy is too little to play anything. Bette is only five. I am in the second grade and have my first Holy Communion in eight weeks. Grammy says the doctor didn’t sew up Bette’s neck right so she had to go under the knife again the next day. The TV is in her room, and Mom sleeps with her.

“Mom says to play cards with you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what? Rummy? Spit?” She doesn’t know how to play Spit, and I know it.

“Who taught you Spit?”

“Marty.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Not while you’re sick.”

Before she would have made me teach her. But she just gives up now. I don’t like her white moon face and the chips of skin hanging off her lips.

The phone rang just as I woke up the day after she was operated on. Grammy says she threw up blood. Bette told me it was black and red. Everybody but Grampy went to the hospital without eating breakfast. Uncle George came over and told me and Maryrose to go to school. As I ran down the front steps, I heard him shouting into the phone.

“What in hell are you doing to my niece?”

I shuffle and deal. We arrange our cards and put down our plays. The throw away pile gets so long it falls off the bed. I crawl around picking up all the cards and when I get up, Bette’s eyes are closed.

“Bette, are you asleep?”

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Okay.”

I spring off the bed and run lightly down the exact middle of the hall so no one can hear me running because running isn’t allowed. The stairs squeak out their song. I jam my hat on, flick my earflaps down, zip my coat, and wind my muffler twice around.

My Christmas Schwinn waits against the garage out back. The sun has already slid behind the mountain. I grab the handle bars, take three long strides and slam onto the seat. Cold air knifes into my chest and my spit makes a frozen patch in my muffler as I pump the pedals and start going fast. Rounding the corner to go down the hill, I bang my knee on a fence post. Cinders swirl up from the ruts as I bump along faster and faster. A tree branch rakes my cheek. I hear a car somewhere near Carroll, so I speed up. The car’s horn billows then fades away. Down the alley into the dim blue air, I fly.

Elizabeth Singer is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Greenwich Village and a writer. She serves on the Public Relations committee for the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) and the committee which runs the Theodor Reik Consultation Center, a low and moderate fee referral service in the tri-state area. “Flying Blind” is Liz’s first publication.

The Lines

By Stephen Michaels

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Eddie Morelli, a wiry man in his mid-seventies, was standing on the lip of the shabby, little, third-floor proscenium of the American Theater of Actors. He held a glass of fake Scotch, and looked out over the audience, as if through a picture window at the sunset. He was speaking, presumably, to the beautiful, blonde young woman seated on the Chinese red couch behind him.

It was opening night of “Private Island,” a new play in which Eddie had the leading role—an aging and unscrupulous lawyer who had made a fortune planning takeover strategies for large corporations. The role was a stretch for Eddie, a retired printer who had grown up in Brooklyn, and sounded like it—but the artistic director, Jed Jensen, was sure he could do it, and Eddie took on the challenge. He’d never played a part this large: the play was a hundred and twenty pages, and his character never stopped talking.

Things were going surprisingly well. Eddie had remembered all his lines—well, he had bobbled a couple in Act I, but he’d recovered. The lines had been his chief concern. Eddie, who never went to college, and who only began acting in his early sixties, always worried about lines. They were hard to learn, and harder to retain. But he’d worked five hours a day for weeks, and had them down.

He had the character down, too. Eddie felt wealthy, powerful, and ruthless—he was none of these things—in his dark blue, satin dressing gown. The audience was with him, and he was cruising.

“Poor James, he’s always been a hothead,” he said, snickering. He was referring to his son, who had just stormed off stage, after his father—Eddie—refused to finance his screenplay, leaving his girl friend and his father alone together. Later, she would try to seduce the old man, to get him to put up the money.

Eddie looked out the imaginary window. He was dimly aware of the tiny opening night crowd—fifteen or so, friends of the cast. The theater ran on a shoestring and couldn’t afford publicity. Nor had Eddie, who had done over twenty shows there, ever been paid.

“Tell me, Mr. Marsden—” said the girl.

“Call me Arthur,” said Eddie. He was approaching his big Act II monologue. Her next line was his cue.

“Arthur.—How did you get to be so…unforgiving?” Eddie smiled, and looked back at her. She was also sipping Scotch, and smiling, seductively.

Cheryl in the play, her real name was Sandra. She was twenty-three, a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse—and thought she was the next Naomi Thornton. Her arrogance offended Eddie, who had learned the lesson of humility, but she was good in the part. She was tall, slender and sexy, with a narrow face, sharp nose, fleshy lips, and long, straight blond hair. She wore tight jeans, and a white blouse, unbuttoned to show her cleft. Her long legs were pulled up on the couch, and she was barefoot.

“I’m a realist, my dear, that’s all,” said Eddie. “But, I had to learn the hard way.” He paused, and stared wistfully into the distance, as if considering the best way to explain. At seventy-five, Eddie—as well as the character he was playing—had a lot of past to look back on.

“I was third in my class at Yale Law—and breathing down the necks of the first two. Plenty of offers from big law firms. I was on top of the world—young, brilliant and bursting with idealism. Oh, yes, I was going to help people! I was going to make the world a better place!”

He shook his head, and laughed, as if remembering the follies of his youth, and then, since the moment had gone so well, made the mistake of glancing into the audience, to see if they were with him. Scanning a line of faces floating in the darkness, he thought he saw—Jesus, was it Larry Thornton, his acting coach? He didn’t say he was coming opening night! He was so critical! With those damned eyes of his, he’d see right through Eddie’s performance!

Eddie went blank. He couldn’t remember the next line, or any line, or where in the play he was, except he remembered it was Act II. Seeing a moment later that it wasn’t Larry after all, didn’t help. Eddie stood there, terrified, as an abyss opened before him. He ransacked his brain, trying to come up with a line, any line—nothing.  The abyss was becoming a gorge. He had to say something! He tried to remember what the character had been doing, so he could improvise, but he couldn’t remember that, either. He felt no impulse to go in any particular direction. He was lost! The audience was staring at him. The pressure was mounting; he could hardly breathe. This was the possibility he always dreaded: a complete lapse of memory!

The audience began to rustle. A few people looked around. Unable to face them any longer, he turned and walked to the bar at one side of what was supposed to represent the sumptuous living room of his mansion on his private island—the set, put together with no budget, required too much imagination. Besides the couch, there were two worn easy chairs with elegant-looking material tacked on, a glass coffee table, a rug and a standing lamp. It all came from the theater’s storehouse of old junk.

The actress followed him with her eyes. She knew something was up. He wasn’t supposed to move until later.

“I think this merits another drink,” he said, stalling for time. Her eyes flashed—he could tell she was angry. She’d shown her irritation in rehearsals several times when he’d had trouble with the lines. He poured himself more Scotch, and tried to look like he was ruminating, while he racked his brain. If only he could remember where in the play he was—he was talking to the girl, obviously—but about what? The words “a better place” popped into his mind—that was it! “I was going to make the world a better place”—referring to his youthful idealism, of course! But what was the next line? He strained, but it wouldn’t come.

“Ah, yes, I was going to make the world better,” he said, stalling. “A ridiculous idea, don’t you agree?” He looked at the girl, and sipped his Scotch. If she threw in a line or two, it would give him time. It was a cheap shot, putting the ball in her court, but he was dying! She stared at him. She looked furious.

“I really don’t have any opinion on the matter, Arthur,” she replied, icily. “Why don’t you tell me what did you did after you graduated from Yale?” Eddie’s cheeks burned. Hadn’t she made it obvious to the audience that he had forgotten his lines? But, she had given him a clue. What did he do after graduating? He remembered the facts, but not the lines. He had no choice but to improvise, again.

“I went down to New Mexico, to work on an Indian reservation,” he spluttered. Eddie didn’t like improvising.

“Ah, but what happened to make you do that?” This was an interview, not a conversation! She was feeding him, but in a way meant to humiliate him in front of the audience. But he had to continue.

“Well, I, uh, worked as a public defender, then married, and had a child—a son, and then—I met this American Indian, who became my best friend, and”—he stopped. He couldn’t just recite the backstory. If only he could remember!

“Was it he, by any chance, who suggested you go down to New Mexico?” said the girl. He thought he heard someone in the audience snicker. But he had to go on.

“Yes, his people were being forced off their land by a coal company, and needed lawyers to represent them, so I…took my wife and child, and we went down there.”

His words sounded nothing like the character’s—and the author was in the audience. What would he think of the hash Eddie was making of his dialogue? Eddie knew he had lost the character’s voice. He sounded like a printer from Brooklyn, now, not a graduate of Yale Law. He’d been worried all along that he’d been miscast. Now it was obvious to everyone!

But the clock was ticking. The girl fed him his cues, and he struggled to piece the monologue together. He got it out, in the end—badly mangled.

“Later, they were both killed, in a car accident. It made me bitter. I gave up my dream of helping people, came back east, and—well, to make a long story short, I decided to make a lot of money. And I did.” It sounded dumb, put this way.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur,” she said. She looked disgusted—but he felt she was enjoying it, somehow. He limped to the end of the scene, remembering a line here and there, but mostly faking it, and dashed off stage, covered with sweat, his heart pounding, his face flushed.

He stood in the little darkened area offstage, which was also used as storage. A few old, painted canvas flats were leaning against one wall. There was sawdust on the wooden floor, which had been painted, and repainted, black. He was shaking, and gasping for breath. His back and armpits were soaked. He felt dizzy, and his head ached, as if he’d been hit. It felt like it might explode. He wondered if he was in shock. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand.

He tried to absorb what had just happened. He had dropped a few lines now and then, but never in his whole career—he’d done close to forty shows at little theaters like this one, mostly in New York—had he gotten so lost. He’d ruined the opening night performance! He’d let down the cast, the writer, everyone! In his whole life, he’d never felt so ashamed.

He leaned his forehead against the wall—it felt cool against his burning brow. He should never have taken the part. It was his pride, really. He had wanted to prove to himself he could play a really big role—that he could remember a lot of lines—and look what happened! Besides, he was miscast. This guy was educated, wealthy, arrogant—and Eddie was from a poor Italian background, and never finished college. And he had been beaten down all his life, how could he look arrogant?  But Jensen had insisted he could do it—Eddie had been good in every show he’d done. And it was true. Everyone always said how terrific he was after the show, didn’t they? And so, he’d taken the plunge.

Everything went wrong. The rehearsal time was shortened, because of the rewrites, and the director, a woman—a girl, really—with hardly any experience, didn’t show up for rehearsals, and didn’t direct, when she did. And then Jensen wouldn’t let them have space, because he was renting out the top floor of the theater and was short on rooms, and they were stuck in Ruth’s apartment, which wasn’t big enough for them to go through the blocking, even. They just sat around reciting lines. Eddie was in a panic. He needed more rehearsal to get the lines and the blocking to come together. He called Larry a few days before opening.

“For Christ’s sake, Eddie, they’re not paying you,” Larry said. “What are you getting out of it, anyway? The director is fucking up. She should be at rehearsals, and she should make sure you have space, no matter what. They’re a bunch of amateurs! Tell her you want another week of rehearsal, in a real space, period. If she doesn’t like it, she can get someone else. You have all the power.”

But Eddie didn’t have the nerve to confront anyone. Instead, he took the burden on himself, and went on trying to achieve the impossible. And now, the worst had happened, and—but he couldn’t afford to think about it, now. He had to go back on in a couple of minutes, for the Act II finale. He had more long speeches—would he fall apart again?

He had an impulse to run out the side door, through the drab, carpeted lobby, down the two curling flights of metal stairs, and out onto West Fifty-seventh Street. His car was parked a few blocks away, he could just—but no. The show must go on. He was an actor, and that was his code.

He tried to remember his entrance line—he couldn’t at first, felt a stab of panic, then it came—“Still here? Isn’t it past your bedtime?” He could hear the girl talking on stage to his son. He glanced out at them from the wings.

“I think he’s cute,” she was saying.

“He’s seventy-three, Cheryl. ‘Cute’ hardly applies. Besides, he’s a bastard,” said the young man. Donald in life, he was dark-haired, and slender, with bushy eyebrows and big, vulnerable eyes. He sounded angry. Was it because Eddie had ruined the performance?

“Bastards can be cute,” said the girl. Despite his shame, Eddie couldn’t help thinking of the stage kiss he and Sandra would share. He never could help looking forward to it, though he always felt her holding back. How would she react tonight, after what he had done?—but that was later in the play, which he still had to get through. He was supposed to interrupt them talking about him, and pretend not to notice. He had his entrance line, thank God. The cue came. He took a breath, and stepped on stage.

***

An hour later, Eddie took his curtain call in a daze, unable to meet the eyes of the audience. The rest of the show had gone well enough—he’d acted as well as he could—but the damage was done. He hurried offstage, and down the narrow, junk-filled corridor to the dressing room. He kept his head down, trying to make himself invisible.

He bumped into Marsha, the female stage manager, who gave him a look of compassion. She was a tall, frizzy-haired young woman with big glasses and a professional manner. He couldn’t meet her eyes. She put her hand on his arm, as if about to say something, but he rushed away.

He stopped at the door to the dressing room, and peeked inside. He felt like a criminal. No one else was here, yet, thank God. The row of unpainted wooden chairs facing the mirror that ran the length of the wall, was empty. The line of bare bulbs above—some of them burned out—glared at him, hurting his eyes. The faded lime green walls, peeling in places, looked even more depressing. The room felt like an interrogation chamber. He scurried to his place and sat down.

He stared in the mirror. He looked older than he had before the show. His narrow face, with its flat nose, high cheekbones, thin lips and square chin, was paler than usual, and covered with beads of sweat. His flesh looked like wax—he was reminded of a corpse. He could see the pain in his blue-gray eyes. His curly, gray hair, combed back, looked greasy—thank God he still had his hair. The males in his family never lost it—their only positive quality. They were miserable alcoholics, mostly, like his father, who had beaten him at the slightest provocation. Eddie had been a drinker, too, but he had gone straight, after his first wife died.

He studied his reflection in the mirror. He could see the resemblance to his father. Except his father had balls. Eddie shivered. It was like facing the old man, again. He remembered him, drunk, coming up to Eddie one evening in their little apartment sixty-five years ago, or more, and swatting him, hard, on the top of his head. It stung.

“You’re so stupid!” he was saying. His breath reeked of Scotch. “I told you to buy some milk on your way home! You can’t remember nothing! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” He swatted him with each epithet. It made Eddie dizzy.

Eddie shook his head, to get rid of the memory. But his headache was worse. The lines etched in his forehead, and the furrows running from his nostrils down to the sides of his mouth, seemed to have deepened. Black eyeliner was smeared across one cheek—he must have wiped his eyes with his hand. It looked like dried blood. He ripped a tissue out of a nearby box, and wiped.

He noticed his hands—they looked old, too. He held them up to the light. The skin was tight, and criss-crossed with tiny lines, the finger joints swollen, the nails flat and brittle. Every day he got older. His heart was weak. His lungs weren’t getting enough air. He got winded climbing stairs. He could die anytime, couldn’t he?

He heard a voice in the distance. He had to hurry—the others would be coming in. Should he remove his makeup, or just change and get the hell out? He was glad his wife Daisy hadn’t been there tonight. He never let her come to openings. He made her wait until the show was going well. This one never would. There were only four performances, and he’d fucked the first one up, totally.

He heard footsteps, and looked up. It was Sandra, entering briskly. She glanced at him, sharply, then away, tossing her hair to one side. She went to her chair and sat down. She held herself erect. He glanced over at her, apologetically, but she ignored him. He could feel an icy cold coming off her. It almost made him shiver. She began removing her makeup. She applied cold cream, and rubbed it in, and removed it with a tissue. He couldn’t help admiring her profile. He remembered the kiss near the end of Act II, and how her lips had felt—so soft, so moist, so warm—so young. His own lips, he knew, were dry and hard—another sign of age. And then, she could remember her lines, and he couldn’t. Memory problems were a sign of old age, too. Wasn’t he too old to be doing this anymore? Didn’t tonight prove it?

The silence was unbearable.

“The hell with makeup,” he thought. “I’ll just change my clothes and leave.” He got up, went to the costume rack at one side of the room, and untied his dressing gown. Donald, the young man who played his son, walked in. He looked at Eddie and tried to smile.

“Hey, man, you OK?”

“Fine,” said Eddie. Donald looked at him.

“Don’t worry about a few lines. The audience didn’t even know.” Sandra made a sarcastic face in the mirror.

“I’m not worried,” said Eddie, turning away. He busied himself at the costume rack, untying his dressing gown. He’d let Donald down, too. The kid was doing such a good job—his scenes with Eddie were always full of emotion. He really gave a lot. Eddie had flubbed a couple of lines with him, too.

Donald went to his place, sat down, and cleared his throat. He began taking his makeup off. Eddie hung up his dressing gown, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“Shitty show, wasn’t it?” said Sandra to Donald. Eddie knew she was referring to him. He flushed again, and took his shirt off as fast as he could.

“I’m sure it’ll get better,” Donald said, glancing at her, awkwardly. He didn’t sound sure.

“Do you, really?” said Sandra. “We only have three more performances.” She was brushing her hair violently, pulling the loose hairs out of the brush and dropping them to the ground. “Thank God nobody who is anybody was here tonight. Just fucking relatives. But I’ve got agents coming tomorrow, and other people…I worked very hard on this!” Her cheeks were red. Eddie caught her eyes in the mirror—a frightful moment—but they both looked away.

“We all did, Sandra,” said Donald, sighing.

“You wouldn’t know it.”

“It wasn’t that bad. We needed more rehearsal.”

“You have to make do with what you get! It’s Off-off Broadway, for Christ’s sake!” Eddie felt that she was talking to him, while ignoring him, totally. It was chilling. If she was so angry about it now, why hadn’t she helped him at the time, instead of ridiculing him in front of the audience?

He put his own shirt on and buttoned it as fast as he could He unzipped his pants, and pulled them off, catching them on one shoe, and almost falling over onto the cement floor. He had to slow down—he didn’t want to make more of a fool of himself than he already had. And then, if he fell, he might break something. His bones weren’t as supple as they had once been. He freed his pants, hung them on the rack, and stood there in his pinstripe boxer shorts. His legs were spindly. His knobby knees looked ridiculous. He shivered—he was especially vulnerable to cold, another sign of old age. He felt goose bumps forming.

Ruth, the older actress who played his wife, came in. She looked exhausted. He’d acted in other plays with her, at ATA. She looked at him, a little sadly, and placed her hand on his arm, but didn’t say anything—that hurt. She was in her sixties, plump, gray-haired, with a round, fleshy face. Her hair was tied in a bun in back. She was wearing a peach-colored gown from the last scene, with strings of fake pearls—she was supposed to be a woman of wealth. She slumped in her chair.

“I’m done,” she said. She began taking off her white, high-heeled shoes—she was always complaining how they hurt.

“Ow. These shoes get smaller, or my feet get bigger, every night.” She rubbed her feet. Eddie glanced at her twice, but she would not reciprocate. She was too busy with her feet. She was ignoring him, too—and they were supposed to be friends. She began taking clasps out of her hair and dropping them on the table—click, clack. Each sound added to the insult.

Eddie pulled his pants on, carefully. No one said anything more. An eerie silence descended upon the dressing room, punctuated only by tissues being ripped out of boxes, clasps dropping on the tabletop, throats being cleared, and the rustle of clothes being removed. They got up, walked to the costume rack and back, in silence. They were freezing him out. But he deserved it, didn’t he? He had ruined their work, too.

Marsha, the stage manager, appeared at the door. She looked at them, and cleared her throat.

“The call tomorrow is for 6:30. The director wants to run the lines before the show.” No one said anything. She looked worried, and went out.

The director, Carol, appeared. She was twenty-three, and just out of Hunter College. She was slender, with short brown hair, a sharp nose, and an efficient manner.

“Well, we got through it. OK, I know, it wasn’t perfect. We can do a lot better, and we will. Consider this our real dress rehearsal. Tomorrow, we launch. Carol told you about the 6:30 call, right? We need to run the lines. Too many gaffs.” Eddie felt like throwing his chair at her. “OK, get a good night’s sleep, everyone. You need to be sharp tomorrow evening. Some important people might be coming.” She whirled and rushed out, before anyone could respond.

“Useless bitch,” said Donald.

“Aren’t they all?” said Ruth. “Directors. Ugh.”

“It wasn’t all her fault,” said Sandra, cuttingly. Eddie knew that was directed at him. He buckled his belt, grabbed his coat, ran for the door, and didn’t stop until he was safely in his car, blocks away, with the doors locked.

Stephen Michaels, a graduate of Harvard College, is an acting teacher, director, writer and actor. He has taught at many New York acting schools and studios. Currently, he teaches at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, Tisch School of the Arts, and the New School. He has directed sixteen productions in New York City. Roles he has played include Jim Tyrone in “Moon for the Misbegotten” and Judge Brack in “Hedda Gabler.” Stephen has written plays, screenplays, short stories and a memoir. Two of his plays, “Rude Awakening” and “Release,” were produced in New York. This is his first published fiction. He is also a candidate at NPAP.