The Child by Sarah Schulman Page A

rise.
    “I’ve explained this before,” Mary said calmly.
    “You have explained it. But I still don’t get it. I thought he loved your play.”
    Mary was willing to go over this one more time, even though she had long ago come to understand that there were essential facts about her world that Eva could never grok. The Theater was not orderly like the law. Eva was logical to a fault. Since the theater was entirely illogical, Eva would never understand, really, why all that cruel and lovely artifice mattered so very, very much. Why it drove people mad.

    “I’ll explain it to you again.”
    “I know you’ve explained it before–I’m sorry. But I want to get it.”
    “Okay.” Mary was willing.
    Repetition had worked in the past. It had taken Eva about three moons of explanations to finally understand that Mary really cared about Christmas and that Eva had to get her a present every year. Then Mary persuaded her that ham sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise were delicious comfort food and nothing to be made fun of.
    Eva had to learn that most people in most places say prayers before eating when they are with their parents. Witnessing it should not be considered an anthropological experience to be relayed to aesthetic friends at dinner parties. Mary spent years convincing her that it is normal to fly an American flag. That Mary’s family members are regular , not “blue-collar white Protestants,” as Eva habitually described them. Just normal. That most people do not think it is “fun” to argue at the dinner table. That when you ask someone where they are from, the typical answer is Michigan . Not The Pale of Settlement .
    Of course, Mary, too, had had to adjust very rapidly to the way Eva saw life. Anyone wanting to make it in New York had to catch on quickly. There was a hysterical kind of ambitious socialist loyalty that Eva, and the other people who dominated New York culture, had in tow. They would wish death on their opponents while inviting gross, dislocated, poor people home for dinner. What was the point? Eva should just take care of her own business and let other people fend for themselves.
    Mary could. Mary was robust, she worked three jobs, wrote plays,
she did all of this without handouts or scheming. Mary understood Eva’s way, but Eva had a hard time figuring out how the other ninety-nine percent lived. After all, Mary realized quickly, her girlfriend was the really provincial one. Eva had never lived anywhere but here. She’d never had any job but lawyer and now teacher. She’d never had a real job, where it is incredibly boring but you can’t do anything about it. And most important, Eva–who had no artistic impulse, and had never even made one drawing in her entire life–Eva had no idea of what the theater world was really like.
    “Well, he’s one of those producers who wants to know whose play it is.”
    “But it’s yours. Throw me that rag, with you?”
    “No, which character. They think that a play can only belong to one character. So they walk around saying, ‘Whose play is this?’”
    “That’s dumb.”
    “Yeah, it is dumb. It’s a limited way of looking at what theater can be.” Mary got up and poured them both more coffee. Nonfat milk for Eva; she had cystic breasts. Mary, on the other hand, could eat anything. She never gained weight and never got sick. American. Her people settled the West. “But all the guys who run the theaters arbitrarily agreed one day that a commercial play had to be about one character. They don’t have enough empathy to care about someone they don’t identify with. It’s a combination of pathology and privilege. They don’t realize that the world belongs to everyone at the same time . When you sit on a park bench and look out, the world you observe is not about one person. Life is the protagonist. Human failing. Desire.”
    “So why does he only want one?” Eva wasn’t getting it.
    “Because.…” Mary wanted to be patient. She