(Marian laughs.)
What’s funny?
MARIAN: There are so many more important problems this country now faces than campaign finance.
RICHARD: Are there? I always thought of elections as the trees which bear the fruit. They tell us everything about ourselves. Not just who we want. But what we are. And to always remember, that for a politician—they are something else. They are hurdles, obstacles, things to overcome and ride out. But for us—the rest of us—shouldn’t elections be our voice?
TIM: They appointed a place holder in Delaware for Biden’s seat, to wait for Biden’s son. That blew up in their face.
(He stops himself. Then:)
They changed the law in Massachusetts, when Teddy was ill and Romney was governor, so if Teddy died, they have to have an election. That blew up their face. Illinois, Obama’s own seat blew up. Pennsylvania—pressing the guy not to run against Specter. Boom. The White House pushing Caroline Kennedy on us? Protecting Gillibrand from—us? So on and so on.
(Short pause.)
I’m sure the Republicans have been much worse. But these guys are still bad . . .
RICHARD: Marian, I admire all the work you do. Your commitment to your town. To Rhinebeck. I admire the teas you have for the Democrats. The phone banks. All the work your husband does. I’m not trying to denigrate that . . .
MARIAN: I’m surprised at you, Jane. Very surprised.
JANE: Well, I guess we don’t really talk . . .
MARIAN: People are out of work. That’s what all this is about. If they had jobs everything would be different.
JANE: Would it? (Short pause) What do you think, Barbara?
(Barbara looks at the others.)
BARBARA: We’re just talking? We’re not arguing about anything.
RICHARD: No, no one’s arguing.
BARBARA: I have been thinking of writing a short story.
MARIAN: You haven’t written in years—
TIM (To Jane): She writes too—?
JANE: She used to write great stories. She had a story in the Atlantic. How old were you?
MARIAN: She was twenty-two.
BARBARA: I had this idea. I hadn’t wanted to write for a long time. One of my AP students, she was writing about Afghanistan. And looking for books about war—poetry, novels, plays. That got me reading the Greeks for the first time in I don’t know how long. Euripides. It helps to be older to read Euripides. (Smiles to herself) I remember seeing you in some Greek play, Uncle.
TIM (To Benjamin): Do you remember?
(He thinks, says nothing.)
BARBARA: I came across a play I’d never read—Helen.
(No one knows it.)
About Helen of Troy and how she hadn’t been taken to Troy, that hadn’t been her—that was an apparition created by a god. She’d been kept hidden on an island. A soldier from the wars washes up on this island and sees her, and realizes what’s happened, and that all the deaths, all the destruction, the rapes, the pillaging, everything, all of that, had been for nothing. It had all been a kind of test—by the gods, to see what sort of people they were. How they handled their—rage.
(Smiles) It seemed reading it, to be maybe the smartest thing I’d ever read about war. How they all went to war—the Trojan War—the epitome of war—because of something only imagined, not real, only in their minds.
(Short pause.)
I started to think, what if a character, a woman, on a ship, in, say, the Caribbean, is washed overboard and ends up on an island where she meets all the people who died during 9/11. And they’re not dead. Because it was their apparitions we saw on that day, that we’d seen die in the fires and in the collapse. Now all these people had been spirited away, safe and sound, onto this island. I wondered if I could make a similar point, that it all had been a test to see what sort of people we are, and how we handle—being hurt. I’d have the woman realize, like the soldier, that it had all been for nothing, the hundreds of thousands on all sides dead, those young boys and girls whose faces we watch in silence on the NewsHour, the billions and billions spent, year after year after year—which could have been our national health care, our schools, our poor, our children. Nothing, because when you think about it—it’s hard to figure out—what have we gained. What it’s all been for . . .
(Short pause.)
Of course I know people did die. I know that there are people who want to kill us. And I know I want to be protected from them. But how we reacted to . . . It all feels so out of proportion. Doesn’t it?
(Short pause.)
MARIAN: Isn’t Obama trying to fix that? He’s doing all he can. He’s tried talking to the Muslims . . .
TIM: And added tens of thousands of more American soldiers.
BENJAMIN: When did that happen?
RICHARD: It’s still happening, Uncle.
MARIAN: There’s a timetable—
RICHARD: For what?
JANE: I wish to god I sometimes couldn’t remember.
(Then:)
TIM: When I was in the Shreveport airport . . .
JANE (Bad accent): “Shreveport.”
TIM: Last week. It’s a very small airport. An armed guard, with a machine gun, stopped my rent-a-car on my way in, and made me open the trunk. (Shrugs) Shreveport. Going through security? It’s a really tiny airport. There was no line. I was the only person. And there were nine—nine uniformed security people at that post. What are we doing?
(Short pause.)
At noon—inside the airport, they now play the national anthem over the intercom. This since 9/11 I was told. And everyone—everyone has to stop what they’re doing, stand, and most people put their hand to their heart. Someone yells at you—or worse, I think—if you don’t. Why does that seem so wrong?
BARBARA (Quietly): When he began, he was the anti-war candidate.
MARIAN: I know. I know.
TIM: He was anti–Iraq War. He said Afghanistan was the right war.
MARIAN: Is it now?
(They are surprised by Marian.)
I’m not convinced. I’m not. About all the other things. But if we’re being honest . . . We are being honest? And we’re just talking?
RICHARD: Yes. Yes.
MARIAN: This war makes no sense . . .
(Pause. Jane looks at Richard and Barbara.)
JANE (Quietly): How did it happen?
TIM: I think as a candidate he just didn’t want to appear weak.
MARIAN: He couldn’t do that. Such a young man. A black man. He had to. I know. I know.
TIM: He never would have been nominated . . .
MARIAN: No.
But now? What he’s afraid of now? What are we doing?
(Pause.)
BARBARA: He’s a very good man.
JANE: I believe that too. I think we all do. That’s not the point.
MARIAN: Who