HOME IS WHERE THE HURT IS.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
(Entering to a tight spotlight. Little shards of light illuminate random parts of the stage briefly and randomly, revealing a lot of extraneous debris.)
You may think me rude. Just barging in on you like this. When you were having an intimate moment. But this is a matter of urgency. I was just at the shop and it struck me. It struck me suddenly. I missed you. Yes, you’re big, sometimes cold and often changeable but you’ll always be my first one. My first home. 
(She begins to roll around on the floor. A man and woman enter tenuously from opposite sides of the stage. They are wide-eyed. They stare at each other and begin babbling.)

MAN
Who are you?

WOMAN
Eye.

MAN
How did you know? But, not me. You!

WOMAN
I’m eye. What about you? You not I.

MAN
Yes you. I asked you first. But, if you must know, I am eye.

WOMAN
I’m eye. But enough about me. Now how about you, not I?

(BEAUTIFUL WOMAN stops rolling and stands up sharply. Sternly.)

Oh for goodness sake, you have me rolling around like a lunatic. You’re both eyes. The pair of you. You go everywhere together, side by side. But one of you isn’t very reliable and sometimes can be downright dodgy. 
(Both of them blink dramatically. She snaps at them.)

I summoned you here because I want to know what you see when you look at my childhood home. I can’t see anything at all. I needed a fresh pair of eyes.

MAN
Well, that’s a bit sad because nobody sees your home as you see it. And if you can’t see anything at all, I think it may be due to some type of trauma.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Maybe, but I don’t really want to talk about that now. If you can’t be specific, please tell me what you see in general.

MAN
(Holds hands with WOMAN)
I see laziness. I see open doors, misplaced cushions, empty jars of nutella with a conspicuous stained spoon wedged into an awkward crevice nearby. 

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
That’s better. That’s fabulous. What about over there? In the darkness.
(Points. A beam of light illuminates the area that she is pointing towards. She rushes towards it and takes her place in the scene.)

MAN
(Quietly)
I see you.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
(Matching his tone. Her body moves accordingly, as though she is following directions.)
What am I doing?

MAN
It looks like you’re aching.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Why would I be doing that?

MAN
It looks like you’re aching from growth. You ache because you’re growing into the adult you would become and growing out of the adult that you could never be. 

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
(Hushed)
Why would you say that?

MAN
(Apologetic)
You asked.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
No, I didn’t. I asked what you saw.

MAN
And, I told you.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
No, that’s speculation. Eyes are supposed to see things for what they are.

MAN 
That’s incorrect. 

WOMAN
People often see things that they would like to and not the things that are actually there. 

MAN
Hallucinations.

WOMAN
Intoxication.

MAN AND WOMAN
Religion...

MAN:
Which is a deadly combination of hallucinations and intoxication. 

WOMAN
Call it what you want. 
There are a number of circumstances where eyes see what they would like to as opposed to what they are presented with.

MAN
 For example when I see you, I see a beautiful woman. But we are your eyes and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's just, like, in us, you know?
(Beat.)

WOMAN
You might be really ugly but we just can’t tell. You might look like a diseased boar. You could-

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Okay, fine! You think you can see me ache but can you see what I’m actually doing?

WOMAN
You are writing in your diary. That diary that you always carried around. The book that kept the thoughts that you became progressively more afraid to share with others as you aged.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Can you see what I have written?

MAN
“Will I ever love you as much as I loved you when I was young and never knew that anybody else existed?”

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Who is that addressed to?

MAN AND WOMAN 
To yourself.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
OH FOR GOD SAKE!

MAN
We love ourselves most when we are least educated and then books and knowledge fill us with self hatred and insecurities.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I don’t want you looking at me anymore and presenting these judgements. What else is in my home?

WOMAN
Forgotten memories.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Is it possible that you may be able to see hidden memories of mine? 

WOMAN
Of course. A person remembers what they saw initially, but very often seen memories become decorated and distorted by other body parts, like the brain and heart. Us eyes don’t forget or alter after the original sight.   

MAN AND WOMAN
Getting to the root of the problem. 

MAN
The source beneath the surface. 

WOMAN
Something may be buried, some trauma out of sight but there are many visible clues as to its existence that anybody could see... 

MAN AND WOMAN
If they looked properly.

 BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
You keep saying that there may have been some type of trauma.

MAN
Of course, it goes without saying. Why else would you want to return to your childhood home, unless there was some hidden unresolved trauma?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
It’s nice to remember pleasant things.

WOMAN
People rarely take the time to recall pleasant memories. People will visit graveyards, memorials, even war sites but you rarely see them returning to the hospital that they were born to reminisce about their coming into existence.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
That’s not true at all. People regularly celebrate birthdays, engagements, anniversaries...

WOMAN
Yes, but will they travel to the site of the original sight of the good memory? They will lay wreaths at the corner of a street that caused a death but they will not return to the church they were married to lay a bouquet at the alter. They don’t want to see the original good memory because that would limit everything good whereas the imagination makes it so much better. But, the opposite applies to the bad, they prefer to quarantine the bad memory to the original site of sight. As though it could never happen again. To limit it.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
But, if you were to apply that logic to me, why would I want to see the bad in my home? I can't quarantine my home.

MAN
Well, in your case, it was not intentional, it was sub-conscious. 

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
There was a neighbor.

WOMAN
Yes?
 
BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
The minute you mentioned the trauma, for some reason I started to see this neighbor we once had. He was a single father of twins. A boy and a girl.The two together looked liked a pair of confused earth fallen angels. Constantly dazed, always laughing. He worked in the local post office. He was very, very handsome but nobody ever heard him speak a word and he was always staring at the ground. Some of the dedicated ladies of the town believed that he was a selective mute and that they could shock him back into normality with kindness. Flowers. Teas. Local elections. The things that often caused pregnancy and marriage in my town. Often, in that order.

WOMAN
But the women couldn’t get a reaction from him, could they? And it made you curious. You always were a very inquisitive little girl.

MAN
Your mother used to say that one day it would be your downfall.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
She was right.

WOMAN
What’s that?

MAN
Can you see something?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I just keep thinking about him. He was just so odd. I remember one day, mid-summer one year ...I must have been about nine or so...I was playing with a frisbee in my backyard, when it went over the fence and slipped into his garden... I think I got the frisbee.

MAN AND WOMAN 
How did you do that?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I imagine that I knocked on the door and he let me in.

MAN
Why would you imagine? We already told you that imagination rarely has anything to do with vision. You always were a very curious little girl.

WOMAN
Your mother said it would be your downfall.

MAN
Why would you knock and give him advance warning when that might disrupt your snooping?

 WOMAN
(Sadly)
You always were a very curious little girl.
(Sharp spotlight on a little girl. She stands on her tiptoes, stretching herself into different contortions in an attempt to see the frisbee through her garden fence.)

LITTLE GIRL
Ahhhh... I think I can see it.

(She suddenly gasps. She freezes mid gasp.)

MAN AND WOMAN
We are at our bravest when we are at our most ignorant. 

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Twins. One boy and one girl.

MAN
Yes. 

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
A beautiful pair of baby twins. Inseparable. They lived next door until they went away to live with their mother.

MAN
Did they?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Yes. They lived with their handsome selective mute father until their mother took them away. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the sadness I couldn’t bare to think about.

MAN 
That would not have been a blink as sad as what you saw.

WOMAN
Not even a squint. 

MAN AND WOMAN
Not a tremor or twitch.

WOMAN
A few words on what we have not felt but we have observed.

MAN
A word on empathy and how one acquires it.

MAN AND WOMAN
Pain.

WOMAN
A word on pain on how we learn from it.

MAN AND WOMAN
Hurt.

MAN
A word on never knowing when to stop.

WOMAN
Which is the same as the word on a death, accidental or not.

MAN AND WOMAN
(Loudly and largely.)
SHOCK.
Beat.

WOMAN
You will never know.

MAN
Which is why you are better off never knowing about the alternative or anything in between or anything at all.

WOMAN
Alter the mind and don’t let the heart see. You were so loving, so brave, that little girl had just grown out of a crawl.

MAN
You couldn’t comprehend whether it was an intentional push or a fall.

WOMAN
But you can remember the river of blood that bled and swam to the top of the inflatable pool.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I would remember something like that, don’t take me for a fool.

MAN 
If a baby hurts a baby who is to blame? If a baby never knew love, then, how could they know hate?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
If a baby is a baby, if innocence is anything at all, innocence is unknowing, smiling and small. She was just a baby.

WOMAN
So, how could she have learned empathy from a man who never showed her love?

MAN
We are at our bravest when we are at our most ignorant.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Laughter.
(Blocks her ears.)
After.

MAN AND WOMAN
Tell us what you see.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
(Woman stands peering over the garden fence.)
I saw her do it. And after, laughter. That was the horrific part. Because even if it had been a mistake, I saw joy in her eyes at the destruction. In her eyes. There was... there was... a new brand of happy where there should have been cry. I-I-I-

MAN
I

WOMAN
EYE.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I swear I saw joy in her eyes. Joy where there should have been cry. And this loud laughter at her former brother as he spilt out all around her in a pool of red. I-I-I...

MAN
Eye.

WOMAN
Eyes.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
I swear I saw joy in her eyes.
(Loud gasp.)
Then he came out.

(MAN and WOMAN gasp)

MAN AND WOMAN
Do you see it now?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
He saw. He saw.

MAN
See?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Saw.

WOMAN
See?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Saw. I see. Saw.
I see that he saw. I see that he saw. And I think it might be the first time that he ever saw anything at all. It was the first time that I ever saw him see.

MAN
Saw.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
He ran around. Like he was trying to see it as something else from a different angle. He kept running.
Back and forth like a see.

MAN
Saw.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
And finally he broke his silence. He kept shouting. ‘No, no, one dead, one alive. The balance is off like a broken see-

MAN AND WOMAN
Saw.’

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
And like a dead man. No empathy. No pain in his eyes. Just a task. He took the live twin and he held her under the water. And I stood. Frozen. Did nothing. I didn’t know what to do. Because I knew if I did a thing, he would do the same to me.

MAN
Pain.

WOMAN
Hurt.

MAN AND WOMAN
Empathy. Shock.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
And when her tiny hands that had never been loved stopped grabbing at his arms, he lifted her out, limp and lifeless and he took the boy out too and cradled them both. The pair of them. Eyes closed and cloaked in the pink stain of diluted blood. They looked more like cherubs than ever before. And he rocked them gently. And he cried. 
Silently. 
I couldn’t hear him. There was no sound at all. 
He was muted once again. But I knew that he was hurting because I could see the tears. I finally saw him hurt. As he rocked them from side to side like a see.
MAN
Saw.
BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
See.
WOMAN
Saw.

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
And I saw it all and I couldn’t unsee. And I stood there seeing him feel. Then, he knelt beside them, now completely still. And I made a noise, I think an apology and I don’t know why. I think I said I was sorry about him and all that had happened in his life. And he looked right at me. 
  And I could see that he saw. And he could see that I saw. But it’s like he couldn’t move. He couldn’t leave them. Abandon the babies he had ignored to death. Looking now at the children he had overlooked for two tiny lifetimes. And, once again, he couldn’t say a word. He just looked right at me and cried. And I wouldn’t have seen his pain at all, had I not looked right in his eyes.

MAN
I.

WOMAN
EYE.

​BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
Eyes.
I. 
See.
I.
Saw.
Eyes see.
Now I can see.
That I saw.