OH, THE GENEROSITY OF THE HEART–CAITLYN WALTERMIRE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ELLEN BLUMENTHAL HILL Foggy blonde mid-forties. A German-Jewish political science professor, currently employed by the International Refugees Organization.
PAT HIGHSMITH Sullen sharp thirty-one. A native Texan who pioneered psychological thriller novels in the 1950s.
SETTING: July 4, 1953. A hospital room. Ellen attempted suicide four days prior, following an ugly fight with Pat, her lover.
NOTES: Highsmith’s brutal treatment of her romantic partners is well-documented in her journals and by the unfortunate other parties. A forward slash (“/”) indicates an interruption where the other speaker’s next line should begin.
A hospital room. Fluorescent bulbs buzz. ELLEN BLUMENTHAL HILL sleeps in the bed.
PAT HIGHSMITH enters. She drops her coat on a chair, sits in it, and pulls her knees up to
her chest like a bat, watching ELLEN. After thirty seconds, she goes to the bedside and touches ELLEN’s hair. Then she takes a small garden snail out of her purse. She places it on the chair. Two more on ELLEN’s blanket. One on the dinner tray. She puts the final snail under her nose like a moustache, pursing her lips to hold it there. It falls off. She catches it and kisses ELLEN on the mouth.
ELLEN wakes with a sharp inhale, wiping slime off her lips. PAT grins but moves quickly away, as though she expects to be struck.
PAT: I came to ask your opinion on something.
ELLEN says something inaudible.
PAT: S-s-sh. I wrote this on the train.
PAT takes out a pocket notebook, finds a page.
ELLEN: (voice raw) Shut up.
PAT: “A start of pleasure, of hatred, a kind of hopeless—”
ELLEN: (louder) Shut up.
PAT: “—a kind of hopeless tenderness that Walter crushed as soon as his mind recognized it—”
ELLEN: Going to… call the nurse.
PAT: (speaking over her, with little inflection) “HE HAD A SUDDEN DESIRE TO EMBRACE HER HARD AT THIS LAST MINUTE, THEN TO FLING HER/ AWAY FROM HIM.”
ELLEN: Calling her.
PAT: That’ll look nice. I told the desk I’m your sister from upstate.
ELLEN: Oh. Oh, you did. And how are my nieces and nephews?
She’s waking up.
ELLEN: There must be… sixty of them, at least, with your box as baggy as—
PAT: As baggy as what?
ELLEN: As…
PAT: As what?
PAT grins because ELLEN is not quick right now.
PAT: Hi, Ellen. What do you think?
ELLEN What you read just now? Out of context. I’ve got no opinion.
(after some thought) No opinion.
PAT: I was here the entire first night. Stop sulking. It makes you look old.
ELLEN: You think that matters to me?
PAT: That you look old?
ELLEN: That you were here.
PAT: They couldn’t reach your father by telephone—maybe he didn’t want to come. No
one in your family came. But I was here. They gave me complete legal power
over you. I could’ve had you electroshocked like Dick’s wife. (baby voice:) R-R-Rich-chard, your s-secretary called—
ELLEN: And after that?
PAT: I made them save you. “Do anything you must,” I commanded. “Only make her live.”
PAT situates into the bed with her, all sharp angles.
ELLEN: Where have you been?
PAT: Working.
ELLEN: You horny bitch. You brat. Move your arm, please. It’s hurting me.
PAT: (doesn’t) You look very, very, very pretty, Ellen.
ELLEN: I know I don’t.
PAT: You look better than you ever did.
ELLEN: Bullshit. Go away. (pause, softer:) Please go away.
PAT: My lily-of-the-valley. This is the first time I’ve ever really noticed you.
ELLEN: Move your arm, Pat.
They struggle briefly against each other.
PAT: Did they give you a tube? Charcoal?
ELLEN: Both.
PAT: Was it painful?
ELLEN: It was worse than dying.
PAT: I imagine it felt like being raped. Did it? Would you say that’s true?
ELLEN: I’ve never been raped.
PAT: You’ve never died, either.
ELLEN: The worst of it was the nights. Completely alone in the dark. I vomited onto my
chest and when the nurses came, they turned on the overhead light and I looked
down and saw myself.
PAT: You could have called your mother.
ELLEN: No, I couldn’t have.
PAT: Perhaps I’ll call her for you.
ELLEN: Don’t you dare! She wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands this except you and me.
PAT: Last night—are you listening to me?
ELLEN: Please don’t call my mother/ Don’t tell her anything.
PAT: Last night, I was thinking about our magic beach with the green sparks in the sand. We stomped it and stomped it, didn’t we?
ELLEN: Ions. Basic science.
PAT: Magic.
ELLEN: You are the most sentimental chip of ice I’ve ever met. Do you have any idea
how to digest sentiment? You must cough it up and chew it again like a cow.
PAT lights a cigarette.
Vulnerable, needing to believe:
ELLEN: Were you really thinking about me?
PAT: (exhaling cigarette smoke) The magic beach. I said, “I was thinking about our magic beach.”
ELLEN: Jim came by yesterday. He said you called him Sunday night, the night I took the
pills, and said we’d argued. You called him from a pay-phone while I was inside
on the kitchen floor… Then they brought me here but you weren’t here. Liar.
What kind of person watches someone take a bottle of Veronal and leaves them
to die? What kind of woman—
PAT: You look just fine.
ELLEN: (coldly) I’m never going to see you again, Pat.
Beat.
PAT suddenly believes her. She’s terrified. She presses all over ELLEN’s body, kisses her neck, begging.
PAT: No, Ellen, please. I should never have left you. I got distracted. There was
somebody else. I know you know. I can’t lie to you, I can’t tell you the truth. You
make me stupid and selfish, I’m like a child with you. Oh my god, of course you
had to do it. You had to teach me and now I’ve learned my lesson. God, Ellen.
Darling, don’t do this to me again. You’re precious. You’re the only thing to look
at in this ugly—
ELLEN: Was she a teenager? Was she pretty?
PAT sniffles. She runs her fingers through ELLEN’s hair and crunches some between her teeth.
ELLEN turns to PAT and sees something kind in her face. She warms. Beat. PAT pokes ELLEN in the belly.
PAT: She was fat, too.
She gets out of bed.
ELLEN: Where are you going?
PAT: I’ll be right back.
She exits, taking her coat and purse.
ELLEN watches the snails creep over her blanket and dinner tray.
She lays back and closes her eyes.
END OF PLAY
***
Caitlyn Waltermire is a playwright and musician from Kentucky. In 2017, her first show, musical One More Fine Day, won “Outstanding Ensemble” in NYC’s Midtown Int’l Theatre Festival. Her subsequent plays have been produced across the country. They include: Little Bites (Leeds Center For The Arts); Dreary, Dearie (Cincy Fringe); What Am I Supposed To Do, Knowing You’re In The World? (Seat Of Our Pants’ Short Play Festival; awarded “Overall Pick” and “Judges’ Pick”); radio drama The Holiday Special, alongside new work by NY Times best-selling author Silas House (WUKY and AthensWest Theatre Company). Soapworld (A Love Story) and by the beautiful beautiful sea premiered in 2022 at Gaslight-Baker Theatre and Hickory Community Theatre respectively. In 2023, a portion of her second musical Aim For The Brain!! premiered at the 4th Annual CO New Musical Festival. Short play Come Here, Baby Boy was featured in both SOOP’s Short Play Festival and Greenbrier Valley Theatre in WV. Dreary, Dearie will be included in Alaska’s 2024 Valdez Theatre Conference’s New Play Lab this June.