FRANCOIZ: Shannon, it's too early for existential anthropology.
FRANCOIZ: Shannon, it's too early for existential anthropology. SHANNON: But you WERE a sandwich! An OLD sandwich! Like from before refrigerators! When people had to eat things fast or they'd grow roots! BERTRAND: I'm practicing. FRANCOIZ: Practicing what? Becoming a standing stone? BERTRAND: Bending. Margaret said I bow when I should bend. Bowing is distance. Bending is... archaeology. Digging down to find what's real. FRANCOIZ: Here. Emergency bow tie. Been carrying it since '96. Your funeral tie dissolved. Like sugar in rain. Like everything eventually. BERTRAND: Twenty-eight years. That's a whole archaeological layer. That's limestone becoming marble. SHANNON: You're doing the paper dance again. Shuffle shuffle, sad face, shuffle shuffle. PENELOPE: There aren't any happy papers. SHANNON: Then why keep looking? PENELOPE: I... I don't know. SHANNON: When I don't know things, I eat chips. They're barbecue flavored. That's like happiness but for your mouth. Ancient people probably had berries for the same thing. Sad berries. Happy berries. Tuesday berries. BERTRAND: Pen? What have you unearthed? PENELOPE: Bangladesh. 2013. The factory collapse. Layers of time compressed in ninety seconds. The building was called Joy Garments. Built on a swamp. Built on the bones of older buildings. Built on hope that physics would make an exception. SHANNON: Like when you build a sand castle on another sand castle but the bottom one is already sinking? PENELOPE: Exactly like that. But with people inside. FRANCOIZ: The girl in your papers— PENELOPE: Rashida. Nineteen. Trapped for six days in a pocket of air the size of a coffin. The size of a womb. The size of the space between heartbeats. She apologized for bleeding. Like bleeding was bad manners. Like dying was a social error. SHANNON: I apologized when Mom died. Said sorry to the nurses. Like it was my fault her roots stopped drinking. CONSTANCE: It's 3:15. Thirty-two minutes until my daily archaeological dig. Every day I excavate the same moment. Find the same pottery shards of loss. SHANNON: Sit! We have sad chips and sad stories! It's like a wake but nobody's dead! Except Thierry! THIERRY: Present! Well, not present. Formerly present. Presently absent. It's complicated. PENELOPE: Your daughter. What was her name? CONSTANCE: Mira. Seven. An entire civilization in seven years. PENELOPE: Brown eyes? Loved elephants? Asked about elephants even when— CONSTANCE: How could you possibly— PENELOPE: October 9th, 2003. 3:47 PM. I was the last person to see your daughter's civilization. I was her... archaeologist. Recording the final moments. SHANNON: The universe is playing that matching game. Where you flip cards to find pairs. But with people. And pain. And time. CONSTANCE: Twenty-one years of archaeological layers. Twenty-one years of digging in the same spot. And my daughter was already found. Already catalogued. Already safe in someone else's field notes. SHANNON: We need to throw it with ceremony! Like ancient people throwing spears but at time instead of mammoths! CONSTANCE AND SHANNON: Bye bye, mean time! Go be someone else's fossil!
FRANCOIZ: Want to know a secret older than writing? SHANNON: Is it about dinosaurs? FRANCOIZ: Older. It's about how humans have always needed help to keep going. These pills—they're just modern cave paintings. Ways of saying 'I was here and I was scared but I stayed.' Lexapro. 40mg. Every day for fifteen years. My little chemical time machine. Keeps me in the present instead of the past where the monsters live SHANNON: My mom took happy pills but stayed sad. Like buying wings but forgetting how to fly. FRANCOIZ: The pills don't teach you to fly. They just make you remember you're not actually falling. SHANNON: It's like those Russian dolls but all the dolls are different ages and the smallest one is crying and the biggest one is pretending everything's fine and selling tacos!
PENELOPE: That's the human condition. We're all archaeological sites. Layers of who we were, who we are, who we're becoming. MARGARET: I heard there's a coming-of-age crisis happening? That's evolution, dear. Adaptation to changed circumstances. Very anthropologically sound. FRANCOIZ: I've got the modern medicine! And the ancient wisdom! And the Tuesday feelings! CONSTANCE: Some things are meant to wash away. That's how beaches become mountains become beaches again. Everything recycles. Even grief. THIERRY: From my perspective, you're all just rearranging sand on a spinning rock in infinite space! THIERRY: Can I tell you something without jokes? Without wings or roots or archaeological metaphors?
THIERRY: I was so lonely. Thirty-seven years of eating lunch like a cave painter with no cave. Apologizing for taking up space in the fossil record. Then you weirdos found me and suddenly I was real. Part of the tribal record. Part of the continuing story. SHANNON: You're still in the story! Just in the footnotes! Footnotes are the best parts—that's where the secrets live!
CONSTANCE: I threw away time and grew wings. Who knew they were connected? BERTRAND: I'm bending! It's like archaeology but emotional! I'm digging down to where we planted our roots! MARGARET: I'm almost there. Save me some sand. Some wings. Some whatever this is. PENELOPE: New play: Everyone discovers they're ancient. Everyone discovers they're new. Everyone discovers they're both. Everyone discovers that's enough. FRANCOIZ: My pills are just modern wings. Chemical feathers. Whatever keeps you airborne. SHANNON: I'm my mom but with wheels. I'm eight but with keys to a truck. I'm roots that drive. I'm wings that serve lunch. PENELOPE: In my next play, everyone has wings but chooses to grow roots. Everyone has roots but chooses to grow wings. Everyone chooses. SHANNON: In my next life, I'm still eight but I know it's okay! Being eight is like having wings on the inside! CONSTANCE: In my next minute, I don't count it. I just live it. Revolutionary.
FRANCOIZ: In my next breath, I take my medicine and say thank you. To chemistry. To continuing. To Tuesday. BERTRAND: In my next bow, it's actually a bend. Toward. Instead of away. The difference is everything. THIERRY: In my next existence, I'm exactly this. Dead but present. Rooted in memory, wings in possibility. The perfect combination. SHANNON: This silence means everything. This silence means we evolved to stay. FRANCOIZ: Shannon, it's too early for existential anthropology. SHANNON: But you WERE a sandwich! An OLD sandwich! Like from before refrigerators! When people had to eat things fast or they'd grow roots!
BERTRAND: I'm practicing. FRANCOIZ: Practicing what? Becoming a standing stone? BERTRAND: Bending. Margaret said I bow when I should bend. Bowing is distance. Bending is... archaeology. Digging down to find what's real. FRANCOIZ: Here. Emergency bow tie. Been carrying it since '96. Your funeral tie dissolved. Like sugar in rain. Like everything eventually. BERTRAND: Twenty-eight years. That's a whole archaeological layer. That's limestone becoming marble. SHANNON: You're doing the paper dance again. Shuffle shuffle, sad face, shuffle shuffle. PENELOPE: There aren't any happy papers. SHANNON: Then why keep looking? PENELOPE: I don't know. When I don't know things, I eat chips. They're barbecue flavored. That's like happiness but for your mouth. Ancient people probably had berries for the same thing. Sad berries. Happy berries. Tuesday berries. BERTRAND: Pen? What have you unearthed? PENELOPE: Bangladesh. 2013. The factory collapse. Layers of time compressed in ninety seconds. The building was called Joy Garments. Built on a swamp. Built on the bones of older buildings. Built on hope that physics would make an exception. SHANNON: Like when you build a sand castle on another sand castle but the bottom one is already sinking?
PENELOPE: Exactly like that. But with people inside.
FRANCOIZ: The girl in your papers— PENELOPE: Rashida. Nineteen. Trapped for six days in a pocket of air the size of a coffin. The size of a womb. The size of the space between heartbeats. She apologized for bleeding. Like bleeding was bad manners. Like dying was a social error. SHANNON: I apologized when Mom died. Said sorry to the nurses. Like it was my fault her roots stopped drinking. CONSTANCE: It's 3:15. Thirty-two minutes until my daily archaeological dig. Every day I excavate the same moment. Find the same pottery shards of loss.
SHANNON: Sit! We have sad chips and sad stories! It's like a wake but nobody's dead! Except Thierry! THIERRY: Present! Well, not present. Formerly present. Presently absent. It's complicated. PENELOPE: Your daughter. What was her name?
CONSTANCE: Mira. Seven. An entire civilization in seven years. PENELOPE: Brown eyes? Loved elephants? Asked about elephants even when— CONSTANCE: How could you possibly— PENELOPE: October 9th, 2003. 3:47 PM. I was the last person to see your daughter's civilization. I was her... archaeologist. Recording the final moments. SHANNON: The universe is playing that matching game. Where you flip cards to find pairs. But with people. And pain. And time. CONSTANCE: Twenty-one years of archaeological layers. Twenty-one years of digging in the same spot. And my daughter was already found. Already catalogued. Already safe in someone else's field notes. SHANNON: We need to throw it with ceremony! Like ancient people throwing spears but at time instead of mammoths! FRANCOIZ: Want to know a secret older than writing? SHANNON: Is it about dinosaurs? FRANCOIZ: Older. It's about how humans have always needed help to keep going. These pills—they're just modern cave paintings. Ways of saying 'I was here and I was scared but I stayed.' Lexapro. 40mg. Every day for fifteen years. My little chemical time machine. Keeps me in the present instead of the past where the monsters live. SHANNON: My mom took happy pills but stayed sad. Like buying wings but forgetting how to fly. FRANCOIZ: The pills don't teach you to fly. They just make you remember you're not actually falling. SHANNON: It's like those Russian dolls but all the dolls are different ages and the smallest one is crying and the biggest one is pretending everything's fine and selling tacos! PENELOPE: That's the human condition. We're all archaeological sites. Layers of who we were, who we are, who we're becoming. MARGARET: I heard there's a coming-of-age crisis happening? MARGARET: That's evolution, dear. Adaptation to changed circumstances. Very anthropologically sound. FRANCOIZ: I've got the modern medicine! And the ancient wisdom! And the Tuesday feelings! CONSTANCE: Some things are meant to wash away. That's how beaches become mountains become beaches again. Everything recycles. Even grief.
THIERRY: From my perspective, you're all just rearranging sand on a spinning rock in infinite space! It's MAGNIFICENT!
THIERRY: Can I tell you something without jokes? Without wings or roots or archaeological metaphors? I was so lonely. Thirty-seven years of eating lunch like a cave painter with no cave. Apologizing for taking up space in the fossil record. Then you weirdos found me and suddenly I was real. Part of the tribal record. Part of the continuing story. SHANNON: You're still in the story! Just in the footnotes! Footnotes are the best parts—that's where the secrets live! CONSTANCE: I threw away time and grew wings. Who knew they were connected? BERTRAND: I'm bending! It's like archaeology but emotional! I'm digging down to where we planted our roots! MARGARET: I'm almost there. Save me some sand. Some wings. Some whatever this is.PENELOPE: Everyone discovers they're ancient. Everyone discovers they're new. Everyone discovers they're both. Everyone discovers that's enough. FRANCOIZ: My pills are just modern wings. Chemical feathers. Whatever keeps you airborne. SHANNON: I'm my mom but with wheels. I'm eight but with keys to a truck. I'm roots that drive. I'm wings that serve lunch.
PENELOPE: In my next play, everyone has wings but chooses to grow roots. Everyone has roots but chooses to grow wings. Everyone chooses. SHANNON: In my next life, I'm still eight but I know it's okay! Being eight is like having wings on the inside!
CONSTANCE: In my next minute, I don't count it. I just live it. Revolutionary. FRANCOIZ: In my next breath, I take my medicine and say thank you. To chemistry. To continuing. To Tuesday. BERTRAND: In my next bow, it's actually a bend. Toward. Instead of away. The difference is everything. THIERRY: In my next existence, I'm exactly this. Dead but present. Rooted in memory, wings in possibility. The perfect combination. We are not going anywhere. Our roots too deep. We are not going anywhere. Our wings too new. We are not going anywhere. SHANNON: This silence means everything. This silence means we evolved to stay. FRANCOIZ: Shannon, it's too early for cannibalism. SHANNON: Not eating people! People MADE of food! You were a sandwich! You were soup! Very proper soup with a tie! BERTRAND: What kind of soup?
SHANNON: The kind that says sorry for being hot. You're doing the paper dance again. PENELOPE: Paper dance? SHANNON: Like this! Shuffle shuffle shuffle, look sad, shuffle shuffle. Like the papers are cards and you're trying to find the happy one. PENELOPE: There aren't any happy ones. SHANNON: Then why keep looking? PENELOPE: I don't know. FRANCOIZ: Bert? You okay? You look like someone starched your feelings. BERTRAND: I'm practicing. FRANCOIZ: Practicing what? Being a lamppost?
BERTRAND: Bending. Margaret said I bow when I should bend. So I'm... pre-bending. FRANCOIZ: Here. Take this. BERTRAND: You've been carrying an emergency bow tie for me for twenty-eight years? FRANCOIZ:
Twenty-eight years of thinking you might need dignity in a hurry.
CONSTANCE: 2:47. 2:48. The seconds between have names. This one is "almost." This one is "not yet." This one is "please."
SHANNON: Why do you keep looking at your arm?
CONSTANCE: I'm checking the time. SHANNON:
But time doesn't go anywhere. It just stays being time. CONSTANCE: Not for me. For me, time went away at 3:47. And every day I check to see if it came back. SHANNON:
Like checking if your mom's car is in the driveway. Even though you know. You still look. CONSTANCE: Yes. Exactly like that.
SHANNON: I check my cooler. To see if my mom's still not there. She's really good at still not being there. THIERRY:
Bonjour, mes amis! Don't mind me, I'm just being dead at you!
SHANNON: THIERRY! You scared me! THIERRY: Sorry! I forget I'm see-through now. Very rude of me. Being invisible without permission. SHANNON: Do you miss being solid?
THIERRY: Every day. But I can walk through walls now. Swings and roundabouts. Les hauts et les bas. SHANNON: Can you eat? THIERRY: No, but I remember eating. Sometimes that's better. No dishes. SHANNON: My mom's in the cooler but she doesn't eat either. We have so much in common!
PENELOPE: No no no no no. BERTRAND: Pen? What is it?
PENELOPE: A patient file. From Bangladesh. From the collapse. SHANNON: Like when buildings fall down? I saw that on the news. All those people making clothes. They looked like my mom. Tired but still smiling. PENELOPE:
1,134 people. In ninety seconds. The building was called Joy Garments. In a place called Joy Land. SHANNON: That's a lie name. Like "Fun Size" candy that's actually small. Or "Happy Meals" that make nobody happy. PENELOPE: Yes. Exactly. A lie name. SHANNON: Did you fix people? PENELOPE:
I tried. Some I fixed. Some I couldn't. One girl, Rashida, she was nineteen— SHANNON: That's eleven more than me! I mean, eleven less than me! I mean—Math is hard when you're sad!
FRANCOIZ: Shannon, you bring the chips? SHANNON:
Always! It's Tuesday! Grief eating day! BERTRAND: Is that an official day? SHANNON: Every day is grief eating day! Tuesday just sounds better! Like "Taco Tuesday" but for feelings! "Feeling Tuesday!" "Sad Taco Tuesday!" "My Mom Is Dead But I Still Have To Eat Tuesday!" CONSTANCE: In fifty-six minutes. I'll join you in fifty-six minutes. SHANNON: Why won't she come now? FRANCOIZ: She's waiting for 3:47. SHANNON:
What happens at 3:47? BERTRAND: Her daughter happened. Then stopped happening. SHANNON: My mom stopped happening too! At 6:52! But I don't have a watch. So I just feel 6:52 all the time. Like a stomach ache but in your everywhere. CONSTANCE: Yes. Like that. PENELOPE: The girl. Rashida. From the factory. She apologized for bleeding.SHANNON: Why? PENELOPE:
I don't know. Maybe she thought bleeding was rude. SHANNON: I apologized when Mom died. Said sorry to the nurses. Like it was my fault she stopped. FRANCOIZ: It wasn't your fault. SHANNON: I know. But sorry wanted to come out anyway. Like a burp but sadder. CONSTANCE: It's 3:15. Thirty-two minutes. SHANNON: Sit! We have sad chips and sad stories! It's like a party but nobody's happy! CONSTANCE:
I can do thirty-two minutes of pretending. PENELOPE: Your daughter. What was her name? CONSTANCE:
Mira. She was seven. SHANNON: That's one less than me! I mean—when I was eight. Now I'm thirty-five but inside I'm still eight. Are you still seven inside? CONSTANCE: Sometimes. When I see elephants. PENELOPE: Elephants CONSTANCE: She loved elephants. Had seventeen stuffed ones. Said they remembered everything so she didn't have to. SHANNON:
That's smart! I make tacos remember things for me! PENELOPE: October 9th, 2003. Seven years old. Brown eyes. Elephants. Asking "are we there yet?" CONSTANCE: How could you possibly— PENELOPE: I was her doctor. In Beirut. I sang to her. About elephants. SHANNON: The universe is playing snap. Same cards, different hands. THIERRY: Or cosmic poker. Everyone's bluffing but nobody wins. CONSTANCE: You were with her? PENELOPE: I sang elephant songs. Badly. She said to tell the elephants she was okay.
CONSTANCE: I told them. Every night. "Mira's okay." Seventeen times. Once for each elephant. SHANNON: She was okay! She had a singing doctor! That's like... that's like having a magic person! My mom just had regular doctors. No singing.
PENELOPE: Were you kind? CONSTANCE: Yes. You were kind. CONSTANCE: Help me throw this in the ocean? I'm late. SHANNON: This is the grill where sadness gets cooked! This is the window where I pass food to sad people! This is the menu with all my mom's jokes but as food! PENELOPE: What kind of jokes? SHANNON: Like "Nacho Average Grief!" Get it? Nacho? Not your? Mom was better at jokes. Hers made sense.
CONSTANCE: I don't know what this is. I'm just... making.
SHANNON: It's a feeling castle! For when feelings need somewhere to live! CONSTANCE: Mira used to build those. Called them time castles. Past in the basement, present in the kitchen, future in the attic. SHANNON: Where's the bathroom? CONSTANCE: She never said. SHANNON:
That's where NOW lives. You're always now in the bathroom.
BERTRAND: I'm calling Margaret. SHANNON:
Who's Margaret? Is she nice? Does she like tacos? BERTRAND:My ex-wife. She's... complicated. SHANNON: Like math?
BERTRAND: Like math with feelings. SHANNON:
The hardest kind. THIERRY: This is it. This is kindness and loss having a baby. Music from an ex-wife at the world's end. Beauty from broken marriages. Art from arguments. FRANCOIZ: Side B finished. Alice would have... No. Not "would have." Alice DID. She did love this. Present tense. She loves this now, in the part of time where everything happens at once.
CONSTANCE: Mira is seven forever. Also, she's thirty-one. Also, she's not. Also, she is. Time isn't a line or a circle. It's a... what's the word? PENELOPE: Palimpsest. A document written over and over, but you can still see all the layers. I need to say something. I've been carrying Mira with me. Every patient since. She taught me something. CONSTANCE: What? PENELOPE: That kindness at the end isn't about saving. It's about witnessing. I witnessed her. She was brave and small and asked about elephants and I witnessed all of it. That's the job. Not healing. Witnessing. CONSTANCE: Thank you for witnessing her. PENELOPE: Thank you for raising someone worth witnessing. FRANCOIZ: You know what? FRANCOIZ:
Kidding! But I am done pretending these make me weak. They make me here. Present tense. Still sad, but present tense sad.
BERTRAND: That's the best kind of sad. FRANCOIZ:
No, it's still terrible. But it's terrible with friends. CONSTANCE: What time is it? CONSTANCE: Perfect! It could be any time! It could be all times! It could be 3:47 and I'm not counting! Twenty-one years of time prison and I'm free! Free to be late! Free to be early! Free to be now! THIERRY: From my timeless perspective, you were always free. You just needed to throw away the watch and clock. CONSTANCE: Shut up, Thierry. I love you. THIERRY: I love you too. Present tense. Even though I'm past tense. SHANNON: Are we all—? PENELOPE: Floating? Yes. MARGARET: Is this normal for your beach days?
BERTRAND: Nothing's normal. Everything's possible. We're floating because we put down our weights. FRANCOIZ:
I'm floating on Lexapro and hope! CONSTANCE: I'm floating on temporal freedom! SHANNON: I'm floating on my mom's expired love! PENELOPE: I'm floating on witnessed losses!
THIERRY: I've been floating this whole time! MARGARET:
I'm floating on... what am I floating on? BERTRAND: Second chances. You're floating on second chances. MARGARET:
That's the best thing to float on. SHANNON: You were a sandwich! You were soup! BERTRAND: What kind of soup?
SHANNON: The kind that says sorry for being hot. SHANNON: You're doing the paper dance again. PENELOPE: Paper dance? SHANNON: Like this! Shuffle shuffle shuffle, look sad, shuffle shuffle. Like the papers are cards and you're trying to find the happy one. PENELOPE: There aren't any happy ones. SHANNON: Then why keep looking?
PENELOPE: I don't know. FRANCOIZ: Bert? You okay? You look like someone starched your feelings. FRANCOIZ:
Twenty-eight years of thinking you might need dignity in a hurry.
CONSTANCE: 2:47. 2:48. The seconds between have names. This one is "almost." This one is "not yet." This one is "please."
SHANNON: Why do you keep looking at your watch?
CONSTANCE: I'm checking the time. SHANNON:
But time doesn't go anywhere. CONSTANCE: Not for me. For me, time went away at 3:47. And every day I check to see if it came back. SHANNON: Like checking if your mom's car is in the driveway. Even though you know. You still look. CONSTANCE:
Yes. Exactly like that.THIERRY: Bonjour, mes amis! Don't mind me. SHANNON: Thierry! You scared me! THIERRY:
Sorry! I forget I'm see-through now. Very rude of me. Being invisible without permission. SHANNON: Do you miss being solid? THIERRY: Every day. But I can walk through walls now. Swings and roundabouts. SHANNON: Can you eat?
THIERRY: No, but I remember eating. Sometimes that's better. No dishes. SHANNON: Did you fix people? PENELOPE:
I tried. Some I fixed. Some I couldn't. One girl, Rashida, she was nineteen— From the factory. She apologized for bleeding. SHANNON: Why? PENELOPE: I don't know. Maybe she thought bleeding was rude. SHANNON: I apologized when Mom died. Said sorry to the nurses. CONSTANCE: It's 3:15. Thirty-two minutes. PENELOPE: Your daughter. What was her name? CONSTANCE: Mira. She was seven. SHANNON:
That's one less than me! I mean—when I was eight. Now I'm thirty-five but inside I'm still eight. Are you still seven inside?
CONSTANCE: Sometimes. When I see elephants. SHANNON: This is the grill where sadness gets cooked! This is the window where I pass food to sad people!PENELOPE:
In my next play, we all get wings. But we still choose to walk. Together. On whatever beach remains. Through whatever silence comes. Making noise. Making meaning. Making do. Making peace with time. Making time with peace. Making, making, making.
CONSTANCE: What time is it? PENELOPE: Did anyone else have that dream where we were all frozen and— SHANNON: The one where we could hear everything but couldn't move? Where silence was so loud it had subtitles? Yeah. Weird. How long were we out? THIERRY: Time works differently in puppet tableaus. Could've been minutes. Could've been decades. Could've been the exact duration of a sigh. I've been dead the whole time, so it's hard to tell! Death is like wearing a watch that only shows "now." PENELOPE: Chapter One of our guide: How to recognize life versus death. Check for pulse! "The soldier's pulse was like a hummingbird drinking time—" No wait, that's my play. Here: "Check for pulse!" Unless the pulse is yours. Then check for meaning. Unless the meaning is gone. Then check for chips! The crispy kind save lives! They're communion wafers for the church of continuing! CONSTANCE: Penelope, darling, are you mixing your medical notes with your new play again?
PENELOPE: They're the same thing! Healing, storytelling—what's the difference? Both require cutting things open to see what's inside. Both require believing the inside matters. Both end with someone changed or unchanged but witnessed. The only difference is plays can be performed again. Lives are limited runs.
SHANNON: Fun fact: I haven't felt joy since 2019. But these are barbecue flavored, so that's something. My therapist says I should celebrate small victories. Today I showered and ate a vegetable. Potato counts, right? In the taxonomy of trying, where does root vegetable rank? BERTRAND: Absolutely! In France, pommes de terre are practically a food group. Earth apples! Dirt fruit! See? Even my muscle memory validates your vegetable choices! My body votes yes with its failures! FRANCOIZ:
You're writing about the hospital? "Act One, Scene One: A Tuesday in the emergency ward. The sound of—" What's the sound of giving up? Medically speaking? Precisely speaking? The exact frequency of surrender? THIERRY: A sigh that starts in your heart and ends in everyone else's chest! Contagious capitulation!
CONSTANCE: The ocean's closer. Three inches since lunch. We're dying by increments. Millimeter mortality. The planet's hospice care. FRANCOIZ: But inches take time! We have hours! Days! Maybe even— CONSTANCE: We have what we have. Don't round the edges of it. PENELOPE: Perfect. "A sigh that starts in the heart, travels through the spleen of regret, rests briefly in the pancreas of acceptance. DOCTOR enters, carrying—" What does hope look like as a prop? CONSTANCE: A potted plant that's half dead but still growing. Schrodinger's fern. Photosynthesis. SHANNON: A phone with one bar of battery that never dies. Electronic immortality. Digital denial. BERTRAND: Shannon, your sand-pharmacy is extraordinary! The attention to detail— SHANNON: It's sand. Shaped like where my mother got her prescriptions. Filled them every month. Thirty years of Lipitor. Twenty years of Prozac. Five years of morphine. All that medicine. Still dead. Still Tuesday. PENELOPE: You're creating something beautiful from—
SHANNON: From nothing. From the space where my mother isn't. There. A pharmacy made of erosion. Perfect. Everyone clap for my perfect grief art project. THIERRY: Watch this! See? My words are up here but I'm down there! Or am I? Lightness of touch means touching everything while holding nothing! I'm a ventriloquist for my own existence! BERTRAND: I can do that with my dignity! See? My heart is here but my self-respect is— —apparently on vacation! FRANCOIZ: My anxiety floats three feet above my head! Like a thought bubble! There it is! Touching nothing but affecting everything! PENELOPE: "The patients discover they can separate their pain from their bodies. It floats above them like balloons. They hold the strings. They could let go. They don't. CONSTANCE: That's not how pain works.PENELOPE: That's exactly how pain works. We hold onto what hurts us like it's all we have. CONSTANCE: Because it is.
PENELOPE: That's what Mira said. Seven years old. Beirut. 2011. "Are we there yet?" She thought the hospital was a bus stop. Thought we were going somewhere else. Somewhere better. She was right. We were. Not in the same vehicle. Not on the same schedule. Her bus left early. Mine's still circling. SHANNON:
Did you... were you able to...? PENELOPE: No. But in my play, she becomes a time traveler. She was right—we were going somewhere else. She just got there first. She's probably already there, complaining about how late we are. BERTRAND: Penelope, how many plays have you written about the hospital?
PENELOPE: Seventeen. No, eighteen. One for each person I— They're all comedies. I turn war zones into farces. Triage into slapstick. Death into punchlines. The worse it was, the funnier I make it. Like I'm trying to balance some cosmic equation. Tragedy plus time equals comedy, but what if you don't have time? What if you only have tragedy and a keyboard and the stubborn belief that laughter is just screaming that learned manners? CONSTANCE: Or you're finding the absurdity that was already there. Hidden in the hospital corners like dust bunnies of meaning. THIERRY: Death is inherently absurd! I should know. I died at 3:47 PM. Do you know what I was doing? Organizing my sock drawer. By color. Then by the likelihood they'd be missed. I had plans! I had a system! Death has no respect for filing systems. FRANCOIZ:
Shannon, the way you're processing this, it's remarkable— PENELOPE: Your honesty is brave? Powerful? There. I have destroyed my art project. Someone find meaning in the wreckage.
THIERRY: From my perspective, your mother's in the ultimate pharmacy. Unlimited refills. No co-pay. SHANNON:
That's the stupidest thing— no. Not doing that. Not letting you make me feel better with your wisdom. I choose devastation. It's reliable. CONSTANCE: That bird's been circling for twenty minutes. Same radius. It's given up looking but can't stop the motion. BERTRAND: Perhaps it's found freedom in the pattern! The joy of repetition! CONSTANCE: It's stuck, Bertrand. We're all stuck. Some of us just have better costumes. FRANCOIZ: You want to see lightness of touch? Look! I'm juggling air! Each ball is a worry! See how light they are? There goes my mortgage! There goes my fear of dying alone!
BERTRAND: I'll juggle my failures! THIERRY: I'm juggling death as the ultimate lightness of touch—you touch everything by touching nothing! PENELOPE: "The patients begin juggling their diagnoses. Cancer becomes a red ball.They've been doing this so long, their hands move without thinking. This is not healing. This is not hurting. This is the space between SHANNON: Great. Ta-da. Penelope, read us something. From any of the plays.SHANNON: Mom always said hospitals needed more jokes. Also more windows. SHANNON:
Make me the comic relief who's secretly profound! BERTRAND: Make me the one who knows everyone's secrets but reveals them through graceful disclosures! CONSTANCE: Make me the chorus who measures the distance between tea ceremonies.
PENELOPE: In the hospital, nobody chose. On the beach, everyone does. Every day, they choose to return to the disappearing place. To build what will be destroyed. To love what will leave. To write what will wash away. This is not tragedy. This is—" What is this? PENELOPE: You've been in the play all along. Every time you chose to stay somewhere that was leaving. Every time you built something temporary. Every time you loved someone. Which is the only time that matters because it's the only time that's here. PENELOPE: In my next play, we all get wings. But we still walk together. On whatever beach. Making do.
THIERRY: There's always another beach. And yes, I have a spot for you.
