“Two Old Women Giggling”

Last night, I traveled down to Princeton to see my beautiful friend Kate, as Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady. She was absolutely magnificent. I met Kate when she and I were in a production of James Agee’s Death in the Family in Chicago. It was my last play in Chicago, before I moved to New York, and Kate and I became fast friends within about … oh … 10 minutes … and it was kind of sad for both of us. Like: I meet this fabulous kindred spirit and now I have to MOVE?

But our relationship has gone on, flourished, I’m going to be in her wedding in October – she is what I can honestly call a “soul sister”.

Also, there’s something about her acting that makes me cry. She seems incapable of doing anything phony, ever.

I saw her in a production of Philadelphia Story in Chicago, and had such an intense experience that it was as though I was seeing a Greek tragedy, as opposed to a Philip Barry comedy. She is so alive.

Last night was their opening. I was in Princeton. Before the show, I wandered the campus, in search of Nassau Hall (the largest single building in the colonies at the time of the Revolutionary War). Oh GOD, is it gorgeous!!! I stood on the edge of the lawn, and just stared at it. Ivy-covered stone, with this massive lawn in front of it …

I sat in the audience at the show, watching the crowd file in. I have never seen so many people with canes in my life. And this is what I mean when I say I am a ball of unpredictable emotion: I would watch these 85 year old couples hobble in, clutching their respective canes – he in his suit, she in a nice dress, her hair all done … and here they are … 85 years old … coming out to see the opening of My Fair Lady…I can’t explain it better than that. I kept staring at these ranks of OLD people, we are talking OLD OLD people, and felt like I was losing my grip!!

During intermission, I became a little bit obsessed with a group of 3 old ladies talking in the aisle. They were obviously old friends. They each had a cane. Each one of them looked like a million bucks, like women of that generation always do. Subtle matching jewelry, a nice hairdo, their nails done, with nice little-old-lady dresses on. I heard one of them say, in this enthusiastic way, “I’ve seen this show so many times … but it’s fresh and new every time, isn’t it?”

What is it about people that strikes as me as so goddamn beautiful at times?? I wish I could turn that off and just be bitter all the time, but I cannot.

I was watching the three of them together, laughing, talking, complimenting each other on articles of clothing, I heard one of them say what was obviously a kind of ribald comment, and the three of them dissolved into giggles, as though they were adolescent girls.

I thought of me and my friends. Of Kate and I, in particular. We are young now. But someday (God willing), we will be that. Little old lady friends, with our nice old-lady clothes, going to see a play, making ribald jokes.

I also thought of the last moment of Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood – one of my favorite books, and certainly one of my favorite of her books. As a matter of fact, she hasn’t written anything good since. The book is about a friendship between two girls – a powerful intense girlhood friendship – which pretty much shatters before they reach adulthood. The narrator never fully recovers from the loss of this powerful friendship in her teenage years. The book ends with the narrator on a plane, and in front of her are seated two little old ladies, who sit together, who play cards during the flight, who get up to go to the bathroom 50 times, and then make ribald jokes to each other about their bladders when they sit down …

And the narrator then speaks to Cordelia – her friend of yore.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

Jesus, the poignancy of that moment. I have lost a “Cordelia” in my past, and I miss that too. I miss the future, basically.

Later, at the reception after the show, Kate and I were talking, and people kept coming over to rave to her, and I got to witness Kate saying the same thing 45 times, it was great … and some of the people who came up … I was a blubbery mess. One little doddering old men came over and said, “I saw the original production with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews and my first thought after seeing this show tonight was, ‘Who’s Rex Harrison?'”

Meaning: this Henry Higgins had obliterated the indelible memory of Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins.

Anyway, in between people coming over to talk to Kate, she and I talked like maniacs, and I kept having these episodes of emotion (like after the little man with the cane), and Kate, ready to totally BUST on the moment after he left, would look at me, see me in a daze of tears, and howl with laughter.

Here is why Kate and I are such good friends (or, one of the reasons):

I described to her watching the three old ladies in the aisle, and how moved I was by it, their friendship, their elderly-ness, their cute little outfits …

Kate jumped in and said, “God, you know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of the last moment in Cat’s Eye.”

The less said about such coincidences and connections the better.

Stuff like that happens to us all the time. And some day … she and I will be “two old women giggling over tea” …

If any of you live in or around Princeton, I highly recommend you get your ass to the McCarter Theatre, and see My Fair Lady!