How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti Read Free Book Online Page B

parade—
    MARGAUX
    Wait! ­Were they always meeting in Paris?
    SHEILA
    By accident. It’s an accident. So they meet in Paris by accident because the kids recognize each other at a parade, and there’s this sort of inexplicable hostility between the two mothers. They hate each other instantly, right?
    MARGAUX
    Right.
    SHEILA
    And at the end of the first scene, Daniel goes missing, ’kay?
    MARGAUX
    Okay.
    Margaux takes some potatoes with a fork. They fall. She eats them with her fingers.
    SHEILA
    Then the next scene’s back at the hotel. Now the problem of the play is: The kid’s gone missing. But nobody reacts in a conventional way to it. Jenny really wants to find Daniel, but she becomes a more minor character in the play, and the real central character of the play becomes Ms. Oddi, Jenny’s mother, who sort of realizes through the course of things, really quickly, that she’s completely dissatisfied in her life and has never reached her full potential, blah blah blah. In the first draft of the play she runs away to the beach—­to Cannes.
    MARGAUX
    Wait! Why does she run away?
    SHEILA
    She feels she’s kind of been oppressed by her family.
    MARGAUX
    I guess she has no feelings for them. Or how ­else could she run away?
    SHEILA
    Huh? I guess she’s distracting herself. Oh, and then she has this affair with the Man in the Bear Suit. At the end of the play, Daniel comes home, and it turns out he actually ran away. He has grown up in this really weird way, and he speaks this weird monologue about how great it is to be a grown-­up. Anyways, now Ms. Oddi ­doesn’t go to Cannes.
    MARGAUX
    ( disappointed ) Oh, she ­doesn’t?
    SHEILA
    No. ’Cause the director, Ben, thought it would be better to localize the action at the hotel—
    MARGAUX
    Oh, I guess that is how theater works.
    SHEILA
    Yeah. So now what sets Ms. Oddi off is that they’re in the hotel room and she’s playing the flute, and Jenny never knew that she played the flute, and somebody from the hotel comes and asks if she’ll play for dinner to­night—
    MARGAUX
    Yeah?
    SHEILA
    And... she ­doesn’t.
    MARGAUX
    ( disappointed ) Oh.
    SHEILA
    â€™Cause she realizes she hasn’t been playing all these years. She loved it but never took it seriously, and now she’s afraid she’s not good enough.
    MARGAUX
    Wait. Where did the flute come from?
    SHEILA
    The suitcase.
    Margaux laughs.
    So now ­we’ve got Ms. Oddi, who somehow—­she feels she has to change her life—­but she just keeps getting embroiled with all these various men from the hotel when all she wants to do is play her flute!
    MARGAUX
    The flute’s my favorite part.
    SHEILA
    It’s stupid!
    MARGAUX
    ( laughing ) It’s just an autobiography.
    Sheila puts her head in her hands.
    SHEILA
    I know, I know ! But my life keeps changing. My life keeps changing!
    MARGAUX
    Well, it’s too bad she never plays the flute. It’s like when in films there’s a painting that’s being discussed, but you never— ­and all you want is to see this painting—­but you never get to see it. It always seems nice to never see the painting because then it becomes so much more amazing than you could ever imagine!
    SHEILA
    ( unhappy ) Yeah.
    Margaux picks up a thing of jam.
    MARGAUX
    Did you take one of these already?
    SHEILA
    Yes.
    Margaux puts the jam on her plate.
    In fact, I should pull the play.
    MARGAUX
    Pull the play?
    SHEILA
    ( miserable ) Too late now. Oh my God, Margaux, what am I going to do ? The play’s never made any sense! It’s nonsense!
    MARGAUX
    How is that possible? You’ve been working on it for years !
    SHEILA
    I should have totally fucking never agreed to write this play in the first place! Oh my God. Maybe I can go into our studio and just spend all day...
    MARGAUX
    I mean, I guess you could spend all day...
    SHEILA
    But I ­can’t fix the