Gerald Bivens

CROSSMAN. Perhaps it isn’t. I don’t know. [He watches as GRIGGS takes out a cigarette and lights it. GRIGGS’S hands are shaking and as he puts out the match, he stares at them.]

GRIGGS [Smiles]. My hands are shaking.

CROSSMAN. What’s the matter?

GRIGGS. Worst disease of all. I’m all gone. I’ve just looked and there’s no Benjamin Griggs.

CROSSMAN [After a second]. Oh, that. And you’ve just found that out?

GRIGGS. Just today. Just now.

CROSSMAN. My God, you’re young.

GRIGGS [Laughs]. I guess I was. [Slowly, carefully] So at any given moment you’re only the sum of your life up to then. There are no big moments you can reach unless you’ve a pile of smaller moments to stand on. That big hour of decision the turning point in your life, the someday you’ve counted on when you’d suddenly wipe out your past mistakes, do the work you’d never done, think the way you’d never thought, have what you’d never had—it just doesn’t come suddenly. You’ve trained yourself for it while you waited—or you’ve let it all run past you and frittered yourself away. [Shakes his head] I’ve frittered myself away, Crossman.

CROSSMAN. Most people like us.

GRIGGS. That’s no good to me. Most people like us haven’t done anything to themselves; they’ve let it be done to them. I had no right to let it be done to me, but I let it be done. What consolation can I find in not having made myself any more useless than an Ellis, a Denery, a Tuckerman, a—

CROSSMAN. Say it. I won’t mind. Or a Crossman.

GRIGGS. The difference is you’ve meant to fritter yourself away.

CROSSMAN. And does that make it better?

GRIGGS. Better? Worse? All I know is it makes it different. Rose is a sick woman. But you know I’m not talking only about Rose and me, don’t you?

CROSSMAN. I know.

GRIGGS. [Very slowly]. I am not any too sure I didn’t partly welcome the medical opinion that made it easier for me to give up. [Then in a low voice as if to himself] And I don’t like Rose. And I’ll live to like her less.¹