Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 9: Who has the laughing hand?

Objects are more successfully grasped at than are people; people always seem to manage to slip away. Brother considers the infinite spaces. He tries to see far beyond the horizon, beyond the sharp bits of glass wall that all mirror his gray projection. What will finally conquer him is the composite picture into which these jagged cuts will assemble. Then he will feel monstrous. Not that he has not done his own time in thinking himself to be a monster. Sister, in a way the direct product of Mother, hanging on by a mutual limb of self-loathing and self-adoration, has already become accustomed to feeling quite monstrous at times. It is early evening. We are back to the house, where the Yardley siblings are in their yard, again. A sunset swirled with unspoiled hollandaise sauce and egg yolk, dwindling before the twinkling eye.
Charlotte:
--I feel supremely disillusioned.
Laurent:
--You what?
--Here, right here, my character is feeling very disenchanted with everything onto which she had latched herself, before her emigration from Greece. Then, in the penultimate scene, she does get everything she had dreamed of having in her travels, but it is unbearable to her. I think that sort of irony fuels her feebleness and her own sense of martyrdom when submitting herself to the rape. Well, I suppose you cannot volunteer to be raped...It's sacrificial.
Laurent:
--If I ever become theistic again, it will be because of irony--not that my turning myself back into God would be ironic, but that my understanding of my own bigger ironies and those pertaining to others and of those that overlap myself and others would cause me to affirm a God of some kind.
Maybe God is the reason things do not happen the way the Yardley siblings expect! If they were more supreme, it seems they could bend their reality more to their liking if they tried hard enough. There is money, though, and it keeps flowing across the Atlantic and into their pockets. Plus, the two are performers. So, reality is bending all the time and given new structures as seen fit. Laurent lights another cigarette as Sister listens intently. How quick the two are able to switch from enemies of the midday to Brother and Sister again, obsessed with themselves and with the other!
Laurent:
--Until then, all of irony will be read as absurdity.
Charlotte:
--I've actually thought the same thing several times and have decided that kind of ontological introspection is an ultimately ironic and despairing thing. Absurd? Not quite. That axe never quite drops--the sound of one hand laughing.
Laurent nods his head:
--So is absurdity more brutal?
--I'm not sure. But I think…I think that absurdity sounds like something that can be ignored, dismissed, written off. Something to wink back at from a chair, while keeping with the daily flow and routine. I don't know the true heart of the word, but I do think it's pretty brutal. Do you agree?
--I think so, yes.
Laurent:
--You've given this script a lot of thought. How did the phone call go? You did call, right?
Charlotte:
--In my experience, well, the director has said very little. Communication was in some accord through the medium of casting agents and through the writer. She always seemed to be very brooding, not gloomy, but very introverted. You can imagine how stressed I was as I picked up the phone to dial her number. Surprisingly, she spoke so much she made my head spin. Her mouth was motorized by machine and it was wired to a postmodern, neurotic mind that was short circuited by its own mania and self-consciousness. I believe she's very excited for the project.
Laurent smiles, realizing he forgets how fully-realized his sister can be in her analyses. That is the thing, though, we are much better are analyzing others than we are ourselves. It is not only Charlotte's needle of social awareness, but her eloquence that captivates Laurent. Sister should try to write, just like Laurent, except that this would further stifle Brother's voice. Poetry has been his territory, after all, and he needs territory.
Charlotte:
--She wants to come by tomorrow to chat and get to know me.
--Catherine Broussard coming to our house. Man, oh, man.
--You'll have to be on your best behavior.
--Meaning?
--Don't bore her.
--I'll just act naturally.
--No, don't do that.
--I'll just act very enthused for your upcoming work. I'll also say things, such as "any character who really, righteously embraces her martyrdom is so erotic to me."
Sister dips her head down and purses her lips:
--That sort of remark won't get us anywhere.
As if Laurent and Charlotte want to go anywhere. No, they are much more comfortable here in their little palace. This is not to say that neither of them are driven by want. Boy, do they want! What they both want is to end a scene with the laughing hand.