A Miracle Would Happen/When You Come Home To Me
JAMIE
Everyone tells you that the minute you get married
Every other woman in the world
Suddenly finds you attractive
Well, that’s not true
It only affects the kind of women
You always wanted to sleeep with
But they wouldn’t give you the time of day before
And now they’re banging down your door
And falling to their knees
At least that’s what it feels like because you
Can
Not
Touch
Them
In fact, you can’t even look at them
Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes
Except you’re sitting there
Eating your corned beef sandwich
And all of a sudden, this pair of breasts walks by
And smiles at you
And you’re like “That’s not fair!”
And in a perfect world
A miracle would happen
And every other girl would fly away
And it’d be me and Cathy,
And nothing else would matter
But it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine
I mean, I’m happy
And I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine
It’s not a problem
It’s just a challenge
It’s a challenge to resist
Temptation
And I have to say that
What exacerbates the problem
Is I’m at these parties
I’m the center of attention
I’m the grand fromage
And here she comes:
“Let’s get a cup of coffee.
Will you look at my manuscript?”
And I’m showing her my left hand
I’m gesticulating with my left hand
And then WHOOMP! There’s Cathy!
‘Cause she knows
(They always know)
And there’s that really awkward moment
Where I try to show I wasn’t encouraging this
(Though of course I sort of was)
And I don’t want to look whipped in front of this woman
Which is dumb – I shouldn’t care what she thinks
Since I can’t fuck her anyway!
And in a perfect world
A miracle would happen
And every girl would look like Mister Ed
And it’d be me and Cathy
And nothing else would matter
But it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine
You know I love her
And it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine
It’s what I wanted
And I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine!
It’s not a problem
It’s just a challenge
It’s a challenge to resist
Temptation
CATHERINE
When you come home to me
I’ll wear a sweeter smile
And hope that, for a while, you’ll stay
When you come home to me
Your hand will touch my face
And banish any trace of gray
Soon, a love will rise anew
Even greater than the joy I felt
Just missing you
And once again, I’ll be
So proud to call you “mine”
When you finally come home
To me
JAMIE
I’ll be there soon, Cathy
I’ll finish up this chapter and be out the door
I swear I’ll be there soon, Cathy
Don’t give up on me yet
I am so proud of you, baby
You’re doing what you never got to do before
And I will be there, ripe and crawling
If fuckin’ Random House stops calling
Don’t lose faith
Don’t get down
Don’t despair
I’ll be there
And in a perfect world
A miracle would happen
And that day would finally be here
And it’d be me and you
Riding it together
And the things we do
Goin’ like we planned
We’re gonna make it through
And nothing else will matter
We’ll be fine, we’re fine
We’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine
I’ll be there soon, Cathy…
I swear I will
Climbing Uphill
CATHERINE
When you come home to me
I’ll wear a sweeter smile
And hope that, for a while, you’ll…
Okay, thank you
Thank you so much
I’m climbing uphill, Daddy
Climbing uphill
I’m up every morning at six
And standing in line
With two hundred girls
Who are younger and thinner than me
Who have already been to the gym
I’m waiting five hours in line
And watching the girls
Just coming and going
In dresses that look just like this
Till my number is finally called
When I walk in the room
There’s a table of men
Always men – usually gay
Who’ve been sitting like I have
And listening all day
To two hundred girls
Belting as high as they can!
I am a good person
I’m an attractive person
I am a talented person
Grant me Grace!
When you come home…
I should have told them I was sick last week
They’re gonna think this is the way I sing
Why is the pianist playing so loud?
Should I sing louder?
I’ll sing louder
Maybe I should stop and start over
I’m gonna stop and start over
Why is the director staring at his crotch?
Why is that man staring at my résumé?
Don’t stare at my résumé
I made up half of my résumé
Look at me
Stop looking at that, look at me
No, not at my shoes
Don’t look at my shoes
I hate these fucking shoes
Why did I pick these shoes?
Why did I pick this song?
Why did I pick this career?
Why does this pianist hate me?
If I don’t get a callback
I can go to Crate and Barrel with mom and buy a couch
Not that I want to spend a day with mom
But Jamie needs space to write
Since I’m obviously such a horrible, annoying distraction to him
What’s he gonna be like when we have kids?
And once again…
Why am I working so hard?
These are the people who cast Linda Blair in a musical
Jesus Christ, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck
When fin’lly you come home to…
Okay, thank you
Thank you so much
I will not be the girl stuck at home in the ‘burbs
With the baby, the dog, and the garden of herbs
I will not be the girl in the sensible shoes
Pushing burgers and beer nuts and missing the clues
I will not be the girl who gets asked how it feels
To be trotting along at the genius’s heels
I will not be the girl who requires a man to get by
And I…
When you come home to me
I’ll wear a sweeter smile…
If I Didn’t Believe In You
JAMIE
Okay, stop
Cathy, stop
Listen to me
There are people
And they are publishing my book
And there’s a party that they’re throwing
And while you’ve made it very clear that you’re not going
I will be going
And that’s done
But what’s it really about?
Is it really about a party, Cathy?
Can we please for a minute stop blaming
And say what you feel?
Is it just that you’re disappointed
To be touring again for the summer?
Did you think this would all be much easier
Than it’s turned out to be?
Well, then talk to me, Cathy
Talk to me
If I didn’t believe in you
We’d never have gotten this far
If I didn’t believe in you
And all of the ten thousand women you are
If I didn’t think you could do
Anything you ever wanted to
If I wasn’t certain that you’d come through somehow
THe fact of the matter is, Cathy
I wouldn’t be standing here now
If I didn’t believe in you
We wouldn’t be having this fight
If I didn’t believe in you
I’d walk out the door and say,
“Cathy, you’re right”
But I never could let that go
Knowing the things about you I know
Things, when I met you four years ago, I knew
It never took much convincing
To make me believe in you
Don’t we get to be happy, Cathy?
At some point down the line
Don’t we get to relax?
Without some new tsuris
To push me yet further from you?
If I’m cheering on your side, Cathy
Why can’t you support mine?
Why do I have to feel
I’ve committed some felony
Doing what I always swore I would do?
I don’t want you to hurt
I don’t want you to sink
But you know what I think?
I think you’ll be fine!
Just hang on and you’ll see-
But don’t make me wait till you do
To be happy with you
Will you listen to me?
No one can give you courage
No one can thicken your skin
I will not fail so you can be comfortable, Cathy
I will not lose because you can’t win
If I didn’t believe in you
Then here’s where the travelogue ends
If I didn’t believe in you
I couldn’t have stood before all of our friends
And said, “This is the life I choose-
This is the thing I can’t bear to lose
Trip us or trap us, but we refuse to fall”
That’s what I thought we agreed on, Cathy
If I hadn’t believed in you
I wouldn’t have loved you at all
Now why don’t you put your dress on and we’ll go, okay?
Cathy?
Can we just do that please?
Please?!
I Can Do Better Than That
CATHERINE
My best friend had a little situation
At the end of our senior year
And like a shot, she and Mitchell got married that summer
Carolann getting bigger every minute
Thinking, “What am I doing here?”
While Mitchell’s out every night
Being a heavy-metal drummer
They got a little cute house on a little cute street
With a crucifix on the door
Mitchell got a job at the record store in the mall
Just the typical facts of a typical life in a town on the Eastern Shore
I thought about what I wanted
It wasn’t like that at all
Made Carolann a cute baby sweater
Thinking “I can do better than that”
In a year or so, I moved to the city
Thinking “What have I got to lose?”
Got a room, got a cat, and got twenty pounds thinner
Met a guy in a class I was taking who you might say
Looked like Tom Cruise
He wouldn’t leave me alone ‘less I went with him to dinner
And I guess he was cute
And I guess he was sweet
And I guess he was good in bed
I gave up my life for a better part of a year
And so I’m starting to think that this maybe might work
And the second it entered my head
He needed to take some time off
Focus on his “career”
He blew me off with a heartfelt letter
I thought “I can do better than that”
You don’t have to get a haircute
You don’t have to change your shoes
You don’t have to like Duran Duran
Just love me
You don’t have to put the seat down
You don’t have to watch the news
You dont’ have to learn to tango
You don’t have to eat prosciutto
You don’t have to change a thing
Just stay with me
I want you and you and nothing but you
Miles and piles of you
Finally I’ll have something worthwhile
To think about each morning
You and you and nothing but you
No substitution will do
Nothing but fresh, undiluted and pure
Top of the line and totally mine!
I don’t need any lifetime commitments
I don’t need to get hitched tonight
I don’t want to throw up your walls and defenses
I don’t mean to put on any pressure
But I know what a thing is right
And I spend every day reconfiguring my sense
When we get to my house, take a look at that town
Take a look at how far I’ve gone
I will never go back
Never look back anymoure
And it feels like my life led right to your side
And will keep me there from now on
Think about what you wanted
Think about what could be
THink about how I love you
Say you’ll move in with me
Think of what’s great about me and you
Think of the bullshit we’ve both been through
Think of what’s past because we can do better!
We can do better!
We can do better than that!
We can do better than that!
Nobody Needs To Know
JAMIE
Hey, kid – good morning
You look like an angel
I don’t remember when we fell asleep
We should get up, kid
Cathy is waiting…
Look at us, lying here
Dreaming, pretending
I made a promise and I took a vow
I wrote a story
And we changed the ending
Cathy, just look at me now!
Hold on, facts are facts
Just relax, lay low
All right, the panic recedes:
Nobody needs to know
Put on my armore
I’m off to Ohio
Back into battle till
I don’t know when
Swearing to her that I was
Never with you
And praying I”ll hold you again
Hold on, clip these wings –
Things get out of hand
All right, it’s over, it’s done
No one will understand
No one will understand…
We build a treehouse
I keep it from shaking
Little more glue every time that it breaks
Perfectly balanced
And then I start making
Conscious, deliberate mistakes
All that I ask for
Is one little corner
One private room
At the back of my heart
Tell her I found one
She sends out battalions
To claim it and blow it apart
I grip and she grips
And faster we’re sliding
Sliding and spilling
And what can I do?
Come back to bed, kid
Take me inside you
I pormise I won’t lie to you
Hold on, don’t cry yet
I won’t let you go
All right – the panic recedes
All right – everyone bleeds
All right – I get what I need
And nobody needs to know
Nobody needs to know
And since I have to be in love with someone
Since I need to be in love with someone
Maybe I could be in love with someone
Like you…
Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You
CATHERINE
Don’t kiss me goodbye again
Leave this night clean and quiet
You want the last word
You want me to laugh
But leave it for now
All you can say
All you can feel
Was wrapped up inside that one perfect kiss
Leave it at that:
I’ll watch you turn the corner and go…
And goodbye until tomorrow
Goodbye until the next time you call
And I will be waiting
I will be waiting
Goodbye until tomorrow
Goodbye till I recall how to breathe
And I have been waiting
I have been waiting for you
I stand on a precipice
I struggle to keep my balance
I open myself
I open myself one stitch at a time
Finally yes!
Finally now!
Finally something takes me away
Finally free!
Finally he can cut through these strings
And open my wings!
So goodbye until tomorrow!
Goodbye until my feet touch the floor
And I will be waiting
I will be waiting!
Goodbye until tomorrow
Goodbye until the rest of my life
And I have been waiting
I have been waiting for you
Waiting for you
Waiting for you
JAMIE
I called Elise to help me pack my bags
I went downtown and closed the bank account
It’s not about another shrink
It’s not about another compromise
I’m not the only one who’s hurting here
I don’t know what the hell is left to do
You never saw how far the crack had opened
You never knew I had run out of rope and
I could never rescue you
All you ever wanted
But I could never rescue you
No matter how I tried
All I could do was love you hard
And let you go
No matter how I tried
All I could do was love you
God, I loved you so
So we could fight
Or we could wait
Or I could go…
CATHERINE
Goodbye until tomorrow!
Goodbye until I crawl to your door
And I will be waiting
I will be waiting
JAMIE
You never noticed how the wind had changed
CATHERINE
Goodbye until tomorrow!
JAMIE
I didn’t see a way we both could win
CATHERINE
Goodbye until I’m done thanking God
For I have been waiting
I have been waiting for you
I have been waiting!
JAMIE
Goodbye, Cathy
CATHERINE
I have been waiting for you
JAMIE
Goodbye
CATHERINE
I will keep waiting –
I will be waiting for you
Just close the gate
I’ll stand and wait
Jamie…
CATHERINE/JAMIE
Goodbye