MELIA: I want—Actually I want pretty much what I have.

LIDDIE: I want surprises.

TIM: You’ve put it off for two weeks.

MELIA: Three.

TIM: Eggplant?

MELIA: Ratatouille. So after I say hello. . .

TIM: “Hi, Mom, guess who!”

MELIA: Tim, I don’t need encouragement! I’m sorry, no, hon, I do. Ok. Ok.

TIM: You want me to stay in the room?

MELIA: You were going to fix that cabinet drawer. Oh God, I lost the number.

LIDDIE: I can show you the house in St. Michael’s tomorrow—No, tomorrow’s Friday. I’ve marked in big red letters I am taking one day this month totally off—Saturday? Yes, Barney, on Saturday Jupiter aligns with Mars! This is your day! No, I don’t do this for all my clients: only stockbrokers fall for astrology. Now I warn you, the rooms are great, high ceilings, woodwork, but a leaky basement can be a strain on a marriage. Maybe ten thousand bucks, fix it or invest in a boat. But otherwise—Ok, Saturday at ten? Great. Bye.

MELIA: Lidia?

LIDDIE: This is Liddie Sherman.

MELIA: Liddie. Hi, you don’t know me, but I got your name from. . . I’m sorry, this is very. . .

LIDDIE: Are you in the market for a house?

MELIA: No. I. . .

LIDDIE: Oh, was this in . . . reference to something else? I’m sorry, I had my private number switched over to this phone, I forgot to punch it back—

MELIA: I’ve been trying for a long time, and I got your name and. . . Did you give birth to a daughter in June of 1962?

LIDDIE: Who is this?

MELIA: I’m looking for my natural mother . . . and I think you might be her.

LIDDIE: What’s your birthdate?

MELIA: June 5th, 1962.

LIDDIE: Where were you born?

MELIA: Brooklyn.

LIDDIE: What do you look like?

MELIA: Well, I have very thick curly sort of reddish brown hair and freckles and big eyes, and I’m sort of muscular, and I have size eleven feet.

LIDDIE: Oh my God. . .

MELIA: Tim?

TIM: You’re right. It’s amazing.

MELIA: I did it. I’m gonna see her tomorrow. She sells real estate.

TIM: Is that—

MELIA: What you sense is the aura of what used to be the eggplant.

JANELLE: Hi, it’s me! Oh Lord God! Jesus, I’m glad this one’s over. Hi sweetiepie. That drawbridge, I was stuck thirty minutes, the longest goddamn barge in my life, I was late for class—

LIDDIE: My daughter called me.

JANELLE: Your what? Your daughter? What daughter? You mean your daughter?

LIDDIE: Her name is Melia. She found me.

JANELLE: God Almighty.

LIDDIE: Can you believe it, she lives in Baltimore, she works in computers, she’s coming at ten o’clock in the morning, and she has size eleven feet.

JANELLE: She just called? This is the baby you told me you—

LIDDIE: And I said “Well I knew you probably existed but. . .” And she said “I don’t want this to be disruptive to your life” and I said “This is amazing and this is wonderful” and she said “Thank you very much for saying that.” She’s in Baltimore, she’s—Thirty-two years, and she’s an hour away. What about the drawbridge?

JANELLE: I had to wait for a barge. . . This is unbelievably shocking. You want some scotch?

LIDDIE: She’s coming at ten. I said to meet down in the park, and then we might walk back here. So in the morning, let’s see, you don’t teach on Fridays, so could you please go and do something and—

JANELLE: I won’t be here, that’s ok—

LIDDIE: And then please come back at eleven. Please. Be here for me.

JANELLE: You better wash your hair tonight.

LIDDIE: Should we get plastered or—No. How bout just . . . go out to dinner . . . and then I’ll shower, wash my hair. . . And then I just want you to hold me.

JANELLE: What are you going to wear?

LIDDIE: Meet her stark naked.

JANELLE: Some people might think you were joking.

LIDDIE: Surprises, yes. Some people, there’s an energy buzz, and it’s raw—

MELIA: Long fingers. I really like long fingers—

LIDDIE: Long slow grins—

MELIA: Very wide mouths I find erotic—

LIDDIE: Kind of a rangy bone structure that drives me nuts, kind of borderline ugly, big sharp noses—

MELIA: Men’s eyes in India—

JANELLE: Stairsteps. Of all things, going up stairs—

LIDDIE: Gravelly voices—

JANELLE: Dirty words. They’re tacky, disgusting really, but I can’t help finding them compelling—

LIDDIE: Flex of a thigh where that long muscle gives a vertical hollow right up to the groin—

TIM: Dancing close and very dirty in public—

MELIA: Couples kissing, where you can’t see the faces—

TIM: Having my fingers sucked—

JANELLE: Buck teeth—

TIM: A very soft tongue—

JANELLE: A big lot of skin, walk down the street in summer and see lots of skin—

MELIA: I really do like sweat—

TIM: Sweaty smells—

LIDDIE: Strong buttocks—

MELIA: Oh yes indeed—

JANELLE: Legs—

LIDDIE: Strong legs—

TIM: Strong legs—

JANELLE: The sound she makes—

MELIA: When he laughs—

LIDDIE: Laughing—

TIM: Laughing—

JANELLE: Gentleness.

LIDDIE: How’d we get on a subject like that?

MELIA: Are you Liddie?

LIDDIE: Melia?

MELIA: (offering) Want some party mix?

LIDDIE: This is dumb, I was going to say how old are you.

MELIA: How old are you?

LIDDIE: Fifty-three.

MELIA: Wow, you don’t look it.

LIDDIE: Yes I do. This is what it looks like. On me.

MELIA: Nice park. You live near here?

LIDDIE: Block down the road.

MELIA: So anyway, how I found you. . . I’ve been looking a long time. I work with computers, and—You know it’s a peculiarity of New York records, they’re sealed at adoption, but they keep the number of the actual birth certificate—And so through that I got my family name and—well, it’s a real tangle, but eventually your name. And then I was converting databanks of a mailing list outfit, and I spent coffee breaks cracking a few security codes, etcetera. But the fact is that No One Presently Alive Is Not In There Somewhere. And it just blew my mind that you’re on the Eastern Shore, I mean, forty-five minutes away.

LIDDIE: Do you have kids?

MELIA: No.

LIDDIE: You hate what I did?

MELIA: I—I don’t know—No, I mean I—I have my parents, my parents are fine, and one brother, their son by birth, he’s in Ohio, we don’t have much in common. . . And why I started looking, I don’t know, you get past thirty should I start thinking about kids? And what if I got pregnant and they say “Any history of this or that in the family,” and what family? Gosh I’m—Is there anything you’ve always wanted to know about computers?

LIDDIE: Could I see your hand?

MELIA: I have a really long life line. I get the lines mixed up.

LIDDIE: Could I please hug you?

MELIA: Sorry.

LIDDIE: No, hey, that’s ok—

MELIA: But I. . . Having met you I would like to, I don’t know, get to know you and. . . So you sell houses?

LIDDIE: Yeh, I sell houses. Things are pretty boring on the Eastern Shore. No big surprises.

MELIA: That’s fine. I think I need a little normalcy.

LIDDIE: I know this sounds anticlimactic, but I’ve been drinking coffee all morning, and I have to pee something fierce. The house is a block away, I’ve got a friend I’d like you to meet. Could we—Do you have to go—

MELIA: No, yeh, sure, I mean—Yeh.

LIDDIE: I can see the resemblance.

MELIA: Almost.

LIDDIE: Good. I’ll warm up the coffee.

LIDDIE: I watch little kids on busses. Little girl, maybe four, Korean maybe. Lady says, “Do you like busses?” “Yes.” “You like trains?” “Yes.” “Which do you like better, trains or busses?” “Busses. No, trains.”

JANELLE: Should I open another bottle?

TIM: Not for me.

LIDDIE: Nope.

MELIA: I don’t feel like drinking.

JANELLE: Well I will.

TIM: Great food. Who does the cooking?

LIDDIE: Both. What about you?

MELIA: Both. Me mostly. I really caught fire about three years ago. No, in my job I cook up terrific software, pureed algorithms, but you can’t chew it. So I really envied how Tim, when he’s working with wood, first, he has to be alone, and he just has the instinct to look at wood and find the one thing it really wants to be, and work it, and love it—

TIM: I love it. You see a piece of wood, and “Oh baby, I want you, I need you”—

MELIA: And so I got into food. “What does this eggplant want to be?” And I lay out candles, flowers, fruit all over the place—

LIDDIE: People, when they eat—Janelle, where she teaches, these faculty parties, I go sometimes, and this raging dyke, Betty, this really broomstick-up-the-ass person—

JANELLE: (off) Get off Betty! She’s ok!

LIDDIE: —But she’ll stand there by the dip, sort of slurping with her fingers, and it’s so charming, she suddenly becomes this messy little kid—

JANELLE: I had to dig out the cork.

LIDDIE: Use the screw with the arms—

JANELLE: You want some wine?

TIM: Copies of antiques—

MELIA: Very high-class, high-price, plus his own designs, which are incredible—

TIM: Hey! I’m showing next weekend, a craft fair in Bethesda, you and Melia could spend some time, see my stuff—I mean (including Janelle) all of us—

LIDDIE: Great. Sunday?

JANELLE: I have to work all weekend. Shooting a godforsaken idiot asshole fucking shit commercial. To be precise. Nother time.

LIDDIE: Well about time we loosened things up.

JANELLE: Normally it’s her. (to Melia) I’ve never seen her like this, for what it’s worth.

MELIA: Like what?

LIDDIE: (laughing) I dare you!

JANELLE: She’s an extremely self-possessed person.

LIDDIE: I’m a businesswoman. A good one.

JANELLE: A tremendously good one—

LIDDIE: I am not vulnerable—

JANELLE: And she’s been an ever-loving basket case this week. Braying with laughter, crying—

LIDDIE: Just grabbin’ hold!

JANELLE: Want some ice cream? Tea, I could get you some tea?

MELIA: So, you’re a teacher, or I thought—

LIDDIE: She’s an actress.

JANELLE: I teach a class, but mostly—

MELIA: What do you do?

JANELLE: All kinds of stuff, mostly comedy. I’m a big, dumb clown.

LIDDIE: She’s very very good.

JANELLE: I am, actually.

TIM: I’ll have some.

MELIA: How’d you meet?

JANELLE: At a concert.

LIDDIE: Chamber music. One of these Sunday afternoon wine and cheese wonders, and we talked, and had dinner and—

JANELLE: How bout you?

TIM: She came to see a piece of my work—

MELIA: Little side table, with paws—

TIM: Black walnut, which I love. And she came again, and came back again—

MELIA: And he would not come down on the price—

TIM: Until I finally did—

MELIA: And I bought it.

JANELLE: You have parents?

MELIA: My mother and father. And they’re very sweet people, I love them a lot, although we don’t communicate real well, they see me as kind of bizarre—

TIM: They still haven’t recovered from Hakim.

MELIA: Previous relationship. But it wasn’t so much the racial thing as it was the tattoos.

LIDDIE: And they want grandkids, of course?

MELIA: My brother has two kids.

JANELLE: People are having babies all over the place, it seems to me.

TIM: How long have you two known each other?

JANELLE: Pushing eleven years.

TIM: Mind if I ask a personal question?

MELIA: Tim—

JANELLE: That depends.

LIDDIE: The answer is, you bet your sweet ass.

JANELLE: She has a way with words.

TIM: I mean that’s fine with me.

JANELLE: Well gee whiz, thanks!

MELIA: I’m trying to ask you a question.

LIDDIE: Go for it.

MELIA: It’s not really fair. Did you consider—This isn’t an accusation, I just want to—Did you consider not giving me up for adoption?

LIDDIE: Yeh. But the stud bull, that was not part of his picture, and he took off. And I lost my job. I asked my parents for help, my mom told me to take a flying fuck. So—And one of the most devastating things in my life—

JANELLE: Pretty much so.

LIDDIE: It’s scary how fast you can chicken out. I thought of keeping you, yes. Such a strong rush—And I hate to say how quick the jaws closed, I did the Sensible Thing—And how fast I mostly . . . forgot all about it. New job, night classes, new friends—

MELIA: “New Friends!”

TIM: Yeh!

MELIA: No, that’s it. I was trying to think. That’s where I found your name. That’s the mailing list. “New Friends.”

JANELLE: Swell. Swell. Yay, Liddie.

TIM: What’s that?

LIDDIE: It’s a swingers’ magazine.

MELIA: A what?

LIDDIE: People who have parties.

TIM: New Friends! Perfect!

JANELLE: I think it’s tremendously tacky. Scuse me.

LIDDIE: Well I’ll tell you. If you judge a person by what they’ve done with their body, I’m a case for the Supreme Court. And to tell you the God’s truth, I have liked it. Yes maybe it’s tacky, I’m tacky, carnivals are tacky, carnivals are fun—

TIM: There are no right angles.

LIDDIE: Hi there.

MELIA: Hi.

LIDDIE: You have his hair. That goddamn hair turned me on to start with. I’m a real sucker for something that pretty.

TIM: I can relate to that.

LIDDIE: You got made with joy, baby, what can I say, it was not a dry fuck. I saw you once. Some newborns are red, wrinkled, but you were like a pink pearl, you were shiny pink like a pearl, incredible little jewel, I’d never seen anything so pretty in my life, and this kind of pink halo, the hair was pink. . .

MELIA: I’m pregnant.

TIM: Scuse me?

MELIA: I am pregnant.

TIM: Omigod. . . You sure? How long? Since when? . . .

MELIA: Oh God—

TIM: It’s ok, yes?

MELIA: Ok with you?

TIM: Yes! Yes! Absolutely! It’s . . . a surprise, I mean, how did we—But it’s wonderful. How long have you known?

MELIA: Two weeks. But it’s something to think really seriously—I don’t want to put any responsibility on you, but half the chromosomes are yours—

TIM: It’s all right!

MELIA: It shouldn’t have happened—

TIM: Right, ok, but it happened, and it’s fine, and we go with it—

MELIA: I’m sorry, this is the craziest time for this, but I’ve been trying to—

TIM: Two weeks?

MELIA: I’m sorry. Well I really wish I could have some wine, but I guess I can’t.

TIM: I love you. (stomps feet) Wheeeeeee!

JANELLE: I’m gonna excuse myself, ok? I’ve gotta get up early—

TIM: Should we go?

JANELLE: No, that’s—Good God. Man oh man. Congratulations, really. No, I mean it. To you too.

MELIA: I am very very happy that I found you and I would like to get to know you—I said that. I would like to continue to get to know you, and I would like to have you, in whatever capacity, some part of my life. Is that something that you would be interested in?

LIDDIE: Don’t you chicken out.

LIDDIE: Eating. . .

MELIA: One time, this Italian street fair, this whole street of incredible messy eating, no garbage cans, just slurping and tossing melon rinds and shells in the street, sticky, juicy, greasy, messy celebration of eating and eating and eating. . .

LIDDIE: I met a woman who moved here from Texas. And she invited me over on a Sunday afternoon, with clear intentions, and she was this kind of plumpy bouncy frizzly type, I wasn’t really attracted, but I thought, she’s pleasant, be social. . .

MELIA: And this fabulous chef’s dinner, I don’t remember the boyfriend, but I sure remember the dinner. Eight courses, wine with each course, and this little printed menu, says what’s coming. . . appetizer, shellfish, salad, the pasta, filet, fruit and cheese, the meringue, for hours and hours and hours. . .

LIDDIE: And I went, and it was evident that this wasn’t working, we kept sort of brushing past each other’s eyes. . . And we were out in the kitchen, “You want a beer,” “Sure,” and she started making nachos in the toaster oven, and this big jar of jalapeno peppers, which I never could stand. . .

MELIA: I was seven or eight, some friends of my parents went crabbing, fishing for crabs. Take a fishhead, tie a string, crab nibbles, scoop it up, boil water, drop them in and they scream, it’s true, it’s terrible, it’s—then boil till they’re pink, and crack’em, dig out the meat, and dig and dig and dig. . .

LIDDIE: But I didn’t want to offend her, so I ate the goddamn thing, and I sneezed, and my eyes started running, I took a slosh of beer. . . And we caught each other’s eyes, and we knew right then we were probably going to have sex. . . And we sat and ate those things for two hours and I don’t think I ever spent a more erotic two hours in my life. And the final thing itself wasn’t bad, but the awareness of coming to it, the eye contact, “We know this is happening,” the burning in the mouth, prolonging it till you have to take that cold guzzle of beer, two o’clock, two-thirty, ten till four—Ohhh my.

MELIA: And I’ve never tasted anything that delicious. . . for many years. . .

LIDDIE: (calling) Back of the fridge, behind the orange juice. Bring me one. Death and taxes.

TIM: Well I had to deliver a piece to St. Mary’s, so I thought why not stop by—

LIDDIE: And here I sit doing taxes—

TIM: No problem. Where’s Janelle?

LIDDIE: She’s out to dinner. Some academic types. God I love your furniture.

TIM: Sunday was great—

LIDDIE: Did you sell a lot?

TIM: I did. I have many dollars again.

LIDDIE: Those big sturdy, knobby, elbowy things—

TIM: I like elbows. The two of you were so—Melia just lighted up, she had such a buzz—

LIDDIE: (abruptly) What does she say about me? Sorry to be blunt, but this is desperately important to me, and I would like to put you in the untenable position of being an informer.

TIM: She thinks you’re a neat person. She likes you.

LIDDIE: Well ok. The true test of honesty is not only to speak the truth, but believe it when you hear it. I’m even honest on my income tax. Or at least I try. They expect you to predict the totally unpredictable. They set it up so you must necessarily cheat.

TIM: So are you down on men?

LIDDIE: I go down on men a lot.

MELIA: Is this my cabinet drawer?

TIM: Ok, what I had to do, every piece of the drawer is individually warped. And as a unit they fit together, but then the unit is massively warped. So—

MELIA: So—

TIM: So I disassemble it, straighten out each piece and they go back together square. Very fascist. Oh, Liddie called.

MELIA: You want a beer?

TIM: I have one. Thanks for helping unload.

MELIA: I love the wood smell on my hands. What kind is that?

TIM: Basswood. Wow. Six, seven months they’ve promised me this wood. Every week, “Not today, tomorrow, next month, later later!” But it’s worth it. It’s gorgeous.

MELIA: What are you going to do with it?

TIM: Some cabinets, one order, a display case for a museum—How bout a cradle?

MELIA: I’m going to keep the baby.

TIM: Well of course. My God. Yes.

MELIA: I don’t know. I think perhaps I’m making a baby. Do your ankles itch?

TIM: No.

MELIA: Mine really really really itch.

TIM: It’s fleas. You need—

MELIA: Flea collars. It’s not good for the cats. Would you personally wear a flea collar?

TIM: I’m not tempting to fleas. Meel, you have three cats, you let’em out doors, and you don’t use heavy carcinogens, you’re gonna have fleas.

MELIA: I don’t really need that drawer. It was full of crap.

TIM: Huh?

JANELLE: (from the kitchen) Fuck! Thanks a lot for drinking the last beer.

LIDDIE: Sorry.

JANELLE: Shitty.

LIDDIE: I never woulda guessed.

JANELLE: (bitterly) I appreciated the note.

LIDDIE: Nell—

JANELLE: “Hi. I’m out. Back in the morning. Love you.”

LIDDIE: Are we back in the Preferred Secrecy mode? I thought you said that hurt worse.

JANELLE: Just do your damn taxes! I’m busy!

LIDDIE: You said be honest.

JANELLE: Be honest. Being honest for you means—

LIDDIE: Nelly—

JANELLE: “Now I am crucifying you, I know, but I’m being perfectly HONEST about it. Don’t twitch like that? Would you hold these nails for me? Oh, you don’t have a hand free, sorry!”

LIDDIE: You are a big dumb clown.

JANELLE: Jesus God!

LIDDIE: And once I was in the jacuzzi, big one, maybe fifteen people, and the water foam at the top, it’s great, you can’t see what’s going on under the surface. And this very foxy red-headed woman next to me on one side, this big, beautiful, bony ugly guy on the other. And somebody’s feeling me up, wow, but who? I thought, whichever, this is going to be special. And then she turned away. And he got up and climbed out. And I remained sitting there, on the jet of the jacuzzi. Very fulfilling relationship with the plumbing.

TIM: Sure. About the age of twenty-two.

LIDDIE: Sunday was wonderful. Wasn’t it? It was family.

TIM: It was.

LIDDIE: And then I called you guys Tuesday, and she said “I’m busy, I’ll call you back,” and she didn’t. This is Friday. What, am I being too pushy? Did I freak her out? What?

TIM: Melia? No, she’s very open-minded. I mean astoundingly. Some ways she’s very straight, and controlled, and then she just happens to mention working in India, or living in a commune of radical Christian nudists. She’s a real explorer, and no, she very very much wanted to find her mother—

LIDDIE: Problems?

TIM: Trouble getting a drawer to fit. But just be straight with her—

LIDDIE: I can’t be straight. Honest yes, “straight,” nooo!

TIM: Well, I’m not either.

MELIA: So what do you think?

TIM: About what?

MELIA: They all bite around the ankles—So what about our life, our routines?

TIM: Such as?

MELIA: What about Eric? Andreas?

TIM: Is that a problem?

MELIA: Why should it be?

TIM: I don’t know, maybe. . . You’re pregnant, there’s a feeling of insecurity, and maybe the kind of unconventional lifestyle on my part that used to be just fine now suddenly isn’t.

MELIA: That’s an interesting thought.

TIM: Should we get married?

MELIA: Oh God, that’d just solve everything wouldn’t it!

TIM: Huh?

MELIA: Marriage: what would be the difference between now and being married?

TIM: I don’t see a whole lot of difference, actually—

MELIA: What’s on my mind is I just want to know when we’re going to sit down and really answer the questions we need to answer.

TIM: What about right now?

MELIA: Sure, just like that!

TIM: Meel. What—

MELIA: I’m sorry. I’m very bitchy right now, and totally irrational, and maybe it does have something to do with your being out with Eric on Tuesday night, and that’s not a problem, it’s never been a problem, but you asked me if it might be a problem, although there’s no legitimate reason why it should be a problem, and I am feeling totally absurd!

LIDDIE: Should I make dinner?

JANELLE: No. Not hungry.

LIDDIE: With some people.

JANELLE: “People.”

LIDDIE: You want a blow-by-blow description?

JANELLE: Sorry. Sorry, I’m not going to live with it any more. It makes me feel like shit. I’m tired of you making me feel like shit, and I’m tired of feeling like a stuffy old fool for feeling like shit. You explain it, your explanations are perfect, you’ve really got your explanations down pat. Still I feel like shit.

LIDDIE: What is all this? I mean my God we’ve—

JANELLE: That’s not the point—

LIDDIE: The last two weeks it’s been like newlyweds—

JANELLE: It certainly has and it’s wonderful and then you go out last night, “Back when I feel like it, honey, Tally ho!”

LIDDIE: I love you.

JANELLE: (near tears) Well it certainly doesn’t seem like it to me.

LIDDIE: I’m not going to change.

JANELLE: Surprise.

LIDDIE: I’m not taking anything away from you. I’m careful, I am never unsafe.

JANELLE: Well goodie on you!

LIDDIE: Are you jealous of my daughter, is that it?

JANELLE: Not unless you’re fucking her!

LIDDIE: This is not worthy of you.

JANELLE: Well you’re not succeeding. Quite frankly, I think of myself as a tremendously creative woman, and trying for years to deal with what you’re doing to yourself and me and us, and you’re always telling me “I am who I am, I love you but I am who I am,” well for Chrissake CONTROL YOURSELF! Just CONTROL YOURSELF for a change!

LIDDIE: That scotch isn’t helping this conversation.

JANELLE: Actually it’s helping quite a bit.

LIDDIE: I think we need a span of time when—Look, let’s try two weeks, and I promise I will not give us any cause for dissension until we can really get our heads—

JANELLE: (subdued) This is just like you, this is so much like you, you’re so incredibly smart and rational—I am not, for God’s sake, jealous of your daughter, I like her tremendously. That’s a vile thing to say. Even if it’s true.

LIDDIE: Should I go get some beer?

JANELLE: Yes, please.

LIDDIE: I’ll go.

JANELLE: I will go get the goddamn Christalmighty sonofabitching beer.

LIDDIE: Get some chips?

TIM: And I’ve been honest about it from Day One. Or, maybe Day Two or Three. We first started going together, I said, “You know, I do need to tell you that I have some friends, and—” I stuttered around for what felt about five minutes, till finally she said, “You’re saying you’re bisexual?” “Yeh.” She said, “Well, that’s no problem as long as I’m one of the sexes.” I thought Where Have You Been All My Life! But it was such a risk to come out with it, because I really—We just really—

LIDDIE: Blended.

TIM: Meshed.

LIDDIE: Clinched. Coupled.

TIM: Mortised.

LIDDIE: Fused. Oh yeh.

TIM: God, how long have I—I have to get back—I just really needed to—See, I talk to my wood, and when there’s serious knots, we negotiate. But—

LIDDIE: Tell me about it!—Are you safe with these other people?

TIM: Very.

LIDDIE: Sorry to sound like a mother-in-law.

TIM: That doesn’t sound much like a mother-in-law.

LIDDIE: Should I call her again? Just be myself?

TIM: God yes. Absolutely.

LIDDIE: Call me, would you? I need a younger brother.

TIM: Ok!

LIDDIE: Close it, it locks.

LIDDIE: Stuff we say when we’re making love. . .

MELIA: No, I’m very inarticulate, I. . . Well, I guess. . . “Do that some more.”

JANELLE: Lovely.

TIM: Oh yes.

MELIA: Yes.

JANELLE: Yes.

LIDDIE: Lemme go to the bathroom.

JANELLE: Do that some more.

LIDDIE: Talk to me.

MELIA: That tickles.

LIDDIE: That hurts.

MELIA: That’s nice.

JANELLE: That’s . . . different.

TIM: Do that some more.

MELIA: I need you to scratch my back.

TIM: My arm’s asleep.

JANELLE: Should we answer that?

LIDDIE: Is that your stomach or mine?

TIM: Cuddle?

MELIA: Does that feel good?

JANELLE: Oh God. Oh Jesus. Oh mama.

LIDDIE: Oops.

MELIA: Ouch.

TIM: Sorry.

JANELLE: Thanks.

LIDDIE: Do that some more.

TIM: What’s that?

MELIA: Hot milk and honey.

TIM: For the baby or the fleas?

MELIA: For me.

TIM: Is the spray working?

MELIA: Can’t tell. (pointing to the drawer) Does that fit?

TIM: I have to take it all down to the shop. This is square now, but the runners are not. Oh, your mom called again.

MELIA: Mom?

TIM: Liddie.

MELIA: What did she want?

TIM: She wanted to talk to you. Is there some sort of problem there?

MELIA: I like her. She’s not my mother. She gave birth to me. I just met her three weeks ago. She’s not my mother. Please.

TIM: Would you look at me a minute?

MELIA: I’m not—

TIM: You should at least tell her why.

MELIA: You have to admit that our relationship—ours, this here thing—would not be regarded as quite normal, say, in Wichita, Kansas.

TIM: Probably not.

MELIA: Or anywhere else. And one doesn’t normally have her mother detail the pros and cons of S&M. Not as a general rule.

TIM: Are you saying—

MELIA: I’m starting, just starting, for the first time in my life, to feel the need for a Republican Administration. I say that metaphorically.

TIM: I didn’t have any plans to.

MELIA: Maybe you should. I don’t want you stay because you feel like you have to. Just go.

TIM: What?!

MELIA: Tim! Hold onto me!

LIDDIE: Ist looking for Ms. Melia Sherman? Ist you name Melia? I haf message from God: “Call your Mommy.”

TIM: How you doing?

LIDDIE: Well I kept making phone calls, and then I drove up to see if Baltimore has been evacuated, because there might be some bargains in real estate. And then I heard you were shacked up with my daughter and I want to know what your intentions are, sir!

MELIA: (abruptly) I’m not ready to be the object of merriment. Or be discussed as if I’m not in the room—

TIM: Hey!

MELIA: And I’d spent the day on a kludgy upgrade of a kludgy inventory software for beer distributors, and resisting the urge to include little screen window messages from Krishna. Then home, and he said my mother called, and I said “My mother?” and he said “Liddie.” And I was picking fleas. And I said, “Maybe you should go out tonight and have some fun,” but I didn’t say it quite right, and then the door opens, zowie, and I laughed, and I didn’t want to laugh, and I left, went out to the car, and sat there, scratching, for an hour and twenty-two minutes.

JANELLE: Damn, you caught me. I’m going to a motel. I’ve made up my mind.. I’m just gonna do it, Liddie. Just gonna go. Did you have a good time?

LIDDIE: (bitterly) Ecstatic. I drove to Melia’s. I walked in the door and she walked out.

JANELLE: I’ve made up my mind. I’m sorry about the timing, too bad, too damn bad, you’re getting it from all sides—

LIDDIE: No shit.

JANELLE: It’s been seven years like this, seven out of eleven, so I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to cramp your style, I’m tired of feeling like I’m a prissy old—

LIDDIE: I was at Melia’s.

JANELLE: Why the hell should I believe that?

LIDDIE: Because I don’t lie. I do not lie and you know it. I made you a promise that until we came to some equilibrium I would keep my pants on, and that was a promise, and I do not lie!

JANELLE: Well for Chrissake I wish you would!

LIDDIE: You don’t want to live alone. This is something you’re not suited for, woman.

JANELLE: I don’t know what’s worse, to feel like a stuffy old bitch half the time, messing up your life, like I’m just a doormat for you occasionally when you feel like coming home—

LIDDIE: Oh bullshit! Bullshit!

JANELLE: Or living alone. I don’t see why one is all that much worse than the other.

MELIA: And I went back in. Tim was sitting there, and it was at that point I said “I love you very much.” And he said, “Is it me being who I am is what the problem is?” And I said, “Damned if I know.” Then I asked him could he go sleep in his shop a couple of days. He seemed to understand, which I didn’t, and so he packed a couple things, and came downstairs and said, “I’m off.” “Ok, see you soon, see you tomorrow.” “Have a good night.” “You too.” And he left.

LIDDIE: Janelle, I beg of you don’t do it this way. If we’d sat down and you said—

JANELLE: I’m not that kind of person—I took the two weeks, I made up my mind—

LIDDIE: We have to talk—

JANELLE: What? Same thing all over again, you’d say “I’ve got to live my life, I don’t want to be caged up”—if that—you—I don’t want to cage you up—

LIDDIE: I don’t want to lose you—I love you—

JANELLE: I spent years alone, I was fine, I was really fine alone, except that I actually wasn’t fine alone, and I met you, and I thought this was going to be the rest of my life, and I still—

LIDDIE: I love you!

JANELLE: Well I love you too!

LIDDIE: Janelle!

MELIA: And I thought, Hey, is this me? I will cope with this in the way I cope. So I made myself camomile tea, dug out my scrapbooks, sat down and searched methodically for the Real Me: College. Social work. Freddie. Spiritual journeys. Politics. Hakim. Trade school. Meditation. Multimedia. Tim. I don’t diddle around, I have very passionate affairs with particular subject matter. So who on earth is this incoherent flake with fleas? And I stayed all night on the living room couch, blanket, corn chips, and cried and cried and cried.

LIDDIE: Janelle. Don’t go tonight. If you have to go, go tomorrow.

JANELLE: (exhausted) I have to do it. I have to follow through with this. I never follow through with anything. I’m so damn funny in comedy, I start doing one thing, and then do the opposite, and they laugh like hell. This is tremendously embarrassing. . .

LIDDIE: Come to bed. I promise not to make love to you. Just stay the night, I’ll bring you a hot scotch, and if you have to go tomorrow, for a while, but don’t do it this way tonight, please. All the motels are closed, you don’t want to drive down the road and have every damn sign say No. Stay one night. Like a sister.

JANELLE: I’m going to go in the morning. . . I’m going to keep packing, start in in the other room on the books. . . I’ll sleep out here.

LIDDIE: You sleep in the bed, I’ll sleep out here.

JANELLE: No.

LIDDIE: I won’t sleep in the bed.

JANELLE: I’ll sleep here.

LIDDIE: I’ll get the sleeping bag, and I’ll take some whiskey, and sleep out in the car, so I know you won’t drive off, and you sleep in the bed.

JANELLE: I won’t sleep in the bed.

LIDDIE: I won’t be in the bed.

JANELLE: Then nobody sleeps in the bed.

LIDDIE: Too bad.

JANELLE: Then we’ll both feel like damn fools.

LIDDIE: The all-time most bizarre. . .

TIM: Janelle, thanks. I called at the college, because we’ve got your home number but I just wanted to—I know it’s strange, but it’s like, if I’m looking for a better way to cut dadoes, I ask somebody that knows. Nother beer?

JANELLE: Not yet.

TIM: We’re at an interesting stage right now, Melia and I, and it occurred, I don’t know a lot of couples in open—long-term open situations, and so I’ve talked to Liddie, but I wanted to get kind of an inside-out perspective. Does that make sense?

JANELLE: No.

TIM: You know I’m bisexual.

JANELLE: No. Yes—Well—Maybe I guessed.

TIM: Well I am. And for Melia that hasn’t been a problem, and for me it’s just who I am. And you and Liddie have been together ten years, more or less—

JANELLE: Eleven.

TIM: Wow. And we’re just three years, four. And you’re a great couple, and I’m sure there’s problems, but I gather that it’s a fairly open relationship, and we’re trying really to create our own definitions of—

JANELLE: I don’t have a whole lot of time.

TIM: I know it’s very personal, but from what I see it’s your own really incredible acceptance of Liddie being who she is, and you’re doing it so well.

JANELLE: What is it I’m doing well?

TIM: Your accepting of Liddie being—

JANELLE: Being what?

TIM: Being who she is. And that’s ok by you, that’s wonderful!

JANELLE: You know that I’m not living with Liddie now?

TIM: Oh.

JANELLE: Seems to me you can’t have your cake and eat it, honey.

TIM: But eleven years—

JANELLE: I hate open relationships! I hate the whole idea. No, I never managed. I knuckled under or got drunk or sometimes really struggled to be modern and smart but, no. No. Mind you, we never negotiated, we just fell in love, and about three years then suddenly Liddie, you know, IS WHO SHE IS, and then this talk about open relationships, books on it, I’ve read about it, worked really hard to understand it, but it has never for a second felt right.

TIM: Eleven years?

JANELLE: Well I’m patient. Well no, you know, Liddie, she’s not a monster, she’s—

TIM: She’s great—

JANELLE: She is, and so—I can also get wrapped up in my work, I can drink too much, there are a billion things I can do.

TIM: But if two people love each other, can’t you make it work?

JANELLE: I ain’t figured it out. It might have been easier if she weren’t so goddamned HONEST. She’s always been completely honest and never discreet. If she’d have been discreet, and then I would have found her out, and we’d have made up, and then she could cheat some more, and make promises, and cheat, and she never did. Cheating and lying and subterfuge are the way decent people do it.

TIM: I guess you weren’t exactly the person to ask. Beer?

JANELLE: I’m gonna have to go.

TIM: Could we talk?

JANELLE: Do we have to?

TIM: How do you make somebody into an actor?

JANELLE: What do you—How come you—Well how do you make a chair?

TIM: Try to make every join perfect.

JANELLE: Same.

TIM: Yeh. Well the wood says what it wants to do.

JANELLE: Some similarities. My students are quite wooden.

TIM: Raw material.

JANELLE: Raw material. . . I make them sing. They have to sing a song, most of them are terrified. But I set up very protective circumstances and. . . Watch a big homely techie, and she sings “Gettin’ on a Jet Plane,” see her become beautiful beyond words. . . I need another beer.

TIM: Amen.

JANELLE: What are we talking about? I don’t think you want to get to know me. I’ll give you hell, Tim. I mean it.

TIM: In the past, I’ve been able to handle hell.

JANELLE: I believe you. I believe when you say you love her, but you want to have flings with these men. I can almost—I believe you’re a decent creature. I even understand wanting it to work, one so much wants for these ideas to work—But I think it’s bullshit. Positive bullshit. From the bottom of my soul I feel like it’s bullshit.

TIM: It’s more like me being who I am. So rather than me being half who I am, I’m giving her entirely who I am.

JANELLE: That “Who I Am” garbage. I don’t buy it.

TIM: Would you stop acting if Liddie asked you not to?

JANELLE: Hell no. What? Why would she ask me?

TIM: Say you don’t have enough time together, you’re too involved—

JANELLE: No. Course not. I’m an actor. That’s what I do.

TIM: That’s who you are?

JANELLE: That’s who I am.

MELIA: Janelle, thanks. I thought it might be better for me to call at the college. Thanks for—

JANELLE: I have absolutely no advice. What are you drinking?

MELIA: Club soda. I’ve even cut out coffee.

JANELLE: Coffee gives me the runs. How are you?

MELIA: Confused—

JANELLE: Physically.

MELIA: Hungry. Nothing. Fine.

JANELLE: Don’t ask me, for Godsake!

MELIA: Thing with the magazine?—

JANELLE: And it would never occur to her not to say it flat out. Describing the night you were conceived, for Godsake, bless her heart, it’s fabulous, but I couldn’t believe it— She has her own ideas about how people ought to feel, and if they don’t, why too bad for them.

MELIA: I do that. I have my own strong ideas how the world ought to be.

JANELLE: Well it won’t. Just forget it. Not in a million years.

MELIA: That scares me. That’s what I’ve always wanted. What if I get it?

JANELLE: She’s crazy about you. She said, “Are you jealous of Melia?” and for Godsake no! Except maybe I am, a bit, or just it’s more like a, what?—

MELIA: Catalyst?

JANELLE: God knows. Jealousy, I don’t know why it’s there, in me, makes no sense, I know, to say “No you cannot be intense except with me,” no sense at all. This whole sex thing, “erotic friendships” she calls’em, Jesus, it’s disgusting, but when she talks about it, well yes she means it, it’s her blood, it’s what acting is to me, as natural as eating, for Godsake, the friendliest, most vitalizing—What am I—I don’t want to defend her, I want to kill her!

LIDDIE: Sometimes it’s a bummer.

MELIA: Sometimes it is a bummer. What turms me off. . .

LIDDIE: Smelly feet.

MELIA: Dumb jokes.

LIDDIE: Endurance contests.

JANELLE: Grim determination.

TIM: Trying to set a record.

MELIA: Feeling I have to perform.

LIDDIE: Dishonesty.

TIM: Faking it.

JANELLE: Bad acting. Although good acting is fine.

LIDDIE: When they feel, “This is foreplay. Now we’re doing foreplay. Prepare for Phase Two.”

MELIA: A guy who thinks it’s a matter of pistons and cylinders.

JANELLE: Being worshipped. Ugh.

TIM: Being monitored for signs of ecstasy.

LIDDIE: Those who become comatose with passion.

MELIA: Lust that sounds like asthma.

TIM: There’s a difference between Gentle and Barely Alive.

LIDDIE: This CPA, and normally I’m not attracted to suits, but finally we got back to my place, and loosen the necktie, and he says, “You got anything to eat?” Meaning that as a dirty joke. And I thought, this is the kind of intellect I attract?

TIM: When I met this guy, had a very nice time, and next time he invited me to a dance, and I met him there, and he was the only one in full drag.

MELIA: Once when I didn’t feel like it, but I didn’t want to disappoint him, and he didn’t feel like it, but he didn’t want to disappoint me, and we both knew it, but we never said it, and so we did it. And felt like real fools.

JANELLE: Getting falling-down drunk at a party, and staying the night, and making love with this person but not remembering a thing about it, and thinking why in holy hell did I ever do that?

MELIA: Cologne.

TIM: Deodorant.

LIDDIE: Snaggly fingernails.

MELIA: People who don’t take care of whatever kind of bodies they’ve got.

JANELLE: Needing to go to the bathroom but feeling she might take it personally.

LIDDIE: This cold-fish compulsiveness that seems to be what people think sex is.

JANELLE: I suppose I shouldn’t say it, but. . . I never had a sexual experience that I couldn’t live without.

JANELLE: I won’t be real long. If I get this one load in the car.

LIDDIE: I’m getting a ride, so you lock up. What do I do about your mail?

JANELLE: I can drop by and get it. Actually, no, I’ll just—

LIDDIE: Phone calls?

JANELLE: Tell them—Just write down the messages. No, I’ll beep in. I called at suppertime.

LIDDIE: I went down and played with somebody’s big dumb dog in the park.

TIM: Meel, I’m having a hard time with this. Are you asking for monogamy? I could try. If it has to be a choice—

MELIA: I really don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t. You want the last of that Chinese food?

TIM: You know it seems ironic that you’re asking the father of your child to move out because he wants to marry you. And you’re packing my lunch.

LIDDIE: Why are you taking books? Just take your clothes, you’re coming back.

JANELLE: I don’t think I’m gonna want to.

LIDDIE: You don’t mean that.

JANELLE: You like honesty. Well, “honestly” I don’t think I’m gonna want to.

LIDDIE: I didn’t hear you say it till you say it three times.

JANELLE: I don’t think I’m gonna want to, Liddie. I do not think I’m gonna want to, Liddie. I do not think I’m gonna want to come CRAWLING BACK!

MELIA: I’m sorry I haven’t been fair with you. I’m not reacting to. . . No, early on I didn’t know how I might react, and I thought well fine as long as it’s not somebody I know, so it’s not really real. And then Henry came into the picture and I thought Omigod, Henry! But then it was fine. It was Henry. It was fine.

LIDDIE: Lady, let go!

JANELLE: Please don’t be like you are! You are too damned old for that! You are just too damned old, your fanny’s hanging all the way down to your knees for Godsake!

LIDDIE: Woman, you have got your wires crossed!

JANELLE: This is home! There’s enough here at home for you, I love you and that’s just gonna be enough, you’re beautiful, you’re sexy, stop trying to prove it every two minutes!

LIDDIE: Get your fucking hands off me!

JANELLE: You got a kleenex?

LIDDIE: Jan, please. I want to stay home tonight. With you. Please.

JANELLE: I’ll call when I’m ready to pack the other stuff. You have my number if you don’t have anything better to do and want to talk to one of your many fans.

LIDDIE: Hey! You like my new dress? Right across here it says FUCK ME!

JANELLE: Byebye.

TIM: Well look. You need the space. I’ll be at the shop. I’ll call on Friday.

MELIA: Slicing rutabaga!

LIDDIE: Liddie Sherman. . . Roy, how you doing? No, right, I thought I was, but every piece of shit hit the fan. Well I was getting a ride with Terry, but I had to cancel. No, family stuff. Oh God I’m still in my party dress. Look, I have to get off the phone—Maybe see you next month. No, it’s ok, sweet cheeks, I’m fine, I’m just miserable. I’ll survive. Love to Gail. Tell her she can have my share.

TIM: (off) Tim.

LIDDIE: Hold on.

MELIA: (off) No!

LIDDIE: My God. What? Did she lose it?

TIM: No. (supporting Melia) There.

MELIA: I’m not gonna stay. . .

LIDDIE: What do they say?

TIM: She’s ok. She’s maybe ok. She needs to lay flat.

LIDDIE: Sheets are in the dryer, I’ll make up the bed and—

TIM: She was in total hysterics, the fleas were driving her nuts, she couldn’t calm down, throwing things, and she started to spot.

MELIA: I broke. . .

TIM: You broke what?

MELIA: This thing, plaster statue I made in fourth grade. I threw it at a flea!

LIDDIE: Real shitsuckers aren’t they?

MELIA: THEY’RE ALL OVER MY BODY!

TIM: Settle down. Don’t wake up the baby.

MELIA: No!

TIM: So I called—

MELIA: The doors are unlocked, the cats’ll get out—

TIM: I’ll take care of it.

MELIA: I don’t want to stay here!. . .

LIDDIE: You have no choice.

TIM: Ok with you?

LIDDIE: Tim. This is my daughter. Go. Take care of the cats. These cats will take care of themselves.

TIM: Are you in the middle of something?

LIDDIE: Just housework.

TIM: Ok. I’ll drive home, then back here, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.

MELIA: My legs itch!

LIDDIE: I’ll get some Calamine.

MELIA: What’ll I tell Mom? She’ll freak out.

TIM: Well she doesn’t know you’re pregnant. Doesn’t know about Liddie. So be honest. Lie.

LIDDIE: Out of Calamine, I’ve got some aloe.

MELIA: I tried rubbing alcohol.

LIDDIE: Bad idea.

TIM: So what the doctor said. . . No dilation, but possibly the placenta is in the wrong something-or-other, but so stay calm, stay horizontal, maybe two days. She can get up, go to the bathroom, but any cramping, call the doctor. He said it’s not unusual, but not a good idea to get up and roar around the room. Ok? Love you.

LIDDIE: What did you make in fourth grade?

MELIA: A turtle. A bright green turtle. Clay.

LIDDIE: I made something like that. What was your teacher like?

MELIA: She was really nice. . . I had a British friend, taught me the word for eraser in England was “rubbers,” and I went to my teacher and asked if she had any rubbers I could use.

LIDDIE: In France, it’s “preservatifs.” And the American tourists who ask “Does this food contain preservatives?”

MELIA: Where’s Janelle?

LIDDIE: With friends. So there is some space. We don’t have fleas.

MELIA: I brought my own.

LIDDIE: We’ll kill’em.

MELIA: Don’t kill them—

LIDDIE: Ok, I won’t kill’em, I’ll drown’em.

MELIA: Funny. In the middle of everything. . . We went to the nearest ER, this hospital, I started to giggle, something like Sisters of Constant Virginity or. . . Total Charity. . .

LIDDIE: Our Lady of Perpetual Motion?

MELIA: And I flashed on the name of the hospital on my birth certificate, it never struck me for some reason, but. . . Sisters of Life. I like that.

LIDDIE: Sisters of Life.

MELIA: Are you Catholic?

LIDDIE: No.

MELIA: Liddie, I can’t stay here. . .

LIDDIE: Hon. . .

MELIA: No. Liddie. . . You asked the first day, was I mad at you? No. No. But I can’t help it, my picture of what a mother is, the picture printed in my head is what my other mother is. Is not bizarre. Is not a walking, talking alternative lifestyle. Does not wear a funny nose. Does not give up her baby. . .

LIDDIE: Would you like me to call your parents?

MELIA: Were you going out?

LIDDIE: My dancing togs, and then Tim called, and I cancelled, and then I tossed this on and washed the sheets and cleaned the fridge and polished all the silver. Talk about rationality.

MELIA: Dance for me.

LIDDIE: Huh?

MELIA: I’d like to see you dance.

TIM: Want anything?

MELIA: Everything.

TIM: I’ll see what I can do.

MELIA: Thanks for finding this doctor. She’s ok.

TIM: “This is your body’s way of saying YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION.”

MELIA: Tim. Don’t jolly me.

LIDDIE: Find me some people who are not such phenomenally interesting clients. The Schultzes need a yard big enough to build a sweat lodge, plus a playroom for their Vietnamese potbellied pig—and be close to a liquor store. I have to keep this crap in my head.

MELIA: Don’t you have a database program?

LIDDIE: It doesn’t have a column for potbellied pigs.

MELIA: It’s easy to set up.

LIDDIE: It’s set up, it’s fine, it just doesn’t work.

TIM: So. The doctor says six weeks.

LIDDIE: Wow.

TIM: Six weeks. The placenta’s moving half a centimeter a week, and once it’s across the cervix then it’s ready to sign a lease. But in the meantime, flat on the back if we want the baby.

MELIA: I don’t need to stay here.

TIM: The cats are being defleaed, I’ve called the exterminator. Do you really want to move back into chemical warfare?

LIDDIE: What?—

TIM: Because we really need help on this.

LIDDIE: She’s coming here?

TIM: I felt it was necessary. Sorry, but half the chromosomes are mine.

MELIA: Stop saying that!

TIM: You said it!

LIDDIE: This isn’t going to work—

TIM: It’s your house. But we are going to need the help.

MELIA: I don’t!

TIM: You do! Goddammit! I am trying to handle this.

MELIA: I don’t want to be handled!

LIDDIE: Tim, it’s not necessary—

TIM: (in an exasperated rant) I fix the drawer but the boards are warped. I straighten the boards but the runners are warped. I replace the runners, the damn cabinet is a corkscrew. The fleas keep coming. “Melia, what can I do?” “Nothing, I’ll work it out.” “Are you working it out?” “No.”

MELIA: I never said—

LIDDIE: Tim—

TIM: And if it didn’t matter, then fine. But you love that cabinet—

MELIA: I hate that cabinet, my uncle gave it to me, I hate my uncle, I’ve carted it all over hell—

TIM: You love it!

MELIA: I hate it!

TIM: And the baby, and the cats, and the fleas, and I HAVE HAD IT!

LIDDIE: I didn’t know he had a temper.

JANELLE: It was open.

LIDDIE: Sure.

JANELLE: (to Melia) How are you?

MELIA: Fine. Not so fine.

JANELLE: Tim told me. Six weeks?

MELIA: Yeh.

JANELLE: Here?

MELIA: I guess.

TIM: Janelle, hi. (to others) I’m sorry.

LIDDIE: So the idea is what, we work out a three-way schedule?

TIM: That was my thought.

LIDDIE: So start with mine. (handing a piece of paper) That’s when I’m normally here. This week I have a problem on Thursday.

JANELLE: I don’t have classes on Thursday.

LIDDIE: I have a closing, I set it three weeks ago, for Thursday.

MELIA: This is nuts. I really don’t need round-the-clock babysitting—

TIM: If there’s a problem, and we’re all over the map—No.

LIDDIE: Right.

JANELLE: Here’s my schedule, when I’m free. Just work it out and call me. Oh and—Add Tuesday as well, actually after two o’clock Tuesday—Wednesday I don’t think I have rehearsal, no, I’m not in that scene—

MELIA: You have to drive down from Baltimore?—

JANELLE: Or what about—Betty, you could stay at Betty’s, she has tons of room and she loves to organize people, God knows, but— (sensing Liddie) No—Well—No that would have multiple . . . complications. . .

MELIA: Janelle—

JANELLE: You will not deny me my inborn right to be seriously inconvenienced.

LIDDIE: Could we talk a second?

JANELLE: She’s fine. It’s convenient.

LIDDIE: I was just going to say let’s try not to fight.

JANELLE: That’s wise.

LIDDIE: This was Tim’s idea. It’s great, but I wouldn’t have had the guts.

JANELLE: It’s fine. I still have lots of stuff here. I can do some sorting.

LIDDIE: You doing ok?

LIDDIE: That’s not what—

JANELLE: I do just dandy. I know exactly what this here lady likes, thank you, and I am perfectly content to fly solo. If you want it done right, do it yourself.

LIDDIE: That’s fine. That’s great. Do it.

JANELLE: Oh damn you!

LIDDIE: What are you—

JANELLE: Damn you!

LIDDIE: Hold on, there’s a stack of mail.

JANELLE: Well I’ve taken care of children, but I’ve never helped make one before. I’ve wanted to. At times I have very badly wanted a child.

MELIA: Should we make a boy or a girl?

JANELLE: Girl. Or a boy. Boys are impossible. Girls are becoming impossible. You decide.

TIM: What needs to be done?

LIDDIE: You need to get lost. I need to talk to my daughter.

TIM: Ok. I have to finish an order. (to Melia) Will you call your boss?

MELIA: Come over in the morning and we’ll make a big list.

TIM: (to Janelle) You need a ride?

JANELLE: I have Betty’s car. One of these hopped-up things, buckle in and it blasts off. Does everything but shave your armpits. Call me.

TIM: You really don’t like the cabinet?

MELIA: I really don’t. It was a present. Like an extra toe: “There must be something we can do with this.”

TIM: It’s beautiful wood.

LIDDIE: Say frankly. It’s six weeks. Would you rather stay with your mother?

MELIA: I don’t know. It’s been a unique three days. Talking with you. Stand back watching myself, very objectively, I do that, feeling hysterical and sometimes tremendously happy.

LIDDIE: I do talk about stuff besides sex, right?

MELIA: At times. But that’s great. It’s not one of the hot topics with my parents. Since I have a brother, I assume they’ve done it, they just prefer not to make it public knowledge. And I share some of that: for me, sex is fine, ok, but it’s not separate. My cats, my trees, my cooking, my mate, the nurturing, that’s the root of it. The sex is icing on the cake, and I do like icing, but—

LIDDIE: For me it’s friendship. Something friends do. And sometimes just pure adrenalin, or this funny little gadget you got for Christmas. . .

MELIA: I’m uncomfortable here. Tim likes to call me “an explorer.” Ok. Maybe. But I still travel with full suitcases.

LIDDIE: Ok—

MELIA: But then so what? Discomfort, I mean, I’m stiff, my nipples are sore—

LIDDIE: God, I remember—

MELIA: I wanted to ask you—Never mind, I—This is embarrassing. . . Ok. My doctor said, if I want to nurse, that I should take some oil, and regularly massage the nipples, and that will relieve the soreness and so on, and it does. . .

LIDDIE: Great.

MELIA: But it also gets me . . . tremendously aroused. And I don’t know. . .

LIDDIE: I would advise: expand the parameters of the massage.

MELIA: (embarrassed) Stop that!

LIDDIE: Whoever she is.

MELIA: Life.

LIDDIE: Beautiful name. That’s not where it was.

MELIA: It was. It—

LIDDIE: That’s not where I was. I checked. I did make a baby in my belly. I had a daughter in Brooklyn, June of 1962. Not at that hospital. Not you.

JANELLE: Sometimes it works.

LIDDIE: Backrubs are a great excuse for starting. Well first it is a backrub, then pour a little oil right in the small of the back, and brush with your whole front, flat belly on the flat back slither, tobogganing. . .

JANELLE: There are rehearsals. Spans of rehearsals, you think you know where the character’s going, and it’s fine, it’s a job. And one day, some very simple question, “Jan, could you move to the sofa?” “Well, why?” “Well I think. . .” And you plunge into the jungle.

TIM: We’d just started seeing each other, and she came to visit, late afternoon, went out on my fire escape to enjoy the breeze, and started kissing, and before we were quite aware, we were doing it, and suddenly “Hoo, this is a fire escape!”

JANELLE: And it’s hell. Three weeks of absolute hell, the director’s pitching a fit, I’m a raging bitch and I start to smoke again, and then—If you’re very lucky, and if you’re all serving the play—Maybe all of a sudden, Friday before tech—It comes together.

MELIA: On the beach, whole image of sand and sky and sea, but the sand sticking, oh God, sheets would be so nice. . . And then home in the bathtub, kissing, and he says, “Talk to me, tell me what you like, tell me what it feels like. . .”

JANELLE: Yes, it does. Even with the most unlikely casting, you find some common thread, and it becomes a kind of a family. . .

LIDDIE: Roaring with laughter on a hot night, and all that sweat, raise up and smack together, like seals, and laugh till you almost lose it. . .

JANELLE: And it does take time to tie up loose ends, but it comes together. Maybe not quite as you’d like, and maybe some scars. But it does come together. Sometimes surprisingly well.

LIDDIE: Backrubs are a great excuse.

JANELLE: Happy birthday. I would sing, but I’m not sure you’d welcome that.

MELIA: Thanks. I’m not much for sentiment.

JANELLE: It’s not sentiment. It’s plain tortured croaking.

MELIA: Fine. Sore. Counting the days. Two more weeks.

JANELLE: Lord God, I would go crazy. Four weeks—

MELIA: Five now—

JANELLE: Five? (realizing) I already swept here.

MELIA: What’s this housewife stuff?

JANELLE: Well your parents are coming at six and they are Presbyterian.

MELIA: They’ll just stop in. Actually they’re very sweet. Liddie’s terrified. She keeps sorting the magazine rack.

JANELLE: What do they know about Liddie?

MELIA: Just that she’s a friend.

JANELLE: You don’t look a bit alike. . . . Well maybe you do. I can see it.

TIM: Hi.

JANELLE: Would you please tell me where in the HELL you put the blades to the Cuisinart. I spent a half hour chopping for the stir-fry—

TIM: I built a rack. Right beside it.

MELIA: Which mom?

TIM: The one who wants to name the baby Gerald.

MELIA: She’ll settle down.

TIM: No, it’s great. I love being treated like a son-in-law.

MELIA: You’re doing lots of thinking.

TIM: Well forty miles here, forty miles back—Names, ok, we should give the baby a name—

JANELLE: (to herself) Neat idea.

TIM: But he, she, shouldn’t be stuck with it, if at some point he wants to change it, because childhood, I mean it’s a process of self-definition—

JANELLE: (unable to restrain herself) It’s a process of being a child!

TIM: (taking up the battle) The child discovering who they are.

JANELLE: I’m going to have to watch every minute that you don’t turn that child into a serial killer.

TIM: Janelle. . . Could I talk to you a minute?

JANELLE: I’m busy, for Godsake. Her parents are coming at six.

TIM: I’ll pitch in. Just—Out in the sunroom?

JANELLE: Here we go.

TIM: You know, we have disagreements on the surface, but we share kind of basic values—

JANELLE: What’s the point—

TIM: And you’re on your own now, you haven’t been out there for a long time—

JANELLE: What on earth are—

TIM: So I wrote you a Personals ad.

JANELLE: A what?

TIM: A Personals ad.

JANELLE: Fuck you.

TIM: And I think this is a really easy way—

JANELLE: Fuck you! Jesus!—

TIM: —For you to get back in circulation—

JANELLE: Circulation! That is absurd.

TIM: It’s not absurd.

JANELLE: It’s appalling. I would sooner die.

TIM: Why?

JANELLE: It just is. Because. It is. I don’t know. It is. (handing him broom) Do something useful.

TIM: Janelle, I spent some time on this—

JANELLE: Bug off!

TIM: Here it is. “Woman seeking woman. Terrific sense of humor. Youthful—”

JANELLE: GOD!!!

TIM: I just think it—

MELIA: I am not to be disturbed!

TIM: You found the peppers.

LIDDIE: Happy birthday. Any beer?

TIM: I’ll put some in.

JANELLE: Liddie, the Cuisinart, why, you know, that’s mine, I’m taking that.

LIDDIE: We got it with green stamps.

JANELLE: That was the mixer. The Cuisinart my aunt gave me for Christmas, and you made one of your usual comments. Two weeks I won’t have any more excuse to be here, so—

LIDDIE: Two weeks.

MELIA: “June 5, 1962. One pink pearl.”

LIDDIE: Tim said the same.

MELIA: Me neither!—

LIDDIE: Thank God for aluminum siding!

MELIA: We were both pretty comic. You told me about the hospital, I didn’t know what to say—

LIDDIE: I was absolutely petrified. Does this mean she’ll leave, or stay, or dump me, or—“So, well, I, uh. . .”

MELIA: “Yes, well, so, gee. . .”

LIDDIE: And ring, excuse me, hello, and “Well gee, you sound very sexy, but I’m not in the market for aluminum siding.” Thank God for nuisance calls. Then “Well we should talk about this. . .”

MELIA: “Yeh, we should. . .”

LIDDIE: “Maybe after supper. . .” We sort of procrastinated. Four weeks.

MELIA: Procrastination has its virtues. Gives us time to see the resemblance.

TIM: Any more laundry?

MELIA: My God!

LIDDIE: What?

MELIA: We’re all here at the same time. One two three four. That hasn’t happened since, God, when you three were all cleaning out the storage room for me to sleep in.

JANELLE: (flustered) I—Nothing—Never mind—

LIDDIE: Something on your mind?

JANELLE: Nobody reads that crap anyway!

LIDDIE: What?

JANELLE: Nothing.

LIDDIE: How’s Betty? She still forbidding you to cook red meat?

JANELLE: It’s a vestige of patriarchy. No, Betty is pretty intense. Pretty intense, bless her heart, she’s had me turned into pretzels, I’ve wound up defending your behavior, for God’s sake—Well no, she’s not stupid, I actually find it useful to listen to her, but she’s just got this bug up her ass, and if I show any sign of compromising myself, she gives me the ideological rub-a-dub. And her lover, Jane, just kinda chirps along, it’s not what you’d call a liberated relationship, I wouldn’t put up with it for a minute—

LIDDIE: Nell—

JANELLE: Don’t say it. I couldn’t believe you would have the gall to bring up the storage room.

LIDDIE: I didn’t. Melia did.

JANELLE: Well you were thinking it. It will not happen again. Unbelievable. You will stoop to anything.

LIDDIE: I didn’t start it.

JANELLE: You did.

LIDDIE: I didn’t.

JANELLE: You did. My God it was embarrassing. Suppose Tim had walked in.

LIDDIE: Nothing to see. Fully clothed, standing up.

JANELLE: It’s amazing what’s possible.

LIDDIE: I didn’t start it, Nell.

JANELLE: Why the hell am I talking to you?

TIM: I was saying to Liddie that we seemed to be doing pretty well. . .

MELIA: Janelle asked me, and I said pretty well. . .

TIM: But I said that I wasn’t certain because in four weeks nothing had really been said. . .

MELIA: Except just talking. . .

TIM: And Liddie said, “I think Melia really wants you with her, I really do.”

MELIA: And I told Janelle I always have. But previous lovers, love meant totalitarian togetherness. But this guy, we give each other our private space, he has his furniture and his friends, I do computers and cooking and cats, but how does that make a family? And then surprise. Liddie’s my mother, and then I go nuts, and then do I stay or go, and I stay. I stay with my friends. My mom said, “You have very strange friends, but they seem to understand you.” They seem like family.

TIM: And I said, “Well, the house is clear and the cats are lonely. . .”

MELIA: And Janelle said, “You could do worse maybe. You’ve put up with fleas.”

TIM: I’m gonna make popcorn.

MELIA: Liddie?

LIDDIE: Two weeks.

MELIA: Liddie, I could set up your database. I do vertical applications.

LIDDIE: Is this a proposition?

MELIA: I customize programs to specific needs.

LIDDIE: (distracted) That’s what they did for me, I paid a bundle, but it’s this conventional real estate thing—

MELIA: It’s very simple. This application has its own language. I can set up the data fields; create entry forms, report forms, customize the menus, set up macros, import from your on-line listings, whatever. It has its own development language. There’s no visible signs that it’s alterable, these things get stripped down to a run-time version. But programs can be modified. Anything you want it to be.

LIDDIE: Daughters?

MELIA: Take about two weeks.

JANELLE: (off) All right already!

TIM: Janelle!

JANELLE: So?

TIM: I was thinking. . .

JANELLE: Cut to the chase, baby!

TIM: I would like to build you a bed.

JANELLE: Liddie’s room?

TIM: Well, so if you wanted to be here, and you didn’t want to share a bed, you could do that.

JANELLE: What the hell are you talking about! Damn, Tim! I don’t need a bed in this house!

TIM: Well—

JANELLE: Fucking Jesus! Unbelievable! You are non-stop!

TIM: I don’t think it’s so outrageous.

JANELLE: Mind your own business!

TIM: Don’t you really want to be here?

JANELLE: You are a dirty-minded little—

TIM: This is a family here! And families respect each other’s needs, and for that reason I did not come into the storage room.

JANELLE: DAMN YOU TO HELL!

TIM: I don’t think I’m batting a thousand.

LIDDIE: Janelle?

JANELLE: (off) I’m doing the fucking popcorn!

TIM: I’ll do the popcorn!

MELIA: It’s my birthday!

JANELLE: (to Liddie) Let’s talk.

LIDDIE: I’ve felt there’ve been spans of friendly time between us?

JANELLE: Amazingly. And Betty’s been dinging at me, “You don’t have to be a victim!” By which she means I should kick your ass. But which I interpret quite differently.

LIDDIE: Which means?

JANELLE: Which means, for a start, that I would like to be in this house, which I know and I like—It’s my house too, for Godsake. You say houses are like friends, lovers, maybe we share an old, leaky, garlicky lover. Tim can put a bed here in the sun room, set him making a bed, keep him out of my hair. Damn him, he saw right through me.

LIDDIE: Do friends have sex? What’s the difference, Nell? Friends and lovers? When do friends have sex?

JANELLE: When the spirit moves.

LIDDIE: I’ve spent quite a lot of time in that garden.

MELIA: Popcorn!

JANELLE: I hate popcorn.

MELIA: Any more preparations for six o’clock?

LIDDIE: I think we’re set.

MELIA: Is this what’s left of the cabinet?

TIM: No, I took it apart, and it’s beautiful wood, and given the fact that a baby has no right angles, I’d like to build a cradle.

JANELLE: Jesus God. . .

LIDDIE: It’s a birthday! It’s time to boogie!

MELIA: Boogie. . . I get chills. I think about cradles and babies, and I want to laugh and hoot and holler, and then suddenly I feel that we’re so fucked up, not to mention the rest of the world, and maybe first we need to straighten out ourselves, and then the world, and then it’s time to boogie.

TIM: No one will boogie then for six hundred years. The art of boogie will fade.

LIDDIE: Babies are born to boogie.

JANELLE: Just boogie and pray.