So you see, I had to find ways to bring in more cash while you sat home all night, thinking you were sacrificing yourself for me and these two children, sewing away at bras and G-strings for Emilio Paz.

WILL: And it was in the strip joint that you met…?

STEPDAUGHTER: (pointing to the Father) Him. Oh, he was an old customer there. What a scene that’s going to be … terrific!

FATHER: With her, the mother, coming in …

STEPDAUGHTER: (quickly, savagely) Almost in time!

FATHER: (crying out) No, just in time, just in time. Luckily I found out who she was before it was too late. I took all of them back to my house then. Try to imagine that scene, with the two of us living in the same house. She behaving …just like she does here; and I unable to look her in the face.

STEPDAUGHTER: God, it’s so ridiculous. After what happened at Emilio Paz’s, do you think it’s possible for me to behave like a sweet young thing, modest and virtuous, in order to justify your pretentious notions about “sound moral cleanliness”?

FATHER: That’s what’s so interesting to me about life and drama, the way we tend to think of ourselves as a single personality. But it’s not true. Each of us is many different complex people, and all of those people live inside of us. We discover this when we suddenly find ourselves doing something that defines us, and we hang there, as if in chains, summed up, for all time, by a single action. Now do you understand how this girl betrayed me? By accident she found me in a place I had no right to be, doing something I had no right to do. And now she wants to fix me in a reality that is alien to my nature, that came from a single uncharacteristic action of my life. That is what really hurts. You’ll see what a tremendous impact the play will have when this theme of mine becomes clear. But other positions have to be considered. His … (pointing to the Son)

SON: (with a scornful shrug) Leave me out of it. This has nothing to do with me.

FATHER: Why not?

SON: I’m not involved, and I don’t want to be involved. You know perfectly well I was never supposed to get mixed up with you all.

STEPDAUGHTER: We’re vulgar and common, you see! And he’s so high class! But you may have noticed that whenever I look at this well-bred member of the upper crust, he can’t face me directly…. He knows what he’s done to me.

SON: (not looking at her) Me?

STEPDAUGHTER: Yes, you. Whose fault is it, sweetheart, that I went back to peddling my ass? Yours! (the actors start at this) Didn’t you make us feel like strangers in your home, intruding on your legitimate kingdom? He says I acted like a tyrannical bitch, but look how he treated us. According to him, we had no right to move into his house with my mother—but she’s his mother too.

SON: Look how they’re ganging up on me. But consider my point of view. One day I’m sitting home quietly when this creature, acting as if she owns the place, comes in and asks for my father. God knows what business she has with him. The next minute, with the same bold look in her eye, she comes back with that little girl there. And she begins to treat my father, I don’t know why, in the most suggestive and forward way—demanding money from him as if he owed it to her.

FATHER: In a way, I did. I owed it to your mother.

SON: My mother? How was I supposed to know that? I had never seen her before. I had never even heard her name mentioned. Anyway, one day she comes in with her (pointing to the Stepdaughter) and with the little boy and that little girl.