Do you know why she’s lying? Because of him there, (pointing to the Son) She tortures herself, wears herself out, and all because of his indifference. She wants him to think that she abandoned him when he was two years old because this man forced her to.

MOTHER: (passionately) But he did! He made me do it! I swear to God! (to Jeremy) Ask him yourself. (pointing to the Father) Make him tell our son the truth, (to the Stepdaughter) You know nothing about it.

STEPDAUGHTER: I know how happy you were when my father was alive. Can you deny that?

MOTHER: (with reluctance) No.

STEPDAUGHTER: He always loved you deeply, (to the Little Boy with anger) Isn’t that right? Admit it. Why don’t you say something, idiot?

MOTHER: Leave him alone, poor thing. You’re trying to make me look ungrateful. You’re my daughter. I respect your father’s memory. It was not my fault, it was not to please myself that I left his house, left my son.

FATHER: She’s right. It was entirely my fault.

CHUCK: If they can’t get their story straight, how do they expect anybody else to understand it?

KAREN: The whole thing seems a little melodramatic to me.

TOMMY: I think I heard it somewhere before.

JEREMY: (getting interested) Look, fellows, could you cool it? I’m interested in this. Do go on. (he removes himself from the table and goes into the auditorium as if to see how the scene would look from the audience’s point of view)

SON: (coldly, ironically) Look at him. Next he’ll start spouting philosophy. Soon he’ll be telling us all about the Daemon of Experiment.

FATHER: You’re a cynical little bastard, (to Jeremy in the auditorium) I use a phrase to explain my actions, and you sneer at it.

SON: Words, words, words.

FATHER: Yes, words, words. What else do we have for comfort when we’re confused and consumed by guilty thoughts.

STEPDAUGHTER: You just want to bury your guilt, that’s all.

FATHER: Bury my guilt? No, that’s not true. It would take a lot more than words to do that.

STEPDAUGHTER: Yes, it would take a little cash, too. The money you were going to pay me. (the actors sense something squalid coming)

SON: (contemptuously) You are disgusting.

STEPDAUGHTER: Am I? What was in that pale blue envelope on the little mahogany table in the room behind Emilio Paz’s strip joint? Ah, that name rings a bell, doesn’t it? Emilio Paz, king of the grind houses, always happy to help his topless beauties collect a little extra money on the side.

SON: And she thinks she now has the right to abuse our whole family just because he was going to give her that money. But as it turned out, the transaction never took place.

STEPDAUGHTER: We came awfully close.

MOTHER: Stop, daughter. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

STEPDAUGHTER: I don’t feel shame, what I feel is an overwhelming desire for revenge. I’m dying, dying to play that scene! The little room. I can see it clearly. The girls leave their street clothes over there, there’s the convertible couch, there’s the mirror, there’s the Chinese screen, and right there in front of the window is the little mahogany table with the pale blue envelope on it. It’s absolutely real. I could pick it up now! But don’t anybody look, because I’m almost naked! No shame, no blushes—I leave that to him. (pointing to the Father) He was pretty shaky then, I can tell you that.

WILL: Does anyone understand what the hell’s going on?

FATHER: I don’t blame you for being confused when all you hear is her side! Why don’t you give me a chance to reply to these horrible slanders?

STEPDAUGHTER: Nobody wants to listen to your long-winded excuses.

FATHER: No excuses! I want to explain the facts.

STEPDAUGHTER: Yes, your facts.

FATHER: We can never understand each other. For example, all the pity and compassion I felt for this woman (the Mother), she still believes is only vengeance and hatred.

MOTHER: But you kicked me out of the house.

FATHER: You see? I kicked her out! She actually believes that!

MOTHER: I can’t talk as good as you, I’m not educated enough…. But believe me, sir, (to Jeremy) after we got married … I don’t know why he married me, a poor uneducated woman.

FATHER: But that’s why I married you—because you were simple. That’s what I loved about you, I … (exasperated over his failure to make her understand, he throws up his hands) Do you see the problem? She simply can’t… it’s maddening, maddening, this mental deafness of hers. She can feel love for her children, yes, but up here (taps his forehead) deaf, infuriatingly deaf.

STEPDAUGHTER: Yes, but ask him to explain what good all his intelligence has done for us.

FATHER: If we only knew what misery comes from our efforts to do good.

KAREN: Excuse me, but, Jeremy, can we please go on with our rehearsal?

TOMMY: I’m sure I heard it somewhere before.

KAREN: Yeah, they were guests on the Jenny Jones Show.

JEREMY: (to the Father) Sir, you’ve obviously got an interesting story here, but we were rehearsing a play when you came in here, and we really can’t spend all our rehearsal time on this.