Marjorie, the things you forget.
You were trying to tell me and I wouldn’t let you.
WALTER: That’s all right.
(Short pause.)
MARJORIE: Kind of unfortunate, isn’t it.
WALTER: What.
MARJORIE: Julia Roberts, forever etched upon our lives. (Beat) What if we saw Casablanca instead? Let’s say we saw Casablanca in an old theater with velvet seats, and then, on the way home, you proposed. Then, by the next time we talk, it will be true.
WALTER: You mean make it up?
MARJORIE (Narrowing her eyes): You’re very serious. You’re like them. Especially Tess.
WALTER (As if getting his facts straight): Our daughter.
MARJORIE: Our daughter Tess and her over-solicitous husband. No that’s not fair, I like him. I didn’t but now I do.
WALTER: Do you like me?
MARJORIE (Playful): Don’t be an idiot.
WALTER: Don’t call me an idiot.
MARJORIE: Idiot.
WALTER: Why do you like me if I’m an idiot?
MARJORIE (A little saucy): There are some things you know.
WALTER: What kinds of things?
(She shakes her head, smiling to herself.)
What.
MARJORIE: I’ll get in trouble.
WALTER: In trouble?
MARJORIE: For talking to you that way. In trouble with Tess. Everything gets me in trouble with her—she’s the mother now.
WALTER (Faintly generic): Tell me more about your mother.
MARJORIE: You don’t always understand, do you.
(He smiles a little, sympathetic.)
Tell me about the time we got Toni.
WALTER: I just told you yesterday.
MARJORIE: I like that story.
(He gathers his wits. Maybe he stands.)
WALTER: There was once a couple, a very fine young couple.
(Speaking of himself) He had a good strong jaw.
MARJORIE: He was a little too pleased with himself.
WALTER: He had a good strong jaw and was a little too pleased with himself. And she—she was the most beautiful woman in town. It wasn’t a very big town, but she was the queen of it.
MARJORIE: It sounds like a fairy tale when you tell it.
WALTER: It is a fairy tale.
(Beat. The feeling, again, of an uncomfortable truth.)
MARJORIE: That’s not very nice.
WALTER: I didn’t mean / it didn’t really happen,
MARJORIE: I thought you were supposed to / provide comfort—
WALTER (Continuous): I just mean that’s the way it happened. Like a fairy tale.
MARJORIE (Faintly grumpy): It was.
WALTER: Now this young couple was a bit lonely because they didn’t have any children yet. So one day they decided that it was time to get a dog. So they rode the bus down to the city pound and there was a little black dog there, asleep, its tummy going up and down, like a little sleeping shadow. And they named this dog Toni. (Beat) / Toni with an “i.”
MARJORIE (Overlapping): Toni with an “i.”
WALTER: Which was short for Antoinette. She had a French name because she was a French poodle. But not the fussy kind that look like hedges. No, this was a poodle for fetching sticks and running on the beach. So they took her home with them on the bus—she behaved so well—and they loved her, and she loved them back for a long time. (Still soothing, unemotional) And then, like everything else, she died.
(Marjorie is crying softly.)
Do you want me to keep going?
MARJORIE: There’s more? After “she died”?
WALTER: In this case, yes. Because soon after, this couple had a child
MARJORIE: Tess
WALTER: Which is a variation of Tessa, which is Greek for “the gatherer.”
MARJORIE: Don’t show off.
WALTER: And when Tess was three years old, / they went down to the pound, the same pound.
MARJORIE: Oh yes
WALTER (Continuous): By now they had an old Subaru, so they didn’t have to take the bus. And of course they let little Tess pick out the new dog. There were more dogs there this time, many more. A cocker spaniel, and a noble gray pointer, and a very attractive mutt. And the amazing thing was, of all the dogs there, Tess picked the poodle, the little black poodle like a sleeping shadow. That was the one she liked the best.
MARJORIE: And so we named it Toni.
WALTER: Toni Two. But soon it got shortened to just Toni. (Beat) And of course it wasn’t Toni exactly. But the longer they had her, the less it mattered which Toni had run along the beach, or which Toni had dug up all the bulbs in the garden. The more time passed, the more she became the same dog in their memories.
(Short pause.)
MARJORIE: Who told you all that?
WALTER: You did.
MARJORIE: I talked that much?
WALTER: Well, you and Jon. (Beat) You have your good days, when you remember.
(Short pause.)
MARJORIE (Quietly): It was the second Toni.
WALTER: What’s that?
MARJORIE: It was the second Toni who loved the beach. It’s a shame we didn’t have her longer. Even if she always had sand in her hair. Fur? No—“hair” like a human seems right.
She was a good dog.
WALTER (Generic): I’ll remember that fact about Toni.
