I’ll call you. It might be late.
BERNADETTE: Would you like to stay with us for a little while?
SEBASTIAN: No.
BERNADETTE: Kip and I have discussed it. He wouldn’t mind. Would you, Kip?
KIP: No.
SEBASTIAN: No thank you.
BERNADETTE: For just a little while, until the shock wears off. It was so sudden. I still can’t believe it. I may never take another shower.—You can stay for a week, or a month. Whatever you like.
SEBASTIAN: I don’t think so.
BERNADETTE: It’ll be fun! And besides, there are things to do, things to divide. There are heirlooms and furniture and Mother’s jewelry and the estate. We have plenty of room. Tell him, Kip.
KIP: We have plenty of room.
BERNADETTE: It’ll be just like when we were children!
SEBASTIAN: I don’t want to.
BERNADETTE (Sweetly): Do you remember when we were children?
SEBASTIAN: Vaguely.
BERNADETTE (Slightly hostile): Well so do I.
KIP: They should call this place Unpleasant Meadows.
BERNADETTE (Standing): I think I’m going to cry again.
SEBASTIAN: I’d rather you didn’t.
KIP (To Sebastian): Don’t waste your breath.
BERNADETTE: I feel so awful! I’m going to cry.
SEBASTIAN: Please don’t.
BERNADETTE: I can’t help it.
SEBASTIAN: You cry so loudly.
BERNADETTE: I’m sorry.
KIP: You get used to it.
SEBASTIAN: Let’s talk about something else—Kip, do you enjoy being a dentist?
KIP: God no.
BERNADETTE: Here it comes!
SEBASTIAN: Maybe you’re going to sneeze?
BERNADETTE: I’m not.
KIP: Teeth make me sick.
SEBASTIAN (To Bernadette): People will stare.
BERNADETTE: So what? What if they do? And I don’t see why people should stare anyway. My mother has just been buried! I would think some tears are called for under the circumstances!
SEBASTIAN: I don’t want people to stare. I don’t like being gawked at.
(Bernadette turns away and starts to sob.)
BERNADETTE: OH GOD!! I never said goodbye! I never—
SEBASTIAN (To Kip): It makes me uncomfortable.
BERNADETTE: I never told her I loved her!
KIP: Yes you did. I heard you.
BERNADETTE: But I never meant it!! I said what I was supposed to say when I was supposed to say it! Now it’s too late!
SEBASTIAN: Pull yourself together.
BERNADETTE (Turning to Sebastian): Why should I?! To please you? I’m very sorry but I can’t spend my life trying to please you. It’s been too many hideous years already, trying, reaching out to you—only to be spurned! Sebastian, I’ve tried to be a friend to you. You’re my brother and I want you in my life, but I can take no more humiliation! I matter too!
SEBASTIAN: Fine.
BERNADETTE: I’m sorry. I am. Really. I’m just upset and so I say things, ugly things. You can’t blame me. Can you? You know I love you, don’t you? Don’t you? I do. We only have each other now. Well you have me and I have—Kip. We’re so alone! We’re random, drifting orphans!!
SEBASTIAN: We’re too old to be orphans.
BERNADETTE: We’re Annie Warbucks and Oliver Twist!
SEBASTIAN: I have to go.
KIP: It was nice meeting—
BERNADETTE (To Sebastian): You don’t care, do you? You don’t care one bit that she’s dead. You hated her! You’re completely self-absorbed. You always were. You never shared. You stay away for years at a stretch and sever your ties! You think you can erase your past and live without roots.
KIP (To Sebastian): It was nice meeting you—
BERNADETTE (Cutting him off): Well, Sebastian, I wasn’t going to say anything, because I don’t know if this is really the right place, but I think it is patently immoral of you to disappear from our lives and return, show up just in time to claim half of everything. You think you’re entitled. I’m sorry, but I don’t! Why should you be? You didn’t have to deal with her. No! You have your glamorous literary friends. You sit around the Russian Tea Room all day eating blintzes and trading bons mots! You never suffered her venomous glares and the constant insults, the barrage of insults pecking away at my self-confidence. She adored you. You were some perfect abstract figure in the alcoholic haze of her imagination. You have a perfect life, don’t you? I don’t care. I have a perfect life too.—You didn’t endure her epithets and the black stream of complaints about my life and my husband and my wardrobe. She hated this dress! That’s why I wore it!!! So, so, so I think it is just in the worst possible taste for you to come marching up, making demands for things to which, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you’re entitled! I hope I haven’t hurt you. But that’s how I feel.
SEBASTIAN: I don’t want anything. You can keep it all.
(Pause.)
BERNADETTE: Kip and I have discussed it and we would be so happy if you came for a visit. A week, say, or two. A month.
SEBASTIAN: I really have to go.
BERNADETTE (Mumbled): Why do you hate me?
SEBASTIAN: What?
BERNADETTE: Why do you hate me?
SEBASTIAN: I don’t hate you—
BERNADETTE: Oh please.
SEBASTIAN: I just have to be someplace.
BERNADETTE: You look at me and hate shoots out of you, out of your eyes.
SEBASTIAN: It does not.
BERNADETTE: I’m blinded by your loathing. Rays of hate! You burn holes of hate in my flesh!
SEBASTIAN: What do you want from me!!?
(Pause. Bernadette sits to think.)
BERNADETTE:
