the patience for this, I couldn’t even find my glasses so I drove all the way here not knowing if I was going to kill someone, and I’m not even legally supposed to drive if I’m not wearing my—
(Eddie enters from the kitchen with a large tray holding a wide array of pasta dishes, all pristinely presented.)
What / is—?
EDDIE: Gluten-free manicotti. Gluten-free fettucine Alfredo. Gluten-free cheese ravioli, gluten-free spaghetti with meatballs . . . And some other stuff. I went to the 24-hour mart for the pasta. (Pause) Sit down, Mom.
(Pause.)
DORIS: Wait, you want me to—? This is the emergency?
EDDIE: Sit down.
DORIS: I’m not hungry, Eddie, I— . . . (Pause) This is so strange, I don’t even know what to / say—
EDDIE: Mom. Please. I spent five hours making all this.
(Doris looks at the food, unsure of what to do. Silence.)
Can we just sit and—be together? We used to be able to do this, when I was in high school, we used to be able to just sit and talk—
DORIS: That was almost twenty years ago, Eddie! You’re an adult!
EDDIE: What does being an adult have to do / with—?
DORIS: It was an awful time, and we got through it! (Quick pause) Do you just want an apology? Fine, then, Eddie, I am so sorry you had an awful childhood. I’m sorry that Dad was the way he was. / It was a terrible time for all of us.
EDDIE: I don’t want an apology—
DORIS: But you don’t need to act out like this, calling me in the middle of the night! People today are so obsessed their feelings and emotions and talking, talking, talking, people have forgotten how to deal with problems on their own!
EDDIE: I don’t want to talk about problems. I just want to get through all this crap so we can sit down and eat fucking lasagna together!
DORIS: DON’T USE THAT WORD.
EDDIE: SIT. DOWN.
(Pause. Doris doesn’t move.)
Please.
(Doris pauses, then pulls the chair a good distance away from the table and sits. Eddie looks at her.)
What would you like?
DORIS: I told you I’m not hungry.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Okay.
(Eddie serves himself some lasagna.)
DORIS: This is why you brought me here in the middle of the night?
EDDIE: Yeah, Mom, it is. Because I like you, because I miss what we used to have, I miss just being able to talk to you—
DORIS: Well maybe it wasn’t—
(Doris stops herself. Quick pause.)
EDDIE: What?
DORIS: Never mind.
EDDIE: No, seriously, just say it!
DORIS: I said never mind!
EDDIE: Mom, let’s please just get it out in the open so we can move on, I just / want to—
DORIS: Maybe it wasn’t good for you, what about that?! I don’t know why you have to do this, Nicky has always been so independent, but you have this different way, so sensitive, and—.
(Short pause.)
You have to understand, after Dad—. I had no idea how you and your brother were going to move forward. I thought you would just—collapse in on yourselves. But then you both went to college, you both seemed normal. I thought you had both made it through unscathed. Obviously you hadn’t.
(Pause.)
You think it was easy for me, after Dad died? Nicky away at college, I was working at the Blockbuster and the Albertson’s, seeing those people every day who knew me, who used to eat at the diner—my God, what they must have thought of me. It was always a relief to come home and have dinner with you every night, and we didn’t have to talk about Dad or our feelings or—any of it. We could just act like normal human beings. And then you came home that night, and you tell me that you’re— . . .
(Pause.)
I realized, it just—wasn’t normal for a grown man to spend that much time around his mother.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Wait—you think it’s your fault?
DORIS: Well I don’t know, you came out of nowhere and told me this thing, I don’t—. I just thought that what with your father gone, and you and I being so close, it wasn’t too surprising that you— . . . I was terrified for you. Your life had been difficult enough already, and then living with that in this town . . . And thinking that I had somehow contributed to it, I just—. I thought that putting some distance between us would be good for you. I didn’t want to, I—. Oh I hate talking like this, it’s so embarrassing.
(Pause.)
You just seem so troubled. I don’t like thinking it’s my fault.
(Doris looks away from Eddie. Pause.)
EDDIE: It’s not your fault, Mom, it’s no one’s fault, it’s just . . . (Pause) I never knew you felt that way.
DORIS: Well. You’ve always just seemed so unhappy.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: I am unhappy, Mom. But it doesn’t have anything to do with—.
(Silence.)
You remember Great-Grandpa’s old place?
(Pause. Doris looks at him.)
DORIS: Well, of course I remember it—
EDDIE: I still go there sometimes. And I sit there for a while, and I think about Great-Grandpa. Coming up here from Utah, homesteading, farming the land for the first time, and it’s so— . . . For a second or two, I feel like I’m—here. Here.
(Pause.)
But then I have to leave because it’s not our land anymore, and I get back in my car and I drive back to my apartment complex, and all I can think is—there’s the Starbucks. The Walmart. The Burger King. The Wendy’s. The Staples. The Kmart. The Best Buy. The McDonalds. The Safeway. The Home Depot. The Olive Garden.
(Silence.)
