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Back Marjorie Prime Save as PDF
Chapters (14)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Production History
  4. Characters
  5. Part One
  6. Scene 2
  7. Scene 3
  8. Part Two
  9. Scene 2
  10. Scene 3
  11. Scene 4
  12. Part Three
  13. Thoughts on the Primes
  14. About the Author

MARJORIE: You want to be more human too.

(Beat.)

TESS: Jon wants me to see a therapist. (Beat) It feels like I made all the right choices, all my life—I woke up early, I studied for the test—and now here I am talking to my dead mother, and the person who loves me the most in the whole world thinks I’m broken.

MARJORIE: You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.

(Pause. Again, Tess is strangely moved. The empathy from Marjorie feels real.)

(A feeling that she’s discovering this as she says it) There are penguins there.

TESS: Where?

MARJORIE: On Madagascar. Just one species.

They think sailors must have brought them. In the eighteenth century. Brought them there and left them behind. Think of that.

TESS: What?

MARJORIE: Now penguins are all that’s left of them.

Scene 2

2

Tess and Jon in the living room.

Maybe Marjorie and Walter both sit at the dim perimeter now.

JON: I got a ficus too. The maple was looking a little lonely. Little droopy.

TESS: We’ll find it a nice sunny spot. It’ll perk right up.

JON: Speaking of perking up.

(He produces a latte from behind his back.)

Abracadabra.

TESS: You say that before the trick.

(He resets, hiding the latte again.)

JON: Abracadabra.

TESS (The last act of resistance): I really shouldn’t—the way I’ve been sleeping.

JON (Enticing): It’s half-caff . . .

TESS (Taking it): Oh all right, you thought of everything.

I’m that predictable.

JON (Not a bad thing): After twenty-nine years.

(She takes a sip.)

TESS: You didn’t get yourself one?

JON (Patting his stomach): In here.

TESS: Did you leave the cup in the car?

JON: No?

TESS: Jon.

JON: Sorry.

TESS: You’re starting, like, an ecosystem in there.

JON: I’ll clean the whole car before it gets dark, how’s that.

TESS: Thank you.

JON: Spray it all down with 409—I won’t spare a single para-mecium.

TESS (Sneaking this in, trying not to be bossy): Soap and water’s better.

(Beat.)

Look what I found.

(She holds up a candy box with the words PEOPLE I WANT TO REMEMBER written on it in Sharpie.)

JON: Oh wow.

TESS: I still haven’t made it through all the boxes from the old house. She was like a squirrel.

(Jon opens it. Looks at the photos and papers inside.)

I don’t know half the people in it. Lot of obituaries, of course. And some more letters from Jean-Paul.

JON: He never gave up, did he.

TESS: He really loved her.

(He picks a letter.)

JON (Reading): “Dear Margie,

Love is a strange thing.”

TESS: Oh that’s a good one.