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