Contents ( 9)
CASS shoves both bottles at him.
CASS: What’s happening here, Brother Luke? Are you thinking you’re going to marry her? (Toasting all:) I do! I do!
BRO: No. I’ll sit this one out. You two go ahead and get married. (Raising his jug:) I’ll observe.
SUZANNE: He’s got his true love.
DOG: Bark! bark bark bark!
SUZANNE (kicking dog out and going right into kicking BRO): Damn it damn it damn it—Luke!—Luke!—Luke!—
BRO: Bro.
SUZANNE: Bro! (Pause.) There’s a brand-new, year-two-thousand SS Camaro outside that we pulled up in.
GIB: Zero to sixty in five seconds flat. Kind of puts a stop to all the speculation about “Are we there yet.”
BRO: So it’s all about the style to which you’re accustomed.
SUZANNE: No. I’m accustomed to shoes from the thrift store with other women’s dried-up foot-sweat in them. I’m accustomed to the ninety-nine-cent fast-food drive-thru special. I’m accustomed to eating burgers and tacos off my lap and listening to the one-speaker stereo and apartments with six-and-a-half-foot ceilings and cigarette scars on the linoleum and cigarette scars on the carpet and a puddle of oil under the car with the power window that won’t roll up. I’m accustomed to taking my little book of food stamps to eight different checkout counters to buy eight packs of gum so I can get enough change in actual U.S. money to buy a half-rack of Tombstone Beer and a pack of no-name cigarettes with a fistful of quarters, pennies, nickels, and dimes. (Pause.) With you, my past becomes my future again…Because if I went back with you I’d just end up divorcing you like last time and marrying him like I’m doing now, so why don’t I just marry him now and get it over with and save all that time?…Because it just gets slowly and slowly and slowly more obvious. You’re a trauma case. A kidnapped child.
BRO: A what?
SUZANNE: A wolf boy.
BRO: What?
CASS: She’s making sense.
BRO: To who?…Aaaaah. You’re all on a self-help…thing.
SUZANNE: I know a wolf boy when I see one.
BRO: You read a scientific book. Your ricochet rebop!
SUZANNE: Your trauma stopped you at the age of nine. You’re stalled halfway inside the human race. Half of you is outside. Like a wolf boy. There’s a lot of you you can’t talk about. You just howl and bite. I wasn’t going to stay married to that kind of stuff.
BRO: Your ripoff repartee!
SUZANNE: A kidnapped child. You’re looking for somebody to ransom you. But I’m marrying Gib.
CASS (to his jug): I do! I do! (Drinks. Lays his head on the counter. Meanwhile:)
BRO: Be that…as it may. He…loves my sister. He is eternally in love with Marigold. Since he was six…I was there. At the pool. He took one look at her and dunked her till she had to be rescued. Took one look at her, and he just had to drown her. That’s a very common expression of love.
GIB: No.